Love the Second Time Around

Chapter 1 He Is Back

I did not know that someone as happy-go-lucky and playful as Julius Keaton would be upset when he discovered, on our wedding night, no less, that I was not a virgin.

To be honest, I was struck by a moment of guilt then. Had I known that this would be a big deal to him, I would have gotten a discreet procedure at the hospital. It might have preserved the harmony of our marriage.

That night, Julius seemed moody as he asked me about “the guy.” He tried to mask his emotions but failed miserably. Who would blame him? After all, I was not who he perceived to be. Looking at the devastation written on his face, I could not bring myself to utter the name buried deep in my heart. Thus, I apologized meekly instead.

Maybe it was this incident that had caused irrevocable cracks in our arranged marriage. Yet, little did I know that a more dangerous crisis would befall our already rocky marriage.

I was a comic writer. In cruder terms, I had been freelancing in the industry for many years. Though I had never gotten a significant breakthrough, I earned enough to pay the bills.

However, a call from my editor, Shannon Harper, changed my life forever.

She told me that my first work, I Only Want to Be With You, had caught the eye of Galaxy Entertainment’s CEO. They were interested in buying the rights to my comic to make a movie.

and dragged myself to the VIP room on

to say, any writer who received praise for their work would naturally be ecstatic…

I was also perplexed at their

to come up with ways to reject the offer that would not end with Shannon strangling me. After years of working together, she was more like a friend to me than my

a moment longer before I pushed open the

Sitting before the windows was a man in a wheelchair. With his back to me, he seemed to be

explain why, but his silhouette seemed oddly familiar to me. In fact, it was a

I

stopped when I was a respectable distance away. “Hello. Are you the one interested in obtaining the rights to

of my voice. Gradually, he turned around to

I could

I, when my whole world was about to be

me introduce myself again, then. Hi, I’m Dominic Hartnell,

lurked in the depths of my heart, and the very same one that I could not tell Julius on our wedding