Love's Design

Carmen Melnyk

Description

It’s love at first sight for two lonely people on a chance encounter during a violent snow storm
Orphaned at the tender age of three and a half years old, Mandy Sullivan has moved from foster home to foster home never putting down roots long enough to make lasting friendships. Her most sincere wish was to be adopted into a loving family but that was not in the cards. Her only friend is a dwarf hamster living in her mind. Now at 24, she hides some very deep hurts and betrayals beneath a smooth, apparently self-confident exterior. She yearns for a true friend…
Jamie Vandraegen, successful architect at 28, lives almost like a recluse in the beautiful house he designed and built with his own blood, sweat and tears. Estranged from his parents and jealously insane brother, he talks to his dream girl, a faceless entity who simply understands him. The day of the big snowstorm, his lonely, quiet life is rocked by the whirlwind appearance of a snow-covered, frozen-lashed girl on his doorstep.
But his jealous brother is bent on making trouble.

Sujets

• Contemporary
• Romance
• Love
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: iUniverse
• Date de parution: 24 octobre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781663246349
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Love’s Design
A North of the 53° Romance
CARMEN MELNYK


LOVE’S DESIGN A NORTH OF THE 53° ROMANCE
 
Copyright © 2014 Carmen Melnyk.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
 
 
iUniverse
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Bloomington, IN 47403
www.iuniverse.com
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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
ISBN: 978-1-6632-4635-6 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6632-4634-9 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022918522
 
 
iUniverse rev. date: 10/21/2022
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Epilogue
About The Author
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3

Orphaned at the tender age of three and a half years old, Mandy Sullivan has moved from foster home to foster home never putting down roots long enough to make lasting friendships. Her most sincere wish was to be adopted into a loving family but that was not in the cards. Her only friend is a dwarf hamster living in her mind. Now at 24, she hides some very deep hurts and betrayals beneath a smooth, apparently self-confident exterior. She yearns for a true friend…
Jamie Vandraegen, successful architect at 28, lives almost like a recluse in the beautiful house he designed and built with his own blood, sweat and tears. Estranged from his parents and jealously insane brother, he talks to his dream girl, a faceless entity who simply understands him. The day of the big snowstorm, his lonely, quiet life is rocked by the whirlwind appearance of a snow-covered, frozen-lashed girl on his doorstep.
CHAPTER
1
S trong gusts of wind buffeted her car as she doggedly kept creeping along at forty kilometers an hour despite the near whiteout conditions. The drifting snow made it nearly impossible to tell where the shoulder was. Hogging the middle of the highway, she prayed the other guy would have his lights on so she could avoid a head-on collision.
“Actually, there’s little chance of that happening. Nobody else is that stupid to be driving in this kind of weather,” she soliloquized. She gently rotated her neck and shoulders in an effort to ease the tension and stiffness that had built up over the last hour. According to her GPS, she still has another fifty kilometers to go not that she fully trusted the thing. It was more often wrong than right in remote areas.
All of a sudden, her car fishtailed slightly. Her heart stuck in her throat. She instinctively righted the little Audi, slowing down even more.
“Great! Just great!” she muttered. “That’s all I needed – black ice!”
She briefly considered pulling over and parking right there on the side of the road but then immediately negated the idea. “Ugh! That would be even stupider. I’d be a sitting duck for some eighteen-wheeler!”
Resigned, she squinted into the swirling whiteness and kept going. With both hands gripping the steering wheel, she reminded herself why she was on this godforsaken highway in the worst possible conditions.
She had been fortunate in landing a teaching position with the Public-School Board immediately upon completing her degree. For the last two years, she had devoted all her time and effort in caring and nurturing those wonderful Grade Four students at the Eaglestone Elementary School. The glowing recommendations from her co-workers, parents and principal at the end of those two years culminated in a permanent teacher’s certificate.
Unfortunately, some perverse twist of fate changed everything! Her Grade Four class was awarded to another teacher with more seniority leaving her with little choice but to take on the Grade One class. She didn’t mind the little ones but it was a totally different ballgame. And to make matters worse, her nice principal was promoted to a bigger school and his replacement seemed to have taken an immediate dislike to her. Maybe it was the fact that her class was too lively, too enthusiastic. He called it “unruly”. Or maybe it was because she bluntly refused to have the children hold on to a rope like pack animals when they went out on field trips.
“Why is it,” she wondered aloud, “that when you think you have all angles covered and your life is going along just beautifully, some idiot throws a monkey wrench in the whole works? Like I don’t have enough problems or something! And why did all those accidents have to happen while I was on supervision? I must be jinxed! Some yoyo up there must have picked my number out of a hat and decided to make my life a living hell!”
Talking to herself seemed to alleviate the monotony of this long, unending drive. Plus, it was a little habit she’d picked up along the way when trying to figure things out. Putting things into words always helped her to look at them from an exterior point of view. One time, she had tried to explain to her roommate, Leila, why she talked to herself.
“You see, by voicing the problem out loud it gets it out of my head. Otherwise, it ends up going around and around in circles like a hamster in a wheel. After a while, the wheel takes the hamster for a ride and he ends up thumping along out of control till he falls to the bottom, half dead.”
Leila almost had an apoplexy from laughing so hard. For weeks after, she’d ask, “How’s the hamster?” any time she figured her roommate had been silent for too long – which was about a half hour limit.
That was the first and last time Mandy had ever tried to explain how her mind worked.
Out of the corner of her eye, she noted the faint glow of a yard light. Common sense should have asserted itself at that moment and she should have holed up at this farmhouse until the storm passed over. But, if there ever was a character flaw in someone, it would have been Mandy’s stubbornness in attaining her goals. She meant to get to her destination today even if it half killed her in the process.
The tension in her shoulders and neck was becoming unbearable as she once again rotated them. Driving on, eyes glued to the road, she continued her monologue.
“Is it my fault if that kid froze his tongue to the monkey bars? Whatever was he thinking? I guess he wasn’t thinking! And that poor little girl – she’s going to have a scar on her cheek for the rest of her life now.”
Mandy felt really bad about that one but there was nothing she could have done to prevent that accident short of turning into Superwoman. The end of recess bell had just sounded and the 2 nd grader was running towards the school when she inadvertently stepped on the edge of her crazy carpet and ended up sliding right into the bike rack. Her parents had filed a negligence report on her – the second one in the space of ten days! The straw that broke the camel’s back came barely two weeks later when a ten-year old broke his arm falling out of the jungle gym. She could still see the principal’s sorrowful demeanour which didn’t quite disguise the happy gloat in his eyes when he so sweetly expressed his regrets at having to dismiss her.
“I hate apologetic hypocrites!” she cried out angrily, straightening up abruptly.
That was a mistake! The uneven pressure on the gas pedal caused the car to lose its tenuous hold on the icy road. Instinctively putting the car in neutral, she eased off the gas as it spun around and around. She might have been able to keep it on the road had the passenger wheels not hit the frozen ridge on the shoulder. With those two wheels locked in place, the rest of the car has nowhere to go but up and over on its side.
She felt curiously detached as it sunk into the ditch sending a geyser of snow flying outward, all four wheels now spinning freely. Hanging from her seat belt, she was dimly aware that the passenger side airbag had deployed under impact just as it should per the manual.
“What a waste,” she noted resentfully.
She cautiously reached for the ignition and shut the motor off. In the ensuing silence, all she could hear was her furiously pounding heart. Taking stock of the situation, she braced herself and unclipped the seatbelt. Despite the cramped quarters, she managed to put on her ski pants and find her scarf, tuque and mitts. Digging out her wallet from her purse, she slipped it in one of the large pockets of her three-quarter length parka along with the car keys.
Getting out of the car proved more of a challenge than expected. The wind was either trying to rip the door off its hinges or else slam it down on her head as it swirled around the car like a preying hyena.
Holding the door up with one hand, she managed to get halfw