City
Nights: One Night in Madrid by JD Martins
Blurb:
Danny left Dublin for Madrid two years ago, but still
scans the crowd in the Irish pubs for the face of someone from home. Though
doubtful he'll ever recognise anybody, one evening he sees Aisling, a girl he'd
known - or wished he'd known - at university. Beautiful but haughty, she'd
always ignored Danny, and though he'd fantasised about making love to her,
she'd never so much as smiled at him.
To his amazement, Aisling is extremely friendly when
she meets him all these years later and away from home. She is still snobby and
condescending, but Danny decides to make her night as enjoyable as he can,
hoping for one last chance to impress her and make his teenage fantasies come
true. As the sultry Madrid night progresses, mere lust grows into affection,
and Danny begins to see her snobbery as something else entirely. Will Aisling
see Danny as more than just a way to pass her night in Madrid?
Purchase links for all formats:
Amazon
UK: http://amzn.to/161xgxx
Amazon
CA: http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B00RY328RY
Excerpt:
Draining the glass, Danny placed it on the bar,
debating whether to have another pint, or stroll home and have a glass of wine
while he prepared dinner. The plan was
just one pint, but he needed to tell himself that twice; once when he went into
the bar and again when he'd finished the drink.
And then he saw her.
She stood quite near, surrounded by a tight knot of
people at the edge of the dance floor that had parted momentarily. She wore a
cotton summer dress that showed the sweep of her shoulder blades and spine. The
dress was floral, red with splashes of black and dark blue. She wore soft brown
leather sandals that were almost invisible against her tanned feet. Her
toenails were painted red but her fingernails were French polished. A silver or
white-gold bracelet hung from her right wrist, and on her left she wore a
silver wristwatch, which a discreet look later told him was a
Patek Philippe. In her ears she had diamond stud earrings, and on
the ring finger of her right hand was a silver ring with a blue stone he couldn't identify.
He didn't see her face straight away, yet something
deep inside him said it had to be her.
In college, he'd often stared at this girl's long
blonde hair from a few seats behind in the lecture theatre, while far below
them a maths professor droned on about matrices. He knew the shape of her head
and neck, had observed her tie up that hair, amazed at the beauty of the fine,
straight filaments, the way the strands slid like silk over one another, yet
held as one tight rope. When she was an infant her mother had clearly decided
ever cutting such hair would be a sin, and she’d concurred. She plaited it, put
it in a ponytail, tied it up around a clip made of what seemed to Danny like a
piece of wood and two chopsticks, or simply a spare pencil. Sometimes it
splayed out across her shoulders like a cascade of spun gold. Now it was pulled
up in a silver clasp, to reveal the nape of a long, fine neck, and soft-skinned
shoulders.
Those shoulders had been bared before, in a hot
September of their freshman year, and later, during the intense study month
when the cherry blossoms bloomed and fell across the lawns of campus. Danny had
fantasised about slipping off that shoulder strap, letting the silky string
fall down along her arm, trailing his fingers along her collarbone and ribs and
pushing aside the top to expose her breasts.
When she turned around in the bar and he saw her face,
Danny instantly searched through his memory to match her visage, and see all
six numbers of recognition. It came out a winner. She stared back at him, her
brain no doubt doing the same. Although still early, and most—apart from the
pre-marriage revellers—were only on their second or third drink, Danny thought
she must have been fairly merry already, because as she recognised him she
smiled.
She’d never smiled at him before—not in four years of
college. Then again, they’d not interacted much. They'd never really talked,
never attended the same classes after second year. He'd always told himself she’d
never smiled at him because she didn’t know him. Once or twice, of course,
she'd turned around, casually, and seen him. But she'd seen lots of others
sitting behind her, too. The back rows of the lecture theatre were filled with
Danny's friends, who'd varying levels of interest in her hair and the maths
lecture; from zero to all-absorbed.
The chance to get to know her had never come around.
She'd majored in chemistry, Danny in computer science. He had taken a chemistry
class in second year, but she'd always seemed to sit on the opposite side of
the theatre then. His gaze had often paused upon her face as he searched
through those assembled in a lecture the way he did through the throng of a
bar.
She was stunning. Her frame was that of someone who
was fit without effort. A swimmer or a gymnast at some point, she had a fine
body, breasts the way Hemingway described, wide womanly hips and a behind that
eyes or hands could never tire of. She had crystal blue eyes like deep
Antarctic ice, and a button nose. Her mouth was perfect. Her teeth had had
money spent on them, but her lips were natural; she had a dazzling smile. But
before that moment in a Madrid bar, Danny had only received the coldness of
those glacial eyes.
Bio:
JD
Martins has been called Spanish, Mexican, Chinese, Philippine and English and
Australian. He is none of these.
He's
lived in four cities in three countries on two continents, but he doesn't feel
like he's travelled very much. His life in each city was rather mundane and he
didn't get out much - tending to move his pen more than his body.
He
still aspires to see much more of the world - probably when his wife becomes
rich enough to let him retire from day jobs.
He
would like to live like Ernest Hemmingway: periodically sending novel manuscripts
to his publisher from various far-flung corners of the world, though he's not
sure the quality will be quite the same. Until then, he has contented himself
with living like Robert Graves - in a pleasant part of Spain with a quiet life
- and being able to do some things that Hemmingway did - trout fishing in
Spain, game hunting in Africa, watching bullfights and running with the bulls,
- and a few that he did not get to do - surfing, skydiving, bungee jumping, and
getting erotic stories published.
links:
email:
jdmartinsauthor@gmail.com
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