For
my post today, I have a bit from my story Slush: A
Holiday Romance. This title represented my very first foray
into self-publishing, nearly five years ago.
A
lot of books under the bridge since then! I’m still fond of this
gentle tale, though, about a rich guy who’s rescued by a homeless
young woman.
You
can get a copy (only 99 cents!) at Smashwords,
Amazon,
BN
or Kobo.
Blurb
Hot
shot Boston lawyer Ian Pierce has everything but peace of mind.
Christmas Eve finds him alone, wading through the slush to his BMW so
he can drive back to his lonely luxury apartment. Then everything
goes black. He awakens with an aching skull to find himself in a
freezing, boarded-up garage occupied by a street kid. At first he
blames the dodgy-looking youth for his troubles, but before long he
realizes the raggedy girl who rescued him from the gutter may well be
a Christmas angel in disguise.
Excerpt
“Hey,
mister – you okay?”
The
youthful voice filtered down the deep, dark hole to Ian’s
flickering awareness.
“Urgh.”
That was his own voice, a groan that kicked up pounding echoes in his
head. Irritated by his own incapacity, pushing the pain aside, he
tried again.
“I
– uh – I don’t know...” He forced his heavy eyelids open,
blinking to dispel the maddening blurriness, and tried to focus on
the pale face hovering over him. “What – what happened?”
“I
think you were mugged. I found you unconscious in the alley, lying in
the gutter next to some fancy car.” The teenager had a thin face
with a toothy grin. A knitted Bruins cap pulled low over his ears hid
the kid’s hair. His breath condensed into white clouds when he
spoke.
A
shiver wracked Ian’s body. Even that slight movement exacerbated
the throbbing at the back of his skull. Damn, it hurt! And it was
freezing in here!
“Where
am I?” Ian tried to sit up, impatient as always with any kind of
weakness. “Ow – shit!”
He
sank back onto something yielding, breathing hard. A damp smell of
mold assailed him, mixed with hints of motor oil and wood smoke.
“Better
not move,” the kid counseled. “You might have a concussion.”
Ignoring
this advice, Ian managed to work himself into a half-sit. The
softness beneath him was an old mattress, covered with a stained
woolen blanket. He leaned against a plywood wall. Cold seeped through
the thin barrier from the winter night outside, all the way through
his coat and his shirt. His back muscles cramped and he shivered
again. He glanced around the dim, crowded space, noting that the
other walls and the floor were bare concrete.
“Here
– try this.” The younger man grabbed a thick wad of newspapers
from a pile in the corner
“Tilt
forward – yeah – that’s right.” He slipped the papers into
the space between Ian’s back and the wall. They worked surprisingly
well as insulation. The kid smiled, showing those even white teeth
once again. “Better now?”
Ian
nodded, then regretted it as the pain in his head surged. “How did
I get here?”
The
teen’s laugh was high and girlish as he gestured toward a rusty
supermarket cart parked near the door in the plywood partition.
“You’re
joking!”
“Nope.
A sled might have been better on a night like this, though.”
“But
how... why...?”
The
kid gazed at him, hands on his hips. “I couldn’t leave you there
in the slush, could I? You would’ve froze to death, no question.”
Ian
peered more closely at his savior. The teen – well, he might have
been twenty, twenty one at most – looked plump in his miscellany
of sweaters and sweatshirts. Underneath the bulky layers, though, he
was slightly built. His hands, wrapped in orange mittens, were small.
Bright red long johns showed through the holes in his ragged jeans.
Despite the inclement weather, he wore no boots, only dirty sneakers,
which looked soaked through. That observation made Ian realize how
wet and cold he was in his own clothing.
He
shivered again. “Don’t you have any heat in here?”
The
kid shrugged. “I could light a fire, I guess. I don’t like to do
that too often – makes it more likely someone will figure out I’m
in here. But I suppose nobody’s going to be prowling around on
Christmas Eve, ‘specially when it’s so miserable out.”
He
dragged a battered oil drum with a deeply dented lid into the center
of the room and started piling on bits and pieces of wood from a box
near the newspapers. Then he crumpled some of that paper onto the top
and struck a match.
The
merry flames made Ian feel marginally better. The ache in his
occipital region faded a bit and the numbness shrouding his brain
cleared. He began to remember, brief impressions at first, then whole
scenes.
