Wish Upon a Midlife Moon: A Paranormal Women's Fiction Romance (Wishing Moon Magic Book 1) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Wishing Moon Magic Series

  Wish Upon a Midlife Moon

  Chapter One – Meredith

  Chapter Two – Meredith

  Chapter Three – Meredith

  Chapter Four – Meredith

  Chapter Five – Meredith

  Chapter Six – Silas

  Chapter Seven – Meredith

  Chapter Eight – Meredith

  Chapter Nine – Meredith

  Chapter Ten – Silas

  Chapter Eleven – Meredith

  Chapter Twelve – Meredith

  Chapter Thirteen – Meredith

  Chapter Fourteen – Silas

  Chapter Fifteen – Meredith

  Chapter Sixteen – Meredith

  Chapter Seventeen – Meredith

  Chapter Eighteen – Silas

  Chapter Nineteen – Meredith

  Chapter Twenty – Meredith

  Chapter Twenty-One – Meredith

  Chapter Twenty-Two – Meredith

  Chapter Twenty-Three – Meredith

  Chapter Twenty-Four – Meredith

  Chapter Twenty-Five – Silas

  Chapter Twenty-Six – Meredith

  Chapter Twenty-Seven – Meredith

  Chapter Twenty-Eight – Meredith

  Chapter Twenty-Nine – Meredith

  Epilogue

  Also By Harmony Raines

  Get In Touch

  Wish Upon a Midlife Moon

  Wishing Moon Magic

  Book One

  ***

  All rights reserved. This book, or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner without the express written consent of the author or publisher.

  This is a work of fiction and is intended for mature audiences only. All characters within are eighteen years of age or older. Names, places, businesses, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, actual events or places is purely coincidental.

  © 2021 Harmony Raines

  Cover by Jacqueline Sweet

  Wishing Moon Magic

  Recently divorced, Meredith returns home to Wishing Moon Bay with her two children. But she's not looking for a midlife crisis.

  Who has time for one of those when you have children to raise?

  Helped by her family and Silas, a devastatingly handsome vampire, she learns to live, laugh and love again.

  Witch Moon Magic is a heartwarming paranormal women's fiction series, with a side of romance and a sprinkling of magic.

  Wish Upon a Midlife Moon

  Wishing Moon Magic Book One

  Blood Moon Rising

  Wishing Moon Magic Book Two

  Wish Upon a Midlife Moon

  Wishing Moon Magic

  Book One

  With a failed marriage and a daughter on the cusp of coming into her magic, Meredith is returning to Wishing Moon Bay and her family home. A home that holds secrets and sorrow.

  But Primrose Cottage also holds love and laughter. Just what a forty-something mother of two needs to avert a midlife crisis.

  All she has to do is deal an old high school adversary, who likes to remind Merri she is the only member of her family who has no magic, and heal her broken heart, while finding a new job.

  However, when magic starts to misbehave, Meredith wonders if this new start might not be a good idea after all. But she’s not ready to quit. Magic or no magic she will protect those she loves.

  Silas is a centuries old vampire who made a choice long ago to hide his true feelings from the only woman he’d ever loved. Why? Because he couldn’t give her the one thing she craved.

  But now she’s back.

  However, his true love isn’t the only thing that’s back in Wishing Moon Bay. Something is stirring.

  Something old. Something greedy. Something that lurks unseen in the shadows.

  Chapter One – Meredith

  “Are you okay, Mom?” Brigette touched Meredith’s hand and she inhaled sharply as if waking from a deep sleep.

  Only she wasn’t asleep, this was real. After two decades of living in the world beyond, Meredith was returning home. Home to Wishing Moon Bay, a town filled with magic. Only magic had skipped over Meredith and so she’d left. It had been one of the hardest decisions she’d ever made. But it was something she’d needed to do.

  Was it the right decision? As she glanced sideways at her daughter in the passenger seat and then turned her gaze to the rearview mirror to check on her son who was in the back seat, she didn’t hesitate to answer yes.

  Leaving Wishing Moon Bay had been the right decision. She only hoped that returning was the right decision, too.

  It felt right. If she trusted her instincts and searched deep inside, the message was clear, it was time to come home.

  After she left her hometown, she’d tried to fit into the world beyond, the world where magic only really existed in movies and books, in make-believe. But truthfully, she never had. It was as if she was stuck between the two worlds, living on the fringes.

  “Mom.” Brigette’s firm tone told Meredith she’d drifted away again. “Dad needs to get the moving truck back tonight. We can’t just sit here.”

  Meredith once again raised her eyes to the rearview mirror of her aged station wagon, only this time she looked beyond the back seat. Her ex-husband, Timothy, sat in the driver’s seat of the truck he’d rented to help his family move back to Wishing Moon Bay. Only he wasn’t moving back with them. Instead, once he’d unloaded the truck and made sure Meredith and their children, Brigette and Jared, were settled, he’d leave them to make their new lives, while he headed back to his old life.

  With Sarah. Lovely, easygoing, not-too-much-trouble, Sarah.

  “Mom.”

  “Sorry.” Meredith dragged her gaze away from the rearview mirror but the image of Tim in the truck behind, giggling happily with his new wife, Sarah, was etched on her brain.

  “It’ll be all right, Mom,” Jared assured her.

  “I know.” Meredith inhaled deeply as her son went back to reading his book.

  She smiled to herself as she put her foot on the gas and drove toward the tunnel that led to Wishing Moon Bay. Most kids Jared’s age would be staring at a small screen, either their phone or a portable game console. But Jared liked books.

  More than liked them. He could spend hours, days if given the chance, reading quietly. He could sit and read, eat and read, walk and read, and sometimes Meredith suspected he could read in his sleep. From the moment he saw his first word, he was hooked.

  “There, you know it’ll be fine. The nerd said so.” Brigette half-turned in her seat to look at Jared. She liked to tease him, but he never took the bait. “He’s got his nose buried so deep in that book that he won’t even realize we’ve moved.”

  “He knows,” Meredith replied.

  Brigette turned back to face the front as they entered the long tunnel that acted as a border between the world beyond and Wishing Moon Bay. “We could have stayed put. We didn’t have to move.”

  “Yes, we did. It’s safer here in Wishing Moon Bay while you learn to control your magic.” Meredith switched on the headlights and clutched the steering wheel tightly as the darkness surrounded them. The headlights did little more than push back the darkness an inch or two as they drove deeper into the tunnel.

  “You could have taught me,” Brigette r
etorted. “Aunt Keely said you were better at learning magic than she was when you were my age.”

  Meredith snorted, making a mental note to thank her sister for filling Brigette’s head with stories. “How could I be better at learning magic when I don’t have magic? I never have.”

  “She said that you learned all the spells and helped teach her. You could teach me.” Brigette stared at her mom’s face as the end of the tunnel neared and the darkness subsided.

  “Sure, I can teach you the spells, I can recite the words and tell you the ingredients you need and what order to add them, but I can’t tell you how to transform them with magic.” She glanced at Jared in the back seat. “It’s the same as Jared reading a science fiction book and then expecting to get in a spaceship and fly it.”

  “That would be so cool!” Jared’s words confirmed Meredith’s belief that her son listened to conversations while reading. When her marriage broke down, Meredith and Tim had always been careful about what they said in front of their son even when he was engrossed in a book.

  Tim used to joke that Jared’s eyes might be fixed on a book, but his ears were constantly scanning the immediate area for snippets of conversation that might prove interesting.

  Tim used to joke.

  Tears pricked her eyes as the bright sunlight swept over them. Meredith blamed it on the sharp transition from dark to light. It was an innocent lie made to help her cope with losing Tim. They’d been happy. For a long time, they had been happy.

  They met and fell in love a couple of years after she left Wishing Moon Bay. Her life had been complete when they got married and she instantly got pregnant with Brigette. They’d doted on their daughter, wallowing in the joys of parenthood. Happy and content even when they failed to conceive a brother or sister for their daughter.

  They’d almost given up hope when Jared completed their small family five years later. Conceived on Christmas eve, Tim always joked that their slightly eccentric son was the gift that kept on giving.

  Tim used to joke.

  But his jokes were for Sarah now.

  The divorce had been amicable. They’d both accepted they were no longer right for each other. Before, they’d fit together like two halves of a whole.

  But something had happened. Something intangible. A mystery that neither of them could solve.

  There was never a point in time. Never a moment when it ended. It was as if something had simply withered away. Their marriage died, slowly, silently.

  “Are we nearly there?” Jared snapped his book shut and wriggled forward in his seat, his face pressed up to the window. Wishing Moon Bay was the one place that pulled him out of his books. It filled him with the same wonder as a voyage on a pirate ship, or a journey to a new world.

  Because Wishing Moon Bay was exceptional. The townsfolk were like the characters found in fantasy books.

  But they were real. From witches and warlocks to shifters and merfolk.

  Meredith rolled down the window and sucked in the air. She was home.

  “We’re about five minutes away.” Meredith glanced at Brigette. “Why don’t you text Aunt Keely to warn her?”

  “Okay.” Brigette tapped her phone screen, her fingers flying across the letters as she typed out the message and hit send. “I warned her the wicked stepmother was with us.”

  “Sarah is the least wicked person I have ever met,” Meredith replied.

  “Those are the ones you have to watch.” Jared jabbed his finger at his mom. “It’s always the ones you least expect that turn out to be the bad guy.”

  “In your books.” Brigette rolled her eyes at Meredith, who smothered a smile.

  “I think Sarah is genuinely nice.” When Tim had told Meredith he’d met someone new, she’d been worried about the children losing their father to a jealous other woman. She need not have worried, Sarah had never had children of her own and she doted on Jared and Brigette.

  And they were both very fond of their wickedless stepmother. They probably even loved her, but they never said so in front of their mom.

  A lump formed in her throat. She loved her kids more than anything in the world. Hopefully, her decision to move back to Wishing Moon Bay was the right one for them all. They’d miss Tim and Sarah, but the kids would visit them during the holidays and one weekend a month.

  In between those visits, Tim and Sarah would come to town whenever they could.

  “Do you think Dad and Sarah will have a baby of their own now?” Jared mused as he huffed on the car window and drew a smiley face.

  Meredith cast a sidelong look at Brigette who shrugged. “What do you mean, now?”

  “Now that Dad won’t be seeing us so much. I thought they might have a baby of their own.” Jared used his cuff to clean the window before he breathed on it again and drew a wolf head.

  “I don’t know.” Meredith opted for a noncommittal answer since she had no idea what Tim and Sarah had planned. “But whatever happens, your dad loves you very much.”

  “I know. That’s why I asked...because he’ll miss us.” Jared wiped the window and then turned in his seat to wave at his dad and Sarah as they followed the station wagon. “I wish he could move to Wishing Moon Bay, too.”

  “That would mean telling Sarah everything.” Meredith licked her lips as she glanced in the rearview mirror. “And we all agreed that would be a bad idea.”

  “She might not freak out,” Jared persisted.

  “Really?” Brigette asked. “Sarah doesn’t even approve of kids believing in the tooth fairy or Santa.”

  “If she saw them for herself, she’d believe in them,” Jared replied. “And if she saw a shifter or if Aunt Keely showed her a magic spell, then she’d have to believe in other magic, too.”

  “It’s not that simple.” Meredith had explained this to Jared several times already, but he was adamant Sarah would believe magic was real if she saw it with her own eyes.

  Not that it mattered if she believed it or not. What mattered was whether or not Sarah would keep magic a secret. Whether she would keep Wishing Moon Bay a secret. Tim was certain Sarah would keep the secret. At least she wouldn’t intentionally tell anyone.

  But...

  Sarah was terrible at keeping secrets. All secrets. The whole Santa thing was a prime example. When Sarah first started dating Tim a couple of years ago, she took Jared to a large toy store to pick out a gift. While they were there, kids were lining up to meet Santa. She’d told Jared that they were wasting their time asking Santa for gifts since he wasn’t real before realizing she’d made an unforgivable mistake.

  She’d tried to backtrack to convince Jared that Santa was real, but the damage was done. Or it would have been done if Jared didn’t know that Santa absolutely was real. He’d seen Santa flying across the sky in Wishing Moon Bay the previous Christmas. He’d even patted one of the reindeer.

  “I suppose you’re right.” Jared sighed heavily. “She did tell me what Dad got me for my birthday.”

  “She didn’t!” Meredith had no idea, Jared had acted surprised as if he had no clue.

  “I did fool you all!” Jared clapped his hands gleefully. “I could be a master spy when I grow up.”

  “You could,” Meredith agreed. “Which brings us back to the reason we are not going to tell Sarah the truth about Wishing Moon Bay.”

  “You seriously think we can keep it a secret forever?” Brigette asked. “They’re going to come and visit on weekends. Are you going to convince all of Wishing Moon Bay to stop doing magic while she’s here?”

  “We’ll just steer her away from any of the magic hotspots.” Meredith grinned as a thought struck her. “And if she does see anything, I’ll just ask Silas to pluck the memory out of her head.”

  “Silas?” Brigette leaned closer to her mom. “Who is Silas, and can he teach me how to pluck thoughts out of people’s heads? Because that would be such a great skill.”

  “Silas is a vampire. So unless you want to become a member of the undead, you ca
n’t master the skill.” Meredith side-eyed her daughter. “And why would you need to pluck memories out of someone’s head?”

  Brigette slumped back in her seat as they approached Meredith’s childhood home. “I’m a teenager about to learn how to use my magic. There’s going to be times. You know it. I know it.”

  “Good point.” As Meredith turned off the road and parked to one side of the wide driveway in front of Primrose Cottage, she closed her eyes and silently prayed she’d done the right thing bringing her family back to Wishing Moon Bay.

  Chapter Two – Meredith

  “You’re here!” Keely ran out of the house and jumped down the porch steps to land lightly on the balls of her feet, her arms outstretched as she welcomed them.

  “We are.” Meredith cranked open the car door and got out, her hand on her lower back as she straightened up. A week of packing boxes, followed by a hectic day of packing the rented van, had been finished off by the long drive to their new home. Her aching back was crying out for a soak in a hot bath, but they had to unpack the van first.

  Keely enveloped her sister in a warm hug as she whispered in her ear, “Are you okay?”

  “We’re fine,” Meredith assured her. “Just tired and a little cranky.”

  “Come on, I have some fresh coffee waiting for you and there are some homemade cookies.” Keely grasped Meredith’s hands and pulled her toward the cottage. “And there’s cold soda.”

  “Great!” Jared sped toward the house while Brigette waited for Tim and Sarah.

  “Come on!” Keely beckoned everyone toward the house. “I have wine if you prefer, Sarah.”

  Sarah’s cheeks flushed pink as she waved her hand at Keely. “Coffee is just fine. We have to drive back home this evening.”

  Keely stomped up the steps and paused on the porch. “Are you sure? It’s the rhubarb and ginger wine you liked so much last time you visited.”