LITMIR.BIZ

       One

      Melinda Perry glanced at her phone as she put the last hot roller in her hair. She was trying to ween herself off her social media addiction. While she loved knowing exactly what her faves were doing, she had learned she functioned better with far less FOMO if she started her day with a mug of... She wanted to say hot lemon water, but she’d never been able to make herself acquire a taste for it. No matter how unhealthy it was, she always started her day with coffee, a teaspoon of hot cocoa mix and nonfat half-and-half.

      She glanced at the clock on her vanity mirror; she was running ahead of schedule. “Okay, Jeeves, give me the latest society news from the Houston Chronicle,” she said. She’d programmed her electronic assistant to answer to Jeeves because she thought it was funny to pretend she had a proper British butler and because it had been going off whenever the commercial for it had come on prior to that.

      “Good morning, Mels. Here’s today’s headline—‘Heiress and philanthropist Melinda Perry is going hot and heavy with notorious playboy Slade Bartelli. Photos available on Houston Chronicle dot com.’”

      “Okay, Jeeves, stop,” she said, fumbling for her phone and opening the Houston Chronicle app. Oh, no. She didn’t want to be on the society pages. She didn’t want the world to know about her love affair with Slade.

      Her family had been a hot mess for the last year and she had struggled to remain above it. Going about her business and acting as if everything were okay. Her father had been accused of running a Ponzi scheme, arrested and released from jail. Her sister was having a scandalous relationship with one of her father’s most hated business rivals. And of course, she had started a romance with the son of notorious mobster Carlo Bartelli.

      To be fair, Slade wasn’t part of his father’s crime syndicate and she had met him at a charitable committee meeting. He was an upstanding citizen but the media never seemed to care about that.

      As soon as she opened the app, she saw a photo of herself and Slade embracing...okay, kissing. Hot and heavy kissing in one of the alcoves of the Houston Symphony at Jones Hall.

      She felt panic rise inside of her and her pulse raced. She was hot and bothered not only from being exposed but from remembering that kiss. She had to end this. It was getting out of control. She was behaving in a way that didn’t suit her at all. Sure, she was thirty-nine and, as her twin had pointed out, not getting any younger.

      If not now, then when? That’s what Angela had said when Melinda had shyly mentioned she was seeing someone different from her usual type of guy.

      But this wasn’t what Melinda had had in mind. She liked her charity work, her quiet life. Also, Angela had been very plain in her disapproval of Slade as a lover for Melinda. Not that she needed her twin’s approval of the man she dated.

      She heard the sound of Pixie, her miniature dachshund, barking and then her bedroom door opened and her sister Angela walked into the room. They lived in the same building and always nipped into each other’s places. The design of the condo was an open concept on the main living level and then an upper-level loft that was the master bedroom, bathroom and a living/sitting room that Melinda used as a workout space.

      “I thought you weren’t sure that Slade was the right man for you. Didn’t you say you wanted to be a mom? He’s a legendary playboy, you know that, right?”

      “No need to ask how you found out,” she said. “I just didn’t know if we were serious or not and I didn’t want to make a big deal.”

      “That photo looked pretty serious to me,” Angela said. She sat down on the tufted bench at the end of Melinda’s bed.

      Her sister had a thermal mug in her hand and looked fashionable as always. No matter how hard Melinda tried, she always felt like the serious, preppy twin. She knew that no one else would ever call her that, but she was the quieter twin, in fashion and in personality. If anyone should have been dating Slade, it was Angela.

      “That picture... I had no idea anyone would see us, or I never would have kissed him like that,” Melinda admitted.

      “You’re blushing! We’re thirty-nine, Mels. It’s time for you to stop blushing when you talk about sex.”

      “I wasn’t talking about sex! Slade just makes me hot. It’s not embarrassment, it’s—Oh, never mind. What am I going to do?” she asked her sister.

      “Do you like him?” Angela asked.

       Like him?

      She hadn’t thought about

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