Time After Time

USA TODAY bestselling author
Antoinette Stockenberg spins love, family, and a touch of magic
into a lighthearted, richly drawn tale that tugs at the heart and
leaves the reader laughing and wanting more. 
Time After Time
will
appeal to fans of authors as diverse as Nora Roberts,  Barbara
Michaels, Jennifer Crusie and Barbara Freethy.
WHEN A PARTY PLANNER MEETS A PARTY
POOPER ...

things will probably not turn out the way either would
like.   Liz Coppersmith hopes to move beyond kids'
parties at Chuck E. Cheese to planning premier events among the
upper crust in Newport, Rhode Island.  Her first upscale
client is confirmed bachelor Jack Eastman, who's struggling to keep
the family empire afloat and would be just fine with Chuck E.
Cheese.  More problematic for Jack are an untrained puppy, two
illegitimate toddlers, a runaway mother and an aging Lothario
father.  Liz's problems are simpler:  an historic
mystery, an amnesiac friend, a thief on the loose and a recurring
apparition that may or may not be her imagination.

"Master storyteller
Antoinette Stockenberg surpasses herself with her newest
tale,
Time After Time
... a richly rewarding novel filled with wrenching loss,
timeless passion and eerie suspense.  A novel to be
savored."
--
Romantic Times
"All of the elements of a rollicking
great read have been expertly blended into this story, from
precocious children to an old skirt-chasing lech. 
Time After Time
, as
hilarious as it is poignant and heart-tugging, will command center
stage on your keeper shelf.  Once again, Antoinette
Stockenberg has done a magnificent job."
--
I'll Take Romance
"Antoinette Stockenberg is a superb contemporary writer, an
author who creates an ambience that is as important as the
character development.  She also adds an invaluable sense of
humor which appears at unexpected times, leaving readers loudly
laughing. 
Time After Time
is that rarest of works -- a satisfying treasure
for a vast variety of palates."
--
Affaire de Coeur
"This book [is] a rewarding and gratifying reading
experience.  This exceptionally talented author has penned a
unique story that spins a touching and sensitive story of love and
trust.  Throw in a cast of magnificent characters, and you'll
be ready to hold on to this one for another read."
--
Rendezvous
"A light and engaging tale of
righting past wrongs in class-conscious Newport society."
--
Gothic Journal

In 1692, Salem, Massachusetts was the setting for the
infamous  persecution of innocents accused of
witchcraft.  Three centuries later, little has changed. 
Helen Evett, widowed mother of two and owner of a prestigious
preschool in town, finds her family, her fortunes, and her life's
work threatened —all because she feels driven to protect the sweet
three-year-old daughter of a man who knows everything about finance
but not so much about fathering.

A Nantucket cottage by the sea: the inheritance is a dream come
true for Jane Drew. Too bad it comes with a ghost -- and a
soulfully seductive neighbor who'd just as soon boot Jane off the
island.

Embers

To Meg Hazard, it seemed like a good idea at
the time: squeezing her extended family into the back rooms of
their rambling Victorian home and converting the rest of the house
into a Bed and Breakfast in the coastal town of Bar Harbor,
Maine.  Paying guests are most welcome, but the arrival of a
Chicago cop on medical leave turns out to be both good news and bad
news for Meg and the Inn Between.

Emily's Ghost

A showdown between a U.S. Senator (with a house on Martha's
Vineyard) who believes in ghosts and a reporter who doesn't. 
What could possibly go wrong?

Visit
http://www.antoinettestockenberg.com
to read sample chapters of other novels coming
soon for your Kindle.

This is a work of
fiction.  Names, characters, places, and incidents are either
the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously,
and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental.
Time After
Time
Copyright © 1995 by Antoinette Stockenberg

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For Diane

My gratitude to the
following for their helpful input:  Dr. Howard Browne (as
always) and Dr. Samir Moubayed; Mike Muessel of Oldport Marine;
Seaman David Parry; Newport Officer Teresa Hayes; Vicki Lawrence;
and especially my sister Diane, whose kids had
better
remember all those birthday
extravaganzas.
Jane, thanks for the copper beech and the view.

Liz Coppersmith and her
friend Victoria raised their wineglasses to the brooding mansion on
the other side of the chain-link fence.

"Not a bad neighborhood,"
said Victoria, the taller, more whimsically dressed of the two. She
dropped into a plastic lawn chair, shook out her red permed curls,
and straightened the folds of her star-print sundress. "You'll do
lots of business over there," she predicted, "or my name's not
Victoria."

Liz had heard her say "or
my name's not Victoria" a thousand times since they'd met five
years ago in a grief-management group. And every time, Liz had to
resist saying, "Your name
isn'
t
Victoria, damn it." Victoria's name was Judy Maroney, and if
it weren't for her stubborn, persistent, rather amazing amnesia,
Liz would be calling her Judy and not Tori at that very
moment.

"If I do get any work out
of them, Tori, it'll be thanks to you. You found me a house in a
perfect location."

"I did, didn't I?" said
Victoria, pleased with herself. "Call it intuition, but I was sure
you'd like it, despite that unpromising ad in the paper. I mean — a
four-room house? I have more bathrooms than that, and I live
alone."

They both glanced back at
the sweet but plain two-story cottage that now belonged to Liz. It
was exactly the kind of house that children invariably draw; all
that was missing was a plume of Crayola smoke from the red-brick
chimney.

"It's no castle," Liz
conceded. She tilted her head toward the intimidating mansion to
the east. "But what the heck," she said with an ironic smile. "It's
close enough."

She went back to gazing
through the chain-link fence at her neighbor. The grounds of the
estate were magnificent, even for Newport. Ancient trees, presided
over by an enormous copper beech, threw shimmering pools of shade
over an expanse of well-kept grass. In the sunny openings between
the trees were huge, wonderful shrubs — viburnums and hydrangeas
and lush, towering rhododendrons. There were no flowers to speak
of; only a green, understated elegance. It was like having her own
private deer park — except without the deer — right in the heart of
Newport.

Too bad she was separated
from it by a chain-link fence and barbed wire.

Liz reached up and plucked
a strand of the rusty wire as if it were a harp string. "This has
been here a
long
time," she said.

"If I were you," said
Victoria, "I'd think about getting a tetanus shot." She frowned in
disapproval. "Barbed wire. Who do they think they are,
anyway?"

"You mean, who do they
think
we
are,"
Liz corrected. "Obviously they don't trust my side of the
neighborhood." She took in her tiny cottage, the smallest house on
a street of small houses. "And let's face it, why should they? We
don't exactly radiate wealth and prosperity."

"Never mind," said
Victoria with an airy wave of her hand. "That will come. It's your
karma. I had a vision."

Liz laughed and said, "You
and your crystal ball just might be right. After all, yesterday —
the very day I moved in! — there I was, talking through this fence
to their housekeeper. I suppose they sent her over here to make
sure I wasn't in some prison-release program, but I liked her, even
if she
was
a spy.
Her name is Netta something, and she was as chatty as could be.
Apparently her boss is some workaholic bachelor —"

"Uh-oh. No business
there," said Victoria, sipping her wine.

"That's what I thought,
too, at first." Liz raked her hair away from her face and cocked
her head appraisingly at the Queen Anne-style mansion.

"But then I found out that
his parents stay at the estate — East Gate, it's called — every
summer. It's been in the family since it was built, a hundred years
ago. Besides the parents, there are a couple of semi-permanent
guests staying there now as well. They must do
some
entertaining." Liz smiled and
said, "Naturally I found a way to let it drop that I was an events
planner."

"Did the housekeeper even
know what that was?" asked Victoria.

"I made sure of it. I told
her I design weddings, dinners, birthdays, dances, receptions,
fund-raisers, charity events — the works."

"In other words
—"

"I lied." Liz's deep brown
eyes flashed with good humor. "Hey, if I told her I arranged kids'
birthday parties at Chuck E. Cheese, you think she'd have been
impressed?"

"You did what you had to
do, Liz Coppersmith," agreed Victoria. "You planted the
seed."

"Yeah. That was the easy
part. The hard part will be to provide references who're old enough
to read and write."

Victoria said, "If you
need references, don't worry. I'll come up with
references."

And she would, too,
because — unlike Liz — Victoria had money to buy anything she
wanted.

It wasn't always that way.
Less than six years earlier, Victoria —Judy Maroney then — had
crossed the Rhode Island border with her husband, two children, and
not much more than high hopes that her husband's new job at the
Newport Tourist and Convention Center would give her family more
stability than he had at his old job in the defense industry. The
family was eastbound on Route
95,
just a few miles behind their moving van, when
they were sideswiped by a drunk driver and ended up broadside to
two lanes of eastbound traffic.

Judy's husband, Paul, and
their four-year-old son were killed instantly. Their daughter,
Jessica, who would've been two in a week, had lived another
forty-eight hours. Judy Maroney, behind the wheel, was saved, just
barely, by the driver's-side airbag.

And she could not forgive
herself, both for being at the wheel and for surviving. That, at
least, became Liz's theory. How else to explain the post-trauma
amnesia that had no medical basis?

Judy's mother-in-law, to
whom Liz had once spoken, had a different theory. She believed that
Judy, rejecting the unspeakable horror of her loss, had invented a
new identity to get around having to face that abyss. Hence the
single — and now legal — name "Victoria."

Whatever the reason, Judy
Maroney had for all practical purposes died in that crash. And the
woman who replaced her — Victoria — had never once, to Liz or to
anyone else, alluded to the accident. Tori was pleasant, she was
friendly — by far the most cheerful member in the grief group — and
she was totally amnesiac.

The accident had resulted
in a huge settlement for her. Money hadn't given Judy back her
memory — it certainly hadn't given her back her family — but
it
had
given the
woman named Victoria lots of people willing to call themselves
friends. Or references. Or whatever she wanted.