by Cat Johnson
OPPOSITES ATTRACT
Written by Cat Johnson
Copyright © Cat Johnson, 2011
License Statement
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Opposites Attract
A Romantic Comedy Trilogy by Cat Johnson
TAKING A LEAP
Bradley Morgan is the quintessential computer geek and nice guy, through and through. The only problem is that in his opinion, nice guys almost always finish last when it comes to hot women like his sexy co-worker Alyssa Jones. But things change after Alyssa finds her boyfriend cheating. Suddenly, nice guys like Brad don't look so bad. So when Brad agrees to ghostwrite the sex scenes for a romance novel as a favor for desperate client Maria White and asks for Alyssa's help after hours, she agrees wholeheartedly and things really start to heat up. Brad and Alyssa learn you should never judge a book by its cover and that sometimes love requires a leap of faith.
LIGHT MY FIRE
Amy Gerald's life is filled with whirlwind romance. Unfortunately, it's all on the pages of the romance novels she publishes. That is until she volunteers to cat-sit for her friend Maria White and meets Troy O'Donnell, the hunky fireman who lives next door. The problem is, this commitment-phobic consummate bachelor is far more willing to run into a burning building than allow love into his life. Troy will grasp at any excuse, even the ridiculous assumption that Amy is a lesbian, just to avoid his growing feelings for her. Amid a comedy of errors and misunderstandings, which includes Troy's first hilarious visit to a gay bar, Amy manages to light Troy's fire, but can she also conquer his fears?
SECOND TIME AROUND
Antonio Sanchez thought that at 32 his life was all mapped out—wife, kids, career—until some major bumps in the road radically alter his course and send him careening right into the path of newly divorced Maddie Morgan. After being thrust back into single life, Antonio moves back in with his old-fashioned parents and has to learn to juggle being a part-time dad to his kids, his job at the firehouse and his role as Best Man for his newly engaged best friend Troy, all in addition to facing his unquenchable desire for Maddie. Throw in a slew of matchmaking friends and relatives, led by Maria whose apartment appears to be the Bermuda Triangle for floundering lovers and Antonio and Maddie discover just how complicated things can get. Can the pair prove that love really is better the second time around?
This book has been previously published. It has been edited for rerelease.
Table of Contents
Taking A Leap
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Light My Fire
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Second Time Around
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
About the Author
TAKING A LEAP
Chapter 1
Bradley Morgan took off his smudged glasses and rubbed his eyes. How many hours had he been sitting, staring at the never-ending lists of code on the green tinted screen of his computer? To know that, he’d have to actually know what time it was. He glanced outside. No surprise, it was dark. It was February. It was always dark. It was dark when he left his apartment in the morning and dark when he finally got home at night.
He stood and winced as his legs protested. Looking around he saw the office was dark too, except for the glow of his screen and the dim light of the desk lamp in his cubicle. The other cubes were all empty. He was totally alone in the large office. Even the night janitor had come and gone hours ago.
Usually Brad liked the solitude of working late. It was easier to concentrate when everyone else was gone, particularly Alyssa, the hottie who sat in the next cube. From the minute she arrived in the morning, she would talk and talk and talk. She barely sat before she would slip her phone headset over her shiny chestnut hair and start the never-ending chatter, usually to her friend Jane. He knew that because as much as he tried to block out the conversations, he couldn't because she sounded all breathy and sexy when she lowered her voice and tried to whisper into the phone.
He shook his head. She must actually think no one else in the office could hear her when she whispered. Well, he heard her and her voice strummed every nerve in his body as he wondered what she would sound like whispering in his ear in bed. Yeah, like that would ever happen. He laughed out loud at that thought. All she talked about to her friend Jane was some guy named Jake, whom Brad assumed was Alyssa’s boyfriend.
Jake. Now there was a manly name. Jake probably drove a vintage Harley and wore black leather pants and two hundred dollar sunglasses. Jake was probably a body builder who bench-pressed like five hundred pounds and could snap Brad like a twig.
Brad scowled. Even if Alyssa hadn’t had a boyfriend, Brad knew better than to think he had a chance with a babe like her. Her outfit on any given day probably cost more than his car. Like last month, for one entire week she was on the phone trying to buy something she called a Birken bag. It finally drove Brad crazy enough that he asked the receptionist at the front desk what the hell it was. Apparently it was the accessory to have and very hard to come by, even if you had the five thousand dollars to buy it. Five-freaking-thousand. Unbelievable.
He glanced down at his own now wrinkled and stained khakis and blue button-down shirt with frayed cuffs. A male model he wasn’t. And he drove an old VW bug, ripped ragtop, rust and all. He could afford a new car, but his bug was great on gas and he felt kind of sentimental about it since it was the first car he bought for himself right after graduating college. Besides, it was a classic. No, he was not someone Alyssa would want to be seen with. As far as accessories went, he was no Birken bag.
Yeah, he definitely got more work done when Alyssa and her sexy voice weren’t in the office. But tonight, it would have been nice if someone had been around, anyone, so he could celebrate his victory over the latest computer virus. But he wouldn’t have been able to tell anyone about it anyway. His boss had given him the assignment with the strict understanding that he tell no one about what he was doing.
The secrecy was understandable and he was used to it. He’d worked on more than a few top-secret projects and signed more confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements than he could count in his years in the tech field. He’d worked day and night to rid a local investment firm’s system of a particularly nasty virus. At the client’s request, he’d done it all in complete isolation from his co-workers to protect the company’s confidentiality.
But now he was finally done. He removed the disk containing his final work and popped it into an envelope to be messengered in the morning to the client’s office. Then he backed up another copy on a separate disk as insurance. Finally, he emailed the file to the client’s network administrator, who was ripping his hair out waiting for this very fix so he could have the network up and running and secure again before the employees arrived in the morning. It would be a long night for that guy, but at least Brad’s night was over.
He finally noticed the time in the lower right hand corner of his computer screen. 2:13a.m. Jeez. No wonder he was so tired. He was exhausted and bleary eyed as he caught a whiff of something nasty. It was either the leftover Chinese food from lunch sitting on the corner of his desk or him. He sniffed his armpit. It had been a while since he’d showered, or brushed his teeth, come to think of it. He logged off of his computer, stood and pitched the leftovers into the trash bin under his desk.
Time to go home. He was just grabbing his jacket off the back of his chair when the night phone ringing loudly made him jump. A receptionist manned the switchboard during the day, but when she was gone, the phone rang throughout the office so anyone who was still working could answer it from his or her desk.
He sighed. He could let the call go into voicemail. The receptionist would retrieve the message in the morning and get back to whoever it was. But then a sickening thought struck him. What if it was the network admin he’d just emailed and there was a problem with the file? He dove for the phone.
“Computer Geeks-R-Us. If you’ve got a problem, we’ve got a geek who can fix it. This is Bradley speaking. Can I help you?” He cringed at the name of the company and the official greeting they were all supposed to use. Although, considering it was after two in the morning, he could have probably forgone the requirement without any ramifications.
“Thank God you’re still open. I have an emergency. You have to help me.” The woman sounded frantic. Now he knew how those 911 operators felt when they took emergency calls.
“Okay. Calm down. Tell me exactly what happened.” What the hell kind of computer emergency could this be in the middle of the night?
“My cat just spilled coffee on my laptop. Now the screen is all blue. I can’t log out or reboot or anything and I think the file I was working on is gone.” She sounded close to tears now.
“I understand how you feel, but you have to calm down.” Brad sat down in his chair again and leaned back with a sigh. He glanced wistfully at the exit door. He’d been so close…
“You can’t possibly understand. How can you understand?” She was nearing hysteria now.
“I do understand. Two years ago I was working as a programmer. I’d just finished a big project when a worm slipped through the company’s firewall and attacked my hard drive. It ate its way through all of my files and the backup files on the server. It was like a rat through cheese and I couldn’t do anything but watch it happen. So believe me, I understand.” It was the closest Brad had ever come to just breaking down and crying at work. It was right then and there that he decided to take the job he had been offered by Computer Geeks-R-Us so he could help people.
He heard her breathe in and out loudly. Calmer now she said, “I guess you do. So what do I do now?”
“I should be able to recover your files for you even if I can’t fix the unit. Can you drop the laptop off here in the morning?”
“No. That’s the bigger problem. I’m leaving for the airport in just a few hours for a six o’clock flight to Miami. I need to email the file I was working on to my editor before I go. I’ll be on a cruise ship for seven days. God, I’m going to lose this book deal because of this dumb cat, I know it.”
Brad sighed. Oh well, he was already exhausted, hungry and smelly. What was another hour or so? He could sleep in tomorrow morning. “How far away are you? If I wait here, can you drive it over here tonight?”
“I don’t own a car. I walk to work. My apartment doesn’t have parking facilities. You know what parking is like in this city. I guess I could call a cab, but that will take a while to get here…”
He sighed deeper this time. “Maybe I can stop by and pick it up on my way home. Where are you?”
“Oh my God. You’re my savior. Thank you.” She told him what part of town she lived in. It wasn’t that far out of his way and at this time of night, there’d be no traffic, that’s for sure. Perhaps he would still get to bed before the sun actually rose.
“But what about my file? Can you fix it right here tonight so I can email it before I leave?”
Brad laughed at that. People who didn’t know computers just cracked him up. Did she really think this was going to be a five-minute fix? Even if he weren’t working on four hours sleep in the last two days, it would still take a while.
He had to control his urge to giggle and realized just how punchy he was from lack of sleep. “No way. Don’t you have a backup file somewhere?”
“No.”
He shook his head. “You should always keep a backup file.”
“Yes, I know. I already got a lecture from my roommate. Lesson learned. But what can I do about it now?”
“I can recover the file tomorrow and I’ll email it to your editor for you. Just give me her email address. Okay?”
“But what if the file’s all messed up?”
“I won't lie to you, it's a possibility. But I’ll read through it to see if it’s corrupted before I send it. What is it anyway? The file, I mean.”
She hesitated. “It’s a…um…novel. An erotic romance novel, actually…it’s my first book and it hasn’t been professionally edited yet…so don’t be too critical.”
Brad laughed again. “I’m sorry, but I’ve spent the last two days reading nothing but code. A romance novel will be a nice change. Besides, I wouldn’t know a good romance novel from a bad one, so don’t worry. Just give me your apartment number. I’ll be right over.”
An erotic romance novel. Huh. As Brad hung up the phone and slid into his jacket, he wondered guiltily just how erotic it would be.
Chapter 2
Alyssa felt as if she’d crawled to work rather than drove. Had the front door gotten heavier overnight? It took all her strength to budge it. It had been another sleepless night. Walking into the lobby of Computer Geeks-R-Us she had her usual morning accessories—dark sunglasses and an extra large coffee—and today she really needed both.
“Good morning, Alyssa.” Lisa the resident perky receptionist was, as usual, much too chipper for this hour of the morning.
Lisa was the kind of person who dotted the “i” in her name with a little heart when she wrote you a note. On a good day, petite perky Lisa’s cheerful a.m. greetings grated on Alyssa’s nerves, but this morning it made her want to pummel the little brunette.
Alyssa mumbled a response and quickly punched the button for the elevator. She left her sunglasses on and stared straight ahead so no one would even think of speaking to her. She couldn’t wait to slide into her cubical and hide herself behind her monitor. If she pretended to be really busy, no one would bother her. And luckily the guy across from her cube, Bradley the quintessential computer geek who should be the poster boy for the company advertising, was always so busy working he never even spoke to her.
She traversed the maze of cubicles quickly and slipped into her chair. She booted up her computer and was about to log into her email when her phone rang.
“Alyssa Jones.” The effort to lift the receiver and answer it was nearly beyond her.
“Thank God you’re all right. I called you all night long. Why didn’t you answer your home phone or your cell?”
She really didn’t need her best friend berating her right now. She sighed and pulled back the lid of her much needed coffee. “Jake stopped by.”
“What? And you let that son of a bitch in? You go to all the trouble to change your locks, then you go and let him in anyway. What the hell were you thinking?”
Alyssa let out a loud breath. “He said he just wanted to talk.”
She heard Jane spit out a bitter sounding laugh. “Yeah, I’m sure. And? Please, please tell me you didn’t have sex with the guy.”
“No, we didn’t. We just talked…all night long. He actually cried, Jane,” she whispered.
“Good, he should cry. He threw away a two-year relationship with you when he cheated on you.”
“He said it was only because he was drunk. He says he doesn’t even remember it. He just rememb
ers drinking at the bachelor party, then these strippers show up and the next thing he knows he’s waking up naked in bed with one of them.”
“Oh come on, Alyssa. A committed man doesn’t forget his girlfriend because he’s drunk. His only regret is that he got caught.”
Alyssa swallowed hard. Just the memory of walking into his friend’s condo to pick him up Sunday morning and finding Jake and the stripper in bed together made her feel like she needed to vomit. Lucky for her she hadn’t eaten anything solid enough in the last three days to actually throw up. She took another big gulp of coffee, her heart beginning to race. She was starting to shake from all the coffee she’d drunk over the past few days to stay awake at work since she wasn’t sleeping at all at night.
“Lys?” Jane’s voice brought her back to the present.
“Yeah. I’m fine. Listen, I really have to get to work. I’ll call you later, I swear.” She couldn’t take Jane rehashing what a shit Jake was and how lucky she should feel to be free of him one more time.
“You better call me tonight.”
“Okay, I will. Bye.” She sighed again and hung up the phone.
Brad the Geek had just slipped into his own cube. He glanced over. She wondered at the fact that he was actually getting in after her. He was always at his desk when she arrived in the morning and still sitting in his cubicle when she left at night.
“You all right?” He glanced her way as he took off his beat up brown leather jacket and draped it over the back of his chair.
The first time in two years this guy decides to be friendly and it happens to be today of all days. That just figured.
“I’m fine. Why?” That came out a bit harsher than she intended.
He was visibly taken aback at her tone. “You’re just sighing a lot, that’s all. And you look really tired.”
