by Cathy Lamb
To the ladies of the Garden Gobbling group,
Olive,
I’m delighted that Charlotte is coming. I can’t wait to see her! She’s a few years younger than me. Charlotte’s parents were both quite kind. I remember loving Mrs. Mackintosh’s American accent. I thought it was so worldly and stylish.
I heard from Dee Dee’s boy, Arthur, who works for Toran, and who helped unload all the rubbish from Charlotte’s house, that Charlotte lives on an island near Hawaii, has about twenty cats, sells vegetables for a living, especially tomatoes, and she has six types of tomatoes. She’s a farmer like her father. She likes physics. She also is against whale killing, but keeps whales in the ocean, which is her front yard. A tad confusing!
Don’t kill Fiona. I love that chicken. She’s a chicken fashion model and I won’t eat her.
On another note, we could kill my soon-to-be ex-husband, The Arse, pluck his feathers, boil him, and feed him to a hog. He has a girlfriend named Chrissy. You might know her by her other name, Bubbles. Can you believe this? He left me for bubbles.
Rowena
Hello garden gang ladies,
Olive, I have to add my own dose of medicine here. Please don’t kill Fiona. She is one of my favorites. She does seem to think the world of herself, but more woman power to her, right? Maybe we all should learn to strut like she does. Sorry this is such the scribble! I had a plum busy night. I reattached a toe, put twelve stitches into a man’s arse when he cut it open on a wine barrel, and had to operate on a man who had “accidentally” swallowed two beer caps.
He was in his cups. Told me I reminded him of “Doctor Mean Elf.”
I’m so glad to hear that Charlotte is a farmer in the States. Her father was an outstanding farmer and businessman, that’s what my father says. He still misses Quinn.
Kenna
Ladys,
I come to Gobbling Ladys Club and I bring chicken makhani, which is a chicken that has the butter. It’s tasty in the mouth water.
And piece to all of you and joy of life,
Gitanjali
Rowena and Kenna,
Don’t be ridiculous. You will love the taste of Fiona.
Olive
Lorna,
I am sending this note only to you.
We have St. Ambrose Ladies’ Gab, Garden, and Gobble Group this week, as usual. I want to talk to you about something, and I thought I’d put it in a letter for personal protection. You can come round or phone later if you need to talk after you have calmed your feathers back down.
A few of the women have been complaining because—I don’t know how to say it gently, so I won’t bother—you’re snippy and rude.
When you told Rowena that her garden had not improved for years, that did not have a pleasing result. It was not right for her to shove her slice of Tantallon cake into your chest, and call you an old witch, as you are not old, but you had no right to get so huffy about it, either. Rowena has four kids, and an ex-husband who, as you know, has taken up with that young bartender in town with breasts the size of Edinburgh.
When you had an argument with Kenna and told her she didn’t know a thing about roses, which she does, and you realize it, Lorna, as her roses always win awards, it showed your jealous side. You took such offense when she said your garden looks like you, uptight, and as if it had a snake up its butt, but what you said to her was uncalled for now, wasn’t it?
As for Gitanjali. You will hardly recognize her presence because she’s from India. Don’t deny it and stop it this instant.
So, Lorna, as a proud gardener, the president of the club, and a Scotswoman, I’ll have to insist that you act like a pleasant human to the women in gardening club or stay home and dust.
Olive
“How does it feel to be back in Scotland, Charlotte?” Toran stretched his legs out in front of his fireplace, which was huge, with a rock hearth and a mantel made of polished wood. He had long legs, hard and muscled. I tried not to stare. My oh my. I had made Partan Bree soup with crab, white rice and sherry, barbecued beef steaks with shallots, bread, and Scottish Whisky Dundee cake with orange and lemon. When he saw what I had cooked when he came in from work, I thought the man was going to swoon. He said, “I wish I had more trucks to loan you.”
I had tried not to giggle, because that would have been unbecoming for a person my age, and too simpering to boot. So I blushed.
“It feels like I’ve returned home only a few key people are missing.”
He smiled, soft. “I understand. You must miss your father and grandparents even more when you’re here. And Bridget. I’m sorry, I truly am.”
He was so quick, so intuitive. We talked, and he asked all sorts of questions about me and my work as a writer. He was truly interested, which is so sexy. A listening man is a sex-able man. You can have wild good sex with a listening man. I think. I mean, I would have if I had been given the opportunity.
I reminded him not to tell anyone about how I write, as I am “part hermit, part recluse, part insanely private,” and he said, “Your secret is safe with me unless you refuse to make me this Scottish Whisky Dundee cake again.”
I reassured him I would make him the whiskey cake again.
“Dance with me, Charlotte,” he asked as the fire burned down.
“Right now?”
“Yes,” Toran said, spreading his arms out. “Dance with me.”
“There’s no music.”
“One moment please, lass.” He turned on rock music, the dancing sort.
He held out his arms. “Let’s dance like your parents used to dance together.” He pushed a table and a chair out of the way. “Your father was my role model on how to treat a woman, so let’s see how I’m doing.”
“The only type of dances I know are the traditional Scottish Highland dances where I’m kicking my heels up with my arms in arcs in the air, back straight. I can also do the foxtrot, some salsa and ballroom dancing, but with this free dancing, wiggling everywhere to a beat everyone hears that I don’t hear, I’m awkward and unbalanced.”
“Every Scot knows how to dance.”
“I think that gene has gone missing.”
“No, you have it. It’s given at birth. We danced as kids, and I remember you could dance then. The four of us danced in the meadow all the time.”
“And in the river.”
“And on top of the hill.”
“And on the beach.”
“Then that proves it. You can dance.”
“It’s been years. I have no rhythm. You will confuse me with an electrified chicken.”
“You see? You are so funny, Char. An electrified chicken.” He laughed. “Come on, luv.”
He pulled me into his arms. I was stiff at first, rigid like a stick. My long brown skirt didn’t help, and my sturdy brown shoes were not slidey enough.
“If you dance I’ll let you have some of my Scottish whiskey.”
“I can’t refuse then, King Toran.” I smiled. I sounded almost flirty. Was that flirting? I pulled back and curtsied. I smiled at him. I hadn’t seen him in twenty years but now here he was, a man. A heck of a handsome Scotsman.
I placed my hand in his, and his fingers curled around mine.
He twirled me around. He spun me, he turned and dipped me.
I laughed. I twirled, I spun, I tried to dip him. He was too tall. We swayed and boogied and did strange things like pounding our fists into the air, and wiggling our butts around, and swirling our hips while waving our hands. We latched elbows and do-si-doed. We danced back to back and side to side. He pulled me through his legs, then flipped me over his shoulder.
Later, we collapsed on the couch.
“I knew it,” he breathed heavily.
“What?” I panted.
“You’re my perfect Scottish dance partner.”
“And it appears that you are mine, too, King Toran. You’re a fine dancing partner. Quick on those feet of yours.”
I wanted to kiss him so much, I tingled in my
privates.
Did I know how to kiss okay still? It had been a long time. Would my lips forget?
Would my breath be okay?
What about my tongue? Did he like French kissing? Did I know how to do it right anymore?
I couldn’t help smiling at him as he yanked me up and we did the twist. I wanted to pull him down on top of me and link my ankles behind his shoulders.
I was beginning to believe that all of my sex thoughts were disrespectful to Toran’s intellect and fine character.
Nah.
I woke up the next morning and stretched in my flannel nightgown. I actually hurt in a few places because I shook my buttocks so hard on the dance floor.
Last night, I’d danced. My whole body moved to the beat. Yes, I, Charlotte Mackintosh, had found my beat. My rhythm. My dancing shoes, which ended up being my bare feet.
I had danced with Toran.
I pulled the sheet over my head, then wriggled myself as hard as I could.
I was a dancing girl again.
Romance Readers and Writers Magazine
By Kitty Rosemary
Books For Chicks Reviewer
MY OH MY, THE LITERARY SECRETS I’LL TELL
This week I’m writing about the mysterious, elusive Georgia Chandler. Her latest book, Danger, Doughnuts, and a Latin Lover, A Romantic Time Travel Adventure, Book Number Nine, is still topping the charts since it debuted sixteen weeks ago. She has sold approximately ten million books, but who’s counting?
La-di-da, I love ’em all.
Her protagonist, McKenzie Rae Dean, is a saucy, adventurous, lusty character who is afraid of chains, enclosed spaces, and sausages, because of the phallic shape, and thinks pudding is disgusting. She is surprisingly emotionally deep and her problems, fears, and personal pain strikes women readers straight in the gut.
McKenzie Rae Dean rocks my literary world, I am telling you.
We all know everything about McKenzie Rae Dean, but the question that lights my brain on fire and smokes it, as a book reporter is, who is author Georgia Chandler?
I’ll tell you what I know. Don’t breathe a word of it to anyone else!
As some of you know, Georgia Chandler’s real name is Charlotte Mackintosh.
We know that Charlotte Mackintosh received degrees in biology and physics from Stanford and went to work at a research lab after graduation. We know she published her first book when she was twenty-five. We know there are eight books after that and she lives, reputedly, on an island off the coast of Washington.
But there are other rumors that she spends part of every year in Tibet in meditation, in China with monks, and in Africa on months-long safaris. I’ve heard rumors that she particularly likes watching apes in their natural habitat.
So the recluse part? I’m not so sure about that. The sleuth in me is doubtful.
We also know that she is unmarried, but again, through the grapevine, I’ve heard there are men. Men plural, isn’t that titillating? She’s like McKenzie Rae Dean. Voracious!
And we’ve heard that she doesn’t tell those men that she’s Georgia Chandler, New York Times bestselling author. In fact, she tells them she’s, get this, a fourth-grade teacher! Hilarious! Tickle my tummy, doesn’t that give you a giggle?
But that’s all we know. She refuses to give interviews. She refuses to answer questions by letter or by phone. She is a mystery, and I don’t like mysteries. I like to open them wiiiide up and reveal it all, drum roll, please!
Her New York agent, Maybelle Courten, says that Ms. Mackintosh/Georgia Chandler wants her readers to focus on the stories in her romantic time travel adventure series and not her.
“Georgia Chandler loves and appreciates her readers, but she likes her privacy.” Asked if she traveled in disguise all over the world, Courten said, “Georgia needs to nurture her creative energy. Sometimes she takes herself off on adventures to exotic worldwide locales and uses a fake name and identity. She keeps her love life private. I absolutely cannot comment on the men who are in and out of her life to protect her privacy and theirs.”
There have been no photos of Georgia Chandler/Charlotte Mackintosh in ten years. There have been no appearances.
As one fan, Dr. Barbara said (she told me I couldn’t print her last name as she’s up for tenure), “I’m a chemistry professor at an elite university. I read Georgia Chandler’s books to relax. Do I want to go home and read one of those gloomy literary novels where life sucked, life sucks now, and life will suck in the future? Those dreary ones that win awards and pompous people pretend they read? No. Hell, no. I don’t. I want to read about McKenzie Rae Dean’s adventures traveling through time and the sexy men she ends up naked in bed with.”
Samantha Pho, who owns her own import-export business said, “I often pretend that I’m McKenzie Rae Dean. Sometimes when I’m bored at work, I write down where I want to go and to what time period. I even bought a red bag, exactly like hers, so when I’m in business meetings, I can channel her aura. Crazy, I know. And I don’t like pudding or sausage anymore, either.”
Next year another book will come out.
You will not be hearing from Georgia Chandler.
(Unless I, dear friends, do some poking and prodding and find out the real truth about Georgia Chandler/Charlotte Mackintosh. And I shall pop some champagne and share it all with you!)
Secrets, secrets, they tickle my fancy.
Ta-ta for now!
Kiss, kiss!
Kitty Rosemary
In each one of my books, McKenzie Rae is working as a minimalist artist in Seattle. She draws the exact same type of drawings that Bridget did. A full scene. Lots of color, tiniest details. She sells her work at art shows and sometimes she sits near Pike Place Market and draws and sells her work right off her easel.
Sometimes I keep McKenzie Rae in her new time period for months, other times she stays for a lifetime, then I whisk her back on her deathbed. In the first novel, McKenzie Rae Dean falls in love with her soul mate. They are married for ten blissful years, then she’s whisked back to current time and she can’t get back to him.
She falls in love with other men, one a book, but she never forgets the soul mate, in the almost two hundred years she racks up time traveling.
McKenzie Rae and I are radically different in a multitude of ways. McKenzie Rae is daring and brave. I like being home and frighten easily. McKenzie Rae is witty and funny. I am not sure I have a sense of humor. McKenzie Rae is outgoing and social. I like to be alone and I don’t like people much.
McKenzie Rae dresses in silks and high heels. She flashes her cleavage and butt. I prefer my long skirts, bulky sweaters to cover my body, and shoes that are flat and comfy.
McKenzie Rae is good in bed, passionate and free. She has experience.
It’s embarrassing to admit how little va-va-vooming I’ve had in bed. I am probably a sexual dud.
McKenzie Rae would never need a vibrator named Dan, like me.
We do have one thing in common, though: McKenzie Rae has a soul mate she can’t have.
I have the same problem.
I understand her angst and longing.
I was married once. He was not my soul mate. It lasted two years. By the end of it, I felt shriveled, exhausted, and defeated. I was surprised and unprepared for what I found out about my husband. On one hand, it was devastating. On the other, it was not my fault. I realize that now. It sure hurt then.
I knew Toran knew about the divorce. Maybe I would talk about it with him.
If I had married Toran, that never would have happened.
Toran told me about two home remodelers named Stanley I and Stanley II. They were cousins. I called Stanley I from Toran’s and met both Stanley I and Stanley II at the house the next day. They were about forty-five and have been remodeling and building homes since they were nineteen.
Apparently Stanley I and Stanley II had mothers who were sisters who both wanted to name their children after their father. Neither one would back down. S
o, Stanley I and Stanley II were born. Stanley II was born one month after Stanley I.
Stanley II asked where I was from, and when I said an island off the coast of Washington, we talked about whales and migration. His knowledge about them was extensive. Stanley I had extensive knowledge about the American stock market. “A gamble, if you ask me, run fast and loose by gamblers and gangsters, sanctified by the American government.”
I knew we would be able to relate. They were smart, had ideas already about what to do with my home, and they were experienced, honest, and articulate.
I hired them and promised to get them a check. They would start immediately, but they couldn’t work this weekend. Stanley II’s daughter was getting married. “Got a temper that one, feisty as a tornado, fiancé is half deaf. I think it will work out because of the deafness, I do.”
“Maisie has her mother’s temper,” Stanley I said.
“And I have been married to that woman with that temper for twenty-five years.” Stanley II sighed.
“Must not have bothered you that much, as you have six kids,” I said.
“My woman, she does let the steam blow off of her when she has her feelings in a stew and a boil, but, to this day, I cannot say I have ever met a woman I wanted to be with more than my Serena.”
“Serena is a blessing, a true Scottish wife,” Stanley I said, nodding. “I’ve been married for twenty years, to my Isla. Five kids.”
“You two have a lot of kids,” I said.
“Too many,” they said together.
We all laughed.
“Any named Stanley?”
Yes, one boy each. Stanley III, Stanley IV.
Dear Charlotte,
I so enjoyed catching up with you when you came to get the key for your cottage. I also enjoyed showing you my garden and your mother’s goldenrod daisies and the honeysuckle vine while we had our tea. Please excuse my emotional response when I saw you, the tears that leapt unbidden to my eyes. It was a gift to see you again, to see the daughter of my friends, all grown up now.
