My Cover Model (A Love Like That #1) - R.L. Kenderson Page 0,1
you, Sydney.
Maleficent, my cat, jumped onto my desk and meowed at me. Her tone suggested she agreed with my assessment.
I petted her on the head, and she lay down next to my computer.
“Thank you for your vote of confidence.”
She began to purr, and I took that as, You’re welcome.
I turned back to my computer.
I supposed an ordinary, older bookworm of a woman could dream about a model falling in love with her. Actually, this ordinary, older bookworm of a woman could write a novel about it. But, in real life, things like that just didn’t happen.
I wasn’t going to waste the idea though. I flipped to a different page in my notebook where I had a list of potential book plots and wrote down model/author before flipping back to my to-do list.
I copied the article and posted it to my Facebook reader group, telling all my fans they should try to make it to the book signing event I was attending. I listed the three popular authors I’d discovered were attending and posted the link to the blog that had interviewed Travis Zehler.
Check it out, ladies! Not only would you get to meet me, but you’d also get to meet model Travis Zehler. ;-)
It was a long shot that I would see many, if any, of my readers. This was only the third author event I was attending, and I had yet to meet a hard-core fan. It was hard when I lived in the Midwest, which was where all the events had been located, while I had readers all over the country and the world. But I still dreamed of meeting at least one of them someday.
And I was going to do everything I could to entice them.
Two
Sydney
ONE MONTH LATER
I pulled into the driveway of one of my closest friends, Harper Stone, and honked the horn. I felt rude, not going in and saying hi to her husband and son, but she had given me explicit instructions to get her out of there right away.
She came running out of the house like her spiked pink hair was on fire. She threw her bag in the back of my SUV and climbed into the seat beside me.
“Let’s go.”
I put the vehicle in reverse and backed out. “What’s going on? Is everything okay with you and Ian?”
Just as I put the car in drive, her front door opened, and Ian stepped into the doorway. He had a grin on his face, his oversize glasses halfway down his nose, as he eagerly waved his hand back and forth.
Harper rolled down her window and yelled, “I’ll miss you, you big goof.” She blew him a kiss.
“Miss you, too, honey. Have fun. Hi and bye, Sydney.”
I leaned down and waved. “Bye, Ian. Give baby Wyatt kisses for me.”
“Will do,” he shouted back.
Harper pushed the up button on the window and pointed forward. “Let’s get out of here.”
We drove away with one last wave to Ian, and Harper dropped her head back against the seat and sighed.
“Is everything okay?” I asked again.
She opened an eyelid. “Yeah. I just need a break.”
“Being a wife and mother is exhausting, huh?”
She sprang up in her seat. “Yes. A few years ago, I thought I was going to be single forever. Happily single, I might add. But then I had to meet Ian, and that dork convinced me to marry him and have his baby.”
Harper was a bit of a free spirit. She bleached her dark hair white blonde and dyed the ends pink or whatever other color she felt like that month. She was a massage therapist who set her own hours and worked out of people’s homes. She refused to be employed by anyone but herself.
She’d met her husband at his job where he worked with computers and electronics—I still didn’t know exactly what he did—when his company brought her in to give massages to the employees for Employee Appreciation Day.
Ian had convinced Harper to go out with him. I thought she’d agreed because she felt bad about turning him down. Instead, she’d fallen in love.
I laughed. “Does this mean you want a divorce?”
“Not on your life. He’s a dork, but he’s my dork. And I wouldn’t give up Wyatt for the world. I just need a break.”
“I think you’re very lucky to have him, but I get it. You need time away, and we needed some girl time anyway.”
Harper turned her head toward me. “Hey, what about you?”