Excerpt:

"Good morning, Heaven," he said with a smile that had her insides turning cartwheels. "I've come to apologize and explain."

"I..." She swallowed hard and continued to look at him. What a smile he had! "I have to apologize too."

He lifted his shoulder from the door frame and stood erect, his formerly teasing eyes serious now. "No, you don't. You never have to apologize to me for anything."

She blinked and turned back to the table. She didn't want to look at him anymore. Looking at him, at the strange expression in his eyes, was disturbing. And she did not want to be disturbed. So why didn't her stomach stop doing back flips?

"My aunts would expect it of me. They are both great sticklers for manners," she said, shredding one of the muffin papers. She heard him open a cupboard and take down a mug. He filled it.

"Your aunts would never know."

He sat down across from her, his eyes sweeping over her face again. He had such an intense stare it made her uncomfortable. She moved restlessly in her chair, wishing he would look at something other than her. He didn't. Even when he lifted his mug and sipped -- black coffee, she noticed -- he kept his gaze on her face.

"They'd find out somehow," she said, and had to smile at the memories that came rushing back. "They always did. I never knew how, but if I'd done something wrong, they knew, and they took away my privileges. They never raised their voices, and never, but never, spanked me. They only Took Away Privileges. And whenever one of them used the phrase I could hear the capital letters."

She'd smiled! Hennessey thought his heart was going to burst. She had smiled at him, Heaven had smiled on him. Even though he knew the smile wasn't something he should take personally, that it was a smile of reminiscence, he loved it. And he was right, her eyes were gorgeous when they were soft, just as gorgeous as when they snapped with temper. "What kind of privileges?"

Author BIO: Judy Gill is a compulsive writer who confesses to having once strode through a campground in Germany begging sheets of writing paper from perfect strangers in her imperfect German. All this because she'd left her typewriter at home {this was a VACATION as her husband insisted}, and when the writing bug bit she was forced to use every scrap of paper in her trailer, including both sides of brown paper grocery bags before going on the prowl for more paper. The resulting book was the only one she ever did in longhand--and was the first draft of POCKETS FULL OF JOY, her first re-release from Awe-Struck.

To her great joy, she now does her "camping" aboard a 30' boat, and has a laptop computer for when the bug bites, which seems to be daily.