Page 2 of The Reading

“Yeah,” the other brunette grumbled. “We’re all single, so what the hell do we know about men?”

“Okay, that’s fair,” I agreed. “So, I’m going to have to take each of your hands, feel your energy, then I’ll be able to tell you what all I see.”

“I hope it’s Cortland’s dick falling off,” the platinum blonde muttered.

While I hadn’t seen any visions of Cortland Culpepper’s dick falling off, I had seen a lot.

Too bad they’d all been too drunk to believe me.

Just Another Day.

She’d said that I already knew my soulmate, but she was wrong.

She had to be.

After Madam Brousseau had informed our drunk asses that we already knew who our soulmates were, I had wracked my brain with all the men currently in my life, and I’d been both horrified and disappointed. While there weren’t a lot of men in my life, they were clearly categorized in the friends, family, or no thanks sections of my life.

Never mind that she’d been a psychic palm reader nowhere near the Las Vegas Strip, never mind that she’d given us all the same prediction, never mind that we’d all been drunk out of our minds, never mind all that.

A month later, based on the ramblings of a complete stranger, I was still trying to figure out who my soulmate was, and I was coming up empty.

Absolutely empty.

It could be that Valentine’s Day was making me antsy, and it was causing me to focus on my love life a little more than I normally would, but still. Plus, if we were really measuring miseries, Alessa had more to complain about than the rest of us. She’d caught her fiancé screwing her stepsister, and if that wasn’t jacked-up, then I didn’t know what was. If any of us should be drinking straight out of the bottle this Valentine’s Day, it should be her.

Nevertheless, ever since our visit to Madam Brousseau, we’d all been acting on edge. Every man was a possible option or a horrifying thought. Madam Brousseau had really done quite the mindfuck on us girls, and it sucked.

It wasn’t even that my clock was ticking or anything serious like that. I was just tired of wasting my time with dates that never led to anything. I was thirty-two, and I’d had my fair share of dates and relationships, but they’d all wanted the same damn thing.

A mother.

They hadn’t wanted a successful, passionate, dedicated partner. They’d wanted someone to cook their dinner, wash their clothes, and replace their holey underwear when the time came. They’d wanted a caretaker with the benefit of sex, and that wasn’t me.

My biggest fear in a relationship was turning into that washing, cooking, cleaning machine that women often turned into without even realizing it. While they were at home with macaroni in their hair because their kids were horrible, their husbands were screwing their sexy secretaries because their secretaries didn’t walk around with macaroni in their hair and think that it was okay.

Now, while I didn’t have a problem with taking care of my partner, I didn’t want to become a structure in the home. I didn’t want him coming home from work and seeing me as a piece of the furniture; something that was just there and would always be there.

I wanted my husband to come home from work with his dick hard for me, not caring if the children were asleep because we’d mastered the quickie. I wanted my husband to look at me andseeme. I wanted a man that chose me because he’d never be able to live without me, not because I looked like I wouldn’t put him in a home once he started wearing diapers.

Putting away the last of the dishes, I groaned when I heard my phone chime with an incoming notification. Since I had a special ringtone for work-related calls and messages, I knew that it was work, and I knew why they were messaging me.

Great.

I was an insurance adjustor, and not for automobile accidents or stuff like that. I was a home insurance adjustor, specifically natural disasters. So, if your home got wrapped up in a tornado, hurricane, earthquake, tsunami, volcano eruption, or just God wanting to strike your house down with a lightning bolt, I was the person that got sent out to assess the damage.

Granted, it was a depressing job, but I was good at it, and I hadn’t lost my compassion for my fellow man just because my love life sucked.

Grabbing my phone, I saw a text from my immediate supervisor, Cash Daring.

Bossman:Pack ur bags, Morris. Oklahoma in the morning.

So much for a romantic Valentine’s Day weekend getaway.

Chapter 1

Vivian~

Every hotel room was the same, no matter what the moniker on the front of the building read. Nothing was as comfortable as being home, so when the hotels came withnomini-bar, that really sucked.

---