Traci On The Spot Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Excerpt

  Dear Reader

  Title Page

  Dedication

  About the Author

  Books by Marle Ferrarella

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  Copyright

  How I spent my summer vacation by Morgan Brigham, age 29

  Traci and I used to spend every summer together. But that was when we were kids, back when our biggest goal was to see who could stuff more spiders down whose back.

  I honestly didn’t expect to get stranded with her here today at the old cabin. But now I’m kind of glad. Boy, she sure has changed! This night-alone-in-the-dark is starting to have definite possibilities….

  But, of course, I’m not the kind to kiss and tell. And I have a more important mission in mind: I’ve got to convince her not to marry Dr. Dull. She deserves so much more! She deserves someone who will treat her like an equal; someone who will challenge her, who will keep her life exciting—

  Hey! Why does that sound like someone I know?

  Dear Reader

  Boy, did Marie Ferrarella’s Traci on the Spot bring back a few memories for me. Her heroine is a cartoonist, and she works out the daily dilemmas of her life via her character’s escapades. I once dated a cartoonist However, his character was of the animated-vegetablesaving-the-world variety, and no way would I have wanted to be involved in any of his escapades. Of course, maybe if we’d managed to share a night alone in a romantic cabin, I might have changed my mind.

  Our second book this month is First Date: Honeymoon, by Diane Pershing. Mix together one handsome hero and one waiting-for-Mr.-Right heroine, then add a sham marriage proposal and an equally ersatz honeymoon, and voilà You’ve got just the right ingredients for the perfect travel guide to honeymoon bliss, not to mention passion hot enough to melt granite and a couple whose next honeymoon is going to be the very, very real variety.

  Enjoy both stories, and remember to come back next month for more adventures in meeting, dating—and marrying—Mr. Right.

  Yours truly,

  Leslie Wainger

  Senior Editor and Editorial Coordinator

  Please address questions and book requests to:

  Silhouette Reader Service

  U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

  Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont L2A 5X3

  Traci on the Spot

  Marie Ferrarella

  To all the writers

  of the comics

  and comic strips

  that have fueled my imagination,

  brightened my day,

  or made me laugh.

  Thank you.

  About the Author

  Dearest person who has picked up this book,

  All right, I admit it. I’m a cartoonaholic. Cartoons have always fit prominently into my life. I learned how to read by reading wonderful comic books like “Little Lulu” and “Nancy & Sluggo.” I progressed to “Superman” (in every single publication that bore his name) and could have majored in super heroes (ask me a question, any question, I dare you). By the time I got my master’s degree in Shakespeare (yes, I read comic books through college), I could not only intelligently discuss the bard’s plays, but I could also tell you all of the people who figured into Superman’s life whose initials were L.L. Even now I feel my day is incomplete without opening the paper and reading the funnies. I love to smile, and if a laugh can be tucked into it, all the better.

  That was why writing Traci on the Spot was such a kick for me. I could imagine writing a daily comic strip that reflected my life. (Hey, I can deal with pressure—I have two kids, a husband and a German shepherd who thinks she’s a lap dog.) I hope Traci (and I) manage to entertain you for a little while.

  With love and gratitude,

  Marie Ferrarella

  Books by Marle Ferrarella

  Silhouette Yours Truly

  †The 71b., 2oz.Valentine

  Let’s Get Mommy Married

  Trad on the Spot

  Silhouette Romance

  The Gift #588

  Five-Alarm Affair #613

  Heart to Heart #632

  Mother for Hire #686

  Borrowed Baby #730

  Her Special Angel #744

  The Undoing of Justin Starbuck #766

  Man Trouble #815

  The Tamingof the Teen #839

  Father Goose #869

  Babies on His Mind #920

  The Right Man #932

  In Her Own Backyard #947

  Her Man Friday #959

  Aunt Connie’s Wedding #984

  †Caution: Baby Ahead #1007

  †Motheron the Wing #1026

  †Baby Times Two #1037

  Father in the Making #1078

  The Women in Joe Sullivan’s Life #1096

  ‡ Do You Take This Child? #1145

  The Man Who Would Be Daddy #1175

  Silhouette Special Edition

  It Happened One Night #597

  A Girl’s Best Friend #652

  Blessing in Disguise #675

  Someone To Talk To #703

  World’s Greatest Dad #767

  Family Matters #832

  She Got Her Man #843

  Baby in the Middle #892

  Husband: Some Assembly Required #931

  Brooding Angel #963

  ‡ Baby’s First Christmas #997

  Christmas Bride #1069

  Silhouette Desire

  ‡ Husband Optional #988

  Silhouette Intimate Moments

  *Holding Out for a Hero #496

  *Heroes Great and Small #501

  *Christmas Bvery Day #538

  Callaghan’s Way #601

  *Caitlin’s Guardian Angel #661

  ‡ Happy New Year—Baby! #686

  Silhouette Books

  Silhouette Christmas Stories 1992

  “The Night Santa Claus Returned”

  † Baby’s Choice

  *Those Sinclairs

  ‡ The Baby of the Month Club

  Books by Marle Ferrarella writing as Marie Nicole

  Silhouette Desire

  Tried and True #112

  Buyer Beware #142

  Through Laughter and Tears #161

  Grand Theft Heart #182

  A Woman of Integrity #197

  Country Blue #224

  Last Year’s Hunk #274

  Foxy Lady #315

  Chocolate Dreams #346

  No Laughing Matter #382

  Silhouette Romance

  Man Undercover #373

  Please Stand By #394

  Mine by Write #411

  Getting Physical #440

  Prologue

  Morgan Brigham slowly set down his coffee cup on the kitchen table and stared at the comic strip in the center of his paper. It was nestled in among approximately twenty others that were spread out across two pages. But this was the only one he made a point of reading faithfully each morning at breakfast.

  This was the only one that mirrored her life.

  He read each panel twice, as if he couldn’t trust his own eyes. But he could. It was there, in blackand-white.

  Morgan folded the paper slowly, thoughtfully, his mind not on his task. So Traci was getting engaged.

  The realization gnawed at the lining of his stomach. He hadn’t a clue as to why.

  He had even less of a clue why he did what he did next.

  Abandoning his coffee, now cooling, and the newspaper, and ignoring the fact that this was
going to make him late for the office, Morgan went to get a sheet of stationery from the den.

  He didn’t have much time.

  1

  Traci Richardson stared at the last frame she had just drawn. She ran her teeth thoughtfully over her lower lip. Debating, she glanced toward the creature sprawled out on the kitchen floor.

  “What do you think, Jeremiah? Too blunt?”

  The dog, part bloodhound,’ part mutt, idly looked up from his rawhide bone at the sound of his name. Jeremiah gave her a look that she felt free to interpret as ambivalent.

  “Fine help you are. What if Daniel actually reads this and puts two and two together?”

  Not that there was all that much chance that the man who had proposed to her, the very prosperous and busy Dr. Daniel Thane, would actually see the comic strip she drew for a living. Not unless the strip was taped to a bicuspid he was examining.

  It wasn’t that Daniel belittled the cartoon figure that had begun as a drawing on the bottom of a Christmas card to a childhood friend and evolved into a morning staple that held regular meetings with people over cereal and milk every day in thousands of houses across America. After all, Traci on the Spot could be viewed as her alter ego, which, at times, was exactly what she was.

  Like now.

  But lately, Daniel had gotten so busy he’d stopped reading anything but the morning headlines of the Times. His thriving practice had almost doubled in the past year and he was talking about taking on yet another partner.

  Still, you never knew. Murphy’s Law being what it was, he just might be feeling guilty and make a point of reading her strip.

  “I don’t want to hurt his feelings,” Traci continued, using the dog she had saved from certain execution more than six years ago as a sounding board. She turned in the swivel chair to face the animal. “It’s just that Traci is overwhelmed by Donald’s proposal and, see, she thinks the ring is going to swallow her up.” To prove her point, Traci held up the drawing for the dog to view.

  This time, Jeremiah didn’t even bother to lift his head.

  He was probably used to the sound of her voice droning on in the background, she thought with a sigh.

  The advantage of working out of her house was that she wasn’t chained to a desk or a clock. She could come and go as she pleased, and if she felt like getting up in the middle of the night and working on a strip in her pajamas, there was no one to tell her not to. The downside was that there wasn’t anyone to talk to, to use as a real sounding board for her ideas.

  Oh, sure, she could always call into the office and talk to Matthew.or Jill in the art department. But having to listen to a metallic voice offer her selections from a menu before she could get through to either of them took away some of the spontaneity from the situation.

  And she was nothing if not spontaneous.

  So why didn’t she just jump at this chance to become Mrs. Daniel Thane?

  Traci stared moodily at the small velvet box on the corner of her kitchen counter, where it had sat since Daniel had asked her to marry him last Sunday.

  She blew out a breath and leaned back so far in her chair it almost toppled over. Grabbing the edge of the drawing board, she steadied herself, but not before her pens went flying to the floor, a pointed rainbow scattering all over.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw that the sudden commotion had caught the dog’s attention. Jeremiah came trotting over to investigate. And to sample.

  Traci made a dive for the floor and got to the pens first. “Back. You don’t help with the strip, you can’t eat a pen.”

  Gathering them together, she deposited the pens back into the tray. And then studied the last frame again. The Traci character’s query fit her quirky nature.

  That settled it, she decided. It was going into the paper.

  “Daniel isn’t going to see it,” she told the disinterested dog, more to convince herself than anything else. “He probably won’t have time to see any of them.”

  But Daniel was going to suspect something eventually, she mused.

  The very fact that she hadn’t grabbed the ring from his hand and slid it onto her finger should have given him a clue that she had doubts about their union.

  Traci sighed, dragging both hands through her hair. The blond strands curled around her fingers, momentarily straightening before springing back. What was the matter with her? Daniel Thane was a catch by any definition. A wonderful, kind, loving man who was a doctor, for heaven’s sake. Okay, a dentist, but that was almost as good.

  So what was her problem?

  Her problem, if she were honest with herself, was that she wanted a combination. A mixture of Daniel’s stability and kindness and Rory’s charm. Rory Conway was an unemployed actor who had been in and out of her life before Daniel had ever entered it.

  “Not unemployed,” Rory had maintained with alacrity. “Just between jobs.” He’d been between jobs for a long while. Longer than they had been together. Rory’s main attribute, other than being tall, dark and deadly handsome, was that he could make a woman feel every inch a female in flaming capital letters, from the very tips of her frosted hair down to the edge of her pearl pink polished toes.

  And he didn’t have a nesting bone in his body.

  But Daniel did. All of Daniel leaned toward nesting. Home, hearth, family, that was all he’d talked about this Sunday as she had sat there, holding the velvet box in her numbed fingers, waiting to be struck by that sunny ray of happiness. And waiting and waiting. Daniel said he wanted to take care of her, to fulfill her every whim. And he was even willing to let her think about it before she gave him her answer.

  Guilt nibbled at her. She should be dancing up and down, not wavering like a weather vane in a gale. After all, she did love him. Who wouldn’t? But maybe, just maybe, she didn’t love him enough.

  Still, he was generous, loving and patient. “Can a man get any better than that?” Traci asked aloud.

  Jeremiah, having denuded the rawhide bone of its tan color, moaned mournfully in reply.

  She waved her hand at him and huffed. “What do you know?”

  Pronouncing the strip completed, Traci scribbled her signature in the corner of the last frame and then sighed. Another week’s work put to bed. Though she was completely scattered about everything else in her life, when it came to the strip, that was a different matter. There she adhered to schedules and deadlines as if her life, and not just her livelihood, depended on it. It was, at times, as if Traci on the Spot reflected her very soul.

  “Beats lying on a couch one hour a week,” she assured Jeremiah, who couldn’t care less. He was settling in for a nice nap in the middle of a warm sunspot pooling on the tile floor.

  Very carefully, she slid the strip into her portfolio along with the others she’d completed. That done, she glanced at the pile of mail on the counter. She’d been bringing it in steadily from the mailbox since Monday, but the stack had gotten no farther than her kitchen. She hadn’t opened any of it. Most of the envelopes probably contained bills, anyway. Those she allowed to marinate.

  The rest were undoubtedly ads and would only go into the recycle bin. No hurry for that, either. But since she was finished with her work, she thought she might as well make a stab at cleaning, and sorting letters was the least heinous of the annoying chores that faced her.

  Traci slid onto the kitchen stool and picked up a handful of mail. She began sorting, tossing envelopes into piles like a dealer at an Atlantic City gambling table.

  “Bill, bill,” she read, tossing, “ad, petition, pleas for contributions, catalog, bill.” It was sad how the bills seemed to outnumber everything else. She shook her head as she continued tossing envelopes onto the uneven piles. “Letter.”

  Traci paused as she turned the long envelope over. The return address was embossed and in script. Morgan Brigham. Why would Morgan be writing to her? It wasn’t Christmas.

  Curious, Traci tore open the envelope and quickly scanned the short note inside.
/>   Dear Traci,

  I’m putting the summerhouse up for sale. Thought you might want to come up and see it one more time before it goes up on the block. Or make a bid on it yourself. If memory serves, you once said you wanted to buy it. Either way, let me know. My number’s on the card.

  Take care, Morgan

  P.S. Got a kick out of Traci on the Spot this week.

  Traci folded the letter, then looked down at the card in her hand. He read her strip. She hadn’t known that A feeling of pride silently coaxed a smile to her lips. She always got that happy-shy reaction when she found out people read Traci on the Spot.

  After a beat, the rest of his note seeped into her consciousness. He was selling the house.

  The summerhouse. A faded white building with brick trim. Suddenly, memories flooded her mind.

  Skinny-dipping in the lake when she was five until her mother and her aunt had ordered her and her cousin Adam out of the water. Morgan had told on them. She got even by putting a spider in his bed. He absolutely hated spiders.

  Long, lazy afternoons that shone through bright green leaves and felt as if they would never end.

  Morgan—his long, lanky body covered with red bumps—biting his lower lip as she applied globs of calamine lotion to his arms and back.

  Other memories winked in and out of her mind like fireflies with a mission.

  He was going to sell it. Or his parents were. Traci wondered why her mother hadn’t told her anything about this. Julia Richardson still remained in touch with Eva Brigham. Friends for thirty years, they lunched together once a month. Talk of the sale must have come up. Why hadn’t her mother said anything?