by Joy Penny
“It’s Mom,” I say, shoving the phone back into the purse. I grab Pride and Prejudice and shove that inside, too, tea stains or no.
“Let me guess,” says Owen. “She sent you to pick me up so she can make a ‘Welcome home, June’ dinner. And she timed it so we’d start eating about one second after my practice ended.”
“Pretty much.” I grimace and turn my head just slightly to give Sinjin a smile. “We should get going.”
“Sure.” Sinjin takes the hint and nods, sliding out the door. “Mamma probably has her own ‘Welcome home, twins, make your own dinner’ planned.” I pinch my lips picturing Margot and Deana coming home to an empty house this afternoon. A gloriously relaxing empty house. Sinjin does this informal salute thing, like he’s saying ‘hats off to you.’ “See ya!”
I grunt something back. Maybe it’s the “see ya” I meant to say. Maybe it’s some other language. My hands are kind of shaking on the steering wheel.
Owen shuts the door. “Well, are you going to start the car or should I drive?”
“Ha,” I say, snapping out of it. I toss my purse back on the seat so recently vacated by the walking reminder of a simpler life, a life where I could have a little crush without feeling like some perv and without worrying I’m wasting my time even expending brain cells on anything but the future and work and research. I shake my head and start the engine, looking behind me to make sure there’s no one I’m about to hit with my vehicle. “Mom told me you’re not driving until you’re forty-three.”
Owen crosses his arms and leans back into the seat, squishing his damp blond curls against the headrest. “Mom’s just being anal.” He shrugs, closing his eyes. “Show me a junior in high school who hasn’t snuck out in the middle of the night with his parents’ car and a learner’s permit, and I’ll show you this little horned horse I’ve been keeping under my bed called a unicorn.” He snorts. “That is, an actual human junior. Not Spoon from two years ago, who wouldn’t come up for air from a book.”
Is it too late to get back on the train to Chicago? I’m sensing I won’t be able to make it through the summer without ‘accidentally’ hitting my brother with a vehicle.
Kiss. Marry. Kill. Nineteen-year-old June Eyermann has always known exactly which of her favorite Byronic heroes goes where. She’d kiss moody and possessive Rochester from Jane Eyre and marry prideful but repentant Darcy from Pride and Prejudice, leaving obsessive and spiteful Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights to be chucked off a cliff—but no. She couldn’t leave any of her heroes behind. She lives for her favorite fictional worlds.
But June is about to get a serious wake up call when she returns home for the summer after her college freshman year. Stuck somewhere between feeling like a kid again under her parents’ roof and being forced to start acting like an adult with worries about her future career, June looks at the library volunteer position offered to her as a way to keep her sanity for the next few months before she can go back to school.
What June doesn’t expect to find at the library is her favorite romantic heroes brought to life—all in the same man. Obstinate, prideful and even a bit rude, Everett Rockford shouldn’t exactly be “dating material,” even if June’s heart rate accelerates whenever she’s near him. But after discovering his enigmatic past and witnessing a few fiery moments of tenderness, June can’t help but see Rochester, Darcy and even Heathcliff in Everett. If she’s going to make it through the summer without becoming a tragic heroine in her own story, she has to separate the man from the ideals of fiction in her head. Because if there’s one thing she knows about Byronic love stories, it’s that they don’t always end happily ever after.
Read A Love for the Pages, a NA contemporary sweet romance, by Joy Penny (an Amy McNulty pen name) today! Purchase on Kindle or read for free via Kindle Unlimited. Buy the paperback or audiobook and add it to your Goodreads to-read list today!