Pleasure in the Rain (11 page)

RITA® Award-winning author Inglath Cooper was born in Virginia. She is a graduate of Virginia Tech with a degree in English. She fell in love with books as soon as she learned how to read. “My mom read to us before bed, and I think that’s how I started to love stories. It was like a little mini-vacation we looked forward to every night before going to sleep. I think I eventually read most of the books in my elementary school library.”

That love for books translated into a natural love for writing and a desire to create stories that other readers could get lost in, just as she had gotten lost in her favorite books. Her stories focus on the dynamics of relationships, those between a man and a woman, mother and daughter, sisters, friends. They most often take place in small Virginia towns very much like the one where she grew up and are peopled with characters who reflect those values and traditions.

“There’s something about small-town life that’s just part of who I am. I’ve had the desire to live in other places, wondered what it would be like to be a true Manhattanite, but the thing I know I would miss is the familiarity of faces everywhere I go. There’s a lot to be said for going in the grocery store and seeing ten people you know!”

Inglath Cooper is an avid supporter of companion animal rescue and is a volunteer and donor for the Franklin County Humane Society. She and her family have fostered many dogs and cats that have gone on to be adopted by other families. “The rewards are endless. It’s an eye-opening moment to realize that what one person throws away can fill another person’s life with love and joy.”

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AN EXCERPT FROM JANE AUSTEN GIRL

By

Inglath Cooper

Jane Austen Girl

A Timbell Creek Contemporary Romance

Book One

Inglath Cooper

Fence Free Entertainment, LLC

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“Is there a girl out there who doesn’t want to be looked at the way Mr. Darcy looked at Elizabeth?”

Grier McAllister - Blog at Jane Austen Girl

Prologue

The morning had started out typical enough, and might have remained so, if it hadn’t been for the eagle flying just above traffic on Park and Sixty-fifth.

From the back seat of a Lincoln town car, Grier McAllister removed her sunglasses, lowered the window and stuck her head out for a better look. Surely, she’d been mistaken. But there it was, soaring in a left to right pattern, no higher up than the top of the street lamps. An eagle? In Manhattan? What in the world?

She remembered then something she’d once heard her mother say when she was a child. Eagle sightings hadn’t been so unusual around Timbell Creek, although it was still something to make a person stop and look. Grier had been six or so the day she and her mama had taken a picnic out in the pasture behind her grandparents’ house. Her grandpa had an old mule named Lloyd who was willing to act as their shade tree in exchange for the carrots she kept stuffed in her pockets. It was actually a good memory of her mama, and maybe one of the last Grier could actually recall.

They’d spotted the eagle at the same moment that day, watching the majestic bird swoop low out of the sky, like an airplane guided by radar.

“What’s he doing, Mama?” Grier had asked.

“Looking,” she’d said.

“For what?”

“Most likely his next meal.
But my daddy once told me that whenever you see an eagle, it’s a sign that maybe you need to pay closer attention to what’s happening in your life. Or even what’s not happening.”

Grier had frowned and asked, “Why?”

“Some people believe eagles are messengers and that they appear when there’s something we need to do in our lives.”

“Is he trying to tell us something?”

“Maybe.”

“Like what?”

“I guess that’s the part we’re supposed to figure out.”

Even at that age, Grier had wondered if the eagle might be trying to warn her mama about the glass bottle she kept hidden in her nightstand. Sometimes, the bottle would disappear, and their life seemed almost normal. No men Grier didn’t know coming into the house late at night. No hearing her mama throw up in the toilet in the morning. But then, the bottle always reappeared again, and those were the days Grier wished she could be somebody else, anybody else. The days when she would disappear inside a book, the only escape hatch she could find at the time.

“Did you see that?” she said to Jason, the twenty-something driver maneuvering her through the rush hour traffic to her office on Madison and Sixty-first.

He looked up, blue eyes locking on hers in the rear view mirror.

“What?”

“That eagle,” she said, pointing at the sky.

“An eagle?
Really?”

“Yes,” she said. “It was right there.”

He opened the sunroof and looked upward, shrugging. “You sure?”

“Positive,” she said, peering up again only to realize it had now completely disappeared.

“Not too many of those in Manhattan,” Jason said, the twinkle in his voice suggesting she might have added a little shot of something to her morning o.j.

“No,” she said, feeling silly now and wondering if she had indeed imagined it. “I guess not.”

Jason slid the car into a spot in front of a Starbucks green awning. “Same as usual?”

“Yes, thanks,” she said, watching as he got out and jogged inside the store. She leaned forward again and searched the strip of sky in between the buildings on either side of the car. She couldn’t seem to shake the uneasy feeling that she’d seen that eagle for a reason.

Resolving to put it and any unintended symbolism from her mind, she pulled her phone from her purse and began checking e-mail. Twenty-five new messages since she’d gone to bed at midnight. Several new client requests. Seriously needed. A few pleas for last minute appointments. Would see what she could do.

Jason arrived back with her coffee and passed it to her over the seat. “One sugar. Shot of half and half,” he said.

“Thanks,” she said, returning his smile.

He held her gaze for an extra moment, and then said, “No problem, Ms. McAllister,” before pulling back into the traffic.

This wasn’t the first time Jason had given her the look, or the first time she’d decided to ignore it. Aside from the obvious, at thirty-seven, the only thing she was likely to have in common with a barely twenty-something guy was an unfortunate weakness for pizza.

And besides, she had recently decided to excuse herself from the predictable course of events that disguised itself as dating in Manhattan. Attraction. Pursuit. Greener-grass-syndrome. She’d just experienced the third phase of this sequence, a nice way of saying she’d recently been dumped.

Carter Mathers – fresh off the divorce train, eyes glazed by the sudden buffet of available women - hadn’t actually put it like that. His wording was more along the lines of, “Grier. We’re at different places just now. I don’t want to lead you to think I have something more to offer you than I do. That wouldn’t be fair, would it?”

Fairness being his personal life mantra, of course.

Dating in New York City was its own basic training boot camp. After a while, Grier developed an ear for the subtext and knew that what he really meant was: “Grier. I think you’re getting too serious. I like you, but it’s only fun as long as no one cares. Besides, there’s a great-looking blonde at the table by the window. I’d really like to ask for her number.”

Grier had decided long ago that the key was to make expectation parallel with reality. If you knew that, for the most part, Manhattan was full of men who didn’t want to see the same face two nights in a row, then expecting to find one who did was simply unrealistic, like hoping your tricep jiggle would completely disappear after two workouts with Gunar at Fitness House.

But if you decided that settling down probably wasn’t everything it had been touted to be, then a nice dinner could be had with no hard feelings when he didn’t call the next day. Of course, in the case of cute-driver-Jason, she would be the one buying the dinner. But even that might have its upside. At least neither of them would foster any unrealistic expectations.

For the next ten minutes, they crept along with the rest of the traffic toward Madison. She lowered her window a few inches, letting in the sounds and smells of the city. Manhattan had its own rhythm, its own heartbeat. Even after nineteen years of living here, it somehow still managed to surprise her. She’d grown up in a different kind of place, a place where the pulse of life beat at a very different rate.

She’d left that place behind at the age of eighteen, catching a bus out of downtown Roanoke for New York City where she’d been offered a job as a prostitute within twenty-four hours of arriving.

For the first few days, she wandered the streets with her small suitcase, sleeping on benches in Central Park, wondering if someone like her could ever make it in a place like this. She decided then that one of two things could happen. She could let the city run right over her, or she could breathe in the heady power of the place and let it fuel her ambitions. She chose the latter, and she’d never looked back.

At exactly eight-thirty, Jason pulled over in front of her office building on Madison. He got out and opened her door, again leveling her with a steamy gaze she felt certain he’d used to great effect numerous times before now.

“Good luck with the audition this afternoon,” she said, slipping out with her briefcase and purse in one hand, coffee in the other.

He smiled the smile that would surely win him the role. “If I don’t get it,” he said, “I’m going to come see you about that image redo.”

She laughed, shook her head. “I don’t think you’ll be needing it, Jason.”

“Have a great day, Ms. McAllister,” he said. As she walked away, she felt his gaze on her backside. In Timbell Creek, they’d had names for guys brazen enough to cop a feel or leer behind a girl’s back. It was just plain bad manners, like talking with your mouth full of potato salad at the church picnic, and would have earned the offender a cuff in the head from Somebody’s Daddy. Those of them who had a daddy, anyway.

But with forty in the headlights, Grier decided to take it as a compliment.

Franklin, the doorman, smiled as she approached the building. “Notice anything different about me today, Ms. McAllister?” he asked, with an exaggerated smile.

She stopped, gave him a surmising look. By Manhattan standards, she wouldn’t call herself tall, but Franklin stood a good foot below her. He was seventy if a day and had worked the eight to four shift in this building for nearly thirty years. He had a book’s worth of short stories he could tell about the people he’d seen come and go through its doors. “That’s a new suit, isn’t it?” she said.

He straightened, lifted his chin a little, then smoothed his hands down the center of the navy jacket. “What do you think?”

“Smashing.”

He flashed her another big grin. “Anything else?”

She smiled. “Why, Franklin, look at your teeth. They’re beautiful.”

“Who knew I still had these under all those years of smoking? Thanks for telling me about that dentist. Nice guy. And the whitening thing didn’t hurt a bit.”

“I’m glad,” she said. “You look great.”

“Remember I told you about Marla, the lady who works in the Macy’s shoe department?”

“I do,” she said. “Any luck?”

“I haven’t asked her out yet. She’s taller than I am,” he said, sounding suddenly worried. “Think that matters?”