Jenny and I met outside my building one afternoon for our private rendezvous. Even though we were on the street, she greeted me warmly, hugging and kissing me. For once, I didn’t care if anyone saw us. Jenny was my special friend, and I thought female friends could demonstrate their affection for each other. “My sweet Chloe, it’s so good to see you today. I so much want to be with you right now.” We didn’t linger long the...

It was too good to be true. My daughter, who lived about three hours away, needed someone to house-sit for her for a couple of weeks. I was quasi-retired and able to do what work I did from “home” (read: anywhere I could get an internet connection). My wife had to pull the old nine-to-five grind at a brick-and-mortar business, so that left me to my own devices. It would be a perfect opportunity to indulge in my true passi...

Just a few days after Shawn and I spit-roasted Amber, I found myself at a party hosted by Andy’s mom, Allie. Allie was going through her second divorce. At forty-three, she had birthed three kids, one of them being my friend Andy. Her youngest was a seventeen-year-old boy, they had a sister, Alexa who was twenty-five. Allie was hitting her mid-life crisis; she wanted to be hip and was starting to host parties, dressing yo...

“Is this a blindfold? Cooper, what the hell do you have a blindfold for in your bedroom? This ain’t some roadhouse, to play darts in, now is it?” Cooper returned to the small bedroom carrying two bottled beers. “Well, it can be a roadhouse if you want it to be. I’m sure I can find a dart somewhere.” he flirted back and waggled his eyebrows. She shook her head at his cheesy charm. “And what would the target board be then?...

Coffee and a little nourishment served us well. We reclined back in the bed for our second cup of coffee and watched a little TV. With the fan stirring, it wasn’t long before we both drifted off again. What seemed like hours later – it was actually only about forty minutes or so – I woke to find myself alone in the bed. Looking beyond the screen, I saw you on the deck that overlooked the valley below. We really were seclu...

Sunday morning, I was still in bed trying to keep as warm as humanly possible in a bloody freezing London flat. I was reading Thursday’s paper, catching up with old news. Actually, I was not looking for news — I was looking for travel ads. I’d had it with the constant damp and the darkness and the dreary short daylight hours of another long English winter. It was obvious that I would fall for the first travel-to-warmer-cl...

I was a young lawyer, eager to save the world, and very much in need of some real courtroom experience. Divorce work tended to be precisely the type of work that got young lawyers that fast-paced experience in litigation, and it was, quite honestly, difficult to mess it up. Besides, judges tended to give young guys like me a little extra leeway when it came to doing things correctly. A little “help” from the bench never h...

“Rick? Rick Connors? This is Tommy Bowers. Michael Bowers' son?” It took Rick a moment to place the name. Michael Bowers was Rick’s step-brother, and he remembered that he did have a couple of kids. Rick’s mother had married Michael’s father when Rick was a teen-ager, but Michael had lived with his mother, so they had only seen each other a handful of times, the last time being at the funeral for Michael’s father, some te...

Fitz lay crossways on the bed, arms extended upward with a magazine in his hands. Too tired to read, he flipped through pages of advertisements and looked at pictures of refugees. It had been a tough week. Shit, it had been a tough year, he thought. Fucking clients, fucking auditors, fucking pissant bureaucrats… At least having a couple of beers with friends tonight had relaxed him. Becca and Sam always threw a good party...