A Vacancy at the Inn: Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series, #3

Alice Orr

Dedication

To my husband Jonathan, who is always my romantic hero –

And to my family, my friends and my faith.

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-R|R-

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Visit Alice’s Blog and Website -  www.aliceorrbooks.com

Email Alice -  aliceorrbooks@gmail.com

Copyright @ 2015 by Alice Orr

Alice Orr Books

A Division of Alice Orr Agency

New York NY

All rights reserved

Including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Cover & Interior Design by The Killion Group Inc.

ISBN – 9 78150 235688

Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series – What Amazon Readers Are Saying

A Wrong Way Home – Book 1 – Matt & Kara’s Story

Alice Orr hits it out of the park. If you see her name, grab the book.

The puzzle of a mystery, the heat of a romance, the emotional journey of a women's fiction. A WRONG WAY HOME has complex characters and a small town setting sure to charm the reader.

Kept me turning pages. So many twists in plot kept me wondering what would happen next. All I can say is well done! Bring on the rest in this series.

Delicious, well-written suspense spiced with a love story for fun... The 5 stars, however, is for the extremely well-written literature hidden within this story. I highly recommend this read.

A Year of Summer Shadows – Book 2 – Mark & Hailey’s Story

Anytime I see Alice Orr's name on a book, I will be sure and pick it up. I know I am in for a great ride. Always strong, entertaining characters. Plenty of suspense with never knowing ‘who done it’ till late in story, lots of food for thought and just the right amount of romance.

Another great read! Alice keeps you wanting to read faster, then when you have finished the last page, you want more.

Move this one to the TOP of your beach read pile! The second installment of Alice Orr's Riverton Road series doesn't disappoint... a must read for lovers of romantic suspense.

Ms. Orr has the unique ability to involve the reader in the emotions and deepest thoughts of the characters. She makes you care, she makes you wonder, she allows her characters to take the reader on a dangerous ride through the shadows of a small town and lives that mean more than what they appear, just as they would in any small town. She writes about the good and the bad, leaving it up to the reader to see through the shades into the light.

Hurray, Alice Orr swept me off into romantic-suspense land again! Keep 'em coming!

A Vacancy at the Inn – Book 3 – Luke & Bethany’s Story

Alice Orr brings a sense of place to life nearly as fully as a character. And the love story in this quick, engaging read was very satisfying. Well-developed undercurrents of suspense move the story along at an irresistible pace.

I loved this book. It is a perfect Christmas read... Though a novella, Alice has packed a great deal of love, suspense and family in a well-plotted and wonderfully written story.

The Miller family is rife with personality quirks, an authenticity that demonstrates Alice Orr's skill as a writer. I felt right at home with the Millers, who could easily be my own family.

I'm an enthusiastic fan of Alice Orr's series. How does she wrap up so many wonderful characters in such a now-familiar setting? Then there's the additional exquisite tension between two lovers and the scary happenings as well.

A wonderful story filled with warm-hearted people readers will come to love. Give yourself a Christmas gift and curl up with this book.

A Villain for Vanessa – Book 4 – Bobby & Vanessa’s Story

Orr’s ability to raise the stakes and keep the tension high is remarkable. Her characters are multidimensional and her scenic details vivid. She hooked me from the start and kept me turning pages until the satisfying ending.

A mystery, a book of suspense, a study of family dynamics, or a romance; this novel is all of those and then some.

The first sentence of this novel can be any creative writing teacher’s favorite example of a hook. ‘Carl Westerlo’s pudgy fingers caught the corner of an asphalt shingle and tried to hold on, but there was no chance of that.’ Just this opening is enough for me to utter a Wow!

Alice Orr has a deft hand for every necessary element of fiction. She nails the breath-stopping pace of tightly written suspense, wields the kind of tension, shifts and twists that don't let you look away. I was gripped before I was off the first page. That's a writer’s big gift at work, both for the reader and the story.

A Time of Fear and Loving – Book 5 – Mike & Amanda’s Story

Alice Orr is the queen of ramped-up stakes and page-turning suspense.

The best one yet, Alice! Dead bodies on a riverbank and a budding romance that simmers in the background until it ignites with passion.

I thought, Well, I'll read a few pages before I go to sleep. Ha! After the first 20 pages, I could hardly wait to see what Mike and Amanda were going to do next. I was charmed by these vibrant characters. Before I knew it... three o'clock in the morning! And, with a satisfied sigh, I closed the book and went to sleep.

Gripping from the first page. Couldn't put it down and didn't want it to end. Alice is brilliant at weaving romance into mystery and her novels are always page turners! I loved it!

I am a big fan of this series.... Each story is a killer page turner that challenges your blood pressure to stay in its normal range!

A Note from Alice

I was born and raised a North Country girl. I grew up on a one-block street in a town a lot like Riverton, the setting of my Riverton Road Romantic Suspense series.

The winters were hard, but summers were soft. Spring was welcome, and fall blazed with color. The North Country ended a couple of dozen miles away at the dark green waters of the Saint Lawrence River and its beautiful Thousand Islands, a summer wonderland where we lived in shorts and tee shirts and bathing suits, sandals sometimes too, but I preferred barefoot. Winter was another wonderland filled with sleds and toboggans and my personal favorite, ice skates.

I return to the North Country now mostly by imagination, and I have a vivid one. I don’t remember a single murder happening while I grew up there. I didn’t know about any passionate romances either, but I love to conjure both in my stories. The same way I conjure Riverton and the Kalli family of Riverton Road, the Miller family of Riverton Road Hill and the Women of West Main Street still to come in Book 6 of this series.

Welcome to Riverton. I hope you have a thrilling visit. If you’d like to say Hey to this North Country girl please don’t hesitate to email me at aliceorrbooks@gmail.com. Your messages are always a special joy to me. 

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Love and Blessings.

Alice

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Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series

Book 1 – A Wrong Way Home

Book 2 – A Year of Summer Shadows  

Book 3 –A Vacancy at the Inn  

Book 4 – A Villain for Vanessa  

Book 5 –A Time of Fear and Loving  

Book 6 –A Thankless Season  – In progress

Chapter One

The trouble with driving when you’re upset is that you still have to drive. Bethany Miller felt the challenge of that as she drove down Jefferson Avenue for the first time since before her son was born and she’d taken his embryonic self, and her brokenhearted self, out of here. She should have known what a shock her return would be. She should have anticipated how the years she’d spent in the North Country would come barreling back at her full force, like the glacier that cut the St. Lawrence River Valley out of the earth and left behind a thousand mountain peaks as islands in the stream, a little over two dozen miles from here.

Instead, she’d told herself what she usually told herself. It will be all right. This was the assumption she always made, just before she wandered off into the fog that shrouded whatever lay ahead. She’d had It will be all right in her head a decade ago when she ran away from Riverton, New York. She’d been nineteen, pregnant and seriously lacking in resources, but she kept on telling herself everything would turn out fine. What kind of fool’s faith had it taken to fly off to Chicago on such flimsy wings? What kind of fool was she now, with her son Michael in the backseat of a rented Ford Fiesta, winging back here on the same flimsy assumption? Or was it only a wish? It will be all right.

Mom, you’re driving funny.

Michael’s voice snapped her back to the reality of her former hometown at midday.

You’re going about three miles an hour in a twenty-five-mile zone. It’s a good thing there’s not a lot of cars in this place besides us.

Michael muttered that last sentence in the cross between disappointment and accusation that had been his customary tone for some time now.

There’ll be many more people when Christmas comes.

That tidbit of defensiveness popped out of Bethany’s mouth before she could remind herself she was the adult and he was the nine-year-old, and she shouldn’t allow him to manipulate her into defending herself.

I can hardly wait, he said.

Okay, that’s enough. Let’s have a little respect from the backseat brigade.

She understood that shutting him down with a demand for better behavior was a weak parental response. Knowing Michael, she probably hadn’t really shut him down anyway, but at least she’d shut him up for the moment. Besides, he was right about one thing. She needed to pay better attention to her driving. Traffic might be sparse at this time of day in late-December with a snowstorm in the forecast, but there were still other cars on the street, which meant it would be a good idea for her to get off the street. She pulled the ugly green rental over to the curb.

What’re you doing now?

She’d been correct about not shutting her son down for long.

I need a minute.

She looked into Michael’s eyes in the rearview mirror and saw a flash of compassion there. He wasn’t a bad kid. He was a good kid in a bad situation. Being uprooted from the place he’d known as home all his life would be a bad situation for any nine-year-old. Being uprooted against his will had to feel like a nightmare. Bethany let her own compassion sink in and tried not to muddy it up too much with guilt. This move back from Illinois was for Michael after all, even though he didn’t think so.

What I really need is a cookie break. Would you like to join me?

She knew very well that cookies were Michael’s passion.

Okay, he said, obviously trying to sound less than enthusiastic.

They were parked in front of Ginny’s Coffee Corner Café, and Bethany knew what that meant. If she’d hoped to ease herself