Freaking tears again.
Stacy sniffed. She’d been home for three weeks, and still she was crying rivers over Michael Moretti. How had this happened? Her work lay unfinished on the computer. Luckily, she didn’t have any pressing deadlines to worry about, but normally, she prided herself on writing at least one thousand words every day, usually much more. She hadn’t written more than a couple of hundred since she got home.
Time to suck it up, Oppenheimer.
She could get something out of this, use her experience for her next installment in the Starr Shannon urban fantasy series. The beauty of urban fantasy was that she didn’t need a happy ending every time, and Starr could have a new love interest for each book. Stacy would take Mary’s advice and make Starr a cougar this time, give her a younger lover. Starr was thirty-nine, so her lover could be thirty or younger. Twenty-nine, Stacy thought, was a good age for her hero. Her sex with Michael could serve as the basis for the sex scenes. Stacy smiled to herself. This time she wouldn’t have to guess what an orgasm felt like.
Now, some research on cougar and cub relationships. She sat at her computer and starting typing into her search engine. Over a million hits! Well, starting at the beginning would work well, she guessed. She scanned the pages…perfect! The Cougar Club offered advice and, better yet, a chatroom! What better place to research than with real live cougars?
And she could stay anonymous. She registered with a screen name, StacyStarr, and logged in.
Hollygolightly: Hi, Stacy!
MrsRobinson: Hi there, Stacy!
StacyStarr: Hello
MrsRobinson: What brings you out tonight?
Stacy inhaled. What should she say? Should she be honest that she was a writer doing research? Yes, that would probably be best. But perhaps the other women wouldn’t appreciate being asked questions?
No, honesty was best.
StacyStarr: I’m a writer. Do you mind if I ask you some questions?
Hollygolightly: Of course not.
MrsRobinson: Go right ahead. Or go “write” ahead, lol.
Hollygolightly: Lol, Megan.
Geez, had these women been drinking? But they seemed open to her quest for information, so she dove in.
StacyStarr: I was wondering, I guess, what younger men see in older women?
Hollygolightly: There’s not really an easy answer to that question, Stacy. Stacy is your name, right?
StacyStarr: Yes, my name is Stacy.
Hollygolightly: My guy and I met on a one night stand, to be honest. I was in a bad place, and he really helped. I never meant to see him again, but we found each other later, and the connection was still there.
MrsRobinson: Holly’s right. Honestly, most cougar/cub relationships that I know of began with a connection, not with any conscious thought on the woman’s part to go after a younger man or on the man’s part to go after an older woman.
Hmmm. Interesting.
MrsRobinson: I wasn’t consciously looking for a cub either. I got lucky in that I found a man, who happened to be younger, who wasn’t interested in having children. He’s a great stepdad to my two daughters.
Sheesh. Stacy hadn’t even considered the kid issue. Michael was nearly ten years younger than she. Surely he would want kids. Stacy had wanted kids at one time, but it hadn’t happened with David, and now she figured she was too old. Only months away from her forty-sixth birthday. Perimenopause could set in any day now. Yes, she’d wanted to be a mother at one time, but now? She wasn’t so sure she could do it.
But…
Oh, God.
It had been three weeks since the writers’ conference. When had she had her last period? She did some quick mental calculations. It had come well before the conference, and she hadn’t had one since. She’d stopped keeping track during her marriage to David. Though they’d had their sterile sex regularly, she’d never gotten pregnant. She’d assumed after a while that she was sterile.
Oh, God again.
Could David have been the sterile one?