Tia Louise's Blog: ONE TO BLOG - Posts Tagged "secret-baby"

WAIT FOR ME
By Tia Louise
© TLM Productions LLC, 2019

Prologue

Noel

My momma was too beautiful to die.
At least, that’s what everybody said.

Penelope Jean Harris was the scion of our town’s founder and prettiest girl in three parishes. She was head majorette in high school and Homecoming queen and Prom queen and every other queen. She was Peach Princess, Teen Dixie Peach, and Miss Dixie Gem. She would’ve gone on to be Miss Louisiana if my daddy hadn’t made her a Mrs.

I was eleven—that strange age between too big to play in the creek in only my panties and too little to sleep without the closet light on. I loved Dolly Parton and butterflies and picking peaches straight off my Daddy’s trees and eating them, jumping in the lake and running after jackrabbits with my little brother Leon.

In the summer the trees were rich green, and the sweet scent of peach juice filled the air. In the winter they were sparse, bony hands, reaching palms up to heaven. Branches like fingers spread, grasping for hope.

Momma’s hazel eyes crinkled at the corners whenever she looked at me or my brothers or my daddy. Her sweet smile was warm sunshine when I got cold.

She would wrap me in her arms and sing an old sad song when I was sleepy or cranky or “out of sorts,” which is how she’d put it. I pictured “sorts” as ivory dominoes I could line up and knock down or slap off the table, across the room. I’d pull her silky brown hair around me like a cape and close my eyes and breathe…

Then she was gone.

She went for a walk one crisp winter evening along the narrow, dirt road that runs past our orchard out to the old house on the hill. Frost was in the air; bonfires were burning. The man driving the truck said she came out of nowhere.

He never saw her.
She never saw him.

Six weeks later, in that same orchard with peach blossoms on the trees and dew tipping the grass, on the very spot she died, my daddy took his life with his own gun.

I guess sometimes love makes you forget things can get better.
I guess he didn’t see a bend in the road up ahead.
I guess he only saw a straight line leading deeper and deeper into black.

My daddy was the star of his high school football team… but Life threw him a pass he couldn’t catch with Momma’s death.

Our world changed forever that winter.

Dolly says love is like a butterfly, soft and gentle as a sigh, but from what I’ve seen of love, I think it’s more like a tornado, shocking and violent and so powerful it can rip your soul out of your mouth…

It’s faster than you can run, and it blows one house away while leaving the next one peacefully standing.

I didn’t know which way love would take me, quietly or with the roar of a freight train. I should’ve known. I should’ve realized the moment I saw him.

It was both.

It was quiet as the brush of peach fuzz, but it left my insides in splinters. It twisted my lungs and lifted me up so high only to throw me down with a force that rang my ears and flooded my eyes.

It all started the summer before they left, a month before my brother was sent to fight in a war everybody said was over.

It all started in the kitchen of my momma’s house…

* * *
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WAIT FOR ME
By Tia Louise
© TLM Productions LLC, 2019

Taron

She jogs up behind me and wraps both her arms tightly around mine, soaking my backside with her frigid, wet body.

“How does that feel, Mr. Bruised Rib? Huh? How does it?” Her voice is so adorably taunting, like she’s going to fight me or something.

I kind of can’t take it anymore. Turning around, I swoop her up by the waist, putting her face directly level with mine. She gasps as our eyes meet.

Her hands are on my shoulders, and all the pent-up heat, the nagging chemistry, her hard nipples pressing against my chest, all of it swirls into a fusion of lust and need.

“I want to kiss you.” My voice cracks roughly. I barely recognize it.

She nods, and I stretch up as she meets me halfway. Our lips brush, and it’s like two flints striking. Sparks swirl between us as I push her mouth open with mine.

I lower her to her feet so I can cup her face in my hands, and our tongues slide and curl together. She tastes like cold, fresh water, and she feels like diving off the top of a cliff into a bottomless ocean.

Her small body fits perfectly in my arms, and I pull her closer to me, wrapping my arms around her. She exhales a high noise, and my lips move to the top of her cheek, to her temple, to her brow. I don’t want to stop kissing her, holding her. I’ve never felt this way—desperate and hungry and so satisfied.

She slides her hands up to my neck, and she drops her forehead to my bare chest. I lower my nose to the top of her head and breathe.

“Taron.” Her soft voice sounds as bewildered as I feel.

How is this happening to us? Has this ever happened to anyone before? Is it possible? It feels so specific.

Her head lifts, and her golden-brown eyes are warm. “What are you doing?”

The question makes me grin. “Something I’ve wanted to do for two days.”

She blinks down as her cheeks flush. “I wondered why I didn’t do it when you caught me in the kitchen.” Her nose wrinkles, and she squints up at me. “Isn’t that what ladies do when they’re saved by handsome princes?”

“I’m not a prince.”

“But you are handsome.” A tease is in her eye.

Sliding my thumb along the top of her cheek, I lean down to kiss her lips once more. “If you ever need saving, I want to save you.”

Somehow I’m certain Noel LaGrange can take care of herself no matter what. Still, everybody slips off a kitchen counter sometimes.

“And I’ll save you back.”

I pull her to my chest, wanting to kiss her again. “It’s a deal.”

* * *
★ Read FREE in Kindle Unlimited Now:
Amazon: https://smarturl.it/W4Mamz
Audiobook: https://smarturl.it/W4MaUS
Amazon PB: https://smarturl.it/W4Mapb
Nook PB: https://smarturl.it/W4Mnpb

*Free in Kindle Unlimited.