Does redemption flow in small towns like Three Rivers?
I spent a decade in prison for a crime I didn't commit.
Before I was released on parole, I was part of a work-release program in a little town in Michigan called Three Rivers. So, when I'm finally paroled, there's nowhere else I want to be but here in Three Rivers, rebuilding my life from scratch.
I expect life to be hard; it always has been, for me.
What I don't expect?
Noelle Harper. Short, curvy, gorgeous, and way too sweet and innocent for the likes of me. She's full of light, love, understanding, compassion, and affection-things I know nothing about.
I don't expect her to crash into the new life I'm building, turn everything upside down, and see things in me I've never seen in myself.
I don't expect her to save me. To see beyond my past and show me how to reach for more-how to love.
* * *
My life has not gone the way I thought it would.
I'm a small-town girl next door, Three Rivers born and raised. I'm a good girl from a conservative home-I didn't
date
my high school sweetheart, I
courted
him...with chaperones. I didn't so much as hold his hand until we married right out of high school.
I expected to be a pastor's wife, a mom, and a member of the only community I've ever known. I expected my life to be simple and predictable.
To discover that my husband was cheating on me with not one, not two, but three church skanks, while acting like my eager desire for a healthy marital sex life was something I should be ashamed of.
I don't expect a man like Bear. A veritable mountain of a man with an unlikely name, long red hair, and a giant red beard. A man with a criminal record. A man who sees a side of me no one, not my family, and certainly not my husband ever saw. A man who brings the real Noelle Harper to life.
I never expected to fall in love with a gigantic, quiet, rough-around-the-edges man with a gentle spirit and a misunderstood past.
But in Three Rivers, the unexpected seems to travel faster than the town gossip.