No Ordinary Love

Outstanding praise for the novels of J.J. Murray!

Let’s Stay Together

Named one of the Best Books for Summer 2015 by
Publishers Weekly
!

“Murray turns improbable situations that require
much suspension of disbelief into enjoyable and
compelling romance about believable love.”

Library Journal

“A magical story . . . definitely a sensational read.”

RT Book Reviews

“Murray delivers a compulsively readable rags-to-riches
love story brimming with memorable
characters, magical charm, lively repartee and
delicious passion. Fans of romantic comedy movies
will applaud this heartwarming tale and hope for
an encore performance.”

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Until I Saw Your Smile

An
Ebony
Magazine Editor’s Pick for Summer Must Reads!

“An endearing story of heartfelt love, refreshingly
narrated by the hero. Unusual characters will inspire
readers of this emotional yet joyful story.”

Publishers Weekly

You Give Good Love

“Jane Green and Terry McMillan fans will enjoy
this inspiring, warm, Gift of the Magi-inspired
holiday romance.”

Booklist

Books by J.J. Murray

RENEE AND JAY

SOMETHING REAL

ORIGINAL LOVE

I’M YOUR GIRL

CAN’T GET ENOUGH OF YOUR LOVE

TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING

THE REAL THING

SHE’S THE ONE

I’LL BE YOUR EVERYTHING

A GOOD MAN

YOU GIVE GOOD LOVE

UNTIL I SAW YOUR SMILE

LET’S STAY TOGETHER

NO ORDINARY LOVE

Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

no ordinary love

J.J. Murray

KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

Table of Contents

Outstanding praise for the novels of J.J. Murray!
Books by J.J. Murray
Title Page
Dedication
Brooklyn, New York

1
2
3
4

San Francisco, California

5
6
7
8
9
10

Brooklyn, New York

11
12

San Francisco, California

13

Brooklyn, New York

14

Brooklyn, New York to San Francisco, California

15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43

San Francisco, California and Los Angeles, California

44

Press Clippings
Copyright Page

For Amy

Brooklyn, New York

1

O
n the surface, Anthony “Tony” Santangelo of Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, New York, was a handsome forty-year-old Italian American with wavy black hair, dark blue eyes floating over a clean-shaven face, and broad shoulders topping his sturdy six-foot frame. To anyone seeing him riding the subway or rushing to and from cafés and coffeehouses in Brooklyn, he was an ordinary man.

No one but his brother knew he had made a fortune as a songwriter.

Under the pseudonym “Art E.,” Tony had written his first top-forty hit at the age of sixteen and added five dozen more over the next twenty-four years. He had earned thirty-nine Grammy Award nominations, to rank him just behind Eminem, Alison Krauss, Vince Gill, and Barbra Streisand. When he began collaborating with R & B seductress Naomi Stringer in 2011, his songs shot to the top of the charts and earned him three Grammy Awards in a row for best song and yet another nomination this year for Naomi Stringer’s “Love Me in the Morning.”

Tony had watched Naomi collect all three of his awards on his behalf on television.

“She is pretty,” he told his older brother Angelo the first time Naomi accepted his award in 2012.

“Do you want to meet her?” Angelo asked.

“No,” Tony said.

“Why not? She owes you. Your songs have put her on the map.”

“She is not on any map,” Tony said. “A person is not put on a map. Streets and roads and landmarks are put on maps. Mountains and rivers are put on maps. She is not a street or a road. She is too small to be a landmark. She is not a mountain or a river.”

Angelo sighed. “It’s just an expression, Tony.” He pointed at the television. “Look at her, Tony. She’s gorgeous, and she’s single.”

“She wears too much makeup,” Tony said. “She wears horse hair instead of her own hair. She does not wear underwear.”

Angelo stared at the television screen. “You’re right. Look at
that
. You
have
to respect that.”

“She should wear underwear,” Tony said.

“Come on, Tony,” Angelo said. “That
is
kind of hot.”

“Naomi should be cold without underwear,” Tony said. “She should not be hot.”

Tony kept his awards in unopened boxes in the closet in his room, but not because he didn’t want fame to go to his head. Fame could never go to Tony Santangelo’s head because it was far too congested with music, lyrics, maps, colors, sounds, odors, mostly useless trivia, and forecasts from the Weather Channel.

Tony Santangelo, aka “Art E.,” one of America’s greatest living songwriters, had Asperger’s syndrome, or AS, the mildest form of autism. Although he wasn’t physically clumsy and awkward, Tony had enough of the other symptoms to exist in the “mild” range. His voice was a monotone, and his hands were generally at his sides or jammed into his pockets. Until he discovered the piano, he “stimmed” to stay calm by constantly twisting and pulling on his fingers mercilessly while chanting rhymes like a Gregorian monk. He also perseverated, talking endlessly about the same topic for hours or even days at a time.

Tony had difficulty having and maintaining friendships, counting his brother Angelo as his only friend because he had “selective mutism” around women. He could usually talk to other men once he got to know them, but as a child, he would remain completely silent around women, especially with his elementary school teachers and even with his mother.

When he hit puberty and middle school, however, Tony began saying the most inappropriate—though truthful—things to his female classmates:

“You are not ugly. A cockroach is ugly. Dog poop is ugly. Pollution is ugly. What is under my fingernails before I clean them is ugly. You are prettier than a cockroach, dog poop, pollution, and what is under my fingernails . . .”

“You are not black. My shoes are black. My hair is black. My pen is black. You are brown and tan and red and beige and white. You should not tell people you are black when you are not black at all . . .”

“You should not wear a bra yet. You do not have breasts . . .”

Tony often left school with scratches, bruises, and welts.

“I told them the truth,” he would say while his mother wearily applied another bag of ice to his cheek or nose after school. “I told them the truth and they hit me.”

“You told them too much truth,” his mother had said. “You must learn to tell the truth sparingly.”

Tony also had the inability to make meaningful eye contact.

“Tony, look at me,” his mother had said a few weeks before her death.

“I can hear you,” Tony had said. “I do not have to look at you to hear you.”

“It is rude not to look at someone who is talking to you,” his mother said. “You need to practice looking people in the eye.”

Tony had widened his eyes and stared at his mother.

“And it is also rude to stare like that,” his mother said.

“I will be rude and not look,” Tony had said. “It hurts my eyes to stare.”

With Angelo’s help, Tony learned to stare
around
a person’s face. “At least look in their general direction,” Angelo said. “You know, give them the once-over. You don’t have to look them directly in the eye. And don’t make your eyes so wide when you do. They’ll think you’re crazy.”

As a result, if Tony made eye contact, he did so unintentionally, his eyes sluggishly crawling over another person’s face and body. This, unfortunately, made his teachers think he was lazy and inattentive. “He cannot seem to focus,” his teachers told his parents. “And when he does focus, he makes rude faces.”

Tony also tended to take
everything
literally and had no concept of sarcasm. He had fallen down the stairs as a child, and Angelo had told him, “Smooth move, dork.”

Tony had said, “Thank you.”

And
meant
it.

A female classmate told him, “Oh, you’re
really
funny, aren’t you?”

Tony had said, “Thank you.”

And
meant
it.

She immediately punched him in the nose for his lack of understanding.

Finally diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome at thirteen, removed from middle school by his parents, and homeschooled by a series of tutors, Tony found refuge in front of an 1883 Mason & Hamlin upright piano that had been quietly gathering dust in the Santangelo cellar.

Tony taught himself to play the piano in three days.

His finger-strangling days diminished drastically.

He became a musical genius in one month.

“He is a prodigy,” Ivan Lubitz, his first and only piano teacher, told his parents. “I cannot keep up with him. He has mastered Prokofiev’s
Eighth Sonata.
He has reinvented Stravinsky. He plays Boulez’s
Second Sonata
and only looks at the music once or twice. He is close to memorizing Ravel’s
Gaspard de la Nuit
—in my opinion the single most difficult piano piece ever written. You
must
get him a better piano before he destroys this one.”