Five for Friday
Today’s Five for Friday are from Assume the Positions. Though I always try to incorporate humor into my books, this was my first attempt at romantic comedy. I had a lot of fun with the characters. Hope you’ll give it a try if you haven’t already. It’s part of the Cougar Challenge series at Ellora’s Cave and, believe me, I was so incredibly honored when they asked me to join them for these stories!
Chapter One
Rachel Bridges stared at the computer screen and sighed. She was generally a happy-go-lucky kind of girl, but lately she couldn’t fight back the brief spurts of depression that plagued her.
Since her friend Monica had issued that ridiculous dare—Cougar Challenge, she called it—more than a few of her online pals had actually gone out and found themselves younger men. Crap, a couple of the girls had actually hooked up with two younger men. Her friends were turning out to be fearless and adventurous, and Rachel couldn’t help but be envious as she read about their sexual liaisons on the Tempt the Cougar blog they’d created together.
She’d met all but one of the women at RomantiCon, a conference for erotic romance novel fans. In one weekend, she’d formed a tighter bond with these women than with any friends she’d made in all of her thirty-seven years. Besides their shared love of hot books, they’d really connected personally as they shared their struggles to cope with the harsh realities of getting older. They’d been a godsend for Rachel at a time when loneliness and her own mortality had begun kicking her in the ass on a daily basis.
She clicked on her IM list, grateful to find Autumn online. Since buying a ranch on eBay and finding the hunkiest cowboy in Texas, her friend had been on the blog less and less. Having too much great sex all the time was clearly cutting into Autumn’s computer time. Bitch.
Rachel: Hey.
Autumn: What’s up, buttercup?
Rachel: My life sucks.
She was aware she was whining, but she didn’t care. She was PMSing and the damn vending machine ate her last three quarters without giving her the Milky Way she wanted. Now her hip hurt from beating the machine and the stupid son of a bitch was still dangling there, taunting her from across the room.
Autumn: Why?
Rachel: I’m never going to be able to complete Monica’s challenge. There’s no way I can find a younger man to sleep with me. Hell, I can’t find an old man to have sex with.
She’d never been into the club scene and she basically sucked at flirting. In fact, the entire concept of using her feminine wiles to attract the opposite sex struck her as downright silly. The few times she’d gone out to bars, she’d spent the entire time laughing at the antics of other women as they attempted to hook up. Her bizarre sense of humor clearly overshadowed every girly personality trait she possessed.
Her mother viewed her lack of relationships differently, saying she was far too practical for her own good and teasing her good-naturedly about the fact there wasn’t a romantic bone in her whole body. There was probably a basis of truth in both theories.
Autumn: Men would love to sleep with you. You’re pretty, successful, funny. Oh hell…where are you, sweetie?
Rachel stared around at the empty physical therapy office where she worked and grimaced.
Rachel: Work.
Autumn: That’s what I thought. Get the hell out of there. It’s Friday night. Get dolled up and hit a bar.
Rachel: I can’t. I have a client coming in.
Autumn: Dammit, Rach. You’re not even trying to find a guy. I hate to break it to you, but you aren’t going to find Mr. Right by hiding out at work all the time. You’ve got to get out there and take some chances.
Rachel: I know, but hitting the pick-up scene again is just too damn depressing.
Autumn: I really think this lack of confidence is your ex-husband’s fault. You’re letting him win.
Rachel: Voldemort already won.
Autumn: LMAO. He’d shit himself if he knew that’s how you referred to him.
Rachel: Truth hurts. Besides, can you blame me for being trigger shy? My whole life has been one big fucking cliché. Worked my ass off to support the shithead so he could attend medical school then dump me.
Autumn: He didn’t deserve you.
Rachel: No, apparently he deserved his twenty-something blonde nurse. You do realize the only way I’m going to get the image of them screwing in our bed out of my mind is to scratch my eyes out.
Autumn: At least you kicked the bum out on his ass.
Rachel: Wasn’t much of a kick. He wanted her, so he left. Catching them in the act just saved him the trouble of telling me.
After she’d divorced her husband, Rachel had pursued her own dreams, going back to school to work toward her physical therapy degree. For nearly six years, she’d managed to work herself into oblivion in hopes of avoiding the concept of “getting out there”. During the stressful time after her divorce, she’d turned to erotic romance as a means of escape. Curling up in bed with a hunky fictional character was a hell of a lot easier than dealing with a real flesh-and-blood man.
Autumn: Christ, Rachel. Don’t you miss hot, sweaty, set-the-sheets-on-fire sex?
She rolled her eyes. The only man she’d ever had sex with—her ex-husband—had made reading the changes in tax laws seem exciting in comparison.
Rachel: Hard to miss what you never had.
Autumn: All the more reason to get out there.
Rachel: Yeah. I guess you’re right. Thanks for the pep talk.
Autumn: Is that what this was? Because, sweetie, you don’t seem much peppier. Guess it’s a good thing I never went out for cheerleading in high school. Of course, with my lack of hips, I’d have spent the entire time cheering with that little skirt around my ankles. Nothing to hold it up.
Rachel grinned. Even through IMs, Autumn always managed to make her laugh.
Rachel: Talking to you always helps. Give Mitch a kiss for me.
Autumn: I will. Bye, sweetie.
She closed her computer rather than go back to the Cougar blog. Tonight, listening to all her friends chatter about their fun lives just deepened her depression. Hearing them talk about overcoming their problems and finding their dreams left her to wonder if there was something seriously wrong with her. She’d been dragged along with the Cougar Challenge and now they were expecting her to go out and have a fling with not just a man, but a younger man.
Shit.
She’d never be able to do that. She was too sensible to go around flirting with younger men who in all likelihood wouldn’t even notice her pathetic efforts. She was more the gal-pal type than the “pick up a stranger in a bar” sort of woman.
She pulled out the tatty notebook she always carried with her and flipped through the pages until she found the list she was looking for. She’d started keeping lists back in high school and the habit had never gone away. Once she filled a notebook, she bought a new one, loading the pages with list after list on every subject under the sun. In the beginning they were a way to stay organized. As she got older, they’d begun to also serve the purpose of reminding her of various things as she tended to be more forgetful.
She found the page she was looking for and scanned her pitiful list of potential younger men once again. She’d been keeping a running list since the night Monica issued the challenge, adding and marking out names for months. Unfortunately, the list was as pitiful now as it had been when she’d started it. There were currently seven names on the page, but four of those had been scratched out for various reasons. The three remaining prospects weren’t exactly thrilling. She leaned her head against her desk chair and fought back a groan. Apparently, she wasn’t cougar material after all.
She glanced at the clock, closed her eyes and sighed. Ethan was late again. Officer Russell was her most disgruntled patient. As a physical therapist, she was used to treating people who preferred to ignore their injuries, who chose instead to carry on with their normal activities without regard for the fact they were doing themselves more harm. Ethan took the award for stubbornness.
For the past eight weeks, she’d worked with him as he recovered from a gunshot wound to his upper leg. If not for the police department’s strict policy on the treatment of work-related injuries, she was certain Ethan would never have darkened her door, and it had taken more than a little bit of convincing on her part to get him to take the exercises and recovery strategy seriously.
If she had any feminine wiles at all, she’d be using the handsome twenty-eight-year-old officer to practice her seduction skills. But her work ethic prohibited her from becoming involved with a patient and her damn practicality prohibited basically everything else in regards to Ethan Russell.
“Whatcha doin’, Doc? Sleeping?”
“Oh shit!” She jumped out of her chair, her heart racing at the sudden sound in the room. She hadn’t heard Ethan walk in. There he stood, six feet four inches of mouth-watering perfection, with wavy dark brown hair and a smile that reduced her insides to utter mush. His hot-chocolate-colored gaze should be registered as lethal as his work-issued gun.
His grin at her alarm was remorseless. “Tsk, tsk, tsk. Napping on the clock,” he teased.
She shook her head and ignored his comment. “You’re late. Again.”
He shrugged, unconcerned. “Caught a bad guy right at the end of shift. Lousy paperwork took awhile.”
Assume the Positions is available at Ellora’s Cave, Amazon, Sony, Barnes and Noble and All Romance Ebooks.
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