Never Can Say Goodbye - Jana Richards

Can accepting what can't be changed give Gabriel's new client a second chance at love?

I'm apprentice angel Gabriel Daniels, and my second task on the road to becoming a full-fledged angel is already testing everything I believe about love and self-worth. My new client is Joanna Compton. In 1971, she ended her engagement to Lucas Kendall after a car accident left her paraplegic. She left not because she stopped loving him, but because she was terrified of becoming a burden-just as she'd watched her father become.

Eight years later, Joanna is a successful lawyer, but she's cut herself off from others. She won't accept help from friends, co-workers, or even her mother, believing that because of her disability, she must constantly prove her worth. When Lucas comes to her for help with his wrongful dismissal case, she refuses him. She claims it was a conflict of interest, but I think she was afraid of needing Lucas again. I persuade her to go back to 1979, but she makes her boundaries painfully clear: she's doing this only to give Lucas the justice she believes she denied him the first time. Love, she insists, is no longer an option. There will be no second chances.

I need her to change her mind. Desperately. Helping Joanna reclaim what she's been too afraid to want would bring me one step closer to Heaven-closer to the promise I've been clinging to since I died. It's the only way I'll be allowed to keep watching over the people I love back on Earth. My mother and my brother need me. They can't cope without me.

And I was never ready to leave Sloane behind. I'll love her forever.

While I'm trying to guide Joanna toward acceptance, my mentor, Thomas-a senior angel-turns my attention inward. He forces me to face the wounds I've spent a lifetime avoiding: my parents' divorce, and the bipolar illness that shadows my family history. He shows me how my refusal to accept what I couldn't fix has quietly shaped every part of who I am, keeping me stuck between hope and fear.

I have to help Joanna accept the things she cannot change. And as much as I resist it, Thomas has to help me do the same. Because if we can't let go of the pain we're clinging to-if we can't forgive what the past has taken from us-then neither of us will ever find peace. Not on Earth. Not in Heaven.

NEVER CAN SAY GOODBYE is book 2 in the Twice in a Lifetime time-travel romance series. This paranormal romance with closed door love scenes and duel time-line love stories is intended to be read in order, after I'LL BE SEEING YOU (book 1) and before WHEN I WAS YOUR MAN (book 3).