Or maybe it was the fact that it was ten o’clock on a Wednesday night—the Wednesday night following the Wednesday morning when her live-in boyfriend of eight years walked out on her—and she was still working, thanks to the King Kong Five which went into production first thing in the morning. The new version of a tried and true product would, hopefully, bring back the dozen or so accounts Wild Woman had lost in the past few months to Lust, Lust, Baby!, a competitive company that had recently been attracting a lot of attention with a new line of multi-colored, multi-speed, musical vibrators.
At five that afternoon, she’d noticed that the King Kong head wobbled more than it rotated. After six hours of going back and forth with the engineering department, she’d managed to perfect the movement. Trying it out had been the last step before calling it quits. She was tired. Mentally and physically worn out. No wonder her mind was playing tricks on her.
Then again, it could just be the poor lighting in her office, where she designed and tested her latest products. There were no fluorescent squares overhead like the ones lighting the rest of the suite that housed Wild Woman, Inc. Rather, she’d traded the bright fixtures for several small lamps strategically placed throughout the large room. The light played off the dark mahogany paneled walls, and rich, lush, pink carpeting to create an overall effect that was soft, subtle, sensual. The perfect atmosphere to relax and tune in to her body, and unleash the wild woman within.
Usually.
She forced her eyes open, eased her reclining leather chair upright and smoothed her skirt back down. She double-pressed the button that controlled the red privacy light above her door to make sure that it blinked. It was one thing to be disturbed during a trial test, and quite another to face the world when she was this close to a major life crisis.
Close, but not quite there. Not yet.
Pushing to her feet, she rounded the desk. She was not going to panic. Or kick. Or scream. Or cry. She was going to get a better look.
Fifteen minutes later, she sat on the thick carpet, her skirt hiked up to her waist, her lace thong pushed aside and her legs parted in a vee. She adjusted the neck of the desk lamp she’d pulled to the floor with her. A pencil cup toppled over as the cord stretched tight and she went in for a close-up view.
Please, she prayed to the Big Lady Upstairs. Don’t do this to me. Not now. I’ll change my ways. I’ll smile at that snotty lady up on the tenth floor who spilled cappucino on me last week. I’ll even stop scowling at that guy down on the second who wears the blue leisure suit every Thursday and offers to bend me over like a shotgun. I’ll give up my pot of coffee every morning and stop eating those Snickers bars for lunch and I will never, ever tell the salesclerk at Saks that I found something on the sales rack when I really didn’t.
Hope renewed, she gathered her courage and drew in a deep breath. Sixty watts of light illuminated the area in question. Her gaze zeroed in on the hair and a lump formed in her throat.
It was there and it was gray, and it was now officially the worst day of Xandra Farrel’s life.
“Knock-knock!” The deep voice rang out as the door to Xandra’s office opened.
Xandra lifted her head from the desk where she’d collapsed after hauling herself off the floor ten minutes earlier. Her gaze went to the man who stood in the doorway.
Albert Sinclair was the head engineer for Wild Woman, Inc, and a bonafide walking, talking Ken doll. He was tall, tanned and blond, with sparkling blue eyes and a white smile and an athletic body honed from hours of racquetball.
He’d beaten her more times than she could count. Then again, she’d never really played to win. Just to talk. Albert could talk and listen even better than he could play thanks to hours of sensitivity training courtesy of his gay parents. He was kind and compassionate, and he was the closest person to her besides her two older sisters.
“Your light was off, so I figured you’d finished the test run. How did it go?”
“Fine.”
“We still don’t think the rotating head is smooth enough and so a few of us are working late on a new coggle. Not to mention, we’re brainstorming ideas for the Sextravaganza next month. Have you come up with anything?”
“Not yet.” How could she focus on the biggest marketing convention of the year when all she wanted to do was crawl into a hole and hibernate?
“I’m making a midnight food run. Can I bring you anything while I’m out?”
“A gun. Or a noose.”
“I was thinking more like Chinese or Thai.”
“Only if it’s loaded with rat poison and guaranteed to put me out of my misery.” She reached for a tissue and swiped at the traitorous tear that slid down her cheek.
Albert’s smile faded into a concerned frown. “Oh, honey, what is it? What’s wrong? You’re not upset about the Sextravaganza are you? You’ll come up with something. You always do.”
“I...” She shook her head and blinked. “No, no. I mean, I’m concerned, but I’ve already started my brainstorming list for the product.” She eyed the familiar notebook where she kept her prized lists. She penned them for everything, from WHAT TO DO TODAY to CREATIVE WAYS TO
KILL THE COMPETITION to NEW CONDOM COLORS. “Not that I can really think about the convention right now. Or a new product. Or that I’ll be able to think about either of them tomorrow. Or ever. I might be all washed up professionally as well as personally. I might as well call it quits and go file unemployment. I’ll lose my house and my car and end up bagging it on some street corner, my face all wrinkled from the elements.” At Albert’s puzzled stare, she added, “I’m just having a moment, that’s all.”
“One of those Life is passing me by and I’m cooped up watching from the inside out moments?” He nodded. “I know the feeling. I had one of those myself not more than a few hours ago when I watched the marketing girls head off to one of those dance clubs, while I stayed here with the rest of my team to work.”
“Not that kind. This one’s more of a Wait! This is going too fast! moment. Like when you ride a bike for the first time without the training wheels. Or when you slip behind the wheel of your first car. Or when you climb into the backseat with the hottest guy in high school who turns out to be a total dud in the sack. Or when you find your first gray hair.”
“A gray hair?” He walked in and perched on the corner of her desk. “Is that what this is all about? Relax, honey. That’s why God invented Bjorn over at Bolo’s. That man works wonder with bleach and foil. He’ll blend it in so you don’t even notice.”
“I seriously doubt that.”
“He did mine and I’ve got seventeen of the stubborn little sons-of-bitches.” He pointed near his temple. “Right here. And here. But you can’t see a one of them thanks to Bjorn.”
“I’m not doubting his ability. I just don’t think the hair in question is long enough to foil.”
He gave her a get real look. “Why, it’s way below your shoulders.”
“Boy, is it ever.”
“Then stop worrying. All you need is a little careful bleaching and your problem is solved.”
Another tear slid free and then another. “It’s not exactly on my head.”
“Let me get this straight. You’ve got a gray hair and it’s not exactly on your . . .” Albert’s words trailed off as the truth seemed to strike him. “Oh.”
She bit her lip and blinked, trying to hold back a new flood of tears. “Not that it’s the end of the world, mind you.”
“That’s the spirit.”
She blinked frantically. “It’s all in the way you look at it.”
“Exactly.”
“Gray doesn’t have to mean old, right?”
“Right.”
“It can mean mature. Experienced.”
“Seasoned,” Albert offered, handing her another tissue. “Weathered.” At the last word, she threw him a watery stare and he shrugged. “Sorry. Poor word choice. How about... knowledgeable?”
She nodded. “Knowledgeable. Th
at’s good.” She dabbed at her eyes and sniffled. “I’m not losing my youth. I’m merely starting a whole new phase of life.”
“You’re evolving.”
“Right. This isn’t the end. My life isn’t over just because of a silly gray hair.”
“Who cares about a couple of gray hairs?”
“It’s just one. At least, I think it’s just one.” Panic rushed through her and her gaze caught his. “What if it’s more?”
“I’m sure it’s just one.”
“But you said a couple.”
“It was a figure of speech. I really meant one. Honest.” She nodded and tried to calm her churning stomach. “It’s not the end of the world,” she said again. “It’s not like I’m going to shrivel up and die just because I have a gray hair and I’m alone for the first time in eight years. Alone doesn’t necessarily mean lonely. It can mean free. Untethered. Ripe for the picking.”
Albert nodded. “You’re so ripe, you’re about to burst—hey, what do you mean, alone?”
“I’m in my prime,” she rushed on, eager to focus on the positive. “I’m enlightened. I’m mature and knowledgeable and weathered.” As soon as the word popped out, a tear squeezed past her lashes. She shook her head. “Geez, who am I kidding? I’m past ripe. I’m this close to my expiration date. No wonder Mark packed up his laptop and walked out.”
“He really left you?”
She nodded and whacked her forehead on the desktop. “Right after he told me I didn’t do it for him anymore.”
“He didn’t!”
“What does that mean anyway? I don’t do it for him? If he’s talking sex, it’s his own fault. He works more than I do, even with the Sextravaganza only a month away. When I initiate, he’s always too tired. And when he initiates . . .” She shook her head. “Come to think of it, I can’t remember the last time he initiated.” She slumped back in her chair. “It’s me. I’m old and unattractive and dried up. No one wants to have sex with a prune.”
“You’re not a prune. Mark is an idiot.”
“Mark is perfect. We’re perfect. We both like the same things, we both respect each other and we have great sex. Or we had great sex. In the beginning. In between his meetings and business trips.” Her gaze met Albert’s. “It’s not supposed to happen like this. We had it all.”
“Maybe you just thought you had it all.”
She eyed Albert. “What’s that supposed to mean?” “That you love Mexican food and Thai and any and everything spicy, and Mark lived for tofu.”
“I eat tofu, too.”
“But it doesn’t make your mouth water. Deep down in your soul,” he tapped his chest, “you don’t lust after tofu.”
“You’re right,” she blurted after a long, contemplative moment. “It’s me. I tried to hide it, but Mark finally saw past the front to the spicy food junkie who dwells inside.” She shook her head. “I’m a fake. And I’m getting old.”
“You’re not a fake.”
“But I am getting old.” “You’re only twenty-nine.”
“I’m this close to being thirty. Two months and bam. I’m there.”
“It’s just another year.”
“It’s the year. Do you know that a woman’s number of fertile eggs decreases by fifty percent when she hits thirty? That’s half.”
“So that’s what this is all about. You want a baby.” “Of course I do. I mean, not now, at this very moment. But I definitely want one before I hit thirty-five. Or I at least want to be pregnant by then.”
“What catastrophic event happens at thirty-five?” “The measly fifty percent of fertile eggs I have left decreases by another fifty percent. Each year thereafter, it’s downhill. Fast.” She shook her head. “I invested eight years. Mark and I were stable. Comfortable. We’d actually reached the no makeup phase of our relationship. I could walk around the house in nothing but my ratty warm-ups and sparkling personality.”
“Maybe that’s what scared him off.” When she cut him a glance, Albert grinned, “I’m trying to make you laugh.”
“We were so close to the next step in our relationship,” she went on.
“Marriage?”
“Are you kidding? You know how I feel about marriage. It’s the most archaic form of oppression,” Xandra repeated the words that had been drilled into her as a child. Her mother, a widely popular Harvard-trained sexologist and host of Lifetime’s Get Sexed Up, and her quiet, conservative conservationist father had been together for over thirty-seven years now without benefit of a formal license, their longevity due to her mother’s infamous Holy Commitment Trinity theory. “It’s a man’s way of enslaving a woman, and I value my freedom far too much to just give it up like that.” She snapped her fingers. “No thank you.”
“I just thought that since Skye finally took the plunge, you might have mellowed to the whole marriage thing.”
Xandra’s oldest sister, Skye, had walked down the aisle six months ago and enslaved herself to the hottest, hunkiest driver to ever race a NASCAR series. Worse, she’d been ecstatic about the whole thing.
“Skye’s still suffering from a major case of lust,” Xandra told Albert. “It’ll wear off eventually and she’ll realize she’s made a mistake.”
That’s what Jacqueline Farrel kept saying to any and every one who would listen. But Xandra had her doubts. Six months and her sister seemed happier with each day that passed. Content. Complete.
A pang of longing went through her. “My life sucks,” she sobbed.
“You’ll find someone else.”
“I don’t have time to find someone else. Do you know how hard it is to meet men? Dorothy from marketing has been dating for the last five years since her divorce and she still hasn’t found anyone. I don’t have five years to waste on dating, much less another eight years on top of that to get to my comfort zone.” She shook her head. “My life really sucks.”
“So do something about it.”
“I am. I’m crying, and in another minute I’m going to go for the stash of cigarettes in my desk and start smoking. After that, I’m going to the candy machine down in the lobby and I’m going to buy every Snickers bar and eat them all.”
“That’s just a temporary fix.”
True. Chocolate, even a lot of chocolate, would only ease the pain. It wouldn’t make it go away entirely, and it certainly wouldn’t change the fact that she’d been dumped and she had a gray hair and the competition was snipping at her heels. She had to change things herself and get her life back on track.
Personally and professionally.
“You’re right. I’m sitting here crying when I should be thinking about the future.”
“The convention is next month. We need something to really wow everyone and draw our stable customers back to Wild Woman.”
“I’m wasting my time agonizing over this relationship business when I should be washing my hands of it entirely.”
“I wouldn’t go that far. I was thinking more in terms of concentrating on work as a distraction until the pain eases. Then you can get back in the game with a fresh mind and find a new man.”
“Forget it. That’s the last thing I want. But I am going to come up with something really spectacular and kick this company up the next notch. In the meantime, I’m going to find the man.”
“But you just said you didn’t want a man.”
“I don’t.” She smiled as she reached for her notebook and pen and scribbled the heading for her newest list. “I want the man.” Her smiled widened. “The perfect man to father my baby.”
THE EDITOR’S DIARY
Dear Reader,
You can find love—or more often, it can find you—in the strangest places and in packages you never expected. Just ask Steven Thatcher and Skye Farrel in our two Warner Forever titles this February.
Publishers Weekly raves that Karen Rose’s first book Don’t Tell is “as gripping as a cold hand on the back of one’s neck” and we can promise that HAVE YOU SEEN HER?, her latest book,
is so good it will make the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. One by one, teenaged girls are disappearing from their beds at night, only to be found brutally murdered. Special Agent Steven Thatcher has sworn to find the serial killer responsible. But as his job pulls him one way, his family pulls him in another. A widower haunted by loss, Steven worries about his eldest son’s failing grades and agrees to a parent/teacher conference. There he meets Jenna Marshall, his son’s teacher, and the one person he shouldn’t get involved with. But neither can deny their attraction. As the brutal murders continue, endangering her students, Jenna reaches out to Steven. But the killer has his eyes set on a new victim . . . Jenna.
Moving from spine-tingling suspense in North Carolina to hot days and even hotter nights in Dallas, we present Kimberly Raye’s Warner Forever debut KISS ME ONCE, KISS ME TWICE. Affaire de Coeur calls couldn’t be more right. For Skye Farrel, sex is business. Her Girl Talk seminars have professional women jumping at the chance to learn the art of sexual fulfillment. But while she teaches women to turn sparks into flames in the bedroom, her own love life is ice cold. Enter Clint MacAllister. As a sexy, six-foot plus NASCAR driver, Clint’s speedy lifestyle hasn’t left him any time for love. So, on the hunt for a wife, he can’t resist Skye’s proposal: her sex tips for his insight into the male mind. But soon, her new favorite student has put love on her mind and fear in her heart. Can Clint convince her to face her biggest fear and take a race down the aisle with him?
To find out more about Warner Forever, these February titles, and the authors, visit us at www.warnerforever.com.
With warmest wishes,
Karen Kosztolnyik, Senior Editor
P.S. Spring will soon be here and love is in the air so cozy up with these two Warner Forever titles, guaranteed to make your temperature rise. Mary McBride pens a fresh and funny contemporary about an advice columnist who’s the target of a letter bomber and the undercover cop who’s in charge of keeping her safe in MS. SIMON SAYS; and Wendy Markham delivers the witty and poignant tale of two people who try to set up their best friends at a matchmaking cyber café, only to find themselves hit by Cupid’s arrow in ONCE UPON A BLIND DATE.
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