Reality Bytes

by Jane Frances

  But it seemed she had read Heather’s expression incorrectly. Toni found herself flipped onto her back. “You’re gonna pay for that, Ms. Ljanjovich.”

  “How so?” Toni looked up at the woman who straddled her stomach, somewhat impressed that Heather rolled her surname off her tongue so easily—most people she met had to ask for it to be repeated at least twice. At that moment, however, Heather’s pronunciation skills took a backseat to her more physical attributes. Toni watched the bulge of biceps and the pleasing line of taut triceps when Heather lifted her arms to again adjust her twist tie. A healthy dose of lust reared its head. Along with it came her second wind.

  She was ready.

  “Maybe like this.” The muscular arm descended and disappeared behind Heather’s back, her hand probing the space between Toni’s thighs.

  A groan emerged as Heather’s fingers found their target. Another burst forth as she began a slow grind over Toni’s stomach, pace quickening in time with Toni’s undulating hips.

  The bed shuddered and shook. Toni shuddered and shook. She lost her second wind then gained a third. And a fourth. They spent the entire Saturday afternoon in bed. And they stayed there well into the evening.

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  Reality Bytes

  Copyright © 2007 by Jane Frances

  Bella Books, Inc.

  P.O. Box 10543

  Tallahassee, FL 32302

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

  First Edition

  Editor: Christi Cassidy

  Cover designer: Stephanie Solomon-Lopez

  ISBN-10: 978-1-59493-079-1

  ISBN-13: 978-1-59493-079-9

  In loving memory of Virgil

  Acknowledgments

  Sincere thanks to all who provided me with advice, encouragement and support during the writing of Reality Bytes: Aline, Caroline, Don, Elise, Fleur, Joelle, Joey and Lee.

  And special thanks to Christine at Bella Books.

  About the Author

  The daughter of a teacher, Jane was brought up with books from as early as she can remember, and to this day continues her love affair with the written word and its ability to transport the reader to places unknown.

  Jane was educated in the traditional fashion, taking the path directly from school to university and gaining a Bachelor of Business with major studies in Marketing. Her studies took her to the marketing department of a city-based educational institution where she spent over a decade working in a creative and supportive environment.

  English-born and Australian raised, Jane currently lives in France where she is taking every opportunity to absorb the sights and sounds of a culture steeped in history and brimming with romance. Totally inept to master the native tongue, she also daydreams of the day the “neighbors from across the channel” invade, and declare English to be France’s new official language!

  Reality Bytes, the sequel to Reunion, is Jane’s second novel.

  Chapter One

  Emma Walker poked her head around the half open door. “See you in three weeks, Pete.”

  The lone occupant of the storeroom held up his hand. As requested by the gesture, Emma stayed, leaning against the doorframe while Pete finished counting the cans in an open carton of diet food for cats.

  Emma sighed audibly, irked at the activity she was witnessing. Pete was supposed to be on his lunch break but instead was doing the weekly stock-take. Why anyone would select Saturday, typically the busiest day in a suburban veterinary practice, as the day to take inventory was beyond Emma. But then Colleen Wells, veterinary surgeon, recent divorcée and, for the five weeks since taking over the practice, the bane of Emma’s existence, probably wasn’t in her right mind. The woman was hell in high heels—who in her right mind tottered around a vet practice in heels, for goodness’ sake?—and she and Emma clashed almost from day one. Luckily, Emma had booked her impending vacation leave well before the sale of the practice was announced. She was hoping, come the end of her vacation, she’d have another position lined up.

  “All done.” Pete slotted his pen behind an ear, shaking his head as he turned to Emma. “You’re completely mad, you know.”

  “Probably.” Emma knew he was referring to the very large favor she was doing for Tricia, a fellow vet and friend from her university days. Tricia was desperate to attend the upcoming Veterinary Association’s annual conference. She was also very persuasive. Emma crumbled, so now nearly half of her vacation days would be spent working as a locum in Tricia’s practice. Each time Emma kicked herself for being such a pushover, she consoled herself with thoughts of the extra money. Every cent provided that bit more of a safety net if things got to breaking point and she told Colleen to shove her high heels and Saturday stock-takes where the sun didn’t shine. “Here’s a tip for you,” Emma said. “Never, never tell anyone you plan to spend your vacation doing nothing more than pottering ’round the house.”

  “You’re just a big softie, Em.”

  Their hug was swift, friendly. Emma would miss Pete over the next few weeks. Only nineteen, he was mature for his age, and his love of animals evident. He took his position as veterinary assistant very seriously, arriving early for shifts and, as she was witnessing now, even working through his break. Emma knew he felt the same discontent with the new management as she did. She also knew, unlike her, he was already actively job-seeking. Emma decided she’d put in a good word for him with Tricia, probably right about the time she laid out feelers for herself.

  By two p.m. Emma was turning her station wagon into the driveway of her home. She’d made good time. Usually Saturdays saw her working well past her scheduled one o’clock knockoff, but today it seemed the Goddess was smiling down upon her. No emergency presented itself between her good-bye to Pete and the short walk to the back door of the practice so she was able to make a guilt-free getaway. Emma jangled her keys happily as she walked up the path to her front door. Despite having to report for duty at Tricia’s practice on Tuesday, she was in vacation mode. A brilliant sun shone in a cloudless Western Australian sky, and she would be seeing Justine in less than two hours. Life was good.

  The front door was hardly open when a cold nose pressed into her leg.

  “Hello, my beautiful girl.” Emma laughed delightedly at the welcome, despite coming home to the same greeting for over three years. She stood at the entrance, unable to get past the threshold until the ritual was completed. Emma hunkered down to doggie level and ran her hands down the length of Kayisha’s long, floppy, golden retriever ears. “How was your day, Kai?”

  The large golden mass of fur happily woofed in response, excitement at the return of the center of her universe evident in the whole of her body wag.

  “That good, huh?” Emma scratched Kayisha’s ruff and returned to human height.

  Kayisha was at her heels as Emma walked the length of the hallway, jealously pushed her snout into Emma’s hand when Emma called a hello to Malibu and wagged her tail frantically as Emma stripped out of her work gear to don a pair of running shorts and a T-shirt.

  “Come on, girl.” Emma adjusted the harness around Kayisha’s middle, snapped on a lead and slipped a plastic poo bag into the space between fur and the thick leather collar. “It’ll just be a quickie today. Mum’s got to go out again soon.”

  Just under an hour later, Emma hummed softly as she patted herself dry. A hot shower had washed away the perspiration from her run arou
nd the local lake. It also washed away all the veterinary smells of the morning. Once dressed in fresh jeans and T-shirt, she left her bedroom in search of Malibu, at last in a state deemed suitable to say hello.

  “Hi there, Mal.” Emma plopped onto the couch next to the six-year-old Burmese and held her hand out to be sniffed. On the subsequent passing of inspection—Emma had long ago figured there was no point trying to go near Malibu while she still smelled liked a menagerie—she picked up the black bundle for a cuddle. Most days Emma would be rewarded with a purr, but today Malibu was having none of it, wriggling from Emma’s arms and shooting a dismissive stare as she padded away, tail held high.

  Emma watched Malibu disappear into the kitchen, getting the distinct impression she had just been treated to a brown eye. Obviously she had not yet been forgiven for the worm paste administered that morning.

  Emma gave Kayisha a quick stroke as she headed toward the front door. “See you soon, Kai.” With Kayisha’s doleful look, Emma stooped to give a lengthier pat. “Don’t worry, girl. I’ll be home to give you dinner.”

  Although, Emma thought happily, if all goes well, it’ll just be a quick stop home on the way back to heaven.

  Heaven was located just a few doors away. Eighteen months ago an angel had arrived in Emma’s street, and Emma had been knocking on heaven’s door ever since.

  The angel came in the form of Justine. Dear, sweet Justine, arriving in a cloud of black smoke, her old Celica barely making the journey from her previous home on the south side of the river, the other side of Perth. A loud backfire had diverted Emma’s attention from her watering of the pot plants on her front veranda, and curiosity at her potential new neighbor held her attention as the Celica drew up outside the empty house a few doors down. Only minutes after the Celica shuddered to a stop, the new-neighbor theory was confirmed. A removal van pulled into the red concrete driveway and two men swung open the van’s doors to begin spewing forth its contents.

  Emma had steered clear of the house’s previous occupant, a little weasel of a man with a very bad case of halitosis and a gaze that couldn’t lift above chest height. From her current vantage point, however, Emma could quite plainly see New Neighbor was neither weasel-like nor male. She was too far away to tell if New Neighbor also suffered halitosis, but a quick appraisal told Emma it was unlikely. New Neighbor looked a good few years younger than Emma’s thirty-six years and she had the waif-like appearance of the infamous actress, Winona. New Neighbor displayed a pert little denim-clad bottom as she leaned into the passenger side of the car to tug at an overflowing cardboard box. She cursed a loud “Shit, shit, shit!” as a lamp base dislodged from the top of the box and dangled by its cord, dangerously close to smashing distance of the curb. Emma, watering can still in hand, rushed over to see if she needed some help.

  Five minutes later Emma was in love with her new neighbor.

  That same night, as Emma replayed the afternoon in her head—an afternoon of lugging boxes and shifting furniture—she told herself she was not in love at all, she was just rebounding from the three-and-a-half-year relationship that had ended only a couple of months prior. “Bloody Chris.” Emma punched her pillow into shape for the third time. “How dare you leave me for a metal-mouthed trollop.” Emma punched her pillow again, recalling how she naïvely echoed that sentiment to the totally tactless girlfriend of a friend helping her through the first days of the breakup. Her eyes had opened wide on discovering why a tongue stud could be so appealing, and then she burst into tears as images of the trollop doing that to her Chris flashed through her mind.

  By the next morning her pillow had been well and truly pummeled and a bleary-eyed Emma hauled herself out of the house for Kayisha’s morning walk. New Neighbor, Justine, called to her from the front step. A coffee and breakfast later Emma was convinced this was no rebound. It was love. Pure and simple.

  It had to be love. Why else would she, to this day, force herself to swallow the burnt offerings Justine served up in the guise of food? The first breakfast—of congealed eggs, charcoal bacon and fossilized toast—was surreptitiously fed to Kayisha, who lay under Justine’s kitchen table, while Justine busied herself cleaning the disaster she managed to create in the preparation of such a simple meal. Subsequent offerings were suffered with smiles at the time, and Quick-Eze once home. Justine just couldn’t cook. But Emma didn’t care. She’d chew through a five-course journey to indigestion if it meant spending one more minute in heaven, in the presence of her twenty-eight-year-old angel.

  Even though heaven opened its gates to men.

  Yes, Justine was straight. But it was an obstacle Emma chose to overlook. Initially it was a detail easily dismissed, the landscape dotted with men who appeared on the scene and left only a few days or weeks later—however long it took Justine to tire of them (or maybe for them to go in search of a decent meal). That was, until the arrival of Paul.

  Emma learned of Paul during morning tea on a Sunday just over a year ago. Justine had poured tea and passed Emma a plate that contained, much to Emma’s pleasure, shop-bought biscuits. Then, much to Emma’s displeasure, no detail of Justine and Paul’s “date” was spared.

  “Please, Justine.” Emma really had no desire to hear of the length or girth of Paul’s appendage. And she certainly didn’t want to hear of what he had done with it. “Can we leave something to the imagination?”

  Justine appeared surprised, as if providing the neighbors with a lowdown on the boyfriend’s anatomical “gifts” was an everyday occurrence. “Okay.” She nibbled on her biscuit, a smile forming as she obviously remembered some other detail of the night. Justine launched into a description that left nothing at all to the imagination.

  “For God’s sake, Justine.” Emma rose from her chair. “I told you, I don’t want to hear about it.”

  Again Justine looked surprised, told Emma to sit back down, that she promised not to say anything more. Then she asked if Emma had a boyfriend.

  It was Emma’s turn to be surprised. She just assumed Justine knew. Emma took a deep breath, preparing herself. God, it had been so long since she’d done the coming-out thing, she had forgotten how nerve-wracking it was. “No, Justine. No boyfriend.”

  “Oh.” Justine gave Emma a poor you look. “Never mind.”

  Obviously Justine had not caught on. Emma was going to have to spell it out. “I’m not in the market for a man.”

  “Oh,” Justine said again. The poor you look was also repeated. “Burned, huh?”

  Emma squinted in disbelief. Dear, sweet Justine. Absolutely clueless. Emma took a really deep breath, having no idea how Justine would react to her news. “Burned, yes, but not by the male of the species.”

  “Oh,” Justine said for the third time. Silence drew between them, Justine giving Emma an overt once-over—maybe to see if there were any visible markings to give away the fact she was a lesbian. Seemingly satisfied, she picked up the plate sitting in the middle of the table and held it out. “Would you like another biscuit?”

  Emma couldn’t make up her mind if she was glad or disappointed. Glad, yes, that Justine finally figured it out and seemed not to care a whit over it. Disappointed she seemed not to care a whit over it, Justine’s affections well and truly aimed at Paul.

  Paul.

  Emma didn’t like him at all. He was a fraction taller than Justine, but that still left him a good couple of inches shorter than Emma. And, Emma couldn’t help noticing one hot day as they all sat in her backyard sipping on cold beers, for his size he had big feet. Big, hairy feet. Emma renamed him The Hobbit. But of course she never told Justine that.

  During one of Paul’s absences—he had a fly-in, fly-out job at one of the underground mines in the state’s interior—Justine and Emma rented the final installment of The Lord of the Rings on DVD, and Justine, more than once, exclaimed how cute Frodo was. The Hobbit name was quickly dropped and Emma now privately referred to Paul as The Troglodyte.

  To Emma’s mind, Paul’s troglodyt
e occupation was the only redeeming factor in his sorry troglodyte existence. For, while he would hang around for two drawn-out weeks at a time, when he flew back to the mines, he was gone for three glorious weeks. Three weeks that Emma had Justine all to herself.

  Sort of all to herself.

  Well, not all to herself at all really. Unfortunately Justine saw Emma as nothing more than a neighbor and friend.

  At least that’s what Emma had thought. Until the night of the fight.

  The fight was only three nights ago, halfway into Paul’s latest stay in Perth.

  Emma heard the fight from her house. She was sure the whole street heard it, neither Paul nor Justine holding back in the decibel department. But she was the only one who ventured outside to check on Justine’s welfare. Emma stood in the shadows of her veranda, thinking what a sad state of affairs it was—how, these days, the world hid inside, too fearful for its own safety to intervene, or too disenfranchised from its immediate society to care.

  In between the “fuck yous” and “fuck offs” being tossed around by both parties with amazing frequency, Emma gleaned the disagreement was over…she listened more intently…over sex, money, domestic skills or lack thereof, politics, religion, golf…Essentially they had polarized views on every single topic.

  Emma jumped at the crash of metal hitting concrete, her body coiling into fight mode, ready to charge at Paul if he dared lay a finger on Justine. But Justine was more than holding her own, the crash coming from his set of golf clubs as they were tossed out of the front door and onto the driveway. The clubs were followed by his mountain bike, then by a noiseless flurry of clothes—jeans, shirts, socks and jocks went flying.