Happy Book Birthday to Me!

So excited that my orphaned EPIC finalist Symmetry has been reborn thanks to my new publisher The Wild Rose Press. It released to Amazon Kindle Select in March, and today marks its worldwide release! Here's the blurb and an excerpt.

Jessica Cassady is a copyeditor for a small newspaper in Georgia where her husband Lee is a sportswriter. When he attends a convention in New York, Jess is shocked when she calls his room in the middle of the night and a woman answers. Lee swears things aren't what they seem, but Jess isn't so sure and kicks him out. Things become even more complicated when a sweet man from her past named Noah Hamilton shows up and makes Lee even more determined to get Jess back. Should she forego the beefcake brigade and give the sensitive type a try like her cat and her best friend Deb want her to do, or should she give in to the addictive rush she's always felt whenever she's close to Lee? It's enough to make any girl pull out her hair!

Jess always woke a second before she could complete the castration. Curses, foiled again. She blinked at the red numbers projected onto her ceiling by the clock on her night stand—4:23 a.m. Plenty of time to go back to sleep and finish the job, but she knew it was useless. She’d only end up dreaming about giving birth to a canned ham or grocery shopping in her pajamas, and Lee’s manhood would escape the knife again.

She snuggled against the body pillow occupying his place beside her in bed and got an indignant rowl from the Siamese cat curled up there. Jess smiled at the thought of what Lee would say about letting Ming sleep with her and decided maybe she’d tell him he’d been replaced by his feline nemesis when she saw him at the meeting later that morning.

She fell asleep reminding herself of how much better off she was without her two-timing, cat-hating, conceited jerk of a husband, and she dreamed he made love to her on the conference table at work, castration the furthest thing from her mind.

God, she hated him.

Five hours later, she sat across from Lee in the conference room at the Espanola Times and tried to focus on Thad Crandall’s weekly lecture about deadlines. If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought Lee knew what she’d dreamed about him from the way he kept nudging her with his foot under the table and flashing that damn blond-Adonis smile at her.

She tried to suppress the dream images of his face over hers, but every time she looked at him, her mind became a private movie screen featuring the world premiere of Position: Impossible. Shackled as she was with a redhead’s proclivity for blushing, she knew he noticed her agitation and probably thought it was from simply being near him.

Don't you hate it when your heart and your head (and a few other body parts) are at war with each other? Hope you enjoyed the excerpt. You can read the rest for 50% off right now, so get your copy here!


~Stay true to yourself and your dreams will come true!

Follow me on Twitter: @JoyceScarbrough
Like my Facebook Fan Page here

Big Easy Blog Tour

Welcome to the Big Easy Blog Tour, where writers talk about their writing process and the projects they're working on right now. I was suckered into . . . er, I mean invited to join the tour by my friend and fellow Wild Rose Press author Gloria Davidson Marlow who writes wonderfully chilling romantic suspense books that will keep you up reading all night.

Okay, on to the questions we're all supposed to answer.

1. What am I working on?

In between promotional efforts for my women's fiction book Symmetry and my YA novel After Me that's coming out this summer, I'm redoing my first novel, True Blue Forever, as a trilogy that includes a prequel about the main characters when they were children. This means I'm in the equivalent of Writer Heaven. Not only do I get to revisit my four favorite characters, I get to take a trip back in time to the days of playing outside until the streetlights came on, pinky swears and lifelong friendships, first loves and first kisses, broken hearts and broken promises, and that moment when you meet the person you're going to spend the rest of your life with and can't tell anyone because you're both eleven years old.

2. How does my work differ from others of its genre?

Actually, fitting my books into any one genre has always been a problem for me. One reason is that I have a penchant for writing about young characters dealing with adult issues. And although all my books include a love story that's central to the plot, they also feature sub-plots and other relationship issues for the hero/heroine that keep the books from fitting neatly into the required structure for romance novels. This has caused me a few problems in the past when pitching them to publishers and also with reviewers who were expecting a category romance and didn't get it. That's regrettable, but that's me. I like multi-dimensional plots when I'm reading, so that's the only way I can write mine.

3. Why do I write what I do?

Two reasons: First, I write stories that entertain me and just hope others will enjoy them as well. I've been making up stories to entertain myself since I was four years old. Sometimes I couldn't wait until bedtime so I could lie in the dark and envision the stories in my head. It wasn't until many years later when I began plotting my first novel that I realized I'd been plotting books all my life. The only difference is that now I write them down. This is why I don't really understand it when writers say they're so sick of their own book by the time it's published that they never want to read it again. I never get tired of reading my own books because I wrote them to entertain myself in the first place.

Second, I follow that age-old advice for writers to "write what you know." I write about epic loves that were meant to be because that's the only kind I know. My husband is my hero, the love of my life, and my absolute favorite person in the world. My characters might all be fictional people, but the love between them is the real thing. And since everybody in my family is a wise-cracking comedian, my books always have plenty of humor in them too.

However, I guess I probably need to point out here that the psychotic killer and other general scumbags in my upcoming YA novel After Me do NOT come from my real life. Neither does the smartass dead girl. Well, the dead part.

4. How does my writing process work?

I always start with the characters. After I have a clear picture of my protagonist and the other main characters in my head and my Blue Spiral Notebook, I ask myself the "what ifs?" What if this happened to them? What if somebody was trying to do this to them? What if they had to do this and couldn't get out of it? Etcetera, etcetera. Then I write a narrative overview of all the major plot points, making sure I have a strong beginning, middle and ending. This ensures that I don't get halfway through a book and stop because I don't know how to end it.

However, the overview sometimes changes as the actual scenes are written, because the characters often decide they don't want to do what I had planned for them. Sometimes the bad guys steal my heart and become not-so-bad guys. Sometimes my heroine doesn't end up with the guy I thought she'd pick. And sometimes someone just has to die no matter how hard I try to save them. When these things happen, I go back and adjust the overview to match the new plot developments.

And although I don't get stuck without an ending, I sometimes get stuck between how to get from Major Plot Point A to Major Plot Point B. I once left a pair of characters in a Jacuzzi for two weeks while I figured out what happened in their next scene. (Aside from a lot of wrinkled skin, they didn't seem to mind it too much. They were naked, after all.)

Luckily, I found a solution for when I find myself in one of those literary bogs. I use a tip I got from the amazing Laurie Halse Anderson and make a list of 25 things that could happen next, making sure that at least some of them are nonsensical. This works every time and has resulted in some of my favorite scenes.

Once I have the first draft completed, I try to let it sit for a couple of weeks before I start editing and revising, but I don't always make it that long because I actually love the editing process. When I do begin editing, I print out the manuscript so I can read it aloud to myself and Princess Tilly, my rescued Pomeranian. Not only does this do wonders for spotting stilted dialogue and problems with flow, Tilly thinks I'm the greatest writer in the world, so it also does wonders for my ego.

So that's the way I do it! Next up on the tour will be these talented ladies who'll tell you next Monday, June 9, all about their own writing processes and their upcoming books.

Lee Ann Ward -- Lee Ann is a former Senior Editor for a digital romance publisher and a multi-published author of adult and YA fiction. She's won several awards for her fiction and can't remember a time when she wasn't writing, having completed her first novel at the age of sixteen. She has four gorgeous sons, a sweetheart of a husband, two lazy cats, and the most rambunctious poodle in existence.

Brenda Barry -- Brenda is the author of a four-part saga of star-crossed lovers separated by the war in Vietnam titled Seasons of Love and War. Her husband was in the military for 21 years and gave her help and encouragement while writing her novel. They now live in Roseburg, Oregon, and when Brenda's not writing she can normally be found walking the trails with her husband and their little dachshund or traveling in their RV.

Angela Quarles -- Angela works at an independent bookstore and lives in a historic house in the beautiful and quirky town of Mobile, Alabama, with her two matched gray cats, Darcy and Bingley. When she's not writing, she enjoys the usual stuff like gardening, reading, hanging out, eating, drinking, chasing squirrels out of the walls and creating the occasional knitted scarf. She's had a varied career, including website programming and directing a small local history museum. She has a B.A. in Anthropology and International Studies with a minor in German from Emory University, and she has a Masters in Heritage Preservation from Georgia State University. She was an exchange student to Finland in high school and studied abroad in Vienna one summer in college. She is represented by Maura Kye-Casella at Don Congdon Associates, Inc.


~Stay true to yourself and your dreams will come true!

Follow me on Twitter: @JoyceScarbrough
Like my Facebook Fan Page here

Spanning the Testosterone Scale

Welcome back to Sneak Peek Sunday!

My release party on Facebook this past Thursday was so much fun! Thanks to everyone who came, and congratulations to all the game winners. This week's excerpt from Symmetry features the first encounter between Jess's estranged husband and the soft-spoken man from her past. Just as Jess and Noah get home from their date, Lee shows up unexpectedly and loses it when he realizes that the "old friend" Jess had plans with isn't a girlfriend.

“Well, it shouldn’t make a difference to you either way, Lee, because we’re getting a divorce. What I do is none of your business anymore.” She turned to walk back to Noah, who looked as though he wished the Earth would open up and swallow him.

Lee grabbed her arm and stopped her. “Like hell it’s not my business! You’re still my wife, and I’m not letting any man put his hands on you!”

She whirled around to face him again. “Well, maybe I’ll come up with some story about being drugged and not knowing what I’m doing, then it won’t matter. Right, Lee?”

He moved her aside and started toward Noah. “Why don’t we see if your boyfriend’s willing to get his ass kicked for you!”

Noah held up his hands and took a step back. “Look, I don’t want any trouble with you, but I intend to keep seeing Jess.”

“Oh, really?” Lee sneered at him. “Well, I intend to break your face!”

Will Jess go back to Team Hunk, or will she defect to Team Sensitive? Buy your own copy of Symmetry to find out! And please also check out the other Sneak Peekers. Loads of talent on this list!

~Stay true to yourself and your dreams will come true!

Follow me on Twitter: @JoyceScarbrough
Like my Facebook Fan Page here

Book Reincarnation

Welcome to my first week participating in the Sneak Peek Sunday blog hop! I'm really excited about joining all the other great authors sharing their excerpts, so click on the blog name to read them all!

My contribution is from my novel Symmetry, which has been reborn thanks to my new publisher The Wild Rose Press. It's releasing to Amazon Kindle Select this Thursday, and the paperback and Nook versions will be available in July. Here's the blurb.

Jessica Cassady is a copyeditor for a small newspaper in Georgia where her husband Lee is a sportswriter. When he attends a convention in New York, Jess is shocked when she calls his room in the middle of the night and a woman answers. Lee swears things aren't what they seem, but Jess isn't so sure and kicks him out. Things become even more complicated when a sweet man from her past named Noah Hamilton shows up and makes Lee even more determined to get Jess back. Should she forego the beefcake brigade and give the sensitive type a try like her cat and her best friend Deb want her to do, or should she give in to the addictive rush she's always felt whenever she's close to Lee? It's enough to make any girl pull out her hair!

The excerpt I chose is the beginning of the first chapter and does a great job of showing Jess's dilemma when it comes to her hunky but clueless husband.

Jess always woke a second before she could complete the castration. Curses, foiled again. She blinked at the red numbers projected onto her ceiling by the clock on her night stand—4:23 a.m. Plenty of time to go back to sleep and finish the job, but she knew it was useless. She’d only end up dreaming about giving birth to a canned ham or grocery shopping in her pajamas, and Lee’s manhood would escape the knife again.

She snuggled against the body pillow occupying his place beside her in bed and got an indignant rowl from the Siamese cat curled up there. Jess smiled at the thought of what Lee would say about letting Ming sleep with her and decided maybe she’d tell him he’d been replaced by his feline nemesis when she saw him at the meeting later that morning.

She fell asleep reminding herself of how much better off she was without her two-timing, cat-hating, conceited jerk of a husband, and she dreamed he made love to her on the conference table at work, castration the furthest thing from her mind.

God, she hated him.

Five hours later, she sat across from Lee in the conference room at the Espanola Times and tried to focus on Thad Crandall’s weekly lecture about deadlines. If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought Lee knew what she’d dreamed about him from the way he kept nudging her with his foot under the table and flashing that damn blond-Adonis smile at her.

She tried to suppress the dream images of his face over hers, but every time she looked at him, her mind became a private movie screen featuring the world premiere of Position: Impossible. Shackled as she was with a redhead’s proclivity for blushing, she knew he noticed her agitation and probably thought it was from simply being near him.

Don't you hate it when your heart and your head (and a few other body parts) are at war with each other? Hope you enjoyed the excerpt. You can read the rest when Symmetry releases on Kindle this Thursday! I'm having a release party here all day on Facebook, so come join us for a chance to win a free copy plus games and other goodies!


~Stay true to yourself and your dreams will come true!

Follow me on Twitter: @JoyceScarbrough
Like my Facebook Fan Page here

Delicious Dilemma

For my last Six Sentence Sunday featuring my novel Symmetry, I felt I needed to show why Jess has such a tough decision about which man she wants to be with.

Last week I left you in the middle of a testosterone-charged exchange between Jess's estranged husband Lee and Noah, the attractive man from her past. Jess manages to stop Lee before things become physical, but he makes sure that Noah knows Jess is still his wife before he leaves. He comes back in the middle of the night, reeking of whiskey and pleading with Jess to forgive him for all his past transgressions. She's not at all convinced, but she lets him sleep on the couch since he's in no condition to drive. This scene takes place the next morning.

Lee was still asleep when she got up in the morning, sprawled on the couch the way he’d taken a nap there so many times in the past. She stopped to look at him on her way to the kitchen and had to marvel at how, even while in dire need of a shave with his hair a mass of blond chaos and his bottom lip vibrating rather obscenely every time he exhaled, he was still the best-looking thing she had ever seen.

Her gaze was drawn to the way his biceps flexed on the arm bent over his head and the glorious shape of his lower body inside his wrinkled cotton pants. Her pulse quickened the way it always had whenever she looked at him. God, she was so hooked on him it was like having a chemical dependency--addicted to the hormonal rush her body always experienced when it was near his. She was nothing but a pathetic Lee junkie.

Which man will she pick? Her hunky, clueless husband or the silken-voiced sweetheart from her past? Buy Symmetry here and find out!

And please also check out the other Six Sentencers.

~Stay true to yourself and your dreams will come true!

Male Egos R Us

When last we saw our heroine Jess, she was checking out a tall drink of water from her past and considering a switch from Team Hunk to Team Soulful. After the lecture, she goes out for coffee with Noah and agrees to have dinner with him the next night. The initial guilt she feels disappears pretty quick when she tells her estranged husband Lee that she's having dinner with an old friend and he can't stop advancing his career long enough to even care.

When Lee shows up at their house just as she's coming home from her date with Noah, she discovers that he thought her old friend was an old girlfriend. Turns out he cares a little after all.

“Why don’t we see if your boyfriend’s willing to get his ass kicked for you!”

Noah held up his hands and took a step back. “Look, I don’t want any trouble with you, but I intend to keep seeing Jess.”

Lee sneered at him. “Oh, really? Well, I intend to break your face!”

Oh, my. What girl doesn't appreciate a little macho posturing on her behalf? Tune in next Sunday to see what happens next!

Or you can just buy you own copy of Symmetry here. And please also check out the other Six Sentencers.

~Stay true to yourself and your dreams will come true!

Mystery Man from the Past

Happy Sunday, everyone!

This week's six sentences feature the man in Symmetry from Jess's past who shows up while she's separated from her husband Lee. To celebrate her new independence and reward herself for standing up to her mother, Jess decides to pamper herself a little. But since she's Jess, her idea of pampering is to get her first pedicure, take art and yoga lessons, and sign up for a lecture series on the Revolutionary War. Her best friend Deb tells her those things are an insult to pampering and that she's like the heroine in the nerdiest Chick Lit novel ever, which of course she is! ;-)

When Jess attends her first lecture, the speaker--Noah Hamilton--seems very familiar to her, but she can't place him. This scene takes place right after he's introduced to the audience, but it still doesn't jog Jess's memory.

Jess thought she might’ve heard his name before, but she had no idea where or when. As he stepped up to the podium, his gaze met hers again momentarily, and she got the feeling he was looking for a reaction from her, as if he knew who she was and wanted to see if she recognized him as well. Who the devil was he?

As soon as he began speaking, she knew. Although she thought they might have had more than one class together in high school, she remembered talking to him only once when he’d complimented her on an impassioned essay about tobacco company lawsuits that she’d written and read aloud in her sophomore English class. She recalled thinking then that his voice reminded her of the wind in the trees outside her bedroom window, a soothing whisper that had lulled her to sleep for as long as she could remember.

Uh-oh. Looks like Lee has some competition, huh? Find out next week what happens when these two polar opposites on the testosterone scale meet face to face!

Or you can just buy you own copy of Symmetry here. And please also check out the other Six Sentencers. Loads of talent on this list!

~Stay true to yourself and your dreams will come true!

Hands Down and Heads Up!

Last Sunday I promised to explain what I meant by the "hair pulling" reference in my description of Symmetry. Since I'm on vacay this week visiting my step-daughters, (one of whom is the beautiful redhead on the cover of Symmetry) I'm being lazy and letting an excerpt from one of my reviews do it for me. This is from Julie's review on the Girls Just Reading blog:

"What I enjoyed most was Jess's journey to figuring out why she liked to pull out her hair, strand by strand. This leads her to a self-diagnosis of trichotillomania or TTM for short. She begins to try to understand the triggers for this and takes actions to stop. I also liked how she developed a relationship with a young girl named Cara who did not have the support of her family in treating this disease. As a psychology major, I found it extremely interesting that this is a physical disease and not a mental illness. I can see why it would be misdiagnosed a lot of the time. I liked how this also brought her closer to her younger sister-in-law Lexie, and how she was able to help Lexie with her own issues with OCD.

Normally, I would think that authors would have to do a lot of research on a disease like TTM, but not Ms. Scarbrough. For her this was a personal novel because she deals with TTM herself. I always like it when authors use a subject matter they know personally as a source of inspiration for a character. I have a feeling that Jessica is a lot like Joyce in her way of dealing with TTM."

So there it is. I have trichotillomania. The six sentences I chose for this week come from the book's dedication and from the author's note at the end, and they explain why I wrote it.

This book is dedicated to all the people suffering alone who don't even know that what they do has a name. You are not defective, damaged, or mentally ill, and you are worthy of love and understanding.

I’ve often been asked why I decided to include a topic like hair-pulling in a novel instead of telling my own story about it in a book of non-fiction. The answer to that is twofold. First, I have TTM only to the degree that Jess has it, so it’s not a major problem for me—certainly not interesting enough for an entire book about it. Second, I figured the only people who read non-fiction books about TTM are people who already know what it is, and my goal is to raise awareness in the rest of the population.

See, I always knew there had to be a reason God gave me both the ability to write and enough hair for three people!

You can buy you own copy of Symmetry here. And please also check out the other Six Sentencers.

~Stay true to yourself and your dreams will come true!

Amorous Excerpt #2

This one features Jaycee and Bud from DIFFERENT ROADS, so be prepared for some steam!

The middle-aged secretary who worked for Bud, Mack, and Luke told Jaycee that Bud was on the phone with one of the mill managers, but she could wait on the couch in his office for him to finish the call.

Jaycee had worn a short denim skirt with a sleeveless blouse, and Bud leaned over in his chair in an exaggerated effort to look at her legs while he listened to the man on the phone. The door was open, but no one could see Jaycee from outside the office, so she slid her skirt a little higher on her thigh and gave him a suggestive look.

“No problem, Phil,” Bud said into the phone. “I’ll be there in the morning with two more terminals and have them up and running by noon. See you then.” He hung up and started around the desk toward Jaycee just as a young blonde woman in a short red dress came through the doorway.

“I brought you some coffee, Mr. Stanton,” she said. “Extra cream and sugar, just the way you like it.”

Bud stopped and glanced at Jaycee. “Uh . . . thank you, Bridget. My wife’s here right now. Want some coffee, Jaycee?”

Bridget froze when she saw Jaycee on the couch, and a little coffee sloshed out of the cup.

Jaycee folded her arms across her chest. “No, and since when do you drink it, Bud?”

“I drink it now and then,” he said. “Just put it on the desk, Bridget. Thanks.”

She set it on a coaster. “I’ll come back for the cup when you’re finished, Mr. Stanton.”

“Don’t bother,” Jaycee said. “And close the door on your way out.”
Bridget left without another word.

“That’s not my fault, Jaycee,” Bud said when she was gone. “I’ve never asked her to bring me anything.”

“Uh-huh, and you obviously haven’t spread the word that your wife won’t hesitate to kick somebody’s over-ambitious little ass either, so maybe that’s what I need to do.”

He walked over to the couch and sat beside her. “Come on, Jaycee. All she does is bring me coffee sometimes. I’m sure she does the same thing for Dad and Luke.”

She pushed away his hand when he tried to hold hers. “I don’t give a shit what she brings them. You’d better tell her that I’ll make her spill more than coffee if I catch her offering you anything else. I’ll fix you a frigging thermos if you like coffee so damn much, and what the hell are you smiling about?”

He answered in a singsong voice: “Jay-cee is jeal-ous. You’re afraid somebody’s gonna steal your Sugar Daddy, huh?”

She threw a punch at his arm, but he caught her hand and pushed her back on the couch to lie on top of her. “Get off me, shithead! I’m sure as hell not jealous of a little twit like her, but if you think you want somebody else then you can just—”

He covered her mouth with his and forced his tongue inside. Jaycee was a stronger-than-average girl, but there was really no comparison of her strength to Bud’s. She gave up struggling after a minute or so.

“I hate you,” she said when he let her speak. “Your little office fan club can have you. All I care about is Junior anyway.”

He laughed and kissed her neck with her hands still pinned to the couch. “Don’t worry, Firecracker. Junior doesn’t like anybody but you.”

She gave him a sly look. “Let go of my hands and I’ll say hello to him.”

“Uh-uh, I don’t trust you. You’ll punch me.”

“No I won’t, Bud. I promise.” She pressed her hips upward and moved against him. “I like it when you act all tough like this. You caveman, me woman. It’s making me so hot.”

He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “For real?”

She smiled and nodded. He hesitated a couple of seconds more and slowly released her right hand, still holding her left above her head and watching her closely. She put her hand on his cheek and slid it down his neck. Just as it reached his chest and he shifted his weight so she could get her hand between them, she pinched his nipple between her thumb and forefinger and twisted.

“Ow, shit.” He grabbed her hand and pinned it again. “You lied to me, Jaycee!”

“No, I promised I wouldn’t punch you. Now get off me.”

He kissed her again until she returned it.

“Still hate me?”

“More than ever.”

“If I make love to you right here and shock the employees by making you moan with ecstasy, will you like me again?”

“Maybe.”

He got up and went to his desk to press the intercom button on his phone. “Mrs. Patterson, hold all my calls until further notice. I’ll be in conference with my wife until she likes me again.”

Jaycee laughed. “But your coffee will get cold, Mr. Stanton.”

He came back to the couch and started to unbutton her blouse. “I just thought of a new game for us to play, and I want you to call me Mr. Stanton while we play it.”

When Jaycee left, she stopped by Bridget’s desk in the clerical office next door and set the empty coffee cup in front of her.

“I’m afraid Mr. Stanton’s coffee got spilled while we were . . . working on his desk, so I brought you the cup to get him some more. But, if I were you”—she leaned toward her conspiratorially but didn’t lower her voice—“I’d focus my efforts on one of the single Stanton men. Not only is Bud a waste of your time because he’s not interested, he’s got a wife who’s been known to cold-cock women over a lot less than your pathetic attempts at getting him to look at your ass. You might want to write that on a sticky note and keep it on your monitor so you won’t forget.”

Jaycee waved congenially to all the open-mouthed women in the room as she left.

Buy Your Own Copy Of DIFFERENT ROADS here

~Stay true to yourself and your dreams will come true!

Valentine's Day Love Fest!

In celebration of love and romance, three amorous excerpts from my books. Up first, TRUE BLUE FOREVER:

“My Jeana,” he whispered. “You’re so beautiful.”

She stiffened involuntarily in his arms. “Don’t say that, Mickey. I believe that you love me, but don’t lie to me. You promised you wouldn’t.”

Mickey looked at her in confusion. “I’ve never lied in my life, Jeana. You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.”

She tried to shake her head, but he wouldn’t let her.

“Don’t you know how incredible you are?” Mickey’s eyes searched her face and slowly widened. “You don’t, do you? God, you’re like a perfect work of art, and you don’t even know it.”

Jeana had never thought of herself as even close to beautiful, but now—looking into Mickey’s amazing eyes so full of his love for her—she had no choice but to believe him. Even if no one else ever thought she was beautiful, she knew Mickey did. And that was all that mattered to her.

“Then you’re the artist, Mickey, because I didn’t exist until you kissed me.”

They lay beside each other on the couch, and Jeana sensed immediately that they’d moved to a deeper level in their relationship. Their kisses were more intense, and when Mickey’s lips moved to her neck, a warmth started in the pit of her stomach that spread over her entire body. She felt that odd pulse between her legs again, and it was as if every nerve and synapse were electrified. She’d never felt so inflamed, and her only thought was of more.

Every brush of his lips on her skin was like a tiny shock that elicited little whimpers from her, meant to tell him how much she liked it and that she wanted him to go further. She knew he got the message because his hands began to explore, and when he touched her breasts through her thin T-shirt, she felt as if he had ignited a fuse that ran to the most sensitive parts of her body. Her chest rose and fell with her rapid breathing, and Mickey misread her reaction.

“Do you want me to stop, Jeana?”

“No, Mickey.” She put his hand back on her breast. “Please don’t stop.”

He smiled as he lowered his lips to her neck again. He was lying with one of his knees between her thighs, and Jeana discovered that it felt wonderful when she moved her lower body against his leg. She knew he shared her arousal because of the hardness she felt against her thigh, and also from the way he moaned when she pressed her body against him.

“You gotta stop that, baby,” he said breathlessly. “I like it, but you gotta stop.”

Instead of stopping, Jeana’s hands slid to his hips and pulled him against her.

“No, Mickey. I want you to make love to me.”

He tensed and tried to pull away. “We can’t, Jeana. I want to, but—”

“I love you, Mickey.” Her hands clutched him tighter. “It’s not wrong if we love each other.”

“I love you too.” He buried his face in her hair. “But, we have to wait.”

“I don’t want to wait, I want you.” Jeana knew she was being reckless and irresponsible, but the pounding of her heart drowned out the voice in her head telling her to listen to Mickey because he was right.

“You know I want you, baby. So much...” He closed his eyes and gasped when her hands found their way inside his jersey and touched his chest. “Jeana, stop. You’re driving me crazy.”

He took her hands from his shirt and sat up. She pulled herself up beside him and put her head on his shoulder.

“Why do we have to wait if we love each other, Mickey?”

He told her the story about his parents, how his birth had changed the course of their lives. When he finished, he said, “I don’t want us to make the same mistake, Jeana.”

“Don’t say it like that, Mickey. You’re not a mistake.”

He smiled. “You’re so sweet. But, do you understand what I’m talking about, baby? You’re gonna be the valedictorian, with the sky as your limit after that. I promised my dad I’d play baseball. If you got pregnant—”

“We can be careful, Mickey. We can wait until we have protection.”

“Nothing is a hundred percent safe, and that’s not the only problem, because I know once we made love I’d want you all the time. We’d be tempted every time we were together, and pretty soon we’d start to take chances.” He covered his face in frustration. “Please try to understand.”

Her laughter surprised him.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “but don’t we have our roles reversed here?”

Mickey smiled wryly. “Let’s face it, Jeana. There’s nothing typical about you or me.”


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