A few weeks ago, I asked readers on my Facebook page what their favorite Jenn Faulk book was, and the responses were all over the place. Everyone had a different favorite! Among those favorites were books I hadn’t looked at or touched or (very frankly) remembered until they were mentioned. This got me thinking about how so many of my books have gotten lost in the all the new books that are coming out and how a lot of new readers may not have even heard of some of these titles.
So, I’m going to do a new thing, just to give you a sneak peek of books you might not have read yet. (Or, if you’ve read them all, to help jog your memory. “Oh, yeah, that’s how [insert name here] met [insert name here]!”) Plus, it’s just fun going back and re-reading some of the old ones, right?
All that said, here’s an excerpt from Best Day Ever which is FREE on Kindle Unlimited or available for just $3.99 here…
I was hard at work looking for a job when he came over.
And by “hard at work looking for a job,” I mean that I had been shopping for shoes online. Which is a real drag when you don’t have a credit card, but I was content with browsing for a while at least. When the doorbell rang, it was hard to tear myself away to answer it.
When I opened the door, I could tell that I had caught him by surprise… and honestly? He caught me by surprise with the way he was so oddly familiar, like I should’ve known immediately who he was. I had seen him before somewhere, but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out where.
“Who are you?” I asked.
He was staring at me, regarding me with no small amount of amazement.
Weird.
“Um… Stephen. Stephen Hayes,” he finally managed. A long pause, then, “Are you… Beau’s sister?”
“Yeah.”
He smiled, shaking his head slightly. “Hey… nice to finally meet you.” He held his hand out to me.
I took it. “Yeah. Sure.” He continued staring at me, still holding my hand in his. Hello, weird man standing at my brother’s door with your mouth hanging open, and –
“Oh, well,” he said, clearly flustered, dropping my hand as he laughed to himself, “I have a file to drop off for Beau, for some work he’s doing for the church… he asked me to just put it on his desk.” He looked past me as if to ask permission to come on in.
“Well, come on in, then,” I said, opening the door wider for him.
“Thanks,” he said, smiling his warm smile. Then, looking at me again, “Melissa’s told me a lot about you.”
“Has she?” I asked. “Good things, I hope.”
He nodded as he made his way to Beau’s office. Apparently he had been here a few times before. “Yeah, great stuff, actually.”
I sat on the couch and picked up a copy of US Weekly (God bless Melissa for her quirky addiction), expecting that he would just walk himself out. Which is why I was slightly annoyed when he came back to the living room and looked to me questioningly.
“Well… you found the desk, then?” I asked.
“Yeah, I found it,” he said, putting his hands in his pockets.
“So…..” I looked to him expectantly.
“Hey, I hope you don’t think this is weird, but… well, Melissa’s been telling me that I should meet you, and now that I have, I see what she’s been –“ He stopped himself.
I waited for him to go on.
He shook his head, embarrassed. “Would you… well, can I take you out for dinner sometime?”
“Oh, wow,” I exclaimed, before even thinking to censor myself. “You’re like, a lot older than me.”
He seemed surprised by my answer. “Um… well, I’m thirty-four.”
“Yeah, that means you were fifteen when I was born!”
A bright red blush spread over his face. “You’re nineteen?” he asked, horrified.
“No, I’m twenty.” I refigured my numbers. “Ugh, stupid math! You were fourteen when I was born! There that’s better.”
“Actually, that’s not much better,” he murmured.
“Not really,” I said. “How old did you think I was?”
“Given Beau’s age, I thought you were, well… in your thirties, at least.”
I gasped. “No way! I don’t look that old, do I?”
“Well, ‘old’ is relative, but…” He bit his lip. “No, not at all. And now that you’re talking, you certainly don’t act much older than, well, sixteen, actually.”
“Thank God!” I said, then, “I mean, literally, I’m thanking God for that.”
He looked puzzled. “How… how do you already own your own business at… twenty?”
“Business?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “The accessories store, with the franchises, and –“
“Oh!” I gasped, laughing out loud. “You think I’m Sophie!”
“You… aren’t?”
“No, I’m Chloe!” I exclaimed. “Beau has two sisters.” A pause. “Seriously, has my brother never mentioned me?”
“I can’t say that he has,” he said.
“You know, that’s just like him. And just like Sophie, too. Pretending I don’t even exist like some shady family secret. Like he’s some prize pig himself. Just a big, old freakin’ nerd who spends his whole life at work and wouldn’t know fun if it came up and bit him where the sun doesn’t shine, you know?”
He watched me for a moment. “Well, then,” he managed.
“Yeah.” Then, disbelieving, “He never mentioned me?”
“No,” the stranger sighed, apologetic. “Just your… older sister.”
“Much, much older,” I affirmed. “She’s thirty-four. Just like you, actually.”
“Well, that’s old,” he said.
“Yeah,” I smiled. “People never confused us back home because everyone knows that I’m the younger one…” Then in a whisper, “… and the much more fun one, too.” I paused for a moment. “Why am I whispering? She’s not here, and even if she was, she knows I’m more fun. I’m the fun one! There, that’s better.”
“Ahh,” he said, sitting down on one of the couches. Yeah, he was definitely a regular here. “Yeah, Melissa was trying to fix me up with, um, well your sister, and –”
“Is that what this was about?” I asked. “All the stammering and awkward asking me out?”
He paused for a moment. “Was I stammering?”
“Pretty bad, yeah.”
He thought about this. “How could I have done better?”
“Well, you could have just told me I was smokin’ hot.”
“Smokin’ hot?” he asked, raising his eyebrows at me, smiling slightly.
“Yeah, cheesy and obvious, I know, but it always works on me.”
“Hmm,” he said, thoughtfully. “Not really my style, actually.”
“Probably not. Oh, well,” I said, looking him over again. He was older, granted, but cute enough. Blondish, brown hair, icy blue eyes, a dimple in one cheek. Handsome actually, if you’re into older guys, that is. His face held no hardness, no severity, just traces of kindness and compassion, even as he watched me watching him. It’s like “nice guy” was flashing in neon above his head.
“And, besides,” I said, “you’re not Sophie’s type at all.”
A pause. “Am I not?”
“No, she goes for big, high-powered CEO types. You know, real movers and shakers, workaholics. That kind. The kind just like her, actually. Oh, and she’s super religious, too, so she’s hard to please when it comes to… well, everything.”
“Ahh.”
“Yeah, but you’re totally cute,” I said, conciliatorily. “I mean, for an older guy and all.”
“Uh… well, thanks.”
“No problem,” I smiled at him. “How do you know Beau and Melissa anyway?”
“I’m the pastor of their church.”
I looked at him for a minute, thinking about this. “Pastor… what was your name again?”
“Stephen.”
“Pastor Stephen!” I smiled. And my mind flitted over the New Year’s Eve wedding, to this man who stood at the front alongside another, older pastor, as they did the ceremony together. “No wonder you look familiar! I remember you from Beau and Melissa’s wedding!” Of course, my attention for most of the evening had been more focused on one of the waiters brought on by the catering staff who shot me enough looks during the reception that it was rather inevitable that as the clock struck midnight, the two of us rang in the new year together, making out in one of the church’s linen closets and –
“You remember me?” Stephen asked.
Vaguely.
“Yeah! So, you’ve already actually met Sophie. Back then. She was there!”
“And… you were there, too?” he said, looking at me doubtfully. “I… think I would’ve remembered you.”
I shrugged. “Well, I’m more surprised that you don’t remember Sophie. Half of the men in the church followed her around the whole night.”
“Really?”
“She’s a looker, Preacher,” I said. “Surely you must have noticed her.”
“Not so much,” he sighed.
Well, this was weird. “Are you straight?” I whispered to him.
“Oh, yeah,” he answered, smiling, barely able to keep from laughing.
“Well, then, I don’t know how you missed her.”
He shrugged. “Maybe she wasn’t my type, huh?”
“Could be.”
A pause. “Not that I really think I have a type, per se, but… why am I telling you all of this?”
“Beats me,” I said, opening the USWeekly back up. “I’m just easy to talk to. And, you know, with you being a preacher and all, you just might win Sophie over yet.”
“You think?”
I looked at him. “Maybe. But I’m pretty sure she’d eat you alive.”
“She sounds… just lovely.”
“Well, she’d be well intentioned and efficient about it.”
He sighed. “Well, I appreciate the advice… Chloe.”
I gave him my best smile.
“No problem, Preacher.”
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Jenn Faulk 