Sizzling in South Africa

By Zinaid Meeran

Jo Hernandez is a wallflower doing a PhD on South African models and beauty queens. She travels to Cape Town but spends much of her time peeping at the hot neighbor guy. He has a girlfriend, though, and the couple draw Jo into a flirty friendship. Around them love feels within reach, and they have just the guy for her.

Anele is a police psychologist. He’s perfect and just the kind of guy Jo would have run a mile from until her cupids gave her a personality makeover. But does the affection of her friends come with a price?

Before Jo and Anele can get together her budding will and his talent as a hostage negotiator will be put to the test.

• Language: Unknown
• Publisher: The Wild Rose Press
• Release date: Mar 11, 2024
• ISBN: 9781509253913

Book preview

Praise for Zinaid Meeran

Praise for, ‘Saracen at the Gates’

A fast moving wholly modern romp of a novel... this is one of the most assured debuts in years.

~Tymon Smith, Sunday Times

The book is a hilarious carnival ride that teems with extraordinary, fascinating detail… elegant and profound like Salman Rushdie’s work.

~Deborah Steinmaier, Die Burger

Saracen at the Gates won the European Union/Dinaane Award and was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Fiction Prize and the University of Johannesburg Prize.

Praise for, ‘Tanuki Ichiban’

Zinaid Meeran was the most refreshing literary voice at the Time of the Writer Festival.

~Charl Cilliers, City Press

Readers will be rewarded with deep humor, interesting allegory and evocative prose.

~Karen Jeynes, Mercury

Sizzling in South Africa

by

Zinaid Meeran

Passport to Pleasure Series

Copyright Notice

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

Sizzling in South Africa

COPYRIGHT © 2023 by Zinaid Meeran

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Contact Information: [e-mail]

Cover Art by Kristian Norris

The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

PO Box 708

Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

Publishing History

First Edition, 2024

Digital ISBN 978-1-5092-5391-3

Passport to Pleasure Series

Published in the United States of America

Dedication

For Anastassia

Chapter 1

I have just gotten stuck into those hard-to-reach molars when I hear a scraping sound outside. I hurry to the window with a hand cupped under my chin to catch the splattering toothpaste.

In a nook at the back door of the house across the road sits a torn garbage bag and a mound of kitty litter plopped on a rusted barbeque stand. Onion peels flutter and take off like smelly moths. A glossy maroon cat food bag unfolds and does a slow forward roll down the pavement.

So that’s where people leave their garbage out for the truck… I’ve just moved into the neighborhood and have been wondering what to do with mine.

A key rattles and the neighbor guy bursts through the steel door as he shoulders it open. His wavy hair is worn in the kind of forelock a yak might sport.

He takes the corner of the barbeque stand between his thumb and forefinger and peers into it, as though watching the progress of a rare jungle plant within.

His intensity makes my pulse spike, leaving me dizzy.

When his bronze face turns in my direction, I duck behind my laptop screen and my chin comes to rest on the ruins of last night’s ciabatta.

When he is done tossing the mess into a wheelie bin, he gazes from house to house pulling down his sleeves with the force normally reserved for making a bed.

He shoves the wheelie bin in the nook and probes for keys in his back pocket as though killing something in there. When he tries to unlock the door, the key gives him trouble. The back muscles under his T-shirt ripple out of proportion to the task.

And he’s gone.

I’ll have to make a lightning strike to dump my garbage in his wheelie bin. Risky, considering that I’m hung over and shaky as hell.

Last night I met up with two girls who have also come out to South Africa to study. Unlike me they are doing the kind of one-semester stint that is more the form of package tourism that you can justify to your overachiever parents.

The girls warned me that Wednesday is party night in Cape Town. They learned this from a slightly creepy but somewhat hot older guy the previous Wednesday. He also taught them that ‘study broads’ are hot girls engaged in study abroad programs.

They both have those weirdly unblemished faces and that perfect balance of muscle to fat that gives the skin a buoyant appearance, as though floating on the flesh underneath. Their health and cheer drove me to drink half a bottle of tequila and smoke almost an entire pack of cigarettes.

Their readymade look ensured hookups, while I went home alone to stare at my heroic face. My only consolation is that I was carded, which logically means that I look under eighteen—woo! I’ll have to take my passport along next time.

The burst of adrenaline derived from all this resentment carries me to the kitchen, where I wrench the garbage bag from the rickety plastic bin and dash out onto the street in my pajamas, toss it into my hot neighbor guy’s wheelie bin, and dash back into my house, laughing in terror.

****

It’s next Thursday: garbage day again.

He hasn’t put his wheelie bin out and I’m under threat of being tardy for my seminar.

I flick my puffer jacket off the hook and slide my keys off the brass stand in the hall. It’s winter, and the Western Cape is way colder than I expected, certainly colder than Los Angeles, where I’m from. I imagine him thrusting his hands into my jacket to warm me up before I head out. His hands will brush my nipples and give me a satisfying jolt.

I snatch my eyeliner and lipstick from the dresser. I will do the unspeakable and put my makeup on in the e-taxi.

It’s terrible, I know, but I will have to leave my garbage at his door, like the dumper from last week, and rely on his fastidiousness to clear it up.

I order the e-taxi, tug my garbage bag from the bin, and hurry out onto the street.

It is one of those crisp mornings where sound travels and to my horror I hear the rattle of keys in his back door. I make a dash for it and hurl the garbage bag into the nook before peeling off up the street toward the superette on the corner—there’s no way I could double back to my house without him spotting me.

The entrance of the superette is blocked by a looming outline of masculinity.

If the neighbor guy is a yak, this guy is a panther. An oversized panther.

My cells trill in a way that sounds like a definite communiqué. They are telling me that they want this guy’s DNA to join with mine. I haven’t felt anything like that before and I’m tempted to put it down to cross-wiring.

Everything all right, ma’am? he says.

His exaggerated concern makes me think ‘undercover cop.’

My eyes are huge with adrenaline and I’m trembling so hard it’s got to be visible.

I feel my fate is tied up with the rumbling presence standing in my way.

Are you sure you’re okay? he says, less formal now.

I can barely look into his face. He gives off an obsidian glow that the human retina struggles to process.

I tend to come up with that kind of excuse to justify my awkwardness around hot guys. This time it’s true. And this guy is beyond simply hot. There is something unflappable about him.

I think something has shaken you up, he concludes and ushers me into the superette. You weren’t coming in here to buy something, am I correct?

I shake my head, my curls dancing in defiance.

Of course I was! I squeal. "I was totally coming in to buy stuff. Like that thing over