Ready to Take a Chance - Softcover

Wootson, Alice

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1450208479 ISBN 13: 9781450208475

Publisher: iUniverse, 2010

Synopsis

When Shana catches her husband cheating, she vows to never let a man get that close to her again. Then along comes Kyle to make her reconsider her decision. Can she trust him? Or is he just another player?

About this title

About the Author

Alice Wootson grew up in Rankin, a suburb of Pittsburgh, PA. She is a graduate of Cheyney University and a former teacher. Alice is an award-winning author of ten romance novels. Ms. Wootson teaches writing workshops and meets with book clubs.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

"I'm sorry to stick you with this, but I have to go home." Shana apologized to Paula for the third time in two minutes. "I thought I could make it." She wiped her forehead. "I--I guess I should have stayed home, but I promised the team we'd have track practice after school." She grabbed a tissue from her shoulder bag just in time to cover a cough. "Will you announce that I have to cancel?"

"I'll take care of it. Go."

"I know the other teachers won't like missing their prep times this afternoon. I hate it when it happens to me." She leaned against the wall beside Paula's desk.

"I'm so sorry."

"Quit apologizing and go home. I'll tell Mrs. Simms when she gets in. I got you covered." She waved her away. "Now go before you give me what you have and you know this office can't possibly operate without me." Paula leaned closer and frowned. "You look terrible, what my grandmama would call 'death warmed over." I don't know how you managed to do it, but you're pale and flushed at the same time. Are you sure you can drive home okay? Do you need somebody to take you?"

"That's just what you need. Two classes to cover instead of one." Shana took a deep breath and covered up her cough. "I can make it. I don't have far to go. I'll creep home taking the small streets and then crawl into bed when I get home." She coughed again. "Maybe I'll just lie on my hall floor for a few days before I crawl into my bed." She tried to smile, but it was interrupted by a sneeze. "In a little more than a month I'll be back here and I'll drag the month of May with me."

"Don't even try it. May has to wait to do its thing until after April is finished, and March is still here. You better be back way before then. You know Murdock School can't function without you any more than it can without me."

"Sure." Shana managed a weak smile which was quite an accomplishment since it felt like her fever was melting her face. She walked from the office at a pace a snail could beat.

The bright late March sunshine covering her as she made it to her car did nothing to make her feel better. It wasn't that she preferred the bitter rain and snow flurries that had squatted over Philadelphia and played tag for a week before it had decided to saunter off. She was just too sick to care.

"I can't believe this. I managed to avoid the flu that circulated in December and the strain that showed up in January," she muttered as she drove from the parking lot. "Philadelphia was hit hard, but that was to be expected. I managed to avoid it, then." She caught a sneeze just as she turned onto the street. "Getting the flu at the end of March is worse."

Everybody was trying to hold on until winter was over and make it to spring. In a few weeks, the earth would sprout and bloom and grow, and she was feeling like death was pounding on her door telling her that the end was here.

She inched her car along Greene Street as if she were in rush-hour traffic on the expressway instead of on a nearly deserted street. She lifted her hair from her neck and turned the air conditioner up high in spite of the light snow flurries drifting down. She wished she lived in the next block instead of two miles from school.

Finally she eased her car into the driveway on St. Martin's Lane and frowned.

"What's Elliot's car doing here? I hope he didn't catch what I have. We can't have both of us sick at the same time."

She took a deep breath and forced herself out of the car by imagining herself snuggled in her bed. That was the only way she could get her body to move. The sun had completely fled and a gray blanket covered the sky, matching her gray mood. The bare white-wicker porch furniture had lost the blue cover she had placed over it in November. She didn't have the energy to care. Maybe next week she'd be able to fix it. Or next month. If she lived that long.

She unlocked the heavy carved wooden door and pushed it open.

"Elli..." She never finished his name.

Soft music drifted down the stairs forcing her words to stay inside of her. Nina Simone's husky voice crooning about love filled the wide downstairs hall and squeezed against her. Elliot's voice, joined with a giggle from someone else, led her upstairs as she followed the music. The sounds bounced off the polished oak floors.

Uh-uh. She shook her head and the pain reminded her why she had come home early. A new kind of pain joined it. Oh, no way. I must be hallucinating. He wouldn't dare.

Slowly she climbed the stairs, clutching the banister as if afraid it would collapse if she let go.

She had spent a week the summer after they had moved in carefully stripping and finishing the hardwood staircase. She had done her best to make it inviting.

Laughter skipped along the stairs, oblivious to the effort she had put into the staircase. Maybe she had made it too inviting.

She swallowed hard and tightened her leg muscles so she could stay on her feet. The flu had nothing to do with the weakness in her legs right now, nor the feeling inside her that felt as if a fist were wrapped around her stomach and squeezing.

She reached the second-floor hall and stared, but she wasn't looking at the bentwood rocker beside the bookcase under the window. Right now her ears were more important than her eyes. Muffled sounds skipped from the bedroom. Two voices. Coming from her bedroom.

She swallowed hard again and leaned against the wall. She didn't want to move, and not because of the flu. She didn't want to think. She wanted to wait until the sounds went away, as if they had never happened. Then she took a deep breath and pushed open the door.

She felt as if she had stumbled into a soap opera. "What--what are you doing home?" Elliot sputtered, pounding at her head worse than her headache. He sounded as if she were the one at fault.

"I'm the woman who lives here. Remember?" Shana stared at the bed as if she needed more time for the image to etch in her mind. As if she would ever be able to erase it. She glanced at the young woman on her side of the bed.

She had seen the young blonde before. Here in this house. Elliot had invited this woman, Ingrid, his graduate assistant, to their open house last Christmas. Shana hadn't known the welcome she had extended to Ingrid had included her husband and her bed.

Ingrid's glance slithered away. She pulled the top sheet under her arms.

Funny, Shana thought, though there was nothing funny about the situation at all. She's modest in front of me but not in front of my husband.

"Fancy meeting you here, Ingrid." Shana's voice was stronger than she would have expected it to be.

She stood straighter when what she wanted to do was run down the stairs and find someplace to curl up into a ball until this all went away. She took a deep breath. She certainly couldn't curl up in her bed. It was already filled to capacity.

"Mrs. Garner..." Shana's stare kept the rest of the woman's words from coming out.

"I think that, since you're in my bed with my husband, we should be on a first-name basis. Don't you?" Her stare hardened. "Did you ace this test, Ingrid?"

"Shana." Elliot scrambled from the bed and groped on the floor beside it for his pants.

"You've got it all wrong, don't you? I'm not the one you should cover up for." She threw her words at him and coughed. Nothing was heavy enough for this situation.

"Shana, listen."

"I hear you. Your actions are talking for you. How could you? How dare you?" Her stare pinned him. Then she looked away.

Her gaze went to the crystal angel on the dresser; well within reach. Her hand tightened. Then she loosened her fingers. Elliot wasn't worth the angel. He wasn't worth spit.

She stared back at this person she thought she knew as well as she knew herself. She took a deep breath, coughed, then freed her next words. "Now I know what 'action speaks louder than words'means." Tears choked her, trying to get out, but she refused to release them. Maybe she would later, but not now. Not in front of these two. "Don't tell me this isn't what it looks like. That's exactly what it is."

"I'm sorry. I..."

"Yeah, you are. A sorry piece of trash." She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "You should be glad--" she said through clenched teeth "--glad that I'm not a violent woman. Glad that I don't think you are worth going to jail over. I've already wasted too much of my life on you." Although she didn't want to, Shana blinked.

Elliot squirmed. Then he reached to her. "Let me explain...."

"Don't you dare touch me. Not now. Not ever again." He pulled his hands away and Shana continued. "It might be interesting to see how you try to talk your way out of this, but I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear anything from you ever again."

She heard her voice rise. She felt as if she were watching a scene in a play--a new play with an old plot. She forced her voice back to where it would be if she hadn't just found her husband in her bed with another woman. "What I do want is for you to take the rest of the trash and get out of my bed, out of my house and out of my life."

"But--"

"The only 'butt' in this is yours and Blondie's and I want both of them out of here. Now." The spike in her temperature had nothing to do with the flu. She coughed again. "I'll give you fifteen minutes. By the time I get back I want you both gone. If I thought it was feasible, I'd tell you to take the bed with you. You two obviously enjoyed it more than I ever did with you."

Shana turned from the room. The symptoms that had made her come home came back almost immediately. She forced her legs to carry her downstairs and into her car.

She got as far as the supermarket parking lot three blocks away and found a spot at the edge. The shock, the hurt, the betrayal bubbled to the surface and mixed with her tears. She was glad it was the middle of a weekday and the lot was almost empty. She needed to be alone. She swallowed hard. ...

About this edition

• Publisher: iUniverse
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1450208479
• ISBN 13: 9781450208475
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 316