Excerpt: Mail-Order Groom By: Cindy Florez Martinez

Release date: February, 2014

Genre:  Contemporary Romance 

~ What's It About? ~

Lisa is about to marry the love of her life and have the wedding of her dreams, but her world is shattered when she finds her fiancé, Jeff, in the arms of another woman. When he calls the wedding off and struts around town with his new love, Lisa is heartbroken, and she wants revenge. She gets it by marrying a total stranger at the wedding who she found on Mail-Order-Grooms.Com. He’s from Poland, and he needs to marry an American woman so that he can stay in America. He’s willing to pay her money for it. Lisa thinks he’s the perfect answer. It won’t be a real marriage, and her best friend Daphne insists she won’t even have to live with him. Lisa races to the altar with her stand-in groom and says “I do”, but she soon discovers that revenge isn’t as sweet or as simple as she thought it would be. Will she find love in the end?

~ Excerpt ~

     I grabbed the sofa pillow, which was beside me, and dragged it onto my lap to embrace it for comfort. Krzys’s journal fell out from behind it. He had hidden it there and had forgotten it.
 

     I set the pillow aside, reached for it, and opened it to page one.

         Today I saw the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. She walked into the bookstore when I was there. She smiled at me and I felt as if I couldn’t breathe. I felt like I had met her before in a dream. Here is a poem I wrote for her.

         Piękność Twoja (Beautiful You)
         

         I watch you standing in front of me, like a flower glistening with dew,
 

         The sun shines lightly all around beautiful you.
 

         Your smile is like magic, it makes me feel brand new,
 

         I have known nothing better, beautiful you.
 

         I feel you in my heart, a feeling that’s deep and true,

         It’s here for no one else, beautiful you

    My hand trembled as I turned the page and continued reading.

         I saw her again today at the bookstore, the woman I’m in love with. I heard April call her name. I haven’t been able to get it out of my mind. Her name is Lisa.

     Lisa? Was he talking about me? It didn’t seem possible. I couldn’t be the only Lisa that went to the bookstore.
 

     As I read on, I recognized the encounters he described, and I knew I was the one he had written about. He said he always listened to me talking with April and everyone who was at the bookstore, and he fell in love with the person I was. He wanted to talk to me too, but he noticed an engagement ring on my finger, so he kept his distance.
     

     He said he was shocked and confused when Jerzy and Magda told him that they had found a bride for him and that she was me. He couldn’t understand how it had happened. He had planned to return to Poland, but he stayed because he wanted to be with me.
 

     He described the joy he felt at our wedding, the first time he felt my touch, the warmth and softness of my skin, the wonderful scent of my hair, and the first time we kissed.
 

     He was deeply moved when I told him not to give up on his writing. No one had ever cared enough to say those words to him before. He wrote a poem for me that night.

         I wanted to make time stand still,
 

         I wanted to make the moment last forever,
 

         I wanted to stop the sun from rising so we could stay together,
 

         That night I felt like we were the only two people in the world,
 

         And I forgot what heartache meant and what lonely days were.

     I could barely see his words through my tears. He said he read the letters and love notes that I had written to Jeff, which he gave back to me in the plastic storage container. They, more than anything, had touched Krzys’s heart. He wished that I would say words like those to him. He had always wanted the kind of love that I could give. He longed so much to tell me that he loved me, but he didn’t have the courage. He hoped that someday he would.
 

     I wiped my tears and searched the remaining pages. I found a last poem in English, which he said was for me. It was dated that day.

         I thought about you today like I do every day,
 

         I missed having you beside me,
 

         I missed the warmth of your embrace,
 

         The sun was shining outside but all I saw were clouds,

         The sun doesn’t shine in my world when you are not around,
 

         I am like a tree that is withering and dying,
 

         I am like a desert that is thirsting and drying,
 

         My heart is broken and I long for nothing more,
 

         Than to see you and feel you and hold you like before.

     I closed the journal and rose to my feet. Krzys still loved me. It wasn’t over between us. I had to go and find him. I had to tell him that I loved him too.

~ Meet The Author ~

My name is Cindy Flores Martinez. I was born and raised in a suburb of Los Angeles. I have an MFA in Creative Writing with an emphasis in Screenwriting. I have been a screenwriting instructor, screenplay consultant, script reader, and screenplay collaborator.  My debut novel, Mail-Order Groom, which was inspired by my own Polish ancestry, started out as a screenplay and movie project. I spent years shopping it around Hollywood, New York, and other parts of the world and had two well-known actors, one of them Academy Award nominated, interested in portraying the lead character’s parents. After not finding the success I wanted, I officially canceled my film production company in November of 2009 and embarked on the journey of turning my screenplay into a novel.