Lisa lives in New England with her husband and their children. She
spends her days writing for corporate clients and her evenings writing stories
and novels.
About BETTER THAN CAKE:
After
the worst fight of their relationship, the last place Stephanie wants to be is
a wedding reception. She still can’t get over what happened. Could their five
years of marriage be destroyed after a blast of heated words? Johnny suggested
separating. Separating! Now with her marriage on the line, she has to put on a
brave face and pretend love is grand.
Johnny
doesn’t know why he’d freaked out the way he had and is left with one emotion.
Regret. He doesn’t want to lose Stephanie. He must find her and make things
right.
Stephanie
enters the reception, fearing the end of her marriage. Johnny has something
else in mind—a much more decadent proposal that will turn her friend’s wedding
into an event they’ll never forget.
A
short erotic romance for only 99 cents!
Perfect for a beach or summer read.
Buy BETTER THAN CAKE at:
Excerpt
Who
gets ditched at a wedding? Stephanie paused and took a deep breath
before walking into her friend’s reception. Something like this could only
happen to her.
Ditched wasn’t a strong enough
description. “Maybe we should try separating.” Johnny’s words echoed in her
mind, lashing her psyche raw with repetition.
Separating! She closed her
eyes. Unthinkable.
It’s
okay. You can do this. Stick it out for a couple of hours and then you can deal
with the mess.
How would she explain her
husband’s sudden absence? He was at the ceremony, but wouldn’t be at the reception.
What would be a reasonable explanation? They were spending the weekend here in
Cape Cod so it would be tough to feign a work or family excuse.
Illness. Yes, something about
seafood. That would be plausible at a seaside resort. Food poisoning. She had
an excuse—but it didn’t make her feel any better about the situation.
Beyond
the Sea wafted out from the ballroom, appropriate for this Cape Cod
seaside resort. She glanced up at the imposing exterior of the multi-level
hotel. Her hand trembled so she clutched her silver purse tighter. She raised
her chin to steel herself and entered the hotel.
Stephanie scanned the place
settings to find hers. Mr. and Mrs. John Silvio. Table nineteen. She dropped
her purse to her side, but her fingers still clenched it. The last place she
wanted to be after a killer argument with her husband was a wedding. She forced herself to enter the
reception area, squeezing through all those decked in suits and evening gowns.
Searching the table numbers for nineteen, she followed them to the back of the
room. She guessed she’d be furthest from the head table, since she was neither
family nor close friend, but an old college roommate of the bride. She made her
way to the back of the room, braved a smile, and introduced herself to the
couples already seated.
“Hi. I’m Stephanie.”
“Elaine,” a heavyset woman with
puffy blond hair said. “You’re alone?”
Great. Just fantastic. Starting
right with the topic she wanted to avoid. “Yes. My husband couldn’t make it
tonight. Something he ate earlier,” she babbled. “Probably the shellfish.” She
shrugged.
The others introduced
themselves as she sat down and peppered her with questions about where they
bought the seafood. A few shared their stories of food poisoning.
It was going to be a long night.
Once the attention was off her,
she replayed the fight for what had to be the fortieth time since it happened.
After a ripple of snide comments evolved into a tsunami of a fight, she stormed
away from Johnny and ended up talking to herself like a crazy person as she
pounded through the surf.
“Separating? Why does he take a
small argument and blow it up into something like this? How could he do this to
me at my friend’s wedding? What the fuck!”
A couple of miles later, she
had calmed down. It wasn’t all his doing. She was the one who’d dragged them
here when he had other plans. Her fury decreased as the sun sank lower in the
sky, replaced by a cloak of sadness.
She didn’t want to split up.
Her eyes began to water. How
the heck would she make it through the night without breaking down? Her
marriage could be over. How long could she sport a brave face before it
dropped?
“Excuse me,” she said and
hurried into the ladies room. She barely made it through the door before her
eyes pooled with tears.
She grabbed tissues and blotted
them, fixing her smudged makeup the best she could.
“You can do this,” she told her
reflection in the mirror.
As much as she dreaded being at
a wedding while her own marriage hung in jeopardy, she had to put her feelings
aside for the sake of Caryn. She’d only get married once.
Hopefully.
* * * * *
Why?
Why had he freaked out the way
he had? Said the things he had? The day had started out great. They woke up at
the bed and breakfast and had the morning free before the ceremony. They’d
rented bikes on the Cape Cod Rail Trail and had ridden past sand dunes and
shacks, cranberry bogs and duck-filled ponds, villages and pine forests, and
even a couple of lighthouses. The scenery was one thing, his beautiful wife
riding alongside him something else. He could barely keep his eyes off her
lithe body and on the trail.
When they’d stopped to buy
sandwiches from one of the beachside shacks and had a picnic lunch on the
beach, things were still good. It wasn’t until after the seaside wedding
ceremony this afternoon that he’d opened his mouth and all kinds of stupid fell
out. And for what? Something trivial, not something to throw away a marriage
over.
Their argument had stirred
weeks before. He resented her for dragging him to a wedding when he’d already
had plans for his monthly camping trip with his buddies, He had stormed about
it for days, but downright exploded on the beach earlier. Telling her she was
too controlling, she shouldn’t speak for him and make him cancel his plans to
do something she wanted. How his outdoor trips were how he decompressed from
work and if she didn’t get it by now, she didn’t get him. She’d countered,
saying he used the same justification for his softball games, and sometimes he
had to suck it up and act like an adult. Snide comments had escalated into
verbal jabs. Past grievances were drudged up as their defenses rose.
Accusations flew, growing uglier, and digging up past perceived injustices,
until finally, he had suggested a trial separation.
He still wasn’t sure why he’d
said it. A heat of the moment incident, blurting out something to end the fight
with something he didn’t even mean.
Her shocked expression had
turned to one of hurt as she blinked back tears. Then she’d lashed back at him.
“If you’re so shallow and selfish that you consider a weekend away from your
buddies such brutality, then yeah, maybe we should.”
When she had stormed away from
him across the beach, he had turned away thinking to hell with her and pounded through the sand in the opposite
direction. It wasn’t until he had
turned back several minutes later to see she was gone that he realized he might
have made the biggest mistake of his life.
Lisa loves to connect with readers. You can find her on:
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Goodreads Amazon page
Thanks for having me, Diana.
ReplyDelete