A Spark of Heavenly Fire takes place during the month of December. To celebrate, all month I will be posting outtakes from the book. It’s not as easy as it sounds. Since the original version is no longer in my computer, I have to retype the pages from my handwritten draft copy. Hope you enjoy this behind the scenes look at my characters. It’s a continuation of the scene posted in here: A Spark of Heavenly Fire Outtakes. Oh, and if you’d like to see a photo of the handwritten book, you can find it here: A Spark of Heavenly Fire Pre-Anniversary.
The waitress brought a Coke, which Jim drank in one long gulp. He hauled himself out of the booth.
“I’d better be going.” He started to leave, then turned back. “I almost forgot. When we talked earlier today, you said you had some news.”
“It can wait,” Greg said. “You have more important things to worry about.”
Jim sat back down. “Tell me.”
“I asked Pippi to marry me.”
A big grin softened Jim’s forbidding face. “Hey, that’s great! I’ll bet Pippi’s thrilled. She’s had that look in her eye for quite a while now.”
“What look?”
“You know—that ticking biological clock look.”
“She’s only thirty. I didn’t think their biological clocks started ticking until they reached thirty-five, at least.”
Jim shrugged. “Depends on the woman. Letisha’s clock started ticking when she was only twenty-four. Just think, if she hadn’t proposed to me, I would have been a swinging single, too.”
Greg ignored the comment. Jim always pretended to lament the loss of his bachelorhood, but Greg knew the truth—Jim loved being married.
“Have you set a date yet?” Jim asked. “Letisha will feed me leftovers for a month if I can’t give her all the details. It’s only fair to warn you, she’ll want at least one of out kids in your wedding party.” He stopped and peered at Greg. “Hey, you okay? You don’t look too happy.”
Greg tried to smile, but his face refused to cooperate.
“Don’t worry, kid,” Jim said, sounding as if he were twenty years older than Greg instead of just eight. “Everyone gets pre-wedding jitters.”
Greg shook his head. “It’s not that.”
“Then what? Pippi didn’t say no, did she?”
“Not exactly.”
“Did she say yes?”
“Not exactly.”
“Hell, kid, you’ve got me so confused I don’t know whether to slug you or congratulate you.”
Greg toyed with his beer. “You’re confused? What about me? I thought she wanted to get married—she’s been hinting at it for months, so I finally decided to ask her. Know what she said?”
“What?”
“She said she’d think about it.”
“Ouch.”
“I asked her what there was to think about and she said she wasn’t sure if I knew what love was. Then she said that even if I did know what love was, she wasn’t sure if I was capable of loving her the way she wanted to be loved.”
“Sounds to me as if it’s herself she’s unsure about.”
“Could be. I don’t get it though. Marriage, I mean. It’s not like it’s forever any more, so what’s the big deal?”
Jim raised his eyebrows. “Very romantic.”
“I didn’t tell her that. I may be unromantic, but I’m not stupid, you know. And I do love her.”
When Greg was alone once more, however, it was not his would-be fiancé who occupied his thoughts, but the unknown woman whose corpse had been so savagely mutilated.
Read the first chapter of the published version here: A Spark of Heavenly Fire
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Read blurb at Second Wind Publishing: A Spark of Heavenly Fire
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