Jack & Diane

by Hampton, Lena

  Thank you so much for reading my book! I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed telling it. If you did enjoy it, please leave a review. Even a short review is a great way to support me and help other’s enjoy Jack and Diane’s story. Help a friend discover my work by lending this book.

  You can find me online at www.bylenahampton.com, or on Facebook (facebook.com/bylenahampton) and Pinterest (pinterest.com/lenahampton). To get updates on future releases, receive excerpts, and win prizes join my mailing list. Write to lenahampton@outlook.com with “subscribe” in the subject heading. I promise I won’t spam you or share your address.

  Love,

  Lena

  Jack & Diane is the first book in the Hoosier Hearts series.

  Coming in 2014

  Someone to Love

  Ever since her parents sudden death, Noli (short for Magnolia) Freeman has been been travelling trying to outrun her grief and avoid getting too close to anyone she may lose. She returns to Indiana to help plan her cousin’s wedding and is immediately attracted to the groom’s best friend Cooper Smith. Too afraid to allow herself to love him, she leaves town soon after her bridesmaid duties are done.

  Cooper hasn’t believed in love since his father abandoned him and left his mother a heartbroken shadow of herself. He vows never to fall in love and keeps all his ties to women loose. That is until he meets Noli. He thinks that she’ll be another temporary fling but breaks his vow and is rewarded with a broken heart when she leaves as suddenly as his dad did all those years before.

  As hard as Noli tries, it’s impossible to block the memories of Cooper out of her mind or her heart, especially when there’s a permanent reminder of him growing inside her.

  Can they get beyond their pasts and realize they’ve found someone to love?

  The Nearness Of You

  Political consultant Amara Adams fell in love with her best friend’s older brother when she was five. She thought all her dreams had come true when she found herself standing next to him at a Vegas wedding chapel. Those dreams quickly turned to nightmares when she believed he used her love for him to further his career.

  Ryan Clark knew that breaking the career-making news story about his bride’s boss would cause problems in their marriage, but he didn’t think she’d refuse to speak to him except to ask for an annulment. All his attempts to reconcile proved futile, until he tricked his way into becoming her housemate.

  Just as the their nearness brought them back together, he uncovered secrets about the new candidate she was working for that would put the nail in her career’s coffin- and their marriage.

  Will he choose his love for her over his career this time?

  Acknowledgements

  First and foremost I want to thank God for giving me the gift to create stories and characters. It took me awhile to stop hiding my candle under a bushel. Now I’m letting it shine and hopefully reflecting You in my writing.

  I also want to acknowledge myself. Not in the conceited “I did this all by myself” way but in the “I’m shocked I finally completed a novel after all these years” way. Over the last couple of decades I’d accumulated countless character profiles, outlines, first chapters, and other various parts of books without finishing a single one. As one of my friends so aptly put it, this has been a long time coming.

  The two people I hold most responsible for me finally completing this work are Michele Kimbrough and Chris Baty. Michele is my cousin. One day in 2011, probably about October 22nd, she asked on Facebook who else was going to participate in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). I clicked the link and saw that it was a 30 day 50,000 word challenge. It sounded crazy. I like crazy, I do it very well. Chris Baty is the person that started the insanity that is NaNoWriMo. His idea to challenge writers to just write until they get to 50K words made me chain and duct tape my self-editor in the locked basement of my mind until I got to the end. I truly believe Jack and Diane would still just be an idea and a few disorganized plot notes if I was not determined to win the challenge.

  Michele did more than make me aware of the challenge. She also provided support in the form of weekly video chats. We bounced around ideas about or novels and encouraged each other during the month of NanoWriMo. The video chats didn’t stop. It was her continued support and faith in my storytelling skills that made me go forth with not just finishing a novel, but getting it out there in the world.

  My children also deserve thanks, too. I was constantly telling them to use their gifts. This fell under the do as I say, not as I do category of parenting. I know that parenting by example is a much better way to get the message across, so I took my own advice. I wanted to show them that they can do anything they put their minds to because I did.

  On that same note, thanks to my sister Angee and my mother Mary. They are extremely creative and talented, and I’ve been trying to get them to put their ideas and art out into the world for years. Me finally sharing my talents has spoken more to them than any of my talking ever did. They have been amongst my biggest supporters and champions through the entire process.

  Thanks to all those that helped polished my rough into a diamond (or at least a CZ) by reading and critiquing my work. My sister Angee, who understood exactly who I had in mind as I wrote Catherine. My friend Carlton who helped me have the with the male perspective and much more. Thanks to my “proofreader” Jenn for finding inconsistencies and her other valuable comments that let me know when I was on the right path or when I was out in the woods. Once again, thanks to Michele for her countless reads during every stage of the book and turning it into a page turner.

  Thanks to all those who have said they were proud of me or are just as excited as I am about this. Your encouragement is priceless.

  Thanks to Art Fry (inventor of the Post-It Note) for making my ideas and random dialogue stick around long enough to make it onto the page. Even these acknowledgements started out on his invention.

  Finally, thanks to Google for giving me a place to write, get feedback, and hangout with Michele all for free.

  PART ONE

  The truth lay somewhere beneath the wide brushstrokes of reds and blues and greens, crafted into a portrait of a life unfolding. Its existence had been transformed like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon. It was a new translation of itself. A vision imagined. An innocence provoked. A thought transcribed upon its face. Life was just like that for Prudence Payne, so many layers of ideas, dreams, visions and thoughts were cast upon her that she no longer recognized her own truth: her hopes, dreams and vision for her life.

  James was one of those broad strokes in Pru’s life. She wrestled with how far she’d come in her relationship with him. In the beginning it was exciting. He moved heaven and earth for her. If he could’ve given her the moon, he would have. His emails were poetic professions of his love for her. She’d look forward to hearing his soothing voice before going to bed. She’d long for his passionate kisses and slow hand caressing her milky brown skin. She’d languish in his embrace while he took his time with her, placing her satisfaction above his. Now, a few nipple twists and a wet sloppy tongue in the ear constituted foreplay.

  The alarm sounded. Pru hit the snooze button without looking at the clock. She knew she had another ten minutes to ease out of bed. She lay quietly trying to regain focus through her partially open eyes. Peering across the room, her blurred vision rested upon the easel in the corner; the painting she’d been working on rested on the weathered tripod — paint brushes still dangling in the murky water. The self-portrait was shrouded underneath a paint-stained canvas cloth. The portrait wasn’t quite right, the interpretation was . . . off. She’d had trouble with self-portraits in the past so she thought she’d give it another try. This one, well — it wasn’t that the portrait didn’t look like her. It did. Her dissatisfaction was more about how she felt when she looked at it. The colors, the strokes, even the choice of paint brush made all the difference. What made it difficult for her was that she tended to be too c
areful, too calculated. And when her decisions weren’t the best ones — with each mistake, each overcorrection — she was forced to work with the choices she had made. She couldn’t ‘unpaint’ the canvas.

  She rolled over and nestled her face between James’ chest muscles, feeling his heartbeat against her cheek. He wrapped his arm around her, clutching her shoulder to pull her closer. In only five minutes, the alarm would beep again, signaling their final warning to get out of bed. She hated parting with him even though she felt a tinge of resentment towards him. These days, her moments with James were bittersweet. She wanted him, yet, at the same time, she didn’t. The dichotomy baffled her. Nonetheless, she accepted whatever time he gave her as she always had.

  The alarm blared once again from the clock radio beside her bed. She bypassed the snooze button this time, slapped her hand on the off switch and pried herself from James’ grasp. He grunted as he felt the brush of cool air replace her warm body.

  “Get back in bed,” he grumbled in a husky hoarse tone.

  “Come on, babe, you’ve gotta get going,” Pru insisted without looking at him.

  She brushed her bangs away from her face with her fingers. She’d usually make sure he was up and getting ready before she left for her weekly tennis match with Jessica. If he was still lingering in her condo when she got back from the tennis club, she expected she’d have hell to pay for not getting him out on time. Not because James would have a problem. He preferred to spend a casual morning with Pru. It was the Hell-in-Heels that concerned her — Nadine.

  She grabbed her robe from the bedside chair and slid her recently pedicured feet into her slippers. She turned around and gazed at James who pulled the covers over his eyes to block the blossoming daylight. When they met eleven years ago, his hair was thick and curly. Now it was thinning at the crown forming a small bald spot. His once jet black hair was graying slightly at the temple with speckles of gray throughout. She liked the salt and pepper look on him. He looked even more distinguished than before.

  Pru made her way to the bathroom to run the water for her shower, allowing it to warm up. She stood in front of the mirror which hung over the sink that now had small spatters of toothpaste on the lower half. She reached under the sink for the Windex wipes and cleaned the mirror then looked closer at her reflection. Her brown hair with spiraled tight curls was disheveled — matted, even. I hate my hair. She thought back to earlier years when she’d awaken before James in order to freshen up, brush her hair, and even add a little gloss to her lips and a light touch of blush to her cheeks, giving her a morning glow. Now, James was lucky if she got up to brush her teeth before kissing him.

  She tapped her iPod docked on the rack above the commode. A few moments later Marvin Gaye’s velvety voice was crooning Let’s Get It On. As she disrobed to step into the shower, she heard James’ footsteps thumping against the wood floor. She smiled. Ah, movement. He won’t be late again. She hoped he’d get the coffee started. Instead, he crept behind her, grabbing her breasts into the palm of his hands. His erection pressed against her back. He leaned down to kiss her neck and worked his way to her ear, whispering in tune with Marvin, “let’s get it on, sugar, let’s get it on — ooh ooh ooh”. His breath was warm and moist against her cheek. His tongue outlined her earlobe just before he planted a wet one close to but not on her ear. She pulled away.

  “Come on, James. You’re going to be late.”

  He grimaced and continued to caress her naked body while singing along with the Motown classic.

  “Really, James. Why don’t you go start the coffee, babe?”

  His advances were usually welcomed but it was more important to get him out of her condo on time. He couldn’t be late anymore. Besides, Pru was growing weary of the same old routine. Perhaps the right word to use would be bored. He didn’t excite her like he used to. Sure, he was sexy and desirable, and she mostly felt lucky that he wanted her. But something was brewing deep down in her subconscious or maybe it was in her gut or her heart; it was certainly somewhere out of reach. She couldn’t quite get to it, pull it out, or give it a name. Yet, she felt it — like the aches that came before the rain.

  She managed to free herself from his grip and turned to face him. His tall frame towered over her. His deep brown eyes were piercing. It was hard for Pru to say no to him, even though she struggled with whatever was brewing down there in her gut, in her subconscious. He was handsome. Dashing, even — in a Richard Gere kind of way. His fair, nearly pale skin, which was in perfect contrast to her brown skin, was smooth and hairless. His hands were soft — softer than hers. He believed a man’s hands should be soft against a woman’s body, not calloused and rough, scratching her delicate skin.

  “Just one for the road, Pru . . . baby?”

  She smirked. He could be irresistible when he begged.

  “No, James.”

  She placed her hands on his chest to create distance between them. Something in that moment took her back eleven years when she first met James. It might’ve been the song that was now playing, an old favorite of hers by Luther Vandross, So Amazing. Yes, it was the song that drew her back.

  Pru remembered how excited and nervous she had been when she was about to have her first date with James. Who was this tall, gorgeous attorney who seemed besotted with her? He had swept Pru off of her feet in an instant and she waited with bated breath for his call to confirm their plans. When he finally called, she decided to meet him at the restaurant rather than having him pick her up. She was more comfortable with that arrangement.

  Standing across from the large ornate mirror at the entrance of the bar, she checked her hair and lipstick. Perfect. She felt good. She looked good, too, in her cute denim jacket over her clingy dress she snagged at a consignment shop. She had trouble deciding if she wanted to wear her sandals with the four inch heel or her peep-toe summer booties with a more modest height. She opted for the latter but wondered if she was too understated.

  She was early but she wanted to get there first to watch him walk in. James was the kind of man she could look at all day and still want to look some more. She decided to wait at the bar, enjoying a robust red wine.

  “Am I late?”

  She looked up and smiled. Doggonit, I missed it. I wanted to see him walk in.

  “No. Right on time.” Her pulse was racing. He noticed her empty wine glass and ordered two more — one was for him, of course.

  “You look dazzling,” he said.

  The waiter came to escort them to their table. As James grabbed their glasses of wine that the bartender sat on the bar, Pru noticed how masculine he was, so raw and so big.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked after they were seated.

  He looked at her, his eyes slowly roving her body from her waist up to her sultry hazel eyes lingering briefly at her full lips. He lifted an eyebrow, “for what’s on the menu, you mean?”

  She couldn’t believe she was blushing. She felt flushed and giddy. “Yes,” she said without looking at him.

  “Well, I suppose. Unless you’re offering something that I can’t find on the menu.”

  Damn, she thought. What have I gotten myself into?

  He was irresistible but her vow of celibacy was more important than the lust that was rushing through her veins at the moment.

  “Will you excuse me,” she said. “I need to go to the little girl’s room.”

  As she stood, he got up so quickly she was startled. He placed his hand on the small of her back just below her denim jacket. She felt the warmth of his hand radiating through her dress. God, it’s hot in here, she thought. She looked up at him, his gaze locked on her.

  “I’ll be right back,” she said.

  He watched her walk away, admiring her smooth gait as her hips swung slightly from side to side.

  She stood in the mirror trying to regain her composure. She gave herself the run down. He’d buy her dinner, flirt with her and she might even kiss him goodnight at the end of the evening, perhaps eve
n encourage another date. She loathed being flustered but the way he focused his deep brown eyes on her, she feared she’d go limp.

  When she arrived back at the table, James stood. That courteous, gentlemanly act was such a cliché but she liked it. The first time she saw him, he was in a suit looking sexy but business-like. Tonight, he was casual in his sports coat and blue jeans. She didn’t realize how hungrily she was staring at him until her eyes completely meandered around his biceps and up his chest, past his neck and onto the sharp features of his face when her gaze locked with his.

  Her thoughts ran the gamut from prim and proper to lust. She considered skipping dinner and diving right into dessert. He seemed too good to be true. And there he was with her. He could’ve had his pick of any woman, but it was Pru who intrigued him with her unusual good looks, captivating smile and charming laugh.

  James thought Pru was sexy in a way that women didn’t seem to allow themselves to be anymore. She was understated. Nothing flashy about her. And, it had been a long time since a woman grabbed his attention the way that Pru did.

  “You’re beautiful,” he said.

  “Thank you,” she said, not allowing herself to make eye contact with him, fearing his piercing gaze would make her go limp.

  He reached across the table and smoothed back her bangs that had fallen in her eyes, allowing his hand to lightly touch her cheek as he pulled away. Pru closed her eyes for a moment, relishing in the brief but sensual caress, feeling his warmth, smelling his scent. When she realized she was lost in that moment, she sharply pulled back to reality.