Text Me on Tuesday
An Accidentally in Love Story
Book 1
Whitney Dineen & Melanie Summers
Copyright © 2021 by Whitney Dineen and Gretz Corp.
All rights reserved.
Published by 33 Partners Publishing and Indigo Group
First edition
E-Book ASIN: B08WKKM3NN
Paperback ISBN: 9798712792528
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the authors’ overactive imaginations or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. And we don’t mean maybe.
No part of this book may be reproduced, copied, scanned, photographed, or distributed in print or electronic form without express permission of the authors. But let’s face it, if you love it, they’ll probably let you share small portions. You still have to contact them first.
Made in the United States.
March 2021
Cover by: Becky Monson
Also by Whitney Dineen
Romantic Comedies
Love is a Battlefield
Ain't She Sweet
It's My Party
You’re so Vain (coming soon)
The Event
The Move
The Plan
The Dream
Relatively Normal
Relatively Sane
Relatively Happy
The Reinvention of Mimi Finnegan
Mimi Plus Two
Kindred Spirits
She Sins at Midnight
Going Up?
Love for Sale (coming soon)
Non-Fiction Humor
Motherhood, Martyrdom & Costco Runs
Conspiracy Thriller
See No More
Middle Reader Fiction
Wilhelmina and the Willamette Wig Factory
Who the Heck is Harvey Stingle?
Children’s Books
The Friendship Bench
Also by Melanie Summers
ROMANTIC COMEDIES
The Crown Jewels Series
The Royal Treatment
The Royal Wedding
The Royal Delivery
Paradise Bay Series
The Honeymooner
Whisked Away
The Suite Life
Resting Beach Face
Crazy Royal Love Series
Royally Crushed
Royally Wild
Royally Tied (Coming Soon)
WOMEN’S FICTION
The After Wife
The Deep End
STEAMY OFFERINGS by MJ Summers
The Full Hearts Series
Break in Two
Breaking Love
Breaking Clear
Breaking Hearts
The Break-up
DEDICATION
Dedicated to my Big Hollywood Daddy Scott Schwimer.
Friend. Mentor. Well-dressed protector of dreams.
Xoxo,
Whitney
And to Dolly Parton,
Who reminds us all to appreciate what we’ve got,
make the most of what we’re given,
help any way we can,
and be kind.
Thank you,
Melanie
A Behind the Scenes Look at the Birth of a New Series…
(Don’t worry. It’s not gory.)
Chapter One
Aimée
“Hey, Aimes, you want to grab a mani-pedi after our shift?” my friend Teisha asks while hurrying past me to the pastry display.
“You bet,” I answer while changing the filter on the coffee maker and starting a new pot. “’Cause you know I have an extra fifty bucks burning a hole in my pocket.”
“Not this again.” She flings a bear claw on a plate. “I know you’re trying to get your catering business going. Got it. But you have to live, girl! Do something nice for yourself occasionally.”
“I did something nice for myself yesterday, T. I paid my electric bill,” I say, bagging a cranberry orange muffin for a to-go order. The truth is my feet are begging me to say yes to the pedicure after close to eight hours straight rushing around on them.
“I’m going to say it again. My brother is moving out of my place next week and I’d rather have you for a roommate than anyone else in this world.” She bats her eyelashes at me, causing the whites of her eyes to shine brightly against the frame of her flawless ebony skin.
“I just don’t want our living together to affect our friendship,” I say, even though I’ve been giving serious consideration to her offer lately. I’m running out of money and I’m not getting enough catering jobs to get my new business up and running fast enough to save the sinking ship that is my life.
“I don’t know how you can stand living in that shoe box you call an apartment. I’d be ready for the funny farm after one night. It’s like a prison cell.” She convulses in a full body shiver for effect.
Teisha has accurately described my home. When I moved to New York City from Rochester last year, I was sure my catering business would thrive here, just like it had upstate. I was sure I’d be moving on up to the East Side, a la The Jeffersons theme song from that old TV show my parents liked to watch.
That has not been the case.
Even though I came to the Big Apple with enough money to pay my rent for a year, I had to take a waitressing job at the bakery to cover my other expenses—electric, phone, toilet paper, the occasional new tube of lipstick. I’ve only bought two since I’ve been here.
I ran out of rent money last month and had to start digging into my savings. Which will not last, with the price of Manhattan real estate such as it is. “When is Terrance leaving?” I ask.
“Five days, but you can move in any time and share my room until he’s gone. That way you won’t have to pay an extra month’s rent.”
I exhale like I’m trying to blow out birthday candles at the far end of Yankee stadium. “I’ll do it. I’m month to month now, so I can leave at any time.” As I refill the coffee creamers, I add, “But only if you’re sure.”
My friend throws her Amazonian arms around me and jumps up and down, causing the top of my head to bump against her chin. “All right! We’re gonna have the best damn time there ever was!”
“You’re a good friend,” I tell her as I push her away to wipe off the cream that’s now running down my apron.
“Hurry up and finish what you’re doing. Then we can clock out and celebrate by getting our nails done. After that, we’ll hit the Red Apple for a bottle of wine.”
I’m feeling all kinds of things at the moment—relief, trepidation, excitement. It’s like I’m standing in the middle of a hurricane of emotion looking for something solid to hold on to. When I can’t find it, I decide to grab ahold of optimism as it flies by and see where it carries me.
On the D train up to Harlem, Teisha asks, “How did your date go last night? You never told me.”
Rolling my eyes, I reach out for one of the many stripper poles running down the aisle of the subway car—I’ve recently started calling them that after a flash mob of pole dancers came into the car I was riding last month. If you catch the video on YouTube, I’m the curvy blonde in the corner doing a facial impersonation of a mounted fish. You know, wide op
en eyes and a mouth the perfect “O” of shock and awe.
“My date was typical,” I tell my friend. “Wanna-be-young businessman who thinks he’s about to take over the world, takes me to an expensive restaurant and suggests I only order off the appetizer side. Then, after spending the whole meal talking about himself, he pays the check, leaving a ten percent tip—I looked. Then we get into a cab and he gives the driver his address.”
“Oooooooh, slimy. What happened when you told him you weren’t going home with him?” she asks, rubbing her hands together so quickly you’d think she was trying to start a fire Survivor-style.
“He had the cabbie pull over and then told me if he wasn’t going to get an immediate return on his investment, I could find another way home.”
“Why that no-good dirty dog! What did you do?”
“I got out. But not before telling him he needed a stronger mouthwash and that only letting his date order appetizers for dinner was like having a tattoo that says ‘Cheapy McTightwad’ on his forehead.”
The construction worker standing next to me wants to know, “What would have happened if he took you out for chicken and waffles?”
I shoot him a conspiratorial look and lie, “I would have been able to tell my friend here what his apartment looked like.”
Our pole mate laughs uproariously. “Honey, if I wasn’t already married, I’d be offering to take you out for that chicken right now.”
Ignoring the intruder in our conversation, Teisha warns, “He better not have the nerve to set foot in Bean Town again or I’m going to spice up his coffee with some hot sauce.”
“Guys like him never return to the scene of the crime when they’ve been dissed. Their fragile male egos can’t handle it.”
Getting out at 110th St., we walk three blocks to Teisha’s favorite nail salon called The Finger. We amble into the shop under the giant, neon-flashing sign of a hand flipping the bird.
“Kwon,” Teisha calls out, “we need the works. All four paws with gel and nail art. We’re celebrating here!”
In heavily accented English, the Asian man in the salon tells her, “My name is Kevin, not Kwon.”
“Uh-huh,” Teisha replies, “and I’m Queen Latifah. Use your real name, man. Be proud of your roots!”
Kevin/Kwon turns to the woman next to him and tells her something in Korean. She motions me to a massage chair. While the hot water pours in, soothing my aching feet, my phone pings, alerting me of a new email message.
If I weren’t desperately hoping it was a prospective new client, I would have ignored it and let Calgon take me away.
Instead, I pull out my phone and read:
Miss Tompkins,
I’ve received your many flyers in the mail and am intrigued not only by your persistence, but also by your menu. Our caterer unexpectedly dropped out of a corporate lunch we need served at our headquarters on Wall Street tomorrow. If you can help us out with this and my boss is happy with the food, I would be happy to steer more work your way.
Byron Scott
Executive Assistant to Noel Fitzwilliam
Fitzwilliam & Assoc.
I let out of whoop of joy so loud, Teisha says, “Girl, I almost tinkled in my drawers, and I’m not sure Kwon here would appreciate having to clean up that kind of mess. What in the world are you yelling about?”
“Mani/pedis are on me!” I shout. “I just got my first in with Fitzwilliam & Associates! You’re gonna have to count me out for that bottle of wine tonight, Teish. When I’m done here, I’m going straight to the grocery store and start prepping for tomorrow’s luncheon.”
I get busy sending a reply message to Byron, accepting the job and asking for details. Then I mentally start to prepare a list of all the tasks I need to complete to be ready in time. My grandma Jane used to warn about counting my chickens before they hatched, but I’m not worried. I have a feeling my fortune is about to change.
Chapter Two
Noel
“All right, team, I think that's it for changes. I want to thank you all for busting your arses—as we say in England—for the last eight plus months.” I offer what I’m told is a rare smile to the twelve haggard staff members seated around the enormous polished mahogany conference room table. “Before I let you go, I do have a few things to say. I know I don't have to tell you that tomorrow is the most important pitch of most of our careers, certainly mine anyway. One Rosenthal is the reason I made the trek across the pond and set up shop here last year. This tower will be the crown jewel of the Manhattan skyline—a shining beacon of the future of architecture here in the center of the universe. The tower will be luxurious yet with environmentally conscious finishings and design, as well as cutting-edge technology.
“It’s going to earn Fitzwilliam & Associates our rightful place on the world stage. Should we succeed tomorrow—and I believe we will—we’ll become one of the most sought-after architectural firms on the globe. Decades worth of work will come from this one monumental project.” I pause and steady my voice before I allow myself to sound excited. “We've done the work, now the final piece of the puzzle is to ensure we put our best foot forward tomorrow, or feet I suppose, since there are several of us.”
There’s a polite chuckle from around the room, but it’s not because I’m funny. It’s because I pay their rent. I’m relatively certain they all hate me, but I literally couldn’t care less. I didn't get where I am today by worrying about winning popularity contests. “Tomorrow, skip the perfumes and colognes. Mr. Brown Senior is allergic to them and we don't need him to be at all distracted from our message. And please, when you get in here, no fidgeting, no sniffling, no worried expressions. We must present ourselves calmly and confidently as we usher in this new era of design.”
I glance over at my highly distractible twin brother, Byron, who has served as my long-time executive assistant. Byron and I may be twins, but we are nothing alike. Other than having identical noses (which we got from our mother, thank God, because our father has quite the honker) and similar smiles, most people don’t think we’re brothers, let alone twins. He has sandy brown hair while mine is almost black. His eyes are dark blue, mine are light green. He’s Mr. Goodtime and I’m Mr. Responsible, who employs Mr. Goodtime in order to keep him from ruining the family name by becoming a male stripper (which he announced as his true calling just after we blew out the candles on our eighteenth birthday cake). That was eighteen years ago, and his ideas haven’t gotten much better since.
Byron isn’t exactly what you’d call detail-oriented (a bit of a negative in an assistant, to be honest) but he’s one of two people on this planet that I trust explicitly (the other one being me). Byron uses his middle name Scott as his last name (as requested by our father, the great Lord Fitzwilliam shortly after Byron came out to the family), and yes, dear old dad is a complete wanker and neither of us will likely ever forgive him. Well, Byron might, but I certainly won’t.
As with most awful things in life, there is a silver lining to Byron having a different last name—it has allowed him to serve as a spy of sorts on my behalf. People love him—he’s friendly, laid-back, and easy to talk to (unlike me), so they often dish about how much they hate me, whether they’re planning to quit, screw me over, and/or if they’d like to ‘choke the crap out of me and dump my body in the Thames’ (as one of my former junior architects put it). So, even though he screws up nearly as often as he gets things right, I gladly keep him around because there is no price that can be put on trust. I know, I’ve tried to buy it before.
At the moment, however, my brother is completely undermining my words by allowing himself to be openly engrossed in whatever is happening on his mobile phone. I tap the spot on the table in front of him and say, “And don't even think about bringing your mobile devices into tomorrow’s presentation. We don't want to seem as though anything is more important than the client, including whatever's going on this week on RuPaul's Drag Race.”
That
worked. Byron snaps to attention. “I'm sorry, what were you saying?”
I point to his phone. “Leave that at your desk during the meeting tomorrow.”
He shoots me a satisfied smile. “You are about to love both me and my little friend here,” he says, shaking his phone at me. “I just received an invitation to the Dropbox holding the entire pitch Lassiter and Sons gave today.”
I freeze and blink a few times while I let that sink in. Lassiter and Sons is our main competition on this bid, and, until this moment, they’ve had the upper hand (since WL Brown Senior is godfather to Lassiter Junior’s eldest boy). It’s like someone handing you the answer key the night before your calculus exam at university. “How exactly did you manage that?”
“One of the draftsmen over there has a bit of a crush on yours truly,” he says with a shrug. “And to be honest, in this case, taking one for the team wouldn't exactly be a burden, if you catch my drift.”
The few female employees at the table giggle. Women tend to want Byron to apply for the position of gay best friend—believing he’ll be just the thing to boost their flailing self-esteem and help them unlock the code to finding the perfect man.
“Wow, I can't believe someone sent that to you,” my most junior of the junior architects, Jack Layton, says, scooting his chair closer to Byron’s. “Let's see what they've got.”
“Yes, let’s,” Byron says with a satisfied grin. If there's one thing Byron loves, it's being the center of attention, and with this little bombshell, he has most certainly captured the imaginations of a dozen people who, only moments ago, looked too exhausted to breathe.
Cindy Pruitt, one of our project managers, speaks up from the far side of the table. “Wait. We’re not going to look at it, are we? That’s got to be some violation of some sort, right?”
Text Me On Tuesday: All is Fair in Love and Texting ... (An Accidentally in Love Story Book 1) Page 1