Stick Shift
by Mary Leo

Lucy Mastronardo is heading in the right direction — good job, good apartment, good fiancé — until a detour to Naples throws her off the map! Sure, she's just days away from tying the knot, but her next big promotion hits a roadblock and Lucy can't steer away from the last-minute business trip. With reassurances to everyone, including her vanilla- pudding-cup fiancé, she vows to return before she has to say, "I do."

Lucy's certain she'll have everything sorted out in no time. But then her drop-dead due dates are laid to waste by the wacky staff and the tempting restaurant owner next door. The one who makes her think there's more to life than deadlines and rules.

Will Lucy continue her drive in automatic — or will she take control and learn to downshift?

Mary Leo's Bio

Photo by: Ann Collins

When I was growing up on Chicago’s south (east) side, only a couple bridges away from Indiana, I dreamed that one day I would live in a house with central heating. Not a very imaginative dream, I know, but when you continually wake up in the dead of winter to radiators that have turned into metal popsicles and your mom is keeping the kitchen warm from the open door of a four-hundred degree oven, central heating is all you can think about. That and the beaches of Southern California and maybe the ability to pull Daffy Duck out of the TV through a tiny hole I would magically discover in the picture tube. I always thought it would be great if Daffy and the gang could spend some time at my house, just for laughs.

By the time I hit high school, St. Peter and Paul, I was ready to give up my California dreamin’ and marry a Beatle, but only if he could promise me central heating. I’d heard that England could get very cold during the winter months and I wasn’t taking any chances. I still had visions of Daffy and the gang, but I’d given up looking for the magic passageway in the picture tube.

Instead, I started writing my own stories when my kids were all grown up, and my husband told me I needed to focus on one art form (I was into several at the time). We now live in beautiful San Diego, where central heating is optional, and where Daffy lives on in my heart when he’s not “yucking it up” inside my flat-screen TV.