California Sunshine: California Romance, #0.5

By Casey Dawes

She dedicates herself to raising her daughter and fighting for her beliefs. He pursues a quieter, conservative path. Once they were in love.  

 

Single mother Sunshine Mondrake devotes her life to raising her sixteen-year-old daughter, marching for peace and justice, and working her part-time job at a local bookstore. After a teenage love affair broke her heart and a bad marriage tore up her family, she's disenchanted with romance.

 

Richard Campbell embraced the well-ordered life once his family left the California commune behind. After losing his teenage crush and failing at marriage, he condemned all thoughts of romance to the trash can. Now he concentrates on being the best teacher he can be.

 

When Sunshine appears in Richard's class to discuss her daughter, old embers reignite. Can she risk another chance at romance? Will he expose his heart to love?

 

Readers familiar with the culture of the central California coast, who like older heroes and heroines will enjoy California Sunshine, the prequel to the California Romance Series.

Buy California Sunshine today for a relaxing afternoon read.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mountain Vines Publishing
• Release date: Jun 30, 2016
• ISBN: 9781533791504

Casey Dawes

Casey Dawes writes non-steamy contemporary romance and inspirational women’s fiction with romantic elements. She and her husband are traveling the US in a small trailer with the cat who owns them. When not writing or editing, she is exploring national parks, haunting independent bookstores, and lurking in spinning and yarn stores trying not to get caught fondling the fiber! Claim your free collection of short stories! Go to her website, www.CaseyDawes.com, to discover how.

Book preview

Chapter 1

"WHAT is your problem?" Sunshine Mondrake called out to the buttoned-down man grading papers as she strode past the tumble of desks and chairs, her sixteen-year-old daughter, Redwood, trailing behind her.

She sensed Redwood’s total embarrassment, but that didn’t stop her. This teacher needed to be taken down a notch. How dare he give her daughter a C on her term paper simply because Redwood had written it in free verse. Creativity needed to be encouraged, not squashed.

Besides, Redwood was about to enter her junior year, the crucial year for getting into college.

Excuse me? He pulled off the wireframe glasses pseudo-intellectuals liked to wear and looked up at her, his sky-blue eyes promising more than the narrow-minded professor his grade seemed to indicate.

Damn, he was good-looking. If he weren’t such an ass, he would be nice to have in her bed.

He steepled his fingers and smiled at her.

Shit.

She’d already had him in her bed.

Pain she thought she’d dealt with more than two decades ago shot through her veins. Richard Campbell had been the first of the trifecta of male betrayal in her life, but he was the worst.

She steeled herself. With luck, he wouldn’t remember her, and she could once again bury that part of her history. Her life was her daughter and her causes, things that required the best of her ability. Men were a distraction, and she was done with them.

Permanently.

His eyes held no recognition as he slid on his glasses.

Relief eased the tension in her chest.

Hi, Lucy, he said to Sunshine’s daughter.

Lucy?

Her name is Redwood, Sunshine corrected.

M-o-m, Redwood strung out the word as only a teenage girl could. "I told you. I don’t want to be a tree. I want to have a normal name. I like Lucy."

So like her daughter to be trading in a red tree for a red-capped comic.

She’d worry about her daughter’s bent toward normalcy later. Right now it was time to get her a better grade. Redwood needed more opportunities than she’d had.

Why did you give my daughter a C on her term paper? Sunshine attacked again. She showed great creativity in writing it in free verse. Or are you so narrow-minded that your students have to write in a prescribed manner, dull as a dentist’s attempt at humor?

The smile disappeared, and he stood, walked around the desk, and pulled a chair from the corner. He gestured for her to sit.

She remained standing. She knew all about power positions, and she wasn’t going to let one of the public school establishment pull one over on her.

He shrugged and sat back down. Mrs. Mondrake—

It’s Ms.

Metal screeched on the floor as Redwood tossed herself into one of the student chairs.

The smile twitched around his lips.

Oh, hell. She took the chair next to the desk.

He turned to her, and creases formed the number eleven in the space between his eyebrows. Like her, he had fine wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and the beginnings of the summer tan. He didn’t look the forty-one he had to be, though.

She glanced at the long, brown braid streaked with premature gray that had slipped over her shoulder. She looked nothing like the teenage girl he’d left behind.

Twenty-plus years did that to a person.

The problem is, her long-ago lover resumed, Lucy didn’t do any of the required comparison. The approach was brilliant; the substance not.

I wish you’d stop calling her Lucy, Mr. Campbell, she said. Her name is Redwood.

She has asked me to call her that. I try to respect my student’s wishes when I can.

Sunshine opened her mouth to protest but shut it again. Redwood’s name wasn’t the point. Maybe she’d been a little too hasty in blaming the teacher for the problem. She knew well enough that most sixteen-year-olds weren’t innocent in any way, although she hoped her daughter was still more innocent about sex than she’d been at that age.

She looked over at Redwood/Lucy. Her daughter was studying the acoustical ceiling tiles. In the corner of one, Sunshine saw a pencil hanging from its point.

Mr. Campbell followed her stare. Ah. Douglas has been at it again.

She returned her gaze to his and got lost in the clarity and honesty of his eyes for a second or two. He’d meant something to her, damn it. When he escaped their parents’ commune in the redwoods, he’d promised to come back to her.

He never did.

She hated him for that.

Shaking the long-ago mist from her mind, she concentrated on the problem at hand. Had she protested too quickly? Her mother told her she often picked a side before understanding the true nature of a problem.

Is that true? she asked her daughter. Did you skip the research part of the assignment?

It was boring. Redwood shrugged and went back to staring at the ceiling.

How much class time did she spend like that? Enough to create imaginary scenes from the little dots?

That was about to change.

I’ll see that she does it, Sunshine said. Will you accept a rewrite?

As long as she gets it in before the deadline, he said.

She will, Mr. Campbell.

Call me Richard.

Ah, yes. Richard.

WHY DO YOU HAVE TO be like that? Redwood asked as she drove the back streets to their home in the Garfield section of Santa Cruz. Late spring rain, welcome in the fifth year of a historic California drought, slicked the pavement.

I wasn’t being ‘like’ anything, Sunshine retorted.

Of course you were. You were being like you always are—sticking your nose into other people’s business. You’re always doing that. You’re never around. You’re either working or protesting. Why do you care what I do?

What does that have to do with the fact that you didn’t do your assignment?

"I did do my assignment."

Not according to R ... Mr. Campbell.

What does he know? He’s old.

He’s only forty-one.

"How do you know that?"

Just a lucky guess. She’d have to be careful. If her daughter suspected she knew Richard, she’d let him know. Not that she should care whether or not he’d figure it out. Whatever they’d had once was over, snuffed out by indifference.

She pulled into the driveway of the small house, gaily painted green and yellow. Scattered flower beds already boasted the pinks and lilacs of Easter, while iris swords were priming for the summer. Her mother’s handiwork. Her mood lightened.

Redwood swept herself from the car and stormed through the breezeway to the kitchen door. No doubt she’d convince her grandmother of the rightness of her point of view before Sunshine even got out of the car.

The debate team was lucky to have her daughter.

She grabbed her purse—a fringed leather bag she’d found at the Daisy, a local thrift shop. By the time she got to the kitchen, Redwood was at the table, a molasses cookie in her hand, a glass of milk on the oilcloth table covering.

Sunshine took the seat opposite her.

You’ve got one week to do that research and rewrite the paper, she said.

I’ll get to it.

I want a progress report every night. And let me know if you need help. I used to be pretty good at this research stuff.

Sure. I’m going to my room. The cookie and milk were whisked from the kitchen.

Sunshine sighed.

Her mother, Mary, plunked two more cookie plates on the table. Coffee?

Yep. Sunshine propped her head in her hand and stared