Chapter One
More of April's Kiss in the Moonlight
Chapter Two
She slept until Sunny pulled up in front of a large Victorian house where Sunny’s husband, Mike, was waiting to help her out of the car. When the car stopped, April woke up and smiled weakly at Sunny and Mike. She checked her wrist. The shimmering, glittery narrow band was still there. The band-turned-bracelet was made from the collar of her beloved cat, Sasha. When the cat died at fifteen, five years earlier, her mother fashioned a bracelet out of the collar for April who rarely took it off.
Mike picked up her suitcase and hauled it into the guest room on the first floor. April, grimacing n pain, slid out of the car with Sunny’s help.
“I have a prescription for pain meds I’ll get filled for you. In the meantime, your doctor gave me some medication for you. Let’s get inside and I’ll give it to you.”
April climbed the stairs slowly.
“Would it help if I carried you?” Mike asked.
He went over and picked her up but put her down quickly when she screamed in pain. Taking the stairs slowly, April was able to make it into the kitchen. She smelled a fragrant pot of fresh coffee. Sunny made lunch. They all sat down to eat. April’s face was banged up with a black eye, cuts and bruises on her face, shoulders and chest, one wrist was in a small cast. She suffered a concussion, too.
“What happened to you?” Mike asked, taking a swig of his coffee.
“An explosion…I was too close,” she said quietly.
Sunny handed her two pills and pushed a glass of water over to her.
“Your mom was my mentor when I was studying art at Kensington State, quite a while ago,” Sunny said.
“She called you?”
“The hospital called her and I am much closer, so she called me. We’re happy to have you here with us, April…wish it was under different circumstances,” Sunny said, taking the young woman’s hand.
Her finger came up against a ring on April’s finger. She glanced at it.
“You were engaged?”
Tears clouded April’s eyes as she nodded.
“He asked me to marry him about a week before the explosion,” April explained.
“Your mom didn’t tell me you lost your fiancé.”
“She doesn’t know.”
“You didn’t tell her you were engaged?”
“They wouldn’t have liked Rusty…now it doesn’t matter,” She said, two tears slipping down her cheek.
Sunny was overwhelmed with emotion and gave April a gentle hug.
“Stay with us as long as you need to, April,” Mike said.
“Thank you. I don’t know what I would have done without you two,” she said.
April spent most of the next week sleeping. When she was awake she was weepy, thinking about Rusty and her life, writing her thoughts and feelings in her diary. While she was in bed, Missy, Mike’s black lab mix lay down on the floor next to her bed and Trixie, Sunny’s pug climbed into bed with her, curling up next to the injured woman’s legs. Missy licked the tears off her face. Crying made her ribs hurt, so she tried hard to control her emotions, with help from the dogs who often were silly enough to make her laugh, which caused equal pain.
****
Miles away, in Allentown, Juan sat in a booth in Googie’s Diner facing his friend.
“Says here …our guy, Rusty, was killed when his car exploded.”
“Yeah? Rusty’s dead?”
“That’s what it says.”
“So where’s the money?
“Good question, Caleb.”
****
By the middle of the second week, she was feeling stronger and the bruises started to fade. Saturday morning she got under a hot shower which made her aching body feel better. She could hear the sounds of construction coming from the room across from hers. Mike and Sunny were turning it into a nursery because they were planning to have a child.
April dried long lustrous dark brown hair, which fell to her shoulders in loose curls framing her bruised oval face perfectly. Her eyes, so dark they were almost black, looked troubled. Her black eye was turning yellow and the bruise on her delicate chin matched it.
She wrapped a towel around her body and tucked the corner in between her breasts, picked up her hair dryer and opened the bathroom door. She walked into the living room and ran smack dab into Gavin Dailey who was coming around the corner. She bumped into him and grabbed her towel to secure it. He steadied her with his big hands on her elbows as his gaze met hers. They stopped and stared. April felt a sizzle, like an electric current rise up her arms and shoulders from the touch of his hands.
Read "Sunny Days, Moonlit Nights" before the sequel comes out. Brand new 4.5 star review just posted. Read it here: review
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2 comments:
another great excerpt! *hangs head* I still have this in my tbr pile! I've got to get to this soon, Jean!
Thanks, Kellie! I'm confident you will get to it before this one comes out. Thanks for visiting.
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