White Chocolate Cherry: A Red Hot and BOOM! Story

by Graylin Rane

  White Chocolate Cherry: A Candy Man Delivery Story

  Red Hot and BOOM! Series

  By

  Graylin Rane

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

  White Chocolate Cherry: A Red Hot and BOOM! Story

  A Candy Man Delivery Story

  Copyright 2014 by Graylin Rane

  ISBN: 978-0-9899610-4-2

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work, in whole or in part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Graylin Rane at Smashwords

  Chapter One

  “Hi, my name is Julia. I’m here to interview you.”

  Staring at my reflection in the mirror while I practiced made me feel ridiculous. I don’t know who came up with that idea in speech class, but it should be struck from professors’ memories. Going back to work as a field reporter may have been a bad decision. Straightening my shoulder-length light brown hair, I checked my make up again. Amber eyes surrounded by laugh lines reflected my tired expression. I was going to need under eye concealer for the upcoming Fourth of July family gathering.

  “Lifeguards aren’t as tall as football players, Julia.” My best friend, Amy, snickered behind me. “You might find one you can look in the eyes.”

  I’d been out of the game for a while, so to speak. A former news anchor at the local NBC station, I left to raise four sons and two stepdaughters with an amazing man. Jorge had been gone for three years. My beloved left a hole no one could fill. Twenty-five years of bliss left me grateful, fifty, and single.

  My first day back at work, and I was more nervous than thirty years ago. Reporting from the center of hurricanes and flooding in downtown Miami, I built a reputation as a solid reporter who didn’t flinch. The only time I refused to cover a disaster was during pregnancy. I’d risk my own life without a second thought, but not my children’s. They’ve been my greatest accomplishment and comfort.

  All four boys inherited aspects of my beloved Jorge, the chef who made me a spectacular, gravity-defying cupcake to celebrate every anniversary. Our youngest, Carlos, inherited his father’s love for food, even taking over the family restaurant. The other boys had Jorge’s passion for life and helping people.

  “I haven’t had sex in three years, Amy. I’m afraid my lady parts will jump out of my suit and assault him.”

  Three years since I’d felt the touch of a man. Five years since Jorge was healthy enough to leave me twitching. I hid the guilt I felt at even thinking about another man. Cancer stole moments long before it took lives.

  The kids were grown now, making families of their own, scattered around the world. We raised travelers. Our daughters, with their parents’ Spanish looks, melted into the population of Madrid, heart and soul. Their mother’s family lived nearby, snapping pictures of the grandchildren, always including me. Our boys stayed in the area. Two were getting their degrees at the University of Miami, one a surgeon and the other a gynecologist. Julio was in his second year surgical residency at Broward health. His OCD got put to great use in surgery where he wouldn’t leave anything undone. Pedro, well, we always knew he wanted to spend his life in a woman’s crotch.

  “It’s strange to hear you talking about assaulting a hot man in this room.” Amy looked afraid, like Jorge’s ghost would show up in our bedroom and scold me for talking about another man.

  I forced a laugh. “Jorge was clear, Amy. I was supposed to get busy with someone else right away. I didn’t. He’s not going to show up pissed that I’m talking about banging a kid. He’d be ticked off it took me this long.” My beloved treasured our passion. When the kids got old enough to understand the noises coming from our bedroom, they begged their father to soundproof it. He did.

  “Well, then. Bang a lifeguard,” Amy joked, still shifting her gaze around the room.

  “Okay, you superstitious twit. Let’s roll.” I took one last look at the deep blue pantsuit Jorge bought me, paired with a white, cap-sleeved t-shirt.

  Amy had her long blonde hair up in a sloppy bun, blue jeans with frayed ends, flip flops, and the kind of tan people in colder climates paid for. My five foot six inch frame felt petite next to her almost six foot stature. Her husband, a local baseball player, picked her out of a spring break bikini contest. She was my cameraperson. We met when I started at the station right out of college.

  She was tall enough to stand in pounding surf and flooded streets with me while carrying a camera. There’d been more than one occasion when she’d pulled me out after I fell over, and then graciously deleted that section before transmitting back to the station. I didn’t want to be on the blooper reels.

  “Move it, Julia. We have television to make.” She smirked as I walked past her.

  “Almost thirty years, you still say that every time?” We worked together up until I left when the boys were teenagers.

  “Only for you. I don’t talk to the other reporters much. They’re young, nervous, and any comment from me sends them into a tizzy.”

  She was the best person to train new talent. Calm, laid back, no stress, even when standing with a camera in waist deep water during a hurricane. She was my safe place for the past few years.

  “I’m sure they’re grateful.” Picking up my pace in front of her, my ankle boots clicked across the tile floor.

  She laughed. “There are a couple who won’t make it through hurricane season. I’ll have to rope them to the van.”

  I could see that. The station put us on the air nonstop as soon as there was a hurricane warning and kept us there until it was over. That’s when I met Jorge. Standing in front of his restaurant on the Hollywood boardwalk at 3 a.m. He came by to check on his place right as a wave pushed me over. He pulled me up and asked me out. That was it. I was sure I’d never look at another man with that level of desire again. So far, I’d been right.

  I reached for the door handle as a loud knock startled us. “What the hell?”

  “It sounds like Bigfoot has come to carry you away,” Amy joked behind me.

  “Bigfoot? In Fort Lauderdale?” I pulled the door open slowly.

  She poked my shoulder. “He got tired of hairy women?”

  “He left a note.” There was a fancy envelope tucked into the doorknocker.

  Amy walked around me to check the driveway. “Dear Julia, run away with me. I’ll let you shave my back.”

  “Shut up. I’d need a lawn mower.” My hands shook as I opened the letter. The last person to handwrite a note to me was Jorge. Who could be writing me now?

  Written in beautiful longhand, it was from Viviana, the owner of the Candy Man Delivery Service. My breath caught. I’d been chosen. Backing up a few steps, I pulled the door closed, barely aware of Amy’s protests.

  “Dear Julia, your request was received. Eros has picked you to receive a chocolate carved man. He has already chosen the flavor. I’ve begun s
culpting him today. He will be delivered in two days. Please think carefully about what you want in your dream man, as a god with those qualities will inhabit him. Yours, Viviana.”

  “Oh shit. I didn’t do this. I didn’t ask for this. I want a man to play with and send on his way. I don’t want another passionate love. I can’t take another loss.” The words tumbled from me.

  Amy peered around the door. “I put your name in there.”

  Now I was pissed. “Why would you do that? I had Jorge. My forever is over.”

  She rolled her eyes at me. “No, it isn’t. That’s why I did it. He wouldn’t want you alone. He wanted you to start dating days before he passed.”

  “He was teasing, Amy.” I’d cried alone in the pool for hours after he said it.

  “No, my love. He wasn’t.” Pulling me into her arms, she held tight, expecting me, I’m sure, to collapse.

  The tears fell down my face, leaving marks on the note. How could I even consider accepting? Betraying Jorge in his home? Oh shit. I was in trouble.

  Amy lifted my chin until our eyes met. “This was a home built from love. It aches now. Jorge wouldn’t want that for you.”

  She knew me too well. “Dammit, I’m mad at you.”

  “I love you, too. Now move your ass before you ruin your makeup. The beach breeze is harsh enough.”

  I had to go to work when all I wanted was to crawl into my bed—our bed—and remember him. I wasn’t ready. I couldn’t welcome another man into our home this week.

  Knowing Amy would drag me if she had to, I stumbled through the door as she held it open, handing her the keys. My vision was too blurry to find the keyhole.

  The interview went well and too soon, I found myself at home eating a microwave dinner on the pool deck. I called Maribel. The oldest of our children, she was twelve when Jorge and I met. At the time, our ten-year age difference seemed huge.

  “Hi, Mom.” Her voice soothed me. “What’s up?”

  “I have to talk to you.” I couldn’t keep the pain from my voice.

  “What’s wrong?” She was a wonderful daughter.

  I explained what Amy had done, that I’d been chosen. “I don’t know if I can betray your father.”

  “You open your front door, you let that statue inside, and you enjoy every moment of passion. My father adored your spirit. It was your unbridled joy, with no filter, that put a smile on his face, one I’d never seen before you came into his life. He built that house for you.” Irritation laced her voice.

  I wondered if Amy had colluded with my children about this. After all, the reason I refused to sign up was the difficulty in explaining an animated chocolate statue living with their mother.

  I started to protest. She heard me take a breath.

  “No, you don’t interrupt me. My dad built that home out of love for you. If you have any doubts, call Carlos. Go to the restaurant for dinner and talk to him. I want love for you, Mom. We all do.” Her voice gave away the worry she held for me.

  They were all scared I would die of a broken heart. She’d said it at the funeral service. I began to cry. “I’m afraid.”

  She laughed. “That’s not the mother who raised me.”

  “I’m not that woman anymore.” Strength left me as life left Jorge. It hadn’t returned.

  “Yes, you are. You have time to find her again. That woman wouldn’t mope,” she admonished me.

  The words were true. “I’ll do my best.”

  “Call Carlos.”

  “Okay, I love you.” She made me a better person.

  “I love you, too.”

  I heard the click absently as I stared at the phone. My youngest child was the image of his father. He’d gone to culinary school to become a chef while still a teenager. He took over the restaurant his father built. I didn’t need to talk to him to hear his reply. “Do it, Mom.”

  Taking a deep breath, I put the phone down. The sun setting behind me colored the sparse clouds orange against the blue sky. The leaves of the palm trees rattled around in the breeze. I never told the children what I did with Jorge’s urn. They each had a small one of their own. Looking to the corner of the garden, I saw the marker I left. Right where he grew his favorite herbs, there was a blue spatula, his favorite utensil in his favorite color.

  “Jorge. I’m scared. I know you’d want me to do this. If the statue had shown up before you passed....” I laughed. “You would have asked to watch so you could give him directions on what works best.”

  Tears soaked my cheeks, dropping onto my t-shirt. “I loved you more than I thought I could. I can still hear your laughter in the house. Turning to see you, I remember you’re gone and ache again.”

  Sitting quietly, I let my mind clear using a technique Amy taught me from her time as a yoga instructor. A peace came over me. Not quite an excitement for the change coming, but the loss of resistance. The time had come to take a chance again. Maribel knew me more as a friend than a mother. Yet, she was okay with this. The other kids would listen to her if they had doubts. I needed to push aside my wife and mother instincts and decide what I wanted as a widowed woman.

  Stripping my clothes off, I stepped into the pool. Cool water washed over me as I swam back and forth. Swimming calmed my mind the way yoga worked for Amy. Lap after lap, I ran through different scenarios in my mind. Rejecting the statue; accepting the statue; turning them away only to run after them; waking the god inside and regretting it.

  The one thought going through my mind each time was, give it a chance. Him, give him a chance. Stepping out of the pool, gathering my clothes, it hit me. I needed to take a chance on me. That’s what Maribel was talking about. I take chances, defy fate, and step into the dark without looking. That’s the person I lost when Jorge died. The part of me I stored away in a safe place.

  “I’m going to do it.” I announced to the empty house.

  “Good.” Amy’s voice startled me. “Maribel called; she said you sounded awful.” She came in from the yard, her key to the back gate dangling in her hand.

  “That was hours ago.”

  Amy scoffed. “Like I answer my phone.”

  “True. The only time you picked it up was when I was pregnant.” She and her husband were godparents to our boys.

  “You’re too small to have such big babies. I thought we were going to have a scene from Alien by the third month.” She never mentioned my nudity.

  “With which kid?”

  She popped a cookie from my last batch in her mouth. “All of them.” She gave me one.

  “I did a good job with these.” I loved to bake. It was the only cooking I could do. Jorge and Carlos cooked all of the meals here.

  “Chocolate chip with caramel swirls, my favorite.” She winked at me. “You look well. Feeling better?”

  “I deserve a chance.” My tone thrummed quiet as to not awaken the thundering doubts.

  “That’s my girl.” She kissed the top of my head. “Do you want me here when they deliver him?”

  I hadn’t thought about that. “I don’t think so. But stay by your phone.”

  “I’ll change your ring tone back to the pregnancy one.”

  “Thanks, Amy.”

  “Love is worth every chance you give it,” she threw over her shoulder as she left.

  “Yes, it is.”

  I slept naked that night. Rising to a blinding sunrise, I walked to the pool, slathered on sunscreen, and lay quietly in the morning light.

  Chapter Two

  Seated in the news director’s office, I began to fidget. He summoned me from my morning respite saying, “We need to talk.” In my life, that never ended well. My level of distraction while interviewing lifeguards may have tipped him off something was wrong.

  That was yesterday. Today, he seemed surprised by my appearance. I’d put on a full face of makeup, pulled my hair up, leaving a couple of ringlets by my ears. I knew the sun from last night and this morning gave my skin a glow.

  “It’s like being in the pr
incipal’s office.” Amy dropped into the seat next to me.

  “I never did that.” My parents would’ve grounded me for a year.

  She looked comfortable. “I did. Often. It wasn’t my fault the teachers didn’t like my practical jokes.”

  Turning my head, I glared at her, a smile on my face. “You lubed the boys locker room bench.”

  The director walked in, staring at us. He looked awful. “There was a huge pile-up on 95. Lots of dead and wounded filling up the emergency rooms, and I need, no, I want, your face out there.” He waited.

  I hadn’t covered a story with death or illness in it for years. It was a prime assignment, an unspoken question hung in the air.

  “We’ll do it.” I stood up, realizing he’d teared up. “Who?” Someone in his life was in the wreckage.

  “My daughter is in there with my baby granddaughter. Find them if you can. I want to hear it from you.” I was the field reporter when he started as an anchor. He told me it was my voice he wanted to hear relate even the worst news with a hopeful twist. I knew I could do it again.

  Amy walked around his desk and bear-hugged him. He collapsed in tears. I waited for my knees to buckle. They didn’t. For the first time in years, I knew I was healed. “Amy, let the man go. We need to find his baby girl.”

  She folded him into his chair, closed the window blinds, shutting the door behind us. “If you go in there and disturb him, I’ll kick your ass,” she announced to the newsroom.

  They knew. Expressions around the room hovered between sadness and fear. The silent pain of unknowing filled the room. The air stood still, afraid to move.

  Outside, I climbed into the van as Amy ran an equipment check in the back. She slid into the driver’s seat. “You’re okay with this?”

  “Yes.” I was taking a newly healed wound into the chaos of death and pain. I’d damn well better be okay.