Free The Taste of Lavender by Emma Shane

“H oney, could you let the dog out?” I
called to my husband of nine years. And like every day for the past eight
years, he ignored me. “Honey!”
    A deep voice grumbled from the den. He
was, no doubt, at a crucial stage of video-game warfare. Seriously.
    “Fine,” I shouted. “C’mon Skippy.”
    Our lazy beagle regarded me for a minute
before getting to his feet begrudgingly. His nails ticked-tacked across the
hardwood floor as he ambled over to where I stood at the open front door. As he
trotted out to the front yard, I noticed a big yellow van parked across the
street.
    “Honey, did someone finally buy the old
Ames place?” I watched as a wiry, tanned man carried box after box into the
neglected Cape Cod. Crisp shirt sleeves rolled up over his wiry forearms gave
me the impression he was more of the scholarly type than a blue collar worker.
A Professor, maybe?
    Definitely a foreigner. The olive skin
and Indiana Jones attire gave off the “not from here” vibe, but then again,
America was the great melting pot. He was probably from Wisconsin. Or Scranton.
    I paced to the den and leaned against
the doorway. Red-faced and zeroed in on the television, Paul was jerking the
game remote around, his fingers busy punching buttons as the sound of gunfire
echoed throughout the room.
    “Hon, did you hear me?” I asked between
machine gun taps.
    “Sure.” he grunted in typical response.
He could have been Tim Allen’s stand in.
    I chewed on my lower lip. “Sure, what?”
    He glanced over his shoulder in my
general direction, like he was waiting for a hint as to what, exactly, we were
discussing.
    I gave up and returned to the living
room, where I could watch our new neighbors from behind the curtained windows
in protected anonymity. I felt a little like Mrs. Kravitz from Bewitched as I
poked my nose through the wispy fabric. Oh well, at least her life gained some
excitement when Samantha moved next door. If only I could be that lucky.
    I stood there for a few moments longer
dissecting the lives of our new neighbors, one piece of furniture at a time.
Eventually I found myself drooling over their monstrous carved headboard and I
knew it was time for me to get back to work. I snagged a semi-frozen can of
cola out of the fridge, a bag of sea-salt pita crisps and headed for my cramped
office at the back of the house.
    I know I shouldn't complain. A lot of
people would kill to be able to work from home. And even more to get paid
working in the book industry. So I knew how lucky I was, but still, I looked
around my large-pantry-turned-small-office and shuddered at its confining four
walls. I'd even gone so far as to paint a fake window with a view of Tuscany on
the wall over my desk in an effort to make it feel more inviting.
    It didn't work. From my lack of artistic
skill to the scarred brown laminate floor, my office was nothing like those
awe-inspiring offices that I routinely drooled over online.
    I spent the next few hours editing a
cheesy romance novel by a well-known author. The novel was good, as good as a
bodice-ripper can be I suppose, just not my cup of Spiced-Chai. There were more
than enough mentions of heaving chests and sweat-glistened abs to last me
several lifetimes. Not to mention the level of frustration I achieved after
several hours of pouring over the words, only to find my husband loving up on
his video game instead of me. But I'd worked with the author before and her
novels put food on my table quite regularly, so I couldn’t complain.
    I finished up the chapter I'd been
working on and emailed the file to the author, anticipating her response to be
yet another debate over the Oxford comma. All in a day's work I guess. It beat
clocking a regular nine-to-five, that’s for sure.
    I stood and stretched. My body had
become stiff and tight as I'd hunched over my keyboard. I decided to get a
little fresh air by taking Skippy for a walk. It was either that or subject
myself to more of the punctuating gunfire