Snippet: I’ve started yet another story, folk. Take a look at the early stages of Charles and Tunie #erotic #romance #interracial

I have serious writing ADD right now, ya’ll. I mean, it’s bad. I’m plugging along, but the end for any one story gets farther and farther away every time I start something new. The only good thing is the ideas are bubbling up like champagne, and I’m writing a lot. LOL. Here’s a rough snippet of my latest romance feature Charles and Tunie…

She was screwed. Screwed with a capital screwed. She had no alternatives left. No one to turn to, no emergency fund to tap, and there were no social services to provide aid. In three days time she would be out of her apartment, on the street, in the middle of winter, in Chicago.

Tunie figured now would probably be a good time to start crying. As if her soul agreed, her eyes welled up, but she was in public so she gulped back her tears and tried again to think what she could possibly do to help herself out of this nightmarish situation.

“Here.” Someone thrust a white handkerchief in her face.

She looked up and found one of the coffee shop regulars at her elbow. Tall, dark and fine, her coworker Rita called him. Tunie usually hid in the back when she saw him coming. He was undeniably handsome, tall and broad with luxurious thick black hair and piercing blue eyes, but he was also intimidating, a big time scowler. In all the months she’d been working here, she’d seen him often, but never once with a smile on his face.

“Oh, thank you, but I’ll just use one of these napkins.” God forbid she should get the last of her cheap mascara all over that pristine hanky.

“Tell me what’s wrong.”

And just like that, he picked up her purse, which looked absolutely ridiculous in his large hand, and her tea, and set them down on the table of his booth. Then he took her by the elbow, pulled her from her seat, and reinstalled her across from his.

Well, hell, she thought, and blew out a tired breath. But she needed to tell someone, and who better to unload to than a stranger?

“I’m being evicted. I paid my rent,” she hastened to say. “But my new landlord says there is no record of me having paid rent for the last six months, and he wants me out.”

“Why didn’t you show him your canceled checks?”

“I did. But he says the money never made it to the books. I could sue, but I don’t have money for a lawyer, and suing won’t find me a place to live. So here I am,” she finished, taking a shaky sip of tea.

“There’s something you’re not telling me.”

Smart and fine. She’d have to tell Rita. “I can’t prove anything, but I think the old landlord’s son may be the reason my rent never got to the right place. I initially rented the studio from his mother. A very nice old lady I met in this coffee shop. She used to come in all the time.” His fingers twirled, an irritable gesture for her to get to the point. “Anyway, about six months ago, she asked me to make the checks out to her directly because she was having some work down on the building. I didn’t think anything of it. But she went to live in a nursing home not long after, I stopped getting rent receipts, and then the building was sold.”

“Didn’t it occur to you that something was wrong when you stopped getting rent receipts?”

“Yes,” she said shortly, not appreciating his tone, which said he thought she was stupid. Her whole unload to a stranger strategy would henceforth require a completely different type of stranger. “But I figured my cashed checks were proof since I put “rent” on them.”

“So what are you planning to do now?”

“I, I don’t know,” she admitted. Her hands were trembling. She was nervous and upset and she hadn’t eaten. She put them in her lap where he couldn’t see them, but she suspected he knew exactly what she was doing. “I can’t quite believe it,” she said. “But I’ll soon be homeless.”

“I even thought about turning a few tricks,” she admitted, laughing shakily. “But who would pay for my scrawny self?”

“I would,” he said promptly. “How much are you asking?”

Tunie stared at him, shocked, then she began to laugh. A long, pretty laugh that drew eyes and a few smiles from the people around them. “Thank you,” she said sincerely, and it was his turn to be shocked. “I needed that laugh.”

Charlie’s full lips firmed. “I’m not joking. I’m between mistresses at the moment, and I find you very attractive. I think we could be good together.”

He rose, removed a card from an expensive looking black leather wallet and laid it on the table in front of her. Because she was watching closely, he took longer than was necessary to put on his long rather fabulous black cashmere and wool coat and picked up his equally striking briefcase. He paid a stylist to ensure he looked as rich and successful as he was, and no stranger to using his looks to help him get what he wanted, he straightened broad shoulders and allowed a grin to play at the corners of his full, red lips.

“Call me,” he said, and walked away.

Tunie stared after him, her mouth agape. Had he really just propositioned her? Offered her a position as his new mistress?

No, her prissy inner voice corrected, he asked you how much after you let that mouth of yours run away with you.

Okay, that was true enough. She had asked for it with that turning tricks comments, but she’d only been half serious, for pete’s sake. Who wouldn’t know she was joking?

A man who keeps mistresses.