It Happened on Maple Street

by Tara Taylor Quinn

Genres: Contemporary Romance; New Adult Romance

Synopsis

The USA Today–bestselling author reveals her own poignant story of love, hardship, and second chances in this autobiographical romance novel.

Small town girl Tara Gumser dreamed of one day writing her own romance novels—even though she’d never been kissed before meeting her college boyfriend, Tim Barney. Tara fell hard for the hunky tennis ace. But while Tim was wild for this gifted young woman who was certain of her destiny, he wasn’t so ready to commit.

After their breakup, Tara’s love life went from youthful innocence to shattering trauma and tragic isolation. Trapped in a loveless marriage, she would hide her grief between the pages of her popular romance novels written as “Tara Taylor Quinn.”

But then an email message from Tim Barney suddenly upends her world. Plunged into a plot twist beyond her own imaginings, Tara must discover if love can be as real as the kind she writes about. Is it possible that after years, this bestselling author may finally embrace a happily-ever-after of her own?

 

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Release date: May 16, 2023

Publisher: Open Road Media Romance

Print pages: 267

Sample

Chapter One

I’d never had a boyfriend. Never even been on a date. I didn’t go to homecoming. Or prom. I’d never been to the movies with a guy. Or anywhere else alone with one, either, unless you counted my brothers and father, which I didn’t. I was eighteen years old, a freshman in college. And I’d never been kissed.

There you had it. Right up front. I wasn’t one of the popular girls. I read books. All the time. In between classes. During study hall. After school, before dinner, after work and studying, before bed, I read. On weekends, I read. I went babysitting. And I read. Romances. Always romances. Harlequin romances.

I had one in my purse the day I drove to Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, as a very determined, five foot two, hundred-pound blonde who was certain I was ten feet tall and had strength equal to any challenge.

I started college with a lot to learn, but I knew very clearly what I wanted out of life. On that I didn’t waver. At all. I had two goals. I was going to write for Harlequin. And, some day, I was going to find and marry my own Harlequin hero.

I was actually almost in my second year at Wright State because I’d done my first year attending part time simultaneously with my senior year in high school. I was in college because my father expected me to go to college, and I wanted to get it over as quickly as possible. I didn’t argue with my father. Ever.

I was also in college, secondarily, because I absolutely adored learning. It was the writer in me. I could never know enough.

As I parked my new little blue Manta, a month-old eighteenth birthday gift from my parents, in the student parking lot at Wright State University, I knew I was different from everyone else arriving for the first day of classes. I wasn’t there to learn a career. I wasn’t going to be a nurse or a teacher or anything else the education I was there to receive would provide for me. I’d happily get a degree, but, as a career, I was going to write romances for Harlequin Books. There was no Harlequin major in college. There wasn’t a class that studied, or even mentioned, romance novels. There were writing classes, though—more if I majored in English. That semester, I’d signed up for the one writing class I was permitted to take. And I was taking literature, too. Fantasy. I was going to be reading Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I was going to learn from the greats.

And because an English major required a science class—something else I’d managed to graduate high school without—I took geology. Blood and guts weren’t for me. They’d keep me up nights.

Rocks were innocuous. They’d put me to sleep just fine.

So there I was sitting in a geology lecture hall filled with a hundred strangers who were mostly my age—all of them having been kissed, I was certain—during my first full time college semester.

Dressed in my favorite pair of faded, hip hugger bell bottom jeans—the ones that I’d cut from the ankle to just below the knee to insert the piece of white cotton and blue flowered fabric—I might look like the other kids. But I wasn’t like them. I gripped my pencil, my college ruled paper blank before me, waiting for notes.

I’d already decided I’d have to take notes to remain conscious.

I looked around. After having been in class with the same kids for four long years, it was still a little weird to me being in a classroom where I didn’t know a single soul. Weird and kind of freeing, too. No one knew I was Tara Gumser, daughter of the Wayne township school board president. Daughter of the rotary club president. Daughter of the best singer in the church choir. Daughter of the best bridge player in Huber Heights, Ohio. No one knew I hadn’t been asked to my prom. Either of them. No one knew I’d never been asked on any kind of date. Ever.

The room buzzed with energy. Freshman energy. After all life was just beginning. The future was more question than answer—resting largely on the success or failure of the next four years in classrooms just like that one.

Did I stand out?

I didn’t have to be there to obtain a future.

I had my future plann

ed. I knew what I wanted and I wasn’t going to be swayed.

It was the fall of 1977. I had my whole world lying before me …

I saw his hair first. I wasn’t a hair person. I was very clearly an eye person. My one close high school friend and I had talked about it. When I saw a guy, I always looked at his eyes first. And last, too. I didn’t care about a man’s outer image. Heroes weren’t judged by their book covers. What I cared about was a man’s heart. His soul. You could only get there through his eyes.

And there was this hair. I saw it walk in the door. Head toward the steps. Head up the steps. The rest of the room really did fade away, just like I’d read about in my books. I mean, the people were there. I still had peripheral vision. I was still aware of the buzz of conversation. But the focus on them faded away. I didn’t notice them at all. I watched that head of hair instead.

It was dark. Really dark. Not as harsh as black, but darker than brown. It was thick. And long enough to curl up at the collar. It was parted in the middle and feathered down past his ears. My hair was feathered, too. His feathering was much better.

All I could think about—me, who’d never so much as held a guy’s hand in a man/woman way—all I could think about was running my fingers through that hair. I could almost feel the rough silkiness sliding between my fingers, tickling the tender joining between my fingers.

And somehow I was lying with him. His arms were around me. How else could I get to that glorious hair?

The body attached to the hair was close. And then passed me by. Just like that. My great hair guy was heading up to the back of the room. To sit somewhere else. Near someone else.

But not before I’d caught a glimpse of his eyes.

They were brown. And there was something about them, a depth, that disturbed me.

For the first time in my life I’d come in contact with a real life guy who intrigued me. Really intrigued me. Enough to make thoughts of my Harlequin heroes fade

into the shadows.

More than anything in the world, I wanted to meet that great hair guy.

I didn’t meet him. How could I? It’s not like I was going to go speak to him. And say what? Do you mind if I run my fingers through your hair?

Or, maybe, you’re the first real, flesh and blood breathing guy I’ve ever seen who made me feel ‘things?’

Of course not, I was Tara Gumser. Walt Gumser’s girl child. I lived with my nose in books. And furthermore, why would I think for one second that a guy as gorgeous as that would have any interest in me when not one of the four hundred boys I’d graduated with had ever asked me out?

Class started. I took notes. And felt ‘him’ behind me the entire time. The back of my neck was warm. My palms were moist.

Through the entire lecture I had one thought on my mind. What went up had to come down. If I busied myself after class, I’d still be standing there when he came back down the steps and left class. And if I just happened to be leaving my row at the exact time …

I had it all planned. I wouldn’t say anything to him. I couldn’t be that obvious. Nice girls ‘didn’t’. My father, who had a temper that scared the bejesus out of me even though he’d never laid a hand on me, had made it very clear to me that his daughter behaved with modesty and decorum.

Period.

Nice girls didn’t talk to boys first. They didn’t call boys. They didn’t ask a boy out. They didn’t let boys know they liked them unless the boy proclaimed his feelings first. And they didn’t let boys even so much as smell the cow before he owned the barn. Legally. And had a license as proof.

Class ended. I busied myself closing my notebook very slowly. Conversation buzzed around me. Someone stepped on my foot, in a hurry to vacate the premises. Probably to drop the class.

My entire back burned. My senses were tuned. I had to time my exit just right. And I had to be legitimately occupied until then or I’d appear forward. Like, maybe I was interested or something.

I’d blow it before it had ever begun.

My notebook was closed. My pencil back in my denim purse. I checked my schedule. Yep, I had a break after that class just like I’d known I did. I stacked my other books up on top of my notebook.

I made sure that my romance novel didn’t show out of a corner of my purse. And I turned.

Just in time to see him exiting out the other side of his row and trot down the steps on the other side of the room.

I wasn’t surprised.

I wasn’t like other girls.

I didn’t meet guys.

I read books.

I was a writer. And that was exactly what I wanted to be. What I had to be. I was seventeen when I got my first job as a professional writer. Seventeen when I received my first paycheck for writing.

It wasn’t much. Twenty-five dollars. But on the line that said, Pay To The Order Of, the words typed right there beside them read, Tara Gumser. That was me.

And in the upper left corner, the identifier of the payee, it read, Dayton Daily News.

I was a stringer for the largest newspaper in the area. My beat was the Vandalia City council. Vandalia was a small city on the outskirts of Dayton. Once a month, I went to their city council meetings, determined what of interest happened, and wrote a story about it.

I was a respected professional and on my way to writing for Harlequin.

I had my whole life in front of me. A whole lot of time to meet my Harlequin hero.

After I’d become somebody he’d want to meet.

I had myself firmly in check two days later when the next geology class rolled around. I’d thought of my great hair guy far too much. All the time. Even when I was reading. One night, late, I’d been lying in bed reading and somehow my hero had great hair. Dark hair. Longish. Not at all as it looked on the cover of the book. He had brown eyes, too. And legs that looked … mmm … in jeans as they’d climbed steps.

So I was done. Over the nonsense.

I got to class early. I took my seat. I told myself to look at my literature book. I’d been busy with my real life’s work—reading a Harlequin—and hadn’t quite finished the reading required for my college literature class.

I couldn’t concentrate. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t help glancing toward the door every two seconds.

I couldn’t help being disappointed when my great hair guy arrived and walked past my row without noticing that I was sitting there needing to meet him.

That was it. I was over him.

Geology class got in my way. I was not interested in the subject, which left me entirely too much time to notice Great Hair Guy. I’d get bored with the lecture and next thing I knew class was ending and I’d spent the entire time fantasizing about him.

Was there any chance the guy was ever going to say hello to me?

Great Hair Guy didn’t say hello to me. At all. September traveled on. Leaves changed colors and fell to the ground. Some days my feelings felt like those leaves. Like I’d had a glorious moment of colorful possibility and then … nothing.

My great hair guy—I continued to think of him as mine secretly as my thoughts didn’t hurt anyone—came to class regularly. That impressed me. He participated, too, like he really knew what was going on.

Igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic—I remembered the names of the types of rocks but I couldn’t distinguish between them. I liked the words. What they represented were all rocks to me.

But I remembered all kinds of details about great hair guy. Like I was some besotted girl. You know, the kind that irritated me. Like she had no worth on her own, but rather, was judged by how cute her boyfriend was.

Great Hair Guy had changed me. He’d impacted my life in a way I would not forget. I felt ‘things’ whenever he was anywhere close to me. And I promised myself that I was the only one who’d ever know what he did to me. It was my embarrassing and shameful secret.

I knew I’d be the only one who ever knew that Great Hair Guy gave me feelings down below as surely as I knew that I was going to write for Harlequin someday. As surely as I knew that I would find my Harlequin hero. Out there. When I was ready.

Just like all the boys in high school, Great Hair Guy didn’t seek me out. Didn’t even notice me. The only difference was, this time I cared.

And just to make my life more miserable, there was a geology lab that I was required to attend if I wanted to fulfill my science credit and graduate from college. Lab classes started several weeks later than lecture and had fewer students per class.

Would Great Hair Guy be in my lab?

I tried so hard not to worry about whether or not my hair stayed flipped under at the ends, whether or not my feathers winged. I tried not to picture myself in a pair of male eyes when I chose the tight jeans and the shirt that hugged breasts that were far too tiny to be noticed anyway. The blue shiny shadow I smeared on my eyelids might bring out the blue in my eyes—my best feature—but who was going to notice?

The chances of my great hair guy being in the same lab I was in were minimal. The idea that he might actually notice me was ludicrous. And if I thought for one second he would ever speak to me I really was living in fantasy land.

I tried so hard not to care.

And my heart beat such a rapid tattoo against my chest when he walked in the door of lab I was afraid he’d notice. And think I was some kind of freak.

He didn’t notice. My heart rate. Or me.

I was Tara Gumser. I read books.

And I hated geology.

But boy oh boy did I like my great hair guy.

I knew where he was every second during lab. It was like I was connected to him. I could feel when he moved. Hear when he talked. It was me I didn’t recognize. What was the matter with me?

I was focused. Determined.

I didn’t waste time on childish endeavors.

The teacher had papers to hand out. Who cared?

What? Wait! My great hair guy was handing them out. He was coming my way. Handing a sheet to the guy in front of me. I was going to be next. I was goi

ng to make a fool of myself.

I couldn’t look at him.

I saw the bottoms of his jeans. Saw the sheet of paper coming toward me.

I looked up.

And saw him.

He saw me, too.

I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t be cool and nonchalant. Had no hope whatsoever of sexy.

And he moved on.

I was going to die.

I wanted to die.

And had to get out of that class so I could re-live the encounter, analyze every second again and again. Had I made a fool of myself? Had he noticed me even a little bit? Would he remember that second that our eyes had met?

“His name’s Tim.” I turned to see Ann, a girl I sometimes carpooled with, coming up beside me as I walked down the hall after leaving the lab. I knew Ann from high school. And she knew I had a thing for Great Hair Guy.

“I saw his notebook,” Ann said. She was in lab, too. And she knew I’d never dated.

Tim.

Ann got a kick out of my newly painful state. In a compassionate kind of way.

“Don’t look now, but your Tim is behind us,” she continued as we walked toward the door of the building.

I didn’t look. But I could feel him there.

My Tim. 

 

Chapter Two

There was a tradition at Wright State University. A fall party on campus—a welcome to students. October Daze. It was held outside in the field next to the Rathskeller—a pizza and beer place on campus. There were booths of food and club paraphernalia. Live bands and lots of beer.

It was exactly the kind of gathering I avoided. I’d made it all the way through high school without attending a single party. Not one. I didn’t drink outside of my home, where my Dad would occasionally share a sip of his very smooth and expensive scotch whiskey with me because I was the only one in the family besides him who liked it, or my Mom would allow me a taste or two from her glass of wine.

“Come on, Tara,” Ann said the first Friday afternoon in October—the day after our first Geology lab. I was huddled in my raincoat, the bottoms of my jeans dragging on the wet ground, and telling her I wanted to go home. The drizzling had stopped for the moment but I had a romance novel burning a hole in my purse. I’d had a hard day at school, gotten a paper back in my writing class that the teacher hadn’t absolutely loved, and I just wanted to crawl into a story and stay there.

“We have to go,” Ann was saying. She was trying to talk me into going to October Daze. Because she wanted to go. She wanted to meet up with some guys she knew. “What if he’s there?” she continued haranguing me. “You don’t want him to find some other girl without you even having a chance, do you?”

Of course I didn’t. “I don’t even like beer.”

“Have you ever had it?”

“Well … no, but I know I don’t like it.” I liked smooth, expensive Scotch. My Dad did not drink beer. And I was his drinking buddy. Me with my sip or two on the occasions when he actually had a drink.

“It doesn’t matter if you like it or not,” Ann laughed and hooked her arm in mine, dragging me down the hill away from my little blue Manta and the school books that she’d ordered we leave there. “You just drink it,” she explained.

I let her pull me along. And I laughed, too. I didn’t know why. I just did.

I was changing. Life was changing. Anything could happen.

The day was cool, overcast and misting rain. A typical early October day in Ohio. He was barely eighteen and a bit overwhelmed, but no one was going to know that. He’d made it out of high school. Out of the small town where he’d grown up—even if only during the day. He’d made it to college and to a college party. He was going to enjoy himself.

Even so, the smell of wet grass on the cool air took him back to younger days of football and playing in the mud. Back to a time when getting dirty was funny—the dirtier the funnier.

When had he left those days behind? When had being respectable become important?

And earning a degree even more important?

He made his way to the twenty-five cent beer wagons and placed his order. His first college beer and it was out of a plastic cup.

Silently toasting the college life, he drank. Stroh’s had never tasted so good. Looking out over the hundreds of students huddled together, listening to the hippie looking guys up on stage, he chuckled to himself. He was a long way from his home on Maple Street. His brothers would be proud.

Two of the band members were hopping around, one on electric guitar, the other dragging a mic stand with him. The third guy was beating on drums as though he could somehow change the world with those sticks.

And all the while, the college students laughed and drank their drinks as fast as they could pour them down. It was so different from the small town he’d grown up in.

A different universe.

In Eaton, he knew everyone. Or at least knew someone who knew everyone. Here he didn’t know a single person. He was out of place.

But he was staying.

The youngest of five boys—three of whom were at least a full generation older than him, two old enough to be his parent—he’d learned early that he had to tackle life and wrestle from it what he wanted.

His mother, widowed when he was only five, had sacrificed much to get him there. He wasn’t going to forget that.

He was going to succeed. Graduate. Make something of his life. He wasn’t going to spend his entire life as he’d spent much of his youth, eating well enough at the beginning of the month and being grateful for the beans that were on the table by months end.

He was going to own a home. And a washing machine.

He sipped his beer—feeling rich just being there—being welcome to the cheap beer and entertainment. ...