Love and Revenge

Isabella Murdock gripped the wheel of her Dodge SUV as if it held the last tenuous strings of sanity in her life. Her deep green eyes filled with determination as she scanned the tree-studded land around her expecting to see his car pop out from behind some bush and into her driveway. Jesse Harrison’s car.

Run! Her mind screamed. His betrayal clutched at her heart as she tried to blink away the stream of tears overflowing down her cheeks. She bit down on her lower lip trying hard to hold her colliding emotions in check.

Her palms were slick with sweat and almost slipped off the wheel as she slammed the car in reverse, turning too hard and forcing the SUV away from the driveway in an arc’d path of barely controlled panic. Dirt and rocks spewed in the air as she overshot the side of the pavement and bounced into her carefully planted garden of summer flowers, crushing colorful bobbing heads and stems under the studded tires. Bella jammed the car into drive and momentarily heard her wheels spinning on the loosened soil. She panicked and tromped down on the gas pedal, pushing it to the floor and adding too much power. The SUV jumped back onto the pavement landing so hard her head whacked the ceiling. She didn’t care.

Her only focus was to escape this place, this life, and this man. She didn’t know where Jesse was, maybe just around the corner, or maybe he wasn’t coming at all. She wasn’t waiting around for the bastard. Screw Jesse Harrison and his lies.

Why? She fought back a sob that threatened to push her over the edge and tried to focus on the beauty of the setting sun streaking brilliant ribbons of oranges and reds across the sky; the strength of the colors matching her emotions. How could she have misjudged him so completely? Fool! Her mind yelled back, Damned Fool she added. She might have been a fool once, but no more. Not ever again would she let a man like Jesse into her life.

To hell with Jesse and the rest of them. Was she still a fool for running away like some weak little girl afraid to meet her enemy head on? Who cares, she decided. It was time to take care of herself, and if that meant running away from the cruelty of people around her—well, so be it. Bitter anger surged through her and she held onto it like a sorcerer’s protective shield of magic.

Bella raced down the country road adding miles between her and the small white house with crushed summer flowers and crushed dreams of Jesse. His name brought a new feeling of pain. This was the man she had considered a friend, a man she respected, admired, and then loved. How far can one woman miscalculate the depths of a man’s soul? Pretty darned far she berated herself.

Bella rolled down her window and took a deep calming breath of warm summer air. She flexed one damp hand off the wheel, rubbed it on her Levis, and then felt around inside her purse for her cell phone. Her finger started to punch the button for the number of the airline when the phone trilled an incoming call. Her heart thudded against her chest at the unexpected sound. She looked at the number lit on the display. Jesse.

“Sorry, you son of a bitch,” she yelled out loud into the empty car. “The good times are rolling to another state.” The phone abruptly fell silent. “Good” she said, but she didn’t feel good. She wished she could hear Jesse’s deep voice again, telling her everything would be okay, telling her it was one great big mistake. Maybe it was just a nightmare that would end when she opened her eyes. Bella’s chest squeezed in pain. The real nightmare had begun just a few hours earlier when she opened her eyes for the first time in her life and saw everything with absolute clarity.

She punched in the number to the airline and checked on the next available flight to Colorado. The exit sign for the San Francisco airport came into view. Bella checked her rearview mirror as she swung onto the freeway, expecting, dreading, and hoping to see Jesse’s car following close behind.

Instead, her eyes caught the faint reflection of twin spirals of smoke rising from a distant fire in the parched summer hills. It reminded her of candles on a birthday cake, blown out in a whoosh of wish-filled air. A buried memory of her sixteenth birthday popped into Bella’s mind and carried her back to a childhood house when her life was filled with possibilities.

Oh my...don't you wish I'd finish my book so you could find out if Bella and Jesse make it to a happily ever after?

Wicked Women Make the Best Characters

I’ve been writing a romance novel and I’m finding that the low-down-dirty-mean characters are so much easier to write than a heroine or hero. I don’t know what that says about my personal knowledge of the characteristics of these people. I’m sure it’s nothing my family should be concerned about.

Take my wicked female antagonist.

Tiffany Magloire. Doesn’t that name conjure up elite evil? Money and mayhem. The name reeks of it. You haven’t read about her and already you distrust her. She’s pencil thin, lives in a large gated mansion decorated with heavy drapes and art deco. She wears Prada like I wear a Target sale item—easily and without thinking about the price.

And she knows people. All the right people who jump at the snap of her fingers. I’m secretly envious of Tiffany for that. I wish I knew people of influence, or any person for that matter, who would jump when I snapped my fingers. I’ve tried and cannot, no matter how many times I’ve snapped or what snapping rhythm I use, get anyone to leave the ground at my request.

I haven’t decided whether to leave Ms. Magloire in the story or take her out. But don’t tell her that. She knows people. I might have to go into the Writer’s Protection Program. I’d have to change my name to Mehitable and wear ill-fitting housedresses. I’d only be allowed to write articles for Field and Stream magazine, but only on the condition that the words Love or Romance never appeared in any story.

Oh that Tiffany Magloire…she really is a mean one.