TUESDAY TALES - WORD PROMPT "NAKED" - ANOTHER EPISODE OF RENOVATING THE BILLIONAIRE

Welcome! This week the word prompt is "naked" - tee hee. I've got another installment in the as-yet-unwritten story, "Renovating the Billionaire." 

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   After dark on a hot night, there was nothing Jess liked better than to get naked and jump into Cedar Lake. If she was still awake after midnight, she’s ride her bike down to the dock. After checking to see if any lights were on in the houses hugging the lake, she’d slip off her clothes, and lower herself down the ladder.

   One time she’d cannonballed in, not expecting to make such a big splash. The noise woke one of the neighbors. He burst forth from his house, brandishing a gun and hollering. She’d hidden underneath the dock until he left.

   He must have been poking around for twenty minutes. She shivered, but kept still, praying he wouldn’t discover her. He didn’t. When he left, she climbed out quietly, threw her clothes on and hightailed it out of there as fast as she could.

   It was two years later before she tried it again. This time, she eased into the water with nary a splash. Jess did the breast stroke, cutting silently through the water. She stopped at a boat moored near the west side. 
   Hanging on to the anchor rope, she stared at that huge monstrosity, shadowed in the moonlight. At night the old, broken-down house looked eerie, scary almost. The dark windows with their trim painted white resembled huge eyes.

   The house had history and a faded charm that still spoke to Jess. Never mind the hole in the roof, or the bats making their homes in the eaves. Forget the peeling paint, the broken front steps. This house had potential. It haunted Jess’s dreams regularly.

   She pictured it returned to its former glory, pure white paint, immaculate front porch sporting three antique wooden rocking chairs. One for her, one for her brother, Will, and one for the love of her life, a man like no other.

   In her imagination, the third chair sat empty for an eternity. Prince Charming went out of fashion decades ago. Why should a poor, no-account like her expect to find one?

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TUESDAY TALES - RENOVATING THE BILLIONAIRE - PICTURE PROMPT

Time to take a pass at a new story. This will be part of "Renovating the Billionaire", a new Pine Grove book that will be coming out in two months. 
Jess is taking a break from work and goes for a stroll through her old neighborhood. 

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Jess sucked on a piece of onion grass as she headed for Huddle Road. She’d lived there for the first fifteen years of her life. Then her mom shot her dad and went to jail. She and her little brother were shipped off to foster care until she was eighteen, when she got a job and custody of Will.

They had to leave the charming little farmhouse with a Dutch door in the back and a small barn. As she rounded the bend, the old general store came into view. It had closed not long after she left. The Mountain View section of Pine Grove, despite it’s elegant name, was run down, decrepit. Her old house, now bank property, had a few broken windows and a hole in the front steps. The porch sagged. The house seemed sad.

Jess smiled as she sat, cross-legged, in front of it and remembered some happy times there. Even the old general store brought good memories. Mr. Franklin, who owned it, would give her a licorice stick free from time to time. She’d been his favorite because she had good manners.

He died in the store of a heart attack. No one wanted the place and now it was dying, too, just like the man who had built and run it for fifty years.

“Why does everything have to change? Why can’t good things stay the same?” she asked a butterfly fluttering in her face.

She and Will lived in a small apartment in a rundown house. Jess baked pies and cakes for the local restaurants and Will did carpentry. Together they eked out a living. The aroma of baked goods distracted her from her shabby living quarters and early wake-up time. As grandma always said, “there’s good everywhere, if you look for it.”    

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TUESDAY TALES - WORD PROMPT "SILLY"

Welcome! This week's word prompt is "silly." Again, we have an excerpt from Sandy & Rafe: Second Place Heart. Scroll down to return to Tuesday Tales and the great stories there. Thanks for coming! 

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Once the second apartment was almost finished, her fiancé cooled. His late nights became the norm. They stopped eating dinner together. Sex slowed down to once a week, if that. When she took his white shirts to the laundry, she detected a faint, but distinct, sweet scent that was not Lyle’s aftershave.

Sandy dredged up every justification imaginable. Eventually, she stopped believing her own mantra. Desperate, she called her brother. After rattling off a list of Lyle’s offenses, she waited.

“What do you think?” She chewed her lip.

“The guy’s definitely fooling around.”

“Really?” Her voice dropped.

“I can’t hide the truth from you, sis.”

“Really?” she asked again, hanging on to one last shred of hope.

“You don’t want me to lie, do you?”

“No, no, of course not.”

“Do you care?” her brother asked.

“What?”

“Do you love this guy?”

She hesitated. Had she ever loved him or had she simply fallen in love with the picture he’d painted of the future?

“I don’t know.”

“At least you’re being honest. If you don’t love him and he’s being a douche, leave. Don't be silly. You’re not married.”

“Don’t you think we should try to work it out?”

“Why,” Bill asked.

“To save our relationship?”

“What relationship? He used you to fix up his house and get him tons of free publicity. If there’s a relationship there, I’m a kangaroo.”