Free Something to Live for (Moonlight Dating Series) by Natalie G. Owens Page B

discordant, as
would be the sound made by opening a rusted iron door that had been locked for
centuries. A sudden explosion rang in her head and a light as bright as a
nuclear blast penetrated her eyes.
    Black
spots danced in front of her as she instinctively stepped toward it. The last
thing she saw was a large ghostly hand come out of nowhere to push her, trip
her back into a bed of twigs, leaves, and grass. The icy touch chilled her to
the bone. The hand seemed dismembered from a body, surrounded only by a large
frame of beaming filaments. It was the last thing she saw as the sparks
weakened and overcast shadows threatened the clear sky.
    In
moments, it was over and the peace returned while inside her, everything was
spinning. Her heart raced. Her stomach clenched. Her pulse galloped. And her
eyes . . . she squinted, shook her head and opened them wide.
    Her eyes
had stopped working. Just like that. When her parents rushed to her side, it
was already too late.
    Memories
of that fateful day – a dry and sunny May third – were clear, too clear, in her
head. Nothing like the Melita she now ‘saw’ the
mirror. She could only make the major details of her slender body shape and
face that looked back at her, although it was much more than she could see at
first, right after the accident. Back then, her world was one large black hole.
    As she
stood now, she was only legally blind, which prevented her from doing things
like driving a car or piloting a plane.
    Melita tamped down her thoughts. Meanwhile, another May third was rolling by, and she
longed to replace that dreaded memory with something else.
    Something
that would make her feel entirely different emotions.
Something that would make her smile, lust, exult , fly
to a different plane – like she never truly had.
    To venture away from the mundane.
    It was
time to start living, to do what she always encouraged her clients to do,
despite their resistance to change. Why shouldn’t she practice what she
preached?
    And this
year, she had it in hand.
    Two months
earlier she’d found out about Moonlight
Dating, an online servicerun by Jeanette
Lagrange, a self-professed loner and eccentric from Market Drayton, the
picturesque village in the British West Midlands. It was one of those things that
Amelia, her single best friend, learned through one of her well-meaning
relatives who forwarded the site link to her.
    “I think
you’ll get more use out of it. I much prefer the idea of cooking myself in a
roasting pan to nagging or jealous boyfriends. Even temporary ones,” Amelia
said bluntly when she told her about it.
    Melita shook her head. “You’re impossible.”
    “You say
that because you never met my ex-husband,” Amelia retorted. “But I’m here to
talk about you. Let me read Lagrange’s bio.”
    A
passionate gardener with a romantic streak, Lagrange wrote how she’d sought life
away from the hustle and bustle of London for the past ten years. At first impression Melita had thought it some local business struggling
to burst from obscurity. But, judging from the many glowing testimonials from
all over the world it seemed that the provincial tone may be only skin deep. She
could only imagine a little old lady operating a lauded matchmaking service from
her battered oak writing desk in a quaint little cottage.
    Odd that Lagrange
was the only listed employee and customer service information consisted of the
woman’s generic email address; yet the site, Amelia said, boasted feedback from
over a thousand past clients who’d gotten their match over a decade. The lucky
ones were always hand-picked from a pool of applicants based on the five page
application form, Lagrange handled all cases personally, and the service cost a
paltry fee!   Melita had never come across anything like this, and at first wasn’t too keen.
    Amelia
pressed her. She said her cousin had used the site and met the lady who was now
his wife. “I mean, that woman must be psychic. Clara’s so