Play It Again, Sam

by Maryann Miller

Overview

When her husband comes home from work one day to announce he's moving out, Samantha Rutgers thinks it's a joke. She hopes it's a joke. It's not. He packs his suitcase and moves out. For twenty-five years, Sam was a corporate wife, a stay-at-home mom. Now she's divorced, adrift, and alienated from her daughter who blames her for the divorce. Ill equipped to be a single woman in a whole new dating culture, she would have foundered without help from an old friend who challenges her to finish up the art degree she put on hold when she married. Her classes open the door to a job at an advertising agency, where Sam makes several new friends and one enemy. There she meets Frank Reynolds, who invites her to take that first step into new love. Gradually, as she slowly builds a new life for herself, Sam learns how to stand strong in the face of adversity, personal and professional.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781601740588
Publisher:	Histria Romance
Publication date:	07/18/2008
Sold by:	INDEPENDENT PUB GROUP - EPUB - EBKS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	269
File size:	426 KB

About the Author

Maryann Miller is an award-winning author of numerous books, screenplays and stage plays. Her mystery, Open Season, is the first book in a new series that features two women homicide detectives in Dallas. Think "Lethal Weapon" set in Dallas with female leads. It has received rave reviews from Publisher's Weekly and Library Journal. The second book in the series, Stalking Season, was released in 2012. In addition to the mystery, Miller has a suspense novel, One Small Victory, published as an e-book and in paperback. It was originally published in hardback in 2008. Her young adult novel, Friends Forever, is also available as an e-book and paperback. Play it Again, Sam, a contemporary romance is available as an e-book and paperback, and a short story collection, The Wisdom of Ages, is also available as an e-book and paperback.
Miller is the Theatre Director at the Winnsboro Center for the Arts, where she had the privilege of directing one of her original plays several years ago. She enjoys directing, especially working with young performers. When not directing, Miller likes to be onstage and has appeared in "Squabbles" as Mildred at the Main Street Theatre in Sulphur Springs, Texas, where she also appeared as Mama Wheelis in "Daddy's Dying, Whose Got the Will?" and Martha Brewster in "Arsenic and Old Lace."
Among the awards she has received for her writing are the Page Edwards Short Story Award, the New York Library Best Books for Teens Award, first place in the screenwriting competition at the Houston Writer's Conference, placing as a semi-finalist at Sundance, and placing as a semi-finalist in the Chesterfield Screenwriting Competition. She was named The Trails Country Treasure in 2011 by the Winnsboro Center for the Arts.
Her website is http://www.maryannwrites.com
Blog: http://its-not-all-gravy.blogspot.com/

Facebook and Twitter @maryannwrites

Read an Excerpt

Driving home, Sam had her second misgiving. How was she ever going to get the box into the house? That problem loomed even larger as she looked at the front walk that ascended in three tiers from the street. Second guessing yourself isn't going help. Think. You can't lift the box, so what's the alternative?

She eased the box out of her trunk and grabbed the edges to slide it onto the sidewalk, dropping it at the last minute as her hands slipped. Dragging it up the walk seemed like the only option, but she had to figure out a better way to hang on to it. Cut holes in the cardboard so she could slip her hands in? No. There would still be too much weight for her to try to hold up, and the cardboard could tear. She had to find a way to keep most of the weight close to the ground.

I know. Sam went back to the trunk and pulled out an old blanket. She opened it on the sidewalk, then lifted one end of the box and laid it across the width of the blanket near the top, folding the rest of the fabric back over the box. There was just enough of the blanket left for her to roll the two ends together as a handle. Aha! Who needs a dolly when they've got ingenuity?

Easing her burden through the doorway into the library, Sam felt incredibly proud. She had faced the mountain, and the mountain had not defeated her.

She opened the box and assembled the pieces of the table on the floor. Then she went in search of Margaret's tool box. If she remembered correctly, it was in a cabinet in the laundry room.

Back in the library, Sam sat cross-legged on the floor and read the assembly directions. This'll be a piece of cake compared to getting the damn thing inhere.

Later, she nursed a scraped knuckle, happy that that was all she had suffered for her efforts. A sound in the doorway startled her and she turned to see her daughter leaning against the frame.

"What're you doing?" Melissa asked, running her fingers through disheveled hair.

"Was I making too much noise?"

"No. I didn't hear a thing." Melissa moved into the room to get a better view of the table. "It was just time to get up."

"Nice isn't it?" Sam knelt beside the tool box and started putting the wrenches and screwdrivers away, finding an odd sense of pleasure in the solidness of the tools in her hand and the clank of metal against metal as she dropped them in.

"What's the table for?" Melissa asked.

Sam shot a quick look at her daughter. Could she really be that obtuse? Or had she just conveniently blocked any thought of her mother's life different from what it used to be? "It's for my work." Sam kept her voice carefully neutral.

"Oh. Right." The young woman walked around the table, trailing her fingers across the smooth, white Formica. "Guess it's just hard for me to think of you as working."

Sam leaned back against her heels and sighed.

Melissa stopped at the corner of the table and looked over, her bottom lip clutched in her teeth.

She looked so forlorn; Sam feared her heart would burst with the pain of it all. "This isn't what I wanted for any of us," she said, softly.

Editorial Reviews

...wonderfully written, full of heartache and hard lessons learned. The characters are a woman who must learn to have faith in herself and learn to love again, and a man who finds himself attracted to a woman he wants to take care of and protect. The characters are portrayed with depth, and even though they have problems, they are both willing to work through them for a second chance at happiness. For an enjoyable book to cozy up with, read PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM.

Romance Reviews Today - Robin Peek