The Man Cave Collection: Manservant, Man Flu, Man Handler, and Man Buns

by Ryan, Shari J.

  Liam stands up from the mound of sand he’s been sitting on and makes his way over to me, taking a seat in the empty chair next to mine. “He’s pretty fucking happy,” Liam says.

  “So are you,” I say, looking at him with contentment, only because I told him to do this a month ago.

  “Yeah I am, but not just because of Dylan,” he says.

  “Because of Sam?” I ask.

  “Because of you, Jules.” My heart is beating hard for him. I was so afraid he’d hurt me, but he’s restored my faith in his pretty-man kind.

  “Well, I feel the same way, except for getting a Ben Wa ball stuck—” He places his finger on my lips, preventing any more words.

  “Julia,” he whispers while leaning in toward me. “As hard as this is to believe, I’ve never said what I’m about to say . . . to anyone before tonight.”

  “Liam,” I mutter with a hitch to my breath. Where is he going with this? I don’t know if I can take another surprise today.

  “Shh,” he hushes me with a gentle smile. “Julia, I’m falling in love with you. You’ve woken my soul up, made it feel alive, and I’ve never wanted to spend so much time with someone in my entire life. I’ve never looked forward to seeing a person after going just hours without seeing them. I love everything about you and now that I know you’re hanging around the area for a while, I can’t wait to see what happens between us.” He lets out a lungful of air as if everything he said had been pent up and exploding inside of him. “I know I told you I’d make you fall in love with me, but I guess I was the one who fell into my own trap.” He grins at his joke, and I don’t think my face has any type of emotion written on it because I’ve never felt this way about anyone before either. It’s new and I wondered if it was love or just lust, but it’s everything, except for the balls thing . . . that’s not part of this.

  “As much as I hate to tell you you’re right, Liam, you were.” It is hard to admit I might have been wrong about all hot men being assholes, so it’s a good thing I don’t have to admit to it. Liam can be an ass, but it turns out, I’m attracted to assholes . . . err. Wait, no. I’m attracted to men with a domineering side equal to the one I have—we’ll go with that. Men shouldn’t be assholes, but they can be rough and sexually aggressive, while also showing an unexpected sweet side. That’s hot.

  “What was I right about?” Liam asks.

  “I couldn’t help falling in love with you too. It just kind of happened,” I tell him.

  “Oh, I bet it was when I licked your—”

  “Please, stop,” I laugh.

  That’s not what you said then,” he whispers, seductively, as we both laugh.

  He leans forward and kisses me softly as the sky lights up with multiple explosions of beautiful colors. He smiles against my smile and tucks my hair behind my ear as he grips me tightly. “I really do love you,” he whispers into my mouth. “I love you so much, I’d willingly be your personal manservant for life.”

  “Careful what you offer,” I tell him. “I’ve recently been considering hiring one because I just need to be fanned sometimes.”

  “I don’t fan,” he says. “I clear out cobwebs, lick things clean, and sponge down dirty areas.”

  “Perfect. You’re hired, my manservant.”

  A YEAR LATER

  “You missed a spot,” I tell Liam.

  His head falls to the side and he dunks his sponge into the bucket of water he’s been using to clean the bathroom floor.

  “Did you come in here just to annoy me?” he asks.

  “Yup,” I reply with a devious grin.

  He stands up from his spot and grabs me by the wrist, pinning me against the wall as he presses the sponge onto my exposed neck. The water dribbles down the inside of my white shirt, and this is exactly why our house will never be as clean as Sam and Daniel’s.

  “I thought you were busy cleaning,” I tell him.

  “I just found something a little dirtier that needs to be cleaned first,” he utters into my ear, fueling every one of my nerves into excitement.

  “Oh yeah? What’s that?” Knowing full well what he means, I slide down to the ground of the bathroom, finding this place to be a spot we frequent often.

  Liam pulls me back up to my feet, though. “Oh, do you have a better idea?” I ask in my sultry voice.

  He falls to his knees with the sponge and cleans a spot on the tile, but reaches into his back pocket at the same time, pulling out a long rectangular suede box.

  “A new toy?” I ask with excitement.

  “You can call it that,” he says.

  Liam drops the sponge and dries his hands off on his pants before opening the box. I can’t even imagine what it is this time. I feel like we’ve purchased the whole catalog we have hidden in our top dresser drawer.

  He opens the box and pulls a rag out of his other back pocket.

  “Oh my—”

  Liam drags the rag gently over the beautiful ring and looks up at me. “There, now it’s clean.”

  “Liam?” I gasp.

  “Jules, I love you more than I can comprehend some days and I would happily clean every square inch of this entire world if it meant I could spend the rest of my life with you. Let me be yours, let me take care of you, let me always make sure your world is sparkling.”

  “You really want to be my manservant for life?” I giggle through tears.

  “I’d do anything for you. Anything.” He’s more serious than I’ve ever seen him and my heart swells with happiness.

  I fall to the ground with him, wrapping my arms around his neck. “You’d really do anything for me?”

  “I would—I will.”

  “So, will you be the cover model on my next book?”

  He sighs and scratches at the back of his head, while glancing at me with his gorgeous eyes. “Only if I can be shirtless while holding a feather duster,” he easily agrees.

  “Then yes, I will marry you. I will spend every day making things dirty so you always have something to clean, especially if you always do it with your shirt off.”

  “Wait,” he says, holding his hands between us. “Can you title this book: Manservant?”

  “You want it to be our story?” I ask, wondering if he’s joking.

  I don’t wonder for long, though, as doesn’t crack a smile. “Yeah, I think we have a story worth telling,” he says, placing his hands on my cheeks.

  “Me too.” With laughter echoing between the bathroom walls, Liam pulls me in and kisses me senseless, making my toes curl just like he did during our very first kiss and every other kiss in between.

  When our lips part, he slides the ring on my finger and squeezes my hand gently. “Thank you for making me a happy person, Jules.”

  “Thank you for being a good man—a hot, good man. I didn’t know your type existed until I met you.”

  “That’s because there’s only one manservant.”

  “And you’re all mine.”

  * * *

  There was a time I had it all wrong and couldn’t figure out men, but what I’ve learned is . . . if we don’t go through the assholes first, we’ll never know what’s on the other side.

  If you enjoyed the heat and banter between Liam and Julia, make sure you meet Hannah, a newly divorced mom and career woman who hasn’t made much time for herself until a retired pro baseball player, Logan, strolls into her office for a temporary job. When the man flu interrupts a budding romance, things get ugly … but Hannah might just be the perfect cure for the incurable. [One Click Here To Start Reading!]

  * * *

  THANK YOU!

  To authors, reviews are like our fuel, so if you wouldn’t mind leaving a few quick lines for me (even just a few words <3 ), I would greatly appreciate it.

  * * *

  I’m so grateful you took the time to read Manservant. I hope you enjoyed it! If you need more comic relief in your life, make sure you continue reading to see what else The Man Cave has in store for you.

  Man
Flu and Man Handler!

  * * *

  _______________________________________

  MAN FLU

  _______________________________________

  One Year Ago

  “I now pronounce you officially divorced,” I say while staring at the bathroom mirror. “You may kiss your reflection, since that’s the only person you know you can trust, and live happily ever after with.” That’s all I have for a self-help pep talk on this lovely occasion today. No one else knows about the divorce, so I can’t even go celebrate or anything. Time to buy a new vibrator, I guess.

  In any case, I’ve kept this to myself because if anyone were to ask Rick about the split, he’d inform them I was 50 percent at fault because I wasn’t as horny as the twenty-five-year-old he found on Tinder. When I start sharing the news with mutual friends or our extended families, Rick’s story will come out, and I don’t want anyone to know how often I avoided sex with my sleazeball husband. He thought his porn addiction should be a turn on, but it wasn’t my thing. The different scents of perfumes he would come home smelling like didn’t help either. I had no idea who else he was sleeping with, but I assumed it was a common occurrence.

  Before Rick tried to explain his side of the story—how his infidelity and ensuing divorce were partially my fault, I wanted to put an announcement in the newspaper, so everyone knew not to address me as “Mrs.” or wonder why I have a big white indent on my left ring finger. It would be like a wedding announcement, but the opposite.

  I was about to get to it, but then I remembered that announcements are typically written in third person to make it sound like someone cares enough about them to make a formal statement in the name of love. Come on, no one cares that much. If I remember correctly, I wrote ours, and it was something like: “Congratulations to Rick and Hannah Pierce on their recent nuptials. May they be happy and in love for all their days together.” So, because I was lame enough to write my own announcement back then, now I have to undo it and say (as if I’m someone else talking for me, of course): “Condolences and congratulations to Rick and Hannah Pierce on the event of their divorce. After ten long years of bliss, or hell together, depending on which one of the couple you’re talking to, Rick was caught cheating on Hannah. Since there are always two sides to every story, we wish the newly divorced couple the best of luck being single, lonely, and washed up, and eventually wrinkled, forever. Unless you’re Rick, of course, since he’s already moved the hell on.”

  Since I decided against the divorce announcement in the newspaper, I feel like I’ve come a long way, maturity wise. Instead of a public mortification, I opted to drop a laxative in Rick’s coffee this morning, hand him his last box of crap, and tell him to get out of my life, and my house too … I won that part. Then again, we’re talking about a habitable box filled with ten years of memories—memories that should all be burned inside of a flaming bag of shit and left on the doorstep of wherever he ends up.

  I’m not bitter. I’m thrilled to start my life over at thirty-two with a toddler in tow. There are going to be men knocking my door down once the word gets out that I’m single. Although, it’ll probably just be the police because hopefully, someone will realize I haven’t been seen in months. Other than that, I’ve got this all figured out. I’ll quit my job, learn how to homeschool when it’s time, order all household items and groceries from Amazon, and request that their new drone thing drop off my deliveries so I don’t have to see anyone. If I request that my goods are delivered to the back porch, I won’t even have to open the front door. The best part is, I can eat like shit, wear yoga pants but never work out, and avoid all human contact with friends who want to gush about their amazing marriages and how hungry their sexual appetite is after so many happy years.

  My therapist said that the first day of divorced life will be the worst. Well, I think I’ve already made some great strides toward my new future today.

  Shoot, I forgot to add something to my list of things that need to be thrown out. My phone. It’s a part of the cleansing portion of starting over. The damn phone is blaring N’sync’s “Bye Bye Bye,” and I wish whoever is calling could hear the ringtone instead of me.

  I answer because I need to adult, even though I’m on my way to not adulting anymore. “This is Hannah,” I answer.

  “Hannah, it’s Alan. I just wanted to make sure you’re going to be rejoining us tomorrow? I realize you are finalizing your divorce today, but there are some pressing issues we need to go over if you can make yourself available.”

  Alan Mole is the wonderful CEO of the company that employs me. He’s the one who cuts the checks for my salary, the one used to calculate my percentage of earned alimony and child support, so I’m screwed if I leave my job. At least it’s me getting screwed this time and not some twenty-five-year-old chick, but this does put a kink in my great plan. “Yeah, Alan, I’ll be there with bells on tomorrow.” I hang up and switch to the Words With Friends app, waiting for the next victim to experience my nasty wrath of rude words. It’s what I consider to be therapy, so I suppose throwing my phone out wouldn’t be the best idea, after all.

  Dickle15 would like to challenge you to a game. Do you accept?

  Dickle? Sure, why not? How do people come up with these horrible usernames, or find me, for that matter? Maybe I should have been more creative than HannahP84.

  Dickle starts the game with the word, shatter. Nothing like starting a game with a seven-letter word. It’s on, Dickle. It’s on. You picked the wrong player this time.

  I continue the game with the only word I have to play at the moment. Ironically, it’s the word heart, and so begins another funny episode of “Karma’s Picking on Hannah.”

  This will all get easier.

  It will get better.

  Whatever goes down, must come back up.

  Oh, and karma will eventually figure out its got the wrong person, Rick. Just wait.

  * * *

  CHAPTER ONE

  365 Days Post Divorce

  As a little girl, I was told to study hard, get good grades, go to college, get a decent job, find a nice man, and have a family. My dad told me it would make for the perfect life, and I would be set up for success.

  Like a good daughter, I listened. I did everything he said to do, but there were some things he forgot to mention, like the moments that grow in between those life goals and then sprout into the form of ugly weeds—the ones that don’t tear out of the ground without some plant killer. Except plant killer won’t work on an ex-husband, or would it …?

  “Good morning, boss-lady,” Brielle sings as she follows me down the row of cubicles and into my office.

  My office. Alan, the old-fashioned kind of businessman, and my company’s CEO, shockingly offered me a promotion to the Director of Marketing position earlier this year after I laboriously trudged through the Manager title, levels one through five, even though there are only supposed to be three levels. In any case, it made me feel like I could check off the box next to “successful career.”

  “Good morning, Brielle, how was your weekend?” I sometimes live vicariously through Brielle’s weekends because she’s in her mid-twenties and living it up. She has very different goals in life, which makes me wonder if my dad might have been wrong about the certain path that would lead me to success and happiness.

  Ever since I got my first Cosmo magazine in the mail when I was fifteen, I’ve had a thing for the publishing industry and dreamt of snagging a job in New York City, working for one of the big, women’s magazines. I imagined a tall, glass building and lots of high-class people walking around all day. I might have watched too many movies in the nineties and got my hopes up too high because some of the choices I made in my twenties got in the way of my dream. I couldn’t give it up completely, though, so I settled for a smaller magazine here in the suburbs of Massachusetts. I mean, I’ve got my own office, so it’s something.

  It’s also pink, like baby-girl pink. It was a joke—a high five by a c
ouple of my male co-workers, for being upgraded to an office. I love jokes … if they’re executed properly. However, I’ve been finding it difficult to work for a woman’s magazine while being one of only two women in my department.

  “My weekend was fab. First, on Friday night, Adam and I went to Via and met up with some friends. We totally closed down three different bars that night. I don’t even know how it was possible, but clearly, it was.” She sweeps her hair to the side, and I can’t help but watch as each strand falls perfectly back into place. “I was wiped out on Saturday, so I slept until abouuuuut, I don’t know … elevenish? I got manis and pedis with the girls, then had lunch with my old college roomie.” She takes a breather because she’s been talking for a minute straight, but I know she isn’t done. “You know, it’s seriously getting dark out way too early. I can’t deal. Anyway, Adam and I hit up Boston for the night and spent the night at a mod hotel, which was super chic. You should totally check it out sometime. We went to bed wicked early for some reason,” she said with a wink, “but I just couldn’t make it past three that night. I must be starting to break down in age. Gosh, I don’t know how you function in your thirties.” I’ve learned to ignore Brielle’s lack of a filter. It’s great for honesty, no so much for modesty.

  “Wow, that sounds like a busy weekend,” I tell her. “Are things better with Adam, now?” Her six-month relationship has been on the rocks, and I guess this weekend was supposed to be a make-it-or-break-it situation.

  “Eh, we didn’t really have a chance to talk too much.” I’d ask how that’s possible, but I know how it’s possible. I just really don’t care to hear it. I preferred other activities besides talking at one time … back when.