Home, Sweet Home....Explore one woman's journey from movie star diva to hometown girl in Urban Renewal
From the desk of Lee Ann Sontheimer Murphy……
From John Denver’s classic, plaintive ballad Take Me Home, Country Roads to Dorothy
Gale tapping the heels of those famous ruby slippers together repeating the
mantra, “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home” to return to
Kansas, the theme of going home is a common one in our world. Like many people
today I’ve traveled to many locations and lived in several. I live at the opposite end of Missouri from
where I was born and raised but like my heroine in Urban Renewal, I often consider whether or not I might go “home”. I hope to return to my old stomping grounds
to live again, not in the place of my memories but where echoes of the past
remain. My contemporary romance, Urban Renewal, has gained a lot of
comments. One faithful reader told me
she believes it’s my best effort yet.
Another reviewed it on Amazon.com and among other things, said,
This book is for
anyone who has experienced that intense first love and still holds a small
piece of it in their heart. This story is about "going home" and
finding yourself again. Learning what is truly important in life. I absolutely
loved her description of Marie walking into Ma's house and taking in all the
nostalgia. This was a heartwarming love story, and I will definitely read more
by this author.
To read the complete review go here:
Since it’s summer, a time for travel and a time when
many of us return to our roots if only for a visit or to show the place to the
next generation, I thought I’d share the entire first chapter from Urban Renewal. Here’s the blurb, then chapter one, then buy
links and my links follow.
Blurb:
Movie
star Mercedes Montague has it all – the fame, the fortune, and the glittering
celebrity lifestyle. But she lost
herself somewhere along the way. On a publicity tour for her next movie she
realizes she’s just fifty miles from her hometown. Mercedes – real name Marie Dillard – decides
to bolt and go home to see if she can find what’s left of herself. Hiding away in her grandparents’ old home in
a working class neighborhood she’s haunted by memories and reminders of her
first and only love, Joe Shelby.
Marie’s stunned when Joe shows up at her
door. Passion kindles between them from
the first moment their eyes meet but she won’t let it consume her unless it’s
going to include a lasting love. As they renew their relationship, Marie and
Joe face many struggles.
Can a
movie star return to reality or is love just a distant dream?
Chapter
One (Urban Renewal, Lee Ann Sontheimer
Murphy, Champagne Books, 2013)
Her Manolo Blahnik white
satin pumps rested where they landed after Mercedes Montague kicked them from
her aching feet. One shoe landed upright on the four and half inch heel, the
other lay on its side, the crystal beaded appliqué face down against the thick toasted
almond carpeting. Beside it, her crimson Atelier Versace dress pooled like
blood at a murder scene. The silk scraps she’d worn as underwear lay discarded
beside it. Her bare feet whispered across the carpet as she walked to the
window of the suite at the top of the hotel.
Lightning stitched the night
sky with crackling fire and overhead thunder boomed bass. Heavy clouds rolled
into the city with speed, as the amber glow from thousands of streetlights lit
them. Mercedes wondered where in the hell she and her entourage had fetched up
for the night. After four long, grueling days on the road on the multi-city
promo tour for Tempest, the new movie
based on Shakespeare’s play, she’d lost track. Two major cities a day blurred
into one stock urban image and one fan appearance merged into another. Each
featured screaming fans kept behind barricades, hand-lettered signs, security
guards who looked alike. The same questions were asked at every stop. Mercedes
quit paying attention to their location two days earlier and when they flew
into this town, she’d been asleep on the chartered jet.
Her head ached as if demons
pounded on it with red hot hammers straight from the pits of hell so she didn’t
look through the windows of the limo from the airport or glance around as the
handlers whisked them through a parking garage, then up into the hotel. Her
luxurious suite offered everything her contract required, right down to the
vase of Blushing Beauty roses, white tipped with pink, on the dining room table
and the mixed bouquet of roses and Asian lilies at her bedside. The bottle of
Dom Perignon on ice on the dining room sideboard waited with a frosted flute.
Under normal circumstances,
her personal assistant, Mara, would sleep in the second bedroom of the suite but
tonight Mercedes demanded her solitude and because she was the main star of
this movie, this tour, Max conceded. Max Feist, her manager, agent, and
sometimes lover, had stood inside the doorway of the suite and shaken his head.
“So get some sleep, get your game face back on, Mercedes, because we’re doing
two mall appearances here tomorrow and then it’s on to the next. Pull yourself,
together, baby.”
He kissed her, not the warm
lip lock of passion they once shared but a social kiss, light as a butterfly’s
flutter, and left. Mercedes fumed and shed everything she wore, tossing it all
onto the floor with a casual hand. She took a long, steaming shower which
reduced the headache to a tolerable level and then, with her long hair wrapped
in a hotel towel, she padded nude through the suite, still angry and out of
sorts. Right now she resented Max, loathed Mara, disliked her adoring fans, and
hated herself most of all.
I don’t
even know who in the hell I am anymore, she thought as she stared
out of the window at the city’s skyline. But
I know I’m not Mercedes, whoever she’s become. Her persona as Mercedes
Montague was as faux as cubic zirconias. She’d worn the pretty face,
highlighted with expensive cosmetics, put forward the personality the public
seemed to want, and acted as she thought a movie star should for so long, she
couldn’t always remember where the farce ended and the truth began. Naked as a
newborn, she stared out the window of the hotel and wondered whatever happened
to Marie Dillard. Somewhere along the way, Mercedes lost Marie and she realized
she missed her.
A wicked flash of lightning
illuminated the sky and revealed her location beyond any doubt. Below her she
saw the old Union Station, now a shopping and entertainment mecca for the
masses instead of a railroad station and on the horizon, a skyline she would
know anywhere as Kansas City. She realized she must be staying at the Westin
Crown Center. “Holy shit,” she said aloud. “I’m fifty miles from home.”
Fifty miles lay between her
and her past, between Mercedes Montague and Marie Dillard. Born in the rough
old river town of St. Joseph, a city lying along the banks of the Missouri
River, she knew Kansas City like a dear neighbor. She grew up coming down to KC
to watch concerts at Kemper Arena and plays at Starlight, dreaming of the day
she might move with a celebrity crowd. She still owned the house where she grew
up, an old frame house in a blue-collar neighborhood and maintained it as a rat
hole, a place to go if she ever needed a hiding place. The grandparents--Ma and
Pop--who raised her after her parents died in a fiery car crash were long gone
but she could go home. Staring out at the storm raging in the skies over Kansas
City, Mercedes thought maybe she just would leave, take a respite.
The idea of running away,
bolting into the night appealed to Mercedes but she would sleep on it--if she
could sleep at all. Most of the time she couldn’t, without a pill or plenty of
booze so she walked into the dining room, filled the flute with the best Dom
Perignon and drank it in one long swallow. Mercedes repeated it twice and the
bubbly wine impacted her stomach before sending warmth out over her body with
slow relaxation. She towel-dried her hair, combed it smooth and pulled a satin
negligee over her flesh. Still wired, she thought about taking a Xanax but
resisted. Instead she lit a rare cigarette, something Max forbade long ago
because he swore smoking would etch lines in her face, aging her too early. She
stared out the window into the night as if she could see fifty miles northward.
Mercedes reflected on how
much she hated the person she had become, the selfish, ego-tripping movie star,
the kind of celebrity people loved to hate. Her excesses with alcohol and
prescription drugs were legendary and too often made the pages of the gossip
rags, the ones sold on supermarket checkout stands. Being a bitch somehow
became a way of life, she thought now, and wondered how, why. Max sculpted
Mercedes into her persona and as he did, he did his best to remove every bit of
Marie but the stubborn inner self refused to die. Mercedes buried Marie under
the layers of artifice, the glamorous façade and almost lost her but Marie,
tough little chick from a blue-collar world, refused to go away.
Now Mercedes wanted reality. She
longed to know who lurked within her physical shell and ached to release Marie
before she vanished forever. Mercedes yearned to reject all the bullshit of her
life, the trappings grown into burdens too heavy for her back. The more she
thought about it, the more determined she became to revert to the way she’d
been raised, to be Marie.
Sometime before dawn she made
up her mind but realized she couldn’t head home wearing anything she owned. Her
luggage yielded Prada, a Versace turtleneck with one sleeve, Valentino designs,
cashmere blouses, silk scarves by Chanel, Dior, and Hermes, and a Gucci silver
fox cape along with a few designer dresses. The most casual thing she could
find was Levi Capitol E jeans and even they wouldn’t do. Mercedes tossed
colorful garments over the floor and called downstairs to housekeeping.
“I need someone up here
immediately to do some cleaning,” she said in the movie star drawl she affected
and perfected long ago. Her tone didn’t allow for any denials and the
housekeeping manager hearkened to her voice.
“Yes, Miss Montague. We’ll
send someone immediately.”
Five minutes later, someone
knocked at the door and a voice with the lilt of Old Mexico called out,
“Housekeeping.”
Mercedes yanked open the door
and ushered two young women, dressed in baggy, nondescript tan uniforms into
the spacious suite. “Good morning, girls,” she said, more Marie than Mercedes.
“If you happen to wear the same size I do, this is your lucky day.”
They did. Fifteen minutes
later, all of her designer clothing belonged to the two maids, Estefani and
Thrusha, along with her large suitcase. So did the Manolo Blahnik pumps and six
other pairs of shoes. Mercedes dressed in a wash faded Kansas City Royals
t-shirt, a pair of Wrangler jeans, and in a worn out pair of Nikes sans socks. Both
maids were delighted to make the swap and Mercedes also netted a leather purse,
one she could hang over her shoulder. Mercedes gathered up the rest of her
possessions and crammed them all into her smaller bag. She removed some of her
emergency stash, what she called her rat-hole money, from her cosmetics case
and tucked it into the shoulder bag. Keeping a large sum of cash was one of her
few secrets, another throwback to growing up poor. Most of the time she kept
ten grand in the bottom compartment of her make-up bag just in case she needed
it. Until now she never had.
After a quick scan through
the suite, she thought she’d gathered everything and except for the disarray,
nothing remained to show she spent the night here. She paused to brush her long
hair back into a ponytail and nodded at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. Without
her usual make-up and hair styling, she no longer resembled a movie star. She
studied her face and titled her head, thinking, so this is Marie, a mature Marie. At the same time she caught a
resemblance to Ma now, something she never noticed beneath all the artifice.
She grabbed a sheet of
embossed hotel stationery from the desk drawer and used the pen she found
beside the paper to write a short note. “Leaving,” she wrote in her bold,
oversized handwriting she used for autographs. “Let the show go on without me.”
She scrawled “Mercedes Montague,” her precise, practiced name with swirls and
curls, as the signature. She folded it in half, wrote “Max” on it and as she passed
his suite down the hall, she shoved it beneath the door with a flourish. On a
wild, street urchin impulse, she shot her middle finger at the closed door with
a grin.
Her single bag in one hand,
the purse slung over her left shoulder, Mercedes headed downstairs with a
jaunty walk, what her first boyfriend and love used to call her little witch
walk. All she needed now were wheels to get out of town.
Daybreak sent sunlight
streaming between the skyscrapers and downtown landmarks but she didn’t expect
any used car lots to be open at such an early hour. Mercedes headed down the
fire stairs to avoid meeting any of the Tempest
entourage, although she doubted any of them were awake or out of their
hotel rooms. She ducked into the back service hallways to avoid going through
the main lobby. Although Mercedes doubted anyone would recognize her, she
wasn’t taking any chances. She followed the sound of voices and the smell of
coffee to an employee break room and walked in. Eight or nine employees fell
silent and stared.
“Are you a guest?” a young
man dressed in a bus boy’s apron asked.
“No,” Estefani one of the
young ladies she traded garments with upstairs, said with wide-eyed awe. “She’s
the lady who...”
“Wants to buy a car,”
Mercedes interrupted. “Remember, I said don’t tell anyone about our trade. I
need a car and I’ll pay cash if I can drive out of here right now.”
No one spoke but everyone
stared. After a long pause, a young man with the face of an angel and a lithe
body encased in a black t-shirt and skin tight black jeans stood up. “I don’t
work here,” he said. “I’m just here seeing my lady but I’ve got a car at home
for sale. It was my grandma’s, a 1981 Buick Skylark. It’s rough on the outside
but the motor’s good. She died a few months ago and it’s been at my house ever
since.”
Mercedes remembered what
mattered in this world. “How much do you want?”
“I was asking a grand,” he
said.
“I’ll give you two thousand
in cash with no questions asked if you let me take it with the plates. They’re
not expired, are they?” she asked.
His dark, beautiful eyes
widened and his hand twitched toward his chest as if he might make the sign of
the cross. “No, I renewed them for her just before she died so there’s more
than a year left. Lady, are you in trouble?”
“No,” Mercedes said. “I’m
just trying to get home. How far do you live? Would you go get it for me?”
The young man stared at her
and grinned. He stuck his right hand out to her. “I’m Diego,” he said. “It’s
not far but I’ll do you better. How about I take you to my house, you look over
the car and if you like it, you can drive away in it?”
She grasped his hand and
shook it. “It’s a deal.”
“Good,” he said. “I can use
the money.”
“Just one thing,” Mercedes
said, her gaze swinging around the room to everyone present. “No one saw me,
heard of me, or knows where I’m headed, okay?”
A variety of voices answered
in unified agreement. Mercedes dug into the shoulder bag, pulled out a C-note
for each. “Since you don’t know where I’m going, I should be safe,” she said,
“but if anyone asks tell them I took a taxi to the airport, all right?”
“Anything you say,” Diego
replied. “Let’s go so I can get to my job on time after this.”
Mercedes nodded and followed
him out to a low-rider Chevy, sleek and beautiful. Without any fear she climbed
into the seat beside him and they took off. They headed west on Twelfth Street
and headed for the old stockyards district. Diego turned into the driveway of a
dilapidated house divided into apartments and parked.
“There she is,” he said and
pointed at the car. The old Buick was about what she expected an older lady
might drive. Rust speckled the tan exterior and a hairline crack divided the
windshield into two halves. Mercedes walked over to the vehicle and peered
inside at the sun-cracked dash, the worn seats with holes. “Start it up,” she
said.
Diego opened the driver’s
door and sat down. He inserted the key and turned it. On command, the motor
purred like a cream-filled cat. “What do you think?” he asked.
“I’ll take it,” Mercedes
said.
“Let me get the other set of
keys,” Diego said.
In less than five minutes,
she handed over a thick stack of twenty dollar bills. Diego counted them with
speed and gave her the keys, including the one he jerked from his key ring.
“The title’s in the glove
box,” he said. “It’s signed already and there’s a spare tire in the trunk. It’s
in pretty good shape. I hope you get where you’re going and run a lot of miles
out of it. It’s still a decent car.”
“I’ll get there,” Mercedes
said. “Thanks.”
She resisted the impulse to
kiss him because in Hollywood, everyone kissed and it meant nothing, no more
than a simple handshake. He nodded. “De
nada.”
For the first time in years,
Mercedes climbed behind the wheel of a car made in the USA. She adjusted the
seat and checked to see where all the controls were located. She set the
mirrors and with a wave, she drove away, palms slick with nervous perspiration,
heart pounding, but with a sense of total rightness about what she was doing.
A few blocks away she rolled
through a McDonalds for a cup of hot coffee, drank it black and savored how
strong it tasted. If she could do this thing, make an escape, she needed
caffeine and she required strength. She munched down a sausage biscuit, the
greasy pork slick against her tongue but tasty in a way she hadn’t experienced
in years.
As she sat in the parking
lot, licking crumbs from her fingers and sipping coffee, her cell rang. Mercedes
didn’t answer but pulled it out and saw Max’s number on the screen. Son of a bitch, she thought, he can track me with the damn phone. I’ve
got to ditch it.
Getting rid of the phone
should be simple but she wanted to do it so there’d be no way Max could find
her. She considered pitching it into the convenient Missouri River but it
seemed too clichéd. Her next choice was to toss it into rush hour traffic. A
big truck idled in the back of the fast food restaurant’s lot as the driver
dashed inside for breakfast. Mercedes stared at the truck and then an idea hit
her. She remembered a scene from a made-for-television movie she did early in
her career where the villain put a tracking device up into the wheel well of a
big rig. If it worked in the film, it should work in real life.
She pondered the notion,
figuring if Max had the phone pinged or if he tried tracing the location, he
would go crazy as the truck headed for points unknown. She imagined him trying
to figure out her destination if the route went from Kansas City to St. Louis
and down to Memphis. If the driver dropped the trailer after delivering a load,
the phone could make a cross country circuit. With delight, Mercedes gathered
up her trash, got out of the car and sidled over to the trash can near the rear
of the truck. She stepped up to the rear wheels, reached up into the wheel well
and shoved her cell phone into a tight spot. Her fingers jerked on it, testing
how well it was jammed in place and she decided it wouldn’t move. With a grin,
she retreated to the Skylark and headed out.
Mercedes found her way to
Prospect Avenue, the route of Highway 71, the road existing before the
interstates and the interchanges. From there, she managed to backtrack her way
until she reached I-29 and headed north, toward home.
Maybe once she got there she
might figure out who in the hell she was and more important, who--and what--she
wanted to be when she grew up this time.
Purchase
links:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/urban-renewal-lee-ann-sontheimer-murphy/1114919473?ean=9781771550123
Title:
Urban Renewal
Author:
Lee Ann Sontheimer Murphy
Publisher:
Champagne Books
Release
date: March 4, 2013
Genre:
Romance/contemporary romance/second chance at love romance
Length:
203 pages
$4.99
Twitter: leeannwriter
From Sweet to Heat: The Romance of Lee Ann
Sontheimer Murphy
Blog: Rebel Writer: Lee Ann Sontheimer Murphy
Goodreads:
It's funny how our definition of "home" changes through the years. Some places, though I didn't live there long, will always be "home;" others that I lived for a long time, will never be. Love the blurb and excerpt!
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