She trudged toward her office, a weariness invading her bones.
“I called your order in,” her assistant said. Cathy was packing up for the day, shoving her planner into the big bag she carried. Sometimes Becca was utterly fascinated with that bag of hers. It seemed never ending. She could pull almost anything out of it. Need nail clippers? Ask Cathy. Forgot your pen? Cathy had fifteen, and in every color imaginable.
She also had something else in that bag. A long list of eligible bachelors. Cathy was something of a matchmaker.
“Why don’t you come home with me? I’ve got a roast that’s been cooking all day,” Cathy said. “I know having dinner with my kids, and Bob regaling you with stories of his latest policy sale isn’t what a young woman would consider fun, but at least you won’t be alone.”
No, she would be surrounded by a happy, functional family, and that would depress her even more. “Thank you, but I’m truly fine. I have a bottle of wine and some movies I’ve been meaning to watch. I’ll talk to my dad and maybe hop on the computer and Facetime with my baby sis. I’m good with my plans, but maybe not this weekend. Maybe this weekend I should make other plans.”
Cathy stared at her for a moment as though she knew what she would say next. “Please tell me you’re letting me off the leash.”
Becca had to laugh. For two solid years, Cathy had been trying to set her on a new love path. She didn’t really want a love path, but a friendship with benefits path might be nice. “Find me a decent guy who isn’t intimidated by female success and doesn’t want to immediately impregnate me. Don’t you laugh. Men get desperate at this age. They know they’re losing their looks and they’re getting a little paunchy in the middle. The old bio clock is ticking.”
It was precisely why she wouldn’t let Melissa set her up. Melissa only knew doctors, and she wasn’t going there again. It wasn’t that Gary had been an out-and-out asshole. He’d simply needed to be the one who shined in the relationship. He’d been hyper competitive, and having his wife beat him out for a fellowship had been the last straw. He should have had a backbone and divorced her before he started sleeping with his intern, but he had impulse control issues. He’d already married the intern, gotten her pregnant and, if rumors were true, was cheating on her with a nurse.
And she’d thought he was Prince Charming. Yes, she’d needed these two years to figure out what she wanted, and it wasn’t Prince Charming. Prince Knows Where the Clitoris Is would be welcome. Or maybe SuperOrgasm Man was a better name.
Cathy’s hands fluttered, her excitement evident. “I have the perfect man. He’s a lawyer and divorced but not bitter divorced. Well, not anymore. He’s a nice man, and I think he’s as lonely as you are.”
“He sounds terrible.” He sounded like a lonely sad sack, but then she was, too. She’d eaten the same damn chicken sandwich every Wednesday night for two years. “I don’t suppose you know any hot geek boys who just want to have sex.” She should be more specific. Her people could be slow on the social uptake. “Who knows how to have sex.”
Comic Con was coming up. Maybe she should show some cleavage and see what she could drag out of a Walking Dead panel.
Or she could pray Cathy knew what she was doing.
Cathy’s eyes widened. “No. No. No. And if you’re thinking about breaking your self-imposed celibacy at Comic Con with some guy dressed up as Khal Drogo, unless he is actually Jason Momoa, I forbid it. And I control your schedule and your lunch orders and your whole life. You’ll be picking anchovies off your pizza for a year.”
“Well played,” she admitted. “I was only thinking about it because it was easy. No real names exchanged. No whiny man clinging to me. I wouldn’t have to ever see the inside of his apartment.”
Cathy’s brows rose. “What does that have to do with it?”
Cathy had married her high school sweetheart. She hadn’t had to play the dating game. “I’ve found these things go one of two ways. Either I walk into his place and it’s what you would think a frat house would look like after a kegger, or it’s incredibly neat. The first one tells me dude doesn’t care what I think. The second lets me know he’s smart and he’s weaving a web of organization and cleanliness around me. He’s baiting the trap with Lysol, but it’s false. That trap is going to close and I’ll be stuck in there with his dirty socks that he leaves wherever he takes them off or worse, he never actually takes them off at all and I get his stinky, trapped-in-a-pair-of-socks feet forever.”
“Should I point out the current hypocrisy coming out of your mouth?” Cathy asked with a kind of shocked disbelief. “I clean your office, you know. I’ve been to your apartment.”
She knew where stuff was. And she probably needed to hire a cleaning service for something more than when her family was coming into town. “See, I know all the tricks. So all I need is a hot geek who’s super good at sex, wants to clean my apartment, and he can cook, and he mostly just wants to support me.”
“You understand that you’re looking for a wife, right?”
“Bingo.” She pointed Cathy’s way. “Except I’m not. I’m looking for a good time. I’m looking for a reason to not spend my weekends and late nights here. The program is up and running. Paul has somewhat settled down. My own research is going well. What I am lacking is a booty call.” Maybe she didn’t have to go about it the normal way. She was thinking like a chick. “Do you know any escort services?”
She could pay for it. It might be simpler.
Cathy gasped and shook her head. “Absolutely not. You are not hiring a hooker. I’ll look through my friends and set something up for you.” She was still shaking her head as she walked toward the door. “You’re incorrigible, you know.”
“You are preaching to the choir, sister.” She strode to her office door.
“And you didn’t say no. I’m going to take that as a win,” Cathy said, settling her bag over her shoulder. “Have a lovely night. Call me if you need anything. And I’m sending you a surprise. I think you’ll like it.”
Cathy ran out like any minute Becca would change her mind and the world would go back to the way it had been.
She probably would change her mind. The lawyer would only be interested in her until he realized she was as married to her job as he was, and she wouldn’t change her mind and become a good housewife. When she wouldn’t drop everything to pick up his dry cleaning, he would find some woman who would.
The hooker would be easier. The hooker might actually be cool with picking up her dry cleaning if she left him a big enough tip.
Was a dude who took money for sex called a hooker?
She stopped at the door to her office.
Dr. Rebecca Walsh
Head of Neurology Research
God, she hoped one day it would say Dr. Rebecca Walsh, chick who cured Alzheimer’s and dementia.
Tears welled hard and fast and she forced herself to remember her mother as she’d been. Graceful, happy, intelligent. She closed her eyes and saw her mother sitting at her desk, a lone light illuminating the book she was reading. She always took notes for her lectures. In her mind’s eye, she saw her mother turn to her and smile, welcoming her even though she was working. Her mom looked like an angel.
And then another image struck, one of her mother being held down as she tried to get out of bed. She’d screamed and fought and looked at Becca, hatred in her eyes.
She shook off the image. That hadn’t been her mom. It hadn’t. It had been a disease. She’d said she wasn’t angry, but she’d lied. She was violently angry at the disease that had robbed her mother of her mind, her memories, her dignity.
She took a deep breath and pushed through. That was her life. Pushing through. She’d been born for this, born to fight this fight.