Romance: Love Left Behind - A Mystery Romance: (Romance, Mystery, Mystery Romance, Romantic Suspense) Read Free Page B

relationship and solidified his move into a greater life.
    As the night turned cold and bitter, so did Starla.  For another hour she remained planted in the center of Ben’s backyard, unable to stop the tears.

 

Chapter Two:
    2014 – Ben
     
    The morning air quivered with the sounds of honking taxi cabs and screaming children unsuccessfully being soothed by their frazzled nannies.  The city never slept and neither did the inhabitants.  The area around Central Park was notorious for the morning noise as the tourists with their clicking cameras wandered around the sidewalks hoping to get a feel of what New York City was made up of.
    It had been eight years since Ben had first moved to the city for college and he was finally acclimated to the city sounds.  At first, upon his arrival at NYU, they were jarring.  He didn’t understand how people could spend their nights accompanied by a near-constant stream of curse words and car horns.  Oftentimes he couldn’t sleep, tossing and turning in his bed, wondering why he had traded the near-silent streets of Bellen for the hustle and bustle of a city.
    “It’s not for everybody,” his roommate, a striking African-American guy named Kyle, had told him one morning.  “Now me, I love this city.  But I grew up here.  I can’t even hear no noises outside anymore, tune ‘em out.  But you?”  With that, Kyle had chuckled.  “With you, you’re a small town type of guy.  Can’t stand the noise, the movement, the aggressiveness.  Everything in New York City is aggressive.  The people, the streets, the women.  Bet you can’t handle that.  You’re not used to it.  Probably have some sweet little chick back home, don’t ya?”
    Ben, remembering Starla, had shrugged and said no.  He wanted to leave all the nonsense of his past behind and move forward.  He had finally escaped.  It was at that moment, talking to Kyle, that he promised himself he wasn’t going to be some sweet small-town guy that other New Yorkers and other students could take advantage of.  He wasn’t going to be like Starla Bluff, forever stuck in stagnation.  So he committed himself to finding parts of the city to love, to getting used to the noise, to being the Benjamin Brindell that he knew he could be.
    Eight years later, he couldn’t believe that he had ever disliked the sounds of the city.  They were like the sweetest music to his ears now.  It was difficult to sleep without the white noise of footfall and screeching cars.  Every morning he made himself toast with butter and strawberry jam, sat at his kitchen table, and listened.  He was finally a big city man.
    That morning, he had opened the fridge to take out the strawberry jam and realized there was none.  He made a mental note to run to the market later and grab some, lest his breakfast routine be ruined for more than one day.  Begrudgingly he decided to use grape jelly, a much less appealing option.  Ben didn’t even like grape jelly much; he found it cloyingly sweet.  It stuck to his palate all day, making him errantly smack his lips and run his tongue around the inside of his mouth.  He normally wouldn’t keep such a disgustingly processed food item in his refrigerator, but Mina liked it.  The old saying was “Happy wife, happy life,” but it should honestly have been changed to “Happy female companion, happy life.”
    Mina Gurkiri was, by all means, an aggressive woman, as his roommate had described it to him back in the day.  She was a socialite, a daddy’s girl, and a brilliant investigative journalist with a smile like strawberry lemonade.  She knew exactly what buttons to push to get people to do what she wanted them to do and wasn’t afraid to push them.  Mina was fearless, or at least it seemed that way.  She never backed down from a challenge or a story, sometimes even going to dangerous depths to acquire information for her scoops. 
    The fact that she was mind-numbingly gorgeous didn’t hurt