The hopeless romantic believes that a soulmate exists for each of us. That there is one person who makes us feel how good it is to love them. For some couples, things trigger them to push that love away. They find out too late they’ve lost true-love. Sometimes genuine love deserves a second-chance at the happy ending that eluded them the first time.
Desire Me Again is an eclectic assortment of short stories exploring a second-chance at love. The collection is as diverse as the authors who wrote them. Here’s a chance to read the work of talented writers you may not have read before. Within these pages, there are blends of tender, often moving and thought-provoking stories.
Featuring: Annabel Allan, Patricia Elliott, R.M. Olivia, Carol Schoenig, Virginia Wallace, Gibby Campbell, Dee S. Knight, Alice Renaud, Jan Selbourne, Zia Westfield
Second Chance blurb:
Sandy Henderson had been a sweet, wholesome girl in her first year of college, sure of herself and totally in love with her high school sweetheart, Tom Pritchard. Then something happened that shattered her dreams, her confidence, her will to live. When she meets Tom again many years later, she resists taking a chance on love because of her secret, but Tom won’t give up on her. On them. Or will he, once she tells him about her past?
Buy link:
Amazon US https://amzn.to/34NstC7
Second Chance Excerpt:
Cafeterias are big deals in the South–or they used to be. Going out to a good cafeteria was always a treat to my aunts and grandmother.
“Tom,” Mrs. Henderson exclaimed. Like everyone he knew in their town, she stretched the one-syllable word into two. Tah-um. Until he’d joined the Corps he didn’t really know what people meant when they talked about southern accents. Now he considered the soft consonants and extended vowels charming. Part of being home.
Glancing over her shoulder, Tom saw Sandy stick her head around the kitchen wall. “Hey,” he called out to her. Then concentrating on her mother, he held out a bouquet. “These are for you, Mrs. Henderson.”
She flushed like a schoolgirl when she took the flowers. “How did you know that tulips are my favorite?”
He hadn’t. He’d asked the florist to put together something cheerful that an older lady might like. He hoped the brightly colored blooms might bring a smile to Sandy, too.
“Just a guess,” he answered.
“Come in, come in,” Mrs. Henderson backed up and held the door wide.
He stepped into a living room that had seen very little change in the last two decades. It was neat but held a slight whiff of shabbiness. Mrs. Henderson would probably call it comfortable rather than shabby. Tom wondered what Sandy thought of it.
Finally, the woman in question emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. The night was warm and she looked as though she’d just finished doing dishes. Her hair was damp and stuck to her forehead, and a light sheen of sweat clung to her cheeks. His groin tightened when he noticed that her shorts hugged her hips and her sleeveless blouse was slightly dampened, too, showing her white bra through the thin fabric. His mind filled with ways he could make her body slick with sweat, the ways he could make her much more than warm.
“I know I said we should try to get together before I leave, but I didn’t actually mean tonight.”
“I’m sorry to barge in, but I wanted to ask you to dinner tomorrow night.” Before Sandy could form “No, thank you,” as her lips where shaping up to do, he interjected, “And your mom, too.”
Her mother’s eyes widened and she slapped the hand holding the tulips to her chest. “Oh, my! Sandra, we have a beau!”
Sandy smiled. Then she turned to him. “I don’t know. We have so much to do here.”
“Sandra, please. It will be so much fun. I haven’t had dinner out since your father last took me, and that’s been…at least three years.” She turned to Tom. “Could we go to that cafeteria up on the highway?”
Tom laughed. “We can go anywhere you want.”
Mrs. Henderson snapped her head back toward Sandy. He knew the minute Sandy gave in. Her shoulders slumped slightly, but she smiled at her mother. “If Tom is willing to make every other man in town jealous by escorting the lovely Henderson women out to dinner, who am I to stand in his way?”
Lorelei Confer lives on a peninsula in the mid west coast of Florida with her high school sweetheart, now husband, and AJ, her long-haired Chihuahua.
like to speak for a moment on how romance novels make our lives better.
heroine and her FBI man, or a staid teacher and his stripper girlfriend. There’s no demand for heavy thinking or bracing for a tragic ending. Love is going to win in the end, the mystery will be solved, the villain will be vanquished. Contrary to being insipid escapism for unhappy housewives, romance novels give our minds a chance to recharge and our souls a necessary boost.
Romance novels make us believe in love, know that happily ever after does exist, and that a true kiss from our soul mate can change even the most awful world into a place we want to be. Of course, we all know that romances are novels, fiction. But if a little enjoyment for a few hours a day makes us happier and better able to face scraped knees, broken down cars, coffee spilled on the last clean blouse in the closet, I’d say they greatly influence how we go about our daily lives.