USA Today and Publisher’s Weekly bestselling author Marie Ferrarella is releasing her three hard-to-find women’s contemporary novels written in the tradition of Danielle Steel, Nora Roberts and Debbie Macomber. Finally available again, these heart-tugging stories explore the tangled emotional lives of three women. Presenting: CHOICES
Cinderella picks the wrong prince and pays a heavy price for jumping the gun.
Shanna Brady grows up in the shadow of her beautiful mother and her Senator father, always feeling inadequate, never meeting standards she imposes on herself. When handsome Jordan Calhoun seems to fall in love with her, she jumps at the chance to prove her worth by helping him gain the political power he seeks. The signs are there from the beginning, but she tries to smooth things over, until finally she has to face the fact that he married her for her money and position and never loved her at all. But instead of grinding her even further down, shedding the dead weight of the man sets her free to try her wings and begin to develop a career, along with a spine. The baby they made together is her comfort–but Jordan becomes a source of anger and attempts at revenge, and she needs all the resources she’s developed, as well as the love of a new man in her life, to fight off the shadow of the past.
(excerpt)
Her mind drifted back to that day.
“Are you sure, Shanna? Are you really, really sure?” her mother had asked her sharply, even as the strains of the wedding march were swelling through the vast church that held hulking security guards at every possible entrance to keep out the paparazzi.
Yes, Shanna had thought then, she was sure. She was in love. Wildly, happily, blindly in love. For six months she and Jordan had been almost inseparable. And he had treated her as if she mattered, really mattered. As if she were a beautiful goddess.
No one had ever treated her that way, most especially not in her mother’s presence. People tended to ignore her in favor of currying Rheena’s favor. Rheena Fitzhugh Brady, the belle of every ball, the chairwoman of five major charities. The perfect partner for a politically motivated charmer whose eyes looked toward the country’s most-sought-after position. Quick to smile, quick to laugh, her mother had been a raven-haired beauty in her youth and, at nearly fifty-one, was still considered stunning.
Shanna had slowly smoothed down the skirt of her beaded wedding dress, the cost of which, she had thought guiltily, would have fed a small country for a month. Her mother had picked it out for her. Her mother had insisted on it.
A full head taller, Shanna had smiled confidently for perhaps the first time at her mother. Rheena had been a vision in lavender. “Of course I’m sure, Mother. Why wouldn’t I be?”
Rheena shook her head, mindful not to muss her carefully arranged hair. “I don’t know. Call it a feeling.” She shrugged as an attendant carefully spread out Shanna’s ten-foot train. She offered her only daughter a small, tight smile that hid a caldron of mixed emotions. “I just want you to be happy, that’s all.”
Do you, Mother? Do you really? Shanna wondered. Or was it just that her mother was jealous that she wasn’t the star of this gathering?
