An excerpt from Boogie, Boots, & Cherry Pie

“I’m a good girl, I am.” Eliza Doolittle, My Fair Lady

We’ve all had a rough week. I woke up about four this morning and decided the story I was planning to run was too sad. I was sure we could all use a laugh or two! What follows is an excerpt from my fantasy romance novel, Boogie, Boots, & Cherry Pie (amazon. com). Why am I calling it a fantasy? What else could it be? A gorgeous hunk of a guy who hides pieces of his designer jewelry under his girlfriend’s pillow? Really? I have no idea what inspired this novel. It certainly isn’t related to any man in my life! Ha!

(Shout out to the Tennessee National Guard who recently protected demonstrators carrying Save Ukraine signs. In this country, we believe in free, peaceful demonstrations…and, also the freedom of writers to fantasize about a gorgeous man hiding jewelry under his girlfriend’s pillow. Have mercy!)

Chapter 1. Cherry Pie

Lily half-heartedly flipped through the clothes hanging in her closet. Blue, blue, blue—yellow. White. Pink. Pink. Pink. Black. Lots of black. There wasn’t a darn green top in the whole closet, and she knew it, but she kept looking anyway. Why was it every St. Patrick’s Day she had this lack of green thing going on in her wardrobe? Was there a law somewhere against department stores putting a green sequined top on sale? Of course, there were green tops on the full-price racks, but what woman would pay forty or fifty bucks for a green sequined top if she didn’t live in Dublin? Or unless she was trying to catch an Irish geek—who owned half of Microsoft—and was a real hunk. Lily had a nagging hunch if there were any rich, Irish hunks at Microsoft, they’d already been spoken for by women who had a lot more going for them than she did. That was okay. She could settle for just hunky. Hunky could be good.

Well, she’d just have to run through the mall on her way home from work and pick up a green scarf or a pair of green rhinestone earrings. She was in no mood to spend a bundle on something she wouldn’t wear again until next year. She’d rather spend her money on a new twelve-megapixel camera she had her eye on. Not only was it a better camera than the one she had now, but it had a viewfinder in addition to an LCD monitor and took longer videos. The viewfinder was necessary for her outside shots. The monitor didn’t work for her when the sun was shining. She didn’t know why; no one else she knew had any trouble. She’d found the perfect camera at a photography store near her work for three hundred dollars. It wasn’t something a professional would drool over, but it had every feature she was looking for plus it had the added bonus of being as small as the camera she had now, so it would still fit into her purse. Lily resisted the obvious option: buy a bigger purse.

Because she really wanted the camera, even a green sequin top on sale probably wouldn’t have tempted her. Besides, if this year was like the last, there wasn’t much incentive to spend a lot of money and effort for this event. She knew from the last St. Patrick’s Day company party the men there would be the same men she saw at work during the day, only drunk. And still married. It was a pretty sure bet she’d end up spending the night talking to the other single women on her floor, eating stale cookies with foul-tasting green sprinkles, and drinking green beer out of a paper cup. No wonder St. Patty’s Day was her least favorite holiday. Wardrobe stress, green beer, and no eligible men, even if they were leprechauns. What was there to love? The year before last, when she was still in college, the little tavern off campus at least served free hotdogs with their green beer. She hoped this wasn’t a sign she was moving down in the world instead of up.

Actually, Lily’s frustrated mood had nothing to do with sequined tops or green beer or even leprechauns. Her real problem was she was lonely. In her middle twenties, she was anxious to move on with her life. At every company function, she looked at the executives from out of town, hoping in vain to see someone who looked promising. Luckily, she liked her job, and it took her mind off the other areas of her life that weren’t as fulfilling. Still, if she were ever going to have a family, she needed to get started. She’d already looked in the usual places like the local grocery stores, community events, churches, and social clubs without any luck. Since she didn’t hit the bars like some of the other single women, there wasn’t any place else to look except the Internet. She had no interest in picking out the father of her future children on a dating website. Lots of women had been successful and found wonderful men using an Internet dating service, but Lily made her living with computers, and she knew how easy it was to make a donkey look like a racehorse on a computer screen.

After work that night, Lily strolled past the photography shop to look at the camera she wanted. It was still in the window, and she knew there was no shortage of that particular model; she just liked to look at it. Then, she grabbed a slice of pizza at the Italian kiosk and headed for the jewelry section at her favorite department store. She was on her way to the sale table when she spotted a pair of green rhinestone earrings edged in clear crystals on a shiny glass counter. She yelped out loud when she turned them over and saw the price tag. “Forty-three dollars?” she said out loud. “For rhinestones?”

“Oh, they’re not rhinestones, they’re real Austrian crystals,” said a helpful clerk.

They’re glass, Lily thought. Crystals are just glass. And they’re not even set in vermeil, but some kind of mystery pot metal…maybe salvaged from some old World War II submarine.

The clerk, sensing one of her last chances to sell the earrings was slipping away, said, “Wouldn’t they be great to wear tomorrow night?”

What? Almost fifty dollars to go to the company lunchroom and watch everyone drink too much green beer and fall all over themselves? Not going to happen. Even so, she slipped the back of one of the earrings off and tried it on. Oh, she thought to herself when she looked into the mirror. They are gorgeous. The bottom half of the earring was set with a big, tear-shaped stone that caught the light with every movement and lit up her face with tiny flashes of green light whenever her head moved. The top was covered in matching green stones carefully placed not to upstage the bottom half. Maybe she should reconsider; maybe a pair of expensive earrings would change her luck. If there was a real Irish hunk at the party, surely, these would flush him out. She looked at the price tag again. Mentally, she calculated the real cost, $43.00, and used “drool” math to justify them: if she also wore them to the company Christmas party, the drool cost would be cut in half: $21.50. If she wore them for two years, the DC would be: $10.75. Maybe she could even wear them on April fifteenth, tax day. After all, money was green. Then, there was Earth Day; that was green. And Arbor Day. What were the colors of Kwanzaa? she wondered.

Lily left the store wearing the earrings; she was anxious to begin bringing down the drool cost of her new jewelry as soon as possible. On the way home, she decided to put a little jar on her dressing table. Whenever she wore the earrings, she’d drop a bean in. When the jar began to fill up, it would soften the sting of the purchase, she reasoned. Then, when she had a jarful, she’d make soup. More savings! When she got to her apartment, she put a bean in a jar right away because she’d worn the earrings home.

The next morning, she put the earrings on before she left to catch the bus for work. Dutifully, she dropped a bean into the jar. Two beans. Although she was complimented on the earrings all day, by the time the party started that night, she’d almost forgotten she had them on. That was why she was puzzled when a man she’d never seen before kept looking at her from across the room. He was a real hunk, and Lily held her breath when he started threading his way through the crowd toward her. His eyes never left her face.

“Do you know your earrings are throwing green sparks on your cheeks?” he asked. “I’ve been watching you and I’m fascinated. You look beautiful.”

Lily held out her hand and said hello. His name was Mike Miller. He was blond, green-eyed, Irish, and single. He didn’t own half of Microsoft, but then, he wasn’t a leprechaun either, so he had that going for him.

“Let’s dance, so I can nibble on your jewelry,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. When he held out his arms, she wondered if she had any bean recipes that needed just two beans. As far as she was concerned, her new earrings had already paid for themselves in full.

“You’re probably thinking I’m a lech,” he said as he twirled her around, “I may be, but I’m also Kare’s brother.”

“Kare?” Lily’s mind was racing. She couldn’t recall a Kare that worked for the company. She looked around desperately, trying to make a connection.

Mike noticed her distress. “Sorry. I call her Kare. Her real name is Karen. She works in human resources. She says she knows you.”

“Karen! Of course. I’m sorry, I’ve never heard her called Kare before.”

“It goes back to our childhood. She cared about this. Cared about that. Most of the time, we had a house full of strays she cared about. Mom thought she’d be a veterinarian when she grew up.”

“What happened?”

“She branched out to caring about people. She’s on several charity boards and helps with the food bank.”

“I didn’t know that. I’m sorry I haven’t gotten to know her better.”

“She’s a good kid.”

As he twirled her some more, his cell phone rang, and he excused himself to take the call. When he came back, he was grinning from ear to ear. “One of my employees has had a baby. I’ve promised to go up soon to see her.”

“Go where? Does she live in Seattle?”

“No, I have a jewelry company,” he said as he led her back onto the dance floor.

“In fact, the earrings you’re wearing are one of my designs.”

“Really?” Lily asked. “These are from your company? Mike, they’re beautiful. I love them.”

“They look good on you,” he said. “It was a thrill to see a stranger wearing them. That’s never happened before. I’ve often wondered who buys my pieces.”

“Where is your jewelry made? Here in Seattle?”

“No, most of my assemblers are in my hometown, Miller, on Fish Trap River. A lot of the men lost their jobs when the timber industry went belly up so there are a lot of folks there who need a job. The work the women get from me helps out a little. I’m running a true cottage industry. I design the pieces, purchase the supplies here in Seattle, then have them assembled in Miller.”

“I thought you said your name was Miller,” Lily said.

“It is. My mom’s family started the town years ago,” Mike answered casually.

Lily wasn’t sure if he was kidding her or not, so she just nodded. “How many people do you employ?”

“About fifty or so. It’s hard to say, really, because most of the pieces are assembled at someone’s kitchen table, and any woman in the family who has a few minutes can pick up a pair of tweezers and set some stones. If a piece is taking too long to complete, I suspect some of the men are put to work too,” he laughed.

“Is it difficult work?”

“Compared to harvesting trees, no. And, so far, no one has lost an arm or leg. The timber business is dangerous. Since the forest jobs are gone, a lot of the men are cross-training into computer jobs. Harvesting trees used to be the main occupation for men up there. There really wasn’t any other work.”

“That doesn’t sound real promising. Trees to computers? How’s that working out?”

“Really well. They’re even making more money than they ever did cutting trees. And it’s steadier. Computers never shut down because of fire danger,” Mike said as he twirled her again.

“That’s wonderful. I would have never thought something like that would work.”

By the time the evening was over, Lily was enchanted. She was especially impressed when Mike left her to go and dance with his sister, who was hardly a wallflower. He had to wade through men three deep to lead her onto the dance floor. Lily was struck by the obvious warmth the two had for each other, and they danced beautifully together. She had to resist taking her camera out of her purse and snapping a picture of the two. The main thing that stopped her was she didn’t ever turn off the flash on her camera, and she wasn’t entirely sure how. It would be embarrassing for the flash to go off and cause her to get caught taking a picture of people she didn’t really know. She looked around the room and didn’t see a camera anywhere, so there was no chance that someone else got a shot of the two. She didn’t feel like visiting with the other women, so she nibbled on her green cookie and watched her new friend dance with his sister. There was something about the two. Something wholesome. Maybe it was because they were from a small town. They didn’t have that slick city look other Seattleites had. Lily almost felt as if she’d known both of them for a long time. Before their second dance was over, someone cut in, and Kare left Mike’s arms to dance with a co-worker. Again, Mike crossed the middle of the room to lead Lily back onto the dance floor. He never looked at the other women sitting in a group nibbling on green cookies and watching everyone else dance.

“You two are wonderful together,” Lily said.

“Thanks,” Mike answered. “We’ve been dancing together since we were kids. Mom insisted we learn before we got to be teenagers.”

“What a smart mom!”

“I guess she went through a lot of angst because she couldn’t dance when she started dating.”

The rest of the evening flew by. Toward the end, Lily, Kare, and Mike made a pass by the dessert table, but not much was left. Even at the beginning of the party, Lily didn’t remember ever seeing more than packaged cookies on a paper platter but Kare swore she saw a cake when she first got there. They decided she must be right when Mike looked under the table and saw a plastic fork with cake crumbs on it. “I was only twenty minutes late coming down,” Lily said, “and I never saw anything except cookies.”

“I saw it, but thought I’d get some later, after I’d danced a little,” Kare said. “That was a big mistake!”

“Pie! I need pie!” Mike begged. Lily and Kare piled into his compact car and headed for a coffee shop. The waitresses in the quaint 40s era restaurant he took the women to obviously knew him; before Kare and Lily got a menu, Mike was served a slice of lemon meringue pie.

“You’ve done this before,” Lily deadpanned.

Kare pointed a finger at her brother and laughed. “Busted!” she said.

Kare wanted apple pie, and Lily ordered cherry. A grin played at the corner of Mike’s mouth, but Lily didn’t know why. What was he thinking? She looked at Kare, but Mike’s sister was busy looking at the rest of the menu and didn’t notice.

Afterward, Mike delivered them to their doorsteps. They dropped Lily off first. One thing for sure, the man was not a lech. When they pulled up to her building, Mike and Kare screamed with surprise and amusement. “You live at The Zoo!” Mike laughed as he recognized the building. Recently, there had been an article in the paper about the many and varied exotic creatures that resided with their owners in the refurbished Spanish-style building. The article and photos took up a whole page in the Home and Yard section of the Sunday paper. Lily wasn’t surprised they recognized the structure; the story, with photos of the tenants and their pets, had gone national. Lily hadn’t been interviewed because she didn’t have a pet. “I’d invite you two in, but we’ve had a big snake missing for the last few days, and he’s bound to be real hungry by now,” Lily laughed.

Mike bent his head down so he could see the sign taped to the door. In big, black letters it pleaded, “Please Don’t Let Boogie Out.” Mike leaned over and opened her car door, and feigned fear, “This is as far as I go, Sweetheart,” he said with his best Humphrey Bogart accent.

“Have a good weekend,” Kare called after her.

“You too,” Lily answered. It can’t be as good as tonight was, she thought.

Lily quickly ducked into the apartment building and shut the door securely just before a big iguana rounded the corner. The floor shook as the lizard raced to check out who was coming in the door. She looked over her shoulder to see if Mike and Kare saw it, but her new friends had already gone. “Good evening, Boots,” Lily said as she plucked a big hibiscus blossom off the top of the houseplant by the door and tossed it to him. As the lizard ripped the blossom apart and devoured it, she danced up the stairs to her apartment on the third floor. She was a little blue Mike hadn’t asked for her phone number, but it wasn’t as if he didn’t know where to find her. Before she opened her apartment door, she quickly glanced around the hall to be sure the snake wasn’t lurking nearby. She’d had a wonderful evening, and didn’t want it to end with an apartment full of tenants trying to corner a four-foot snake in her bedroom in the wee hours of the morning.

When Lily unlocked the door, her phone was ringing. She was concerned because it was so late. Who would call her at this time of night? Since she had no family, she thought it must be about the missing snake; maybe they’d found it. She laughed when she picked up the phone and a voice at the other end, obviously Kare’s, said, “Remember to lock your doors!” She could hear Mike’s laughter in the background and thought she heard him say, “I told you!” Lily realized he didn’t need to ask her for her phone number. Kare, the head of the human resource department, had the number of every company employee on the contact list of her cell phone. Would he ask Kare for her number? Oh, she hoped he would.

Lily was sitting at her dressing table, getting ready to take off her earrings, when she saw something dart under her bed. “Oh, no, you don’t,” she said to the big white rabbit who peeked out at her from under the bed skirt. It must have gotten in when she had her French doors open that morning. A lot of the tenants on the third floor left their balcony doors open whenever their apartments got too hot. The heat from the units below often warmed the upper apartments so much the renters on the top floor turned their furnaces off. A quick trip to the kitchen produced a carrot she used to lure the floppy-eared creature within reachable range. “No bunny bombs under my bed,” she softly lectured the rabbit as she held it in her arms and scratched behind its ears. She took the pet outside and gently placed it on the tiles between her balcony and the one next door. She tossed the carrot halfway across the almost flat tile roof to get Bomber started in the right direction. There was enough space for the rabbit to squeak through the railings of each balcony and he was a frequent visitor. Lily would worry about the rabbit until the snake was found. The reptile had to be starved. As far as anyone knew, Boogie, the snake, hadn’t eaten for days and a rabbit as big as Bomber would be enticing. She stood watch until she saw the next door neighbor’s pet hop through the apartment’s French doors. She gave a quick wave to her neighbor who stuck her head out the door to say thank you to Lily. Bomber came to Lily’s so often its owner never worried about him when he was gone. That is, until now. With a big, hungry snake on the loose, Lily and her neighbor would have to be more careful.

Chapter 2. Two Makeovers

The next morning, Lily thought she had a giant toothache when she woke up. She chuckled when she felt her face and discovered she’d slept all night in her new earrings. Chasing Bomber out from underneath her bed had distracted her and she’d forgotten to take them out. One of them was digging into her jaw line. On her way to her teapot, she couldn’t resist stopping by the mirror in the living room to look at the dent on the side of her face. The imprint was perfect. Once she got to sleep, she must not have moved all night.

She was still on her first cup of tea when she looked in the mirror again and realized she could use some personal grooming. Her hair needed a new cut, her nails were just so-so, and she knew without looking her toes needed a pedicure. A facial would be a good idea. She grinned when she realized if she hadn’t met Mike, she wouldn’t have cared. Motivated by the hope Mike might come to visit, she carried her cup of tea with her while she tried to evaluate her apartment through a stranger’s eyes. She decided it could also use a little sprucing up. She had the whole weekend; how much could she accomplish before she went back to work on Monday morning?

The walls were white when she moved in, and Lily never liked them, but kept putting off making a decision about a new color. Suddenly, she was inspired. Maybe a soft yellow for the living room and a pale aqua for her bedroom. She’d think about it on the way to the paint store. She quickly dressed, grabbed the keys to her little import, and headed toward the shopping district. She was in such a hurry she forgot to close her balcony door. She didn’t see Boogie slither out from under her bed, onto her balcony, and head toward Bomber’s apartment next door.

By Saturday night, at least half the people on her floor had stopped by and helped her paint. There were so many of them the walls were done in no time.

Still, she was exhausted and fell into bed right after her shower. Early, the next morning, Lily was nervous about being caught with her hair a mess and paint splatters all over her, so the next thing she did was fix herself up. The little beauty shop around the corner was open on Sunday and they had it all, so she got everything on her grooming list done in one stop. Patiently, the women removed paint splatters form Lily’s face, hair, and fingernails. She got a facial, haircut, manicure, and pedicure. It was everything the shop offered except for their tattoos. By the time she’d been there for several hours, the women knew all about Boogie and they joked about her getting a snake tattoo on her ankle. With a laugh, she declined and told them she was afraid it would make Bomber, the rabbit, and Boots, the iguana, jealous.

While she was out, Lily went to the corner photo shop to pick up one of her photos she’d dropped off earlier in the week. It was a shot of colorful beach towels hanging over the side of a yacht in the marina. She had taken the shot on a morning when the light was just right, and the towels were reflected on the water so perfectly it was almost impossible to tell which were the actual towels and which were the reflections. The photo shop was on Lily’s bus route and she noticed it every morning when she went by. Since she had a digital camera and made her own prints, she’d never gone into the store before but, this week, it had a sign in its window that advertised poster size enlargements for ten dollars. How could she pass that up? She made a quick stop to pick up her order.

Near the end of her decorating budget, she opted to purchase the frame for the print in a local discount store. She also picked up two crisp, white lampshades for the living room lamps to replace the dingy ones that were in the apartment when she moved in. She wanted to buy some new toss pillows for her couch to bring out the colors of the towels in the photo, but almost decided against it because she thought she’d spent enough already. However, on the way out of the store with her new shades and frame, she saw a whole bin of brightly colored pillows on sale for ten dollars each. Lily grabbed four and paid for all of the items in her cart with her seldom used credit card.

Then she polished her wood floors. Her fellow tenants who helped her paint, stopped by at the end of the day to see the final results. They were all impressed at the improvement. When Reggae, her colorful Jamaican landlady stopped by, she offered to clean the carpet in Lily’s bedroom. She regularly cleaned the floors in the building and said there was nothing to it because she had her own shampooing machines. She said, if Lily didn’t mind, she could let herself in and do it while Lily was at work. Lily gladly accepted the offer. She hadn’t looked forward to dragging a heavy carpet cleaner out of the grocery store, stuffing it into her car, and then carrying it up three flights of stairs. Was it any wonder the chore was at the bottom of her list? She was surprised to learn Reggae had a utility closet on each floor and each housed vacuums and shampooers.

At the end of the day, she was tired, but pleased with all she’d accomplished. She put on her new green earrings, and was pouring herself a celebratory glass of sherry when she heard a scream next door.

Everyone in the building instantly knew what was wrong, and came running. When they got to the source of the scream, they saw Boogie curled around Bomber’s cage, trying to figure out a way in. The poor terrified rabbit, frozen in fear, could barely move because the snake had constricted the sturdy cage in an attempt to get to his dinner. Lily was startled to see how the constrictor had been able to squeeze the metal cage around Bomber. This snake was no forty-pound weakling. And how had it gotten in? Barbara said she was sure she’d closed her French door to the balcony. Everyone wondered if it hadn’t been there for days, but, then, why hadn’t it tried to get into Bomber’s cage earlier?

Velma, Boogie’s owner, raced in, cooed comforting words to the snake, threw an afghan over it, and fed it a quick snack—Lily didn’t even want to know what—before she took off for her apartment with the bundled reptile under her arm.

The tenants lingered after she left. One of the renters, when she’d heard the scream, had raced out of her apartment so quickly she left without her macaw. “Don’t leave me!” the parrot screamed over and over. Its broken-hearted cry screeched down the building’s third floor halls. Lily’s neighbors didn’t seem to hear it as they discussed their snake crisis. Boogie had gotten too big, the neighbors complained. It was only a matter of time before it caused serious trouble. Could it attack a human? No one knew; someone said they’d check. They all agreed to be sure and not let the news leak out. If the city became alerted to the problem, they might not stop with evaluating the snake. Chances were good they’d start at the first door and check out every apartment in the building. The newspaper article wouldn’t help their situation. It was pretty much a complete inventory of the apartment’s creature inhabitants. If the city decided to, every pet could be efficiently designated as a health or safety hazard in under an hour. They all doubted that would happen. The building’s pets were much loved and well-cared for but, if it did, it would be a difficult decision to reverse. The only thing they had going for them was they didn’t have any children in the building.

Lily was one of the few tenants who didn’t have a pet, unless you counted the two-foot high green ceramic elephant one of the tenants gave her for a joke. The man had said it was the only thing he’d brought home from Vietnam.

When Lily first saw the apartment building, she had no idea of its colorful tenants. She’d stopped her car to take a photo of the building’s unusual architecture. There were few Spanish style buildings in the city and none were in such a pristine condition. As far as she knew, this was the only one that was broken up into apartments. The others she’d seen were office buildings. Lily considered it a real find. When she got out of her car so she could get a closer picture so the power lines that ran in front of the building wouldn’t show, she noticed a small Apartment For Rent sign in the door.

She moved in the next weekend. On her first day, most of the tenants who stopped by to welcome her had some kind of exotic creature under their arm but, so far, the only pets she’d gotten to know well were Bomber, the huge rabbit that lived next door, and Boots, the landlady’s iguana. Bomber was good company; the only downside to his frequent visits were the bunny bombs he occasionally dropped. The iguana never visited, but Lily and he had become friends through visits in the hall. Whenever Lily came home, the big lizard seemed to be waiting for her by the large hibiscus plant near the front door. She suspected Boots didn’t see her as a friend, but as an easy mark for an unreachable snack.

Now that Lily had redecorated and had clean floors, she wasn’t anxious to have Bomber unchaperoned in her apartment. She’d have to keep her balcony doors shut when she wasn’t home. But then, she’d have to keep them shut anyway because of the snake.