Brewin' Up Love My new adult life is going as planned . . . until my boyfriend gets drafted. Luckily it’s just baseball, not war. Although I’m fighting pretty hard to make a long-term relationship transition seamlessly into long-distance. One minute Nate and I are headed to college. The next he’s joining a minor league team in Atlanta. The only part of my life not changing is my family’s apple orchard and good old Apple Cart, Alabama. Mary’s Diner and Piggly Wiggly are still the hub of downtown, and the General Store is still selling “everything from a cradle to a coffin.” (A rather morbid marketing tactic if you ask me.) Part of me is ready to spread my wings and see what the rest of the world has to offer. Like the chocolate coffee Nate and I discovered recently. But Nate’s the other part of the equation—the solution to the “x” that was missing in my life. One that I pray never becomes an “ex.” When we were only sixteen, we made a promise to love each other forever. That’s a promise I know I can keep. But can that promise outlast us chasing separate dreams? *Part of The Coffee Loft shared author series. Baking Spirits Bright A handsome, single stranger is attending the Apple Cart County Christmas Bakeoff—on purpose. This must be a Christmas miracle. I came up with the perfect plan to launch my career as a marketing professional and put my family’s apple orchard on the map. Then my quirky old landlord stole my idea to declare an official Apple Cart apple dessert and suggested a county-wide bakeoff. That leaves me to defend my family’s desserts among others in town. For better or worse, it brings more exposure to Apple Cart. It also brings a handsome man my age to town. But there has to be a catch since he’s not visiting family or just passing through. Not until I’ve bared my soul to him for days do I discover he’s a famous Southern food blogger. Was our connection genuine, or was he playing me for intel on Apple Cart? That leaves me trying to not love and hate him at the same time. Guitars and Sandbars Chasing their dreams lands high school sweethearts on the same shoreline. The last person I expected to see on a music video set was my high school boyfriend. Okay, so it’s not totally unbelievable since we parted ways so he could pursue music. After high school, I headed south to attend culinary classes while he moved to Music City. The last time I saw him was in our hometown Dollar General over a Christmas break. Until this week . . . What are the odds that we’d end up on the same beach years later? I landed my first big catering gig for the set of his first music video. That’s got to be fate, right? Guitars & Sandbars was previously featured in A Splash of Romance multiauthor anthology, published by Banter and Blushes.