by Sandy Lowe
God might be blowing out two thousand years’ worth of candles on his kid’s birthday cake tonight, but he sure as hell made some time to laugh at the mess she was in.
Merry freakin’ Christmas.
Chapter Two
“I’m serious about finding you a Gayle replacement, only attracted to you.” Roxie slid another vodka tonic across the table to Lauren.
“The last thing I need is to fall for someone in Sunrise. You think my obsessiveness is bad now, just wait until it’s love. You’ll never hear the end of it.”
Roxie huffed. “Not fall in love, you idiot, that’s for people over thirty. I’m talking about dating and sex. You know, that stuff other people do?”
“My life’s a hot mess and you want me to start taking strangers out on dates?”
“What’ve you got to lose? May as well put your shiny new rep to good use. And, more importantly, what else do you have to do? You’re staying through the New Year, right?” Lauren squirmed and Roxie nailed her with a wounded look. “Right?”
“Yeah. Mom needs me.” That was putting it mildly, or she would’ve been on the next plane to anywhere.
“So, what’s stopping you? Have some fun. Get I-Like-Penis-Too Gayle out of your system for good.”
“Really, you had to go there?” Lauren scrunched up her face.
“Penis, penis, penis, penis,” Roxie singsonged, laughing when two burly guys with beers glanced over at them.
“Would you please shut up?”
“Not until you agree to a Christmas fling.”
“Now you sound like a made-for-TV movie. I don’t want to date. My shady past doesn’t exactly make me the most eligible bachelorette,” Lauren said.
That stumped Roxie for a second. “Okay, not dating. We’ll give you some time to lick your wounds. What about sex?”
“What about it?”
“How long’s it been?”
“Roxie!” Lauren laughed.
“What? I tell you when I have sex.”
“Yeah, but that’s because you want to. In far more detail than I ever want to know.”
Roxie shrugged. “It’s your duty as my best friend to listen to the details. It’s not my fault you’re gay.”
“A duty I perform with sacrificial heroism.”
“Spill,” Roxie said without sympathy.
Lauren thought about it and mentally eye-rolled at having to search her memory. “Six months ago. The blonde who worked at Macy’s and got me an awesome discount on the dress I wore on Memorial Day. Sophie-something.”
“Oh, I remember her. The I’m-known-for-it girl,” Roxie said.
“I’m known for my phenomenal kissing.” Lauren mimicked Sophie-something’s puckered lips.
“I’m known for being so adventurous,” Roxie chimed in, giggling.
“I’m known for going down on women in the shower.” Lauren shook her head. “Nothing like being told what you should want in bed wrapped in a reminder of all the women she’s ever been with. Aside from that fatal flaw, though, the sex wasn’t that bad. She was pretty good at going down on me.”
Roxie frowned. “You do know wasn’t that bad isn’t a benchmark you should aspire to.”
Lauren just shrugged. She missed sex, but it was a vague, undefined feeling that lacked urgency. More akin to lazy, apathetic melancholy than a genuine desire for mind-melting orgasms. Missing sex was like living on the East Coast and missing sunshine in the middle of January. You knew it was amazing, could recall the way your skin warmed and your spirits lifted, could all but see the blaze in the sky. But, well, it was freaking January, and pining for something that was months away did no one any good. Sex was sunshine, and Lauren’s horizon was dark as night.
Roxie ran her finger around the rim of her glass. “I’m worried about you.”
“I’m fine,” Lauren said, for the billionth time. She’d lost her job, but she was fine. She was down to her last hundred bucks, but she was fine. She was home for the holidays, but she was fine. She hadn’t realized when her life fell apart that she’d spend as much time making other people feel better about it as she did coping with it herself.
“You are so not fine,” Roxie said. “You’re miserable and you need to shake things up.”
Lauren eyed Roxie suspiciously. Roxie was her best friend, her bury-bodies-together, I’d-jump-in-front-of-a-bus-for-you, best-of-the-best, ride-or-die friend. But she was two parts enthusiasm and one part daredevil. In comparison, Lauren was a little old lady afraid to cross the street. “Shake what up, exactly?”
“Your sex life,” Roxie said like it should’ve been obvious. “You need fun, and sexy times, and toe-curling can’t-stop-the-rush pleasure. I’m not taking no for an answer.”
Lauren raised her eyebrows. “Gosh, Rox. Why didn’t you tell me you felt this way? I’d do you in a heartbeat.”
Roxie delivered another of her signature eye rolls. “Not me, and you know it. Plus, if it was me we both know I’d be the one doing you.”
Lauren thought about that for a second, but the image made her brain want to implode so she stopped. All things considered, Roxie probably would want to be the one doing her.
“You want me to take some random girl home?” Lauren asked.
“I want you to take some random girl home and have so many orgasms you see God.”
“God’s a bit busy, today of all days.”
“Sex so good God shows up for it,” Roxie said with enough conviction to make Lauren laugh.
“You’re a weirdo.”
“That’s why you love me.”
Completely true.
“Truth or dare?” Roxie asked.
“Huh?” Lauren said.
“Truth or dare? Or are you too chicken to play?”
Lauren groaned. “Come on, that’s for twelve-year-olds at slumber parties.”
“Okay then, chicken.” Roxie tipped back in her chair and started making exaggerated clucking noises, louder and louder until Lauren worried people would think she was hallucinating.
“Okay, okay, geez. But you go first. Truth or dare?”
“Dare,” Roxie said, just like Lauren knew she would.
Lauren scanned the room for inspiration and landed on Ashton Kutcher. “I dare you to kiss that guy without saying a word.”
Roxie didn’t hesitate. She snagged a cocktail napkin and scrawled on it. Then she was out of her chair and halfway across the room before Lauren had taken her next breath. God, how she wished she had half of Roxie’s confidence. Ashton was standing with his back to a pool table older than time, chatting with half a dozen guys. Lauren knew zilch about what it took to impress guys. She noticed every woman between sixteen and sixty-five within a fifty-foot radius, but guys were just guys. Interchangeable and largely pointless in her world.
In Roxie’s world though, they were cotton candy covered in crack.
Roxie brushed aside the men in her path like they were the pages of a book she was flipping through and zeroed in on her target. She didn’t just kiss him, she went full-on movie star and grabbed his face, pulling him for a lip lock worthy of not just Instagram, but the front page of Us Weekly. If they’d actually been movie stars and not total strangers in the smallest of small towns, that is.
Roxie broke the kiss before Ashton knew what’d hit him, tucked the cocktail napkin into his back pocket, and gave his ass a squeeze for good measure before sauntering back to their table like the twenty feet of beer drenched floorboards was a runway in Milan. “I should definitely do that more often.” Roxie ran the tip of her tongue over her bottom lip. “Guys don’t kiss enough.”
Thinking about kissing guys gave Lauren a really unfortunate mental image of Doug and Gayle doing just that, so she changed the subject. “Bonus points for the paparazzi worthy technique and added flourish of the hair toss.”
Roxie grinned. “Go big or go home. Hopefully, he’s plenty big, and he’ll be taking me home.”
Lauren shook her head. “Your one-night stand pros
pects are much more promising than mine, that’s for sure.”
“Time to fix that. Truth or dare?” Roxie asked.
Tension curled like an angry fist at the base of Lauren’s neck. This was supposed to be fun, she knew that. But fun wasn’t a word she’d associate with her life right now, and the last thing she wanted was another awkward situation in a bar. “Rox.”
“It’s going to be fine.” Roxie wasn’t giving her a chance to back out. “Can’t-stop-the-rush pleasure, remember?”
Lauren sighed. The whole sex thing was overrated. Orgasms were the genital equivalent of a sneeze. Maybe it was impossible to stop the rush once it got going, but in the morning all you had was a foggy head. She had enough to regret already. “I’m not doing this. I appreciate your concern, but this is a terrible, immature idea.”
Roxie folded her arms. “I did it.”
Lauren waved a hand at her. “You wanted to do it.”
“Doesn’t matter. Fair is fair. If you don’t follow through…” Roxie paused as if to consider what heinous fate would await Lauren. “You’ll have to help me serve hot chocolate at the Christmas parade Saturday.”
“Wasn’t that last week?” Lauren had timed her visit so she’d miss the damn thing.
The Christmas parade was a Sunrise Falls tradition, as sacred as the virgin birth itself. In a town where emergency services spent more time rescuing cats from trees and glad-handing for charity than tending to actual emergencies, any excuse for lights and sirens was an occasion you didn’t mess with.
“Too much snow, they had to postpone it,” Roxie said.
“Until after Christmas?” Lauren asked.
“Not the point.” Roxie pointed a finger at her. “You’re stalling. Truth or dare, or hot chocolate?”
“I’m not freezing my ass off for two hours handing out cups of poop-colored water.”
Roxie just stared.
Lauren knew when she was beaten. “Truth.”
“What really happened with James and Caroline? Not what was reported in the media,” Roxie asked.
Lauren closed her eyes as her heart sank into her shoes. She tried her best to ignore the stab of hurt and failed miserably. She’d hoped Roxie wouldn’t go there. All anyone had wanted to do for the last three months was go there. Her whole life had imploded exactly at the intersection of those two names. She’d hoped that of all people, her best friend would understand she didn’t want to talk about it. But, no, nothing was quite as salacious as a full-blown scandal that wasn’t your own.
Lauren would rather freeze her ass off listening to “Jingle Bell Rock” on repeat than replay the moment her life fell apart. Option number two was her only choice.
“Okay, dare,” Lauren said.
Roxie pumped the air with her fist and grinned.
Lauren narrowed her eyes. “You set me up. You knew I’d pick truth, so you asked the one question you knew I wouldn’t want to answer.”
“I’m worried,” Roxie said, as if that made up for it.
“That was low.”
“I’m sorry.” Roxie sounded like she meant it. She squeezed Lauren’s hand. “Now, on to your dare.”
Roxie had the heart of a golden retriever and the attention span of a goldfish. She scanned the room and frowned. Clearly, no one caught her interest. Lauren was relieved right up until Roxie said, “I dare you to sleep with the next woman under the age of forty-five who walks through the door.”
“What? No way.” No wasn’t strong enough. No to the eleventh power.
“Come on, it’s not that crazy. If she’s really awful you don’t have to do it,” Roxie said generously.
“But I only dared you to kiss someone. You’re really daring me to have sex with a woman I haven’t even seen yet?” Lauren asked.
“You need it more than I do. You need to feel good. Get out of your head for a bit.”
Lauren stared at her. “You’re insane.”
“I’m right,” Roxie said with all the conviction of an insane person. “I’m not going to force you to go through with it, if you really don’t want to. But at least see who walks in. Try, okay?”
Lauren could only shake her head. Sex wasn’t going to make her feel better. Rewinding the clock three months, waking up as anyone else, anywhere but here, might help.
But sex? What was the point?
The overly cheery tinkle of bells sounded when the door swung open right on cue, as if Roxie had planned it that way. Despite herself, Lauren’s heart picked up and her palms went damp. This was stupid. She wasn’t actually going to go through with it. Likely, Mrs. Leery from next door would come bustling in for her nightly glass of sherry and Lauren and Roxie would fall all over themselves laughing. Can you imagine?
But it wasn’t Mrs. Leery. It was Emma Prescott.
She frowned. She frowned so hard she could feel her forehead wrinkle. What was little Emma Prescott doing here? Lauren had to search for a solid memory of her. Emma had been in the year behind her at Sunrise High, a wisp of a thing, dark hair and big eyes. She’d been bookish, and shy to the point of mute, all but running away whenever Lauren came within ten feet of her. In fact, Lauren had seen more of the back of Emma’s head than she’d ever seen of her face. Emma’d been…pretty unremarkable. But pretty unremarkable Emma had turned into a very remarkable woman.
The hair she’d used to hide behind now framed her face in a long bob, just touching her shoulders, and so shiny black it gleamed in the overhead light. She was still tiny, but it suited her, her smallness sexy in that way of bodice ripper romance novels, all I-big-and-beefy-You-small-and-trifling. The kids at school used to call Emma Casper for her light skin. Those same girls would be jealous now. She had a complexion Disney princesses dreamed of, as smooth as cream and just as pale. Lauren pushed aside a twinge of insecurity. Emma might be compact, but she was all curves. Soft and supple, and woman in a way Lauren’s taller, lankier frame just wasn’t. Lush. That was it. Lush, and lusciously so. There was no denying it, Emma was hot. Like how had Lauren never noticed before now, hot hot hot.
Roxie waved a paper napkin in front of Lauren’s face. “For the drool that’s trailing down your chin.”
“I’m not drooling.” But Lauren wiped at her chin just in case. Emma Prescott’s sexiness deserved drool. What was she doing at Grumpy’s on Christmas Day?
“No way,” Lauren said. “I’m never going to win the dare with her. It’s a waste of time.”
Roxie tapped a finger to her chin. “I don’t know, you might be in with a chance. She’s a librarian, you know. How’s your Shakespeare?”
Lauren shot her a look.
“Brontë? Dickens? At least tell me you’ve read Jane Austen. Everyone and their mother has a crush on Mr. Darcy,” Roxie said.
“I’m a lesbian. Mr. Darcy has all the allure of burnt toast. Does watching the Jane Austen Book Club movie count?” Lauren asked.
“Did you learn anything in high school?”
Lauren held up three fingers and ticked them off. “French kissing, beer pong, and how to scrape a B minus in chemistry without singeing my eyebrows.”
“Seriously?”
Lauren shrugged. High school had sucked, Roxie knew that. Hell, everyone in Sunrise Falls knew that. Lauren scraped an acceptance to college and was gone before the ink had dried on her diploma. Acing her classes hadn’t exactly been top priority.
Emma greeted the bartender like a long lost relative she actually liked, even hoisting herself up on the counter to kiss his stubbly cheek. She knows the bartender? They chatted for half a minute until a busboy came out of the back with a Styrofoam container and slid it across to her. Emma smiled and Lauren’s breath did a woozy backflip in her throat. Emma was nineteen-fifties pinup girl hotness. When she smiled she was Marilyn Monroe in a Colgate commercial.
“If you don’t hurry up she’s going to leave.” Roxie kicked her in the shin.
“Ow. No, she’s not.” Except, Emma was in fact leaving. She’d turned around with her
mystery container and was heading for the door.
“For Christ’s sake, Lauren, don’t let a girl you’re actually, dare I say obviously, attracted to walk away because you’re too dopey to make up your mind.” Roxie kicked her again for good measure.
Lauren glared at no one in particular. It wasn’t that she couldn’t make up her mind, it was just, it was Emma Prescott. No one was more a hometown hero. More beloved by all she met. Emma was so Sunrise Falls they should’ve made her the mascot. Lauren grinned. A librarian mascot, in a pencil skirt, wielding a ruler. Now there was spirit she could get behind.
She got up to catch Emma before she left. She’d had no intention of delivering on the dare. Sex wasn’t a game. But that was before Emma walked in. Shy, sweet, run-away-from-you Emma had gotten all gorgeous since graduating high school, and suddenly the prospect of sex tonight didn’t seem like such an insane idea after all.
Not when Emma Prescott was the one she’d been dared to seduce.
Chapter Three
Playing nice was getting her nowhere. Emma needed a plan B. Well, actually, at this point more like a plan J, but who was counting. She loved this town the way you love your spouse by your twentieth wedding anniversary. Some days were sunshine and rainbows, and other days you wanted to hightail it to Nebraska. Was opening an e-book lending program so damn space-age no one could comprehend the value? That she had to get the town council’s approval, and that the council comprised a motley crew of octogenarians who didn’t even know what an e-book was, was a pain in her ass. It was Christmas Day and instead of enjoying Christmas crackers and gingerbread, she was rewriting her damn proposal. Why bother calling it a proposal? They should’ve just cut to the chase and called it what it was: a permission slip.
She bumped her shoulder against the door of Grumpy’s trying to push it open without sending her purse and her grilled cheese sandwich dinner to the floor. As the door started to swing, a hand shot out to push it for her, sending Emma stumbling. The arm connected to the hand caught her at the waist to steady her, and a warm body pressed along her side. Emma nearly jumped out of her skin. The scent of ripe tangerines twined around her senses, so exotic, and so out of place she lost her bearings completely.