I'm late, I'm late... I've got a good excuse . . .

Good afternoon, all:

I chipped a tooth and spent the morning going to Seattle and back to see the dentist. (That sounds as if I'm asking for a permission-to-be-late slip and I guess I am!) But then there was last night when we had three small grandchildren staying overnight. That's a topic for another blog.

CYPRESS NIGHTS is out and I'm getting wonderful letters from readers already. Here is a little snippet from the book:

Roche. He was the most unexpected thing to happen to her—in her whole life. Complex, certainly not a talker most of the time, when she was with him she didn't breathe quite normally and her skin became super-sensitive. Those were not signs that brought her any peace. They thrilled her, though. Quiet he might be, but he had a big personality and when it touched her she wanted more of him—even if the feeling made her stomach flip.

In the darkness last night he almost paralyzed me. I never knew that sensation before. He can't know what an enigma he is, can he?

When he looks at me now, by daylight, my breath rushes away. For moments I forget who and what I am. All I can I can think about is sex; what it would be like with him.

I feel this even in the forbidden daylight and it is strange, foreign, to a woman who was taught that she should hate the realities of intimacy. Michael only approached me at night, in the dark.

Since he died, when the shadows gather, what should be quiet hours, teem with distorted pictures, spin into a black miasma that is a mirror image of my marriage. I huddle again in the long, ugly nightgowns until my husband comes to rip at my clothes as if he was raping me. He assaults my body, spewing disgust with every stroke.

Then, when he is satisfied, he leaves me on my own.

What do I want? To see Roche by day when lust wakes up? Or to venture to him by night when terror could hold me back from him, or crack open and send me to swarm over him until I've sucked him dry?

Bleu felt wild, shocked. She stared ahead but saw nothing clearly.

"You're hovering," Roche said.

She started and everything came back into focus.

"Are you okay, Bleu?"

"Of course. I was just waiting for us all to catch up," Bleu said, avoiding looking at him, and pushing open the pink door into the café.

A wave of warm, fragrant air met them. Bleu smelled freshly fried beignets and the subtle sweetness of the powdered sugar they were dredged in, and realized just how hungry she was. She walked inside on unsteady legs, still reeling from thoughts and images she could not have imagined before she met Roche.

She felt him close behind her. He might as well be touching her with his body—stroking every nerve ending.