Why Not Tonight. Susan Mallery
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Happily Inc series features her typical mastery of the romance format, with another quirky small town and a set of characters for her fans to love… The potent and prolific Mallery delivers again.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“You can always count on Mallery to deliver warm-hearted and quirky stories featuring emotionally dented individuals doing their best to survive and hopefully thrive…. A truly unforgettable read! Mallery is one of a kind!”
—RT Book Reviews, Top Pick!
When I was nine years old, my parents took me to the eye doctor, where he told me I had to wear glasses. I was devastated and crushed and sobbed with the broken heart of a little girl who believed she would never again be told she was pretty. When I was fifteen, I convinced my father to get me contact lenses. (And I’m not ashamed to admit I might have used a little guilt from my parents’ recent divorce to get what I wanted.) Order was restored to the universe, although, let me tell you, contacts are a pain.
One LASIK surgery later, I needed neither contacts nor glasses. But alas, my correction slowly faded until now I need glasses to drive and see a crowd. Enough time has passed that I no longer mind wearing them, but I did always wonder why there weren’t more romance novel heroines who wore glasses. And wore them on the cover of a book. Well, now there’s at least one. So this story is for those of you who wear glasses, too. May you always know how beautiful you are.
Contents
NATALIE KALETA DROVE up the mountain, prepared to beard the dragon in his lair. She was brave, she was fearless, she was on a mission. Only was “beard a dragon in his lair” right? Did dragons have beards? And if they did, was it just boy dragons or did the girls have to deal with a beard, as well, which seemed desperately unfair.
Okay, so the dragon-beard issue was questionable, but she was totally sure about the lairs. Dragons had lairs. Cool-looking caves with secret rooms and hidden treasures and maybe a chandelier because a chandelier would look great in a lair and the light would bounce off the dragon scales in a really beautiful way.
Although electricity was an issue. It wasn’t as if the dragon could call the local utility company and get a line brought in. How would they use a phone with their little claw-hands and how would they pay for a phone, for that matter?
Candles could work. Dragons were tall enough to be able to light the candles and replace them when needed... Still, if a dragon couldn’t buy a phone, how would she buy candles? Unless she made them. It wasn’t that hard. Natalie had taken a class once, when she’d been wanting to experiment with wax in her art.
Okay, so a candle chandelier with a beardless girl dragon and no cell phone.
Her mental image reestablished, she turned off the main highway when her phone told her to and headed up the mountain. In the rain. Although rain in no way described how much water was falling. Monsoon was more like it. It was late August and still the season for crazy rain in the desert.
Natalie’s tired, battered twenty-five-year-old Volvo wheezed as the road got steeper. She downshifted, offered silent words of encouragement and wished for a dragon to give her car a little push...or her a ride.
“You can do it,” she told her car, hoping she wasn’t lying because she did not want to get stuck on the side of a mountain, in the rain or, frankly, any other time. Seriously, when was it convenient to get stuck by the side of the road?
Natalie turned right when instructed. The road narrowed and the rain came down in even bigger buckets.
This was no fun, she thought, driving more slowly, less by choice than by