Maybe This Time (A Second Chance Romance) Read online

  Table of Contents

  MAYBE THIS TIME

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Epilogue

  Table of Contents

  MAYBE THIS TIME

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Epilogue

  MAYBE THIS TIME

  A Second Chance Romance

  SUSAN B. JAMES

  SOUL MATE PUBLISHING

  New York

  MAYBE THIS TIME

  Copyright©2017

  SUSAN B. JAMES

  Cover Design by Fiona Jayde

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, business establishments, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.

  Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Published in the United States of America by

  Soul Mate Publishing

  P.O. Box 24

  Macedon, New York, 14502

  ISBN: 978-1-68291-407-6

  www.SoulMatePublishing.com

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  To my fellow readers who enjoy

  second chances and time travel spiced

  with a bit of humor and geekiness.

  I may not know you yet,

  but I believe we are kindred spirits.

  Acknowledgements

  A writer is never alone.

  Bouquets of thanks to Juliana Lovejoy, Lydia Espinoza, and all my readers who asked for more.

  To April Kihlstrom and NaNoWriMo for giving me a timeframe constraint for the first draft.

  To Don Devers, who bravely read through the second rough draft and gave me excellent suggestions.

  To my critique partners who made my story so much better. Kelly Hartog, Tema Merback, Therese Gilardi, Allison Morse, Janie Emaus, Linda O Johnston, and Kady Ambrose.

  To Cheryl Yeko, for the gift of her editing.

  To Fiona Jayde, for another amazing cover.

  To Debby Gilbert and Soul Mate Publishing, for making me part of the family.

  Chapter 1

  London. March 30, 2001

  Birthdays ought to be banned after forty.

  She didn’t need a ruddy birthday marker to remind her how old she was. Jennifer Knight’s stilettos clicked an irritated staccato down the hallway to the Royal Court Theatre’s dressing rooms. She dearly loved her Private Lives family, but if one more person wished her Happy Birthday . . .

  “Happy Birthday, Miss Knight.” Gerri Stokes emerged from the wings, clipboard in hand.

  Jen took a deep breath. She couldn’t strangle the stage manager. What would they do without him? “Thank you, Gerri.” She forced a delighted smile and continued down the narrow, dimly lit hall.

  Gerri beat her to her dressing room and gallantly opened the door.

  Jen sneezed. Every available surface held floral arrangements. Roses. Lilies. Delphiniums. Dianthus. Flowers whose names escaped her. It looked like a funeral. The only thing missing was a horseshoe arrangement saying Rest in Peace. Jen sneezed again.

  Gerri’s face wrinkled up like a pug, mournful and loveable at the same time. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m allergic to at least one of these bouquets. Could you be a dear and get them all out of here?”

  The stage manager grabbed an armful of vases. “Sorry. I forgot about your allergy. I should have thought to check. The roses are all right, aren’t they?”

  Jen shuddered. Roses were her second husband’s flower of choice. Everything to do with Peter Bromley made her feel ill. “Better take them all to be safe. Share them out.”

  “Right. I’ll bring you back the cards.”

  One of the blessings of a small cast was there was always an empty dressing room. Jen retrieved her yoga mat from its corner resting place. “I’ll pop upstairs while you finish.”

  Her pre-performance stretching and meditation routine restored her equilibrium. She returned to her dressing room, now blessedly flower free.

  Someone had wedged a telegram into the large mirror over her dressing table. Happy Forty-Ninth. One year to go. Wish I could be there. Love Sylvie.

  Jen snorted. When she and Sylvie met as starry-eyed ingénues, they both thought turning fifty would be the end of the world.

  Jen surveyed her reflection. Figure still slender. Hair still flame red, courtesy of Cedric’s of London. Eyes still green. Chin line still firm. She sat and scrutinized her face in the magnifying mirror she used for applying makeup. Had more lines appeared overnight in wild birthday abandon? She couldn’t tell. She didn’t feel old.

  “Old is as old does,” she told her reflection. “You’re still playing
leads, so stop worrying.”

  Off with her electric blue Stella McCartney, and into her peach satin dressing gown. Time to start her favorite part of the day. Turning herself into Amanda.

  The joy of acting was living in someone else’s skin and Amanda was one of her favorite roles. Noel Coward’s repartee between the 1930’s socialite who encounters her ex-husband Elyot by chance on the balcony of a hotel, dripped with glorious put downs.

  How she would have loved to use them on her ex-husband, Peter, the Bounder. Or better still on . . . No! Her mind shied away from her first husband—He Who Must Not Be Named.

  She pinned her chin-length hair into flat curls, covering the result with a net wig cap. Eyebrows first. She erased her winged brows with a glue stick and smoothed on crème foundation. She outlined Amanda’s thin, arched brows with a brown grease pencil, added blush and eyeshadow; filled in ruby red lips.

  Her co-star, John Luterman, stuck his head around the door. “Happy birthday, darling. Thanks for the flowers. We’ve got tomorrow off. Want to pop round to the minister and do the deed?”

  Jen concentrated on attaching a strip of false eyelashes. “Darling, I’m too old for you. Your birds get younger every year.”

  John clapped a hand to his chest and pantomimed pulling a dagger out. “You wound me, lady. Wound me to the core. For one look from your fair eyes, I would slay a dragon. Only plight your troth with mine, and we will go hence to a parson.”

  “Wrong period. Wrong woman. Try again with someone else.” She loved John. They’d acted together in repertory and the West End on and off since the late sixties. But there’d never been a spark of sexual attraction.

  “But we’d be so wonderful together.”

  “Onstage, we are bloody marvelous. Off stage?” Jen smiled at John’s reflection in the mirror. The slicked back hair and pencil thin mustache looked good on him. John was born to play Elyot. “I watched you race through three marriages and listened to your tale of woe at the end of each of them. I think you’d better give up on love.”

  “Well, if you won’t marry me, how about coming out for a drink afterward? I’ll buy you a ginger beer.”

  “No, thanks.”

  John came up behind her, watching her face in the mirror. “You’re seeing someone, aren’t you? Tell Mother all.”

  Jen shuddered at the memory of last night’s candidate from the high-priced dating service Sylvie had talked her into employing. No way was she confessing that one. “Yes. I’ve got another date. He’s tall, dark and mysterious, and if I told you his name his security guards would have to kill me.”

  John lifted the platinum wig from the Styrofoam head on the dressing table and fitted it over her wig cap, stretching the wig down to cover the cap’s edges. “It’s a book. You’re going home and reading a book. Jen, you’re too young to give up on romance. There is someone out there for you. I know it.”

  John always had to have an unreachable star. If he lived to be ninety, he’d still be looking. As far as she was concerned the search was over. After last night’s candidate, she called the dating service and canceled the contract. “I’m done looking for the right person. I think I’m better off with a good book.”

  “Forget the book. Come out for a ginger beer. I’ll even stand you a sausage roll or two for old time’s sake. The cast wants to celebrate.”

  Of course, they did. When had her mates ever let a birthday go unpunished? “All right, but not too late. Kat says she has a surprise for me tomorrow. I’m meeting her at noon.”

  “Ah, the enchanting Kathryn. If she wasn’t your niece, I could fall very hard for her.”

  Jen whirled around. “If you ever flirt with Kat, you are going to be minus some very important equipment.”

  John backed up, raising his hands in the air. “Sorry. Bad joke. I would never come on to a teenager. Especially one who calls me Uncle John.”

  “It didn’t stop Peter.”

  She’d never seen John’s eyes turn so cold. “Don’t ever confuse me with the lowlife you married.”

  Two quick taps on the door. “Five minutes, please.”

  “Thank you, Gerri.” She turned to John. “Out.”

  John leered at her. “Can’t I watch?”

  “No.” Jen pushed him out the door. The last bit of transformation she liked to do alone. She slipped her satin dressing wrap onto a hanger and stepped into Amanda's Vionnet silk evening frock. Clipping on diamond eardrops, she took a last survey in the mirror.

  Amanda gazed back at her. A beautiful, sophisticated woman in her thirties who knew everything. Or thought she did. Oops. Rings. She slid the fake diamonds onto her left hand and admired the play of light on the stones. Life was so much simpler on the stage.

  She turned to the framed picture of her family taken before her brother Rob was killed. Mum, Dad, Rob, Jeremy, her baby sister Courtney, and her seventeen-year-old-self posed in front of the castle, all of them laughing and carefree. She touched her finger to her lips and blew them a kiss for luck. Ritual completed, Jen swept out of her dressing room, shoulders back, head erect. She struck an Amanda pose in the dressing room door. “I’m ready, darling.”

  John pushed off from the wall he’d been propping up. “Jen! You forgot your shoes.”

  Jen lifted the hem of her dress. Furry slippers peeped out at her. She kicked them off. Was this the beginning of Alzheimer’s? Pulse racing, she buckled on Amanda’s strappy heels. What if she forgot her lines?

  She stood, knees wobbly. Picked up the jeweled cigarette holder with its prop cigarette, and took a long drag. The act of inhaling as though it were a real cigarette steadied her. “Come on, John. Let’s knock them dead.”

  John kissed his finger and touched it to her throat. “We always do darling. We always do.”

  Chapter 2

  March 31, 2001

  Jen took the steps of her brother Jeremy’s Georgian townhouse two at a time, just to prove she still could.

  Her niece opened the door before Jen rang the bell. Kat had changed her hair again. It was now razor-cut into jagged blades, and dyed ebony with magenta highlights. She wore a peacock-patterned silk blouse over fashionably ripped jeans. Black and white checkered tennis shoes completed her look. Her lovely face was bare of makeup.

  Times changed. At her age, Jen wouldn’t have been seen without full makeup complete with false eyelashes. “I like the magenta streaks better than the blue ones you had last week.”

  Kat hugged her. “You look gorgeous, Aunty. I love your dress. Is it Versace? Can I steal it?”

  “Better still, I’ll take you shopping. Give me my present and let’s go.”

  Kat rubbed the silky hem of her blouse between her thumb and forefinger. “It’s not exactly a regular kind of present. It’s more of an adventure. I think you’ll like it.”

  As if she wouldn’t love anything her Kitty-Kat gave her. It was hard to believe this child of her heart was nineteen. All grown up and fiercely intelligent. “I’m sure I will. Lead me to it.”

  Jen followed Kat through the Wedgwood-blue entry hall, past the living room with its antique white fireplace, past the cozy dining room to a door with a framed sign. Keep Out. This means you. Kathryn E. Smythe. Kat had painted the skull and crossbones decorated sign when she was seven and still answering to her birth name.

  When Jeremy decided to work from home, he’d converted the former dining room into a workspace. Jen had never been invited to enter. The door was always locked and her brother had the only keys.

  And right now they were in Kat’s hand. “Kat, this is a bad idea. We should not disturb your father’s lab. He’ll kill us both. Let’s go shopping.”

  “It’s all right. He gave me the keys.” Kat unlocked the two cylinder locks and opened the door. “It’s not dangerous. Come in.”

&nbs
p; The temperature was at least ten degrees cooler than the rest of the house. Jen surveyed the space, trying to remember how it looked when it was a dining room. The walls used to be papered in a design of flowering trees. That was gone, as were the windows. Jeremy had walled over them. Some kind of soundproofing perhaps?

  The wall opposite them had a huge corkboard filled with notes, and a second door.

  A plain metal desk held a computer monitor the size of her TV, a black metal box with a slot on one end, and an odd-looking keyboard with symbols instead of letters. The rest of the room was lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with computers.

  Their droning made Jen’s teeth ache. “I’ve never seen so many computers in one place. What on earth is he doing with them?”

  Kat seated herself at the desk facing the corkboard. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard. “Aunty Jen, how would you like to be the most fashion forward woman in London?”

  Kat’s expression reminded her of an ingénue stepping on stage for her first audition. Why would she be jittery about going shopping? “Absolutely. You found a new shop?”

  “Not exactly. Dad’s invented a machine . . . No,” Kat corrected herself. “A program, which lets you go into the future. It works. He took me with him. It’s wicked fun. Let me take you.”

  Kat’s hazel eyes were starry bright. Exactly what kind of trip had she taken? Jen willed a calm, interested expression. “Your dad took you into the future. Did you meet any two-headed aliens?”

  Her niece rolled her eyes. “Be serious. We only went ahead five years.”

  The child really believed what she was saying. She was going to have words with Jeremy when he got back. “Does your father let you use his machine?”

  Kat evaded the question. “He taught me how to program it.”

  Probably true. Kat started programming as a child. She said it was more fun than playing video games. “So he took you into the future? Exactly how did he do it?”