Just One Night. Part 1
Read Just One Night. Part 1 Online
Authors: Elle Casey
Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Contemporary, #Romantic Comedy, #Contemporary Women, #Humorous, #Sagas
just one night
A Serial Romance
Part 1
ELLE CASEY
COPYRIGHT NOTICE
© 2014 Elle Casey, all rights reserved, worldwide. No part of this ebook may be reproduced, uploaded to the Internet, or copied without author permission. The author respectfully asks that you please support artistic expression and help promote anti-piracy efforts by
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Elle Casey thanks you deeply for your understanding and support.
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OTHER BOOKS BY ELLE CASEY
NEW ADULT ROMANCE
Shine Not Burn
By Degrees
Don’t Make Me Beautiful
Rebel
Hellion
Trouble
YA PARANORMAL ROMANCE
Duality, Volume I (Melancholia)
Duality, Volume II (Euphoria)
YA URBAN FANTASY
War of the Fae: Book 1, The Changelings - FREE!
War of the Fae: Book 2, Call to Arms
War of the Fae: Book 3, Darkness & Light
War of the Fae: Book 4, New World Order
Clash of the Otherworlds: Book 1, After the Fall
Clash of the Otherworlds: Book 2, Between the Realms
Clash of the Otherworlds: Book 3, Portal Guardians
My Vampire Summer
My Vampire Fall*
Aces High (co-written with Jason Brant)
YA DYSTOPIAN
Apocalypsis: Book 1, Kahayatle
Apocalypsis: Book 2, Warpaint
Apocalypsis: Book 3, Exodus
Apocalypsis: Book 4, Haven
YA ACTION ADVENTURE
Wrecked
Reckless
DEDICATION
To the confident, sexy girl inside all of us.
A note about serial romances…
This book is what’s called a
serial romance
. Most readers are familiar with full-length novels, novellas, and short stories, but many are not so familiar with serialized fiction. With the advent of self-publishing has come many different innovations, but believe it or not, a serial novel is
not
one of them. Serials have been around since the seventeenth century! They became especially popular in Britain’s Victorian Era (nineteenth century), “due to a combination of the rise of literacy, technological advances in printing, and improved economics of distribution.”*
The Pickwick Papers
by Charles Dickens may be a serial you’re familiar with.
The Count of Monte Cristo
and
The Three Musketeers
were also serials, as were
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
,
Madame Bovary
,
Anna Karenina
, and
The Bonfire of the Vanities,
among many others. Use of this format started to die down when periodicals fell out of favor and were then replaced by the Internet, but thanks to indie authors, it’s coming back! As a reader, I’ve found it a fun way to follow a story that’s always evolving while the anticipation builds between episodes or parts, and in the case of my serials it will be a story that evolves according to reader feedback. Please join the conversation about this book on my website at:
You can read more about serialized fiction
*[Law, Graham (2000).
Part 1
CHAPTER ONE
Jennifer
I HAVE THIS PLAN. IT’S not exactly your run-of-the-mill kind of situation, but to be honest, neither is my life. Sure, I could sit around and wait for things to happen to me, but I’ve been doing that for years and I’ve got nothing to show for it but disappointment.
It’s time to take the bull by the horns and make some big changes. I’m so sexually frustrated right now it’s not even funny. And yes, I’ll admit … this pent-up sexual energy may be adding fuel to the fire for this hare-brained idea that sprouted up in my mind last weekend, but I don’t care. I’m doing it anyway.
I ignore the call coming through from my best friend Mia. She’ll tell me it’s a terrible idea and talk me out of it, and I don’t want her to do that. I can make my own decisions … good ones, as a matter of fact. The lecture she gave me last week about considering some therapy made me really cranky. I don’t need a shrink; I need some seriously hot sex with a ridiculously hot guy. I’m totally taking the responsibility for my happiness into my own hands, and no one’s going to stop me.
My computer screen is glowing, lighting up my face in the dark bedroom, the tiny corner of which hosts my laptop sitting on a piece of plywood balanced on two piles of books. It’s the middle of the night and I’m hiding. From whom? No one. Myself, maybe.
I live alone in a tiny apartment, the new home sweet home I had to sign on the dotted line for with very little notice. Why did I do this when I was happily ensconced in a fifteen hundred square foot, fully-loaded condo in the trendy part of town? Well, when I found out my fiancé of way too many years was sleeping with a girl who looks like she should still be carrying textbooks in a backpack, I took that as a sign that I should move on. Cheating rat bastard that he is, Hank left me no choice but to start all over at age thirty-five. I wasted the best years of my life on that asshole. The man I used to love with all of my heart is now el numero uno on my shit list.
I’m still weighing the pros and cons of running him over with my car. I don’t need to totally flatten him to get satisfaction. Maybe just a tap would be okay. How much trouble could I get into over just a tap? I could make it look like an accident.
Oh, hi, fancy meeting you here, Hank, in the middle of the road … with the grill of my car. Did that hurt? Muahahahahaaaaa…
I’m pretty sure if a jury heard my story, they wouldn’t convict, especially if it had any women on it. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and we’ve all been scorned at some point in our lives, haven’t we, ladies?
Ugh
, I cannot think about him anymore. At least not right now. I’m on a mission to take back my life. No more pity parties allowed.
My phone beeps. Mia has left a voicemail. Against my better judgment, I play it out on the speakerphone.
“Jennifer, I know you’re there. Why didn’t you pick up? You better call me back, ho-bag. Are you doing that personal ad thingy you talked about after your third martini last weekend? Because if you are, just stop, okay?”
I don’t remember telling her my plan.
Dammit
. I can’t even keep secrets from myself.
Her message keeps playing, much to my chagrin. “You aren’t cut out for one-night stands, you never were. Remember Mike? Remember Jake? Remember that guy … the one with prematurely gray hair and the flat butt? Shit, I can’t remember his name. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. You fell apart. You liked them right away and then your heart broke when they didn’t call a second time.”
Yeah, that’s helpful, Mia. Thanks for reminding me what a loser I am.
I could stop the message from coming out over the speaker to fill my room, but I don’t. I wallow in the unpleasant memories she’s dredging up.
“I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with you, so don’t even go there. They weren’t the right kind of guy for you. Seriously. Call me. You’d better not be doing that ad. I’m going to come over there and mess you up.” The message ends there.
I laugh at my friend’s fake bravado. She’s always threatening bodily harm, but as far as I know she’s never even hurt a fly. She says all of God’s creatures have value, even the ones that start out as maggots.
Of course I’m going to ignore her every word. The old Jennifer would hesitate and worry, but the old Jennifer would also date a turd like Hank and that’s not going to happen anymore. My life is about to change … like, right now.
Okay, back to business.
My brilliant plan is to restore my faith in men by setting up a single night of fantasy that can never be tainted by reality. I have the whole thing figured out; now I just need a willing partner.
My fingers hover over the keyboard and I wiggle them around to get them warmed up. Magic will be flowing from these babies in about five seconds. My approach has to be short and sweet, clear and up front. I’m not interested in frills. No flowers, no candy, no diamond rings, thank you very much. I just want one amazing night with an amazing guy who I can walk away from and never see again.
I click on the ‘New Listing’ button to start my ad. Chewing on my lip, I consider my options. How much do I really want to expose of myself? Do I want this mystery man to know I was recently dumped in a very embarrassing way? No, that would make me pitiful. That would bring in the vultures. Vultures do not make sexy dreams come true. I should know, seeing as how I lived with one for six years.
I start typing.
‘Single, attractive, successful woman …’
Stopping there, I chew my lip some more. Should I say I’m successful or should I be more circumspect about that part of my life? It’s not like I’m a millionaire or anything, but I do okay in the real estate business. Well enough that I can support myself, anyway, and every year my client list gets longer. I try not to be bitter over the fact that I had to change brokers. Wanting to kill one’s boss is never conducive to a good working environment. Hank took more than my self-esteem and my heart from me.
Typing once more, I force myself to have more confidence. This is easy. Why am I over-thinking it?
Just make it happen, Jennifer, make it happen.
My fingers fly over the keyboard.
‘Single, attractive and successful businesswoman seeks very short-term, intimate and discrete affair. No strings, no commitments, no second dates.’
I sit back and read the ad over and over about ten times. Is it too cold? Too short? Not short enough? Misleading in any way? Ridiculous? Pitiful? Sassy-awesome? I vote for sassy-awesome.
Huffing out a breath of frustrated air, I put my hands back over the keys. It’s not like anyone who reads it will know who I am, right? I have a throw-away cell phone that I bought today just for this project, and I’ve used a post office box for my address to set up the online account. I’m untraceable. Anyone I meet will be checked out in advance by me anyway via telephone so I can conduct a psycho test on them. Plus, we’ll meet for the first time in a very public place, so it’s all good. Safety first, I always say.
My finger floats over the enter button. The angel on my shoulder is crying over the fact that I’ve given up on love. The devil is doing a tap dance telling me to go for it … life is too short to wait around for a Prince Charming who doesn’t even exist.
I tend to agree with that little devil more and more these days. I press the button with only a slight twinge of fear in my chest. Now all that’s left to me is the waiting game.
CHAPTER TWO
William
THE UNNECESSARY CHIT CHAT IS undeniably the very worst part of my workday. The snickering, the giggling, the twittering… And no, I’m not talking about the online tweeting kind of twittering. I’d much prefer
that
to the constant chinwagging I can hear filtering through my door, for the very reason that it’s quiet and it wouldn’t interrupt my workflow. Although truly, I don’t understand the fascination with expressing oneself in one hundred and forty characters or less. Who honestly believes there’s a single other person in the entire world who gives a monkey’s uncle that you just bought a carmel macchiato at the local Starbucks? Only someone irretrievably deluded, that’s who. What a load of rubbish.
Where the secretaries find the time to engage in this nonsense when we have so much to get done is beyond me. The work’s not going to complete itself, that’s for certain. The bone-idle really get me wound up, can you tell? I wasn’t born to privilege; my family worked its way to it from near to nothing.