Page 3 of Careless Whisper

Her curves have rounded out since I saw her for the last time. Her full breasts are gently rounding over the top of the little white blouse that she’s wearing. Her vivid blue glasses sit on the tip of her tiny nose, slipping down while she’s talking. She’s wearing a little mini-skirt that teases the top of her rounded thighs and a pair of low boots with little silver chains on them. Her thick thighs and legs are covered by some kind of holey stockings that let her soft skin show through, teasing any man with red blood in his veins.

And I’ve got a lot of fucking blood in my veins when it comes to her.

My desk phone rings and I pick it up. “She’s coming,” a voice whispers into the receiver.

“What the hell are you talking about?” My mother gasps.

“Benjamin Bartholomew Henry! What have I told you about using that kind of language?”

I cringe and my head drops. “I’m sorry, Mother. You just surprised me, that’s all.” That and I have no idea what the woman’s talking about so I’m just a smidge frustrated. But she huffs out a breath.

“Fine. I’ll forgive you because I know how much you need to hear this.” She pauses dramatically and I swear under my breath, wishing my father hadn’t encouraged her love of the damn theater. She loves her dramatic license. “She’s coming home.”

I suck in a breath and try and control my annoyance which is spiking with every damn word. Why the hell can’t she just say it without all this…

“Stephanie Marlowe.”

Two words and I suck in a shattered, unbelieving breath. Two words that make my heart kick and grind back into life.

Two words that mean more than any two words on this planet. Two words that mean I have a chance to get back what I lost so many years ago.

Dazed, I hang up the phone, barely noticing the squawk as I rest the phone on the cradle.

All I can think about is her. My eyes lift to the picture on my wall. My best friend. The woman I love more than anything on this planet.

The one woman who owns my heart and always will.

I shudder, my eyes closing. I need a plan. Because if this is my last shot. My one and only shot for love. I have to make it work. Have to make it count.

There’s no other option. I need Stephanie Marlowe more than I need to breathe, to eat.

She is and always has been my everything.

Chapter 3

Stephanie

Inever, ever thought I’d creep home in the middle of the night in shame and disgrace.

Who would have thought that in the space of three months, a woman on the highest highs would find herself looking down and wondering where the hell it all went wrong.

But here we are. Sneaking back into my old hometown and wondering how long I can stay hidden before all hell breaks loose and the angry villagers show up at my house with pitchforks and burning flames on sticks.

Why the hell can’t I remember the word for that?

I’m a writer for god’s sake and the word escapes me. What the hell is wrong with me?

But I know what it is. It’s fucking fear. Fear that I’m about to be burned at the stake for the witch this town takes me for.

But I can’t write. Can’t think. Something is off and the only thing that I can think to do is crawl back to where it all started. Where the first kernels of my muse started.

Where I first fell in love and learned that that love would always come with pain.

I sigh and shove my fingers through my hair, the catchy pop song on the radio in my car crackling and sucking at my last nerve.

I drive around the back roads and finally pull up at my parents’ old house. They passed away during college and I never did anything with it. It’s still in my name. The only thing I did do after I made bank on my first royalties was to pay someone to look after the place.

I park the car and stare at the old ranch house that still looks the same just a little older and more worn. Not that my parents really kept it in fantastic shape. They were more inclined to sit in a corner of the living room and get wasted on a Friday night than they were interested in taking care of me or the old house. I think that might be why I can’t seem to get rid of it. It feels like this old house and I are in the same boat. We’ve both been dumped and forgotten over the years by people that should have taken care of us.