by Kim Fox
“What should I put under interests?” Hannibal asked.
“Put fucking,” Julius answered. “And getting my dick sucked.”
Hannibal looked at him over his shoulder with a furrowed brow. “I’m going to put reading and watching movies,” he said, turning back to the computer screen.
“Alright,” Hannibal continued. “What do you want in a girl?”
“Curves,” Julius said with a grin. He liked his women big and full of girth, like bear shifters often did. There was nothing like sliding in between two soft legs over a big pair of tits. “She has to be big.”
Hannibal sighed. “I’m going to write, intelligent.”
Hannibal filled out the rest of the profile without bothering to consult Julius. He hit enter and the bar started loading. Finding suitable matches now! was written on the computer screen.
“Are you sure you don’t want to find your mate first?” Julius asked.
Hannibal leaned back in the chair. “I’m sure.”
The computer dinged and four matches popped up. Julius’ eyes locked on one in particular:
Ava King.
His breath felt like it was yanked out of his throat. She was perfect. Blonde with a stunning face and a warm smile. Her light hair fell over her round shoulders and she was curvy and full just like Julius had dreamed of. Actually better than he could have dreamed up.
“Click on her,” he said, mesmerized by the photo. He couldn’t even pry his eyes off her picture to look at the other girls.
Hannibal brought up her page and Julius gasped. Her photo was making him lightheaded. He grabbed onto the back of the chair and read her profile. “She’s in Seatrelle,” he said in excitement. “That’s only a twenty-minute drive from here.”
“I think we found a potential prospect,” Hannibal said with a smile on his face.
No, we found the only prospect.
It was nighttime and a bit too late to call. “I’ll call her first thing in the morning.”
“Still want me to go first?” Hannibal asked with a grin.
Julius bit his tongue. He didn’t. He had to meet this girl. He was planning on getting married to any girl, securing the ranch, and then divorcing her the minute the deed was signed over. But that was changing now that he saw this girl.
This Ava King.
This potential mate.
three
“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit,” Ava said over and over again as she rushed to her car. She cradled her coffee mug in her armpit as she held up her laptop bag while trying to stuff the key into the lock. “I’m so fucked, I’m so fucked!”
“Hi, Ava,” her neighbor Sally called from across the street. Her pug, Maisey, was taking a big heaving dump on the sidewalk. “You’re leaving early.”
Ava rolled her eyes as she yanked the door open. She’s in a good mood for someone about to pick up a handful of steaming dog shit.
“Important meeting this morning,” she said as she threw her laptop bag onto the passenger’s seat and rushed into the car.
“Well, good lu-”
Ava slammed the car door shut. She would give anything for an important meeting instead of what she was about to do.
She threw the car into drive and peeled out of her parking space on the side of the road. Sally waved but Ava just ignored her. She had no time for that.
She blew through the stop sign on her street while she grabbed her phone. Diane the receptionist was always the first one to arrive in the office. She would know if the boss, Mr. Gladwell, was in yet. At least she wasn’t too far from home if he was. She could turn around and crawl back into bed.
She dialed her company’s number and Diane answered on the first ring. “Ackerman Industries,” she answered.
“Diane!” Ava said, burning another stop sign. It was still early and most people were jumping in the showers or hitting their snooze bars for the third time. “It’s Ava! Is Mr. Gladwell in yet?”
“No, he’s not,” she answered. “Would you like me to take a messa-”
Diane hung up and tossed the phone on the seat. Thank fucking God! She was safe for now but he could be arriving any minute and she had to get to the office before him.
She absolutely had to. Or tomorrow she would be driving to the unemployment office instead of driving into work.
“Shit, shit, shit,” she said as she got caught behind a slow driver who insisted on going the speed limit. She honked the horn in frustration. “Move!” Ava screamed at her windshield. “My job is on the line!”
She swerved around the lady who gave her the finger as she passed. “Sorry!” Ava called out even though there was no way that she could have heard her. “I’m not usually such a bitch.”
This was not how she usually drove. She had fucked up big time last night and she was racing to fix it. She had been at the dentist the day before for a root canal on an infected tooth. It had been two miserable hours in the dentist chair but he gave her some strong painkillers to take after that made her feel nice and woozy.
In her giddy state, she decided to ignore the directions on the pill container and she drank three-quarters of a bottle of wine. She was flying on the mixture of alcohol and painkillers and was feeling as high as giraffe testicles. She moved the party onto her couch and she started looking up inspirational quotes on Pinterest. After ODing on quotes such as ‘Life begins at the end of your comfort zone,’ ‘Making a big life change is scary. But no what is scarier? Regret,’ and ‘Quit slacking and make shit happen,’ she decided in her impaired state to call up her boss and leave a message on his answering machine telling him where he could shove her job.
After that, still feeling good and lightheaded, she decided to text Karl, her boyfriend of four months and tell him where he could shove their relationship. Since she was going to start her career fresh she thought that she might as well start her love life fresh as well.
The rest of the night was a blur. She couldn’t remember what she did no matter how hard she tried. Everything was so hazy.
She woke up this morning with a pounding headache, a sore jaw, and nausea swirling around in her stomach. She leaped out of bed when she remembered the phone call, threw on some clothes, flicked on her Keurig, grabbed her makeup bag and flew to the car. She had to get to the office before her boss, Mr. Gladwell, checked his messages. She had no idea how she was going to get into his office and delete it but she could worry about that later. First, she had to get there.
Breaking up with Karl wasn’t too bad. She could talk with him later but it wouldn’t be the worst thing to have him out of her life. He wasn’t very nice and she kept getting the suspicion that he was seeing other women. A guy could only smell like citrus or vanilla so many times before it started to get suspicious.
She turned on the highway and floored it as she reached into her makeup bag. She pulled the cap off her lipstick and tried to apply it as she raced down the empty lane. “Shit!” she screamed as she hit a pothole and the car bounced, sending her lipstick flying up her face.
Shit! She had a red line of lipstick up her cheek when she glanced into the rearview mirror. This day was going from bad to worse and it wasn’t even eight am yet.
She put her makeup away and decided to get to work alive instead. She pulled into the company parking lot a little while later, grabbed her stuff, and ran inside. “Hi Ava,” the doorman said as she sprinted past him. There was a big group of people waiting at the elevators so she took the stairs, running up to the third floor.
She arrived on her floor, huffing and puffing, and sweaty. There was also a coffee stain all over her pants from when she spilled her travel mug on her somewhere around floor two.
Ava burst through the door and walked as fast as she could while still trying to look casual. She headed straight to her boss’ office. Uh oh. The door was open a crack.
She knocked on the door lightly and it slowly inched open under her knuckles. Her boss was sitting behind his desk glaring at her as he held t
he phone to his ear.
“Come and sit,” he said coldly.
She gulped and sat in one of the two chairs in front of his desk. He hit the speaker phone and hung up the receiver. Ava’s drunken high voice rang out in the corner office.
“Mr. Gladwell,” she said, “or should I call you Mr. Not-glad-well?”
Ava cringed as her alter ego from last night laughed over the speaker phone.
“My name is Ava King even though I’m a Queen,” she said, slurring her words and stumbling on her sentences. “I’m better than this job! I’m going to make it! It’s time for me to shine and be the star that I am! Your time holding me back is over, Mister. You can take this job…er my job and shove it up your cute little ass! I’m hungry and I’m going to eat Doritos and you can’t stop me anymore! You suck! I’m going to start my own company and call it Ackerwoman Industries and then I’ll buy your company and throw it in the garbage. Mr. Not-glad-well. So, I quit!”
He hit the speaker phone button off and sat there with his hands clasped on his desk as Ava’s stomach rolled and her head pounded.
“What a lovely way to start a day,” he said in his trademarked stern voice.
“Mr. Gladwell,” she said, leaning forward. “I can explain.”
“Are you a heroin addict?” he asked, looking at her curiously.
“No,” she said. “I took some painkillers and drank some wine. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I had a root canal.”
“I had a root canal once,” he said, “and I never threatened my boss with a hostile takeover of his company.”
Ava sighed and dropped her head. She had worked for Ackerman Industries for five years and she knew that Mr. Gladwell was not the forgiving type. Nor was he the forgetting type. She had flushed her career down the toilet with one phone call.
“Am I fired?” she asked.
He just grinned and nodded.
Ava stumbled out of the office expecting to wake up from her bad dream any minute. She didn’t even stop at her desk. There was nothing there that she wanted to keep. She had a tiny plant but she knew that her friend Cindy would take it and move it to her desk. She could have it. The plant would be better with her.
She couldn’t face meeting any co-workers in the elevator so she took the stairs down. She walked out of the building as everyone was walking in when her ass buzzed. She pulled out her phone from her back pocket and saw a text from her boyfriend Karl.
He had texted: No problem! She gulped as she opened the attached file. It was a selfie of him lying next to a sleeping girl. A thinner, hotter, sleeping girl.
“Fuck!” she screamed and threw her iPhone into the street. It bounced along the cement and landed in the middle of the road.
A bus was barreling down the road straight for it. “Shit!” She screamed when she realized what she had done. She ran into the road and scooped it up as the bus swerved and honked at her.
She huffed a breath as she sat down on a public bench and wiped the tiny gravel off the cracked screen. Little spiderwebs snaked all over the glass that weren’t there a few seconds ago.
She looked at her reflection in the small area of the phone that wasn’t smashed and she saw the lipstick line still running up her cheek. She had forgotten to fix it.
Ava started to giggle and that giggle built and built until she was roaring laughing on the street like a goddamn crazy person. She had sat in front of her boss, begging for her job, with a line of makeup drawn up her cheek. No wonder he didn’t let her keep her position.
She laughed and laughed until her sides hurt and her eyes watered. Her Pinterest quotes would be proud. Here she was with her life falling to pieces all around her and she was taking it all in with a laugh and a smile on her face. Either that or she was losing her mind.
The cracked phone lit up and an unknown number displayed through the spiderwebs. Montana. Who is that?
She braced herself as she answered it. What had her drunken, pill-induced alter ego done now? Buy a house in Montana? Sign up to be a cowgirl?
“Hello?” she asked when she answered.
“Hi!” a smooth voice said on the other line. “Is this Ava King?”
“Yeah,” she said, nervously.
“We were a match on The Bride Guide and I’d like to take you out on a date,” the guy said on the other line.
She scrunched up her nose. “The what?”
“The Bride Guide website,” he said, sounding unsure. “This is Ava King, right?”
The memory was vaguely returning. She had signed up to some sort of Mail Order Bride website or something. How did she think that was going to be a good idea?
“Hello?” he asked when she didn’t respond. The sexy timber of his voice was flooding her body with warmth.
“Yeah, yeah,” she said. “Sorry, the reception is a little bad.”
“Oh,” he laughed. “So, do you want to go on a date?”
His voice was sexy and it was making her heart beat faster. She wondered what he looked like but anyone with a voice that made her nerve endings stir and tingle like they were doing right now had to be a hot one.
“Yeah sure,” she said with a shrug. “My calendar just opened up.” For good.
“Great! How about tonight?”
“Okay,” she said, feeling some of the carefree attitude from last night returning. What did she have to lose, really?
“I can’t wait,” he said. “Do you want to meet in Colwood?”
She frowned. “What’s that a bar or restaurant?”
“Huh? Colwood the town? It’s about twenty minutes from you.”
“Where are you calling from?” she finally asked.
“Montana,” he answered slowly. “You’re in Seatrelle, right?”
She laughed into the phone. She must have been so out of it that she wrote Seatrelle rather than Seattle for her location.
Hey, you’ve gone this far. Let’s take it all the way. Montana was only an eleven-hour drive. She could make it there by dinner if she ran home got her stuff and left right away.
“Are you in Seatrelle?” he asked again.
“I sure am!” she said. “But how about a late dinner?”
four
Ava stepped out of the car on stiff, cramped legs and stretched. It had been a long drive but the scenery had been spectacular and it sure as hell beat sitting around her apartment all day stressing out about her future, or lack of future was more like it.
She had marveled at the dense forests of Washington, gawked at the snow-capped mountains and sang at the top of her lungs to Madonna, Beyonce, and Katy Perry. Every turn of the road had her gasping at the best sights that Mother Nature had to offer and every turn of the radio dial had her squealing in delight and reaching for the volume.
Ava was never one to be sad or depressed for long. She had a lust for life and always liked to look at the positive aspects of life and ignore the negatives. This morning had a few more negatives than usual but look at what she was doing now: driving eleven hours away to go on a blind date with a guy off a creepy website.
She laughed. If anything it would be a good story to tell, provided the guy wasn’t an ax murderer and she was able to survive the whole experience.
The town was cute; Colwood, Montana. It sounded like something written on a postcard, back when postcards were still sent. The town wasn’t much more than a quiet road with some inns, some stores, a bar and a few cute shops for tourists. What made it jaw dropping was the scenic background; The Absaroka white-capped mountains jutted out into the pink sky making her feel like she was on an alien planet. It might as well have been. Montana was another world compared to the city life that she was used to. Out here there was open land that stretched for miles, wild animals, happy people who lived off that land, and maybe, just maybe a new boyfriend for Ava.
Only one way to find out.
She leaned down and glanced into the side mirror of her car. She checked her makeup and everything was looking good. No lipstick line up m
y cheek. Perfect!
She had gotten ready in a gas station bathroom a few miles back and she was feeling pretty good. It was almost nine o’clock and past dinner time so they decided to meet for a drink at the bar in town, cutely named, The Call of the Wild. She wondered if the owner was a big Jack London fan.
She crossed the street and smiled as a couple walked by, both wearing cowboy hats and cowboy boots. Oooh. Maybe my date is a cowboy.
There was a bright neon sign over the door of the bar, which was made of all wood. The bar looked like a slutty wooden cabin.
She took a deep breath and walked in, not knowing what to expect. The bar was pretty full, but not packed and Ava stepped to the side to take it all in. There was a jukebox playing country music in the corner and three really hot guys in the back playing pool. Her eyes lingered on the blond one in the group. He was muscular with a nice smile that came easily and often. He had bright green eyes that shined like jade stones.
The large bartender, a large man with black hair and big biceps, was chatting with a couple who were sitting at the bar drinking scotch. He winked at her when he caught her eye and she smiled.
Ava looked around for a single man with a sexy voice but there was no one sitting alone. She swallowed hard and pulled out her phone. No texts.
Eleven hours was a long way to drive to get stood up. But, if it’s going to happen to anyone it would happen to me. She chuckled. She had been so used to a disappointing dating life that nothing could get her down these days.
She sent him a text, saying: I’m here whenever you’re ready, and waited. Her eyes drifted back to the three hot guys playing pool in the back and her heart sped up as the hottest one with the dirty blond hair leaned over and the sleeve of his black polo shirt rose, showing off his flexed arms as he aimed to take the shot. A tiny moan escaped her lips as she gawked at the deep line of his flexed tricep.