All the Stars - Mass Market - Signed Paperback

Gaining her trust won’t be easy. Earning her love will be nearly impossible.  

Leah Manning is working to get back on her feet after her ex-husband disappeared one night, leaving her to raise their infant daughter alone. When a trip to a hardware store has her literally falling into the arms of its handsome owner, his charms are hard to resist. But he’s a stranger, and, to her, that means he can’t be trusted. Can she learn to let her faith be stronger than her fear? 

Brian Matthews has never met a stranger. A friend to everyone he meets, he can’t understand why Leah is determined to keep him at a distance. He only wants to help, but she can't accept that he only has the best intentions. It’s a good thing his love is patient.

Leah isn’t ready to let the love she feels for Brian override years of fear, and he’s tired of spending lonely nights playing songs on his guitar to fill the silence. What will it take to show Leah that Brian is the answer to her prayers?

All the Stars is book five in the Unfailing Love series, but the books can be read in any order.

Leah shifted onto her side under the kitchen sink and scratched her neck. It was sweltering in the unventilated space, and she’d been ripping caulk off the pipes for half an hour.

She’d replayed the YouTube video three times now. The man in the video said the first thing she needed to do was make sure there wasn’t anything around the pipe connectors. Of course, each connector was hidden beneath half an inch of white gunk.

A trickle of sweat ran down the side of her face, and there was a sharp ache between her shoulder blades. She needed to get as much of this mess off the pipes as she could before Emma’s nap time. She’d have to make a run to the hardware store for the supplies the man in the video said she’d need. He’d repeated the names of the parts many times now, but none of the words made much sense to her. They hadn’t taught her how to use a wrench when she went to college to study graphic design. Plus, she wasn’t sure this guy was using the technical terms. P-trap didn’t sound very professional.

“Mommy!”

Leah jerked, and the hand holding the blade slid past the caulk and sliced down her thumb.

“Ahh!” She let the razor blade drop and wrapped her hand around the injured thumb. Sucking in lungfuls of air through her gritted teeth, she mentally kicked herself for buying a house that needed more work than it was worth. Sure, it had been within her budget, but it wasn’t anymore after the unexpected repairs that kept popping up like weeds in the garden. One right after the other, things were falling apart.

The old house had charm, but she’d lost her attraction when the leak in the garage had gouged her bank account the month after closing.

That’s what she got for thinking a house wouldn’t keep secrets from her.

Question everything. Trust no one. She was going to get those words tattooed on her wrist like a Bible verse so she wouldn’t forget them.

“Mommy!”

Leah let her head fall back and rest against the damp flooring beneath the sink. “I’m in the kitchen, baby!”

She sucked in deep breaths through her nose and squeezed her eyes closed. Hold it together. You can’t let her see you cry.

She clamped her jaw tight to stop her chin from quivering just as the pat, pat, pat of tiny bare feet rounded the corner.

“Mommy, what are you doing under there?” Emma asked as if her mother was silly for sticking her head beneath the kitchen sink.

“I’m just trying to fix the sink.”

Emma squatted beside the open cabinet door and peeked into the dark space. “Mommy, you okay?”

Don’t cry. Seriously! Don’t cry.

“I’m fine, baby.” Leah covered her mouth with the back of her hand to hide the telltale sign of her worry from her daughter.

“Don’t cry, Mommy.” Emma climbed into the cabinet and squeezed herself in on top of her mother.

Leah’s arms were around her three-year-old little girl in an instant. “I’m not crying.” It was a lie, but she needed to believe the words as much as her daughter did.

“You’re crying. I have magic kisses that make the boo-boos better. Where does it hurt?”

If only there were magic kisses that made the hurt go away. Being a single parent was hard on a good day. The bad days were brutal.

“Right here.” Leah wedged her injured thumb between their bodies and showed her the red line that hadn’t begun bleeding. It didn’t hurt so bad, and it wasn’t the reason she was fighting tears. Still, she didn’t have a way to explain compounding stress to a toddler. “But I don’t think we need to kiss this one on the part that might bleed. Just on the side will be good. Your magic kisses are powerful.”

Emma placed a gentle kiss on the side of Leah’s thumb and smiled triumphantly at her contribution to the traumatic situation. “All better.”

Leah wrapped her daughter in her arms and pulled in deep breaths. Clinging to the proof of life that made every difficult day worth the fight was the best way to ease the pain in her chest when she thought about the stupid leaky pipe.

Owning the house wasn’t supposed to be this hard. It was supposed to be hard before she bought the house. She’d worked her tail off for three years to save the money. It was supposed to be easy-breezy once the house was hers.

Except it hadn’t been easy at all. Her dad was supposed to be helping her like they’d intended, but God had bigger plans. A heart attack wasn’t something she could’ve predicted. Tim Manning was fresh out of a two-week hospital stint and on bed rest for at least two more. That meant she was on her own when it came to leaky pipes.

It didn’t make sense. Her father had always been tough as nails in every aspect of his life… unless it involved his only daughter. Leah had looked up to her dad every day of her life, and it was killing her to see him confined to a bed. The man was a powerhouse, and she had to believe this heart attack wouldn’t keep him down for long. He’d get better, and he’d come back stronger.

Leah rubbed her hand over Emma’s baby-fine hair. The dark-blonde tuft was the most obvious trait she’d inherited from her father. Leah’s own hair was thick and nearly black like both of her parents. “Listen, how about we go see Grammy and Paw-Paw for a while?”

Emma’s head popped up, and Leah raised her hand to block her daughter’s head from hitting the pipe. That insufferable busted P-trap.

“I need to show Grammy my new Lucy doll!” Emma scrambled out of the tiny space and ran toward her bedroom.

Leah shimmied her way out of the cabinet and arched her back before picking up her phone from where it lay on the damp floor to call her mother.

“Hey, dear.”

“Hey, would it be okay if Emma came by for a few hours? Just during her nap. I need to run to the hardware store.”

“You don’t need to ask. How many times do I have to tell you? Just drop her off. We’re always happy to have her.”

Leah’s mom was her best friend—her only friend, since working from home didn’t afford opportunities to meet people. She hated relying on her parents for so much. She was a single parent, but there was nothing singular about Emma’s raising. Leah wouldn’t have made it this far had her parents not taken her in without a word after Saul left.

Her parents had endured more than most grandparents during the first few years of Emma’s life. They’d had a front-row seat to the midnight feedings and the sleepless nights. It was too much to ask every time Leah needed them to watch her daughter now. Her mom voluntarily picked Emma up every Monday through Friday at nine in the morning and brought her home at five in the afternoon without fail.

Leah shook her head, amazed by her mother’s selflessness. “I know you say that, but you need time to yourself.”

Since her dad’s heart attack, her mother had been taking care of him around the clock, as well as helping out with Emma.

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” Her mom wasn’t joking. Leah could count on one hand the number of times she’d seen the woman sit down for anything other than a meal or church.

“We’ll be right over. Thanks again.” Leah grabbed a clean sweatshirt from a drawer and changed into it. No one at the hardware store would appreciate it if she showed up with a damp shirt from her leaky sink.

Emma came running into the room with her doll in hand. “I’ve got Lucy!”

“What about shoes? Do you have shoes?” Leah asked.

“I’ll go get them.” Emma padded off in the direction she came.

Leah slipped her own shoes on and sighed at her worn jeans. Her hair was pulled back into a frizzy bun, and her tennis shoes had seen better days… ten years ago. Hopefully, she wouldn’t see anyone she knew at the store. Not that she knew anyone in Carson, Georgia. After three years here, she still felt like an outsider.

Emma skidded to a halt at the front door. “I’m ready!”

Leah grabbed her purse and opened the door, ushering Emma out ahead of her.

The drive to her parents’ house was short. That’d been one of the biggest selling points when she’d been house shopping.

“Mommy, would you kiss a frog?” Emma asked from the back seat.

“Eww, no! Frogs are icky.”

“But if you kissed a frog, you could have a prince,” Emma countered.

It broke Leah’s heart every time Emma mentioned the father figure that was missing from their lives. Leah looked at her daughter in the rear-view mirror.

Leah didn’t need a prince. She needed a man who would love her and her daughter through everything life threw at them. Unfortunately, that’d been above and beyond the call of duty for her ex-husband. Now, she wasn’t sure if there was a man in this world who could fill that empty role as husband and father in their family. She knew one thing for certain. She’d never settle for a spineless sweet talker ever again. Saul had run for the hills after the first week of sleepless nights.

“I don’t need a prince, baby. A queen can rule a kingdom.”

“Yeah,” her daughter whispered, “but I want a prince.”

Leah’s eyes stung. She hated seeing her daughter wishing for things that only a father could provide. She’d been playing the role of mom and dad from day one, but there were times when her inadequacies showed their ugly heads. The poor girl would miss out on so much in life because her momma chose a man with greedy eyes and no desire to plant roots.

“One day, baby.”