Maui: Here We Come!: Maui Romance Series, #1

By Cynthia Washburn

Carolyn wasn’t looking for romance. At fifty-one, she was pleased with her life as it was. An optimist by nature, she enjoyed her teaching job at an elementary school in the Pacific Northwest. A Spring Break vacation with a female co-worker would be a chance to enjoy some tropical sunshine, nothing more. The pleasant hardware store manager she meets is a fellow Canadian and they reassure each other that their vacation objectives are the same. Can both of them let their guard down and give their friendship a chance to blossom into something more?

A sweet romance novella of 17,000 words.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cynthia Washburn
• Release date: May 26, 2013
• ISBN: 9781497782402

Book preview

Chapter 1

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Was it getting any lighter in the morning?  Carolyn thought about the question on her way to work on yet another cold and rainy January morning.  It was the fifteenth of the month of March.  How many minutes longer was each now since the shortest day in December?  She should look it up, she told herself; then she could share it with her students.  Some of them might be interested. 

Now, Carolyn, she chided herself, just because you get a kick out of explaining to wide-eyed Grade two children that the world goes around the sun once a year, it doesn’t mean you have to keep going on that track.  After all, you’re not teaching science, you are a Learning Assistance teacher.  But she found it hard not to share something that she found interesting herself, and somehow she managed to bring it into the lesson.

She would admit to herself—sometimes—that after twenty years at the job it was necessary for her to find little ways to keep things interesting for herself.  A bored teacher, waiting for the day he or she could collect their full pension, did not reflect well on the teaching profession and Carolyn was someone who liked to feel proud of her occupation.

Last night she had been tempted to remind her younger sister, Chrissy, that teaching was not a form of babysitting.  Just because she enjoyed her job and liked most of the children she worked with, it didn’t mean that she wanted to be surrounded by children in her spare time . . . such as babysitting for Chrissy and her husband, Gord.  Was that what unmarried sisters were for?

You’re so good with children, Carolyn, Carolyn responded.  That’s why you became a teacher, right?  You know all the little tricks to make them behave.  Then Chrissy launched into a story of yet another problem with her twelve year old son, Nate. 

In the end, mainly to find a way to say goodbye, she had agreed to babysit the following Saturday evening.  As usual, Chrissy promised they wouldn’t be late.  They were getting too old to stay out past midnight, she joked.  But, Carolyn well knew that it would likely be close to one in the morning before she heard her sister’s giggling voice at the front door, a sure sign that they were home and that Chrissy had been at the punchbowl.

This weekday morning, once in the door of the school, the non-stop day began.  Besides teaching and planning lessons, there were a number of tasks in a Learning Assistance teacher’s day.  But, all in all, Carolyn had decided that she liked her job and liked the school she had been at for ten years now. 

The staff was friendly and mostly women.  Some of the younger ones complained of that at times.  ‘No chance of meeting a guy here’ was the typical comment.  Elementary schools had become female dominated workplaces over the past twenty years.  But Carolyn wasn’t looking for romance.  At fifty-one she was pleased with her life as it was.  An optimist by nature, if she stopped to take stock of her life—and January was usually the month for that—she felt pleased with her situation. 

She could suit herself and she could do what she wanted.  Sleep late on the weekends, eat sandwiches for dinner or plan vacations to interesting places.  There might have been a time when she would have added ‘eat an entire box of cookies while watching a late movie’ but that habit had faded out.  Cutting that out hadn’t cause her to go down to a size ten but Carolyn was content with herself, size sixteen or not. 

And it wasn’t sour grapes on her part.  She was well aware of that old fable of the fox and the grapes that he couldn’t have. There had been a time when she might have married, when she thought she wanted to marry.  But her two main long term relationships—one in her early thirties and one in her forties—just hadn’t worked out.  For different reasons but that was life, she had told herself afterwards.  Carolyn was more than satisfied with how her life   had turned out.

CHAPTER 2

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The Grade five teacher in the classroom next door had an Educational Assistant this year. If she was in a cynical mood, Carolyn might be heard to remark that these were people who were asked to do much of the work of a teacher but at cheaper price.  In her school district, EA’s as they were called, worked on a one to one basis with special needs students who had been placed into the school.  Darlene, the EA next door, worked with a girl who was mildly autistic.

Carolyn was the Learning Assistance teacher in charge of the same class so Darlene and she worked together on a regular basis.  It had also become their habit to take their morning break together—recess to the students—on those mornings when Carolyn didn’t have outside student supervision responsibilities.  The school staffroom was so crowded during the morning break that it could be