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ChapterOne
Sera
“Everyone in this room is having sex on a regular basis except for me,” I said.
Blame it on the cocktail in my hand. Or the holiday blues. Maybe my unintentional three-year celibacy streak.
Because I didn’t say that to either of my sisters, Toni or Helena.
No.
I said it to Cash Young, who just happened to be standing next to me loading his plate with crab dip from the buffet spread at my sister Toni and her boyfriend Miles’s New Year’s Eve party.
Cash went very, very still.
I’d met him at least a half a dozen times, but for all he was generous and cool with my three kids, he was also quiet. No verbal vomit from this guy. He was the strong, silent type. Literally. He was enormous, his professional career as a left tackle requiring he retain an already large frame.
And he was a man of few words.
Even when he’d crashed through my front window, shattering glass in all directions, after catching a wild football pass from my twelve-year-old son, Johnny, Cash hadn’t had a whole lot to say. Just, “Sorry, ma’am,” which might have been worse than him saying nothing at all.
I hated being called ma’am. As if I didn’t feel old as dirt already.
When I glanced over at Cash it looked like he was having trouble swallowing a lump of crab. He thumped his fist on his chest and coughed. He was dressed the way he was on a regular basis, in jeans, a muscle-hugging T-shirt, and cowboy boots.
“Sorry,” I said, contrite but amused. “I didn’t mean to say that out loud.”
He finally looked over at me. I couldn’t read his expression. “If it makes you feel any better, not everyone in this room is having sex on a regular basis.”
I raised my eyebrows and paused with my espresso martini halfway to my lips. “And how would you know that?”
“Because I know I’m not having sex.”
Interesting. I knew he didn’t have a girlfriend but I couldn’t imagine why an attractive professional football player wouldn’t have a bevy of hot young women rotating through his bedroom. “Why not?”
“Because hookups are messy. Why aren’t you?” he countered.
That should be obvious. “I’m a single mom of three kids, a bakery owner, and I’m enrolled in an undergrad business program. I have no time, and no way to meet men.”
“I don’t believe you don’t have a way to meet men.”
I frowned. That’s what he extracted from my list of how complicated my life was? “Oh, really? Where should I be meeting men, exactly? The grocery store?”
“Sure. Or at the bakery. Or at the university. Or at school functions for the kids. Out downtown for a once a month girls’ night. The park.”
Well, that was all true, and terribly rude of him to point out. I sipped my wine. “Those sound like places to meet men for relationships.”
“Oh, are you not looking for a relationship? If you just want sex that’s even easier. You don’t even have to leave your house to find that. Just pull out your phone.”
Was Cash drunk? “Yes, I just want sex. Theoretically, of course. Didn’t you hear everything I just said I have going on in my life? I’m not looking for a relationship when I can barely manage my life as is. Are you?”
He nodded. “Eventually. Soon. Ish.”
That made me give an ungracious snort. “And hookups are messy?”
“Yes.”
I made a face. “I’ve never had one. I wouldn’t know.”
“I don’t like having sex with strangers.”
This was more than Cash had ever said to me in the half dozen times I had met him. Given that I’d lost my virginity to my college sweetheart, John, and had never had sex with anyone but him since we’d gone on to get married, this conversation was actually interesting. My sisters and female friends liked to talk about dating and sex, but I’d never had a man’s perspective. “Why not? Isn’t that the way to go if you don’t want any entanglements?”
“One, you don’t know what you’re getting.” Cash gave a low whistle and moved his finger in a circle by his ear. “Could be nuts, you know?”
I pressed my lips together, thoroughly entertained. This was much better than standing in a corner by myself at this party, feeling sorry for myself.
“Two, when you know a woman you aren’t going in cold. You know how to approach her, how to please her.”
I reached for a canape off the kitchen island buffet spread. “Every woman requires a different approach?”
“Of course.”
We were both quiet for a second. Then I asked, “So you basically want, what, friends with benefits?”
“Something like that. What do you want?”
“I think I just want to get pounded.”
