Spotlight & Giveaway: Every Other New Year’s Eve by Michelle Dayton

Today, HJ is pleased to share with you Michelle Dayton’s new release: Every Other New Year’s Eve

The point of magic is not to understand it. The point is not to waste it…

Paige Larsen is riding high on her future when she drops into a bar on New Year’s Eve 2019 for a celebratory drink. Will Weber, too, is excited about his life’s direction. Despite clashing personalities—and unexpected physical attraction—they quickly become friends while grooving to 1970s music in this unique joint.

But when Paige and Will each try to find the bar the following day, they realize the night was even more magical than they believed. It seems this bar appears for only a handful of hours every two years in an abandoned city lot on December 31. What’s more, Paige and Will are living in different timelines two years apart.

Over a span of eight years and a multitude of life changes, Paige and Will connect deeply in a fantasy situation that allows them to be their messy, imperfect, vulnerable selves.

Then suddenly, the enchantment—and the bar—disappear for good. Can love offer the magic they need to create a real-life happy ever after?

Enjoy an exclusive excerpt from Every Other New Year’s Eve 

Prologue

December 31, 1978

Charley turned the key over again, but it was no use. The engine wouldn’t start—the car was now well and truly out of gas.

She squinted uselessly out the window, praying for the lights of a tow truck. She couldn’t see more than inches past the glass, however. All she could see was black night and ceaseless snow.

If you ever get caught out in a blizzard, stay in the car. This was advice that anyone who grew up in the Midwest knew. If you strayed from the vehicle, it was all too easy to get disoriented in the wind-driven snow and cold.

Maybe she would have been ok if the temperature in the car had stayed above freezing. But her gas tank had been low today. And when a snow-loaded branch had snapped off an overhanging tree and smashed through her back windshield, the temperature in the car had plummeted.

She’d worn her heavy coat tonight, but underneath was her one pretty, impractical outfit that she wore only on holidays or special occasions. She’d had very low expectations for her blind date tonight, but she’d dressed up anyway.

Wind howled outside, alive and hungry. The storm was getting worse, not better. Charley pounded ice-cold fists against her numbing thighs. This was so stupid. The weatherman had predicted this snow, and she’d watched the news. She’d known it was coming. She should have left the bowling alley hours earlier when the roads were still passable. If she’d left even twenty minutes sooner, her trusty Oldsmobile probably wouldn’t have failed her by sliding off the road and wedging itself into an ever-growing snowbank.

But she hadn’t wanted to leave him.

In spite of her predicament, the thought of him provoked a wave of happiness. It washed over her entire body, briefly shielding her from the icy air slipping through the vents and finding all the gaps in her clothing.

At forty-seven years old and single, Charley knew she was considered a spinster, “a damn tragedy,” by her elderly mother, God rest her soul, and gossiping aunts. She’d never thought of herself as a tragedy, though—she was just a woman unwilling to settle. Decades ago, she’d seen way too many friends throw themselves into marriage and motherhood while barely more than children themselves. So many of them ended up miserable, trapped in suffocating lives with partners who barely knew them as anything but “wife.”

No thank you, she’d thought. She already had her fill of obligations between running the family restaurant and nursing each parent through decades-long illnesses. She had no interest in adding the responsibility of a requisite husband to her list.

C’mon, tow truck. Find me already.

No headlights appeared out of the night. The wind grew stronger. Charley watched drifts pile high on the front of the car. Was her vehicle even still visible to a passing truck?

She wanted to wail at the unrelenting sky. Why was this happening now? Now, after she’d laid her beloved parents to rest. Now, when she’d found a buyer for the restaurant. Now, when her own life was finally about to begin. She had so many plans—she wanted to travel to New Zealand, go on an African safari, and dance at Studio 54, middle age be damned. When she returned from her trip, she was going to open a different kind of place than the traditional Milwaukee supper club in which she’d spent the last thirty years of her life. Her place would be special and modern and attract all sorts of interesting people.

And now . . . on top of all those treasured plans, there was also suddenly him.

Contrary to her mother’s exasperated belief, she’d never been devoid of romantic tendencies. The opposite, really. She had an entire box of battered romance novels stashed under her bed. She’d often longed for someone to share her life with. A man to love, fiercely. One who would understand and adore her too. Of course she wanted that.

It just hadn’t seemed very likely.

But tonight, something miraculous had happened. She’d allowed a longtime customer to set her up on a blind date. Grudgingly, and only because this customer had found the buyer for the family restaurant, the ticket to her financial freedom.

One hour at a bowling alley—a venue that would distinctly tell this sure-to-be loser not to expect a midnight kiss—and then I can escape. She’d settled herself on a stool at the bar, draping her yellow wrap dress over her favorite knee-high suede boots, and waited with a dismissive smile on her bare lips. Another signal—no lipstick. She wasn’t interested.

Barry, the blind date, had been just as uninspiring as she’d feared. A successful local businessman, a widower in his mid-fifties, he said, “I thought you’d be younger,” right after they shook hands. He boasted about his semiannual trips to Florida as if they were the peak of sophisticated travel. She politely inquired about his favorite books, and he couldn’t name one and seemed irritated by the question. Despite the many long silences between them and the clear lack of anything in common, he’d been shocked when she demurred his offer to come home with him for a nightcap.

“This was a waste of time,” he’d muttered, tossing cash on the bar that was not, to her practiced eye, even enough to cover half the bill from the four beers he’d gulped down over the course of the hour.

“You’re telling me.” She sighed, watching him go, then reached into her purse to make up the difference.

“Don’t even think about it.” A low, laughing chuckle. Charley looked up to see the bartender watching her, his eyes twinkling over his thick mustache. “You had one Coke. You’re not paying for that idiot’s drinks.” His gaze was so warm, Charley felt her lips twitch up at the corners in response.

“The Shining, The Thorn Birds, and The World According to Garp,” he announced.

Charley blinked at the book titles, all of which were on her nightstand. “Sorry?”

“My favorite books of the last couple of years.” The bartender refilled her soda and then rested his tall, lanky frame against the bar. “What are yours?”

Two hours of nonstop conversation later, she stood up with a light, bouncing step and a date for the following day. “Where have you been all my life?” she asked him.

He looked just as awestruck as she felt. “Better late than never?”

Now, the wail erupted from her chest after all. It had sounded thunderous in her mind, but the “No, no, no!” was barely more than a whimper in the stifling quiet of the car.

She was so cold. Sleepy, too, yawning until her jaw cracked. What were the symptoms of hypothermia again? She was long past feeling her fingers or toes. Maybe if she just took a little nap, the night would pass faster, and she’d wake to sunny skies and a search party tromping through the snow in parkas and boots.

She jolted herself awake. How much time had passed? Minutes? Hours?

Where was she again? Was it day or night?

Why was she sleeping in her car? That wasn’t right.

Please. She sent up a prayer to the uncaring sky. Please. Not now.

The watch on her wrist ticked past midnight—1979 had arrived, but Charley felt herself leaving.

No, she insisted. No. No, no, no! She wasn’t sure who she was talking to—but she’d make them listen.

I won’t go.

I won’t.

Excerpt. ©Michelle Dayton. Posted by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved.
 

Giveaway: Winner will receieve one ebook copy of EVERY OTHER NEW YEAR’S EVE by Michelle Dayton plus one additional ebook of the winner’s choice from Tule Publishing.

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This giveaway closes 3 days from the date of this post.

Meet the Author:

There are only three things Michelle Dayton loves more than sexy and suspenseful novels: her family, the city of Chicago, and Mr. Darcy. Michelle dreams of a year of world travel — as long as the trip would include weeks and weeks of beach time. As a bourbon lover and unabashed wine snob, Michelle thinks heaven is discussing a good book over an adult beverage.
 
https://tulepublishing.com/books/every-other-new-years-eve/