Note: Over three days, I will be publishing excerpts from my upcoming romance novels. Each of these stories is set in a different exotic locale and features themes of romance, love, passion, lust, and amorousness. You can find them in a supermarket or airport book store near you.
Workin’ down at the mine, a man don’t got a whole lotta time for the finer sex. Most always, I wake with the rooster and go to bed with him too, if only because I like a chicken to keep me company while I sleep. By the time I clock outta the shaft, there ain’t enough daylight for me to go out hunting for broads, so I keep a pretty lonely life.
All that changed the day the gender barrier was broken in the coal mining industry. Most of the company town had their long johns in a twist over there being a lady in the mines, but I was too busy being tired and busy to give much of a hoot. So long as she didn’t dig my coal or turn the company on to the fact that my picket fence is two feet beyond my property lines, she was alright by me.
The first time I laid eyes upon the broad was in the company store. We were both buying rice and beans using our commissary slips. Like I said, I didn’t think much about her being in town. Only queer thing was, this lady coulda been in pictures if she had her druthers. Made no sense havin’ a girl all gussied up like that breaking her back down in the mine. But, my job ain’t to make decisions. My job’s to mine coal.
That fateful mornin’ I woke up just as I always do. My rooster crowed and my crow roostered and I popped outta bed. I thought about taking a shower, but decided it’d be a better use of the hot water to make me some coffee. I put on my uniform and took my lunch and helmet and headed down to the mine. Turned out, the new girl would be in my shift. Some of the boys in my shift were fixin’ to make a pass on her, but let me tell you, I fell out of the ugly tree and hit every stick on the way down. Figured I didn’t have half a lick at taking her to some honky-tonk or nothin’, so I just hunkered down and got down to my work.
By the time we was down in the shaft, it was hotter than a Rolex in a pawn shop. Everybody in the crew got down to cracking ore, but it appeared the new gal was having some trouble. Now, I ain’t so high cotton I can’t help out a coworker, so I shuffled on over to give her a hand.
“What’s a honey as purdy as you doing down in a coal shaft?” I asked her.
“Hell, same thing you’re doing down here, trying to catch a buck,” she said.
“You mind if I gave you a hand? Looks like you ain’t got a whole lotta experience yet,” I said.
The more I looked at her, the more I liked. Her eyes were dark as coal, her hair was black as coal, her skin was getting covered in coal dust, but her heart was clearly not of coal. Every time she looked up at me, my heart shot up like the mine elevator and I wanted to sing like a canary. From then on, our love burned like a coal-fed fire. I never heard of a solar panel doing nothing like that.
The Lighter Side of the Moon 
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