Stuck on Love (BWWM Romance)

Chapter One

Roxy Duncan's hero, her knight in shining armor, her Mr. Right, couldn't have picked a worse time to find her.

Carrying an envelope, she stepped out onto the tiny porch of her townhouse. Pink-faced impatiens, trailing petunias, climbing roses and looping ivies crowded around her, stealing her breath in the already humid air. It was going to be another hot one.

Mail pickup and delivery had been on an unpredictable for the past three weeks. Sometimes the mail would come in the mornings, other times late evenings. The post office's erratic schedule made little difference to Roxy. She always made a point of putting her mail in the slot before leaving for work in the mornings. What the post office did on their end was not her concern as long as they picked up and delivered every day.

She lifted the lid on the mailbox attached to the house and dropped in her latest query letter—this time to Ms. Fanoria Tubbs—the most prestigious agent in the book world who only accepted queries and book submissions via snail mail, no exceptions.

She didn't mind using the mail system. She liked getting and sending mail the old-fashioned way. There was something about the ritual of lifting the mailbox lid and seeing envelopes with her name printed on them. It was like finding presents under the Christmas tree.

Thinking about presents made her thoughts turn to her parents. They always made gift-giving fun. There was no telling what you'd find after you tore open off the wrapping on a present and opened the box. It could be anything from a prank gift to a family heirloom.

She sighed. How she missed them.

Next Monday marked the ten-year anniversary of her parents' car crash and other than her sister, Letha, her other relatives were dead, dying or far away.

Her life felt like a worn-out cliché. She was thirty-five-years old—the do-or-die age for finding a mate, marrying and getting successfully pregnant. Since none of those feminine joys were on her horizon, she buried her loneliness and longing into her writing. Her stories would have to stand in for husband and children, a literary DNA she could pass on to the world. A perennial testament that she had lived, breathed and had being—not to mention the fame and fortune that could come along with it, giving her the luxury to putter in a large garden full of vibrant flowers and grant cozy interviews until the day she keeled over.

She took a moment to bask in the solitude of a typical Saturday morning in an upper middle-class neighborhood made up of rows and rows of well-kept condos and perfect tiny lawns, the scenery broken only by the occasional jogger or the fishtail of a sprinkler.

Roxy had lived in Bent Creek, Virginia all her life and never dreamed of leaving. Though many of her peers had left as soon as their high school diploma graced their palm, Roxy considered Bent Creek to be the perfect place to live. Serene and beautiful, Bent Creek was nestled against the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains along the banks of the James River, and prided itself on being a thriving city but with laid-back, country ways.

Except for the occasional drone of a plane, the neighborhood was quiet and Roxy guessed most of the residents were sleeping in, or hauling their kids to the communal swimming pool and tennis courts before the day grew too hot. A swim sounded like a good idea to her, but the development of a new line of varicose veins down her left leg dissuaded her. Getting older was no joke.

She dead-headed a yellow marigold growing out of a ceramic pot and tested the soil of a red geranium spilling out of the hanging basket next to the door. She eyed her green babies with pride. Thanks to her watering diligence and her thick copy of House Plants, her plants thrived in the sweltering June heat.