My Desert Rose: The Story of Us

By Katrina Max

My Desert Rose is the story of two people who found each other against all odds. It is a classic romance, proving that love will always find a way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Desert Rose Books
• Release date: Nov 2, 2021

Book preview

My Desert Rose

The Story of Us

Katrina Max

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Desert Rose Books

Copyright © 2021 by Katrina Max

All rights reserved.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

Contents

Epigraph

1. 1978 All Over Again

2. Pretty

3. Uncle Sal

4. I'm Game if You Are

5. You Are Lovely

6. Sir

7. Dark, Damp, Dreary, Dim Day

8. Miami Moonlight

9. Eight Became Nine

10. Something More Intense

11. Ecstasy

12. A Thing

13. Patience

14. What Fate had set in Motion

15. A Fairy Tale Complete

Romance and novel paint beauty in colors more charming than nature.

- Oliver Goldsmith

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In a world where there is so much sadness and so much to be afraid of, good things do happen to people. Romance is still something we can find even if we’re not consciously looking for it.

- Kathleen Quinlan

Chapter one

1978 All Over Again

It started with a smile.

That’s all Max knows for certain. He can’t recall what she was wearing that day, or even how she wore her hair. He just remembers her face, and that simple, lovely, smile.

That was a year ago now; the distinct moment when it happened.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, he was smitten.

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At times since that day it has felt confusingly like 1978 all over again. That was the year Max suffered through a schoolboy crush on a girl named Erin, a cheerful little blonde with soft, curly locks and a pretty laugh that lit up the entire third grade.

In many ways, 1978 was a wonderful year for Max—in fact, when asked he often reflected that it was his favorite. After all, when is life better for a boy than when he is eight years old, without a care in the world, yet emboldened with the newfound freedom that comes from having the run of the neighborhood?

1978 was also the year Max’s parents packed up the wood-paneled Pontiac station wagon and took the family on a whirlwind cross-country road trip. The Grand Canyon, the Gateway Arch, the Rocky Mountains. San Francisco, Chicago, even a dusty stretch along Route 66. A different roadside motel every night, a different wonderfully over-chlorinated swimming pool every morning! It was a magical three-week adventure for a boy who collected postcards as fervently as other children his age collected bubble gum cards.

Heck, in 1978 Max even saw his beloved Yankees win the World Series, for the first time truly comprehending the drama and romance of a game he believed he’d been born to play.

Honestly, how could life get any better than 1978?

But it wasn’t quite that easy. Things were about to get complicated. Max was about to enter third grade.

He was about to meet Erin.

It didn’t take long after settling into Miss Martin’s bright new classroom for the excitement of the summer to be replaced by a new, more confusing emotion. On the second day of school he was hanging up his coat after a brisk, cool walk to school when he noticed someone new. It was a girl. He thought he already knew everyone in his class.

Max noticed she was crying, but he could not know the circumstances—that her