Dear Rita

And even as she was being engulfed by this ridiculously unexpected and totally unwarranted attraction, her rational mind reminded her that this was the same man who had been getting on her very last nerve just an hour before. But the warm, woodsy scent of him made those thoughts irrelevant.

Why didn’t he do something? Why didn’t he make a move, say something or lean forward and…touch her? Rita felt her body sway toward him a little. She lifted her eyes to his and found that he was not looking at her, but was staring at the ceiling, in the attitude of someone praying, or at least consulting the heavens for guidance….

“Rita,” he began.

“Yes?”

“I’d better go before…” His eyes were on her mouth again. “I’d better go now.”

Without another word, he turned abruptly and headed out her front door.

MILLS & BOON

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SIMONA TAYLOR

lives on her native Caribbean island of Trinidad—a fertile place for dreaming up scorching, sun-drenched romance novels. She balances a career in public relations and a family of two small children and one very patient man while feeding her obsession for writing.

Simona lives under the spell of her muse, or, as they’d say on her island, the writing “jumbie.” At the end of the day, when her son and daughter—her little matched set of salt and pepper shakers—are safely in bed, after school bags are packed, the laundry done, the kitchen cleaned and the toys put away, she indulges in her latest writing project with a sense of anticipation usually reserved for chocolate.

A sensual setting is half the pleasure to be found in reading—and writing—a book. While Simona loves to show off the charms of Trinidad and its sister island, Tobago, she has also set her romances in the south of France, Barcelona and the fictional city of Santa Amata in the eastern United States.

When not dreaming up drool-worthy heroes, she updates her Web site, www.scribble-scribble.com, which, as thousands of visitors have found out, is a fun place to visit, read her novel excerpts and her blog and have a good laugh.

She has also published three works of women’s literary fiction under her real name, Roslyn Carrington, but it is her passion for romance that most consumes her.

Dear Rita

Simona Taylor

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Dear Reader,

Dear Rita was one of the hardest books I’ve ever had to write. Why? Timing, timing, timing. I started it on August 16, 2005—when my daughter, Megan, was eight weeks old.

I vaguely remember starting that first chapter, sitting in a haze of exhaustion. Snatching half an hour while my baby slept.

And that’s how Dear Rita has been shaped. In dribbles and bits; in stolen half hours and precious whole hours that were too few and too far between. I wrote on my lunch hour, dividing my attention between the book and my ringing phone, my boss passing by my desk to have a word and the blip of e-mails.

At night, while Megan slept and my three-year-old, Riley, read quietly in his bed (or hollered at the top of his lungs for Mommy), I wrote a little more.

The days in which I was able to write ten, fifteen hours a week are gone. Now, 4 or 5 hours a week are a miracle. But I don’t begrudge my babies the time they’ve taken from me. They’ve added a whole new dimension to the person that I am, and I love them dearly.

I hope you enjoyed Dear Rita . In spite of the constraints, I enjoyed writing it.

I look forward to hearing from you. You can e-mail me at roslyn@scribble-scribble.com, or drop by my Web site at www.scribble-scribble.com. My snail mail address is:

Roslyn Carrington

8190 NW 21st Street

Suite T-926

Miami, FL 33122

Dedicated to Mrs. Leeba Deo La Roche

Thanks for your enthusiasm and your encouragement.

Thanks for being you. You make me laugh every time we meet. And thanks for the loving care you’ve shown toward my children, and, very importantly, for keeping them out of my hair long enough for me to write this book.

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 1

S pam.

Delete.

Spam.

Delete.

Spam…How in the world did people dream up half this stuff? And who in the world was crazy enough to buy it? Rita held down the Delete key and shook her head. She had no intention of buying cheap aphrodisiacs online, had no cellulite to speak of and was quite happy with the extra eight pounds or so she carried around on her five-foot-six-inch frame. After all, on the scale of the universe, what was an extra eight pounds?

But spammers certainly made life difficult, especially when her job involved spending hours online each day. People out there relied on her, women who were hurting and confused, who needed her help. Clearing junk mail took longer and longer every day, and when you worked freelance, time was money.

She settled into her Starbucks seat, glad that she had come early enough to bag her favorite, a comfy, funky one near the window, and slurped on her thick, aromatic White Chocolate Mocha. Rita knew her frailties, and coffee was one of them. She could start the day without food. She could start the day without air, if it came to that. But caffeine? Noooo.

She patted her mocha mustache with a napkin and got down to work. A dozen e-mails down, she found a likely prospect.

Dear Rita,

My husband and I share a computer. Last night I was surfing the Net when I began to type in the address of a Web site I wanted. Guess what? The Auto-complete feature was on, and before I could finish typing, another address popped up. It was a singles Web site specializing in girls under thirty. My husband is fifty-two, and we’ve been married twenty-nine years. Rita, I’m devastated. My husband’s registration dates back almost a year, and he’s been using another name, claiming that he’s only forty-one, and single.

What do I do?

Is it just a phase?

Hopeful

Washington D.C.

Dear Hopeful,

What do you do? Try to figure out his password (it usually isn’t all that hard), go into his account with the Web site and cancel it. Then look through his History, dig around in his cookies and Temporary Internet Files, and try to find out where else he’s been. If he has memberships in any other sites, cancel those. Then sit back and wait.

Next time he tries to access the site, he’ll know you know. The measure of the man is what he does next. Either he’ll stay quiet, in which case he’s a coward as well as a cheat, or he’ll ’fess up, in which case he’s honest—for a stinking cheat, that is.

Either way, any man who passes himself off as being ten years younger just to chase women has issues. Is it a phase? Probably. Should you sit back and accept it? No. Either thrash it out before he gets lost in cyberspace, or toss him in the Recycle Bin. Your choice. But I’ve got to tell you, honey, in your shoes, I’d cut the stinker loose and go find a Web site that specializes in men under thirty…

Rita

Rita took another swig of coffee and sighed. Every day she was confronted with the pain of other women’s love lives. They claimed they were coming to her for advice, for her to steer them in the right direction, but most of them knew, deep down in their hearts, what to do. What they were coming to her for, more than anything else, was a sympathetic ear.

And that was why she loved the Dear Rita job. Niobe, a glossy, chatty magazine for women, came out in hard copy monthly. With a wide ethnic base and a decent print run, it was chock-full of everything a women’s magazine should have: fashion, makeup, financial advice, contests and giveaways and an advice column. Her advice column.

Even better, her column ran weekly in the online version of Niobe, creating four times the income for her, and four times the chances to provide a sympathetic ear for sisters in need. It didn’t get much better than that.

She opened up another e-mail.

Holler at ya Rita girl!

Big-ups on your column! You’re a hoot! I have to ask you something. I’m seventeen and still in High School. I’ve been going with a college junior for five months, and he is totally phat!!;-) I’m a virgin and I want to save myself for marriage. (Don’t laugh, my Grandma is a preacher and she’d kill me!) He says he understands.

Thing is, he’s been having sex with other girls. He told me so himself. Not a whole lot. Only once a week or so. He says he loves me and all, but he’s a grown man and has needs.

My girlfriends say he’s a dawg and he could get me sick and I should kick him to the curb, but I love him so awful much, and plus he is so, so cute!!;-)!

What d’you think?

Desperately in Love,

Miami

Rita tapped out an answer, wishing she could thump the girl on the head while she was doing so.

Dear Desperate,

I think your friends are right.

Rita.

She hoped the silly little girl took the hint, but she wasn’t banking on it. What was it with these young women nowadays? Why were they in such a hurry? Was there no more room in the world for friendship rings and promise pins, she groused to herself, feeling a good sixty years older than the twenty-seven she really was.

From deep in the recesses of her coat pocket, her cell phone rang. She fumbled, trying to fish it out, and dropped it on the floor. It survived, but by the time she retrieved it, it had stopped ringing. She recognized the number at once. Beatrix.

She took a few deep breaths. The right thing to do would be to call her mother back. But the idea of it brought a twinge of anxiety to the pit of her stomach. She hadn’t spoken to her mother in, what, a week, maybe two?

She could ignore the call, at least for a day or so, and then plead deadlines, but that would be a bug-eating lie. She was on top of her deadlines for the time being, and it wasn’t as though her social calendar was all penciled in. Besides, the daughter’s rulebook said that a mother’s call had to be returned, even if it amounted to buying an economy-sized bag of trouble at the discount store. She hit Recall.

Her mother picked up. “Rita! Sweetheart! Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. I just—”

“Glad to hear it. I thought you’d fallen off the edge of the Earth. And you didn’t take my call just now! Did I catch you at a bad time?”

“No, I was—”

“Sure I’m not interrupting anything?”

“No, Mom, I was just—”

“Bea,” her mother corrected her automatically. If there was one thing Beatrix hated, it was being called Mom. It made her feel old. She’d been discouraging Rita from doing that since she was fourteen.

Rita started over contritely. “No, Bea, you weren’t interrupting anything. I’m in the coffee shop, actually.”

“With someone?” Beatrix sounded hopeful.

“No.” Rita tried not to sound too sharp. It was just that whenever she and her mother—or her father, for that matter—talked, the conversation always swung around to Rita’s rank among the unattached. Every time she asserted her loner status, the response was surprise and disappointment. Beatrix, especially, seemed to think that Santa Amata was a metropolitan version of Temptation Island, throbbing with sexy young singles just waiting to hook up. It was downright ridiculous. In spite of all evidence to the contrary, Beatrix remained hopeful that once, just once, Rita’s story would be a little more titillating. She was like an older sister who sat up on a Saturday night waiting for her younger sister to come home from a date with the boy next door, hoping that the news would be juicy.

But neither of them was a teenager, and there was no boy next door, or high school sweetheart, or football hero, or break dancer or biker boy. As far as Rita was concerned, Beatrix needed to grow up.

“I hate to disappoint you, Bea, but I’m alone.”

“Well, a coffee shop’s not so bad. Lots of young businessmen fueling up on their way to work. Nice and creative ad execs. Pinstriped suits from Banker’s Row. Yummy. You should start up a conversation with one or two. They’re not as stuffy as you’d think, you know. Trust me.” She could almost hear her mother wink.

“I’m writing,” Rita answered pointedly. “It’s how I get paid. I haven’t got time to throw myself at strangers.”

She thought she heard her mother mumble, “Might do you some good.”

“What?”

“Nothing, kiddo.” Bea went quiet for a while, then sighed. “Well, if ever you need—”

“No, thanks,” Rita said hastily. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know what Beatrix had on offer this time.

“Because, you know, speaking of writing…”

Rita braced herself. Moving from her dismal, manless state to her abysmal writing was only the second verse in an all too familiar song.

“I read your column last week…”

“Uh-huh.”

“And I was thinking…”

“Yes, Mom?”

“Bea,” her mother answered impatiently. This time, Rita didn’t correct herself.

Bea went on. “I was just thinking, you know, sweetheart, if you ever need a few pointers…For example, what you said to Fidgety in Phoenix? Well, I don’t agree with you. This poor woman was having serious sexual issues, and I don’t think you took the right approach. You had the wrong perspective. Not that you probably could have had the right one, given the fact that you choose to live your life in cloisters.”

“I do not,” Rita managed. “And there’s nothing wrong with what I said to Fidgety.” Her throat was tightening up, and it was the kind of automatic response that even a swig of her favorite coffee couldn’t fix. Being a relationship writer, seeking out the right words with which to say the right things, was enough of a challenge. Being a relationship writer, and living in the shadow of parents whose two blockbusters on sex and relationships had taken up permanent residence on every bestseller list in Christendom, and whose names were buzz words on the talk-show circuit, was a different story. Beatrix was a sexologist with a collection of erotic art that made her cocktail parties a hit. Her father was an anthropologist whose doctoral thesis on the primal nature of human sexuality was still one of the most requested documents in half the universities on the East Coast. As proud as she was of them, it didn’t cheer her up to know they scrutinized every word she wrote.

Beatrix was undeterred. “Feel free to run your column by me next time. It wouldn’t be a problem. Torrance and I—” Torrance was her father. He insisted that Rita call him by his first name, too “—we’d be happy to help. And by the way, when’re we seeing you? We’re home for a whole week. After that, ah…”

Rita jumped on the small conversational bone. “You’re off again?”

“As usual. No rest for the wicked.” Beatrix laughed. “We’ve got a whole week of signings in the southwest. Three or four radio programs, couple of TV spots. Most of them cable,” she added dismissively. “But we are looking forward to being back in Vegas again. You know how much your father loves the cabaret. He finds it…inspiring.”

Ick, Rita thought. Here it comes….

“Last time we hit the clubs, your father ordered champagne and strawberries up to our suite the minute we got back. I don’t have to tell you, most of the champagne wound up in the hot tub—”

“Mom!” Rita pleaded. Beatrix relished regaling strangers with stories about her erotic adventures with her husband, but it wasn’t the kind of thing a daughter needed to hear about her father. Why couldn’t she just have a mother who played mahjongg and a father who liked golf?

“All right,” Bea gave in. “Have it your way. Wouldn’t want to traumatize you. But that offer still stands, okay?”

“Okay, Bea. Thank you. I will,” Rita promised, scanning the sky for flying pigs. “But I really have to go. I’ve got a deadline.”

“Say no more, I read you loud and clear. I’m hanging up, okay? But I’m aching to set eyes on you. Don’t forget we live in the same town, all right?”

Rita smiled. “All right. I’ll see you soon. Maybe over the weekend.”

“Looking forward to it. Love you, baby.” And before Rita could return her mother’s air kisses, the line went dead.

The conversation left her feeling as though she’d done two rounds in the ring with Tyson. Rita slumped forward, resting her forehead on the cool tabletop, and took several deep breaths. Ah, parents. Couldn’t live with ’em….

But there was work to be done. She went back to her e-mails. Junk…more junk…and then the next few messages in her In-box made Rita pause and frown. There were five e-mails, all coming from the same address, all sent within the space of three minutes, sometime yesterday. The first thing that came to her mind was that they were more of the much loathed spam, but something stopped her before she could wipe them off her screen. The subject lines of all the messages were identical: Dear, dear, dear Rita. That was puzzling. Spammers didn’t yet have the ability to identify each of their targets individually. That technology just did not exist…did it?

Cautiously, she opened the first message.

Dear Rita,

Bet you think you’re real smart.

A.F.

Rita pursed her lips. A lot of her mail came from readers, rather than people with questions. Fan mail. Some were complimentary, even fawning. Some were from men wanting to date her. A lot of it came from men in prison—all wrongfully convicted, of course—who swore they had nothing but love and respect for their “strong Nubian sister.”

But not all of it was that good. Frustrated individuals, readers offended by a column or bored Web surfers looking to start a flame war—she’d had to deal with them all.

She moved to delete the other four, assuming they’d be more of same, but stopped in mid-action, morbidly curious to see what else this person had to say. She opened up another. I bet you think you’re all that.

Someone needed to lighten up. Resisting the other three e-mails was impossible; she opened them all up at the same time. Don’t you? read the third, and the fourth, in bold caps, DON’T YOU???

Unease replaced amusement. She opened the final message with a mixture of curiosity and apprehension. It was cryptic—and a little too threatening for comfort.

Are you afraid of heights?

A.F.

Rita felt her skin crawl. If this was a joke, it wasn’t funny. She took another look at the e-mail address, but it was simply A.F., the same as the writer’s signoff, coming from one of those generic mail hosting Web sites that everyone used when they preferred to keep their regular one private. She had one herself. That wasn’t much help.

She hit the Delete key a little harder than necessary, sending the offending messages into the ether, and leaned back in her chair. This called for another chug of coffee. She lifted her cup, but it was empty. She left her possessions where they were. After all, she’d been a regular here for years. It wasn’t as if she thought anyone would touch her stuff for the few seconds it took to go to the counter and back. She ordered another coffee, keeping it simple this time. Plain, with the tiniest squirt of hazelnut in deference to the aforementioned, lamentable eight extra pounds. She went back to her table, sat and downed half the steaming cup before returning her attention to the glowing screen before her.

A new e-mail had come in.

It was from A.F.

Even the coffee wasn’t enough to keep the chill out of her blood. She opened it at once, and stared at the unblinking words before her. How’s the coffee?

Chapter 2

R ita felt the hair at the back of her neck snap to attention. She put her hands to the base of her skull, tugging at the long, dark brown double-stranded twists that fell about her shoulders. How’s the coffee? How could this man, whoever he was, know where she was, and what she was drinking? The possibilities nauseated her. Either someone knew her habits so well that he could make an educated guess as to her whereabouts at seven every morning, or she was being watched. Right at this very moment.

Wildly, she looked around, unable to keep the movement casual and circumspect. Had she been followed? Could someone be right there, in Starbucks, quietly watching her? She glanced from table to table, her heart feeling uncomfortably large in her chest.

But all she could see were the regulars, caffeine addicts just like her who turned up every morning, just as she did, to sit in companionable, familiar surroundings while they had their morning fix. Rita knew them so well, she even had names for them.

Across from her, there was the tall, agonizingly thin man who wore business suits and smelled of expensive cologne. Every day he carefully withdrew the financial section of the papers to read over his coffee, then left as silently as he came, abandoning the rest of the paper in a neat heap for whoever occupied his seat next. She privately called him William Wadsworth, Senior.

Closest to her was an older man, who wore a cable-knit cardigan and tweed jacket whatever the weather, and who took plain coffee and a cheese sandwich every morning. No variations. No substitutions. He arrived at the same time, had his breakfast and left at the same time. Sometimes he timidly invited her or one of the other regulars to sit at his table, but whenever she accepted he never said much, just had his coffee and threw her the occasional shy smile. He always left a fifty-cent tip on the table. Rita felt sorry for him. She thought of him as Uncle Harold.

Then there was the strange Goth girl who, like her, always took the same seat if she could get it, near the window. She was about eighteen, although it was hard to tell under the mass of black, greasy hair that fell over her face. Her skin was the color of oatmeal, and the thick, smudged kohl rimming her eyes made her look as though she was losing out on a lot of sleep. She wore the same black hoodie, dark gray jeans, black socks and black high-top Converse sneakers every day. The only hint of color about her was the dozen or so plastic bracelets on one arm, and an oversized silver pendant, representing some arcane symbol, between her small breasts.

She was hunched over her PDA, thumbs flying as she moved the controls to her game, head bobbing to the rhythm of the music being piped into her ears via noodle-thin wires. Rita had decided that her name was Drucilla.

A few joggers were buying drinks at the counter, and a young couple she hadn’t seen before were wrapped up in each other, sharing a chair made for one. Otherwise, the coffee shop was quiet.