Description
It started as a simple bet. It ended up costing me my heart.
I won’t deny it. The ladies love me.
I can’t help it.
But when my male cousins get dumped so their girlfriends can spend time with me, they’ve had enough.
They bet me that I can’t hold down one woman for more than thirty days.
Game on.
I find a sure thing.
Her name is Heather Cook and she’s gorgeous.
She’s way younger than me but when she looks at me she has stars in her eyes.
It’ll be easy, right?
Wrong.
Because my cousins are determined to win this bet and they’ll pull every trick in the book.
Add to it that I’m really starting to fall in love with Heather.
That I’ll do anything to make sure she doesn’t get hurt.
All of a sudden, this careless bet has become a whole lot more complicated.
Author’s Note: This romance contains steamy scenes.
One
Heather
My alarm clock flashes at me as Emma’s shrieking wakes me up. Fuck, there must have been another power cut during the night. This isn’t the first time it’s happened with the wiring in these shoddy apartments and I’m sure it won’t be the last.
I keep meaning to pick up a battery clock but there’s never time or money before the next time it happens.
My phone is beeping from the side-table and it looks like it’s barely charged, but even so I can see enough to be able to tell that I’m already late for work. Again.
I work in a small bookstore called the Cozy Nook and while my boss Rachel is one of the kindest and most maternal women I know she’s been under a lot of stress lately and she won’t be happy with me. I kick off the covers and hurry over to Emma’s bed where my baby is bawling her eyes out.
She’s usually the sweetest three year old you could want to meet, but lately she’s been having some trouble getting to sleep and that’s been making her cranky. I scoop her up in my arms and rock her a little back and forth as she babbles in my ear.
It’s mostly nonsense still but it sounds like she had a bad dream on top of everything else.
“Aw, no,” I kiss her flushed cheek. “Well mommy’s here now. Let’s get you all cleaned up and we can go to the bookstore, okay?”
“B’kstore!” she says, sounding a little happier as I tote her to the bathroom and check to see if we have hot water today. I’m behind on all my bills lately, especially since I maxed out my third credit card on our beat up old car. Every day is a roulette to see if we have power, internet or hot water.
It looks like I’m lucky today and I get baby cleaned up while making a mental note to check if the power is faulty wiring or the power company getting sick of me putting off my payment as long as I have. Emma squeals at the bubbles and tries to splash me and I wish I could laugh with her the way I used to.
But all my laughter has gone away lately. I can’t keep up with the bills and debt just keeps piling on top of me. I’m only twenty-one, and it’s been hard to raise a baby while working to keep our heads above water. It’s only getting harder lately with prices in the city going up and I’ve heard that the people buying up our apartment block are planning on raising the rent.