by Sandi Lynn
She Writes Love...
Sandi Lynn
She Writes Love...
Copyright © 2015 Sandi Lynn
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used factitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover Design by Cover It Designs
Stock Photo Image ID: 168710183
Copyright Es75
www.Shutterstock.com
Editing by B.Z. Hercules
Dedication
To all my hopeless romantic readers. Without you, this book wouldn’t have been possible.
I want to especially thank my amazing friend, S. Moose Author, for taking the time to read this book while it was in the works. Thank you for always being such a great friend.
Table of Contents
Paisley
Ben
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
About The Author
Playlist
Paisley
The circle of life. It’s something we all know about but are never truly prepared for the unexpected. The unexpected that comes out of nowhere. No warning, no heads up, nothing. Just God giving us pure bliss and happiness and then taking it away in the blink of an eye. When you think of people dying, you think of the old who have fully lived their lives. You don’t think about the younger people who have just begun to build their futures, nor do you think about the children that have just begun to live. It’s cruel and it’s unwanted. It leaves us devastated and to the point where we feel we can’t go on. It leaves a hole, an empty space in our hearts that stays with us until we heal. We all heal eventually, right? As the days go on and the years pass by, we never forget the ones we lost and we never forget the pain they left behind. But we do manage to feel somewhat normal again – maybe not completely – but we have no choice. For me, losing my husband to a massive heart attack on our one-year wedding anniversary, and at the age of twenty-seven, was something I didn’t think I could ever heal from. The emptiness, the loneliness, the numbness, and the need just to get through the day was overwhelming. My name is Paisley Logan and this is my story.
Ben
Life. Full of surprises, disappointments, and heartache. It’s strange how we live life with certainty. We’re certain that we’ll find the love of our life, get married, have children, and live happily ever after. No one is ever prepared when a life-threatening illness hits. We’re so busy living our daily lives that we don’t think about such things. I was naïve until my wife was diagnosed with cervical cancer and passed away less than a year later. I was angry. She was the love of my life and we’d only been married five years. We wanted to start a family, and it was when she had trouble getting pregnant that she was diagnosed. I’d never lost anyone before. I’d never experienced death. I felt like God was playing a cruel joke on me. How could he bring her into my life and then take her away so young. Even the best laid plans in life get altered. Mine did. Everyone kept telling me that time would heal all wounds, but this was a wound that would never fully be healed. Trying to get back to the normalcy of life was exhausting, so I didn’t try anymore. My name is Ben Preston and this is my story.
Chapter 1
Paisley
Life was beautiful. So beautiful, it seemed like a sin. At twenty-six years old and a happily married newlywed to the man of my dreams, I couldn’t think of anything more I wanted. We lived in Los Angeles in a cute little home that we designed and built. A home with four bedrooms; a master bedroom and three extra rooms for the three children we planned to have. My husband graduated from Harvard in the top of his class and set out to work for one of the most prestigious financial companies in the world, where he was the youngest ever to land a top managerial position in the company. I graduated from UCLA with a BA in English and took on a job writing a column for the LA Times. We were so incredibly happy that it seemed unreal. We had sex seven nights a week and, every morning, we would get up at five thirty a.m. and go running. Fitness was important to both of us and we never missed a day. I cooked dinner just about every night, with the exception of Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. Those were date nights and we always went out to dinner or out with friends. On Sundays, my mom had family dinner and we were all expected to be there. We were perfect in everyone’s eyes, including our own.
We met when we both were twenty years old at a birthday party for a friend of a friend. It was love at first sight, or should I say, love at first words because I heard his voice from behind before I even saw his face. I had stepped outside on the porch one calm warm night in August to have a cigarette. As I flicked the lighter, I heard someone behind me.
“Do you really like to do that?” he asked.
I slowly turned my head and my green eyes met his, and the smile on his face captured me in the most exciting way that I had never been captured before. I never did smoke that cigarette or any others after that. We spent every waking moment together. Four years later, we were engaged, and two years later, married. My world and my universe were complete, until the day of our one-year wedding anniversary when we were supposed to be road tripping to Montana, but instead, I spent the day mourning my husband’s death. At twenty-seven years old, I was a widow.
****
“Paisley, are you okay?” my sister Piper asked.
“Huh?” I blankly stared at her.
“You looked like you were in la-la land and I need your opinion on this dress.”
She emerged from the fitting room in a black and white polka dot dress. Liam, her boyfriend, was taking her to a fancy restaurant for their one-year dating anniversary.
“I like it. It looks good on you.”
She gave me that sympathetic look that everyone gave me. The “I feel so bad for her” look. The unwelcomed pity that I didn’t want. I just desired to be left alone, but my family wasn’t having any of that. Since my husband passed away, they had become overbearing.
“I think so too. I’m going to buy it!” She smiled.
I had two sisters and a brother. My sisters were Charlotte, who was thirty-one years old and Piper, who was twenty-nine. Then there was Keaton, our brother, who just turned twenty-one. Charlotte was a nurse at Cedars Sinai Hospital, and Piper was a model, who was afraid that, because she was twenty-nine years old, her career was coming to an end. She was the very reason my family packed us up from our family home in
Connecticut and moved us out to Los Angeles sixteen years ago. She was scouted at the local mall and appeared in her first teen magazine when she was thirteen. Keaton was Keaton. He wasn’t interested in college, but managed to land a job working for a top web design company in L.A. He didn’t need to spend much time at the office, so he spent most of his days surfing and working from home. As for me, I was known as “Dear Paisley.” I wrote about love and relationships for the L.A. Times. It was a job I stumbled onto by accident when I was hired as a freelance writer by Kenny, a man who took a chance on me after I criticized one of his articles. The paper had come up with the idea to do a romance column because they wanted to expand their readership to more than just men. Kenny hired Cora and she instantly flopped by giving the worst possible advice. When the column was going belly up, Kenny asked me if I could step in and maybe answer a couple of questions. Needless to say, people liked what I had to say. He fired Cora and labeled me as “Dear Paisley.”
****
Piper dropped me off at home and left to get ready for her date with Liam. I slipped the key into the lock and walked into my empty, lonely house.
“Hi, Romeo.” I smiled as he rubbed up against my leg, welcoming me home.
My mom came over about a month after my husband died and brought me Romeo. He was a three-year-old Siamese cat whose owner had passed away. According to my mom, Romeo and I needed each other because we shared a common bond. I wasn’t a big cat lover, but after spending one night with him, he stole my heart. He followed me into the kitchen and made sure to let me know his food bowl was empty. As I fed the little guy, my phone rang, and when I looked over at it on the counter, I saw my mom was calling.
“Hi, Mom,” I answered.
“Hello, Paisley. I wanted to know if you would like to join me and your dad for dinner tonight.”
I sighed as I put my hand over the receiver. “I can’t tonight. I have a lot of work to do, plus I’ll see you in a couple of days for the family dinner.”
“You need to get out more. I’m worried about you.”
“Mom, don’t—”
“Paisley, it’s the truth and you know it. Sweetheart, it’s been almost a year.”
“Oh, Mom, let me call you back later. Kenny’s calling.”
I hit the end button. I felt bad for lying to her, but my family needed to understand that when I was ready to venture out into the world and become social again, I would. I didn’t care if it took me two, three, or more years. It was when I was ready and nobody else.
Chapter 2
Ben
I was a fireman for the Los Angeles Fire Department. It was something I’d wanted to be ever since my mom bought me my first fire truck at the age of six. Now, twenty-three years later, I was doing a job I loved. My wife, Amy, passed away almost a year ago. I thought about her every single day and I still hadn’t had the courage to clean out her things from the house. Our closet still housed all her beautiful clothes and our bathroom still had all her makeup in it. I missed her like hell and hated God for taking her away from me. I was angry, bitter, and lost without her in my life. My mom told me that I needed to seek counseling, but the only thing a counselor was going to do was tell me that I needed to move on with my life and, little by little, the thought of Amy would disappear. I didn’t want her to disappear. My memories. Our memories were all I had left and I was holding on with every last breath I had. Cancer had taken her and our dreams away.
I was sitting in the garage doing the second thing I loved, building furniture, when the house door opened and Finn was standing there.
“Hey, bro, I was wondering if you wanted to go out with me and Olivia later. We’re going to that new art gallery over on Sunset that just opened.”
“Nah. I can’t tonight.”
He walked over and ran his hand across the desk I had half finished. “Are you ever going to finish this?” he asked.
“I don’t know. There’s really no point now.”
The desk was something I started when Amy was first diagnosed with cancer. I was making it for her as a Christmas present. She always complained about the old ratty one we already had and wanted something bigger. She’d seen the one she liked in an antique store we visited when we were in Maine. I took a photo and began to duplicate it. She never knew about it. I kept it hidden in the corner of the garage with a sheet covering it when I wasn’t working on it. Since she passed, I never saw the purpose to finish it.
Finn, my twenty-seven-year-old brother, had been trying to get me out of the house since Amy died. I had no interest in going out. Being a fireman and building furniture was all I needed. The one place I did go to was the Sunset Bar. It was the place Amy and I went every Friday night for fish and chips. Now, instead of sitting at a table, I sit up at the bar.
“You’ve never not finished anything you started, Ben. It’s not like you.”
“Things are different now. I’m different now and I see no reason to finish the damn desk. So can we please move on to a different subject?” I said as nicely as possible.
“You’re not different, bro. You’re the same brother I’ve known my entire life. Your circumstances changed, not you. I gotta go. Olivia’s getting off work early and we’re going to dinner before we head to the art gallery. If you change your mind, call me.”
“Thanks, but I won’t be changing my mind,” I said as I carefully sanded the top of a table I was building.
****
“Evening, Ben,” Damian, the bartender, said.
“Hey, Damian.”
“Usual?”
“Yep. Just like every other Friday.”
I sat on the barstool and grabbed a few peanuts from the bowl that he set in front of me. Since Amy and I were regulars, Damian got to know us, and when she became sick, he paid her a visit in the hospital. After Amy passed, and I still came into the bar every Friday night, he would put a reserved sign on the counter in front of the stool. I knew everyone in the place. I was the man they all felt sorry for; the twenty-nine-year-old guy that lost his wife to cancer. As I picked up the beer bottle and brought it up to my mouth, a man took a seat next to me.
“How about them Kings,” he said.
“They just might make it into the playoffs,” I said as I took a swig of beer.
“Here’s hoping they do.” He smiled as he held up his beer bottle.
I finished up my fish and chips and continued to have a small conversation with the guy next to me.
Chapter 3
Paisley
Romeo followed me into the garage, where I took a cigarette from my pack and lit it. This was my vice to get me through the days. My family wasn’t happy that I started smoking again, but it wasn’t their life to live and I made that very clear. Romeo jumped up on the workbench and rubbed his head against my arm.
“What’s wrong, Romeo?”
He meowed. Sometimes we could carry on full conversations. As I was petting his head, my phone rang. It was Kenny.
“Hello, Kenny.”
“Paisley, did you finish the article yet for next week’s publication?”
“I’m working on it right now. I’ll email it to you tonight.”
“You better. The print department is on my back.”
“Bye, Kenny.”
I sighed. When I finished my cigarette, I picked up Romeo and went back inside to sit at my computer and finish up the questions I so desperately didn’t want to answer. Just as I finished typing the last word and hit the save button, the doorbell rang. I got up and looked out the window to see my darling brother Keaton standing there.
“Keaton, how nice of you to drop by,” I said as I rolled my eyes, knowing who had sent him.
He held up the large brown bag in his hand. “Don’t hate. Mom just asked that if I wasn’t doing anything tonight, if I would stop over and see how you were doing. I brought some Pad Thai and spring rolls.” He smiled.
“Get in here,” I said as I took the bag from him and took it to the kitchen.
/> Romeo came out of hiding and rubbed up against Keaton’s leg.
“Hey, Romeo,” he said as he picked him up and gave him a kiss.
I took a couple of plates from the cupboard and set them on the table. “So what have you been doing since the last time I saw you three days ago?” I smiled.
“The usual. Surfing, building some websites, picking up chicks.”
“So I take it you and Elena are over?”
“I like to think we’re on a break,” he said as he put Romeo down.
I brought the food to the table and we both sat down. “I like Elena. Why are you taking a break?”
“I don’t know. We’ve been fighting a lot.”
“About what?” I asked as I scooped some Pad Thai onto my plate.
“Is this where you’re going to give me some love advice?”
“Nah, I’m off the clock.” I smiled as I bit into the spring roll.
Keaton, with his six-foot stature, neutral brown hair, dreamy hazel eyes, and a ripped surfer’s body, made women gravitate towards him as if he were some kind of magnet.
“Good, because I don’t want any. I’m living life free, sis. I don’t want to be tied down to one person. There are a whole lot of women out there to explore.”
I rolled my eyes.
“How about you?”
“How about me what?” I got up and grabbed a bottle of merlot and two glasses.
“There are a lot of men out there to explore.”
My family’s very existence these days consisted of trying to get me to find someone. What they didn’t understand was that I didn’t want anyone else. I wanted my husband back and I wanted what we had back. The only thing I saw right now for me was a future of being alone.
“No thanks. I had my guy and he was ripped away from me in a matter of seconds.”
Keaton never looked at me with the sadness that the rest of the family did. He saw me as something else. Not just a woman who lost her husband, but a survivor. At least that was what he called me.
“You know, Paisley, there are other guys out there for you.”
“I don’t want to talk about this!” I said in a raised voice.
