Free A Time to Keep by Rochelle Alers

causes while reporting their acts of heroism in her column. She’d started at the Gazette as a crime reporter before she was reassigned to write the lifestyle column.
    â€œNo, Lauren.” Gwen told her cousin how she came to meet Shiloh, leaving out the part where she wouldn’t get out of her car and he had to carry her across the road.
    â€œDoes he at least look good in his uniform?” Lauren asked, giggling.
    â€œYes, but I think he looks better out of it.” Shiloh wearing a shirt and jeans had the same impact on her as a man in formal attire; he carried himself with a commanding air of self-confidence that she hadn’t encountered in any of the men she knew.
    â€œYou’ve seen him without his clothes?”
    Gwen sucked her teeth while rolling her eyes. “Get your mind out of the gutter, Mrs. Samuels. I was talking about civilian clothes, not his birthday suit. And if you say anything else I’m going to hang up on you.”
    â€œThere’s no need to get hos-tile, Gwendolyn. I don’t need to remind you that each sunrise brings you one day closer to thirty-eight.”
    â€œHel-lo. Test tube,” she countered in singsong.
    â€œI’m hanging up,” Lauren threatened.
    â€œGood night, cuz,” Gwen drawled, unable to stifle a laugh.
    The distinctive sound of a dial tone reverberated in her ear before she pressed a button and placed the receiver in its cradle. She’d teased Lauren about artificial insemination even though  she  preferred  getting  pregnant  naturally.  Gwen doubted whether she would ever choose something so impersonalas going to a sperm bank. Adoption was her first choice, but that was an option that had remained secret.
    Thinking of children reminded her of the upcoming fund-raiser to help needy families. Shiloh said the affair was a masquerade ball and she had to find something to wear.
    â€œAunt Gwendolyn,” she whispered. Her aunt’s closets overflowed with dresses and costumes from her days as an actress. She and her great-aunt were about the same height, and the last time she saw sixty-something Gwendolyn Pickering, the older woman had the figure of someone half her age.
    It’d been years since she’d played dress-up; attending the fund-raiser would bring back memories of the Venetian masked balls during Carnival. There was something about the city built on water that reminded her of Bayou Teche. It was as if time stood still, leaving those trapped within in a spell that was far from reality.
    She rose from the chair and headed for the staircase. The fund-raiser was only two days away.

CHAPTER 5
    S itting in a rocker on the porch of the Louisiana bayou plantation house where he’d grown up, Shiloh stared at his mother’s delicate profile. “Are you sure you want to go with Augustine?”
    Moriah Harper’s hands tightened around the arms of a matching rocker as she stared at her bare feet resting on a cushioned footstool. “Yes, I’m sure, Shiloh.” She turned her head and glared at her firstborn. “Do you have a problem with that?”
    His jawline muscles clenched angrily to halt the flow of expletives poised on the tip of his tongue. He loved and respected his mother, but her decision to attend the fund-raiser with a man who’d pursued her relentlessly since she’d become a widow annoyed him. His father hadn’t been buried a month when the man who owned the largest catfish farm in the region came calling.
    â€œYou’re a grown woman, Mama, and—”
    â€œOh, so you’ve noticed,” Moriah countered, interrupting him.
    â€œPlease don’t be catty, Mama. It’s not becoming,” he chided softly.
    Her green eyes sent off glints of anger and annoyance that her children—Shiloh in particular—were meddling in her life. She’d lost her husband, the love of her life, but she was still alive.
    â€œWhat I find