Dedication




The entire Whisper Lake series is dedicated to all the romance authors out there who give me endless hours of escape, entertainment, and therapy! Each book is going to highlight three authors that are near and dear to my heart and inspire me to write sassy, fun-loving, swoon-worthy love stories that (I hope) are filled with humor, heart, and heat. Most of you know who you are (because I fangirl SO HARD!) but now the world will know, too, because I am shouting it from the rooftops (and by rooftops I mean the dedication page).

Book four is dedicated to Jennifer Bernard, Erika Wilde/Janelle Denison, Heidi Betts, and Shannon Stacey. This quartet of wordsmiths are masters at the bow-chika-bow-wow build up. They are all expertly skilled at the fine art of creating tension that jumps off the page and then melts the sucker down. These lady poets know how to spark a flame and fan the sucker until it’s a raging inferno even if the hanky panky starts is in the first chapter (I’m looking at you Erika Wilde *cough* The Marriage Diaries). These sexy-time savants write three dimensional characters that are real, funny, flawed, smart, strong, vulnerable, and it translates into love scenes that are so real readers will blush and fan themselves.

Whisper of Temptation has blatant shout-outs and hidden Easter eggs for all four of these lovelies. If you haven’t read Jennifer, Erika/Janelle, Heidi, and Shannon’s work I highly recommend you do! Believe me, you won’t be disappointed. *wink wink*

XO

Shawna





CHAPTER 1





Chocolate.

I need chocolate.

Lots. Of. Chocolate.

Sara Kellan had one vice. Yep, that’s right: chocolate. She ate it when she was happy, sad, nervous, frustrated, frazzled. She even used it as an emotional barometer. A bad hair day was a Hershey’s Kiss. Having to pay a traffic ticket that was going to overdraw her bank account was a chocolate bar. This spontaneous road trip was a pan of triple-fudge brownies.

“Are we there yet?!” Trevor called out from the backseat.

The question was innocent enough, but right now it was also like nails on Sara’s chalkboard-soul.

Deep breath.

Only a crazy person would make the twenty-hour drive from Arizona to Illinois with a seven-year-old that had the attention span of a gnat and a three-year-old that couldn’t even sit through an entire movie at the theater.

“Yes, we’re almost there Trev,” she answered the same question she’d been asked over a hundred times in the last six hours.

“Mom, she’s touching me!” her seven-year-old bellowed.

“Am not!” Her precious three-year-old defended herself against her brother’s allegation with the conviction of a wrongly accused death row inmate.

“Are too!”

“Am not!”

“Are too!”

“Am not!”

“Are too!”

What the eff was I thinking?

Her question had only one logical answer, she wasn’t. If anything, she’d lost her ever-lovin’ mind. There were no ifs, ands, or buts about it. No gray area. It was not up for discussion. It was a cold. Hard. Fact.

The only silver lining to this entire fiasco was that at least she would have material for a post on her blog, aptly titled What The F?

The name had come from Sara trying to teach her little sister Shelby math when Shelby was in sixth grade. Her sister would just shake her head and tell her that she didn’t know “what the eff” she was talking about. Shelby was twelve at the time and hadn’t been allowed to curse. Now as an adult, she cursed like a longshoreman. Whenever Sara mentioned it, she said she was making up for lost time. Sara had done her best to explain formulas, fractions, multiplication and theories to her sister, but Shelby and math never made a love connection. For Sara, it was her first true love. Numbers had always made sense to her. It gave her comfort knowing that there was a right answer to something.

Not surprisingly Sara was drawn to a career that dealt with numbers and was a CPA. After she had Trevor she joined a Mommy and Me class where she’d been surrounded by women and a couple of men that had no clue about finances, so she’d shared her expertise. The information she’d given had helped several couples so much that they’d asked if she did any consulting. The thought had never occurred to her, but she’d agreed and slowly, over years, she’d managed to build a solid client base.

Being in a world of numbers was her bliss, but she quickly learned that numbers intimidated most people. One day in Mommy and Me class there were seven women taking notes on the advice that Sara was giving them about finding ways to trim their existing budget and putting that money into building a savings account and then eventually investing. It was honestly the first time any of them had ever heard of it. She mentioned it to Shelby who immediately insisted that her sister start a blog to help women, and men, with tips that could change their lives.