Lisa Childs - Taking Back Mary Ellen Black

Starring

Mary Ellen Black…in the role of a spunky single mom determined to reclaim her identity after losing it (and everything else) in her recent divorce

Supporting characters

Jenna O’Brien…in the recurring role of brutally honest best friend

Amber Nowicki…as Mary Ellen’s preteen daughter who’s just beginning to understand what it means to have an identity

Shelby Nowicki…as Amber’s pesky, attention-grabbing younger sister

Frank Black…as Daddy, Mary Ellen’s first and most enduring love

Grandma Czerwinski…as a woman, wise despite her years

Mrs. Jacques…as friend, neighbor, cheerleader and benefactor

Nonsupporting characters

Eddie Nowicki…as a man whose broken dreams break him financially and emotionally

Louise Black…as Mary Ellen’s hypercritical mother who is threatened by her daughter’s strength and determination

Special guest star

Ryan “Rye” O’Brien…as the young, studly love interest

“Ms. Childs keeps her readers glued to the page with a potent combination of romance, humor and suspense.”

—Escape to Romance

Award-winning author Lisa Childs has been writing since she could first form sentences. She grew up not far from the west side of Grand Rapids, Michigan, which was her dress rehearsal for creating Mary Ellen. At eleven she won her first writing award and was interviewed by the local newspaper. Now, with a wonderful husband and two young daughters, she is a veteran player in the trials, tribulations and joys of motherhood and marriage.

Readers can write to Lisa at P.O. Box 139, Marne, MI 49435 or visit her at her Web site, www.lisachilds.com.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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With special thanks to my editor, Stacy Boyd,

for your help and support with all my books

but most especially for understanding how important

Mary Ellen is to me!

And for three of the strongest women I know, love

and admire—my sisters, Helen, Phyllis and Jackie.

With extra thanks to Jackie for providing the

mortgage brokerage information.

CHAPTER D: DAY Divorce

CHAPTER E: Employment

CHAPTER F: Friendship

CHAPTER G: The Girls

CHAPTER H: Happiness

CHAPTER I: Initiation

CHAPTER J: Jackasses (apparently not all men are)

CHAPTER K: Kids

CHAPTER L: Leave it alone

CHAPTER M: Meeting Rye

CHAPTER N: New housing & a New Eddie

CHAPTER O: Occasions

CHAPTER P: Paint Stains & Pestilence

CHAPTER Q: Quitting Time

CHAPTER R: Revelations

CHAPTER S: School

CHAPTER T: Tests & Threes

CHAPTER U: Under the Knife

CHAPTER V: Venting

CHAPTER W: Wedding

Usually, the A, B, Cs start it all, the beginning of the alphabet, of words, sounds, books. In this case, the first chapter of my life will start with D, for divorce, which, in some ways, is really when my life began—when I first took back Mary Ellen Black.

My husband, ex-husband as of today, hadn’t wanted her, hadn’t even bothered to turn up at the courthouse to contest my asking the judge for my name back, the name I’d been born with but couldn’t use again until I was told it was legal. Eddie hadn’t contested my full custody of the girls, either; he knew pushover Mary Ellen would let him see them whenever he wanted. But he hadn’t wanted, not since he’d walked out on us for the twenty-year-old waitress at the restaurant he owned—or barely owned. If what he’d convinced the Friend of the Court was true, the restaurant was losing so much money that he couldn’t pay child support.

And so I was stuck where I sat, in my grandmother’s car, in the alley behind my parents’ house in the old West Side Grand Rapids neighborhood where I’d grown up and where I’d had to return after the bank had foreclosed on my gorgeous six-year-old house in Cascade. The repo man had taken my SUV, so I had Grandma’s Bonneville to use since her cataracts prevented her from driving anymore. Of course, she could still keep track of ten bingo cards every Saturday morning at Saint Adalbert’s.

Sitting in the car behind my parents’ house wasn’t going to help me figure out how everything had gone so wrong. I knew that, but still I couldn’t summon the energy necessary to open the car door and crawl out. I’d done enough crawling when I’d begged Eddie to come back, to work things out, and then when I’d lost the house, I’d crawled home to Mom, Daddy and Grandma.

No, Mary Ellen Nowicki had done all the crawling; Mary Ellen Black was stronger than that. I didn’t know much else about her anymore, but I knew that. Yet still I slumped on the bench seat of Grandma’s old Bonneville. No wonder her blue-haired head didn’t show above the steering wheel. This seat was low, really low.

I glanced over the wheel and around the alley. No yard. Just the big, square two-story house where I’d grown up, the alley and the detached garage. Inside the dark shadows of the garage, the tip of a cigarette glowed. Dad had knocked off early from the butcher shop and was checking his oil. That’s what he told Mom he was doing when he was really out getting a smoke. Nobody checked his oil as often as Dad did.

If he wanted to talk to me, he would have stepped out. Despite living in the same house since the foreclosure on mine a few months ago, we’d managed pretty well to avoid each other. I was his little princess, and he had always sworn to protect me from all the bad things in the world. He couldn’t protect me from this. And that hurt him more than it did me. I had grown up; I was responsible for my own happiness or lack thereof.

I pushed away the fleeting thought of turning the key in the ignition and backing out of the alley. Three blocks farther down was a bar, a strip club now. I could get a drink there. The fact that I didn’t drink didn’t erase the temptation. Hell, maybe I could even get a job there. Divorce was the only successful diet I’d ever gone on. My clothes hung on me.

A glance in the rearview mirror revealed lank, brown hair and a washed-out face. Yeah, like I could get a job in a strip club. I probably wouldn’t make as much as I did waiting tables at the VFW, and the biggest tips the vets gave were quarters. That was the only job I’d been able to get since being out of the workforce so long, as a stay-at-home mom. Before dropping out of design school to marry Eddie, the only job I’d ever had was waiting tables. But the job at the VFW was only temporary while the regular waitress was healing from a broken hip.

With a heavy sigh, I threw open the creaky door. Dad couldn’t ignore that sound. Nothing moved in the garage but the glowing tip of the cigarette. “Daddy?”

He eased out of the shadows toward the gravel driveway. “Mary Ellen?” He never lifted his gaze from the tip of his contraband.

“Yeah, Dad.” It’s me. Look at me! But we weren’t that kind of family. We didn’t face our problems. We ignored them until they walked out on us. We both turned our heads, scanning the alley and the little ribbon of grass between the garage and the house. “So, Mom’s gone?” I asked.