Table of Contents
Title Page
Newsletter
Prologue
Part One
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
Part Two
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
Epilogue
Preview: Just One Moment
Acknowledgements
Boston 5
The Ashcroft Saga
Just One Kiss
A Romance Novel
Poppy J. Anderson
This book is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, businesses, organizations, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Just One Kiss
Copyright © 2016 by Poppy J. Anderson
Cover design by Catrin Sommer – www.rauschgold.com
Edited by Annie Cosby
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First Publication: 2017
www.poppyjanderson.com
[email protected]
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Prologue
It wasn’t the blare of the sirens or the biting smoke that stung her nose and throat, it was her daughter’s anxious whimpering that reached her from the backseat and dragged her from the haze that had enveloped her. Something was terribly wrong. But Amy felt too drowsy to think straight. The pain came up abruptly and took her breath away, spreading out from her chest into every muscle of her body, making it difficult to inhale. She slowly opened her eyes, and her heart beat wildly when she saw the dashboard of her compact car was completely destroyed, the steering wheel stuck between door and hinge, she, herself, pushed against the windshield.
And then there was the smoke. It made her cough and gasp for air, while the heat underneath the thin soles of her summer shoes was unbearable. Fire. The word flashed through her stupefied mind. She moaned with pain when she tried to move, to get out of the seat. Her fingers were stiff as she plucked at her seatbelt, which did not yield and would not open. In her daze, she ignored the hot pain, going virtually numb with it as her bleeding fingertips snagged on a sharp splinter of metal.
Suddenly the whimpering in the backseat grew weaker. Amy was immediately jolted back into alertness. Panicking, she cried and tried to free herself from the crushed car. In vain.
“Audrey!” she called out over and over again. “Audrey, Mommy is here, baby! Mommy is here!”
Tears streamed from her eyes as she struggled to turn her head, sharp pain blossoming in her skull, and saw that Audrey’s car seat was crushed. Her daughter sat there at an unnatural angle, white as a sheet and not stirring. There was blood running down her face from her forehead, and her legs showed cuts and bruises. Her eyelids, with their thick lashes, fluttered a little, but her eyes didn’t open.
“Audrey!” Amy began to sob frantically. “Look at Mommy! Look at me, honey, please! Do it for Mommy, come on!”
But the five-year-old did not move. Amy yelled and screamed for help, and tore at her seatbelt, which would not open. She tried to reach out to the backseat, but she could not reach her daughter.
“Help! HELP! My daughter is in here! Why isn’t anybody helping?”
She writhed and thrashed in her seat, screaming and tearing at the belt until her fingernails tore, but it was all to no avail. The smoke got thicker, obscuring her vision and making her cough so badly that her lungs began to burn. She tried to breathe, extricate herself from the trap of her seat, and ignore the incredible heat shooting up her legs, all the while screaming for help.
And then she lost consciousness.
Part One
Chapter 1
A few years earlier
When Amy Spencer left the tiny branch of the bank, she was tired, frustrated, and hungry. To top it all off, the room hadn’t been air-conditioned, so the result of her fifty-minute wait in a small, stuffy room without any windows was not only the beginning of a headache and a latent queasiness, but also sweat patches on her new blouse, which she had put on this morning when she’d left for her part-time job.
One of three part-time jobs, to be precise. Unfortunately, waitressing in a café right in the center of a tourist hotspot was as little fun as selling museum tickets, and conducting walking tours for American visitors who wanted to see ancient Rome.
It was August, which meant not only that the air was thick enough to cut in the narrow streets and alleys of the Italian metropolis, but also that any sane inhabitant had fled the city for the beach. Meanwhile, Rome was crowded with tourists reckless enough to want to be steered across the Roman Forum, through the Colosseum, and into the Vatican in unbearable heat. Amy had a tale or two of how exhausting it was, climbing the stairs of the ancient amphitheater in these all but sub-tropical temps while droning on about the Romans to a panting horde in shorts and flip-flops, explaining how the ancient people had even staged water battles in the giant oval 2,000 years ago. Ever since school had let out in the U.S., new wannabe cultural enthusiasts and their offspring came flying into Rome every day, parents determined to combine vacation and education for their kids. Most of the annoyed, pouting sons and daughters would have preferred to spend their time on the beach, instead of getting blisters amongst the antiquities of the Roman Empire. Amy saw it every day.
And she could relate to the teenagers.
Granted, she loved the ancient ruins, the time-honored sites, and adored the antique art of the Eternal City, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t have preferred to hit the beach in this weather. She didn’t have a choice, however. She had to earn money for her room and board. That was the only reason she spent most mornings waitressing, sat for interminable hours in a tiny kiosk selling museum tickets, and marched through the streets with a brightly painted stick in her hand, steering endless groups of tourists through the many passageways of Rome, making sure she didn’t lose a single sheep in her many flocks.
When she’d arrived in Rome almost a year ago, she’d been so much more optimistic and couldn’t wait to actually live in this fascinating city. Her daydreams had shown her a life filled with painting, eating gelato, and philosophizing about life. She’d expected to sit at the beautiful Tiber with her easel, painting one masterpiece after another.
For a small-town girl from North Carolina who had studied art and never had anything exciting happen in her life before, moving to Rome had been a dream come true.
It hadn’t taken her very long to realize that life in Rome was much more expensive than she’d thought, and that the Tiber was actually sludgy and smelled like a giant cesspool come summer. So, i
nstead of spending her time sitting in picturesque spots and painting, Amy had looked for a part-time job. She didn’t mean to complain, either, for she loved life in Rome, and, most days, she even enjoyed telling tourists about the fascinating buildings of the ancient Romans and showing them the splendor of the city.
But, at the moment, her mood was a little sour.
The hot weather made her feel sluggish, she hadn’t painted in a while, and to make matters worse, the banks were on strike again, which meant her account was as good as empty, with no transfers being processed.
She’s been warned about Roman bureaucracy, but she hadn’t thought it could really be that bad. This was the second day in a row she’d spent her lunch break marching to the bank, hoping to find money in her account. She only had forty euros left in her purse, and rent was due by the end of the week. The thought of not being able to give her landlord the money made her break out in another sweat. Signor Giordano was an older gentleman of the affectionate and understanding, grandfatherly type, and he rented her the two rooms in his ancient house in Trastevere for an absolute bargain price. She even called a tiny roof terrace her own. She didn’t want to owe money to Signor Giordano, of all people. He received only a meager pension himself and lived rather frugally.
She was frustrated when the bank teller had fobbed her off with a mere “maybe tomorrow,” and only after she’d waited for an eternity in the stuffy and overheated branch office. It meant she had no idea whether she’d be able to pay her rent that weekend.
The money she had saved so painstakingly back home was long gone. It was nothing short of a miracle that she’d had even enough savings to fly to Europe after graduating from college. No person with half a brain would major in art. At least, according to Amy’s great-aunt Hazel, who had raised her.
But for Amy, art had been the only possible career. She didn’t need a lot of money to be happy, no fancy apartment or pompous car. Instead of slaving away in an office, asking herself whether that was really the life she wished to live, she simply pursued the one thing that made her happy. Period.
She’d always dreamed of going to Europe to paint. Working in the places where the other great artists of history had worked before her.
Even though she could hardly remember anything about her mother, she recalled quite clearly how they had gone to a museum once, her mother showing her all of the paintings, the pair of them trailing through the halls for hours on end. Her mother’s enthusiasm for art had been tangible and contagious, and Amy had listened to her animated voice transfixed, clutching her mother’s warm hand and taking in a painting by Monet. Whenever she saw a Monet today, she could still hear her mother’s voice, could still feel a warm embrace and a kiss on her forehead.
Art was a connection, a lifeline to the mother she knew so little about. Painting meant everything to the girl who had lost her mom in a car accident right after starting elementary school. The girl who’s been sent to live with her great-aunt soon after, because her father couldn’t cope with the death of his wife and had taken to the bottle.
Most of the time, Amy expressed herself much more easily in her paintings than she could have in words. And they made her feel close to her mother, much closer than she’d ever been with her great-aunt. It wasn’t that she hadn’t gotten along with Hazel, for Amy was grateful the woman had taken in her great-niece. But their relationship had never been particularly affectionate. Aunt Hazel happened to be an extremely conservative lady. She never married and had been happy to devote her life to church work instead. Had she been born Catholic, she’d have become a nun, there was no doubt about that.
Hazel had not really understood or appreciated a child prone to daydreaming, one who, in turn, hadn’t found much solace in church and didn’t yearn to become a God-fearing housewife. Amy’s choice of career had irritated the hell out of the older woman, and the fact that she’d spent her entire life in the narrow circle of her small town had not helped either. After graduating from high school, Hazel had opposed Amy’s wish to go to college in another state. But Amy had gone anyway, and their relationship had been cool and distant ever since.
During her rare visits over the last few years, Amy had never been able to shake the feeling that Hazel looked at her now as if she were a Satanist ready to tear the wooden cross from the wall at any moment. Amy had even accompanied Aunt Hazel to church to show her good will, and had ignored the shocked look with which Hazel had scrutinized her pierced ears. If pierced ears were an indication of someone’s pact with the devil, her great-aunt had better never meet Amy’s tattooed art professor, who posed as a nude model for his students each semester.
Of course, that wasn’t entirely normal for Amy, either. She remembered quite vividly how, the first time, she had stared at her sketchbook with flaming cheeks, not knowing how to act. She’d taken art classes in high school, of course, but Mr. Camden, who’d also been her math teacher and who couldn’t distinguish between watercolors and crayons, would never have presented himself to his class in the nude, even if it was for practicing purposes. Not to mention if he had exposed his weak physique to the students, he would have been chased out of town by an outraged mob of righteous townspeople, probably complete with torches and pitchforks. After all, even teaching evolution was a sore spot in Garrington, and Amy guessed a naked art teacher would have been burned at the stake, right along with Darwin.
After living in Garrington for twelve years, it had been quite the adjustment for Amy to get used to naked, tattooed art professors, rollicking campus parties, and roommates who bought pregnancy tests every other month while pondering who might be the father of the possible baby. Amy might have been an artist, but she did not fit the stereotype—you know, advocating free love, drinking copious amounts of alcohol from noon to night, and trying to solve painter’s block with an assortment of drugs. In fact, Amy thought of herself as something of a prude. After all, she hadn’t had a boyfriend in high school.
The problem was, she was a hopeless romantic.
Even though it was considered old-fashioned and sometimes downright embarrassing for an emancipated twenty-first century woman, Amy was still of the opinion that you shouldn’t have indiscriminate sex or pick up every guy who crossed your path. Of course, she was no expert in human relationships. Once she began dating in college, she had only every slept with two men, and both had turned out to be total flops. Thus, it was no wonder Amy had decided she would only allow another guy into her life if she really fell in love.
At the moment, however, it did not seem likely. Not that it caused her sleepless nights or anything. She was no party animal and didn’t go out a lot. She wouldn’t have called herself a hermit, either, she just didn’t need a lot of people around all the time. After all, that’s what she had all day in each of her jobs. And since she didn’t go clubbing every night, like a lot of women her age, she rarely ever met men who interested her.
Unfortunately, the men already in her circle of friends were all artists as well, which meant they were quite the flirts. However much Amy might admire their artwork, she would never consider hooking up with one of them.
That would have seemed cheap.
Not wanting to focus on the sweltering heat any longer, nor her lack of funds or the depressing outlook on suitable men, she grabbed her backpack, put on her sunglasses, and headed for her favorite spot.
She was done for the day—finished guiding a herd of tourists through the Pantheon, selling tickets, and zigzagging through the café with a tray in her hands. She was free to go sit in the Garden of Oranges, the park beside Saint Sabina church, to enjoy the cloudless sky for a while and read a book. She’d also packed her drawing pad, but she was in a dry spell. She didn’t feel like tracing a single line on paper right now, so she assumed she would end up with the book anyway.
As she made her way to the other side of the Tiber, she almost lost heart and turned around. Each and every alleyway and sidewalk was crowded with tourists, who stopped every three ste
ps to take pictures of old buildings. Amy was normally an incredibly patient person, but today she couldn’t muster her usual indulgent smile for the gawping crowd of international visitors. Her own frustration was too all-encompassing for that.
When she finally reached the peaceful garden tucked away from the street, she breathed a sigh of relief, closed her eyes, and inhaled the spicy scent of the orange trees. The garden was considered an insider’s tip, and thankfully, it was accordingly deserted. The August heat made the air shimmer here as well, but since the garden was located on the Aventine Hill, a light breeze promised a little fresh air and made sitting very comfortable.
Amy smiled as she felt herself become enveloped in that peaceful quiet that was so rare in a city like Rome. She slipped out of her sandals and crossed the grass to sit in the shade of one of the trees and lean against the ancient trunk.
She simply sat there for a few moments, enjoying the twitter of the birds and stretching out her legs. Just when she was about to reach into her backpack for her book, her gaze discovered a man sitting on a bench, his face in profile, seemingly enjoying the view over Rome.
Her heart skittered a bit, which was very strange, since she’d never seen the man before. Maybe her fright was simply a reaction to the fact that she had thought herself quite alone in the garden. Or maybe her heart was suddenly beating such an erratic, wild tattoo because he possessed the most classical features she had ever encountered in real life. Maybe she couldn’t help studying him with such breathless wonder because she had never met such a good-looking man before. Straight-backed yet casual, he was leaning against the wooden bench, his long legs stuck out in front of him, giving the impression he felt very much at home here.
The self-assured posture might have exuded arrogance in other people, but strangely enough, it didn’t in him.
Just one kiss (The Ashcrofts Book 1) Page 1
