Title:
Touch Screen
Series:
Sensations Collection #4
Author:
L.B. Dunbar
Genre:
Adult, Contemporary Romance
Release
Date: March 3, 2015
The prodigal son. A second chance. The long kept
secret.
Home?
I had returned. I hadn’t been here for seven years. That last
summer, I was angry. Once I got away, I didn’t want to come back. The irony was
the career I sought to escape this small town was the very reason I was here.
My first movie was a featured film of the Traverse City Film Festival. As an
independent film director, my premiere brought me back home. Home. A place I
didn’t recognize.
Or maybe home didn’t recognize me?
I had it all in California: a girlfriend who was the daughter of a
movie financier, a job that led to connections in the film industry, and a
condo overlooking the ocean in Malibu. What I didn’t have was family. I had
left them all behind. I was the prodigal son.
Now, the last person I expected to see was her. Britton McKay. She had
been my summer love as a teenager. Not just once, but several summers. Until
the last one. That was seven years ago. Now, she looked more beautiful than I
remembered. Seeing her again, flooded me with memories long suppressed. She
reminded me of everything I once had, and left behind.
Now, she had returned too.
Can lost romance be rekindled? Can unanswered questions be
revealed?
Can I make this place my home again?
++++++
L.B. Dunbar reunites you with the Carter and Scott families as all
are gathered for the annual film festival, a much anticipated wedding, and
another summer weekend of Harbor Days.
I felt drawn to this woman and child, and I exited one of the French
doors to walk along the pathway under another canopy. The beauty and her boy
did not seem to notice me, and I tried to stay behind the columns that
supported the overhang providing shade to this portion of the sidewalk as I
peered nonchalantly at the beach. I glanced in their direction enough to notice
wisps of her blonde hair around her tan face blowing out of her ponytail. She
kept her eyes downward, focused on the boy, but I realized they had the same
nose. Again, it seemed safe to assume this was her child.
She dipped the boy again and I heard his strong childish laughter.
It was infectious and I smiled to myself. The woman kissed the boy again with
several small pecks on his little red cheeks and neck, only now I could hear
the sounds the mother made, loud and exaggerated, with each brush of her lips.
The boy laughed harder, saying, “No, no, no,” but he squealed his enjoyment of
each kiss and clearly wanted more. She stood him upright again and the child
wrapped his arm around his mother, beginning to dance.
“Again,” the child pleaded, but the mother directed him elsewhere.
They held hands as they stepped off the dance floor and into the white sand
surrounding the pavilion. I hadn’t noticed they were both barefoot, and the
woman bent down to pick up two pairs of shoes. She handed the child his and
carried hers through her fingers. There was something strangely familiar about
her as she walked across the sand away from me and toward the water line of the
lake.
I stood straighter now, no longer leaning behind the barrier. I took
no more notice of how much warmer I was outside in the blazing morning sun in
my gray summer suit as I took a step into the sand, forgetting my leather dress
shoes. The woman turned toward the child, walking backwards. Her tan legs were
graceful beneath her white shorts. This blonde beauty shielded her eyes as if
looking at something behind me, then she suddenly stopped walking. The child
broke free of her hand and started running across the freshly combed beach
toward the lake’s small white caps.
I made my way to the dance floor, the sand slipping under the hard
soles of my dress shoes. I balanced on the edge of the cement structure with my
heel and kept my gaze focused on her as she continued to stare back at the
resort. Slowly, she lowered her hand from her eyes and tucked a piece of
wayward hair behind her ears. I realized she was no longer looking behind me,
but at me. The way she tucked her hair behind her ear made her instantly
recognizable. Britton. Britton McKay had returned to northern Michigan, just as
I had.
I’d like to say I was always a writer. I’d also like to say that I
wrote every day of my life since a child. That I took the teaching advice I
give my former students because writing every day improves your writing. I’d
like to say I have my ten-thousand hours that makes me a proficient writer. But
I can’t say any of those things. I did dream of writing the “Great American
Novel” until one day a friend said: Why does it have to be great? Why can’t it
just be good and tell a story?
As a teenager, I wrote your typical love-angst poetry that did
occasionally win me an award and honor me with addressing my senior high school
class at our Baccalaureate Mass. I didn’t keep a journal because I was too
afraid my mom would find it in the mattress where I kept my copy of Judy
Blume’s Forever that I wasn’t allowed to read as a twelve year old.
I can say that books have been my life. I’m a reader. I loved to
read the day I discovered “The Three Bears” as a first grader, and ever since
then, the written word has been my friend. Books were an escape for me. An
adventure to the unknown. A love affair I’d never know. I could be lost for
hours in a book.
So why writing now? I had a story to tell. It haunted me from the
moment I decided if I just wrote it down it would go away. But it didn’t. Three
years after writing the first draft, a sign (yes, I believe in them) told me to
fix up that draft and work the process to have it published. That’s what I did.
But one story let to another, and another, and another. Then a new idea came
into my head and a new storyline was created.
I was accused (that’s the correct word) of having an overactive
imagination as a child, as if that was a bad thing. I’ve also been accused of
having the personality of a Jack Russell terrier, full of energy, unable to
relax, and always one step ahead. What can I say other than I have stories to
tell and I think you’ll like them. If you don’t, that’s okay. We all have our
book boyfriends. We all have our favorites. Whatever you do, though, take time
for yourself and read a book.
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