Page 1 of Help Wanted

Chapter 1

After slamming her car door, Kenley stormed into the restaurant, madder than a hornet. When she’d first found out, her initial reaction was disbelief, but fortunately her brain quite efficiently turned the confusion into an easier emotion to express. Anger.

“I can’t believe this,” she muttered to herself while scouring the room for her support system.

Two blondes looked up and waved her over. She already felt a little better as she walked across the dining room to meet them. Good friends could fix anything. Well, good friends and whiskey.

The waitress rushed over and asked for her drink order.

“Jameson, neat.”

“Ken, it’s eleven in the morning,” Vanessa reminded her.

“Thanks. But I didn’t get fired because I couldn’t tell time,” Kenley snapped.

“Right, then.” V backed off as the waitress scampered away.

“I’m sorry,” Kenley moaned into her hands. She hated feeling helpless. “I didn’t mean to snap at you. I’m just so pissed off.”

“So what happened exactly?” Rachel was obviously still confused by Kenley’s mayday text. Kenley couldn’t believe it herself.

Rachel and Vanessa had been her best friends since high school and had stayed in their hometown of Madison, Connecticut, while Kenley sought adventure in Manhattan. Both were married, stay-at-home moms with school-age children, which was the reason they were available to come at her distress call for drinks so early in the day.

Kenley didn’t begrudge them their lives. She knew being home with kids was not an easy job, and they had problems just like everyone else. They were just different kinds of problems than she faced now.

“I got fired,” Kenley said while searching for the waitress. Where the hell was her drink?

“You said that, but why? You’re the best worker they have.”

“My stupid witch of a boss accused me of sleeping with her husband at their New Year’s party.”

“But…?” Rachel still looked confused, and rightfully so. “That’s not possible.”

“It’s possible, Rach, just not probable,” Vanessa pointed out the distinction.

Yes, it was possible for Kenley to have slept with her boss’s husband at a party. It wasn’t probable because she hadn’t slept with anyone. Yet. Given the fact she was twenty-eight and still a virgin, it was highly unlikely she would finally give it up at a holiday party with a married man.

“Why didn’t you tell her you were still a… you know?” Rachel looked over her shoulder as if the Virgin Police would overhear and arrest her.

“Why should I have to? It’s none of her business.”

“That’s right! Screw her!” Vanessa blurted and took a sip of her margarita. Now, who couldn’t tell time? “She wouldn’t have believed you anyway. Look at you.”

As instructed, Kenley looked down at herself. It did seem unbelievable, even to her. Not that she was God’s gift to men, but she was at least doable, as her friends had told her many times.

She’d been a cheerleader in high school. Just that sentence alone should have taken her V-card. Through college she’d dated a lot. Just enough to move on before it got to that point. She’d done everything else, just not that.

Now, looking down at the tight skirt and fitted, button-down with some cleavage showing, she could see how someone might mistake her for a husband-stealing party whore. But looks could be deceiving. Didn’t everyone know that?

Only the two women at the table—and their spouses, because it was apparently the law to share everything with one’s spouse—knew the truth about her.

It wasn’t like she would have held on this long on purpose. It wasn’t a matter of morals or that she was holding out for some sexy, romance-novel highlander pirate to take her maidenhead. It just had never… happened.

While Rachel and Vanessa were losing everything at seventeen and eighteen, including their minds, Kenley was sitting next to her mother’s bed hoping for a miracle that never came.

She was in college before she stopped seeing her peers as immature idiots who took everything and everyone for granted. By then it would have been awkward to admit to a guy who just wanted to hook up that he was her first. Guys didn’t hang around long enough to be special when she wasn’t putting out, so it became a vicious circle. Bringing her to this point in her life where she had been fired for being sexy, even though she didn’t have a true concept of what that really was.

Irony was an asshole.