Alan loves me anyway.

Perhaps this is love: loving within the limits of our limited beings; seeing possibilities even in mere tokens and the tears; forgiving what others consider the unforgiveable, but hell, they don’t know what we can forgive because they don’t know what Alan and I have shared; being with someone who gets that; and loving them still in the comfortable quiet of loving where you are no longer young and have lived.

~The End~

Continue the Parker Family Saga with the next generation, Kaley Stanton The Girl of Sand & Fog.  For all my current and future releases visit my website:

http://susanwardbooks.com

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Enjoy one of my current contemporary romance releases:

The Girl on the Half Shell

The Girl of Tokens and Tears

The Girl of Diamonds and Rust

The Girl in the Comfortable Quiet

The Signature

Rewind

One Last Kiss

One More Kiss

One Long Kiss

One Forever Kiss(Releasing Fall 2015)

Or enjoy one of my historical romance releases:

When the Perfect Comes

Face to Face

Love’s Patient Fury

Love me Forever: Releasing Summer of 2015

 

PREVIEW THE GIRL OF SAND & FOG

 

Oh shit, silence. I don’t like the way Mr. Jamison is staring at me at all.

He leans over his desk, scribbling frantically on the dreaded pink sheet. He holds it up to me and points to the door. “Principal’s office now, Miss Stanton! If you can’t be respectful of the opinions shared in class then keep your opinions to yourself. We don’t criticize each other’s ideology. Not in this class. We encourage open and respectful dialogue.”

I gather my things, feeling the heavy stares and smirks of the silent room, and strangely I realize that I am even more irritated since I haven’t been booted from class for the British vulgarity, but for showing disrespect for liberal politics.

I snatch the pink slip and smile, but then again, what should I have expected? I mean really. I’m in an affluent city in Southern California.

I shove the door open a little too hard, not giving a shit and not even provoking comment from Mr. Jamison. I must have really rocked his world and I think I’ve finally found where intolerable conduct goes over the line with my teachers. Any language that isn’t politically correct speak crosses the line and will be dealt with. No one even seemed to notice that I’d call the girl a “twat.” It’s not on the description of my infraction, and the twat comment is where I would have started listing my crimes and offenses.

I show the pink slip to the office secretary and am instructed to sit down on the waiting room sofa outside the principal’s office. After five minutes, the door opens and in meanders a boy, pink slip in hand, who is directed by pointed finger to the seat across from me.

He drops heavily on the bench facing me and says nothing. He closes his eyes and crosses his arms.

There is something strangely familiar about the guy, but I chalk that up to probably having passed him in the hallways. He isn’t exactly cute, but he isn’t exactly unattractive either. He is interesting, quite a unique specimen at Pacific Palisades Academy. He has that guy’s guy intensity that radiates an air of not giving a shit, though somehow in a strangely intelligent way, and I am surprised to find it mildly thrilling.

He is taller than me, a good thing since I rarely find guys of adequate height for my five-foot-ten-inch frame, and he has a lean, nicely muscled body like a surfer, a slightly worldly aura somehow accomplished by his clothes that are more European style than American, and the most penetrating green eyes I’ve ever seen.

Interesting. I can’t tell what he is, since he’s such a hodgepodge of mismatching things that it is impossible to identify the group he falls in with at school.

I sit there staring at him, fiddling with the pink detention slip, and when the office secretary leaves, those green eyes open and he asks, “You’re Kaley Stanton, aren’t you?”

Shit, not this again. And it’s such a disappointment because there was a slight prick of interest before he spoke and his voice—well, I never expected that—but it made the hairs on my body stand up.

“Oh, fuck me!” I snap, letting loose my fallback response, the knee-jerk reaction that comes from perfect strangers knowing my name.

“Not on the first detention.”

That is the first quick comeback I’ve heard in two months here. I try hard not to smile and can’t stop myself. Arching a brow, I counter, “I’ll probably be here next week. Maybe you can fuck me then.”

Those green eyes sharpen on my face. “You don’t recognize me, do you?”

I tense. Why would he think I’d recognize him? “No. Should I?”

The guy shrugs. “What landed you in here?”

“Fomenting political insurrection. You?”

“Jerking off in the gym.”

It is hard to tell if he is serious or just trying to shock me. Masturbation is a perfectly acceptable topic of conversation at PP Academy. PP Academy…I laugh, stare at him hard and say, “I’m glad you didn’t offer to shake my hand.”

The boy doesn’t smile and I bite my lip to stop my laughter.

“You look and sound just like your dad. Sans accent, of course,” he says in a heavy, all-knowing way, irritating me and sounding as though he’s irritated by his own discovery.

OK, it’s time to stop this now. The boy is messing with me, but unfortunately I’m a little off-kilter from my bizarre internal response to him and whatever it was I heard in his voice when he made that annoying assumption on my parentage.

I snap, “How would you know?”

“I just saw him a month ago in Munich,” he replies casually, twirling his own pink paper around his finger.

“Did you really? Do you have a psychic hotline? Do you speak with the dead as well as see them? My dad has been dead over ten years.”

The guy shrugs again, leans his head back against the wall and closes his eyes. “You’re funnier than Alan Manzone. He’s a real prick these days.”

Before I can stop myself, yet again I respond to his baiting. “Alan Manzone is a prick every day.”

The boy just shakes his head. “No, he’s actually a really cool guy.”

“He’s a narcissistic asshole.”

“You really hate him, don’t you?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“Probably,” he says. “Do you want to get out of here? If we stay, Williams will keep us until after six cleaning the bleachers. We won’t get in trouble, you know. No one wants to deal with my mother so they won’t call her. I don’t think they’ll call Chrissie either. I never stay for detention. Do you want to get out of here?”

I stare up at him apprehensively. Who is this guy? He says everything with such an air of knowing unenthusiasm. Debating with myself over whether to leave with him, I ask, “If you don’t stay why were you on the bench?”

“I saw you leaving class with the pink slip.”

That pleases me more than I want to be. Direct and honest in a no-bullshit type of way. Another rarity at PP Academy.

I give him the stare. “You know, you could have just said ‘hi’ to me in the halls. You didn’t have to be a stalker about the whole thing.”

“Sure, I could have. But meeting on the detention bench makes a more interesting story, don’t you think?”

“Interesting for who?”

“My mom and dad, who by the way, think that I am gay.”

That level of honesty wrapped in self-confidence is too appealing. I don’t want to get close to any guy, something tells me especially not this guy, but somehow I feel myself being drawn to him.

I sink farther back into my seat. “And are you gay?”