Bad Luck With Bad Boys

Stella’s idea of love is rough and adventurous and bad boys get her hot. Nice guys just don’t excite her at all. Unfortunately, the guys she pick keep getting into trouble. She gets a job with a lady lawyer who shows her a path she can follow on her own — working as a porn star, she can have all the bad boys she wants without tying her future to their bad choices. And it will be an adventure.

~~~~~ PG Excerpt ~~~~~

I went to the office early on Monday. Going to work was supposed to be therapeutic. It takes your mind off your troubles. In this case, it was also a way of escaping the morning evil feelings.

Despite my best efforts, Trish woke up depressed. Of course, her world had been turned upside down. Greg, her white knight, was spending hours and hours with tax people, prosecutors, and the like. Sam was in jail, being held without bail since he’d already demonstrated he was a flight risk.

It wasn’t so hard for me. I’d been through this before and Sam and I weren’t engaged. Those things made a difference. Still, I was out of sorts too. Sam had called me as I was dressing to head to the office. He sounded terrible.

“I think you have bigger problems than that car.”

“There are no bigger problems,” he said. “But it doesn’t matter much. With Greg helping the prosecutors, I’m not getting out of here for some time. Do yourself a favor. Forget about me and get a life.”

That was easier said than done. His words chilled me, as it was a remarkable echo of what my drug-dealing boyfriend had said. He’d gotten fifteen years.

“That was just bad luck,” Trisha insisted when I told her. “Both of those guys were doing whatever shit got them in trouble before you even came along. It isn’t even that they did bad shit for you. It’s on them.”

“Still, it’s not a promising indication of my ability to pick a guy for a lovely forevermore,” I said.

She laughed. “You’ve never cared about forevermore. You are a here and now kind of girl.”

“True, but I’d hope the here and now would last a little longer.”

“Maybe you just have bad luck with bad boys.” Then she sighed. “Of course, it’s hard to avoid. Bad boys are what you really want. You don’t seem to want a husband.”

That stopped me. It cut to the core of my own uncertainty. “I don’t, do I? Which raises the question of what I do want?”

“You want a good time. You want adventure. But adventure is dangerous and involves guys who love risk taking. That’s why I look more for a long-term relationship.”

She was too right. “You don’t really run from fun yourself. That foursome was partly your idea.”

“So, I have a sweet tooth,” she said. “No one is consistent all the time.”

With that in my head, I went to work.

I had a list of routine crap chores that needed doing. On the way into the office, I stopped to pick up Martine’s dry cleaning, and when I arrived and checked the voicemail, I shuffled two appointments, and then wrote a letter to complain about a shitty rental car Martine had rented on a recent trip to the Coast.

Martine came in on time and started in making calls, chatting with clients, and the usual. Most of that week was spent catching up on shit like that. Martine had let a lot of things slide, and now it was up to me to get it done.

I liked being at the office. Martine and I were hitting it off well. I found her a fascinating person. She was confident… had the self-assured manner you’d want a lawyer to have, and I thought it made her sexier.