See, Darcy’s a best-selling romance writer whose endless
round of dates never live up to the guys she creates from her own juicy little
imagination. She’s had her heart stomped on for sure, but her defense mechanism
is to her standards a tad too high.
Admittedly, some of her blind dates were, well, a little
creepy. Like this one, where she’s meeting a guy at a coffee shop on the
recommendation of her accountant.
“Now,
let me tell you about myself.” He opened his briefcase and pulled out three
files, laying them carefully on the table. “I’m looking for a mate, not a date.
I don’t have a lot of time to waste dating, and I understand neither do you, if
you want to become pregnant before you’re too old.”
He
glanced up, clearly mistaking her expression for awed speechlessness rather
than horrified incredulity. He patted her hand. “Oh, don’t worry, I am not
opposed to children. I have a strong sex drive, so children are inevitable, but
I don’t believe in premarital sex, so marriage is mandatory and soon.”
Aghast,
Darcy looked around the coffee shop, expecting her family and friends to storm
the table, laughing and teasing, certain this must be a joke.
He
gestured to each file in turn. “This is my resume.”
Resume? He did realize this wasn’t a job interview, right?
“These”—he pointed at
portrait size photos of happy, smiling, neatly dressed children—“are my three children, Kempton the
Third, Angela, and my youngest, Thornton.
Children!
“And
these”—he picked up a stack of paper— “are letters of recommendation.”
Flabbergasted,
and not a little intrigued, Darcy waited for him to continue. After all, she
enjoyed a good joke, even if it was on her.
He
placed his resume in front of her, which she noted included his salary and net
worth. Seven figures—impressive. Next came a description of his home on Long
Island and his country club privileges.
Darcy
suppressed a giggle, still waiting for the punch line. Let everyone think
they’d pulled a good one over on her.
I had so much fun writing Darcy’s story. She’s a little
ditzy, a lot adorable, and I just wanted her to find the happily-ever-after
(HEA) she writes about—after I finished torturing her, of course. Darcy learns
many things on her journey to HEA, like not to take people for granted, and
that when you love someone, you love them warts and all.
She learned some of these lessons while visiting her Aunt
Rosie and her Uncle Al, who were celebrating their sixty-third wedding
anniversary. I modeled Rosie and Al’s relationship after cousins of mine whose
long, happy marriage I admired.
To spend time with my cousins, let’s call them Mary and Bob,
was to see first-hand what two people still in love after all those years
looked like. The little gestures of affection, the flirtations, the sparkle in
their eyes when they looked at each other, and the deep respect they had for
one another, made you hope for that very thing when you reached those same
milestones in your own life. Bob never hesitated to tell you that he’d married
his best friend and the love of his life.
Mary and Bob had been married sixty-three years when he passed
away, and along with their daughters, they can boast four grandchildren, and fourteen
great grandchildren. Quite a legacy.
As a romance author I write stories with happily-ever-after
endings—modern-day fairytales. But my stories can’t compete with Mary and Bob’s.
They lived the fairytale.
Darcy makes a mess of things trying to figure everything out, and
it takes her aunt and uncle’s anniversary party for the light bulb to finally
come on:
It suddenly occurred to Darcy that
fairytales weren’t found in books. They were found in real life—everyday life,
with both its triumphs and its tribulations. And her aunt lived that real-life
fairytale every day, while she had been wishing for the wrong fairytale all
along.
Dreams of Perfection is available on Amazon.
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