It
Happened One Night - Excerpt
Pasta Delizie. When was the last time she’d eaten
there? Come to think of it, when was the
last time she’d eaten anywhere outside her apartment? Unless brown-bagging it in the park counted,
and she seriously doubted that it did.
Not that she’d even done that in a while. Good grief, was she really turning into that
much of a hermit? Maybe Mabel had the
right idea after all. Not about matching
Paisley up with somebody, since she still couldn’t fathom how to squeeze a
relationship with anything more than a potted plant into her busy life right
now, but a little more human contact might not be a bad thing.
And since she remembered now that the last potted plant
she’d had went belly-up a few months ago when she’d forgotten to water it for,
oh, about seven or eight weeks, maybe she’d be wiser to start with something
less fragile than even plant-life for now.
Say, a pet rock perhaps.
And considering that it would be a long time before she
had another night out, she’d better make the most of this one.
So despite the fact that she’d been maneuvered none too
willingly into this whole evening, Paisley smoothed her hair with one hand,
checked her reflection in the window of the restaurant, and plastered a smile
on her face as she stepped inside.
Her eyes scanned the room as they adjusted to the dim
lighting; not the fanciest eatery in the world, Pasta Delizie was still apparently trying for a certain amount of
candlelit atmosphere that was somewhat undermined by the cartoonish mustached
chef that was painted on one wall alongside smiling vegetables with googly
eyes. But the smells of the food that
drifted out from the kitchen… Ahhh. Well, that was more than enough to make a person
forgive the décor.
Her mouth began watering, and she tried not to notice the
way her stomach growled as she turned her attention away from the thought of
food that wasn’t ramen-based and searched for her mystery man.
Not the guy in the red t-shirt, she decided. Too short.
She knew little about this Joe guy other than that he was a mechanic,
but Mabel had said that he was a good
six feet tall. And he couldn’t be the
man over in the corner booth, because he stood up to kiss the cheek of a
redhead who then slid in next to him.
Other than them, most everyone else in this place already had a dinner
companion sitting at their table. Was
she really so late that he’d given up on her and left? Or worse, stood her up altogether?
Then her gaze landed on a man at the other end of the
room. His back was to her, but he looked
like he could be about the right age, and he was certainly tall. Even sitting down, that much was
obvious. Good build, too, if his
shoulders were anything to go by, and the way the dark dress shirt fell across
them, it certainly wasn’t doing them any harm.
Well, well. Maybe
she should trust Mabel with the running of her social life more often. That was, if she actually started to develop
one.
Rearranging the delicate shawl just so across her bare
shoulders, Paisley approached the table and came to a stop beside it. “Hi, I’m so sorry that I’m a little
late. I’m Paisley, and you must be—”
The last word of her sentence froze on her lips as the
dark-haired stranger looked up at her, and she saw that he wasn’t quite a
stranger after all. Unfortunately.
“Joe,” she finished flatly, staring into the familiar
eyes of the man who’d collided with her in the street only last week.
Son of a…
* * *
Joe started to rise from his seat out of habit—not all of
the manners his mother had tried to instill in her boys over the years had
stuck, but some had—only to meet the rather disgruntled gaze of a pretty blonde
who looked vaguely familiar. From the
shop maybe? Or did he know her from
somewhere else? Maybe from the—
Her lips pressed together in a thin line, and something
clicked.
Oh.
It was the straight hair that had thrown him. Last time she’d had it all done up in
curls. Big retro things that could have
come from the nineteen-forties. But that
sour look of disapproval—Oh, yes. He
remembered that look, and all too well.
“You’re…”
“Paisley,” she finished for him coolly.
And then although it probably wasn’t the most intelligent
thing to say just then, all Joe could do was repeat, “You’re Paisley?” What kind
of cosmic joke was this?
“Yes. And saying
it more than once won’t change it. But
by all means, keep trying.” And then
either because of the curious looks she was attracting from nearby diners or
because a waitress was trying to get past her with a tray of food, the blonde
slid into the chair across from Joe as stiffly as if there was an iron rod in
the place where her spine should have been.
Or possibly stuck up a certain other part of her anatomy, which would
have been perfectly in keeping with her attitude last week.
“Mabel’s friend Paisley?” he persisted, still finding it
next to impossible to reconcile the woman across from him with the adorable
sweetheart that Mabel had described.
She frowned. “No,
Elmo’s friend Paisley. Of course,
Mabel’s friend! How many Paisleys do you
think are running around Pasta Delizie
tonight looking to meet up with a blind date?”
If there’s a God in
heaven, there’ll be at least one more, Joe thought, but he was smart enough
to keep that particular thought to himself.
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Book Two in Adventures in Blind Date...
Center Stage - Book Blurb
When financially-strapped actor J.J. McKinney responds to an
unusual Help Wanted ad on the
Enter Erika Mills:
only child of one meddling mother, reluctant darling of several devoted yet
squabbling aunts and uncles who are sure
they know what’s best for her even if none of them can agree on what that is,
and beloved grandchild of the tiny white-haired family matriarch who might just
be more imp than invalid when it comes to managing family matters in spite of
appearances to the contrary.
Throw in a suspicious cousin, an obnoxious ex-boyfriend who
is determined to erase that whole “ex” thing from Erika’s vocabulary, and a
rash deathbed promise that turned out to be less deathbed and more just a bad
case of indigestion, and you get the reunion from hell—at least until the
sparks begin to fly for real.
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Book Three of the Adventures in Blind Dating Series
The Fix-Up
Mix-Up: Excerpt
It
was a busy night, which was good for business of course, but in some ways it
was a welcome reprieve from the activity inside of the dining room and the
bustling in the kitchen to step outside with a couple of hefty-sized garbage
bags to toss into the dumpster. Ryan did so, pausing afterwards to breathe in
the night air and appreciate the quiet for just a moment.
Well,
almost quiet. A soft sound came from right around the corner of the building,
something that sounded to his ears like a grunt of exertion. An oddly feminine
one actually.
Curious,
he poked his head around the corner to investigate only to see the top half of
Jenna Owens sticking out of the window of the women’s restroom with what looked
like a sparkly little purse between her teeth.
He
stared at her, incredulous. “What on earth are you doing?”
The
sound of his voice made her gasp and jerk in surprise, but she neither withdrew
back into the restroom nor climbed the rest of the way out of it. She did,
however, drop her purse from her mouth in her surprise, and it landed on the
ground in the dirt below her. “Oh—” Recovering from her startle, she gave him a
weak smile that had a distinctly sheepish edge to it. “Hey. Um. Fancy meeting
you here.”
Frowning,
he went closer and picked up her purse to brush it off for her. “Are you
climbing out of that window?”
“Uh
huh.”
“And
are you stuck?”
“Uh
huh.”
“You’re
kidding me.”
She
shook her head.
It
didn’t take a huge leap of the imagination to guess what might have driven her to
do such a thing. “Date night, huh?”
“Unfortunately,
yes.”
“And
he’s still in there? Waiting for you to come back?”
He
was really only wondering how awful this latest guy must be to have driven her
to bolt this way when the others she’d met recently—disagreeable as they
were—hadn’t quite pushed her so far, but maybe she thought she heard a note of
disapproval in his voice, because she was quick to speak again, defensive. “I
was going to text him once I was
outside. I was.”
“What
did this one do?”
“For
starters, he wanted to frisk me.”
Ryan
blinked. “Say what?”
“And
check my purse for surveillance equipment. But to tell you the truth, I’m not a
hundred percent sure if he’s worried more about it being planted by the
government or by...” And she pointed one index finger upward toward the sky.
“He
thinks he’s being bugged by God?”
“What?
No.” She frowned at him as if he was crazy to suggest such a thing. “By aliens,
of course.”
Ah,
yes. Because that was so much less
crazy an idea.
“So
excuse me for running off to hide in the ladies’ room, but I guess I just
thought it might be nice to get out of here before this guy tried to... ‘beam
me up’ or something, I don’t know. If I were Zoe I’m sure I’d have no problem
being blunt with the guy and telling him that the date is off and to please go
far, far away from me now and forever, but I’m not Zoe, which is why I’m here. Stuck in this window.” She squirmed
but seemed just as stuck as before. Sighing, she slumped, which was probably no
easy thing to do when halfway out a window the way she was. Certainly not
comfortably.
It
abruptly struck him as vaguely adorable, and he felt his mouth start to turn up
at the corners. She glanced at him again, though, so he headed the smile off at
the pass before she could see it for fear she’d be embarrassed;
self-consciousness seemed to him to be one of her hallmarks. No, she wasn’t
much like her friend Zoe at all, but she seemed to say that like it was a bad
thing. Jenna without her own brand of awkward charm? Now that would be a bad thing.
To his mind at least.
Purchase on Amazon HERE
Want to know more about Christine Feldman? Check out her website HERE or follow her on Facebook HERE.
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