Things are heating up on MOONFLOWER ROAD...

And, as promised, once again, here's a final little snippet of MOONFLOWER ROAD, giving you a taste of some sparks that are soon about to fly....Enjoy!!

Jeannie flipped the light off in her room and peeked out her bedroom window just in time to see Collin ascend the steps of the pool in all his naked glory. She gasped and jumped away from the window, pressing her body against the wall. The pounding of her heart amplified against the daisy-patterned wallpaper and she knew at that moment she was going to look again. Dropping to her knees, she inched her way across the floor, and slowly peeked over the window sill. The lights around the pool illuminated Collin’s glistening muscles as he grabbed a towel off a deck chair and wiped his face and arms. She moaned as he wrapped it around his waist. Oh my god, I’ve turned into a peeping Tom!

As if on cue, his head snapped in her direction and she dropped to her stomach. Shit! Did he see me? Blood shot to her cheeks and she scrunched her eyes shut. He saw me! I just know he saw me! Frozen to the spot, she pressed her ear to the floor and waited until she heard the screen door slam before she rose and made her way over to her bed.

            Jeannie pulled her lone bikini bottoms off, then grabbed a camisole out of her dresser drawer and a matching pair of panties and threw them on her bed. She flicked on the small lamp on her nightstand and was immediately faced with the reflection of her naked body in her dressing mirror. I wonder what he thought when he saw me? She let her eyes trail down the length of her body. Did he find me attractive? She allowed herself a brief glance at her breasts. They still looked pretty good. Very good, as a matter of fact.  She thought she saw a smile on Collin’s face as he ogled them. The thought elicited a warm glow in her cheeks. Her eyes dropped lower. She even had a hint of abs. Definitely not a “hard body”, but better than most of her friends from high school. Most of them already had a couple of kids. Of course, they also didn’t have a husband, or, more precisely, ex-husband, doing time in a state penitentiary. She drew her hand across the smooth flatness of her abdomen. Obviously the lack of the effects of motherhood were a good thing…at least that’s what most people would think. Footsteps in the hallway halted the route her mind was taking. She wiped away the lone tear that had mysteriously appeared on her cheek, jumped into her panties, and pulled the camisole over her head just as she heard the knock. He’s knocking at my door. My bedroom door. She wanted to jump in bed and pull the covers over her head, but she knew she couldn’t...

 

MOONFLOWER ROAD: Chapter One continued: HER

And now, as promised, it's time to meet the heroine of MOONFLOWER ROAD....

One month.

Hot, foreign tears threatened to spill down Jeannie Butler’s blanched cheeks as she scanned the page, trying to see beyond the bolded date of October 1, beyond the panic-inducing mention of foreclosure that popped up every few sentences. The tears threatened to spill, but she wouldn’t let them. Not this time. She’d had this feeling before. Two years earlier. The day she got the call. What was it that he said to her? I’m in trouble, honey? She cried the day she got that call—furious, crazed tears. Tears of dreams shattered, of love lost. She cried until there was nothing left. No tears, no anger, no love…and she hadn’t cried since. Jeannie squashed the final notice into a tight wad and hurled it across the room. It hit the wall then rebounded back at her, rolling to a quick stop in front of her bare feet.

When she looked back, she had to admit the signs were there even before she walked down the aisle.  Jason liked to spend money on himself, and on her, and it made her giddy with ecstatic disbelief when he did. She’d grown up not knowing if her mom would have enough money to put food on the table since her father drank most of it away, so when Jason took her out to eat on a daily basis, bought her the clothes she’d never been able to afford on a teenage waitress’s pay, it didn’t enter her naïve mind at the time that gambling might be involved. By the end of their third year of marriage, six months after she took a second out on their dream home to finance the downpayment on the café, it was evident by the collection notices arriving on a regular basis that he was draining their savings account, not for paying bills as he claimed, but for some shady reason. Then the call came, and the next thing Jeannie knew, her husband was serving a seven year prison sentence for embezzlement and she was stuck paying off all his debts. He’d stolen almost everything from her, and now the bank was taking the last two things she held dear to her heart: her home and her beloved café.

Jeannie sighed and reached down, snatching the ball at her feet. She unrolled it as best she could and stretched it out, running the wrinkled sheet across her thigh in a lame attempt to iron it out. She folded the single sheet and stuffed it back into its envelope, then tucked the envelope and its contents into the front of the file cabinet beside the fridge, along with all the other letters. But this one was different. There would be no more letters after this. No more warnings. This was it.

 
            She glanced at the pile of bills on the table, then to the picture of her, her three sisters and her mom at the grand opening which she’d attached with a rooster magnet to the side of the fridge. The original was on the wall at work, of course, in a fancy pewter frame she’d paid too much for. This was just a copy she made on her scanner, but it didn’t matter. Reading the caption still brought a bittersweet smile to her lips. Jeannie Butler, new owner of The Tip Top Café. She felt so proud at the ribbon-cutting ceremony. Finally, she had something of her own. Something she could be proud of. A tear escaped. She brushed it away with a flick of her finger. One month. How could she tell them? What she needed was a miracle, because it was going to take a miracle to save the café, let alone her house.

MOONFLOWER ROAD, Chapter One: Him

Soooo, I've been in a funk lately, especially since I took my last child, my baby, my only daughter, to college on Friday. Yesterday, after about four hours of sitting in my chair not accomplishing anything except watching Netflix and taking a two hour nap, my husband turned off the TV and suggested I find my muse and start writing again. With nothing else to lose since my baby was now gone, I opened up MOONFLOWER ROAD, primed the pump by reading my last chapter, and the writing began. Success! I added another thousand words in just a couple of hours! In honor of this auspicious occasion, over the next week I'll introduce you to both my main characters with my first chapter, then spice it up at the end of my celebration with my most recent scene, which is a little naughty, if I do say so myself!

And now, heeeeeere's Collin!

“Wish me luck, George.”

The moment the leather of his soles hit the cobblestone of 15 Central Park West, Collin Jamison knew there was no turning back. He flicked away the bead of perspiration trickling down his temple then tugged at the knot of his Lorenzo Cana charcoal silk. Her favorite. At least that’s what she said every time he wore the damn thing. Today it felt like a noose around his neck...choking him…taunting him to turn and run while he had a chance. He could broker multi-million dollar deals, bang heads with Trump and his cronies, but this one little deed, the utterance of four simple words, had him sweating like Fat Bastard in a Santa suit.

George closed the door behind him as only George could do. Noiselessly.

“Ain’t no such thing as luck, Mr. Jamison. Either the woman loves you, or she don’t.”

Collin’s hand slipped over the obscenely expensive lump in his jacket pocket for the millionth time that morning, seeking some type of palpable reassurance of the decision he’d made. Pffft.  Of course she loves me. Who wouldn’t? I’m Collin Edward Jamison the III, heir to the largest real estate development firm in New York. Manhattan’s Most Eligible Bachelor...

George raised an eyebrow.

He’s expecting me to say something like that…something cocky and self-absorbed. But George knew as well as he did that Annette Bradshaw, the willowy, raven-haired, thirty-year-old Wall Street attorney, was the love of his life. This time, George would have to settle for the truth instead of a smart-ass answer.

“She loves me.”

Silence.

Shit. Now what?

“Are you sure you don’t want me to wait? In case she chases you off with her briefcase?” George winked and let loose a throaty James Earl Jones laugh, the kind that seemed to start in his toes before working its way up to his deep baritone vocal cords. Collin couldn’t help but smile.

“I don’t plan on needing your services until later in the day, George.” Collin shot him his own wink. “Much later.  Miss Bradshaw and I will have a bit of .... celebrating to do.” He tapped the lump one more time then headed for the door to Annette’s building.

“Wait!” 

George’s booming voice stopped Collin in his tracks, the same way it did when he was eight years old and George caught him pissing in his mother’s rose bush. Ruined a perfectly good pair of Chuck’s that day. Collin turned, expecting George to give him one last tidbit of unsolicited fatherly advice, or at least a May the Force be with you. After all, it wasn’t every day that a man asked a woman to marry him, and George’s advice was the closest thing he’d be getting to anything fatherly. Instead, George held out a brown paper bag.

“You forgot your bagels ... and I think you’re gonna need your strength, Mr. Jamison. Celebrating takes a lot of energy.” George guffawed at his own joke and shoved the bag at Collin’s chest, but Collin blocked the assault before it crushed the Lorenzo Cana. Her favorite.  Those two words followed on the tail of “Lorenzo Cana” as automatically as the succulent memory of her wearing nothing but that charcoal silk and an I’m gonna make you beg for mercy look in her mahogany eyes the day she gave it to him.  The thought elicited a delicious but inconvenient tug in his groin. At least he didn’t feel like he was choking anymore.

“Thanks, old man.”

“Old? Who you calling old, you little pipsqueak?” George puffed his chest out like a rooster in a henhouse and strutted around the Mercedes to the driver’s door. “I’ve done more celebrating on a daily basis for the last thirty years than you’ll do in the next sixty. As a matter of fact, I think I’m gonna head on home and do some celebrating myself, since you won’t be needing my services for the day.” 

Collin chuckled. “You do that, George.”

George slid into the driver’s seat and, for the first time in recorded history, slammed the door of his beloved Mercedes. Holy shit! Seems I ruffled the old man’s feathers.

Collin turned and faced the nineteen story tower as George drove away, took a deep breath to calm his nerves, patted the lump in his pocket one more time, and smiled.

She loves me.