Title:
SCORPIO’S KISS
Author: MC Domovitch
Publisher: Lansen Publishing
Pages: 588
Genre: Romance
Scorpio's
Kiss is a spell-binding tale of love, ambition and greed that will keep the
reader turning the pages until its surprise ending. Set in New York and Paris amid the glamorous and competitive worlds of art and real
estate, Scorpio's Kiss takes the reader from the late 1940s to the 1960s through
the tumultuous lives of its heroes.
There is
Alex Ivanov, the son of a Russian immigrant and part-time prostitute. He yearns
to escape his sordid life and achieve fame and fortune. His dreams of becoming
a world-class builder are met with countless obstacles, yet he perseveres in
the hope of someday receiving the recognition he craves.
Half a
world away, Brigitte Dartois is an abused teenager who runs into the arms of a
benefactor with an agenda all his own. When she finds out that her boss has an
ulterior motive, she flees again, determined to earn her living through her
art. This career brings her fame, but also the unwanted attention of her early
abuser.
Domovitch’s novel is a compelling
tale, filled with finely etched characters and a superb understanding of the
power of ambition. Scorpio's Kiss promises to resonate with all who once had a
dream.
For More Information
- Scorpio’s Kiss is
available at Amazon.
- Discuss this book at
PUYB Virtual Book Club at Goodreads.
Book Excerpt:
The days were getting shorter. The boy looked up
in surprise at the sky, which had suddenly grown dark. He pulled his worn
sweater tight against the October chill, blew warm breath into his cupped hands
and hurried on. The newspaper bag strung across his shoulders was almost empty.
He no longer had to put it down at every street corner to massage his sore
back. He was almost home.
Alexander Ivanov lived at the end of the world.
To the twelve-year-old, that was exactly what Brooklyn was;
the end of the world. Maybe because the one time he had been to the city, what
he called Manhattan, it had taken forever on the subway.
Alex
hated living in Brooklyn, and never more so than when his mother talked about her
youth in Leningrad with tears running down her face. She would revert to
Russian, which he didn’t understand, but the passion in her eyes spoke more
volubly of the beauty of her old country than words could convey.
Every day on his way back from school, weighed
down by the load of newspapers, he passed the same dusty old stores, their
signs barely legible from the peeling paint; the same ratty tenement buildings
in which people suffocated in the summer and shivered in the winter; the same
old women in their ritual wigs and shapeless dresses, vacant and blank expressions
of hopelessness etched on their faces. Hopeless, that was how he sometimes
felt; and then he would remember Manhattan and feel better. If there was one thing Alex wished for,
it was to live in Manhattan. He yearned for Manhattan the way his mother pined for her old country.
Alex walked along Main Street, where pickles marinated in barrels, salamis swung from
hooks, and sausages dried in their cotton bags. He was oblivious to the sights
and smells around him. One by one, he took the papers from his bag, and with a
quick, experienced motion, he threw them. His aim was almost perfect.
Tomorrow was collection day. He would stop at
each house along his route and wait while his clients went to get their money.
After making change, he would thank each one of them politely even though most
never bothered to leave him a tip. His work would take him more than twice as
long as on normal delivery days. Still, he looked forward to it. Collection day
was when he could go home, count out his profits and decide how much of the
money he could save. This week, if all went well, he might reach the
fifty-dollar mark in his bank account. Fifty dollars! It was a fortune.
He reached into his bag, pulled out the last
newspaper and aimed it with unerring precision at the Kodesky’s front porch. At
that moment the door swung open and old man Kodesky stepped out. The paper flew
through the air like a projectile and landed with a thud in the startled man’s
well-padded stomach.
“Hey, you no-good little piece of shit!” He
waved his fist. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Alex did not hear a
word. He was a million miles away, dreaming of the day he would escape the hell
of living at the end of the world.
Even now, two years later, he could still
remember every detail of his trip to Manhattan. After a long subway ride, he’d emerged in the city
surrounded by skyscrapers so tall, he could only see the top by looking up high
and leaning back. People on the street rushed about in the lightly falling
snow, pushing and jostling each other, their arms full of brightly wrapped
packages. It was one week before Christmas and there was a dizzying feeling of
joy in the air. Alex had been almost drunk from the excitement. This must be
what Leningrad was like.
Deep in his dreams of unlimited delights, he
walked home. Three blocks later, Alex climbed the stairs to the dingy
one-bedroom apartment where he and his mother lived.
Before he was born, his mother had tried to make
the apartment look warm and inviting. She hung pretty paper on the walls and
crisp curtains over the windows. The furniture was inexpensive but attractive
and functional. Whatever nesting instinct had once inspired Marlena Ivanov’s
efforts had long disappeared. For the past twelve years she had done nothing
more to improve her home. Indeed, she had not done even the most basic of
repairs. Over time, the wallpaper had become worn and faded. The curtains lost
their freshness and the once attractive furniture became old and shabby. The
sour stench of poverty clung to the apartment like old dirt.
Alex closed the door behind him and dropped his
canvas bag on the floor. He sniffed the air and wrinkled his nose. From the
kitchen came the smell of boiled cabbage.
“Is dat you Alexander? Vere ver you? Is nearly six o’clock and dinner is been ready for hour,” his mother’s heavily
accented voice called out from the bathroom. “I getting ready to go out. You
vill ave to eat alone.”
Through
the thin door came the sound of the toilet flushing. A moment later Marlena
appeared wearing a tight pink sweater set and a black satin skirt. Her dark
hair was freshly coifed, the marks of the bobby pins still imprinted between
each wave. Her mouth was painted crimson in the shape Joan Crawford had made
popular a decade earlier. From ten feet away the smell of vodka on her breath
was overpowering.
“Will you be coming home by yourself?” asked the
boy suspiciously.
“Vat you vant me to do?” She picked up her purse
abruptly and threw in her lipstick. “You vant to eat. I not do dis for me. A
boy need food to grow big, strong. Someday you understand.” A moment later, she
was gone.
Marlena Ivanov was a bitter woman. She made no
secret of the fact that raising a boy by herself was a heavy cross to carry,
one she deeply resented. Alex sometimes thought his mother hated him almost as
much as she did his father. He had never seen his father. He knew, only because
his mother repeatedly told him, that Pavel Ivanov had been a gambler and a
womanizer. Whatever wages the man had earned, he just as quickly spent on those
two vices. The day Alex was born was the day Pavel Ivanov decided that married
life was not for him. He disappeared, leaving his seventeen-year-old wife to
deal with the struggles of working and raising a son by herself.
After a dinner of cabbage soup, Alex turned off
the lights and climbed under his blankets. In the dark, he could clearly see
his mother’s empty bed a few feet from his own. He turned his back to it and
curled up.
Hours later, the muffled sound of laughter woke
him up. The bedroom door swung open and the light turned on.
“Turn dat off. You vake up boy,” his mother
ordered in a shrill whisper. The light flicked off. “Das better. I like dark.”
She laughed. “Now, come to Marlena.” Clothes rustled. From his cot, in the
corner of the room, Alex guessed every gesture, every movement. Old springs
creaked. The sounds were loud, magnified by the stillness of the night.
Alex covered his ears. By trying hard, maybe he
could keep the noises from reaching him. It was too late. The guilty stirring
in his loins had already begun. His mind swirled in a mix of emotions too
strong for him to understand. Maybe if he thought of something else. Someday
I’ll drive in from the city in a brand new Cadillac. I’ll show them all…
The next morning, Marlena kissed the man goodbye
and turned triumphantly to Alex. “See dis?” She pulled out a ten-dollar bill
from between her breasts. “Dis can buy food for whole week.”
Alex looked away, embarrassed and ashamed, and
returned to the picture he was drawing on the back of his spelling book.
About the Author
Monique
Domovitch has had many careers, starting with being one of Canada’s top models. When she retired from modeling she moved on
to a career in the financial services as an adviser and
planner, specializing
in helping women attain financial freedom. During those years, she was also one
of the first women in
Canada to host her own national financial television show. During
all those years, Monique’s dream was always to someday become a writer. Ten
years ago, Monique attended a writer’s conference where the first line of one
of her novels was read out loud in a workshop, attracting the attention of a
publisher and an agent.
Since
that life-changing conference, Monique Domovitch has published nine books, four
with Penguin using the pen name Carol Ann Martin, two with Harlequin using her
own name, and another two with Lansen Publishing. Scorpio’s
Kiss was previously published as two novels, Scorpio Rising and The
Sting of the Scorpio. Scar Tissue, her latest, is her ninth novel
and she is hard at work on her tenth.
A great believer in the energizing
power of writers’ conferences, she says that if not for that first conference
she attended, she would not be published today.
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