Summer in New York Collection (A Timeless Romance Anthology) Read online

  Copyright © 2014 by Mirror Press, LLC

  E-book edition

  All rights reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form whatsoever without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief passages embodied in critical reviews and articles.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, names, incidents, places, and dialogue are products of the authors’ imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  Interior Design by Heather Justesen

  Edited by Annette Lyon and Kelsey Allan

  Cover image # 144800323, Shutterstock.com

  Cover design by Mirror Press, LLC

  Published by Mirror Press, LLC

  http://timelessromanceanthologies.blogspot.com

  ISBN-10: 1941145221

  ISBN-13: 978-1-941145-22-7

  Winter Collection

  Spring Vacation Collection

  Summer Wedding Collection

  Autumn Collection

  European Collection

  Love Letter Collection

  Old West Collection

  Silver Bells Collection

  Job Hazards by Janette Rallison

  Other Works by Janette Rallison

  About Janette Rallison

  A Taste of Sun by Heather B. Moore

  Other Works by Heather B. Moore

  About Heather B. Moore

  Dulce de Leche by Luisa Perkins

  Other Works by Luisa Perkins

  About Luisa Perkins

  Take a Chance by Sarah M. Eden

  Other Works by Sarah M. Eden

  About Sarah M. Eden

  Firsts and Lasts by Annette Lyon

  Other Works by Annette Lyon

  About Annette Lyon

  & by Lisa Mangum

  Other Works by Lisa Mangum

  About Lisa Mangum

  Fighting crime wasn’t supposed to involve wearing a leopard-print miniskirt, a silky halter top, and stiletto heels. Not once while Lydia Robinson was in the police academy a year ago had she envisioned that the job would land her on a seedy New York street posing as a hooker. But as Lieutenant Miner had told her a week ago after he called her into his office, “You’re a natural.”

  A natural hooker? “Is that supposed to be a compliment?” she asked.

  He held up his hands to stop her protest and nodded at the glass window of his office. Outside, two other female officers were talking about a case. Officer Loomis was fifty-two and had more wrinkles than a pile of forgotten laundry. Officer Dustin was seven months pregnant. “I just meant,” Lieutenant Miner said, “that you’re the best one in the department for the sting.”

  So now Lydia stood on a dimly lit corner next to a row of bars and strip clubs. She wore so much makeup that she looked like she was part of a Broadway play. Her usually long, brown hair had been curled, teased and poofed. It was magazine-girl, notice-me hair. Half-a-bottle-of-hairspray hair.

  For the last four nights, Lydia had staked out different corners as part of the district’s anti-prostitution sweep. She was the subject of catcalls and leers from men, and disapproving glances from other women who drove by. She was also cold, bored, and her feet hurt. Really, whose great fashion idea had it been to create heels so high that you felt like you were tip-toeing from place to place?

  “My career is taking off,” she muttered. Hooker humor. It helped ease the boredom.

  Into her earpiece, Thompson, the head officer of the backup team, said, “You’re doing great. We’ve had more busts with you as bait than we’ve had in years.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m a natural.”

  “Your mother would be proud.”

  Actually, her mother would be worried. Lydia had told her mom that her police job mostly involved paperwork. Office stuff. Safe stuff.

  Strictly speaking, this gig was safer than most of the domestic-violence calls officers were called to. She’d never had a john fly into a rage and throw a chair at her.

  “You gotta work on your strut,” Thompson said, teasing her. “You’re too I’m-about-to-slap-handcuffs-on-you and not enough come-hither.”

  “I can’t do come hither in these heels. I only want to go thither and soak my feet.”

  “On second thought, Carey says your I’m-about-to-slap-handcuffs-on-you strut works. I’ll take a vote and see what the rest of the guys in the van think.”

  Lydia leaned against a lamppost, trying to take some of the weight off her feet. “Don’t make me mad, or you’ll be the one out here in heels and a miniskirt.”

  “That would be one way to stop prostitution on this street corner.”

  Thompson’s voice was light. A stark contrast to the graffiti and litter around them. It was easier to joke about the situation than to keep thinking about it. Young girls were often the ones out on this corner. Runaways. Drug addicts. Prostitution was filled with girls who’d been abused. The guys hiring them should know better. Half of the johns were middle-aged, educated businessmen. Yesterday she’d arrested a high school history teacher. Married with kids, at that.

  A black BMW pulled up to her corner. A nice car for this part of the city. Lydia left her lamppost, swaggered over to the car, and put on an alluring smile. Two things needed to happen before she could say the words that would bring in the backup team. The guy needed to ask for an elicit act, and he needed to offer her money.

  The tinted window rolled down. Lydia leaned toward it. “Looking for some fun, handsome?”

  She called everyone handsome. She might have to act like a hooker, but at least she could be polite about it. As soon as the words left Lydia’s mouth, she realized she hadn’t misspoken. The man sitting behind the wheel was drop-dead gorgeous. She’d always thought so. Especially while dating him in high school.

  Harrison Aldridge’s sandy-blond hair was short and smooth, less tousled than it had been six years ago. The blue eyes were the same. Pale, like sunlight shining through water. His shoulders were broader. He’d grown into his height.

  Lydia stared at him, incredulous. Of all of the places she could have run into Harrison, he had to pull up to her corner while she was pretending to be a prostitute.

  In that one moment, her mind flashed back to her senior year, to the time he’d given her a heart-pendant necklace for Valentine’s Day. He’d shown up so many times at the grocery store where she worked as a clerk that her boss finally said that Harrison either had to stop coming to see her or start helping her shelf things. They spent many an evening restocking the snack aisle. On prom night, Harrison said he loved her.

  And then a week later, he broke up with her. The memories about him always ended there— on the day, and the night before it, when she realized love hadn’t meant much to him.

  She and Harrison had been sitting on his apartment balcony, the lights of New York spread out in front of them like a constellation that had fallen to earth. Sitting on Harrison’s balcony made her feel like she was soaring above the city, that all of her problems could be as easily overlooked as the dirt on the streets below them.

  “So what’s your good news?” she asked.

  Earlier, he’d texted that they would be celebrating. Harrison had brought two wine glasses and a bottle of sparkling apple cider— underage champagne— with him to the balcony. He poured the cider into the glasses and handed her one.

  “The good news is that you’re looking at a Harvard freshman.” He clinked his glass against hers in a toast. “Or at least I will be in September.�
�

  She had the grace to not drop her glass. She was even able to force a smile. “Congratulations!”

  She wrapped her free arm around him in a hug. If they were hugging, he couldn’t see her face, and he wouldn’t be able to read the raw despair in her eyes. She had a moment to mask it, time to calm her shaking. “Wow, Harvard. That’s great.” When she pulled away from him, she was composed.

  Lydia couldn’t protest that going to Harvard would mean that the two of them wouldn’t be together at CUNY. Harrison’s parents had planned for him to go to Harvard since he was born. His father and grandfather had gone there. It was as much a part of the Aldridge tradition as running their family’s property management business.

  Lydia took a sip of the apple cider. The bubbles felt sharp inside her mouth, bitter. Harrison went on telling her about getting the letter today, how his parents had made a big deal about not opening it until they were together at dinner. “All I could think was, If I don’t get in, the rest of dinner will be really awkward.” Harrison tilted his head back and laughed. He was all ambition and possibility. The happiness lit up his features, making him even more handsome. “Dinner crisis averted.”

  “That’s the important thing.” She laughed along with him, but even to her ear the laugh sounded strained. Hadn’t he thought of her— even a little— while he’d held that envelope? Hadn’t the miles that stretched between Massachusetts and New York made the paper a little heavier?

  She took another drink and tried to push those thoughts away. She was being selfish. Attending Harvard was a huge accomplishment. Harrison couldn’t change the fact that Lydia didn’t have the money to go to a university like that. She was only at their private school on scholarship. Besides, people managed long-distance relationships all the time. Love knew no distance. They could overcome this.

  Harrison went on, telling her how beautiful the school was, how rich with history. It was the oldest university in the country. John and Samuel Adams both went there. It was filled with pomp, ceremony, and trees that dripped red leaves in the fall.

  Anxiety made Lydia grip her glass. “Will you come home on the weekends?” She didn’t mean every weekend. Just sometimes. A lot of sometimes. She wanted some sign that he would miss her, and that he would make an effort to keep their relationship alive.

  Harrison let out a scoffing sound that already sounded infused with elitism. “It’s Harvard, Lydia. I’ll be studying on weekends.”

  A piece of her heart broke right then, cracked and shivered. He wasn’t thinking about her at all. Which only meant one thing; he didn’t care that much about her. It was easy for him to leave. He was here celebrating it.

  The lights around them seemed dimmer, both the ones in the sky and the ones in the landscape. “I’ll miss you,” she said.

  “We’ll still talk on the phone.”

  As though that could be enough. But then, maybe it was for him.

  She nodded as he went on, knowing that she was being unusually quiet. He didn’t notice. He was already gone, far away in a land with red-brick buildings, white-tipped towers, and the ghost of John Adams.

  The next day at school, Lydia was a bundle of emotion. The hallways seemed too noisy, the classrooms too crowded. One moment she was devastated, the next angry, and the next resigned. She hoped that resignation would be the prevailing emotion during lunch when she and Harrison sat together. At the very least, she hoped she could fake some sort of bland happiness. But by third period, her emotions had swung toward angry. It was all she could do to hold herself together.

  She texted Harrison that she had to go somewhere at lunch, so he didn’t need to wait for her, then shoved her phone into her book bag. If he was so eager to do without her, he could start now. He might as well get used to it. They both should.

  She made an excuse to her teacher and left the class five minutes early. Less chance of running into anyone in the hallways who wanted to talk to her. Feeling claustrophobic, she hurried outside. She would walk somewhere, get lunch from a street vendor, feed the pigeons, maybe skip out from the rest of school.

  The air was warm today, reminding her that school was almost over. Her childhood was almost gone. Everything she’d known— over. Don’t think about it, she told herself. Don’t think about any of it. The last thing she wanted was to start crying before she was off school grounds. She walked with her head down, staring at the speckled remains of flattened gum on the sidewalk. She didn’t see Brett Nicholson coming the other way until she nearly ran into him. Which was even more awkward because it was just the two of them on the sidewalk.

  Brett was Harrison’s friend, and thus her friend too. He was the school’s quarterback and all-around sports darling. That alone would have been enough to make him popular, but Brett was also tall, dark, and too handsome for his own good. He never stayed with one girl long. Flirting, for him, was as much a sport as football.

  Lydia plastered on a smile. This sort of run-in required a greeting. “Late for school?” she asked.

  He shrugged and gave her his all-star grin. “School is overrated.”

  It was today. Well, enough talk. It was time to go feed pigeons. That was what lonely people did, wasn’t it? Today she was getting a jump on her true calling.

  “I heard the latest Harrison update,” Brett went on, oblivious to her dark mood. “Harvard. Pretty great, huh?”

  And then all of Lydia’s holding it together fell apart. There on the sidewalk, she burst into tears. It wasn’t subtle or delicate. She put her head in her hands and cried.

  The next moment, Brett’s arms were around her, comforting her. “Hey, he’s going to Harvard, not dying.”

  She didn’t answer, but her mind began a list of differences. Dying is less expensive than going to Harvard. And not nearly as exclusive. And if it were death, she could look forward to joining him one day.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Brett whispered. His voice held a sort of panicked awkwardness. He didn’t know what to do with a crying girl. “There, there,” he murmured. “There, there.”

  “Exactly. Harrison’s going there. There.”

  Brett ran his hand over her hair, soothing. Soft. “Hey, I’m trying to think of something to make you feel better.”

  “Try harder. ‘There, there’ isn’t working.”

  “Okay, how’s this: you don’t have to worry about Harrison cheating on you, because everyone knows that really smart chicks are ugly.”

  “Have I ever mentioned I’m a straight-A student?”

  “Seriously? Well, you wouldn’t know it to look at you.”

  She half laughed, half cried. “You suck at this, Brett.”

  “It’s only four years.”

  Four years. She felt like she would hyperventilate. “You’re still sucking.”

  “Okay, I’ll stop talking and let you finish crying.” He kept stroking her hair. He was so understanding, so attentive. Everything Harrison hadn’t been last night.

  She put her head against his chest and cried. Her tears only lasted a minute longer. Then she felt embarrassed to have made such a scene. She didn’t move because she didn’t want to have to look at Brett. She didn’t want to admit that she was a selfish girlfriend who cared more about spending time with Harrison than being happy he’d gotten the future he wanted.

  That’s when she heard Harrison’s voice behind her— cold and biting. “Well, it looks like you won’t miss me that much after all.”

  Lydia jumped, startled. She knew how this must look— standing there with Brett’s arms wrapped around her. At the same time, certainly Harrison could see that she was upset. Surely he’d realize that Brett was just comforting her.

  Brett stepped away from her guiltily, hands held in the air as if he were surrendering. “That isn’t what happened.”

  Lydia repeated the assertion in a way that actually made sense. “Nothing was going on between us.”

  Harrison glared at them both, his blue eyes blazing with anger. “You have an i
nteresting definition of nothing.” Without another word, he turned and strode back toward the school, fast-paced, fists clenched, each step an accusation.

  She went after him, hurrying to catch up. “Harrison, wait!”

  He walked on without pausing, strident in his indictment.

  Didn’t he even want to hear her explanation? Didn’t he at least owe her the chance to defend herself? In a few moments, she caught up with him, walked beside him so he had to listen to her. “Look, I was upset about you leaving and Brett was trying to make me feel better. Nothing else happened.”

  He stared straight ahead. “Yeah, you were really upset about me leaving. I could tell by the way you were all over each other.”

  “All over each other? He was just—”

  Harrison stopped then and turned to face her. The eyes that she loved, the ones more familiar than her own, were looking at her with disdain. “I know what Brett was doing. He’s told me how he can get any girl he wants to do anything he wants. I told him he was wrong about you. I guess I don’t know you as well as I thought I did.”

  The words hit her like a slap. “I guess you don’t, not if you think I would cheat on you.” After all, she was the one whose heart was in shreds. He was fine being without her.

  His eyes narrowed. “Don’t lie to me.”

  Lie? She had never lied to him, not about anything.

  She saw for the first time what this argument was about. It was an excuse for him to break up with her. He’d never cared enough about her to want a long-distance relationship, and now he’d found a reason to end things. Fine. Let him go off and find some blueblood princess; Lydia wouldn’t prolong this moment by groveling and telling him how much she loved him, not when he didn’t feel the same way.

  “Goodbye,” he said. The phrase had a permanence, like a door being slammed. He headed back to the school, leaving her standing there on the sidewalk.

  They’d never spoken again. Not really. Ironically, it was Brett who had apologized again and again about that day. He said he’d tried talking to Harrison, who wouldn’t listen. Par for the course.