CHAPTER 1
All I could think of as I felt the wheels of that Boeing 767 lift off the tarmac was that if I died, the pamphlet at my funeral service would be so lame.
Celebrating the life of Rubie Keane: Mother of…no one.
Grandmother of…(crickets).
Wife of…Mr. Nobody.
Friend of…
I had to stay alive, if only to make sure that the few people who would attend my service after my hypothetical death wouldn’t be subjected to the sheer boredom that was my past life—if that made any sense at all.
But there was one huge problem.
I unofficially held the title of an FFF, and since I was a frequently freaked-out flyer, the possibility of me going temporarily insane, running to the nearest exit, and yanking that door open for all three hundred plus passengers (including myself)
to get sucked out like a vacuum was very, very high.
I could almost feel my older sister and her new husband grinning at my overly tense state from the seats behind me.
“I’ll sell you my last Ambien for five bucks,” my brother-in-law Dennis whispered, leaning in close to my right ear.
“Dennis…” Violet warned, but she quickly smiled when he winked at her playfully. “Try to relax, Rubie. It’s only a four-hour
flight.”
“Thanks for reminding me,” I grumbled as I took a deep breath that filled my lungs to the max.
I heard Dennis try to suppress a chuckle, and not too long after that, the resounding smack of Violet’s hand across his arm.
Then there was the undeniable sound of a kiss.
To say that those two were sickeningly adorable would be true but not quite accurate enough. However, as much as I wanted to throw up every time they were lovey-dovey toward each other, I smiled inwardly, knowing that my sis was able to bag a real nice ginger fella from Massachusetts.
The Cilantro in Apple Pie Description:
Fragnut. Confused? Well so is everyone else at Lumiere Hall Prep when sixteen-year-old Rubie Keane rolls in from Trinidad and Tobago talking her weird lingo. Not that she minds the culture confusion; she’s determined to leave the past behind her and be overlooked—but a certain stoic blue blood is equally as determined to foil her plans.
Gil Stromeyer’s offbeat personality initially makes Rubie second-guess his sanity, but she suspects his erratic outbursts of violence mask a deeper issue in his troubled, charmed life. Despite his disturbing behavior, a gradual bond forms between the two. However, on the night of the annual Stromeyer gala, events unfold that leave Rubie stripped of her dignity and kick Gil’s already fragile world off its axis.
Both their well-kept secrets are uncovered, but Gil’s revelation proves that sometimes the best remedy for a bad case of lost identity, is a dash of comradery from an ally packed with flavor.
