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Authors: Lexi Eddings

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Acknowledgments

C
oldwater Cove is a fictional town, but parts of it are real. It's a combination of every little wide spot in the road I've ever visited or called home. So if you see
your
town in it, you may well be right. I'd be remiss if I didn't acknowledge Marcy Weinbeck, my dear beta reader, who helped me sketch out a map of Coldwater Cove so my story would have a firm sense of place. Thanks, Marcy.

You may also think you recognize some of the secondary characters in Coldwater Cove: the fussy neighbor, Mr. Mayhew, or the Polish piano teacher, Mrs. Paderewski. Small towns are filled with interestingly quirky people, so I understand why you might believe I've been writing about someone you know. Actually, only one of my characters is based on a real person: Charlie Bunn, the founder of the Royal Order of Chicken Pluckers. Yes, it's all too real. I couldn't make that up! Thank you to my beloved friend, Kathy Bunn, for letting me use her dad's real name in the book.

It's said that it takes a village to raise a child. It takes a small town to bring a book to market. I'm grateful for Alicia Condon, my amazing editor at Kensington; and my tireless agent, Natasha Kern; and for the cover artist, copy editor, marketing team, sales staff, and bookseller who helped put this story into your hands.

Which brings me to you, dear reader. Without you and your imagination, my story cannot live. You breathe life into the words on the page and complete the conversation between us. Thank you for coming along for the ride!

If you'd like to know more about me and my books, I hope you'll visit LexiEddings.com.

A READING GROUP GUIDE

THE COLDWATER WARM HEARTS CLUB

Lexi Eddings

ABOUT THIS GUIDE

The suggested questions are included to enhance your group's reading of this book.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1.
Acclaimed author Thomas Wolfe may think “you can't go home again,” but at the beginning of
The Coldwater Warm Hearts Club,
Lacy Evans is trying to do just that. Do you think going back home is hard? Under what circumstances would you do it?

2.
Lacy has had her share of man troubles, especially with Bradford Endicott. What do you think drew her to him in the first place? Did she lose more than her business by hooking up with him?

3.
To all outward appearances, Jake Tyler has adjusted to civilian life without part of his leg. Why do you think he hides the fact that he experiences flashbacks?

4.
The relationship between a parent and his or her adult child is a tricky one. Do you think Mr. and Mrs. Evans treat Lacy like a twelve-year-old, or is it just her perception? How should they try to help her?

5.
What would have happened if Lacy had decided she wanted to rekindle her romance with Daniel? How would that have changed the story?

6.
Homelessness isn't just a big-city problem. Whose responsibility is it to see that people have adequate shelter? Government, either federal or local? Church and charities? What would have happened to Lester without the Warm Hearts Club? How would the group have responded if he had fallen off the wagon or been unwilling to make a change?

7.
Beauty really is in the eye of the beholder. Lacy and her mom have very different ideas of what constitutes “art.” How do the items we surround ourselves with tell people about us? What do you have in your home that shows others who you are?

8.
At the beginning of the book, Jake makes Lacy her favorite waffles. He brings her supper while she's unpacking. Later, they play in the kitchen together when she teaches him how to make three cheese deviled eggs, an Evans family secret recipe. Could food be a metaphor for something else? What's going on in the relationship each time something to eat is involved?

9.
Grandma Bugtussle tells Lacy “if where you are ain't the happiest place, then you ain't home yet.” Is home a place? Is it a collection of relationships? Both?

10.
Did the ending surprise you? Lacy was passionate about her career. What would have happened if Lacy had returned to Boston? Would Jake have followed her there? Could an Okie boy find happiness in Beantown? (Oh, wait, that sounds like another story, doesn't it? Maybe I'd better put that idea on the back burner and let it simmer for a while....)

Thank you for spending time in Coldwater Cove with me. I hope you'll return often!

Happy Reading,

Lexi

Can't wait to spend more time in Coldwater Cove?

Read on for a preview of

A COLDWATER WARM HEARTS WEDDING

coming next May

Chapter 1

Trouble makes us stronger, they say. It brings out
the best in us and shows what we're really made of.
But don't you just hate it when blessings come in disguise?

âShirley Evans, after she got the news
from her doctor about the Big C

“T
his was so not the time to take a surgical rotation,” Heather Walker mumbled to herself as she scanned the lineup of procedures for the day. Not that she didn't love assisting. She did. It was rewarding to be part of the surgical team at Coldwater Cove's small hospital. She went home “good tired” every day. But it would be so much easier if she didn't know her patients.

And Heather knew everybody in town.

Today was worse than usual because the mother of her best friend, Lacy Evans, was on the schedule. Lacy pushed her way past one of the curtains that divided up the surgical waiting area and made a beeline toward Heather.

“Mom was supposed to be in surgery an hour ago.” Lacy's nose was red, a sure sign she'd been fighting back tears.

“I know and I'm sorry, but it can't be helped. We had an emergency appendectomy come in this morning.” Heather always tried to be calmly professional, however frazzled she might feel on the inside. No one would be helped if she joined them in barely suppressed panic. She strived to be detached enough to get the job done. That was the goal anyway. It was a hard line to walk when her friend was obviously holding herself together with spit and baling twine. “Your mom is next on the list.”

Lacy nodded. “Okay. Maybe it's just as well there was a delay. Michael's not here yet.”

Lacy's fiancÃ© Jake had called in a favor with one of his marine buddies in intelligence and between them, they'd managed to track down the elusive Michael Evans. Lacy figured her brother deserved to know what was happening, even though he'd shown precious little interest in his family in the past few years. Lacy had confided in Heather that she was relievedâand a little surprisedâto discover her brother wasn't in jail somewhere.

“Are you expecting him to come?” Heather asked.

“No, but Mom is.”

Her friend's black-sheep brother hadn't been home in ages. Hadn't called. Hadn't even sent a postcard. Mike Evans had been in Heather's class in school, but he ran with a totally different crowd, so their paths had rarely crossed. Her only sharp memory of him was when he christened her “Stilts” in middle school. Through no fault of her own, Heather had shot up to five feet, ten inches by her thirteenth birthday and she hadn't been finished growing yet.

The name stuck. She was Stilts Walker all through high school.

But even that indignity wasn't enough to account for the resentment simmering in her chest. According to Lacy, Michael had shamed his family many times over the years. If there was a way to go wrong, Mike Evans found it. Still, the frustration rising in Heather's chest was unproductive, so she tamped it down. Her relationship with her own parents wasn't anything to brag about. It was aloof rather than estranged, but in a pinch, she hoped the Walkers would come together.

Any guy who couldn't be bothered to show up when his mother was facing cancer surgery deserved a swift kick in the backside.

Her friend Lacy's eyes went hazy for a moment. “She doesn't know how to swim.”

“What?”

“My mom. Every summer she took us kids to the pool for lessons five times a week, and I mean
religiously.
At six-holy-cow-thirty a.m., we'd be hopping around by the side of the pool trying to warm up before they let us into the water.” Lacy's voice trailed away. “Mom swims like a rock, but she made sure we all learned how.”

“Maybe she can take lessons at the Civic Center as part of her physical therapy after surgery,” Heather suggested. It was important for her friend to think positively about her mom's future.

“That's not the point,” Lacy said with a sniff. “The point is she's a terrific mom and I never appreciated her like I should.”

“She's still a terrific mom. Appreciate her now.”

Lacy gave her a shaky nod. Ever since Mrs. Evans's routine mammogram had revealed a tumor and a needle biopsy confirmed cancer, Lacy had been pumping Heather for information about the diagnosis, treatment, and likely outcome. “But what will happen ifâ”

“Hush now.”
Forget being professional.
Heather gave her friend a hug. “You're borrowing trouble. Until your mom has the surgery, we won't know if the cancer has spread. And until we know that, it's hard to say what treatment Dr. Warner will recommend.”

Or if we caught the disease in time to make treatment worth the misery,
Heather thought but didn't say. No point in rehearsing the worst-case scenario.

But Lacy had evidently been imagining it.

“Come on. I need to get your mom prepped.” Pasting on what she hoped was an encouraging smile, Heather led Lacy to the surgical waiting room and drew back the first curtain. The scent of antiseptic cleansers and bleached linen was second nature to Heather, but hospital smells put most people on edge. Mrs. Evans wasn't troubled though. She was always awash in a personal cloud of EstÃ©e Lauder. You couldn't have smelled a skunk if it had taken up residence under her bed.

Heather's patient was sitting up on the gurney, trying to wrestle a pillow away from Lacy's older sister, Crystal. Heather wasn't sure what offense the pillow had committed, but Crystal was doing her best to pound it into submission.

Everyone deals with stress in their own way.

“Good morning, Mrs. Evans,” Heather said as she edged past Crystal to reach her patient. “How are we doing today?”

“Fine, Heather. Ready to get this over with.” Mrs. Evans gave up and surrendered the pillow to her daughter. She was already festooned with electrodes monitoring her heart rate, and the pillow fight had sent her pulse racing. An IV pumped saline into her system. In a few minutes, Heather would add a drug cocktail to prepare her for the general anesthesia to come. Doc Warner called it the “don't give a darn” drug.

Only he didn't say “darn.”

“I'll see what I can do to move things along,” Heather promised.

“Thank you, dear,” Mrs. Evans said. “Crystal, for heaven's sake, stop worrying that pillow.”

“I'm not worrying it. I'm trying to give it a little shape. It won't do you any good if it's all flat.”

“Flat or fluffy, it's not doing me a speck of good if it's not under my head.”

“You heard your mother,” Mr. Evans chimed in from his seat in the only chair on the other side of the bed.

With a sigh, Crystal stuffed the pillow behind her mother's shoulders. Heather suspected Lacy's sister didn't fluff and plump for her mom's comfort. She wasn't even necessarily doing it out of nervous energy. She was rearranging things to suit herself. Even back when they were kids, Crystal had had firm ideas about how everything should be.

Of course, everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but if they wanted to be right, they had to agree with Crystal.

Looking gray and stretched thin, Mr. Evans retreated behind the
Coldwater Gazette,
rattling the paper noisily.

A prime example of the ostrich-with-his-head-in-the-sand way to deal with stress.

Then he began to quote snippets from the
Gazette
whether anyone was listening to him or not.

“Labor Day is fast approaching,” he read, “the traditional time for all graduates of Coldwater High to gather for their class reunions. Like lemmings rushing to the sea, we expect a number of Fighting Marmots will make their way home for the festivities.”

“I did
not
write that,” Lacy was quick to point out, though she did work for the local paper. “That's my boss all the way. It's not enough that our high school mascot is an oversized rodent, Wanda has to lump us with suicidal ones, too.”

Heather had been a Lady Marmot once, a star power forward on the girls' basketball team back in the day. But she'd often wondered who had first decided it would be a good thing for the Coldwater Cove teams to bear the name of a glorified ground squirrel.

“Looks like our class is hosting a supper at the country club on Saturday as one of the reunion events, Shirley.” Mr. Evans glanced up from the paper long enough to make eye contact with his wife before focusing back on the
Gazette
. “Think we'll be able to make it?”

Classic denial,
Heather thought. If George Evans acknowledged that his wife was about to undergo breast cancer surgery, it would make it too real.

“Well,” Shirley Evans said as Heather wrapped the blood pressure cuff around her upper arm and pumped it up. “Iâ”

“How can you ask that, Dad?” Crystal interrupted. “Mom will still be recovering this weekend. She might not even be out of the hospital byâ”

“She might also like to answer for herself, if you don't mind,” Mrs. Evans said with an arched brow at her oldest daughter. “I'd like to go, George, but we'll just have to see. Buy a pair of tickets anyway. The class always gives any excess to a local charity, so whatever happens, you know the money will go to a good cause.”

Whatever happens . . .

Heather had to either lighten the mood or get things moving, preferably both. When she opened Mrs. Evans's chart, her heart fluttered a bit. No one had gone through the pre-op documents with the patient. Of all the aspects of her job, Heather rebelled against this part the most. She was a healer. She hadn't studied nursing to push papers. And especially not papers that dealt with some of life's toughest decisions. “There are a few things for you to sign.”

“What sort of things?” Mr. Evans rose. Since he was a retired lawyer, papers were his life.

“First, there's consent for treatment.” Heather explained the procedure Mrs. Evans was about to undergo, the possible risks, and the expected outcome. They'd heard it all before, but Heather was required to repeat it now. When Mr. Evans nodded, his wife signed. Heather drew a deep breath. She hated this next part, but it was absolutely necessary. “Then there are advance directives to consider. Have you made out a living will or durable power of attorney?”

Mr. Evans snorted. “I wouldn't be worth my salt as a lawyer if she hadn't, would I?”

“Dear George made sure we took care of all that a few years ago when we were both healthy.” Mrs. Evans patted her husband's forearm. “It's always easier to deal with the hard things when they seem a long way off, don't you think?”

Mrs. Evans gave Heather a tremulous smile. She was bearing up well for her family's sake, but it was hard to head into surgery not knowing if your worst fears were about to be confirmed.

“Lacy,” Mrs. Evans said, “why don't you show Heather your wedding palette? I bet she hasn't seen it yet.”

Heather
had
seen Lacy's colors. She'd even helped her pick them out one evening over a nice Merlot. Heather was Lacy's maid of honor, after all. But since Mrs. Evans evidently needed to change the subject, she asked to see the swatches again. Lacy pulled out her cell phone and brought up the navy blue, pale pink, and ivory palette.

“You'll be in ivory, of course, Lacy, and Jake and the male attendants in navy,” Mrs. Evans said with a wistful smile, her gaze fixed on a distant point as if imagining the wedding party in their finery. “And the bridesmaids' gowns will be pink.”

“No, Mom,” Lacy said gently. “We discussed this, remember? Jake will be in his dress blues. He deserves to wear the uniform.”

Since Jake had lost a leg from the knee down in Afghanistan, Heather agreed. He'd more than earned the right to wear the blues. Even though he was no longer in active service, Jake claimed, “Once a marine, always a marine.”

Besides, nothing looked better in wedding pictures than a groom in uniform.

In my case, any groom would look good. No, wait. Scratch that.

No guy in her life was better than the wrong guy. Heather told herself she was single by choice. Lacy always argued she was “single by choosy.”

While Heather prided herself on being choosy, it didn't put an extra place setting at her table. Or an extra head on her pillow.

“The bridesmaids' dresses will be navy, too,” Lacy went on. “Pink is just the accent color.”

Heather silently blessed her friend. A navy dress would help her blend into the background. As gangly as she was, a pink one would make her feel like an overgrown flamingo.

The curtain enclosing the waiting area ruffled and Mrs. Evans looked up expectantly.

“Michael,” she whispered, but when she saw who it was, her smile turned brittle. Instead of her son, her future son-in-law stepped into the small space. Heather knew Mrs. Evans both liked and approved of Jake Tyler, but he wasn't Michael.

The one who
isn't
here is always the one they want to see the most.

Jake gave Lacy a quick kiss. “I overheard you talking about the wedding colors again. Isn't it settled yet?”

“The devil's in the details,” Mr. Evans said morosely.

“I tried to talk Lacy into jarhead camouflage, but she insists on navy.
Navy,
of all colors!” Jake shook his head.

“Hey.” Lacy gave him a playful swat on the shoulder. “I could always go army green, you know.”

Jake shook his head. “It's enough to make a marine consider an elopement.”