Leah Gwaltney and Eric are best friends and have been since freshman year. Eric wants more than friendship but is willing to wait. Leah wants to love Eric. He is her best friend and she cares about him, but something is missing. There is no electricity between them.
Leah discovers what she has been missing when she meets David Leitner, the handsome graduate student who is old enough to be her father. Instantly and powerfully attracted to each other, they play a titillating game of cat and mouse while he does his best to do the right thing.
Eventually, Leah is forced to take things into her own hands and show him that not only does she know what she wants, but she knows how to get it. In a happy-for-now ending, they discover love does not have an age limit.
Excerpt
“Needs some help?” David asked.
“No, I’ve got it!” Leah said while trying unsuccessfully to lift the heavy bag clear of the can. Blowing a strand of dark copper hair from her eyes in frustration, she muttered, “Yes, please. Damn thing weighs a ton.”
“It galls you a little to let me help doesn’t it?”
“No…maybe…oh, shut up!” she said in mock irritation at the twinkle of humor in his eyes. Good God, he had sexy eyes. Gray-green, they were the color of worn military fatigues. Her breath caught in her throat a little as she noticed the widening of his pupils and the suddenly overwrought silence that fell between them.
“I…uhm…I better take this out to the dumpster,” David said without breaking eye contact.
“Yeah, you know, mice and everything,” Leah breathed.
“Yeah, mice…” He sighed. “Wait. What?”
Leah broke the tension by bursting out laughing. “Mice! If you don’t take out the trash, the studio will be swarming with mice! They come in through the loading dock!”
As David maneuvered the trash bag to the door, Leah called out, “I’m going to pull the gels now that the lights have cooled down.”
“Wait a minute and I’ll brace the ladder for you,” David offered over his shoulder.
Leah ignored his suggestion as she tugged the giant ladder under the Kleigs she had used during the production. The ladder, like everything else, was on wheels. In reality, the twenty-foot ladder was extremely sturdy. Rather than using a metal ladder with wheels, Sullivan had secured hefty wooden ladders to rolling plywood frames. They were massively heavy and practically impossible to tip over. In addition, she had no fear of heights. She had climbed those ladders with a forty pound Fresnel light in one hand so many times that she had lost count.
“Hey, I thought I told you to wait for me.”
“I’m…almost…done.”
Leah stretched to retrieve the last colored filter from the frame in front of the concentric lens.
“Heads up!” Leah shouted as she dropped the red and blue plastic filters from the top of the ladder. There was no reason to carry them down the ladder. They were trashed. Filters could only be used so many times before they became brittle and warped. These were at the end of their lifespan and so she allowed them to flutter to the ground rather than carrying them down with her. As she began to back down the ladder, she noticed the annoyed look on David’s face as he braced the ladder with both hands below her.
“There is no reason to be careless!” David scolded.
“It would take a wrecking ball to knock this thing over!”
“It would not take a wrecking ball for you to fall off of it though!”
Leah halted her progress down the ladder when she reached the top of David’s head. Turning her back to the ladder, she slid down a step at a time while enunciating with annoyance, “I…can…take…care…of…my…self.” On the next to last step she found herself face to face, caged in by his arms, still spread to brace the ladder.
Slowly David leaned in to whisper in her ear, “I bet you can, Leah.” His hot breath tickled her ear and sent chills down her arms. “And I wouldn’t mind watching that at all.”
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