by Marina Adair
Romance blooms in a charming small Southern town in Marina Adair’s new Magnolia Falls series . . .
A preview follows.
Chapter 1
Kennedy Sinclair had only taken two steps toward her new life and already her toes were beginning to pinch.
“I don’t think I have what it takes,” she admitted plopping down on the changing room bench to loosen the buckles on her new Comme Il Faut ballroom dance shoes, sighing as the blood rushed back to her feet. The red satin straps were trouble enough—looping tightly around the ankle and pulling across the top of her toes, pinching off all circulation—but the heels were the real problem. Staggering toothpicks that added enough height to cause light-headedness and excessive teetering. A result, no doubt, from attempting to perform aerobic activity in depleted oxygen zones.
Or her body’s preference for practical.
Too bad for her feet, she was done with practical. At least for the summer, she thought glancing in the mirror and taking in her matching cardigan set, glasses, and hair secured with a pencil at the back of her neck. Sure, right then, she supposed she resembled the bookkeeper that she was. But in a week’s time, the semester at the culinary school she did bookkeeping for would end and she would be in Argentina—spending her summer in the most exciting way possible.
Her boyfriend of four years, Philip, had been selected for an educational exchange program, teaching Pacific Northwest cuisine for the summer at one of the top culinary schools in South America. Not that anyone was surprised by the honor. Philip was handsome, charismatic, and the youngest master chef at Le Cordon Bleu school in Portland. In addition to being the perfect boyfriend—he scored a solid 9.9 on the compatibility test she gave him on their first date—he was so dedicated to his career that he’d elevated the school to worldwide acclaim.
Sometimes he was almost too dedicated. Not that there was anything wrong with that. Dedicated people tended to be reliable, stable, had the ability to see things through—something her perpetually unemployed mother could benefit from. But lately Philip had spent so much time heating up his teaching kitchen, he couldn’t even manage a simple tangled-sheets stir-fry when he got home.
So when he asked Kennedy to go with him to Argentina, she’d been thrilled. She’d read that traveling together ignites romance and intimacy between couples, opens the lines of communication and builds healthy relationships. So Argentina was the perfect time for them to reconnect, to take their relationship to that next level in an exotic land. For her to have a long-overdue orgasm.
And what better way to embrace what was to come, than with a new pair of shoes that made her feel sexy, spontaneous, and exotic. Daring even. There hadn’t been a lot of opportunity for that in her life. She’d been too busy trying to find a safe harbor in an unpredictable childhood, which left her a little uptight. Okay, she was obsessed with organization and order, but now that she had a secure future ahead of her, and a stable man by her side, it was time to push the comfort of their relationship a little and experiment with new things.
Standing again, precariously balanced on her heels, she looked at her toes in the changing room mirror, then to the sensible cream flats she’d been dancing in for the past few months they’d been taking lessons. The flats matched her outfit—and her future if she didn’t do something to spice it up.
A loud thump sounded from the changing room beside her, followed by a low moan. Thinking someone had teetered right out of their heels, Kennedy pressed her ear to the wall.
“Is everything okay in there?” she asked, dropping to her knees when the only response was another thump, this one vibrating the wall between them.
A similar pair of mile-high red heels stood on the other side of the divider, fastened around a set of gorgeous tanned legs, which had a little gold anklet with an orchid charm dangling.
Oh my god! It was their tango teacher, Gloria, the woman who had inspired Kennedy to come to class early and tryout the red shoes in the first place. The twenty-two-year-old Latin ballroom champion had legs to her neck, enough hip action to tempt the pope, and wore raw sex appeal like most women wore perfume.
And speaking of hip action!
Kennedy covered her eyes, then peeked through cracks of her fingers to watch as a pair of black and white, very classy, very masculine, wing-tipped shoes stepped toe to toe with the red heels, one of which lifted off the ground to lightly trace up the outside edge of her partner’s leg and wrap around in a perfect caricia.
The wingtips stepped even closer, another thump ensued, then Kennedy heard the telltale sound of a zipper lowering.
Frozen, Kennedy watched as the wingtips started rocking in a perfect T-A-N-G-O rhythm, working toward, what Kennedy knew, would be a standing O. Back and forth, they swayed as the soft moans turned louder and the panting drifted under the dressing room door.
Kennedy found her hands were a little sweaty because for the first time in her life, she didn’t have the right answer. Should she sneak out of the room and run for it?
A good choice, except she’d never been all that graceful and didn’t have a sneaky bone in her body. Even worse, the hinges on the changing room door squeaked when she had come in and getting caught would make for an awkward class. And she really loved their class.
It was the one hour a week when she had Philip all to herself, his undivided attention as he’d sweep her across the floor, making her feel elegant and feminine. For a woman born with the coordination of a gazelle in snowshoes, it was something of a feat—and something she wasn’t willing to lose.
Which meant hiding and waiting for them to finish. An option that rather intrigued her. In fact, Kennedy felt embarrassed, intrigued, and a little bit naughty all at the same time. Leaving the lights on was as kinky as Philip got, so knowing that this might be as close as Kennedy would ever be to a standing-O-Tango, she took a seat, pulled her knees to her chest, and stared at the wall.
Which was all kinds of ridiculous. It wasn’t as if she could see anything through the wood divider, but sitting there in her red shoes gave her the courage to imagine. Only she didn’t have to imagine much since the thumping got louder—and so did the dancing duo next door.
“Ai, papi,” Gloria said, her accent making every vowel sound like a promise. “You are such a good lo-bar.”
“Uh,” was all Mr. Lo-bar said. A single release of air that was neither sexy nor expected from an experienced Latin Lover. It was more of an admission that he’d had all he could handle. Not that Kennedy was judging, she had crested her comfort level about two moans back.
“Yes! Yes, papi,” Gloria mewed and Kennedy closed her eyes. She had to. She was a private person by nature and tried her best to respect other’s privacy, so the guilt began to build low in her belly. But before it could settle, Gloria cried out. “Just like zat, Phil-ep.”
Kennedy’s eves flew open and the guilt quickly faded to confusion and finally shock as she climbed up on the bench to get a look at this Latin lover Phil-ep who uttered a simple “Uh” in the throes of passion.
Breath left her body as her heart tried to adjust, to make room for the familiar ache of disappointment pressing in. Because there below her, right on the other side of the divider, with his pants around his ankles and another woman around his waist, was the man she lived with, the man she’d planned to spend the rest of her life with, holding Gloria in a closed position and executing moves that told Kennedy this wasn’t their first tango.
No, it appeared that Phil-ep was just exotic-people’s talk for a cheating, rat bastard of a boyfriend, and suddenly the past few months made sense. His shift in schedule, his sudden interest in “extra” dance classes, the way he pretended to be asleep when Kennedy would snuggle up behind him at night.
She didn’t think she had made a sound, or maybe the blood rushing though her ears made it hard to hear, but suddenly Philip looked up—and froze. At least she thought it was Philip. Right height, right build, right piercing blue eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses
, but he looked different somehow.
“What are you doing here,” was all he said. No “I’m sorry” or “I made a mistake” or “Please forgive me,” just, “What are you doing here,” as though this was somehow her fault.
Maybe it was. What kind of woman didn’t know when her boyfriend was sleeping with someone else?
The kind who puts all her eggs in the wrong basket. A trait that had been passed down from Sinclair mother to Sinclair daughter for five generations. A trait that Kennedy had spent a lifetime trying to overcome, without much luck.
Until today.
“You know what, Phil-ep? I have no idea what I’m doing here,” she said then stepped off the bench.
Grabbing her purse, she walked out of the changing room proud that she wasn’t toppling over in the heels.
“Wait,” Philip said and she heard a lot of rustling of fabric from his stall, but she didn’t stop, refused to wait. She’d waited for four years for him to pop the question, four years for him to take her on a vacation, to show her the world like he’d promised, and now she was tired of waiting.
Only Philip had always been an efficient dresser and incredibly quick, as Gloria must already know, so he was out of his stall and in front of her before she could make her escape.
“Let’s talk about this.”
“I am a visual learner, Philip, I think I understand. Tab A, slot B, no further explanation needed.” Plus, there was nothing he could say that could make this any less painful—or more humiliating.
“I didn’t mean for it to end this way.”
Except that, she thought, her heart beating so fast she was afraid it would pop right out of her chest, because she was pretty sure he’d just broken up with her, in a public dressing room, with his fly down and his mistress listening to every word.
Part of her wanted to ask why? Why did everyone else always seem to move on before she got the memo that it was over? And why, damn it, didn’t anyone ever think to get her that memo?
“Well, it didn’t end,” she said. “Because I reject your pathetic break-up since I broke up with you the second you became Mr. Lo-bar.”
He stuffed his hands in his pockets, only to remove them when he realized his fly parted. “I never meant to hurt you, Kennedy. It’s just that we’re so . . .” he looked at her starched pants and shirt and sighed, “solid.”
“Most people would think that solid was a good thing.” It was one of her biggest strengths, right along with reliable, steady, accountable.
The look he gave her said that he wasn’t most people; that he was no longer looking for solid. Maybe he never had been. Maybe like all the other people in her life, she’d just been filling the gap between high-points.
“It is, but we’ve become so predictable,” he shrugged, “boring.”
“Excuse me?”
“There is a color coded, itemized itinerary for our Argentina trip on the fridge.” He said it like that was a bad thing. “With contingency plans in place, just in case we finish tasks early.”
Contingency plans were essential, Kennedy thought, maximizing the amount of sightseeing they could accomplish in their limited free time.
“With Gloria everything is fun and unexpected and new. Exciting.”
Kennedy wanted to argue that she could be fun and exciting, too, try new things. She was the one who submitted his application for Argentina—not that she was going anymore. She had signed them up for dance classes. But then she thought of Gloria and her Latin moves and impulsive tendencies, and figured Philip wasn’t willing to settle for a class anymore when he could have the real thing.
“With her I’m exciting,” he added.
“Exciting?” The man thought golfing without a caddy was living on the edge. “You need a humidifier to sleep at night.”
At one time Kennedy had thought he’d needed her, too. Just last semester he told her how he slept better, breathed easier, had less stress in his day knowing that she had his back at work and she’d be there when he got home.
Oh my God. She was his humidifier. Kennedy Sinclair, winner of Berkeley’s esteemed The World’s Your Abacus award, was a certified life-humidifier. Ironic because in that moment, with her whole solid world crashing down around her, she found it hard to breathe.
* * *
Whoever said one could never really go home, obviously wasn’t a Sinclair, because later that night, with all of her worldly possessions in the trunk, a bag of mostly eaten cookies in her lap, and a light dusting of powdered sugar everywhere in between, Kennedy pulled into her grandmother’s drive. She’d made this journey a thousand times as a kid, the inevitable walk of shame to Grandma’s house when her mother’s world fell apart.
Only now, as an adult, making the same pilgrimage felt so much worse. Maybe because it was her world falling apart or maybe it was because instead of packing for her first big adventure—that didn’t come from a book or movie—she was once again packing up her entire life, forced to start over.
It was as if Sinclair women were destined to wind up alone and displaced. A disturbing thought, since Kennedy had done everything right, everything in her power to avoid ending up like her mother. The right school, right profession, right man. Yet there she was, single, homeless, and, as of tomorrow, unemployed.
From a job she really loved. Balancing books at a culinary institute was the only way to blend her profession and her hobby—baking sweets.
Shoving the last cookie in her mouth, Kennedy bent down to pop the trunk, crumbs falling out of God knew where and littering the floorboard. Wiping her mouth on the sleeve of her hoodie, she stepped out of the car, grabbed her suitcase and walked up the drive to the brick steps of the modest-sized Queen Anne–style house.
Even before her feet hit the landing, she knew that Grandma Edna had stayed up and was waiting for her arrival. The dreaming swing, which hung in the corner of the porch, was moving idly. Perched happily on it with Amos and Andy, her two cats, was Edna Sinclair.
All soft curves and frosted tips, she wore a teal house robe, matching crocheted slippers, and a warm smile. She also had a single band of toilet paper wrapped around her curlers and secured with bobby pins.
“I’m home,” Kennedy said, dropping her suitcase on the welcome mat which read WENT BIG AND CAME HOME.
“Figured it was either that or I was about to be robbed.” Edna glanced at Kennedy’s black hoodie pulled over her head and yoga pants. “Glad it’s you, seeing as I made cookies and the boys don’t like to share none.”
The “boys” sent her their best disrupt our pet-time and we will pee on your bed glare.
“I made cookies, too.” She held up the bag, which was surprisingly light, and joined her grandmother on the swing. They both had to scoot down to accommodate Andy’s swishing tail. “But they’re all gone.”
“I can see that,” Edna said, brushing at Kennedy’s shoulder and unleashing an avalanche of crumbs onto Amos’s back. He growled, his little whiskers doing double time.
“Chocolate butterball cookies.” Kennedy rubbed at a large cluster of crumbs that had collected in her cleavage, but it only made a white smear, so she shrugged and gave up. “They’re Philip’s favorite. I made a batch while I was packing.”
“Did you leave him any?”
Kennedy shook her head. “Just a dirty kitchen. And my resignation.”
“That was nice of you.” Edna patted her knee and Kennedy’s eyes started to burn. “Most women would have assumed letting the air out of his tires was word enough.”
Most Sinclair women would have shot first, asked questions second, and then let him pull up his pants after they felt they’d been properly heard. But Kennedy had always been the more reserved one in her family.
“I wrote it in sharpie across all of his dry cleaning that I had just picked up,” she admitted while staring out at the Oregon sky.
Like Kennedy, Edna lived in the greater Portland area, which meant that the city lights snuffed out most of the stars, leavin
g an inky blanket over the city. But tonight, there were a few bold ones whose twinkle was bright enough to break through the night and be seen. And for some reason that made Kennedy smile.
“I was careful not to wrinkle his button-downs,” she added. “He hates wrinkles.”
“I know he does,” Edna said, wrapping a pudgy arm around Kennedy’s shoulder and pulling her close.
Without hesitation, Kennedy snuggled in deeper, wrapping her arms around Edna’s middle and breathing in the familiar scent of cinnamon and vanilla and everything that was safe. One sniff and Kennedy felt her smile crumble and the tears well up.
“They were doing it during the light of day against the wall,” she whispered. “With their shoes on. He’s never asked me to keep my shoes on.”
“Of course he didn’t,” Edna cooed. “You’re a respectable woman who knows the value of a good pair of shoes.”
Oh God. Even her grandmother thought she was respectable and everyone knew that respectable was just another word for boring. And boring people wound up living in their childhood bedroom at thirty with the neighborhood cat lady as their roommate. “What if I wanted to keep the shoes on?”
“With what he’s been stepping in lately you should count yourself lucky,” her grandma cooed.
“Gloria’s the lucky one. He’s taking her to Argentina next week.” And there went the tears.
She tried to hold them back, but sitting there in her grandmother’s arms, once again being the one snuffed out by bigger and brighter, brought back every time her mom had taken off with some guy on some other adventure, leaving Kennedy at home.
“He’s the one who cheated, the one who was lying, and he still gets to go teach in Argentina, check something great off his bucket list, and I am stuck in another life-time-out.”
“That just means you get to check something off your own list now. Go do something that doesn’t include listening to all that wheezing the jackass does when he gets excited or factoring in his work schedule,” Edna said stroking Kennedy’s hair. “Even as a little bit of a thing, you were so busy making checks and balances you never took the time to taste the icing.”