Just A Little Romance Read online

  Just A Little

  Romance

  Mary Jane Russell

  Just a Little Romance

  © 2011 by Mary Jane Russell

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  ISBN 13: 978-1-935216-25-4

  First Printing: 2011

  This Trade Paperback Is Published By

  Intaglio Publications

  Walker, LA USA

  www.intagliopub.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Credits

  Executive Editor: Tara Young

  Cover design by Tiger Graphics

  Dedication

  For Kim and Richard Butler, good friends lost too soon to cancer.

  For Mary Guggenheimer, an example to all.

  For Kate Sweeney, who asked me if I’d be willing to try writing a romance.

  For Dianne Smith, my partner, thank goodness we found each other.

  Acknowledgments

  As always, heartfelt gratitude goes to Sheri Payton and Kate Sweeney at Intaglio Publications, and a wonderful editor, Tara Young. Fabulous women all.

  Last and never least, thanks to and for my dear friend and mentor, Joyce M. Coleman, who always wants to know what I’m working on and doesn’t roll her eyes when I tell her.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Samantha Moyer stood in the aisle at Best Buy, staring at row upon row of music CDs. If one more person under the age of twenty—making her own forty-three years all the more obvious—jostled her messenger bag without any form of apology, that someone was likely to be decked. She would swear she was menopausal and not responsible for her actions. Who amongst a store full of people half her age would argue with that?

  Granted, she didn’t fit the demographics that Best Buy catered to, but Sam was used to breaking stereotypes. She was one of those redheads who didn’t hesitate to wear red as a means of thumbing her nose at the fashion gurus. Sam was just shy of six feet tall and resembled a stocky Lucille Ball. Not that many others in the store would recognize Lucille Ball by hair color, thanks to their only exposure to the comedienne through black and white reruns on cable television.

  Sam’s hair was naturally a reddish blond, but she had decided long ago not to do anything halfway. She kept her hair colored what she liked to think of as lusty red—L’Oreal called it Red Penny—and styled in a short, razored cut bearing no resemblance to the benign semi-ponytail of Lucy’s prime.

  Why was it that Sam found herself explaining to people that Lucy was Sam’s age when filming the classic episodes of I Love Lucy? Sam would just as soon not delve into that or why she was so obsessed lately with Lucille Ball—maybe because middle age bore too much resemblance to slapstick comedy, particularly when single. “Everyone needs an Ethel,” Sam said. She had a crush on Vivian Vance before she fully understood why.

  Sam forced her attention back to the rows of plastic cases, having at least decided on genre—country. She didn’t consider it a sign of her age that she dismissed the loud lament of teenagers and preferred blue-collar country music with lyrics she understood. She spent way too much time in the white-collar world as it was, standing toe to toe with pasty, middle-aged men who never expected someone like her in the job of managing the county’s business development program.

  “Can I help you, ma’am?” The voice came from the direction of Sam’s elbow. Sam quickly convinced herself that there had been no sarcasm in the question.

  “I’m still looking, but thank you for asking.” Sam smiled at the young man wearing his hair in a slicked-back ponytail. She caught a glimpse of a tattoo peeking out from his collar.

  “Classic rock is over there.” He pointed to the far aisle of racks.

  “And country is here,” Sam said. She resorted to the look to send him on his way, sure that she heard a snicker as he departed. “I’ve turned into my mother,” Sam said under her breath. “I suppose talking to myself in Best Buy is not necessarily a good thing. At least he didn’t try to direct me to easy listening.” Sam adjusted her crisp white T-shirt, sans any printed design, tucked into creased washed-out jeans.

  It was Sam’s own fault for thinking she could come to the store for a quick purchase of music for exercising. It was a busy weekend, and of course, she was trapped in an endless debate with herself—country or rock, male or female singer, recent or classic. It was her nature that if she wasn’t in a relationship, she was obsessed with exercising. Traditional exercise required music or television accompaniment. She religiously climbed onto the stair stepper several nights a week. Exercise seemed to have little impact on lessening her dress size—fourteen on a good day, sixteen on a bad—but at least she was maintaining her weight through activity and eating sensibly as she entered pre-menopause. She was solid muscle and taut skin so far. Sam sighed. She was fit and healthy. Why did she endlessly play all of this out in her mind? Dress size was a number. She still bought size thirty-six men’s jeans, just relaxed fit instead of classic cut as she had twenty years ago—at least she wasn’t into comfort waists yet.

  She smiled, finally knowing what to buy, and reached for the CD. “Mmm mmm mmm. I’d pay $9.99 just for the cover photo.” She adored Terri Clark and agreed with the reviewers who praised the woman for being a female Alan Jackson mixed with Dwight Yoakam. Sam preferred greatest hits collections—that way, she knew all the songs and sang along the first time she played the music to take her mind off of whatever it was she didn’t want to be thinking about while driving or working out.

  Sam threaded her way to the checkout aisle. How in the hell did kids have so much money to spend on music, videos, and games? Sam made a good living and couldn’t keep up with purchases for the systems she owned. She looked longingly at a new Wii game and chided herself that there were better things to do with fifty dollars, just not necessarily more fun things.

  Sam opened her wallet as she stared at the credit card reader mounted on the counter. Great, she didn’t have her reading glasses with her. She was still in denial of needing assistance to see.

  “This way.” The young black woman at the register reached across and rotated Sam’s credit card. “We just installed these. No one’s used to them yet.” She smiled at Sam.

  “Thank you.” Sam handed over the CD and strained to read the young woman’s employee badge. “Desiree.” Lucy’s middle name, Sam noted, taking the coincidence as a good sign and her knowledge of it as borderline obsession.

  Desiree continued to smile as she scanned the CD. She hesitated as she looked at the front jacket. “I want to look like her when I grow up.” She dropped her voice seductively. Desiree was young enough to have barely understood the adult lyrics of the songs when originally recorded.

  They both stared at the cover photograph. What was not to like? Terri Clark wore a Stetson as black as her shoulder-length hair that popped the blue in her eyes. The snug tank top was also black, tucked into tight, dark blue jeans. The boots were black with elaborate stitching. The pose on the arm of the leather sofa was classic—one leg propped up with arm resting on raised knee.

  “I’d rather date someone who looks like that,” Sam said, not realizing she said it aloud.

  Desiree didn’t miss a beat in completing the transaction while holding her hand up for a high five as she grinned at Sam. Sam gave the girl’s hand a solid smack and returned the sm
ile.

  “Enjoy the music.” Desiree handed Sam the bright yellow bag and winked.

  Sam walked out of the store in a completely different frame of mind. She looked down as she unclasped her car keys from the strap inside the messenger bag. Desiree had made Sam feel better in five minutes than Sam had in the months of trying to stay busy since her last serious breakup.

  Sam glanced up after she started across the driving lanes of the parking lot just as a full-size Toyota truck screeched to a stop. Her feet froze in stride. Sam spotted the rainbow sticker on the back glass and shrugged with a grin of apology.

  A butch who was Sam’s age leaned her head out the window. “Bitch, get out of the frickin’ road!”

  Sam flipped the woman off and crossed the lane. The truck roared off with a squeal of tires.

  “So much for flirting with someone my own age.” The July heat shimmering from the asphalt was the only thing hot in Sam’s life at the moment. Her mood wilted as she slid into her black Nissan Maxima. She cringed against the warmth of the leather seats.

  “Why is it that I’m able to connect with someone half my age so easily? I probably reminded her of a friend’s mom or favorite old teacher.” Sam started the car and turned the fan up on the air conditioning. She looked in both directions while backing out of the space, never quite trusting her mirrors. “Is this what I’m resorting to now—getting off on a few kind words from a mere girl?” She had given up on her latest bout of casual dating several weeks earlier, deciding to concentrate on work and friends. She tore the plastic off the CD as she waited for the traffic light that would allow her onto the highway. “Well, whatever works.” Sam laughed at herself—it beat the hell out of crying. “I’ll just have to buy more CDs.”

  Sam sang Better Things To Do at the top of her lungs and stayed in tune with Terri Clark, matching the vocal twangs. Not an entirely bad place to be.

  CHAPTER TWO

  A week later, Sam was still listening to Terri Clark in her car. Her drive to and from work was a hellacious twenty minutes of white knuckles along the worst of Richmond, Virginia’s clogged commuter roads—Chesterfield County boasted a population explosion estimated at 316,000 as opposed to 77,000 counted in the 1970 Census. As long as Terri calmed Sam’s nerves, she was staying put.

  Sam pulled into her driveway and punched the remote for the garage door opener. She prepared herself for the usual squealing of the track. If she came in late at night, she parked in the driveway rather than disturb her neighbors. One of these days, she would replace the old door and operating system, but as long as it worked, she would defer another upgrade to the thirty-year-old brick ranch.

  She had grown to like her home, admittedly bought simply because it was a good investment. The two thousand-square-foot house had been rental property long enough for it to fall into disrepair and neglect. The landlord lost his job and decided to sell without making significant improvements. The big bonus was the finished apartment that accounted for half of the ground floor.

  Due to the silty sand content of the soil, homes in the Richmond area did not have basements. The builder had been determined to have a double garage accessible from the street. The lot sloped downward from front to back. The front foundation of the house tucked slightly into the slope with the garage entrance dug out lower than the surrounding lawn and driveway delineated by knee walls. The rear wall of the foundation was fully exposed—what felt like the actual first floor of the house was in fact eight feet in the air. Sam allowed herself calling the ground level a basement just to freak out native Richmonders.

  Sam had taken a chance buying the house as-is over three years before. One of her tenants at the business incubator at the time just happened to be a home inspector. He assured her that the bones of the house were good and that all the work needed was cosmetic. In the years that followed, Sam found that to be mostly true. She was accustomed to small home repair jobs. She could replace a light fixture or an outlet, she knew how to patch walls and paint, and she managed changing a faucet or replacing the toilet tank works. What she had misjudged was the useful life of the furnace. Still, it was all part of a good investment and better than letting money idle in the bank at present interest rates. Eventually, she would recover the cash she had put into the house. For now, home ownership was certainly better than renting an apartment or condo.

  Sam had also learned to love the neighborhood. She had been hesitant about buying into an aging subdivision. What she discovered was that she was part of the first turnover from couples who had bought the houses new and were now retiring elsewhere and selling to people Sam’s age or younger. Her favorite neighbors were the original buyers who stayed on in the neighborhood and gave her all the tidbits of subdivision history in passing.

  Sam made herself confine the junk in the garage to the rear wall. She only parked in half the space and sometimes had friends who needed to store a vehicle or a tenant in the basement apartment willing to pay more rent for enclosed parking. Her last steady girlfriend had parked there for six months until they broke up two years earlier.

  Sam grabbed her briefcase from the passenger’s seat. She went to the trunk for two bags of groceries she picked up when she ran into the store for a loaf of bread.

  She went directly up the stairs in the center of the house to the first floor. The kitchen was to her immediate right at the head of the steps. She marveled at the containers that went from grocer’s bag to freezer to microwave. She could nuke food with the best. She joked more than once about selling the ceramic-top stove; if it broke, it wouldn’t be replaced until she listed the house.

  Sam kicked off her pumps and followed the long hallway to the master bedroom on the back corner of the house. She was ready to change into knit shorts and a baggy tank top, forgoing bra and shoes of any kind.

  By the time she returned to the kitchen, she was hungry enough for one of the microwaveable chicken and rice meals. She ate a piece of fresh bread as the tray rotated in the oven.

  The big decision of the night—and what she spent most of her food budget on—was which beer to go with dinner. She had been called a beer snob and couldn’t argue with the label. She allowed herself one good imported beer per day—occasionally with a client at lunch, usually with dinner, or sometimes saved until just before bed. That night, a Harp with dinner for a taste of the Irish.

  Sam removed the tray and centered the dish on a paper plate. She grabbed a fork and headed for the smallest and closest of the three bedrooms. She glanced at the dining area that opened from the kitchen and wondered why she bothered. The most she used the four-foot diameter table was when she brought work home and needed to spread papers out. On the few days in the winter that it snowed enough in eastern Virginia to shut businesses down, she might work a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle. She even had additional leafs for the table to expand its seating to eight. She hoped the panels were wrapped in moving blankets and standing in the corner of the utility room in the basement.

  Her mother’s upright piano stood in the far corner of the dining room. Sam had refused to learn to play as a child. Her mother had told her she would regret being so hard-headed. Sam chuckled. Her mother had been proven right. Sam hated feeling like an orphan. Even with years to adjust to their deaths, she missed the parents who were in their late thirties when she was born and in their sixties when they died.

  Sam hesitated and almost crashed on the L-shaped couch in the living room. Sometimes she substituted using the Wii for her stair stepper. She just didn’t feel that coordinated tonight. She usually watched the six o’clock or eleven o’clock local news. She would wait until the late broadcast to catch the antics of the Richmond council meeting that often as not resembled a three-ring circus of clowns in suits.

  Sam entered the room of the house she used most—the small bedroom midway along the hall that was perfect for a corner computer desk made of sawdust and glue, her stair stepper, and a three-shelf bookcase with a small flat-screen television on top. The clos
et was filled with her off-season business clothes.

  Sam dropped into the padded executive chair before her computer. The room was comfortably cool, even though late afternoon sun glared through the window. One upgrade to the house she had never regretted was central air conditioning. It was not uncommon for July and August to have days near one hundred degrees with humidity almost as high that made it seem impossible to take a breath outdoors.

  Sam stroked the track ball to bring the computer screen to life. She forced herself not to huff at how slow her home system was compared to that at the office. Of all the conveniences she used daily, the microwave and the computer were a tossup of which was most important.

  She’d definitely sacrifice the telephone landline and cable television for Internet service and a decent computer. She would eventually replace the desktop with a laptop half its size and four times the memory and operating system. It would be such a luxury to be able to move the computer around the house. She could see definite merit to staying in bed on Sunday with a laptop. “Damn, I’ve been single way too long.”

  Sam slowly ate her dinner as she tried not to think about all the women she had dated, slept with, and lived with—not necessarily in that order—over the past twenty-five years. She seemed to go through a repetitive cycle of multi-dating, finding someone to be monogamous with, and living together about three years before one or the other of them would end it, usually without hard feelings and always with resignation that passion and romance just didn’t survive very long in the real world. She had split with her last partner when she wasn’t committed enough to relocate to Ohio. After a breakup, she would keep to herself for as much as a year before casually dating again.