Private Sins (Three Rivers Series: Book 1) (14 page)

Here's an excerpt from:

Loving Mr. Wright- Three Rivers Series: Book 2

(Erica's Story)

Erica drove into the shrub lined driveway of her sister's former home and felt a surge of loneliness so palpable it hit her like a dull thud somewhere in the region of her heart. Her sister Kelly and her family were gone to the Cayman Islands to live and for now she had volunteered as their house sitter.

It was a job she was very happy to do because her apartment, though it was walking distance from where she worked as a hotel nurse, was really just a glorified studio and she relished the prospect of living again in a real house that had yard space. She glanced over at the lawn; it had just started to sprout some wayward patches of grass and looked overgrown already. A gentle breeze touched the greenery and the clumps of grass seemed to wave at her mockingly.

You can't take care of a yard as big as this, they seemed to say to her.

Erica sighed and parked in front of the garage. How would she putter around in a five bedroom, four bathroom house with almost half an acre of yard space, dedicated to flowers and exotic shrubs?

She picked some lint off her jeans. In the past she was quite happy to visit her sister and lounge on her verandah sipping drinks or scrounging around in her kitchen for food.

Now here she was at the house all alone: no children to play with and no sister to argue with. She felt a gaping hole that her sister and her family used to fill and for the first in a long time she realized that she really had no life. She went to work at the Hotel Flamingo, where she dispensed painkillers and kept up with the light work but the job was a far cry from the heavy duties she had when she worked on the surgical ward. It was now more laid back and less stressful.

That’s all she did, work, hang out with her sister's children, occasionally have lunch with her mother and go to church—she was happily living the life of a spinster. She had no male prospects to get excited about and nobody to get excited about her.

She looked down balefully at her size 14 jeans. She had been spending way too much time eating alone lately; these jeans she had on could barely fit her. She had struggled to get into them this morning and now she was shuddering to think of how she was going to get out of them.

“Pathetic!” Erica muttered impatiently, taking her box out of the car and heading into the house.

The house felt empty, even though there was furniture in it, as if it knew that the rightful owners were away. She had a plan to cart over a box or two of her belongings every day until she had fully moved in.

She headed toward the guest room at the very end of the hallway upstairs. She was used to staying in that room when she visited in the past and she always thought that it was cooler than the rest of the rooms in the house. It had a balcony, which had an unobstructed view of the town of Ocho Rios. She gazed out of the window for a while and then sat on the bed staring into space.

Maybe she should call her sister and let her know that she was just starting the moving in process, but then again, they had left just a week ago and she had spoken to Kelly at least twice per day, asking her questions about Cayman, hanging onto her every word. She really needed to get a life apart from her sister and her family. As the eldest of the two, by four years, she had always thought that she would get married and have children first, but here she was still single and for the first time, in a long time, she felt the first stifling stirrings of unhappiness grip her heart—that feeling she had quenched long ago that made her feel as if everybody in the world was happier than she was.

She grabbed her cell phone and punched in her mother's number. The two of them were unusually close for a mother and daughter, maybe because she had nobody else to hang out with. All her friends were married or had children and were too busy raising their families to care about her. Usually she was fine with that, but today she felt slightly down about her situation.

The phone on her mother's end rang for a while and then a breathless Lola came on the line.

“Erica, I thought you would have been down here.”

“Where?” Erica frowned slightly, “what are you up to?”

“I am at church,” Lola said, “getting my heart checked, my blood pressure checked and doing an eye test.”

“What for?” Erica asked puzzled. “Who is doing that?”

“The medical professionals at church, are doing a free day,” Lola said exasperatedly, “were you not at church when it was announced. Shouldn’t you be down here helping? Aren't you a medical professional?”

“Oh, I forgot all about it,” Erica said sullenly, “I was just moving in.”

“Aah,” Lola said soothingly, “you are feeling a bit down.”

“Yes,” Erica, mumbled, “I am missing Kelly and the children a tad bit more than I should, I suddenly feel as if I have no life.”

“Do you know what a good remedy for that is?” Lola asked sweetly.

“What mother?” Erica asked suspiciously, “get married and have my own babies?”

“Nooo, well yes,” Lola laughed, “I was thinking that your present situation could be remedied if you come and help out down here. You don’t have to go to the hotel until in the evening. Come on down and take your mind off your empty nest.”

“Okay,” Erica sighed, “might as well.”  

When she drove into the church's parking lot, she had her AC on full blast and was reluctant to get out of the car. For some reason this summer seemed to be the hottest on record. However, the full parking lot was an indication that the heat was not a deterrent to the people attending. She could already see, from her vantage point, several white circular tents with signs on their white flaps announcing various medical procedures. The parking lot had not had enough space though and several tents were pitched on the church lawn.

Erica grimaced, Hyacinth Donahue was going to have a fit, her precious heliconia flower leaves which she maintained as a matter of pride, and which made for a very colorful hedge, were being used as temporary umbrellas and fans.

There were long lines in front of each tent, and persons were milling around with small packages in hand, she spotted a healthy food tent and vowed to check it out. Maybe it was time she started eating healthier. The thought made her gag a little but enough was enough, she hadn’t gotten this big because she was eating healthily.

She shrugged her arms into her white overcoat, even the short sleeves felt hot.

“Sister Erica, so glad you are here,” Dr. Mansoon grinned when he saw her. “You forgot about this didn’t you?”

“Yup,” Erica nodded grinning back at him, “I was chatting with my mother on one of my routine calls and she reminded me.”

“Well … “ Dr. Mansoon patted his shirt pocket and dragged out a badge with her name on it, “you are not the only one that was missing in action today, I have three more badges, we assigned you the eye care booth for routine eye tests, get to working Nurse,” he gave her a mock scowl.

“It seems as if the whole town is here.” Erica said taking the badge from him.

He grunted and then spun around when somebody shouted his name, “got to go.”

Erica nodded and made her way to the eye care booth.

Her small booth was supposed to be manned by two nurses, however when Sister Darcy saw her coming she handed the clipboard to Erica and explained the routine.  “If you detect that something is seriously wrong send them to that booth,” she indicated an adjoining booth. “Write down your findings and the doctor over there will take it from there, simple.” She then gave Erica a smirk and said, “gotta run, have things to do.”

After the long line receded from her booth and mercifully the sun had also retreated behind an ominous looking cloud, she sat gazing over the parking lot. The community had really taken advantage of the church's initiative to provide free health care. It was something that the church's medical professionals had wanted to do for a long time. Erica could barely remember discussing this venture at the last meeting; she had been very distracted with her sister's unfortunate situation at the time.

She still couldn’t believe that Kelly had been brave enough to have an affair and then have her lover's baby. If she had a husband like Theo she would never in a million years have looked at another man. She always dreamed of a husband like Theo, a man who loves his woman with such a deep abiding love that nothing could shake it. She exhaled. She was happy that Theo, took back Kelly even after her extra marital affair but she still shuddered to think of the long term consequences that the affair would have on the family.

Maybe it was better for her to be single and unattached than go through the emotional wringer that relationships seem to bring. She had tried to be the perfect girlfriend twice before, but both times she had to leave the relationship broken hearted.

Corey had been her first love. She met him in high school but he left her when she became a Christian. “Can’t handle the rules,” he'd told her sheepishly, “Christianity is a bag of rules and I'm free spirited.”

She had moped around for years after that, yearning for a stable Christian man to recognize that she was wife material. Then she had met Jay-Jay-Jason Jolly, a handsome, God-fearing man who had a good job, or so she thought at the time. He had proposed to her on a Tuesday night just after she came off her shift from her job at Seawest Hospital—he had gone down on one knee.

The Wednesday morning after the proposal his wife had called her asking if bigamy was no longer illegal in Jamaica. Erica had been shocked. It had taken her the better part of her thirties, when she still had a semblance of a waist, to get over Jay-Jay.

Now here she was single and lonely; the kind of loneliness that usually had a single woman of thirty-five with no real prospects, feeling that she had to do something about her situation. Obviously, Mr. Right was nowhere near her radius.

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Loving Mr. Wright
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OTHER BOOKS BY BRENDA BARRETT

The Three Rivers Series

Loving Mr. Wright (Three Rivers Series- Book 2)
-
A man with a past. A woman who was tired of being single. Erica was tired of searching for the right man, she had all but resigned herself to a single life but then the mysterious Caleb Wright showed up and Erica saw one last opportunity to ditch her single life. He was perfect for her. But what was he hiding? Could his past be that bad that they couldn’t get past it?

Unholy Matrimony (Three Rivers Series- Book 3)
-
The problem: Phoebe was poor and unhappy with her lot. The solution: Marry a rich man and she would be happy. It should be simple, except that her rich suitor, Ezekiel Hoppings, was ugly and her poor suitor, Charles Black, was handsome. But the more she came to know both of them, the more Phoebe realized that some solutions were not as simple as they first appear.

If It Ain't Broke (Three Rivers Series- Book 4)
-  All Chris Donahue wanted was a place in his child's life. All Pinky Black wanted was his love. Chris Donahue was still obsessed with the married woman he had an affair with and the child they had created together. Though he wanted to, he found that he couldn't move on with his life without his son. Pinky Black knew that Chris' emotions were engaged elsewhere but she wanted him to forget his obsession with Kelly and love her. That shouldn't be so hard? Should it?

Contemporary

Homely Gi
rl
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A love to last a lifetime? April and Taj were opposites in so many ways. He was the cute, athletic, boy genius on campus that everybody wanted to be friends with. She was the overweight, shy and withdrawn girl who the bullies teased mercilessly.

But they were friends and the older they got the deeper their friendship became. As friendship turns into something more, does April and Taj have a love that can last a lifetime? Or will time and separate paths rip them apart?

The Mount Faith Series

      
Saving Face (Mount Faith Series- Book 1)
- Edward Carlisle, the president of Mount Faith University is dead. Natasha Rowe and her partner Harry Campbell are asked to go under cover to investigate what appears to be a murder.

In the process of investigating, Natasha finds herself attracted to lecturer and psychiatrist Taj Jackson. She also realizes that all is not what it appears to be at the school. There are secrets and lies under the veneer of holiness, especially in the life of the dead president.

      
The Preacher And The Prostitute
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Prostitution and the clergy don't mix. Tell that to ex-prostitute Maribel who finds herself in love with the Pastor at her church. Can an ex-prostitute and a pastor have a future together?

New Beginnings
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When self-styled ‘ghetto queen,’ Geneva, was contacted by lawyers who claimed that Stanley Walters, the deceased uptown financier, was her father she was told that his will stipulated that she had to live with her sister uptown to forge sisterly bonds. Leaving Froggie, her ‘ghetto don,’ behind she found herself battling with Pamela her stepmother and battling her emotions for Justin a suave up-towner.

Full Circle
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After Diana graduated from school, she had a couple of things to do, returning to Jamaica to find her siblings was top priority. Additionally, she needed to take a well-earned vacation. What she didn’t foresee was that she would meet Robert Cassidy and that both their pasts would be so intertwined that disturbing questions would pop up about their parentage, just when they were getting close.

Historical Fiction/Romance

The Empty Hammock
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Workaholic, Ana Mendez, was certain that her mother was getting senile, when she said she found a treasure chest in the back yard. After unsuccessfully trying to open the old treasure chest, Ana fell asleep in a hammock, and woke up in the year 1494 in Jamaica! It was the time of the Tainos, a time when life seemed simpler, but Ana knew that all of that was about to change.

The Pull Of Freedom
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Even in bondage the people freshly arrived from Africa considered themselves free. Led by Nanny and Cudjoe the slaves escaped the Simmonds’ plantation and went in different directions to forge their destiny in the new country called Jamaica.

Jamaican Comedy (Material contains Jamaican dialect)

Di Taxi Ride And Other Stories
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Di Taxi Ride and Other Stories is a collection of twelve witty and fast paced short stories. Each story tells of a unique slice of Jamaican life.