Holding Out For A Hero

By Limey Lady

Heather is athletic, specializing in football, hockey and self-defence. Being spurred into action in her local corner shop has not, however, entered into her wildest dreams. Yet spurred she is and, victorious in a confrontation with a knife-wielding thug, she is thrust into the limelight. Suddenly a hero, it seems that everybody wants to be close to her.

And some get closer than others . . .

• Language: English
• Publisher: Limey Lady
• Release date: Aug 11, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463965511

Limey Lady

Here's a confession for you: I'm not sure if "Limey Lady" is a pseudonym or my alter ego. Back in 2016, when she came into being, she was definitely a nom de plume. Now, however, I am not so sure.As background, I have always written stories but, up to 2009, writing took a backseat, way behind the demands of my family and career. Then a life-changing medical condition . . . well, it changed everything for and about me. Suddenly I had/have time to spare. Suddenly I was/am churning out tale after tale.I was born in York but brought up in West Yorkshire, in part of the Aire Valley often described as "Bronte Country". I must say, though, that although most of my stories are set locally, they have little in common with the fine works of Charlotte, Emily and Anne. So far my output can be divided into two: long stories featuring ne'er-do-wells, guns and some violence . . . and shorter stories featuring "liberated" women who rarely do what they're supposed to do.Limey Lady was created to be the author of the short stuff. But the longer novels all include feisty, uncooperative females - much like her characters - so I'm going to put her name to both as I publish on Smashwords.Watch this space . . .

Book preview

Holding Out for a Hero

By LimeyLady

Copyright Mark C Woolridge (writing as LimeyLady), 2019

Distributed by Smashwords

All characters and events in this publication,

other than those clearly in the public domain,

are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons,

living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Table of Contents

Chapter One – Mr Khan’s Emporium

Chapter Two – Helping with enquiries

Chapter Three – Starsky and Hutch

Chapter Four – Maxi

Chapter Five – The date goes well

Chapter Six – Becoming familiar

Chapter Seven – The morning after

Chapter Eight - Lorna

Author’s Note

Other Books by LimeyLady

Chapter One

(October 2001, Lancashire)

Walking down the usual, everyday street Heather caught sight of her reflection in the usual, everyday shop window. And modesty aside, she was impressed. Tall, raven-haired and needing no makeup at all she cut an impressive figure. Even in her student togs she was a sight to be seen; self-supporting, not needing a bra, athletic yet shapely and graced with good looks, she felt like a million dollars.

Or, if that was over-valuing herself, at least she was well worth buying a drink or three.

Smiling internally, she went into Mr Khan’s Emporium. Just anywhere else it would be called a corner shop but, by any standards, this was a big one. And it sold everything. Think "Open All Hours" with a guy in a turban behind the counter instead of Arkwright.

Heather had recently started her second year at university. She had been using Mr Khan’s Emporium for as long as she’d been there, buying chocolate and energy drinks to carry her through the academic day. In her opinion calling it a corner shop would have been a grave understatement. It was more of a mini hypermarket, geared up to give the customer whatever he or she wanted. In fact it was a community service, worlds away from what the local council hypocritically considered to be social support.

Asked for an upside-down coat-hanger Mr Khan would retreat into the back and return with one in only a matter of moments. Asked for something trickier (an authenticated copy of the Mona Lisa, say) it might take him as long as a minute.

Mr Khan was cool. Heather liked him immensely. Over time they had become friends. Nowadays he even shared his feeling about his wife with her.

‘I’m descended from warriors,’ he’d say. ‘My ancestors fought for the British Empire throughout the Indian Mutiny and during both of the world wars. But Chini walks all over me. I should have married a nice young English girl like you . . . a nice girl who would cut me a bit of slack every so often.

They always laughed at that. In reality hen-pecked Mr Khan loved his wife and they both knew it. He was also in his late forties, which was way too old, even for Heather.

Well, almost . . .

Plus she was supposed to be off men . . .

Again!

You didn’t have to sleep with a guy to be friends though, did you? And Heather definitely classed Mr Khan as a friend; no doubt about it.

Consequently she noticed when a gigantic, tattoo-faced thug burst in to his shop. Ignoring the queue of customers waiting to pay the new arrival approached the counter with blatantly evil intent.

‘Cunting motherfucking bastard,’ he began, waving a knife under Mr Khan’s nose. ‘Give me the notes out of that fucking till. Give them me now.’

He said other, horrendously racist things too, spitting them out amid more fuckings and cuntings than Heather had heard in all her