In Too Deep with the Hot Cougar (Cougars of Howling Ridge #1)
Chapter 1
Chapter
One
Liv
“Happy birthday, Liv!” Delilah smacks her beer against my wine glass so hard I’m surprised it doesn’t smash.
We’ve been drinking for hours and none of us are seeing straight.
“How’s it feel to be forty?” asks Jody, her big brown wrinkle-free eyes wide.
Fuck. Forty.
“I don’t know yet,” I tell her. “I still have… twenty-eight minutes before midnight.”
“Turning forty was the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” says Delilah, my boss at the Wildstone Resort and Spa.
She’s a stunning redhead, a hotel empire heiress and one of the coolest people I know.
“Trust me. Everything is better on this side. Especially the sex!” She shoots a look at the new hot, young, buff bartender and licks her lips?
God, I could never be that bold!
He raises an eyebrow at her like he’s definitely up for a night of hot sex with an older woman.
“Your forties are great,” she continues, even though she’s only been forty for a couple of months. “You really know yourself at forty. And even better, you actually like yourself. You just totally stop giving a fuck what everyone else thinks, and it’s so… freeing.”
“Well, I’ll look forward to that happening,” I laugh. Because that’s absolutely not how I feel. At all. I’m more in the “holy shit, I’m forty, what the fuck have I done with my life?” phase of forty.
Not forty.
Thirty-nine.
For another few minutes at least.
“Tequuuilllla!” shouts Melody, her blonde hair bouncing as she returns from the bar with a tray of shots. A lot of shots. Way too many shots for our small group of four.
I’d always pictured celebrating my fortieth birthday in the ballroom of an expensive Manhattan hotel filled with balloons, family, friends and co-workers from the advertising agency I would be practically running by now.
Not at Howler’s bar in Howling Ridge with my boss, the manager of the bar who’s still on a shift and a work friend who’s almost half my age.
When I was in high school in Connecticut, I had big dreams of working in advertising in New York. But I gave it all up for my high school boyfriend, Steven. And instead of a big corner office in Manhattan, I worked as a masseuse out the back of our small-town’s nail salon.
Steven worked for Elven Electronics, and after a couple of years, they transferred him to Howling Ridge to open a store. We didn’t want to leave our friends and family, but the money was good, and it felt like the right time to start trying for kids.
We made a life for ourselves here. I got a job at the Wildstone Resort and Spa, and Steven enjoyed all the new perks of his new job. Including a woman called Amanda who worked in accounts.
“You okay, Liv?” asks Jody, her big brown eyes filled with worry. “You kind of look like you’re going to be sick.”
I let out a howl of forced laughter. “I’m fine!” I grab a shot of tequila, and then another.
And then the new Destiny’s Child song starts playing and I’m too drunk to care what anyone will think of a forty-year-old woman acting like she’s still in her twenties.
“Yeaaaah!” cries out Melody as I take to the dance floor, nearly falling on my ass in the bright pink three-inch heels Delilah convinced me to wear with my little black dress.
I keep drinking and dancing and try to forget that my best years are behind me.
Try to forget that I don’t get to see the love of my life for the next four weeks.
Try to forget that I’m divorced and forty and that hangovers are way fucking worse at this age and that I have to work tomorrow.
I wake up the next morning with sunlight streaming in my eyes, and a mouth so dry it’s like I’ve eaten a box of tissues. My head is pounding and my whole body aches.
Oh, yeah. And I’m naked. In a cave.
What the fuck?!