Zomerschoon, p.1
Zomerschoon, page 1
Table of Contents
Excerpt
Praise for Wendi Dass
Zomerschoon—Beauty of Summer
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Epilogue
A word about the author…
Thank you for purchasing
Hendrik reached for a book on the shelf. “Since I’m your acting advisor for the foreseeable future, I recommend we take a step back. Has Cayley assigned this?” He extended a thick, green text.
Her breath caught. Advisor? Foreseeable future? In a daze, Anna scanned the book. Introductory Cryptography. She shook her head.
“Well, this is a good start.” He dropped the book in her hand then turned his back. “Come see me when you’ve solved all the problems in Appendix A.” He faced the whiteboard and ran his inked hands through his hair.
Anna stared, her lips taut with a mixture of rage and dismay. She gripped the book so tightly the cover threatened to collapse. Of course, Cayley hadn’t assigned the book—Appendix A or any other parts. She’d read that book when she was fourteen. What a narcissist!
Stomping to the door, Anna let her mind jumble with profanities and various methods of destroying this preschool math book. Maybe she’d smash it over Hendrik’s carrot-juice hair. Maybe she’d shred it in a blender and shove the scraps down his throat. Maybe she’d set it on fire and toss it in his trashcan. Yes! Fire would be the perfect crime. No evidence.
With a smirk, she passed through the threshold and turned to slam the door.
Praise for Wendi Dass
“Debut author Dass pens a charming novel that’s just as much a story of one woman’s journey to find herself as it is a search for love…What truly makes this novel stand out are its vivid descriptions of beautiful scenery, which may make some readers homesick for a place they’ve never been.”
~ Kirkus Reviews
“Let yourself be swept away to Italy in a romantic, engaging adventure that covers a wide spectrum of emotions and will have you cheering for the heroine.”
~ Sublime Book Reviews
“Prepare yourself for an entertaining journey of self-discovery full of romance, humor, and drama. ZOMERSCHOON is the story of a young woman's search for purpose and meaning in her life. … This creates an interesting dilemma that is delicious to devour as a reader. The author's sense of humor also hit all the right notes for me as I found the banter and dialogue to be top-notch.”
~Pikasho Deka, Readers' Favorite Review 5 Stars
“In ZOMERSCHOON, Wendi Dass has written a beautiful romance, perfectly capturing the atmosphere of Oxford and its academics. In a world where people tend to write about billionaires and their love lives, an account that is so honest that it could be a true story is refreshing and comforting…I recommend this book to anyone who likes a good romance without sex and nudity. This kind of book is rare and a definite treat.”
~Delene Vrey, Readers' Favorite Review, 5 Stars
Zomerschoon—Beauty of Summer
by
Wendi Dass
Foreign Endearments, Book Two
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
Zomerschoon—Beauty of Summer
COPYRIGHT © 2022 by Wendi Dass
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Contact Information: info@thewildrosepress.com
Cover Art by Jennifer Greeff
The Wild Rose Press, Inc.
PO Box 708
Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708
Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com
Publishing History
First Edition, 2023
Trade Paperback ISBN 978-1-5092-4749-3
Digital ISBN 978-1-5092-4750-9
Foreign Endearments, Book Two
Published in the United States of America
Dedication
To my writing buddies, Brian and Joe, who read many a “crummy first draft.” To my husband and daughter for letting me lock myself in my office to “have some quiet already!” To Irina, Tamara, and Mom for helping me promote my books, even though I preferred to hide in my writer's den. To my besties, Nina and Renee, who indirectly supported my writing by listening to all my hare-brained drama and pretending I wasn't crazy. To my editor at TWRP who also read many a crummy second…and third…and fourth draft but who actually made me fix them. To everyone else, who are too many to name, who supported me through this whirlwind process of completing a manuscript. (And also to those people who drove me so bonkers I escaped to my stories.) I love you all.
Chapter 1
The mathematical likelihood of finding one’s life direction by age eighteen is fifty percent. By twenty, sixty percent. And by twenty-five, seventy-five percent. Perched on her tippy-toes, Anna Franklin examined her overgrown bob in a toothpaste-splattered mirror and wondered why in the world was she in the other twenty-five percent.
With hair too long to spike and too short to tuck behind her ears, Anna tugged at her wisps, drawing the strands into a glittery clip—the sparkles matched the streak of purple above her left ear. At six weeks since her last visit to Rome and her trusted hairdresser, both her dye job and cut needed repair. But heck, the hair was the least of her worries. Since her thirteen months in England, not much about Anna had adjusted well to Oxford. The food all tasted like soggy bread, the classes bored her more than a late-night infomercial, and her love life sucked because apparently Brits found her, an American, far less attractive than Italians had.
A heavy fist rattled the door. “I gotta take a leak, Franklin.”
Conner’s cockney accent sounded thicker than usual. “I thought Brits were supposed to be polite.” Anna swept on black eyeliner.
Conner hmphed. “I thought mathematicians were supposed to be precise.”
She rolled her eyes, wiped a smudge of liner from her eyelid, and then opened the door. Her scrawny, ruddy-faced roommate stood with ankles crossed as he bounced lightly on his toes. “Precision and timeliness are completely different.”
Conner brushed past her into the latrine-sized bathroom without a word.
At least his quiet demeanor rang true to British norms. She stepped over the threshold, and the door slammed behind her. “You, for one, should know the difference in their definitions!” She slapped a palm on the door. “I thought you were an English major—I mean, reading English?” A year in Oxford and she still couldn’t keep all their terms straight. Whoever heard about reading English or reading History or reading Maths? The term was more ludicrous than the idea of an imaginary number to an elementary schooler.
“It’s creative writing, Franklin. I don’t give a sod about grammar. I’m an artist.”
Anna stuck out her tongue. She’d heard the artist spiel before—once regarding Conner’s inability to trash empty chips bags and half-drunk bottles of beer and another time about the number of women, and the occasional male, who shared his room. Even her employer-provided room at St. Theresa’s, which offered about as much privacy as a curtained hospital exam room, topped sharing this shack of an apartment with Conner, the artist. The two years she’d spent under Sister Maria’s archaic rules in the Italian dormitory offered far more fun than the previous year at Oxford.
Anna slipped into her room and sifted through a pile of clean clothes. Could she stand another year with Conner, the smooth-talking co-ed, or without Sarah and Sister Maria? She tossed a tattered tee to the corner, her heart sinking. Could she survive another year of Oxford tedium?
Screw mundane. She scrunched a pair of lime-green underwear and hurled it at her unmade bed. She was the smartest math grad student Oxford had this century. She’d finish her coursework this year and her thesis in the next. Then she’d be free to…to?
Running a hand through her bangs, she sighed. Where or what she’d do after graduation she didn’t know. Figuring out one’s life plan, as it turned out, was trickier than proving Fermat’s last theorem.
She yanked on a pair of jeans—too tight. Another inadequacy of her hare-brained idea to return to grad school. Or maybe she’d put on the pudge because she wasn’t twenty anymore. Now, she’d tick over the midpoint of her twenties with no steady boyfriend, no plans for the future—at least none she could stick to for more than a day—and not even a good haircut. She had only her friends, the extra five pounds on her waist—thank goodness she’d been a size two before them—and Cayley.
She flicked her gaze to her watch. Ugh. She was late again for her weekly chec k-in with her advisor. Anna slipped a rubber band through the buttonhole of her pants to ease the tightness on her stomach, tugged on a sweater, and hurried out the door.
A short walk away, the mathematical institute building stuck out amongst the century-old stone architecture. While domes and spires graced most of the university, at the Andrew Wiles building, the sun glinted off the metal curves of the patterned pavement. Anna stepped between the metal arches of the Penrose design which resembled a page from an adult coloring book—everyone knew stepping on the curves brought bad luck. Inside the sliding glass entrance, a slanted glass roof illuminated an atrium filled with sleek furniture. While the paving and roof gave a nod to mathematical feats, like her favorite Roman building, the Pantheon, Anna had her heart set on a dark, stone-crafted building straight out of a wizarding film. When she’d first visited Oxford a year and a half ago as a prospect, that dream had been shattered.
Stifling a yawn, Anna crossed the atrium and nabbed breakfast from a nearby vending machine. Shortbread cookies probably weren’t the best choice, but they were better than nothing. Shoving one in her mouth, she took the stairs two at a time to the second level. En route to Cayley’s office, she poked her head into an unoccupied grad student office and swiped a piece of copy paper and a pen and scribbled some expressions that had swarmed her mind over the past few days. By the time she reached her advisor’s office, Sigmas, Deltas, and a host of parentheses littered the page.
The scent of burnt coffee and expo markers lingered in the air at the entrance to Cayley’s office. Black scrawl covered two large whiteboards—pseudorandom generator, PRG. Anna scoffed—baby stuff. An undergrad must have visited him during office hours. Turning her attention from the chicken scratch, Anna was greeted by the bald spot between Cayley’s two strips of puffy white hair.
“Half past ten, Ms. Franklin.” He held his gaze steady on the paper in front of him. With a shaky hand, he marked the paper in red pen.
Anna slouched into a seat in front of his desk. “Sorry, I overslept.” She shoved another cookie into her mouth.
“Does that mean you missed Cohen’s lecture?”
Anna cringed, and the buttery cookie in her mouth took on the texture of sawdust. She’d lost count of the times she’d missed the algebraic topology lecture. But why should she have to go if she could ace the tests?
“Again? I can only call in so many favors, Anna. I had to beg them to give you Cs last term. Genius or not, graduating at the bottom of your class doesn’t bode well for your future in academia.”
Swallowing hard, Anna felt the cookie cinch her throat. So now her future didn’t just preoccupy her thoughts, but Cayley’s as well. Dropping her chin, she sank into the chair. Cayley thought she’d be as successful as Oxford’s most famous mathematician, Andrew Wiles. Her friends in Rome, Sarah, Eduardo, and Sister Maria, hoped for the same. Anna rubbed her forehead. She didn’t have it in her to tell any of them how utterly lost she felt. Forcing a smile, she extended the remaining cookie toward Cayley. “Shortbread?”
Cayley furrowed his fuzzy white brows, further accentuating his similarity to the famed English mathematician who shared his name. All he needed was a tie and vest and he’d be an exact match to his great-great-grandfather.
“My physio would detest you.” He nabbed the cookie anyway.
Anna grinned. Sweets always appeased Cayley—well, almost always. Shortbread hadn’t done the trick when she’d skipped three weeks of complex analysis. At the time, Anna thought she might not be allowed to return for her second term. But that was before Cayley understood her brilliance, before he realized Anna could decipher complex encryptions faster than she could consume a shortbread cookie. At that moment, he’d let her into his world—let her begin to solve encryptions he’d been given by outside sources.
Solving that first cypher had been like her first month in Rome, when she’d resigned herself to learning the language. She’d needed a few weeks of nonstop studying, incessant eavesdropping in cafes, and even binge-watching Italian soap operas, but she’d done it. The question wasn’t whether she could solve the puzzles or not, but whether she could make herself solve them. Cayley’s puzzles soon became too easy, and she didn’t have the motivation she’d had in Rome: hundreds of eligible men to converse with and a plethora of menus waiting to be explored. Not to say she didn’t like a good puzzle, she just liked to go out and have fun even more. If only he’d give her something harder to work with—something like he gave his post-doc. These cyphers were easier than point-set-topology, for crying out loud!
“The modulus—did you work out that part?” He moved from his desk and stared at the whiteboard, scratching his head.
Anna approached him and offered the paper. “Actually, I think I did.”
Cayley widened his glassy eyes as he took the sheet of mathematical hieroglyphics. As he considered her expressions, he rubbed his chin.
For a moment, Anna doubted herself. Could she have simplified the summation? Had she switched the variable from n to k by accident? Maybe she should try writing her work a few days in advance of their meetings, instead of a few minutes?
Caley slapped a hand on her back and crinkled a smile. “I knew taking you on as a student wasn’t a mistake. If you keep up this work, I might live long enough to see you crack Allerton!”
Anna smiled. Oh, to work on Allerton, wouldn’t that be fun? Then she dropped her gaze to Cayley’s shaky hand, and she shook her head. “Don’t say that, Cayley. You’re healthy and strong.”
“We’ll see what the cardio has to say about that today.” He shuffled back toward the desk, his foot catching on the carpet as he did. He steadied himself and cleared his throat. “He probably wants me to increase those damned beta blockers.” Cayley reached the desk, picked up a stack of papers, and placed them in an envelope. He extended it to Anna. “Hand these back before you begin the lecture.”
“Lecture?” Anna lifted a brow.
Cayley sighed. “Don’t tell me you forgot you’re covering my class? Intro to Cryptography? PRGs?” He pointed at the whiteboard.
Anna swallowed hard and gave a sheepish smile. She might need to stop at the vending machine—this time for a highly-caffeinated beverage. “Right. Of course.” She straightened her posture. “The class meets at one, right? Lecture hall two hundred?”
“Twelve-thirty in the one hundred wing.” Cayley spoke in a terse tone.
Anna cleared her throat and then pursed her lips. “Sure thing. I’m on it.” With the stack of papers under her arm, Anna headed out the door. PRGs. Undergrads. No problem. She served as a Teacher Assistant for Calculus. How hard could delivering a lecture on her favorite topic be?
As she rushed down the hall, she checked her watch. Eleven-thirty. She’d just spend the next hour reviewing the text, pull out some definitions, examples, and…
Anna stopped mid-descent on the stairs. Did she even have a textbook? Gripping her notebook, she dashed back toward Cayley’s office. The door stood open. “On second thought”—she entered the office—“I better borrow your book. I wouldn’t want to be un—” Anna gasped and dropped the notebook from her hands. The pages fluttered as it fell to the floor. She struggled against the scream caught in her throat.
Cayley didn’t sit at his desk. He didn’t stand at the whiteboard, either. He lay on the floor, unmoving.
Chapter 2
The quiet hum of medical equipment and nurses’ whispers filled the hospital corridor. Cayley remained in surgery—had been for the last two hours.
“Blood clot in the brain,” the doctor said before the surgery. “He’s had a stroke.”
Anna paced the quiet hall, her combat boots scuffing the white linoleum. How long had his brain been without oxygen? After how long without oxygen would someone’s intelligence disappear, would their motor function be destroyed, would—Anna gulped—they survive? She shuddered. No, Cayley would be fine—just fine. He would need to lay off the cookies for a while—okay, maybe indefinitely. But a few statins and a spinach-and-ginger cocktail would make him good as new. Right?
Scanning the hall, Anna released a tight breath. Where was the doctor, the nurse, or, hell, anyone with an update? And why hadn’t Cayley’s family arrived? During the four hours since she found him in his office, only the dean of sciences had emerged.
