Fresh out of college with a chemistry degree, Tim Ratliff’s desperate to move out on his own. He yearns for his own home, his own rules, and the freedom to find the kind of man he’s always dreamed of for his first time. Tim’s applied at every laboratory he can find, but his job search is coming up crickets.
Monument Pharma would be his dream job, and Lorraine in Human Resources swears he’s a shoo-in to be hired. Wonderful, except that’s the one job he dare not take.
At thirty-three, Carson Eddinger’s life is just about perfect—a great position at Monument Pharma, nice home, sweet ride—except for the no boyfriend part. And the constant sniping from the woman in Human Resources.
She isn’t just a thorn in Carson’s side at work—she’s also Tim’s mom, and she has a white picket fence plan for Tim that definitely doesn’t involve a happy ever after with Carson.
They’ve poked the bear. Now they have to outrun it.
Read an excerpt:
So much for the printer workstation being a high output business model. The damn thing needed a full-time babysitter, and somehow Carson Eddinger found himself elected to the job. Maybe if his colleagues didn’t feed the hapless machine a steady diet of rubber bands and staples along with the endless paperwork to be faxed, scanned, copied, and otherwise dumped into the bowels of the business, he wouldn’t spend so much time on his knees at work.
Hell, there had to be rent boys who spent less time on their knees and got more joy from it.
What lunatic excuse of an engineer put the paper feed in so it needed two levers and a twisty knob to extract a jam? Perhaps he should be grateful it didn’t require a blood sacrifice and an incantation.
This time. He dropped a mangled yellow sheet on the floor and hoped he’d gotten all the shreds.
Carson stayed on his knees a little longer than he needed to extract the toner cartridge, which was empty again. With his head stuck in the machine and his butt out to the world, he could avoid speaking to The Harridan From Hell™. Yay, she was moving with purpose, and double yay, a small sip of revenge was his—Carson was only sorry that he was in the right position and wrong venue to slap his ass and tell her to “Kiss this!”
Now, the cutie she was towing behind her… Cutie ought to get a proper introduction to Carson’s backside, with any slapping to be done for much better reasons. And knees time without any copier involved.
Dream on. So much time had passed since Carson’s last enjoyable knee time that he couldn’t rightly recall. Or didn’t want to recall. He’d thought no strings attached was the way to go, until the emptiness of getting called someone else’s name, or no one’s name, became too much. Maybe if he was willing to take someone home, even let him spend the night, he’d have a better chance of something lasting.
He needed a name for Cutie. The spank bank needed a deposit. Or maybe not.
The guy was young, had to be at least ten years younger than his own thirty-three, and might not have a thought in his head.
Which wouldn’t matter one single bit: fantasy fodder only said things that Carson wanted to hear. He could imagine erudite lines from Cutie’s mouth, along with more dangerous imaginings. “Fuck me, I love you, keep breaking from the damn window, Romeo!” ought to satisfy all the needs Carson’s right hand wasn’t meeting.
His hang-dog demeanor could be fixed in Carson’s head too. He might look a lot more confident in different company. Wouldn’t anyone getting dragged into Lorraine Ratliff’s office look like they wholly regretted the events leading up to imprisonment? Carson certainly hadn’t enjoyed his last session in the Chair of Tears. Not that he’d ever give that bitch the satisfaction of knowing.
She couldn’t possibly not know how much he enjoyed being able to produce two emails from higher up, plus an invoice that she’d insisted didn’t exist. Write him up for nonsense, would she? Not that he hadn’t sweated bullets hunting for that invoice, which his nemesis the work station had scanned into the wrong folder. She’d been so confident she had him good that time.
He’d get another glimpse of Cutie if he stood here long enough, but Angie cleared her throat behind him. He jumped guiltily—how long had he been wool-gathering?
“Do we need to call the service center?” she asked, rattling the sheaf of papers at him. “I have to get these sent out on the afternoon mail, and if I have to run over to shipping to use theirs…”
“Honestly, government. You’d think they’d come into the twenty-first century and use electronic documentation already.” Carson inspected the toner cartridge’s change date, information he’d added a month ago with a silver Sharpie on the black plastic. “No, this will only take a minute.”
Movement at an office door attracted their attention—he and Angie both swiveled to look. Jerking his eyes back to the cartridge almost as fast as he’d looked, Carson felt his fantasies evaporating like the mist they were.
“…Mom until you have an employee badge, Tim,” had to be the biggest boner-killer ever uttered.
So Cutie had a name. Tim Ratliff.
And The Harridan from Hell™ was his mother.
Why hadn’t she just named him “My Mommy Has My Balls In Her Purse”? Because that would explain his hunched over gait. His friends could call him Percy. If she let him have friends. Who in their right mind would risk dating anyone who came with a controller like her? Look how she was planning his life. And he was taking it.
If the poor guy ever managed to lose his V-card, Carson would bet either Mommy was leaning over the bed giving instructions, blurgggggggg, or he was a lot more accomplished at sneaking around than the CIA. Or he wasn’t, and the unfortunate partner was composting six feet down in the petunia bed in the back garden.
Nope, not a risk to take.
Not even a risk to imagine taking.
Back to dealing with the copier, which at least the bitch appreciated. Or at least she appreciated not being inconvenienced as frequently as the machine attempted. Not that she appreciated Carson dealing with the balky thing. Hadn’t she ridden his back about “taking time away from your assigned work” for touching its innards? Like he could get anything done without a functioning copier/scanner.
First thing, seal the cartridge, or it would puke greasy black toner all over the packaging on the way to recycling. Carson turned it over gently, hunting the tabs.
Damn it all, here came Lorraine, with blood in her eye, and her mouth all pursed up like a cat’s butt. “Don’t you even think about it!”
He’d apologize to Angie later. “Okay. I won’t. You deal with it.”
Carson thrust the cartridge into her hand in a puff of black dust.
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