Dream a Little Dream of Me

Everyone dreams. You might not remember them, or may be superstitious and hesitate to tell your dreams before breakfast for fear the revelation will bring you bad luck, but everyone dreams.

I do my best dreaming in the hour before I wake. The minute I open my eyes, the dreams evaporate. All memory of the dream fades, too. I tried keeping a notepad and pen beside my bed, but I couldn't write fast enough and the dreams still fled.

What about the other dreams? The kind you dream when you're awake? I've lived long enough I can safely say all my dreams have now come true. How about yours?

Restored Dreams

In Restored Dreams, my latest eBook release from Desert Breeze Publishing, Treasure Montgomery dreams of fixing her leaky roof, of remodeling her hundred-year-old kitchen, of someday opening a home for abused and unwanted boys on her property. She owns four-hundred acres, room for each boy to raise a colt of his own, but doesn't have money to pay for the needed repairs to her house.

Like so many other homeowners, Treasure is house poor. Her teacher's salary barely covers her property taxes and monthly expenses. Try as she may, she can't save enough money to put a new roof on the century-old Victorian house she inherited from the great aunt who raised her.

Treasure may have an empty bank account, but she has a heart big as all outdoors. She gives free equine therapy classes to abused children, and holds a story hour for children hospitalized with leukemia. On the drive home she dreams of restoring the original beauty of her house. Winning the lottery would be a big help.

Then Bradley Harrington Coleman the Third arrives in town. He prefers the name Buck. This retired rodeo champion has dreams, too. He dreams of making a difference in the lives of the residents of Lakeview, hopes to right some of the wrongs suffered because of his grandfather nefarious deeds. Buck inherited a fortune from his ruthless father, money he refuses to spend on himself, and soon becomes the Bill Gates of the rural community, spreading his millions around where the money will do the most good.

After putting a new roof on a Lakeview church and the community center, Buck sets his sights on Treasure's repairs. The penniless middle-school teacher needs a contractor to replace the water-damaged floor in her upstairs bathroom and Buck, a licensed craftsman, offers to do the job.

Poor Treasure hasn't saved enough to do the repairs right. Yes, she's fully aware her roof still leaks and the next rain might damage the new bathroom floor, and no, much as she'd like to, she won't take Buck up on his offer to replace her roof at no cost. Too proud for her own good, she insists on paying her own way, refuses to accept charity, and rejects outright Buck's offer of an interest-free loan.

Just when it looks like Treasure won't be getting her roof repaired before the next rain she gets an unexpected windfall and tells Buck to go-ahead with the roof. He mistakenly thinks Treasure gave the okay to put on a new roof, promptly buys the shingles and sets to work.

Weeks later, after the new roof is in place and Treasure has fallen in love with Buck, she learns the truth. Her dream turns into a nightmare. Because he overspent, she doesn't have enough money set aside to pay Buck back and she fears he will take her house.

How could he do this to her?

Buck dreams of making Treasure his wife, then helping her establish the home for abused and unwanted boys she dreams of on her property until Treasure angrily confronts him about the cost of her new roof. He never dreamed she'd be so furious with him she'd sell her favorite antique to settle his bill, then order him out of her life.

Can he make amends?

Dreams come to us when we least expect them, teasing and tempting us with tantalizing certainty. My fervent dream is I've tempted you to download and read Restored Dreams. Enjoy.

Restored Dreams Blurb:

Her roof leaks, the plumbing, too, but on a teacher's salary Treasure Montgomery can barely pay the taxes on her property, so the list of needed repairs to the grand Victorian house she inherited from the aunt who raised her continues to grow.

Treasure surrounds herself with other people's children, seeking some fulfillment in an otherwise empty life until she meets Buck. A retired rodeo rider turned philanthropist, Buck willingly donates his labor to anyone who needs a helping hand, spending his father's ill-gotten fortune to make amends for his father's bad deeds, but Treasure wants no part of his charity.

            Buck persists. Treasure resists, and he turns to subterfuge to get around the obstacles she throws in his path. She learns the truth and fears she might lose her house to Buck. How wrong can a woman be about the man with whom she's fallen in love?

 

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Toni’s Bio

From Toni’s Website

Toni Noel

             While growing up in the South and completing seventh grade Toni Noel, writing under another name, laboriously typed each copy of the newspaper she published and circulated at church.
            When she was fourteen Toni began an autobiography, but after only three chapters realized she had not lived long enough to give her life story an arc.  She concluded her effort in the fourth chapter by giving her heroine an incurable disease.
            She later edited her high school paper and one of her editorials earned her membership in Quill and Scroll.  She also wrote a weekly fishing column, perhaps her first published work of fiction, for at that time she had never held a fishing pole.
            For two of those high school years a weekly column about the happenings of her high school friends earned Toni a byline in a Scripps-Howard daily newspaper and a neighborhood weekly, the first income earned from her writing, money her father faithfully set aside for her to attend college.
            Toni thrived on spending time in the library, loved to do research and write term papers.  She would finish her theme well ahead of the due date so she could type the papers of classmates, a lucrative way to add to her college fund.
            She met her husband of fifty-nine years her first week on campus and at the end of her freshman year gave up her dream of teaching to marry the first-year teacher who had captured her heart.  He retired in 2010 , ending a sixty year teaching career.
            The couple later moved to San Diego, where Toni became a Girl Scouts leader and troop organizer while actively working to secure a library for her neighborhood and earning an Honorary Membership in the PTA.
            When her last child left for college, Toni resumed her college education, earning a business degree with special emphasis in System Analysis from SDSU.  Hired by a government contractor specializing in research and development of underwater vehicles, she supervised the accounting department software and payroll until the company closed and she retired to write romance.
            Toni continues to hone her writing skills by attending Romance Writers of America national conferences and local RWA-SD meetings.  She loves to take on-line classes and reads every book she can get her hands on, regardless of genre, now reading them on her NOOK.  Currently Toni devotes her time to writing stories like the novels she loves best, books about finding safe havens for the heart.
            With the release of Lawbreakers and Love Makers by Toni Noel from Desert Breeze Publishing, Temp To Permanent and her latest release, Decisive Moments, a dark romance, you have three opportunities to download her novels and lose yourself in a safe haven for the heart novel, too.

From Desert Breeze Publishing’s Website

Since the day my mother started reading The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew to the four of us books have been an important part of my life. As a small child I couldn't wait to learn to read, and in school I devoured every printed page I could get my hands on. Summers in Birmingham I rode my bicycle three miles to the local drug store to check out Zane Grey novels which I shared with my father, a tireless breadwinner and avid reader. As a young wife and mother I started church libraries in two small Tennessee towns. Later, when the Bookmobile no longer satisfied the needs of my growing daughters, with the encouragement of my husband, I appeared before the San Diego City Council and City Planning Commission, urging them to purchase property for a library in our fast-growing subdivision before the preferred sites were snapped up by service stations. I bugged city officials so much I was later invited to assist the Mayor at the ground-breaking ceremony for the promised library. Although that library now needs expansion, it is my fondest dream that they'll save room on those crowded shelves for the romance novels I write.