Any Time, Any Place – Janet Jackson
Let’s Make Love – Faith Hill
I Knew I Loved You Before I Met You – Savage Garden
Home – Michael Bublé
I Could Fall In Love – Selena
All of Me – John Legend
Lover – Taylor Swift
Crash Into Me – Dave Matthews Band
She Will Be Loved – Maroon 5
Fall Into Me – Brantley Gilbert
Just The Way You Are – Bruno Mars
Drops Of Jupiter – Train
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And as always we wish you love, laughter, and happily ever after!
Shawna & Melanie
Charming Cupid
Available Now
CHAPTER 1
Coop
“Siri, what are the causes and symptoms of erectile dysfunction?”
Googling impotence was not the way I’d planned on starting my night, but there I was. Sitting in my truck in the parking lot of a fancy hotel, doing exactly that hoping to understand the only explanation I could come up with for what was going on with me.
An automated voice filled the cab. “Erectile dysfunction is the inability to get or maintain an erection long enough for intercourse.”
It wasn’t that I couldn’t get it up and keep it up. I had no issues handling my business on the solo tip but Mr. Happy just wasn’t playing well with others these days.
“Risk factors for erectile dysfunction include medical conditions. Specifically diabetes or a heart condition.”
I had just had a physical, including a full blood panel, six months prior for insurance purposes when my company, Athletic Wellness, went public. I was happy to report I am healthy as a horse.
“Tobacco use,” Siri continued.
Never smoked a day in my life.
“Obesity.”
I stood six foot two and was one hundred and ninety pounds of lean muscle and only nine percent body fat. My BMI was twenty-four, which was textbook perfection.
“Injuries causing damage of nerves or arteries that control erections.”
I paused, taking a moment to consider this one. I’d taken a few knees to the groin on and off the football field. Growing up with seven brothers I’d endured my fair share of nut jabs both accidental and not so accidental, but those had all occurred years ago. I dismissed that symptom as well since I’d only started having issues the past year.
“Drug and alcohol use,” Siri stated as if she was talking about the weather. “Medications. Antidepressants. Antihistamines. Or those used to treat chronic conditions.”
Other than the occasional Claritin when my hay fever kicked up, I was pharmaceutical-free. I’d never been one to mess around with recreational drugs and besides a cold one on a hot day or while watching the Cowboys, I wasn’t a drinker.
“Stress, depression, anxiety.”
Besides being stressed that I no longer had a sex drive, I had no worries. Professionally, my life couldn’t be going better. I had a thriving business and had just signed a partnership with a premier sports therapy company. Two patents that had been pending for the past eighteen months had been recently awarded to me. One was a cream that would be used primarily by athletes and their trainers that induced cell restoration and endurance and the other was a massage lotion infused with vitamins and healing essential oils for maximum relaxation and muscle recovery to be used in spas.
Since my early retirement from the NFL at the age of twenty-five, I hadn’t stopped. Growing up, my only dream was to play professional football, but that dream was cut short when I blew out my knee after a particularly brutal sack. But I hadn’t wasted a second feeling sorry for myself. I picked up the pieces and threw myself into building my own business.
I’d also landed several lucrative endorsement deals thanks to the genes my parents had blessed me with. I was the spitting image of my father, Walker Briggs, who was known not only in our small town of Wishing Well, Texas, but all of Clover County. Depending on the age range of observers I’d heard him described as a young Robert Redford or a Thelma-and-Louise-era Brad Pitt. Movie star good looks, with a farm-strong physique. Both of us shared brown hair, strong jaws, and dimples, but I did not have his deep yellow eyes. Instead, I had one crystal blue eye and one emerald green eye. My unique eyes had been described as the cherry on top of my sex-appeal pie in print.
I’ve landed on sexiest athlete lists beside David Beckham and Cristiano Ronaldo more times than I could count. It had been five years since I played pro-ball, but I was recognized more now than I ever had been when I was the starting quarterback for the Long Beach Legends. My latest cologne campaign had trended number one on Twitter for close to twenty-four hours.
I had close to a million Instagram followers, which I could once again thank my parents for since I knew that at least ninety-eight percent were only there for the shirtless pics. And I’d just been offered an on-air job as a sports anchor at ESPN, which I could thank my mother for. I might’ve inherited my dad’s looks and athletic ability, but I owed my quick wit and charm to one miss Dolly Briggs. My mom could’ve ruled the world, but instead she’d been busy ruling, or at least wrangling her nine children.
Children. I’d always thought they’d be in my future, but now…now I wasn’t sure.
Professionally, I was on top of the world. But personally, my life felt stagnant.
It was as if I’d been happily four-wheeling on the track of life, taking jumps, speeding over hills, splashing in puddles and then, bam. I got stuck in the mud. I was pressing the gas and the tires were spinning but I wasn’t going anywhere.
Maybe it was that I just turned thirty, I thought.
Or maybe it was because I’d had a front row seat to four of my eight siblings falling in love and finding their people in the span of two years. I lifted my arms and scrubbed my hands over my face. Whatever it was, it was obviously messing with my head, the one on top of my shoulders. And that, in turn, was messing with my other head. The one below the belt.
I was convinced that I must have some sort of “conditional impotence.”
I’d been on an unintentional, unplanned sexual sabbatical. Not because I was saving myself or practicing abstinence. I wanted to have sex. My body just wasn’t cooperating. And that was not like me. I was known for a lot of things. I’d heard people describe me in a lot of different ways.
“Cooper Briggs went undefeated his entire high school career.”
“Cooper Briggs was a number-one draft pick.”
“Cooper Briggs played three years in the NFL and never lost a game he started as quarterback except the one that ended his career with an injury.”
“Cooper Briggs built a company with limited startup and went public less than four years later and opened at the highest market rate of any single entrepreneurship.”
“Cooper Briggs is one of nine children.”
“Cooper Briggs is the spitting image of his father, Walker Briggs.”
But the one that people said more than any of the other things combined was, “Cooper Briggs is a ladies’ man.”
At least, that was the PG version. Other not so flattering examples included: horn dog, player, womanizer, and pussy magnet.
The reality was, I loved women and they tended to return my affections. It had been that way since I was in kindergarten and asked Brittney T. if I could kiss her when we both ended up at the bottom of the slide together. She’d said yes, and the moment our lips touched, my fate was sealed. I loved girls, even at the tender age of five.
But lately, my fate was on vacation or something. I’d had zero interest in any of the women that I’d hung out with for at least the last year, maybe longer. Most of them had made it very clear that they were more than willing to hookup. I’d say they were downright eager to get down and dirty. But I just didn’t fee
l the same drive, the same desire, the same lust that I’d apparently taken for granted for the first twenty plus years of my life. I wasn’t blind. I still found women attractive, but it was on a cerebral level. On an animalistic level? Not so much.
Last week, I’d pressed the pedal to the metal and tried to go the fake-it-till-I-make-it route with Molly, a sweet girl with thighs that should’ve had me on my knees begging, and I’d stalled before I’d even left the garage. There was no amount of foreplay that could wake up Mr. Sleepy, and I’d tried it all.
If I had a type, Molly Hanson was it. Brunette. Petite, but curvy. Sweet smile—that was a must-have feature. Pretty eyes and a good laugh. Great sense of humor. She could hold her own in a conversation. She loved animals and family. She was a kindergarten teacher who spent every spring break in college building houses for Habitat for Humanity.
On paper, she was everything I looked for in a short-term, casual relationship.
I was what some called a serial monogamist. I never cheated and was a one-woman man, that woman just changed…often. But it had been over a year since I’d had any kind of relationship.
My phone dinged with a text and I noticed the time.
“Shit,” I hadn’t meant to go down the broke-wiener rabbit hole, but that’s exactly what I’d done.
I was due up on the bachelor auction block in less than ten minutes. Tonight was a big night for my best friend Jade, and I didn’t want her stressing about me being a no-show. She’d worked her tail off organizing this gala. She owned a party-planning and consulting business and tonight was the big leagues. So when she’d asked if I would participate in the auction, I’d agreed to be a sacrificial lamb.
Did I want to get dressed up and be paraded around for some wealthy debutantes or worse rich housewives of Dallas? Hell no. But Jade could ask me to do anything and my answer would be yes.
Excluding family, she’d been the only constant female in my life. She’d been my person. My plus one. My best friend, really.
I grabbed my jacket from the passenger seat and made my way into the venue where the la-di-da rich people’s annual fundraiser was going down. As I entered the ballroom, I could feel eyes turning in my direction. Eyes that belonged to women dressed to the nines and most likely attending with their husbands. I ignored the attention and stopped a busboy that walked by and asked him where I was supposed to be for the auction. He directed me to the double doors beside the stage.
I walked through them and immediately spotted my friend. With long, dark hair, flawless olive skin, and a body that would stop traffic she was difficult to miss.
“Thanks for not going with overalls.”
Those were the first words out of Jade’s mouth when she saw me decked out in my Ralph Lauren three-piece suit and tie. Earlier that morning, as a joke, I’d texted her a picture of myself in denim overalls with no shirt underneath, one of the straps dangling down the leg, and a piece of hay sticking straight out from between my teeth.
I’d captioned that little masterpiece: I’m ready for the ball.
Jade hadn’t texted back, which didn’t surprise me since I’d known she was busy. The only reason I’d done it was to give her mind something to think about other than everything that was at stake for her big night. I’d wanted to give her a distraction.
Before I had a chance to say hi, Jade’s mouth opened in a silent yawn.
I felt my brow furrow. “You look tired.”
She smirked a little. “Thanks, Coop. That’s exactly what every girl wants to hear when they spend two hours getting ready.”
“You look gorgeous, don’t get me wrong. But you look tired.”
I knew that the gala wasn’t the only thing causing her to lose sleep. She’d recently reunited with her ex and one of my childhood friends, Hayden Reed. The two of them loved each other, but they were proof that timing was everything.
She exhaled a long sigh as her head hung and her shoulders slumped. A flutter of worry ran through me and I looked around to see if there was any water or maybe something stronger that I could get her. That’s when everything came to a screeching halt. From one second to the next, the world around me faded and all I could see was an angel in red.
“Jade.”
“What?”
I gestured at the heavenly being who’d captured me so completely—the most beautiful woman, by far, I’d ever laid eyes on. She wore a strapless red dress, which hugged Jessica-Rabbit curves. Her honey complexion was practically glowing, even from across the room. Her hair shimmered beneath the unforgiving florescent lighting and I knew, in that moment, my life as I knew it had changed forever.
“Who is that?”
Jade’s gaze followed mine. “That’s Vanessa,” she stated as if I should already know. “My college roommate. You’ve met her, haven’t you?”
“No.” I said definitively.
I would’ve remembered it the same way that I was always going to remember this day: as the moment my entire world shifted on its axis.
Jade tilted her head. “Oh, you’re right. I don’t think you have. Come on, you have to meet her.”
She started across the ballroom, but I didn’t follow. I couldn’t. I was frozen in place.
After a few steps, she turned to face me. “Coop? You don’t want to meet her?”
“No…Yes…No…” I couldn’t even answer. Forming the words was impossible. I was entranced, watching Vanessa talk and laugh with the man lucky enough to be standing with her.
Jade’s eyes widened and she strode back to me and poked her finger forcefully into the middle of my chest. Her voice was tight and authoritative when she commanded, “No, Coop. Not Vanessa.”
Rebellion flashed through me. If there was anything in the world that could make me want Vanessa more than I already did, it was being told I couldn’t have her. “Why not?”
Her face softened and her tone grew almost pleading. “She’s sweet, Coop. Really sweet. She doesn’t play games. She’s not like the girls you… date.”
I raised an eyebrow and met Jade’s eyes with a certainty I’d never felt before in my life. “I know.”
She opened her mouth, paused, and then closed it. Finally, she wrinkled her brow and sincerely asked, “How do you know? You don’t know her.”
Like that mattered. “Maybe not. But I know me.”
“What does that even mean?”
I didn’t want to get into it. Even if I did, there was no way I could find the words to convince Jade of my intentions. Hell, I wasn’t even sure I completely understood them myself.
When it came down to it, I was a man of action, and action is what I decided to take, right then and there. I turned to face Jade and I looked her dead in the eye so she’d know I was serious.
“Do you have my envelope?” I remembered her telling me that they were collecting the envelopes from the silent auction before the announcements were going to be made.
“What?”
I scanned the table that held the bids. “My envelope. How high is the bid?”
Jade grabbed a stack and held them away from me. “Why?”
My friend was a lot of things but subtle wasn’t one of them.
“How high is it?”
She clutched the papers close to her chest. “I can’t tell you that.”
I had no time for this. My voice was steel as I asked again. “How high is it, Jade?”
She took a small step back. “It’s fifteen hundred.”
Excellent. Easy solution. I pulled my wallet from my back pocket, got out my credit card, and went to work filling out a bid slip. “Good. I’m bidding 2Gs.”
“You’re bidding on yourself?” Jade’s bewildered voice as she asked the question let me know I was going to have to spell things out for her. She wasn’t following my thought process.
“Yes…and gifting myself to Vanessa.”
“I don’t think that’s legal.”
“Are the bid police going to arrest me?” I finished filling out the
slip and handed it to her. “What’s the point of an auction? To raise money. This is five hundred more than you had a minute ago.”
I could see Jade struggling with the logic, but in the end, she shook her head and replaced the bid slip in the envelope. “Are you sure you don’t want to just meet her?”
I grinned. “I’ll meet her.”
Jade looked straight into my eyes with a fierce protectiveness. “Don’t hurt her.”
“I won’t.”
I don’t know how I knew that, but I did, from the bottom of my soul. If it was in my power to control, I would never hurt Vanessa. I knew it. It was fact, like I knew the sun rose in the east and set in the west.
Confident that my plan was underway, I moved into the holding area and waited to hear my name called. When it was, I stepped out onto the stage and flashed a smile that had always been a crowd pleaser, drawing enthusiastic cheers.
The emcee read the bio I submitted. When I’d written it, I’d kept it intentionally low-key, not even hitting on the majority of my academic and athletic feats or the athletic performance and recovery devices I’d patented. I never flaunted my success. It wasn’t the Briggs way. Growing up with eight siblings, my father had instilled in all of us to let our successes speak for themselves. He always said that actions were louder than words. Now, knowing that Vanessa was hearing it, I sort of wished I’d put some more thought into crafting the short paragraph.
The emcee opened the envelope as if he were about to announce the winner of an award. He looked at the card, then shook his head and checked it again. Finally, he said, “Oh, this is unusual. It looks like our highest bidder was anonymous, and has gifted the bid to our very own Dr. Vanessa Cupid.”
Available Here
Playing With Attraction
Available Now
CHAPTER 1
Cole
WEEK ONE
Are those toes?
I blinked several times and struggled to wake up. I had to force myself, and it was not an easy task. My head was pounding, and there was a distinct buzzing in my ears. My eyes were blurry, my lids felt like they’d been dipped in cement and my throat was as scratchy and dry as the Sahara.
Panty Dropper Page 31
