A Table for Two

• A Table For Two
  
• Copyright © 2010 by Janet Albert
  
• Author's Comments
  
• Dedication
  
• Chapter One
  
• Chapter Two
  
• Chapter Three
  
• Chapter Four
  
• Chapter Five
  
• Chapter Six
  
• Chapter Seven
  
• Chapter Eight
  
• Chapter Nine
  
• Chapter Ten
  
• Chapter Eleven
  
• Chapter Twelve
  
• Chapter Thirteen
  
• Chapter Fourteen
  
• Chapter Fifteen
  
• Chapter Sixteen
  
• Chapter Seventeen
  
• Chapter Eighteen
  
• Chapter Nineteen
  
• Chapter Twenty
  
• Chapty Twenty-one
  
• Chapter Twenty-two
  
• Chapter Twenty-three
  
• Chapter Twenty-four
  
• Chapter Twent-five
  
• Chapter Twenty-six
  
• Chapter Twenty-seven
  
• Chapter Twenty-eight
  
• Chapter Twenty-nine
  
• Chapter Thirty
  
• Chapter Thirty-one
  
• Another Janet Albert title to look for:
  
• Other Yellow Rose titles you may also enjoy:
  
• About the Author
  
• VISIT US ONLINE AT
  

by

Janet Albert

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Parts of this work are fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, or events is entirely coincidental.

ISBN 978-1-935053-27-9 (eBooks)

eBook Conversion August 2010

Published by:

Regal Crest Enterprises, LLC

4700 Hwy 365, Suite A, PMB 210

Port Arthur, Texas 7764

Find us on the World Wide Web at http://www.regalcrest.biz

Published in the
United States of America

A Table for Two
is special to me because it takes place in Philadelphia where I lived for many years and also because I love to cook. My mother was a simple but wonderful cook who passed her talent on to me. I think she would have been pleased that I'd paid attention all those years as I sat at the kitchen table and watched her prepare our family meals. My culinary skills have progressed way beyond those everyday foods and Sunday dinners she used to make. In fact, I've often been told I should open a restaurant. The long hours and stressful work of being a chef never appealed to me and since I preferred my other stressful career, I chose instead to settle for a fictional one. It was a lot more fun and a lot less work. I loved writing about Dana and Tracy and the dishes they created and I loved bringing Café De Marco to life. I hope you enjoy reading about it as much as I enjoyed writing about it.

Thanks from the bottom of my heart to my wonderful beta readers, Norma Serrato, Judy Underwood, and Donna O'Hara-Lewis. No one does this without help and I couldn't have done it without your valuable input, sound advice and keen eyes. All my love and thanks to Mary, who supports me in everything I do and encourages me to write in spite of attacks of self-doubt and a harsh and picky inner critic. You are all worth your weight in gold.

An affectionate thank you and a huge hug goes out to Pat Cronin, my editor, for putting up with me throughout the editing of this book. I appreciate your patience and understanding during a tough time for me, but most of all, I thank you for teaching me to be a better writer. The book as it is now is infinitely improved because of you.

A special thank you to Cathy LeNoir and RCE for taking a chance on me and for making my dream come true a second time. Donna Pawlowski came up with an amazing cover for the book and I am grateful for her efforts. Thanks to Brenda Adcock for her editing input and thanks to RCE author, Lori L. Lake, for her support as well as her handy guides and articles on writing. I'd also like to thank authors, Andi Marquette and Nann Dunne for their advice and encouragement. And thanks, Nann Dunne, for your amazing website, JAW. (Just About Write)

And, as I said in my first book and will say again here--my sincere thanks to all of you, the readers of lesbian fiction. You are the reason we writers persist in doing what we do.

For information about me, more on resources and useful websites for authors and places to purchase books, please visit me at my web site-- www.janetalbert.com

RIDLEY PULLED INTO one of the last spaces in the high school parking lot and sat for a minute with the air-conditioner running while she inspected herself in the rear view mirror. Her wavy auburn hair had curled thanks to the high humidity and she admired the way it fell around her face giving her that carefree, tousled hair style she wished she could have every day. She reached her hand to tame a wayward clump behind her ear and pulled off her sunglasses. In the morning light her eyes were as green as emeralds and she could easily see the tiny specks of gold scattered around the rims of the irises.

The long summer vacation had come to an end, the Labor Day celebrations and fireworks were over and she was about to begin her first day as the new physical education teacher in a high school not too far from where she lived. She was eager to get started, especially since her friend Laurie Morgan taught English at the same school yet at the same time she felt anxious, two conflicting emotions she accepted as understandable under the circumstances.

As soon as she lowered her long legs and planted her sandaled feet on the sticky blacktop, she heard Laurie yelling at her from the other end of the parking lot. Even though they were the only two people around, Laurie jumped up and down and flapped her hands in the air above her head as though she feared Ridley wouldn't be able to locate her without some sort of visual signal. Something about Laurie's hand movements reminded Ridley of a robin frolicking in a backyard birdbath on the first warm day of spring, but then it wasn't hard to think about robins when one thought of Laurie because she held the promise of spring in her heart and she was as reliable as she was pretty.

"Hey, Ridley, wait for me!" Laurie hollered.

Ridley waved back to acknowledge Laurie's request, grabbed her work bags from the front seat of her Honda CR-V and slammed the door shut. Near the rear bumper, she stopped to wait for her friend and pressed the button on her key chain that locked her vehicle. Although she heard the metallic clunk of the locks loud and clear, she pushed the button a second time just to hear the high-pitched beep that told her the doors were already locked. It dawned on her that it was a peculiar little habit and one she did quite often. Sometimes, she even pushed the button three or four times in a row to create a series of beeps.

Laurie half-walked, half-ran to catch up, her chest heaving as she struggled to inhale the heavy air of another hot and humid morning. Once she stood next to Ridley, she set her bags down while she stopped to catch her breath. "If it isn't my old friend, Ridley Kelsen," she said after fifteen or twenty seconds of deep breathing. "Imagine meeting you here."

"What do you mean, 'imagine meeting me here'? You're the one who told me to meet you in front of the school this morning, Ms. Morgan. Remember?"

"Sure I remember. Why wouldn't I?" Laurie's normally pale complexion was as red as the rising summer sun. "Is it hot enough for you?"

"Yeah, I'd say so. I hate September in Philadelphia and you shouldn't be running around in this heat. You look like you're going to self-combust." Ridley looked down at her sandals. "It's been so hot I think the asphalt's starting to melt. I thought my sandals would get stuck in it when I got out of my car." She bent her right foot up and inspected her sandal. "I think the bottom of my sandals might be melting."

Wet ringlets of medium-length, blond hair were stuck to Laurie's forehead and a stream of sweat wiggled a crooked path down the right side of her face. She swiped at it with her fingers, but that only served to send it trickling off in a new direction. "I think I'm melting."

Ridley touched Laurie's sweaty cheek and studied the thin film of moisture coating her fingers before she wiped it off on the side of her shorts. Even Laurie's cool blue eyes looked hot. "You're sweating like crazy. Too bad this school of yours doesn't have air-conditioning because after two weeks of temperatures like these, that old stone building's going to feel just like an enormous sauna inside."

"The entire city feels like a sauna," Laurie pointed out. "And the school has never had any air-conditioning except for a few select places." Laurie brushed at the stream of sweat on her face again. "The library isn't one of those places."

"The library isn't air-conditioned? Isn't that where we're having our meetings?" The staff was required to come in the day after Labor Day for two days of meetings before the official start of the school year. In these meetings they'd go over the District's goals for the coming school year as well as any changes in the curriculum and they'd be treated to a video pep-talk from the head of the school district thanking them in advance for their hard work.

"Yes, unfortunately," Laurie confirmed.

Ridley imagined how miserable her face must have looked as she absorbed the full impact of Laurie's words. "That's great, but I can't say I'm surprised. All the older schools in the city are like that. My last one was."

Laurie plucked at the front of her shirt. "Look at me, my shirt's soaked and we're not even inside the building. By the end of the day, I won't have an ounce of fluid left in my body."

Ridley groaned as she thought of how hellish the next two days would be. "I'm getting heat stroke just thinking about it--as if those meetings aren't intolerable enough."

As though Laurie felt she needed to offer Ridley a thread of hope, she added, "If it makes you feel any better, the weather report said it'll be a lot cooler by the weekend."

"Anything would feel better than this, but first we have to find some way to survive the rest of this week." Ridley lifted one of her bags. "I brought plenty of bottled water and I'm praying the teacher that was here before me left a fan in the gym office."

"If not, I've got an extra one." Laurie glanced briefly at her clothing and then at Ridley's. They both wore shorts and sleeveless polo shirts. "Thank God the students aren't here so we can get away with dressing like this. I don't know what I'll do if it's still this hot when I have to get dressed up to teach class."

"That's one good thing about being the Phys. Ed. teacher. I get away with casual clothes most of the time because no one expects me to dress up."

"And there's no need to. You'd just get dirty down in that gym." Laurie stared at Ridley for a moment and as she did she must have discovered something amusing which caused the corners of her mouth to turn up. "You couldn't pull off wearing a dress anyway. You'd look kind of funny in one. When I think of you, I think of handsome rather than feminine. It's not that you're super butchy or anything, but..." Laurie appeared worried about that last statement.

"Relax, I know what you mean," Ridley said, to put her friend at ease. She'd made it clear to Laurie on more than one occasion that she didn't like to dress too masculine or too feminine. She preferred a more neutral appearance and was attracted to the same kind of women although she did tend to favor women who leaned a tad more toward the feminine side. "And you're right, I would look funny. If I did dress up I'd have to wear dressier pants because I don't own a dress and I can't remember the last time I wore one--twelve years old, maybe?"