Lush

By

Chris Adonn

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2014 Chris
Adonn

*****

All rights reserved. No
part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or
by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of
fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the
product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and
any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or
locales is entirely coincidental.

License Notes:

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you for respecting the hard work of this author.

All the amazing writers
and people who have inspired and encouraged me.

I would like to thank
everyone who has helped me with this novella: my family, my new and
old friends.

Special thanks goes
to,

Lorna, who listened
over and over as this story took shape. You have made some amazing
suggestions along the way and it is thanks to you that it’s a story
I can take pride in.

Ruth, your support and
guidance have been priceless. I don’t want to wax on about just how
much you have helped me, but you and I know what you’ve done for
me, and it is immeasurable.

Big thank you Tina,
Michelle, Karen, and Renita for being my canaries in the mine. You
not only gave me a very clear indication of how Lush might be
received by fellow readers, you spotted some seriously dangerous
typos and grammatical errors. More than that, your suggestions and
advice have been a gift.

My Love Story
Collection is a compilation and expansion of my romance writings
over the past six years. Some of the books, like this one, are
novellas. Some are full-length novels. Some are written in the
third person, and some are written in the first person. It all
comes down to how I interact with my characters and the voice they
take in my mind.

Please be advised that
this is a romance novella that does mention naughtily stuff and,
more importantly, it is served up with a healthy dose of profanity.
If wicked words and descriptive love scenes make you cringe, stop
reading now.

If you are under
eighteen, PLEASE, stop reading now. This book is not intended for
your eyes. Do something age appropriate instead and enjoy your
childhood. You’ll miss it when it’s gone.

For the rest of you,
happy reading. See you on the other side.

Chris Adonn

Ps: I am a South
African writer. As such my spelling generally follows the rules of
Commonwealth English. All this basically means, is that I write
‘colour’ rather than ‘color’ and use the suffix ‘ise’ rather than
‘ize’.

Lush

The Eyes that See

Legacy

The Catalyst

Lush

Dedicated
to

Acknowledgments

Note to the
Reader

Books in the Love
Story collection

Books in the
Balancer Chronicles

Blurb for
Lush

Chapter
1

Chapter
2

Chapter
3

Chapter
4

Chapter
5

Chapter
6

Chapter
7

Chapter
8

Dearest
Reader

Chapter One
– Come Away with Me

Chapter
One – After Alex Died

When past and present
collide at a speed date of all places, Julia Kincaid does what she
does best; she heads for the nearest exit. Only Michael Winthrop
has other plans for her. He wants to pick-up where they left off.
As friends. Only she never saw him as just a friend, he was the guy
she dreamed of marrying some day.

When Julia broke his
heart seven years ago Michael tried to move on, and as far as
anyone can tell, he did. He built a life for himself that most men
would call paradise. But now, after seeing Julia again, he is
realising that a future with her is still the only thing he ever
wanted out of life.

Club Lush, New York NY,
Friday night, July 12th 2013

Speed dating? What on
earth had possessed her to take part in speed dating? There were
many things that Julia Kincaid could easily imagine herself doing
for Kirsten Winthrop: Help her juggle boyfriends, lie to her
parents, lie to the cops, bury a body in the woods with her...

Funny enough, agreeing
to take part in some kind of prescribed dating processional as an
independent critic / adjudicator /
whatever-the-hell-you-want-to-call-it of sorts was the last thing
she had ever imagined she’d do for her best friend.

She hated the idea of
putting herself on display like some desperate, sex-starved female
on the prowl. She especially hated the thought of sitting through
conversations with desperate, sex-starved men who were hoping to
get lucky at the end of the night with some random woman they had
just met.

What, for the love of
sanity, was wrong with the world these days? What was wrong with
the good old-fashioned way of doing things? Why did everything have
to be calculated and about instant gratification? She liked slow
courtships. She liked seeing a man from across the room in an
unplanned situation — a party or night out at a bar after a ball
game — and experiencing mutual sparks of attraction. She liked
making that connection, which held tentative promise, then
gradually pursuing it. She liked talking over that initial cup of
coffee or ice-cold beer and later a dinner date. The first
uncertain kiss, the phone calls, the excitement... The
chase.

She absolutely did not
like the idea of premeditated expectations before even meeting a
potential suitor. She detested the thought of taking part in
something designed to pretty much force its participants into vying
for attention. What could be worse than suffering through a series
of rushed dates with strangers who would no doubt try to make a
memorable first impression followed by obligatory conversation?

And yet here she was,
in the very spacious, very elegant, VIP lounge of Kirsten’s
brother’s two-month-old nightclub, getting ready to take part in
two forty-minute sessions of torture with a forty-minute
shoot-me-now interval between. The only upside was that Michael,
who Julia had not seen in about a decade (a decade and a month to
be precise. Not that she’d been counting), had assured his sister
that he would give her critique partner complimentary drinks for
the night. And a three hundred dollar coupon for dinner at Peter
Luger. And... wait for it. Two tickets to the Midsummer Classic! A
game that would be taking place in just four days time at Citi
Field; home of her favourite team after the Yankees, the Mets!

Oh yeah. The tickets
had been the clincher, and the offer had sounded pretty damn
irresistible last weekend when she’d been more than a little drunk,
thanks entirely to her family’s 4th of July celebration. It had
also helped that she’d planned on taking her favourite cousin to
the game. Bradley was as into baseball as she was and he was so
much fun to hang out with. Sadly he’d needed to catch a flight to
Florida this morning because his grandmother had broken her
hip.

At the beach of all
places!

Seriously, what was a
seventy-four-year-old woman doing playing extreme volleyball
anyway?

Okay, so Julia could
totally see herself doing the same in her seventies, and probably
fracturing more than a hip, but that was beside the point. What
mattered right now was that she would have no one to take to the
exhibition match; one of the biggest highlights of the season!
Well, that was not entirely true. She had lots of people she could
take along, but not a single one whom she would want to spend up to
four hours at the stadium with.

If only she had a
boyfriend, one who was as into major league baseball as she was.
Or, at the very least, not condescending. Most guys, all of her
longstanding male friends included, tended to think that a woman
could not possibly be a true fan of ball games of any kind. Perhaps
because they thought that having balls was a prerequisite. Then
again, they probably weren’t all that far off the mark. Every last
one of her girl friends could pretty much care less about baseball.
Sure, they liked the excitement, the energy of the crowd and
players — not to mention how hot some of those players looked in
their gear — but damned if they understood the true significance of
the strategies at play. Almost none understood that baseball was a
complex mental game even though you could almost always predict the
outcome after the fist two innings. None understood that a truly
great game was the unpredictable one that kept you guessing right
to the end of the last play no matter who you supported.

“Tell me again why your
brother needs us to attend this stupid waste of time tonight?” she
asked Kirsten as they collected their Cosmopolitans from the lavish
bar.

Her puckish friend
winked at the barman before turning to her, leaving the poor sucker
so bowled over that he actually blushed like a devout Puritan who’d
just realised that pleasure wasn’t an entirely bad thing.

After taking an
annoyingly slow sip from her glass, she announced with an
exaggerated air of mock exasperation, “For the thousandth time, Ms
Kincaid, he wants objective assessments of the night. So try to
keep an open mind, and if you think of anything helpful be sure to
make a note of it.”

“Yeah about that, what
on earth do either of us know about speed dating? It’s not like
we’ve ever done it before.”

“That’s the point,
Jules. He wants to hear the opinions of a couple of virgins.”

“Oh God, Kirst! Neither
of us have been virgins for years. I popped my cherry in my first
year at NYU and you? Well, you were kinda precocious. What was it,
your sixteenth birthday with Rory Mullins in your parents’ pool
house?”

“Actually it was the
week after my birthday and it was my parents’ boathouse on the
lake. Now stop being a brat. You know what I mean by virgins. Mike
wants the opinions of women who have never done this kinda thing
before, so we’re perfect. Please just down your drink and stop
looking like you want to kill something. It’s time to give our
gorgeous faces one last touch-up and get our nametags before the
fun starts.”

Julia pointed to the
washrooms and smirked with satisfaction. “Um, I hate to break it to
you, chick, but we only have ten minutes till the dating ordeal
commences and there’s a mile long line at the restrooms. Turns out
you’re not the only vain diva who wants to indulge in her
narcissistic rituals before the desperate male hordes come marching
in to dish out their cheesiest pickup lines in under five
minutes.”

Kirsten was totally
unfazed, as evidenced by her Cheshire cat smirk. “No problem. We
can use my brother’s office. He has a fully loaded bathroom in
there. If we weren’t rushed for time we could’ve taken a swim in
his Olympic size bathtub.”

Oh. Hell. No!
No
way was she willing to face Michael just yet. She was far too sober
for that. She’d successfully avoided him since his return to New
York almost five months ago, and she had no intention of seeing him
before she absolutely had to. She wasn’t ready. Would probably
never be ready.