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Poetry Man
Melanie Schuster
Romantic days. Passionate nights. After trying everything from blind dates to online matchmaking to speed dating, Alexis Sharp has given up finding Mr. Right. Or even Mr. Almost Right. Until the stormy night when the South Carolina spa owner gets a flat…and a hunky stranger comes to her rescue. Sexy, sensitive, super-successful Chicago chef Jared Van Buren is everything Alexis could want in a man.There’s only one thing standing in the way of their budding romance: Jared isn’t black. To her surprise, Alexis discovers she and Jared aren’t as different as she thinks. As desire melts their barriers, Jared vows to prove to Alexis that they belong together.What will it take when it comes to affairs of the heart, to convince the woman who fills his life with passionate poetry that love is color-blind?
Romantic days. Passionate nights.
After trying everything from blind dates to online matchmaking to speed dating, Alexis Sharp has given up finding Mr. Right. Or even Mr. Almost Right. Until the stormy night when the South Carolina spa owner gets a flat…and a hunky stranger comes to her rescue.
Sexy, sensitive, supersuccessful Chicago chef Jared VanBuren is everything Alexis could want in a man. There’s only one thing standing in the way of their budding romance—Jared isn’t black.
To her surprise, Alexis discovers she and Jared aren’t as different as she thinks. As desire melts their barriers, Jared vows to prove to Alexis that they belong together. When it comes to affairs of the heart, what will it take to convince the woman who fills his life with passionate poetry that love is color-blind?
He looked at her in a way she didn’t recognize; she had nothing with which to compare it. Finally he spoke, and she recognized his words immediately.
Jared was reciting a poem by Langston Hughes, a poem called “When Sue Wears Red,” and he did it perfectly. He looked at her with all the reverence the great poet had intended, walking around her and taking in every detail of her essence; it was way beyond just her appearance, and she knew it. How he knew a poem by Langston Hughes she didn’t know, but there was something else she knew for sure. When Jared finished the poem their fingers slid together and neither of them said anything for a moment until Alexis broke the silence.
“We’re not going out, are we?”
Jared had pulled her into his arms and was holding her close when he answered. “Probably not.”
She melted against him, her arms going around him trustingly as she tilted her head back to receive his kiss. “What do you want to do?”
He took his time answering because he was engrossed in the feel of her taut, sexy body against his own. “Everything.”
MELANIE SCHUSTER
started reading when she was four and believes that’s why she’s a writer today. She was always fascinated with books and loved telling stories. From the time she was very small she wanted to be a writer. She fell in love with romances when she began reading the ones her mother would bring home. She would go to any store that sold paperbacks and load up! When she had a spare moment she was reading. Schuster loves romance because it’s always so hopeful. Despite the harsh realities of life, romance always brings to mind the wonderful, exciting adventure of falling in love and meeting your soul mate. She believes in love and romance with all her heart, and she finds fulfillment in writing stories about compelling couples who find true, lasting love in the face of all the obstacles out there. She hopes all her readers find their true love. If they’ve already been lucky enough to find love, she hopes that they never forget what it felt like to fall in love.
Poetry Man
Melanie Schuster
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Dear Reader,
Thanks for coming along on another installment of Friends & Lovers. If you started with Working Man, then you know how the series got started with Nick Hunter and Dakota Phillips. It was followed by Model Perfect Passion (Billie Phillips and Jason Wainwright), A Case for Romance (Ayanna Walker and Johnny Phillips) and Chemistry of Desire (Emily Porter and Todd Wainwright). Now in Poetry Man, we have Emily’s ride-or-die girlfriend Alexis Sharp’s story of finding love with Jared VanBuren, finding true love in the most unlikely way.
Next March you’ll find out all about Emily and Alexis’s BFF, Dr. Sherri Stratton. As you saw in Poetry Man, Sherri has sworn off men until her precocious little girl, Sydney, is at least fifteen. But there are two people who have other ideas about the situation. One is Sydney, who’s decided that her mommy needs a husband. And the other person is Lucas VanBuren, Jared’s handsome younger brother, who agrees with Sydney that he’d make a perfect mate for Sherri. When these two put their heads and hearts together, Sherri won’t stand a chance.
And yes, Alexis’s sisters will find love in the near future because with these friends, love is never far away!
By the way, The Nero Wolfe Cookbook mentioned in my book is real; I’m a huge fan of the series by the esteemed Mr. Rex Stout and I use the cookbook regularly.
Stay blessed,
Melanie
melanieschuster@sbcglobal.net
I Chronicles 4:10
To all the DIVAS who have come before me and on whose shoulders I stand; all the magnificent and generous writers who have encouraged me along the way and made me believe that I could do it, too.
A special thanks to Evette Porter, Gwen Osborne,
Sha-Shana Crichton and as always to Jamil, who
still makes me laugh. And a very special thanks to
Pam Beasley, who’s my own ride-or-die BFF.
Everybody should be blessed with a friend like Pam.
To all my faithful readers
who keep their love on top for me!
I love and appreciate you all.
And a special dedication to my brother Dwight Woods.
Thanks for being my rock and for giving me
the most beautiful nieces in the world.
Stay blessed!
Contents
Prologue (#u9ee1838f-32c4-5a85-a5a3-f2679ac83df5)
Chapter 1 (#u11506992-535d-5545-8d73-ee5a32f85e2a)
Chapter 2 (#u7471c6f5-1e48-5471-904e-a0af44553b0b)
Chapter 3 (#u94ea09a7-a6a8-5046-ab07-360e5f37a216)
Chapter 4 (#u38d83da0-174e-5637-a572-120bc94b1564)
Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue
Alexis Sharp took a deep breath before plunging into the empty pool at her health club. Alexis preferred to get her daily swim in early, before she went to work. She’d often wished she had a pool at one of her two beauty spas, but reality would kick in and she knew it was too expensive to install and not really what her customer base wanted. Her clients wanted top-notch hair care, facials, massages, mani-pedis and the like. What they didn’t want was to get their expensive hairdos wet. So, she made do with a daily swim that was as necessary to her as breathing.
The cool water stimulated her and gave her a chance to think. She was so busy running the spas, her volunteer work teaching water aerobics and being a swim instructor on the weekend that she often felt as if she was treading water when she was on dry land. She used her schedule as the reason why she didn’t date; she was just too busy. However, she and her closest friends knew that wasn’t the real reason she didn’t make room for social interaction in her life. She’d had a normal dating life at one time. She’d been engaged, in fact; right up until the night she’d found her fiancé in bed with his ex-girlfriend. That had put a crimp in her feelings about men for quite a while. Plus the tales of romantic woe she’d heard from the women of her family since she was a small child. Her mother insisted that all the women of their family were doomed to never have a successful relationship with a man. If it was just her mother talking, Alexis could have overlooked it, but her grandmother, her aunts, cousins and her sisters all agreed that there was no point in any women in the family woman trying to fall in love because they had a love curse on them. It was all nonsense, of course, but when Alexis was adding up the reasons that men were off-limits in her current life, she’d think about her mother’s pontificating with a grim smile.
Alexis swam vigorously for a while, enjoying the feeling of the water against her body. After doing about twenty laps, she turned over and floated on her back. She’d been swimming since she was about three years old and her enjoyment of it never flagged. Her love of the water was one of the reasons she kept her hair cut so short. And the fact that it suited her face so well. Glancing at the big clock on the wall, she decided she could stay in five more minutes. She had taken the day off because she was having her two BFFs over for lunch today and she wanted to make sure everything was ready. Not just the food, she wanted to get herself emotionally ready, too, because she knew that her friend Emily was going to interrogate her about her social life, rather her lack thereof.
After her dear friend Emily had surprised everyone by getting married out of the blue, Alexis had done an abrupt about-face and decided that she was going to find her own Mr. Right. She’d had enough of being alone and if Emily could find a tall, handsome doctor and start a new life, so could she. After her firm declaration of her intention to meet her perfect mate, Emily was going to want to know about her progress and the fact was there wasn’t any. It was both embarrassing and frustrating for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was that she was tired of being celibate.
There were times that her body drove her crazy with longing for a lover. Alexis had to admit there were times she wanted Mr. Right Now; she couldn’t have cared less about Mr. Right. Alexis was a perfectly normal woman with perfectly normal desires. She couldn’t sublimate her desires in her work forever; all the spa business in the world couldn’t prevent her from wanting all the things that any woman wanted. Things like an understanding man, a good lover and plenty of really good sex. If she didn’t get some soon her sheets might burst into flames from all the hot dreams she’d been having.
She stopped her lazy floating and turned over and started stroking again, swimming ten more laps before getting out of the pool. She was still alone because most people didn’t start coming into the gym until later in the morning. Especially on a morning like this one, with pouring rain and the occasional clap of thunder. Thunderstorms were typical in Columbia, South Carolina, especially in the summer, but they didn’t bother her at all. Alexis had always been fond of rain; she was a true water baby. She was patting off her face with her towel as she walked to the women’s locker rooms. She’d almost reached the door when a really loud crackling arose, followed by a clap of thunder that sounded like an explosion. The room went black and Alexis had to stifle a scream as she collided with a wet man who was coming out of the adjacent men’s locker rooms.
He was very tall, as her nose reached the middle of his chest. His arms went around her and hers went around him in an automatic response. His skin was damp from the shower all members had to take before getting in the pool, but he didn’t feel clammy. Instead, he felt wonderfully warm and he smelled terrific.
“Are you okay?”
Alexis had to clear her throat before answering, because his deep voice did something to her, something really nice.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Thanks for asking.”
The lights flickered and it looked as if they were coming back on. Alexis seized the moment to back out of the tempting arms of the stranger and scoot into the locker room. She fumbled the handle on the women’s side just as the lights began working again. She toweled off most of the water and got dressed in record time without stopping for a shower. She was normally cool and in control, but the feel of the tall man’s body on hers had lit a fire in her. She wouldn’t have been able to recognize him if she met him on the street because she hadn’t gotten a look at him, thanks to her running off like a scared rabbit. But the brief encounter reminded her of just why she’d decided to get back in the dating game. She couldn’t ignore her needs, wants and desires anymore. Maybe it was time she got back in the dating game and play until she won. Just once. If she played it right, one time was all she’d need.
Chapter 1
“So exactly when are you going to start dating, Alexis? I thought you had a big change of heart when I got married.” Emily Wainwright, recently wed and soon to be a mother, accompanied her words with a sweet, teasing smile that Alexis would tolerate only from an old friend. Emily had been Alexis’s bestie since elementary school, along with their other BFF, Sherri Stratton. The three of them were sitting around the table in Alexis’s cute kitchen. Like the rest of the house, it was beautifully decorated; Alexis had really good taste. They were enjoying the lunch that Alexis had prepared when Emily had brought up what was once a sensitive subject. Sherri braced herself for a dose of Alexis’s wrath, but it didn’t come. Instead, Alexis laughed.
“I admit that I’ve been known to sidestep the dating scene, but I’ve actually been trying to do a little more socializing,” she admitted. “And it’s not the easiest thing in the world. Girl, dating is hard,” she said emphatically. “Have some more salad?”
Emily was easily distracted by Alexis’s offer of more crab salad and homemade rolls. Alexis heaped another helping of the delicious salad onto Emily’s plate, while Sherri gave her another roll and refilled her lemonade. They loved spoiling Emily anytime, but especially now during her pregnancy. Since she’d eloped over Thanksgiving weekend and then moved to Chicago, they didn’t have too many chances to dote on their girl.
“I’m probably eating too much, but this tastes so wonderful,” Emily said happily.
“You can have anything you want, now that you’re eating for two,” Sherri assured her. Sherri was a doctor and spoke with authority on the subject. “You should gain about thirty-five pounds before delivery and you’re nowhere near that yet. You’ve been taking very good care of yourself.”
“I’m eating well and I’m still exercising and Todd keeps a close eye on me, whether I want him to or not.” Emily sighed. Her new husband was a doctor, too, and his only desire in life was to keep her safe and happy. “And I’m actually eating for three,” Emily said with a smile. “We just found out that we’re having twins!”
After the exclamations of joy and excitement, Emily went right back to her initial topic of discussion. She was a biochemist by profession and nothing could deter her once she had marked out a path of inquiry on any subject. “Alexis, you vowed on New Year’s Day that you were going to have a love life this year. You wanted the spare keys to the house on Hilton Head because you were going to meet the man of your dreams, kidnap him and spend next New Year’s Eve having a passion-filled tryst. It’s June. Halfway there. So what happened to those plans, Lex?”
Alexis curled her dainty upper lip in a gesture that was more snarl than smile. “Is it nice to rub people’s noses in their fantasies? No, it’s not. It’s very mean, as a matter of fact.” She rose gracefully from her chair and went to the refrigerator to refill the glass pitcher of lemonade. She always made the old-fashioned kind from scratch with fresh lemons and spring water. Hopefully being a good hostess would make her friend drop the subject. But her maneuver didn’t work.
Emily patted the corners of her mouth with her linen napkin and held out her glass for more when Alexis came back to the table. “It didn’t sound like a fantasy to me, Lex. It sounded like a declaration, a statement of intent. Your primary goal was to meet a suitable mate and develop a relationship.”
Alexis didn’t have a chance to refute Emily’s remark before Sherri chimed in. “Not just a relationship, a marriage. I was there and I heard every word. And trust me, she’s not doing anything that could possibly plant her feet on a trip down the aisle.”
She and Emily laughed heartily, but Alexis didn’t join in. She uncrossed her arms, which had been locked across her chest like an extra-tight sports bra. “It’s not that funny, you two. I’ve dated enough lately to realize that the single pool is shrinking and stagnant and the likelihood of finding a mate is small. Infinitesimal, actually. So I’ve decided that I’m not looking anymore. I’m going to let him search for me,” she said with a touch of defiance.
Sherri looked surprised and Emily looked thoughtful after Alexis made her announcement. She finished off her roll and took a sip of lemonade before speaking, but what she said let Alexis know that she was on her side.
“I actually think that’s a good idea, Lexie. When you go out looking for something you almost never find it. I wasn’t looking when I got together with Todd. He just kinda dropped into my lap. If the things you’ve been doing haven’t been working, it’s time to sit back and see what happens,” she said. “What exactly have you been doing, by the way?”
Alexis gave her a grim smile that was less from humor than frustration. “I’ve been going out on some really bad dates. Really, really bad,” she emphasized.
Emily’s eyes widened. “Bad dates? How many and how bad? And what’s for dessert? Wait a minute, don’t tell me yet. I have to pee again.” She pushed away her chair from the table and hurried to the bathroom.
Alexis had to smile as she watched her scurry off. It was hard to believe that less than a year ago Emily was a grouchy, rumpled academic with no interest in men whatsoever. After a surprise encounter with Todd Wainwright at her family’s vacation home on Hilton Head Island, she and Todd fell head over heels in love. Now Emily was a newlywed with two babies on the way. She looked like a new person with her fabulous haircut, courtesy of Alexis, and a new wardrobe Sherri helped her pick out. Her beautiful caramel skin glowed with happiness and her demeanor was now anything but glum. She was cheerful and more outgoing than she’d ever been before. And it was all because she’d met and married her soul mate. Love could work miracles, if Emily was an example.
“What’s for dessert? And what’s up with the bad dates?” Emily was back, seeking truth and sweets.
“I have some homemade lemon bars if you refrain from asking questions.” Alexis was an excellent cook and her lemon bars were better than any in the whole world. Emily was clearly torn for a moment, but she decided to play the mommy-to-be card.
“Sherri says I can have anything I want. And since your godsons or goddaughters are incubating inside me as we speak, I can’t be denied,” she said smugly. “So you can’t make me choose between dessert and dish. Give it up or I’ll whine,” she warned.
“Oh, sit down. I’ll tell you whatever you want, just don’t make that horrible sound. You know I can’t stand that,” Alexis said grumpily.
“Good. I want two,” Emily said, holding up as many fingers. When the pair of extra-big bars was set before her on beautiful pale green pottery, she grinned and took a huge bite. “So good! Now these bad dates— How bad could they have been?”
This time, Sherri and Alexis locked gazes and burst out laughing. When they could talk again, Sherri wiped her eyes with her napkin.
“They weren’t just bad, they were atrocious,” Sherri said. “If I hadn’t been an eyewitness to a couple of these so-called dates I would swear she’d been exaggerating, but I was there and I saw it all. It’s just ridiculous what passes for dating these days.”
