I grew
up in an old river town in a blue collar neighborhood. Since both of my parents worked when I was
small, I spent a great deal of my time in the company of my grandparents. My Granny always liked to claim she raised
me, something my mother still disputes but the reality is – Granny did. Although I no longer live in either the old
neighborhood or my hometown of St. Joseph, Missouri, I possess very deep roots
there. Someday I may even go back - go
home although sages have often said you can’t go home again. I dispute their notion and the idea of going
home is at the heart of my new release, Urban
Renewal.
Urban
Renewal, however, is not my story.
It’s the tale of a movie star who finds herself jaded with her life and realizes
she’s not only unhappy but that she’s become someone she doesn’t know. Somehow she became the persona behind her
stage name – Mercedes Montague – and realizes she’s lost Marie Dillard.
Here’s the blurb:
Movie
star Mercedes Montague has it all – the fame, the fortune, and the glittering
celebrity lifestyle. But she lost
herself somewhere along the way. On a publicity tour for her next movie she
realizes she’s just fifty miles from her hometown. Mercedes – real name Marie Dillard – decides
to bolt and go home to see if she can find what’s left of herself. Hiding away in her grandparents’ old home in
a working class neighborhood she’s haunted by memories and reminders of her
first and only love, Joe Shelby.
Marie’s stunned when Joe shows up at her
door. Passion kindles between them from
the first moment their eyes meet but she won’t let it consume her unless it’s
going to include a lasting love. As they renew their relationship, Marie and
Joe face many struggles.
Can a movie star return to
reality or is love just a distant dream?
Here’s
an excerpt – the moment of “truth” when her first love confronts her at her
grandparent’s former home:
“It was you,” Joe said, face drained of color, lips so pale they
weren’t the slightest bit pink. “God, I thought I’d gone crazy.”
His voice sounded the same, a little
gruffer maybe, but the roughness might be from emotion. Hearing it brought a
rush of feeling and a powerful need to put her head against his shoulder. Two
feet separated them, the shortest distance in more than twenty-five years and
Marie burned as the old flame between them ignited. Heat rippled between them
like summer lightning, faint but full of potential. Their eyes met and held.
Marie stared into his baby blues until she thought she might drown. Her numb
lips refused to respond but she swallowed hard and after minutes passed, she
managed to nod. “No, it’s me.”
“So you saw me last night at Green
Hills?”
“Yes,” she said, dragging the word
up out of the sawdust filling her throat.
“You couldn’t bother to say hi?” Joe
asked, the question a challenge. His eyes darkened from blue to indigo and she
glimpsed decades of stored pain, hurt she inflicted.
“I wanted to talk to you but I ran
away because I didn’t know what to say,” Marie told him. “I didn’t know if
you’d want to see me. I didn’t come back to interrupt your life. I didn’t even
know you were here, in town or in the old neighborhood.”
Joe glared at her and snorted. “What
in hell are you back for?”
Five minutes, not more than two
decades, might have passed since they last spoke. Anguish revived their last
argument but he went for the offensive attack, abrasive and intrusive. Marie,
who learned to field the questions of the pushiest paparazzi with skill, known
for her ability to ice the biggest boors in the business, caved and answered,
“It’s a long story, Joe, but I’ll tell you if you want.”
“Give me the short version.”
“I wanted to be me again,” Marie
said, cutting through all the complicated layers to offer the truth. “I
realized I don’t like Mercedes.”
“Neither do I,” Joe replied. “I
never did.”
His short staccato words wounded her
so much Marie took a step back. Feeling very self-conscious about her unkempt
appearance, she grasped the handle of the screen door and prepared to shut it.
“Then I don’t know why you came over,” she said in a voice as brittle as
antique glass. “It was nice to see you again, Joe. Good-bye.”
As the door swung toward her, he
stopped it with one hand. “God damn it,” he said, “Don’t be so prickly. It’s
Mercedes I have a problem with, not you.”
Hurt yielded to a burst of anger.
“Oh, yeah?” Marie asked, pure St. Joe, not Hollywood. “Prove it.”
Joe pushed the door open wide and
walked through it. He wasn’t smiling when he took Marie into his arms and
kissed her before she could protest. Her hands balled into fists and she meant
to hit him but his embrace defused her ire. She relaxed into the strong circle
of his arms and when his mouth touched hers, the single flame lit when she
recognized him on her front porch exploded into a conflagration. He wasn’t
gentle as his mouth devoured hers with hunger, with stored passion and maybe a
taste of revenge. Heat rocketed through every nerve ending in her body and
sweet little thrills erupted along her spine. As his mouth bruised her lips
with force and need, Marie’s body softened as it hearkened to the hardness she
felt through the crotch of his jeans. Her nipples ripened with desire and Joe’s
kiss erased decades of stage kisses, social busses and meaningless smooches.
As Mercedes Montague she’d locked
lips with most of Hollywood’s leading actors, the stars who incited lust in
every woman across America from pre-teens to great-grandmas. More than a
handful found their way into her bed and onto her expensive silk sheets for
intimate encounters yielding physical release but nothing more. Sex turned into
a celebrity rodeo as each man tried to prove his talents, to top the others and
although maybe Mercedes liked it, Marie loathed it. She hated the lack of any
real emotion, any passion beyond the need for another body in the lonely night
and the few times she felt a spark with someone it always faded fast with
morning light.
Joe brought back expectations long
forgotten and evoked desire with such depth Marie sank into it as it sucked her
down like quicksand. She should have fought it but couldn’t and didn’t even
want to struggle against it. Her fingers clawed against his plaid flannel shirt
as he tightened his grasp on her, his tongue darting into her mouth like an
exploring snake. New waves of pleasure brought intense delight and Marie leaned
against him so her weak knees wouldn’t dump her onto the floor.
His mouth stirred the ashes of their
past and restored dozens of memories, brought back the memory of other kisses
just as sweet. Whatever emotions they once claimed, all the old bonds
connecting them renewed as power roared to life between them. Marie never knew
how long it lasted and she never thought of anything but Joe within the same
span. Her world shrunk to this, to his mouth and hers, connected. Driving in
St. Joe yesterday she thought she’d come home but she hadn’t, not until now.
Urban Renewal is now
available at Amazon, All Romance Ebooks, Bookstrand and Champagne Books…coming
soon at Barnes and Noble and Coffee Time Romance
You can also find me at:
Twitter: leeannwriter
From Sweet to Heat: The Romance of Lee Ann
Sontheimer Murphyhttps://www.facebook.com/pages/From-Sweet-To-Heat-The-Romance-of-Lee-Ann-Sontheimer-Murphy/287540748010934?ref=hl
Blog: Rebel Writer: Lee Ann Sontheimer Murphy
Author In The House blog:
Amazon author page: http://www.amazon.com/Lee-Ann-Sontheimer-Murphy/e/B004JPBM6I
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1 comment:
Sounds like something I want to read!
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