Beyond Seduction. Kathleen O'Reilly

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      BERGEN COUNTY, NEW JERSEY, was as close to nature as a man could be, yet still be less than thirty minutes from Manhattan. Sam owned three shaded acres of towering Douglas firs, and grass growing as it was meant to be, not trimmed into some geometrical hoodoo. His office was in the back of the house, where he could watch Max, his black lab happily chase squirrels. At the moment, instead of chasing squirrels, Max was happily snoozing, leaving Sam to his own thoughts.

      A man with an MA, BA and BBA, shouldn’t be thinking of T & A when contemplating his livelihood. He was a professional, a man who’d been yelled at, threatened, and yes, hit once, on national television, and never, ever lost his cool. He could think of a million and one reasons why he shouldn’t be asking Mercedes to San Francisco. Number one. He was too old for her. He was thirty-nine, and she was a young twenty-something. That age when the world was full of opportunity and birthdays were still celebrated. Sam wasn’t old by any means, but he’d seen it, he’d done it, and he’d settled into a comfortable existence that didn’t involve nightlife and a tingling anticipation of tomorrow. For God’s sake, he had a recliner. Twenty-somethings didn’t date men with recliners.

      And the reasons didn’t stop there. She wrote erotic fiction. Not children’s books, not historical fiction, not self-help books. Well, if you really wanted to split hairs, you could consider erotic fiction self-help, but Sam wasn’t a hair-splitter. He believed in facts. Honor, responsibility, not just s-e-x, the consummation of a man and woman, bodies entwined together, lost in the mindless passion of the moment, possibly in a recliner.

      Why now? Was he approaching a midlife crisis before he hit forty? He’d always been mature for his age, maybe this was just early onset midlife crisis. And did he want to have sex with Mercedes merely to satisfy some arbitrary whim to have a young, hot babe on his arm. God, he didn’t even like the word “babe”—or the men who said it.

      He swore and Max, his black Lab, lifted his head from the rug and stared.

      “What are you staring at?” snapped Sam.

      Max turned his head and whined.

      “I know it’s not smart, Max. But let me work through this. I’ll have one night, maybe two. Just to get it out of my system. Then I’ll come back, trade in the Lexus on a bright red Ferrari. Like I’m supposed to.”

      Max cocked his head.

      “You can ride in the front seat, the wind blowing through your ears. It’ll be just like in the movies. A man and his dog. You got to back me up on this. Tell me I can be strong.”

      Max barked at him, and Sam smiled. Of course, then he picked up Mercedes’s book and started to read again.

      Thursday night couldn’t come soon enough.