Please
enjoy this excerpt from Zombie Candy, a
genre-bending mystery by Frederick Lee Brooke. Then read on to learn
how you can win huge prizes as part of this blog tour, including $550
in Amazon gift cards, a Kindle Fire, and 5 autographed copies of the
book.
They sit at long tables under grape
arbors. Heavy bunches of grapes hang from the vines. An eight-piece
dance band in white tuxes and black bow ties plays tunes from every
decade. Heavy silver dessert forks and coffee spoons rest untouched
on the linen tablecloth. She can’t eat another bite. All the
glasses, at least, she has used: white wine, red wine, water.
A light breeze comes up. It feels
heavenly on her face. With nightfall, the heat has gone out of the
air. The heat must be trapped in these old stone walls — the walls
of the farmhouse, the walls surrounding the vineyard. The aroma of
fresh herbs floats from a nearby garden, rosemary, and mint, she
thinks as she watches people dancing. The bride, her beautiful white
dress with the daring silk bodice; the groom’s parents, a man with
close-cropped gray hair and a red rose in his lapel, and his wife in
a shimmering blue dress that looks specially made by an Italian
designer.
She keeps one eye on the young man in
the navy suit with the green silk tie. He looks like something
Michelangelo might have sculpted, then breathed life into. This young
man knows everyone here, and has danced every dance for the last
hour. But he’s dancing with both older and younger women, probably
cousins, friends, the mothers of cousins and friends. She has no idea
who he is.
She feels outclassed in her red silk
dress from Bloomingdale’s. She had worn the same dress at a wedding
in June in Chicago. No one here has ever seen it. If there are any
more weddings this fall, she will just have to go shopping in Siena
or even Florence, that’s all there is to it.
“May I have this dance?”
Like a vision, Michelangelo man stands
beside her. Has somebody cast a magic spell here? How did he sneak up
on her like that? She didn’t even notice the song had ended. Or
that another one had started.
“I’m not much of a dancer.”
“We’ll see.” He tugs her hand.
“Really, you don’t have to.” He
obviously feels a duty to make sure every woman in the place gets at
least one dance.
“Of course I don’t have to. I’ve
danced with all the women I was obligated to dance with. Now I want
to dance with you.”
She doesn’t need more arm-twisting
than this. He leads her to the dance floor. The band is playing a
quiet song from the 1940s, she thinks, something familiar. Grape
arbors surround the dance floor and fill the air with sweet perfume.
He turns and puts one hand around her waist. “My name is
Giancarlo,” he says, switching to Italian.
“Candace,” she says. “I’ve been
here for three weeks. I can’t believe I’m at this beautiful
wedding.”
“Your Italian is marvelous.”
Your lips are marvelous, she thinks.
Your curly hair, the color of black coffee, and your handsome
chiseled face are marvelous too. But you can’t say such things to a
man you’ve never met before. Not in Tuscany. At least not before
the end of the first dance. He glides around the floor, leading her
with slight shifts in his weight, slight pressure with his hands. Her
feet know where to go, just as her mouth knows how to form the words.
“We don’t have weddings like this
in Chicago. The food ... the music ... the grapes.”
“My uncle’s house is nice,”
Giancarlo agrees. “But I am sorry for Lucia. She has married a
playboy. I do not think they will be happy.”
“They certainly look happy.”
Giancarlo makes a face. “I should not
talk about the details. I know him. I’ve known him all my life, and
he will never change. I tried to talk to my cousin, but she is in
love and blind. What can we do?”
Giancarlo’s smile, Candace realizes,
has a hypnotizing effect. Thank God a fast dance is starting, the Bee
Gees. He makes no attempt to bring her back to the table, merely
releases his hold on her waist.
“You are a beautiful dancer,” he
says when the Bee Gees song ends. The band takes a break. Everyone is
leaving the dance floor. Her heart sinks. Somehow she has managed to
cling to him for two dances, something no woman before her had
managed. Now he will bring her back to her table, his duty done. He
will go back to his people.
“Thank you for the lovely dances.”
“Come, let’s get some fresh air.
I’ll show you around,” Giancarlo says. And the really amazing
thing is he doesn’t let go of her hand.
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About the book:
Weaving elements of mystery, horror and romance in a hilarious romp
that starts in Chicago and ends in a quaint medieval town in
sun-drenched Tuscany, Zombie Candy is a
genre-hopping knee-slapper of a novel. Get it
on Amazon.
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