James made sure he saw her first.
Engrossed in conversation with a station employee, Jaylynn Turner stood at the far end of a hall on the third floor of the building that housed one of Charlotte’s TV station offices. A former Miss North Carolina runner-up, she was a long leggy blonde with a bosom that impressively filled out a swimsuit. The cascade of long blond hair dipping to the center of her back made her instantly recognizable in a crowd. Dubbed “Charlotte’s Sweetheart” after viewers voted her their favorite local morning-show host, she wasn’t particularly good at news delivery, often flubbing a line. But she had the charisma to cover slipups with a girly “oops, I did it again” kind of glance. The camera loved her. And the right demographics tuned in to watch her. She was on a trajectory for bigger things.
When he was growing up, hot girls like her had not been within his reach. He’d been a late bloomer, not topping five foot seven and a hundred and thirty pounds on high school graduation day. Homecoming queens, cheerleaders, and other popular girls thought him nice, smart, and funny; a social death sentence that relegated him to friend status.
He’d sprouted during his first year of college. He’d played soccer since first grade so his fit physique just proportioned up with him. Now that he was a combination of nice guy and stud muffin, the dynamics shifted. Suddenly, women were eager to give him the sexual experience he had lacked. The short, skinny kid without confidence remained. So he had treated sex like it was a competitive sport through his early twenties until he adjusted to his new self-image. Things were different now.
He would be thirty next April. Most of his friends were either married or engaged. And he’d begun to feel the need—which had nothing to do with his mother’s unsubtle prompting—to settle down.
He had thought he knew what he wanted. It was a fantasy he hadn’t even fully let himself in on until he’d found her. He was looking for the kind of woman who would turn heads and gain him the envious admiration of his male friends. And be willing to become his wife and, in time, mother to their children.
When “Charlotte’s Sweetheart” singled him out with her flirtatious attention during an appearance on her morning show with Bogart, for the Charlotte K-9 service, he was so flattered his hard-on lasted the next three hours. He even started thinking about how to make payments on a diamond ring that first day.
James felt the heat of a rare blush sting his neck. The memory made him want to kick his own sorry butt around the block.
She’s so beautiful but so boring. Wasn’t that a song lyric? He’d always thought: Screw boring. If I could nail a woman like Jaylynn I wouldn’t care if she couldn’t add four plus four.
Only that was no longer true. Not even great sex could prevent his quick disillusionment with his fantasy girlfriend. That was because Jaylynn had only one topic of conversation: Jaylynn.
After an initial fuck-o-rama weekend, even their physical relationship began to have limitations. She didn’t want him to tangle her perfect hair that was, he discovered, not really all hers. She didn’t want to stay up late or wake up early for sex on his days off. She needed to be “fresh” for the camera. She couldn’t do “it” the day she got a bikini wax. “It doesn’t look good.”
Turned out, she was great at faking emotions, too. She wanted him on her arm for her public appearances but she couldn’t make time for a barbecue with his colleagues, let alone spend time with his family. After one too many arguments on the subject, she admitted that she didn’t like any of them that much. She even let slip that her dating him had been a calculation. The obvious chemistry between them on-screen, not to mention Bogart’s appeal to dog lovers, had tracked well with her demographics. Being a couple raised her profile. And she was always on the lookout for people and situations that gave her more publicity.
Just before they broke up, she was bragging about the fact that she had a new following in the Virginia penal system. She’d visited a correctional center as part of a morning-show segment on rehabilitation of the incarcerated. Their fan mail, she told one and all, just made her day. She told James that the thought of a building full of horny incarcerated men thinking about her made her feel all hot and kinky.
She turned away from the colleague to address an underling who had approached, long hair rippling with her every move. James felt his nut sack tighten. She’d betrayed him. He wasn’t ever going to forget that.