Unlucky In Love (10 page)

If I could make it as a writer — and I
wasn’t thinking a
New York Times
bestselling author — I
could support myself. I mean … really … how hard could it be to
sell twenty books a
day?
Dick’s company
typically sold twenty cars a day … fifty on Saturday. So, how hard
would it be to sell a product that costs less than a latte at
Starbucks?

I lifted my head off the steering wheel and
sniffed away my tears. “I will do this!” As long as Angela likes
it, and then Seth. Seth had agreed to read it too, but I wanted
Angela to read it for any typos first.

Shifting the truck into drive, I sped off
toward today’s challenge. I’d been kayaking for months now, but I
hadn’t ventured too far from shore.

Egmont Key was located a little more than
one and a half miles off the far tip of Pinellas
County
, where the Gulf of Mexico connected with Tampa
Bay. The water was crystal clear, but since the pass allowed
freighters and cruise ships into the port of Tampa Bay, it was also
close to ninety-foot deep. The waterway would get wild too, with
swift currents and larger waves than most beaches on the Gulf side
of Florida. It wasn’t unusual to see surfers, especially during
storms.

My reward, though … a
lighthouse
and the ruins of an old fort from the
Spanish-American War. As Angela had suggested, I could have taken
the ferry, but where was the challenge in that?

Like
every other time
when I’d started to unload my kayak from the
portage
carrier, a group of kids, sometimes a few older
men, and every once and a while, a woman, would question where,
what, and why I was paddling to wherever I was paddling.

But never men my age. Sometimes,
college-aged paddlers would chat a bit, but not once had a man who
was older than thirty, but less than fifty, talked to me. Not even
to say, “Nice yak!”

“Yes, it’s mine,” I said to a boy who looked
to be six. Young children were obsessed with whom things belonged
to, it seemed. I could understand that. I knew how I’d felt when
Dick signed over the deed to the house to me. It had felt like a
safety net. Worst case, if I failed, I could sell the house and use
the equity to pay for a small two-bedroom condominium. But I didn’t
want to, not if I didn’t have to. I wanted Eric to be able to come
home, even once he moved off to college. Just because his father
had chosen to break up the family home didn’t mean that I had
to.

“Do you ever see any sharks?” the young boy
asked, his tone excited at the idea.

I smiled. “Sometimes.”

“Do they bite your boat?”

I giggled. “No. But … I did see some kids on
Jetskis who were bothering a shark, which they shouldn’t have been
…” The boy bounced his head up and down as if he agreed. “Well, the
shark bit down on the back of one of the Jetskis. The rider was
lucky that the shark didn’t chomp off the guy’s foot.”

The boy’s eyes grew wide and round. “Yeah
…”

“You should never pick on someone else, huh?
Especially someone or something that can’t defend itself,
right?”

“No … Uh-uh.” The boy ran off toward his
mother, screeching about a shark and
bites
and
skis
.

I shoved off from the beach, aiming for the
southeast side of the waterway. The tide was going out, so if I
headed southeast, I should end up at the tip of Egmont Key. If I
headed straight across Lower Tampa Bay, the waterway that connects
Tampa Bay to the Gulf of Mexico, I could end up fighting to get
back to shore.

Thinking about Eric when he was the age as
the boy on the beach, I smiled. He’d worshiped his father. I hoped
that he and Dick would get along okay this weekend. Dick hadn’t
invited Eric over much, not that Eric would have wanted to go
anyway. He couldn’t stand Dick’s new woman. And since Dick hadn’t
married her yet, Eric saw no sense in getting to know her.

But Dick had made Eric an offer he couldn’t
refuse: a weekend trip to Orlando. Dick had booked a hotel near
Universal Studios for three
nights,
and had
promised him it’d be just them.

At least
Dick realized
that just because he lost me didn’t mean he had to lose his son
too. I could never forgive Dick for his infidelity, but even though
Eric might never forget what his father had done, he was certainly
capable of forgiving him.

As I paddled, I attempted to put Dick … and
everything else out of my mind. Hopefully, this would become a new
tradition after I finished a book. I’d reward myself with a trip …
anywhere. While working out of my house was the most enjoyable job
I’d ever held, it certainly wasn’t the easiest. The problem: there
wasn’t a quitting time. Other than stopping to pick up Eric or
making dinner, I found that many days I put in well more than
fifteen hours.

I inhaled the fresh air and delighted at the
light mist on my face. A few times, I spotted a pod of porpoises
and halted my paddling. I’d found that if I just sat still, they’d
investigate. But I couldn’t sit long. The last thing I wanted was
to be in the center of the channel when a tanker was coming
through.

When I made it to the other beach, I looked
back across the bay at my trek. It wasn’t as hard as it looked the
first time I’d come out here.

The first time I’d
stared
across the divide, I’d thought of dangerous wakes
left behind from the large ships that used the pass, strong
currents, and the fear of the unknown wild creatures beneath the
water. Today, I’d seen an adventure.

My future was no different than this trek
across the open water had been. Yeah, I might get caught in a
riptide every once and a while … But I was smart. I prepared for
storms. I had my gear, my life preserver, my boat …

If life threw me a curveball, I was ready.
If my book bombed, I’d sell the house. I needed to start living my
life as though I had no worries.

After all, what else was there to worry
about?

Goals:
I printed neatly at the top of
the first page of my new leather-bound journal. For several long
minutes, I stared at the one tiny word that demanded so much of
me.

A minute later, I ripped out the page.

Dreams:
I wrote on the new first page
of my journal. Sighing broodingly, I stared at the word.
What
was my dream?

J’Austen jumped up beside me and burrowed
her head beneath my right hand. I offered her a scratch behind her
ear and she immediately began to purr.

“What do I want, baby kitty? Why do I feel
so
blah
?”

J’Austen pressed her paws up and down on my
knee as I scratched her. I dropped the pen and scooped her up into
my arms.

In the last six months, I’d been so busy
writing, editing, and publishing that I hadn’t realized how lonely
I was. I’d managed to fill every minute of my time writing three
books. After the first one, the ideas just kept coming. I was able
to write a book in less than two months. Editing, on the other
hand, had taken much longer. Angela and I had gone back and forth a
hundred times.

Even though I would have loved a man’s point
of view, too, Seth had been unavailable. Not only had he followed
his daughter to New York, where she was going to college, but he’d
been picked up by an agent. Truly, I should be proud that I had
such a good eye. Seth had submitted his manuscript to twenty agents
and had received three offers of representation. But, he would also
have to wait close to eighteen months before his manuscript saw the
light of day.

As much as I wanted to try my hand at
submitting to an agent, especially after I discovered all that was
involved with launching a book, I really didn’t want to sell my
house, so I needed money — STAT.

Back to the
library,
I
went, reading up on everything about self-publishing. Luckily, I
had Mak, and my website offered me a platform of some sort. I made
sure that all my readers knew that the series was written by me,
though, and for the first time ever, I didn’t add a
star rating
for the book I posted. Just a note why they
should read this new book, as I always offered.

The response was amazing, and in no time, I
had readers writing reviews for
my
book.

Then came the marketing.
Ugh!
Why
didn’t anyone tell me about that part?

But I pressed on …

After I’d
uploaded
the
third in the series, I allowed Amazon to offer the first book free,
and the turnout was amazing. I gave away fifty-three thousand books
in three days, but there were still more readers. Within hours of
the book reverting to its full price, it hit the top one hundred of
all paid books on Amazon. Within days, the first book in the
collection was sitting next to a book by Nicholas Sparks — while
the adaptation of his book was playing in the theaters. And after
several days, the book hit number one on the romantic-suspense
bestseller
list.

So the question begs to be answered …
Why
am I suddenly depressed?

I’d managed the last nine months without
having a nervous breakdown or even having to resort to prescription
anti-depressants, but now I broke down and cried during
Hallmark
commercials.

Frustrated, I set down J’Austen and headed
to my room. I hadn’t gone to my self-defense class in weeks.

I’d found the instructor because he’d
offered a free class in honor of two area women who’d been victims
of domestic violence. Not that my ex-husband had ever laid a finger
on me, but Eric was right, there were some scary people out there.
I’d wanted to get in more exercise, so I decided, Why not learn how
to defend myself at the same time?

After the initial classes, since I’d finally
started making money, I’d signed up for Krav Maga, a self-defense
style that the Israel Defense Forces had developed. What interested
me
was how Krav Maga incorporated
combinations
of wrestling and boxing, as well as other types of martial arts
like judo for a realistic approach to training that focused on
real-life situations and proficient counterattacks.

I arrived late, but I hung out in the back,
hoping not to catch Steve’s eye. He liked to call people out.

Thankfully, he’d held off on embarrassing me
for not only being
late,
but also for not
showing up lately. After the class
had
finished
, I turned to leave, deciding I’d just use the
elliptical and do a few squats to burn off some steam.

“Jana!” Steve called over the heads of the
other people who probably showed up on a regular basis — and on
time.

I stopped my retreat, waiting for the verbal
lashing about how martial arts was about self-discipline.

Steve stopped in front of me and smiled.
“Hello, Jana. I haven’t seen you in a while. Do you have a moment?
I’d like to show you a couple of
moves
you’ve
missed.”

I stared at the seventy-something-old Asian
man who had a better physique than most twenty-year-olds. “Oh,
thank you, Steve, but I realize the class is over. I’ll just do
some cardio, and I promise I won’t be late next week.

He waved his hand. “Nonsense. I have nothing
pressing, and I don’t want you to fall behind. I’ll show you the
moves and you can practice them for next week.”

I dropped my head. “I’m tired, Steve.” I
stared at the floor, hoping a trap door would open up, swallowing
me whole. Not to escape Steve, though … to escape my tired
life.

Steve walked toward the other side of the
room, motioning for me to follow him.

He stopped beside the dark blue punching bag
that hung from the ceiling, then turned to me. “Why are you here?”
he asked, his face and speech taking on his training demeanor. He
was so soft-spoken in normal conversation, but when he trained, he
had the sternness of a drill sergeant.

I sighed as my eyes met his. “To get
stronger.”

“Why?” he demanded.

At his severe tone, I stood straighter. I
felt pathetic and powerless against the world, and I didn’t want to
be that woman. “Because I don’t want to be weak,” I groaned.

“Why?” he asked again.

Tears filled my eyes, and without warning, I
cried out, “Because I don’t want to be afraid.”

He punched the bag beside him, making me
sidestep. But he just drilled his gaze at me. “Afraid of what?”

I gasped in a breath as I tried to control
my tears. “Every …
thing,”
I sputtered.

He pushed the bag toward me, then stepped
back. “Then let me see you.”

I assumed my fighting stance, struck my fist
forward, and gave my best warrior
Kiai
!

“Again. Harder.”

I released another strike, followed by a
roundhouse kick.

“Face your fear,” Steve shouted.

I felt the fear that lived inside of me as
though it were a living and breathing entity gnawing on my heart, a
weighty beast that had curled up inside of my stomach, weighing me
down.

But I couldn’t visualize my fear. It wasn’t
Dick cheating on me. It wasn’t my failed marriage. It wasn’t my
horrible childhood. It wasn’t even a fear of not having enough
money to pay the bills.

I knew what my fear was; I just didn’t want
to admit it, and I didn’t want to spend one more minute of my life
wallowing in my grief or being afraid. I needed to face my fear
once and for all.

“I hate you! I hate you!” I screamed,
punching the bag as Steve held it steady.

“Give your fear a name, Jana!” Steve shouted
above my cries and grunts.

“Loneliness!” I cried. “I don’t want to be
afraid to be alone!”