Fall for Love

By Alice May

Francine travels over four thousand miles from her family and best friends:
Petta, Jessica, Georgina and Alysia from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Munich, Germany to accept a job offer with new responsibilities as a genetics research department manager. The offer alone proves her nickname “Miss Smarty Pants” is perfect for her.

With new best friends, Francine transitions into German social life and activities but while falling in love, Francine becomes the number one suspect in a serious crime.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9781796083101

Alice May

Alice May wrote this story while a resident of Camden, Delaware. Alice grew up in Travelers Rest, South Carolina. As a veteran of the US Army and a military spouse she lived in Germany, Twin Brooks, South Dakota, and Anchorage, Alaska, places she experienced great love.

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Copyright © 2020 by alice may.

Cover design and photograph by Anna

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-7960-8312-5

                Softcover        978-1-7960-8311-8

                eBook              978-1-7960-8310-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 01/20/2020

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

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CONTENTS

Prologue

One Day at a Time

Walk This Way

I’m Here

Back Inside

Appropriate Behavior

Come With Me

Watch Your Step

The Internet Is a Girls Best Tool

Don’t Call Me

Beer and Dine

The Weeks Go By Quickly

Uncertainty

My Girls or My Man

You Said What?

The Unexpected

Stay With Me

The Morning After

Come Back to Me

Long Distance FFF Time

A Little Help

A Woman and Her Man’s Work is Never Done

My Man is Back

All Eyes on Me

Good Times Come to An End

Country Scenery

Up and Away

Francine Call Me Now!

We Think You Did

Prove Me Innocent

Who and How

Happy Dance

Love On Our Minds

German Word List

Other books by Alice May:

Take This Smile

Three Fathers and Love

To preview other books visit online.

To all those who love to read, thank you.

Keep the pages tur

ning.

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Prologue

I moved from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Munich, Germany to accept a new position as head of a large company’s research department. It’s a great career move but living over four thousand miles away from my family and best friends: Petta, Jessica, Georgina and Alysia means communicating with them isn’t the same. My Internet talks with my girls don’t always give me the inspirational vibes I need and I end up missing them even more than before. I talk less with my mom than I did before and when we do speak, she only gives me unwanted advice on where I should be in five years with my career and love life. Damn Mom, I just got here and I have no love life, but not because I’m not trying.

One Day at a Time

Francine Trimble your day is starting out just right. Ha, I seem to be talking to myself a lot. I don’t have the FFF time with my girls like I once did. Now I have to be more conscious of my texting and requesting for face time since we are in different time zones. I’m either disturbing their sleep or let’s get it on time with their bed companions, a.k.a. husbands or lover in Jessica’s present situation.

I pinch myself to make sure I’m not in a dream. Me, Francine Trimble living my life here in Germany so many thousand miles from my family and the group of friends that are more like my sisters.

I have been here almost eight months. I have graduated from being a closet crybaby crying all the time over my decision to move and be responsible for the success or failure of a research department, to having a tears party once a day during my morning shower.

I accept that I am a work in progress and I believe being here is good for me. I no longer avoid flying as my mode of transportation from point A to point B or get through flights with a stockpile of mini bottles of booze. Now, I take short flights on the weekends to see places here in Europe I have read about. On those short flights, I use mind over matter with the help of headphones, a collection of musical genres, and wear real panties.

I’m experiencing life Live without my Philly girls. I feel as if I have emerged from my American cocoon and it’s time to fly European style.

When I got here, I felt dowdy with my looks but I wasn’t comfortable walking into a salon. I let my hair grow, and not only the hair on my head. Then, one morning on the way out the door, I took a last look in a mirror I placed near my front door (an interior designer and fashionista suggestion to do so you can check yourself one last time before you leave the house). I looked like a hot mess. The next day I took a personal day from work to find professional styling. With a fully charged cell phone, a list of salons, and how to say in German saved to bookmark, observing I went.

It was not long into my looking into salon windows and eyeing their customers going in and coming out that a stylist invited me inside. With my German speaking ability and of course my cellphone to communicate my needs, I sat in a styling chair, and my makeover began. Being a full service salon I came out with all of my hair (head and body) attended to and feeling like both a student and a teacher. A student as the stylists instructed me on brands of cosmetics and how to apply them, a teacher by answering my stylists how do you say and when would you say questions so they could practice fine-tuning their English. I still get that feeling when I go there.

My last look in the mirror now before leaving home, I see a smiling reflection. My hair cut to frame my face, the stylist said wearing it this way would encourage looking into my dark eyes and that my face is ‘inherited beauty’.

I think because I showed up for several appointments wearing the same pair of jeans (my favorite pair) I received a recommendation to a shop at a near by boutique. I went. It is an amazing place. The owner, Karla Acker, now on my unwritten list of friends, helped me choose the perfect pieces of clothing and even taught me how to wear my new investments of scarves. I’m now proud to see me in any mirror. New look. New job. New man, where are you?

Walk This Way

I like to eat my home-prepared lunch before the normal lunch hour taken by most people at work. It’s ok. I can eat my lunch when I choose. My job description contains the words: Management and Manages. I am the first American to manage this fairly new company’s genetics research department. My department and two other research departments are working on data acquired from an archaeology dig. To summarize, my department does the determining of and separating of genes. Many times our work can lead to the development of new drugs and medical procedures to treat and cure illnesses. Saying that out loud, I feel damn important. Even though the six brainy scientists in my department don’t really need my management. They work at their tasks successfully individually and with each other. I