Heart-Shaped Box

By Natalie Vivien

Can a chance meeting lead to lasting love?

Aphrodite Davenport just inherited her late father's empire: a factory dedicated to producing the heart-shaped boxes that appear in drugstores around Valentine's Day. Trouble is, Aphrodite's a writer, not a business mogul. So her best friend Raquel offers a solution: hire an assistant! Soon, a promising job applicant arrives at Aphrodite's door.

But there's something oddly familiar about gorgeous Veronica Valentine, with her turquoise eyes and her wide, suggestive smile. Aphrodite feels mysteriously drawn to the smart, clever woman. Still, despite being the daughter of the Valentine's Day King, Aphrodite has always been unlucky in love, and she's closed off her heart, jaded by too many failed relationships in the past.

When an unexpected snowstorm shuts down the city around them, forcing Veronica to spend the night at Aphrodite's place, long-buried memories begin to surface, and long-buried hopes rise up from Aphrodite's wounded heart...

This heartwarming, romantic novella is approximately 16,000 words.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rose and Star Press
• Release date: Feb 12, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311045928

Natalie Vivien

I live in the northeast on a small farm with a few cats and dogs, my saintly wife, and more weeds in the garden than anyone should ever have to tackle. I have two great loves: my wife and writing, and I’m so grateful to be able to marry the two in the stories I write, about two women who have a connection, who fall deeply in love with one another. I’d love to hear from you! Send me an email at [e-mail] You can also visit my site at http://natalievivien.wordpress.com

Book preview

Heart-Shaped Box

by Natalie Vivien

Synopsis:

Can a chance meeting lead to lasting love?

Aphrodite Davenport just inherited her late father's empire: a factory dedicated to producing the heart-shaped boxes that appear in drugstores around Valentine's Day. Trouble is, Aphrodite's a writer, not a business mogul. So her best friend Raquel offers a solution: hire an assistant! Soon, a promising job applicant arrives at Aphrodite's door.

But there's something oddly familiar about gorgeous Veronica Valentine, with her turquoise eyes and her wide, suggestive smile. Aphrodite feels mysteriously drawn to the smart, clever woman. Still, despite being the daughter of the Valentine's Day King, Aphrodite has always been unlucky in love, and she's closed off her heart, jaded by too many failed relationships in the past.

When an unexpected snowstorm shuts down the city around them, forcing Veronica to spend the night at Aphrodite's place, long-buried memories begin to surface, and long-buried hopes rise up from Aphrodite's wounded heart...

Heart-Shaped Box

© Natalie Vivien 2015

Rose and Star Press

Smashwords First Edition

All rights reserved

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You've seen them a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand times. Every year, when Valentine's Day rolls around, there they are, in every corner drugstore: rows upon rows of cellophane-wrapped heart-shaped boxes filled with chocolates of...dubious edibility. Only the bravest chocolate cravers dare bite into those mysterious, unmarked cubes.

And before February is over, most of that candy is fated to end up in the trash, never tasted.

But, hey, it's the thought that counts, right?

That's what my dad always said, whenever I nibbled on one of the candies and made an ew-yuck-gross face. It doesn't matter what the chocolate tastes like, he would tell me, popping one of the sweets into his mouth and chewing with contentment. It's all about the heart, Aphrodite.

Dad was a romantic. He did name me Aphrodite, after all.

He was also a very loyal man. He renewed his contract with the same chocolate-maker every year for the same unsavory candies, choosing to focus his attention instead on the design of the heart-shaped boxes, with my mother's artistic assistance. She was a flower painter, so her sumptuous roses and lilies adorned the boxes for decades. Still do.

When my father died last March, two years to the day after my mother passed away from cancer, Cupid Candy Boxes became, by inheritance, my company. My responsibility. My humongous, heart-shaped headache. It wasn't exactly a surprise. I knew this time would come. Ever since I was a little girl, Dad told me, when I visited him on the factory floor, Someday, Aphrodite, all of this will be yours.

And now it is—mine. And I have no idea what to do with it.

You could sell the business, you know, Raquel offers helpfully, talking around a bite of butternut squash ravioli. I know it's the family legacy and all, but if you're this stressed out about it, Dita—

It's not that I'm stressed out about it. I lean back in the booth, rake a hand through my close-cropped blonde hair, and breathe out. The restaurant speakers are playing a mournful Italian ballad. I studied a little Italian in college and can pick out a few words here and there: heart, lost, alone, broken. Really not lifting my mood.

Raquel arches a disbelieving brow, her red-lipsticked mouth drawn down at the corners in her trademark Oh, really? frown.

I grin at her, shaking my head.

"Okay. It is that I'm stressed out about it."

"Well, duh."

I lean forward, elbows on the tabletop, cradling my head in my hands. I mean, I have my writing. My book's about to hit the stores, and the publisher wants my next manuscript by February first. Two weeks away! That's pressure enough. Now I have the destinies of all of these CCB employees in my hands, and I don't want to let them down, Rack. I eye my best friend miserably. My dad never let them down. He always managed to hand out Christmas bonuses, even when times were tough, and he went out of his way to keep up morale—parties and picnics.

I smile softly, sadly, to myself, remembering. "One January he set Queenie's litter of puppies loose in the packing plant, because he said everyone was looking 'a little long in the face, and who doesn't smile when they see