Summer of Love
Temperatures are soaring in Washington, D.C., and the intense summer sun isn't the sole cause. The city is playing host to the Romance Writers of America Conference and NPR's Scott Simon paid a visit, to find out why romance is one of the hottest selling genres in the book industry.
Scott even attempted his own love story - it definitely steamed up the windows at NPR. Please read it and let us know what you think - all comments, naughty and nice, are welcome.
When Chad Rousseau walked into the IT department on his first day in the dazzling, sprawling, high-rise headquarters of the majestic but mysterious Echaverra International Group, he had no idea how his life would soon change, how everything he had been so rock-solid certain about back in Spartanburg, South Carolina, would turn to rhubarb jelly as soon as he saw her standing against a window overlooking the gleaming, soaring towers of Dallas.
He heard her voice first. It was all velvet and honey, but with the unmistakable crack of command.
"I am your supervisor," she said.
Chad turned around. Sarah Beyer Clemente had smooth, pale skin that seemed to beckon like a soft cloud. She had eyes as deep and blue as the waters of vast, far-off oceans that Chad had only seen on postcards that his father, a missionary in the South Pacific, would send back home to be put on their refrigerator. Her hair was the color of ripe chestnuts, which rippled with blinding streaks of bronze, like the powerful, fast flanks of some prize thoroughbred racehorse. She had the strong, curvaceous shoulders of a Greek goddess. Her hips seemed to slither stylishly down to her stunning, stupefying legs, which had the soaring elegance of two great towering sequoias, and were tightly clad in fine, creaking Corinthian leather of the kind that Chad thought only lined the interiors of European sports cars.
"G-g-good morning," said Chad. He felt his mouth turning chalky and dry. He had been a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, but suddenly seemed to forget every one of the thousands of words which had earned him an 800 score on his SAT test at Stonewall Jackson High School, and had brought him to the attention of the revered and beloved mathematical genius Ernest Shepard at MIT.
Sarah Beyer Clemente was unlike any other girl Chad had ever met in Spartanburg or Oxford or even Kelly Sue Devereux, the Sweet Potato Queen whom he had taken to the junior prom. Sarah Beyer Clemente had the force of a hurricane that he knew should drive him into a storm shelter to get away from her powerful aura of attraction. And, she was his new supervisor. But . . .
"What's the matter, hayseed?" she asked Chad, challengingly. "Cat got your tongue?"
His bosom heaved.