Loveknot
WELCOME TO TYLERTHE PIECES ARE COMING TOGETHERJudson's trial is over, but the question remains: Who killed Margaret Ingalls? The answer lies buried deep in her daughter Alyssa's memory….Join the residents of Tyler as they piece together forty-year-old secret of America's favorite hometown.Each book set in Tyler is a self-contained story; together, they stitch the fabric of a community.HAUNTED BY DREAMS…Alyssa Baron's sleep is filled with jumbled images of the night her mother died. But during the day, she's busy sparring with Edward Wocheck, who's intent on buying out the family business.AND A MAN WHO NEVER FORGOT HEREdward has loved Alyssa since they were children. He's determined to put an end to her tortured dreams. And then – business differences or no – he intends to win her heart.
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WELCOME TO TYLER-PIECES ARE COMING TOGETHER
Judson’s trial is over, but the question remains: Who killed Margaret Ingalls? The answer lies buried deep in her daughter Alyssa’s memory.... Join the residents of Tyler as they piece together the forty-year-old secret of America’s favorite hometown.
HAUNTED BY DREAMS...
Alyssa Baron’s sleep is filled with jumbled images of the night her mother died. But during the day, she’s busy sparring with Edward Wocheck, who’s intent on buying out the family business.
AND A MAN WHO NEVER FORGOT HER
Edward has loved Alyssa since they were children. He’s determined to put an end to her tortured dreams. And then—business differences or no—he intends to win her heart.
Previously Published.
“Alyssa, stop torturing yourself.”
Alyssa looked up at her mother’s portrait. “She was so beautiful,” she said. “So beautiful and so cold.”
She felt Edward’s arm go around her and leaned into his strength without conscious thought. She stared up at the aloof, self-involved face in the portrait, trying to see into her mother’s heart. “I was here the night my mother died, Edward.”
He turned her to face him, moving so quickly she had no time to object. He held her shoulders between his hands. “Tell me what happened in this room that night, Lyssa. Tell me what you saw and what you heard.”
“And what I did,” she said, fighting the urge to break into tears.
“Alyssa,” he repeated softly. “Tell me what you remember.”
Welcome to Mills & Boon’s Tyler, a small Wisconsin town whose citizens we hope you’ve come to know and love. It was your enthusiasm for sequels and continuing characters that prompted us to create a series of individual romances whose characters’ lives intertwine.
By now word is out that Judson Ingalls has been acquitted of his wife’s murder, but the mystery remains. What really happened that night so many years ago? Will the emotionally scarred members of the Ingalls clan ever know for sure?
Phil Wocheck buried some secret knowledge along with Margaret’s body—everyone in town is convinced of that. And the proud Ingalls dynasty is tottering on the edge of financial ruin. Timberlake Lodge has been totally transformed, and Edward Wocheck, once reviled, is now firmly entrenched as a mover and shaker.
And there are strangers in town, too. Devon Addison, Edward’s stepson, seems more and more to be calling Tyler home, and Robert Grover, a strange little man from Chicago, appears to have taken up permanent residence at Timberlake.
Has Tyler lost forever its quiet innocence and strong sense of community? Join Edward and Alyssa as they attempt to make peace with the past and forge a new future for America’s favorite hometown.
Marsha Zinberg
Editorial Coordinator, Tyler
Special thanks and acknowledgment to Marisa Carroll for her contribution to the TYLER series.
Special thanks and acknowledgment to Joanna Kosloff for her contribution to the concept for the TYLER series.
CONTENTS
TIMBERLAKE.
Alyssa Ingalls Baron caught her breath at the sight of the imposing main lodge with its gabled dormer windows and twin fieldstone chimneys as the drive curved around to front the wide veranda.
Unconsciously her hands tightened on the steering wheel. “This is what it was like when my mother was alive.” She spoke the words aloud, the sound of her voice a talisman against the nervous beat of blood in her ears. “This is the way I remember it in my dreams.”
No one was sitting in the passenger seat of the car to hear her words. She was alone. She wanted it that way. No one knew she was coming to Timberlake to question Phil Wocheck face-to-face, for the first time, about Margaret Ingalls’s death. What she had to say to the old man was for his ears alone.
She parked the car in the graveled lot, hidden from the newly renovated lodge by an artful tangle of evergreens and barberry bushes, and started across the lawn. Adirondack chairs, painted a dark fir-green, were still grouped in inviting clusters under the massive maples and oaks, although many of the trees had already dropped their leaves and the late-fall weather was warm enough to sit outside comfortably for only a short time in the middle of the day.
But it was the windows Alyssa remembered best, dozens of them, it seemed, gleaming warmly in the sunlight, reflecting the blue of the sky and the lake, welcoming her—home.
Alyssa shivered. The feeling of comfort and momentary sense of belonging was so at odds with her mood. For forty years, most of her life, the lodge had been locked and shuttered and ignored, a grim testament to Margaret Ingalls’s desertion of her husband and daughter.
For all those years, no one but Phil had known what had happened to Margaret. Now they did. She hadn’t run away with a lover that long-ago night, but had died right here at Timberlake. It was public knowledge now, how she had died, when and where. The only question that still remained was who had killed her. Only two days before, Alyssa’s father, Judson Ingalls, had been acquitted of his wife’s murder. Acquitted of responsibility, but not proved innocent of the crime.
