Series starter, p.1
Series Starter, page 1
Series Starter: First in Series Collection Volume One
When Lightning Strikes — Twist of Fate — Love Always — Finding Natalie
Kathryn Kaleigh
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First in Series Collection Volume One
When Lightning Strikes
Storm of Time Preview
Twist of Fate
When the Stars Align Preview
Love Always
Beyond Enemy Lines Preview
Finding Natalie
Promising Samantha Preview
Copyright © 2021 by Kathryn Kaleigh
All rights reserved.
Written by Kathryn Kaleigh.
Published by KST Publishing, Inc., 2021
Cover by Skyhouse24Media
www.kathrynkaleigh.com
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, places, or incidents are products of the author’s imagination and used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual people, places, of events is purely coincidental or fictionalized.
Created with Vellum
Contents
When Lightning Strikes
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Epilogue
Storm of Time
Storm of Time
Twist of Fate
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Epilogue
When the Stars Align
Love Always
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Epilogue
Beyond Enemy Lines
Finding Natalie
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Epilogue
Promising Samantha
Promising Samantha
Also by Kathryn Kaleigh
Prologue
Hannah Sinclair tilted her head back and stared up at the really, really tall clock.
She'd never seen a tall clock like this. Never in her eight years of life.
She watched the pendulum swing steadily back and forth, the deep rhythmic ticking echoing through the foyer.
It was a big clock in a big house.
Hannah didn't know why she was here with her mother. She didn't know why her mother was talking to the nice older lady in what the lady had called a parlor.
They'd left the door open, but Hannah could only hear a murmur of their voices, not their words.
There were live rose buds in a vase sitting on a table across from the clock. Hannah knew they were live because they smelled like the flowers in the grocery store.
They never had enough money to buy any, but the one time her uncle came to visit, he'd brought a bouquet with live flowers. White and pink daisies. Mamma had let Hanna keep them on her nightstand.
Hannah lived with her mother in a trailer house about fifteen minutes from here. Her mother called it a manufactured home, but Hannah knew it was a trailer.
She knew because she'd heard the other kids on the school bus complaining about how long it took to drive through the trailer park.
Hannah gasped when the clock started chiming. It chimed ten times.
It was ten o'clock in the morning.
Hannah stood perfectly still through all ten chimes.
Then the rhythmic ticking started again.
An older man, older than her grandfather, came down the wide wooden stairs.
She watched him until he reached the floor and stopped.
He smiled at her. "Can you believe that clock is over two hundred years old?"
Hannah's eyes widened. "That's really old. How do you know?"
He tilted his head to one side. "That's a really good question. My father told me and his father told him."
Hannah looked toward the parlor. Her mother and the lady were still talking.
"My name is Jonathan Becquerel," he said.
Hannah nodded. "This is your house, then."
He grinned, his faded blue eyes bright. "It used to be, but I gave it to my wife." He nodded toward the parlor.
Hannah turned her gaze back toward the clock. There was a jagged rip across its face. She tried to wrap her head around why a man would give a house to his wife, but it made no sense.
"What happened to it?" she asked.
"There was a war," Jonathan said.
Hannah was a good student. She remembered everything she learned in school. "The Civil War," she said.
"That's right," he looked pleased that she knew about it.
She smiled at him. "Were you a soldier in the Civil War?"
Jonathan laughed. "I was a soldier, but not in the Civil War." He sat down on the stairs. "I'm not quite that old."
Hannah nodded. "It was a long time ago."
Before he could answer, Hannah's mother and the lady of the house came out of the parlor.
"I hope she didn't bother you," Mamma said, nervously.
Mamma had been nervous on the drive over. She kept reminding Hannah to keep her hands to herself. To say yes ma’am and no ma’am if she said anything at all to the lady who owned the house.
But the older lady frightened her and Hannah just looked at her without speaking.
"Not at all," Jonathan said, standing up. "We were just getting acquainted."
"That's good," Mamma said. "Hannah, say bye-bye. We can go now."
Hannah held up a hand. “Bye-bye,” she said to the nice man.
As Mamma slipped an envelope into her large purse, Hanna noticed that Mamma's eyes were red-rimmed.
The only other time that Hannah had seen Mamma with red-rimmed eyes was after her uncle who brought the daisies left.
Chapter 1
Natchez, Mississippi
Hannah Sinclair turned the knob and pushed open the door to the old mansion.
Becquerel Plantation.
She stepped inside, shook off her umbrella, then pulled it inside behind her.
The old house had been grand once. A big two-story mansion built sometime back in the 1700s.
The house had caught on fire years ago, but the part of the house that had burned — the parlor area — had been recently rebuilt and it wasn’t even noticeable if a person didn’t know where to look.
It was three o'clock in the afternoon, and the grandfather clock standing in the foyer chimed the hour.
Hannah tilted her head to the side and watched the clock as it chimed three times.
Someone was keeping it wound.
Perhaps it was Jerry, the caretaker.
As far as Hannah knew, Jerry only came in once a day.
She was impressed by Jerry’s attention to detail.
Most people wouldn’t have bothered to wind the clock unless they knew someone was coming by. And as far as she knew, Jerry hadn’t known that Hannah would be coming.
She hadn’t even known she was coming.
Hannah leaned her umbrella against the door and decided that she really didn’t know all that much.
The house smelled like an odd mixture of Lysol and… old. Old books maybe. Or old furniture. With a hint of coffee.
Maybe it was just the old walls.
Hannah ran a hand along the wall, covered in faded wallpaper in yellow flowers and green foliage. Her fingertips snagged against a seam in the textured paper. It wasn’t original, of course, but it wasn’t exactly new either.
This old house had seen so much in its more than two — three — hundred years. More than Hannah could even begin to fathom.
She stood in front of the grandfather clock and looked up. It was a big clock. She was five feet four inches and it towered over her. The clock was easily over six feet tall.
There was a rip in the dial between the numbers six and seven.
She knew the story.
The clock had been damaged during the American Civil War.
Charles Becquerel had nearly lost his leg when the Union army had attacked the house.
There were other things to the story, but Hannah hadn’t decided how much of those stories she believed.
Right now it didn’t matter whether she believed them or not.
That wasn’t her task.
She turned her attention to the wide mahogany staircase that went up to a landing with a window before splitting off to the second floor.
That window there on the landing still had the original glass. It was wavy and a little bit hard to see through.
Hannah looked to the right into the parlor and she could almost hear her mother talking with Vaughn Becquerel. But that had been years ago. When Hannah was still no more than a child.
Her mother had told her then that Vaughn was a great lady and that Hannah had to be on her best behavior while they were here in the house.
Hannah smiled at the memory.
She wondered what her mother would think about her now.
Hannah was twenty-three years old now. Five four, one hundred pounds.
Fresh out of graduate school.
So different from her mother, yet so like her father.
Or so her mother told her.
Hannah had never actually met her father.
Sometimes she wondered if he even existed.
Perhaps her mother had gotten him from a sperm bank.
But that was neither here nor there and in the great scheme of things didn’t matter.
Hannah stepped into the parlor. The fireplace was huge by today’s standards.
It had to be, of course. Since it had been built for more than just ambiance.
It had to be used for heat back in the day.
The furniture in here was old, too. Old, but obviously of good quality.
She stopped in front of a roll top writing desk and slowly slid open the lid.
What was concealed beneath the roll top could have been from a page in history.
An inkwell and quill stood next to a piece of thick vellum paper.
Though the paper was blank, it was turned as though someone was about to begin writing. A letter perhaps.
She heard a sound overhead, like someone dropping a box and quickly closed the desk top.
She returned to the foyer and looked upstairs.
A door slammed.
She must have caught Jerry in the house.
“Hello,” she called out.
No answer.
It wouldn’t do to have him think she was an intruder.
She could stay down here and wait or she could go upstairs and let him know that she was here.
It would be easier to go find him and introduce herself.
