Hunks: Opposites Attract (4 page)

Other pieces of furniture like a huge comfy plush chair, a small circular table with four wingback chairs and one more handsome made bookshelf completed the entire living space turning it into a mini paradise for any one lucky enough to be staying here.

Sapphire was thrilled she was that person. Shauntie was too good to her and she would have to find a way to make it up to her. Her girlfriend absolutely knew of the most amazing place for her to come and alleviate all of the stress from her year.

How could anyone not fall in love with all of this
?

Picking up the grocery bags, Sapphire decided to get all of the food put away before heading upstairs and choosing which one of the four bedrooms she would sleep in. Walking across the room, she went through the door separating the kitchen from the living room.

She placed the four bags on the white island in the center of the kitchen. Looking around, Sapphire couldn’t get over how this room spoke volumes about Shauntie’s decorating style. The white cabinets with the print border only complimented the stunning gingham on the French doors to the pantry. The blinds on the windows above the kitchen sink gave the space a little added light it needed.

Sapphire took everything out of the bags and organized all of her items inside the cabinets, pantry and refrigerator. She didn’t want to spend too much time in here. Sapphire hoped to get settled in pretty quickly. Since there were already several ideas running through her head she wanted to get onto her computer.

Leaving the kitchen, Sapphire hurried back into the living room and picked up her suitcase before going up the staircase. She had thought about getting something to eat, but that was before her mind got stimulated with new ideas.

Chapter Three

The bedroom was perfect.

Taking a sip of her hot cocoa with mini-marshmallows, Sapphire couldn’t keep the thought from filtering back into her head as she walked around the frozen pond at the back of the cottage.

After she had gone upstairs, Sapphire had spent a few minutes checking out all of the bedrooms before finally the last one captured everything she was looking for while she was here on her mini-vacation.

A huge pine four-poster bed stood proudly in the center of the room beckoning her to stay there. The predominant teal mixed with a touch of ocher colors relaxed her mind the second she walked through the door. She couldn’t help but envision herself curled up in the middle of the night with her laptop, working away on her blog

. None of the second hand finds Shauntie used to decorate the space from the antique chest at the front of the bed to the reupholstered armchair by the window brought down the beauty of the room. Even the turquoise table to the left side of the bed was shabby chic.

The sweet smell of nature filled her nose as the wind through the trees gave the backyard a feel of tranquility Sapphire wasn’t getting from the city.

Everything about the cottage was ‘picture perfect’. Even the birds flying one tree to another made the stress of her writer’s block leave her body clearing her cluttered mind. The cottage was the total opposite from her. Nothing about her was relaxing or calming. Her creative mind was always flowing until a couple of weeks ago when she hit a roadblock.

Sapphire had spent so much time working on the dental care of her patients over the last five years that she’d gotten used to putting everyone else’s need before her own. Noise and chaos seemed like they were the front runners in her life now.

Yet, now that she was all alone, Sapphire saw the reason why Shauntie encouraged her to spend the rest of the month here away from the city. Who wouldn’t be inspired to do something incredible surrounded by such beauty?

Most of her life she had made a vow to herself that she wanted to be a successful career woman and not a woman who stayed at home with the kids while her husband worked. Being a success in the medical field was her main focus.

As a young girl Sapphire had made a very important decision concerning her life. She knew she didn’t want to be dependent on anyone but herself. So she studied extremely hard during high school and college taking courses in biology, health and mathematics. While she was a college undergraduate she’d taken science courses like biology and chemistry which were required before she could apply to dental school.

In addition to all of that she was also required to take the Dental Admissions Test which was a requirement for all dental school applicants. Dental school considered the scores earned in the Dental Admissions Test, along with her grade point average plus recommendations and of course the interview as a part of the admissions package. Doing well on all of those things was front and center for her back then. She hadn’t thought of failure.

She was always fascinated by people’s teeth when she was growing up. Her parents always told her the importance of making a good first impression, and of course a nice smile was a big part. So, she decided to become involved in helping people make that great impression.

By the time she arrived at high school she already had her career choice in mind and nothing was going to change her mind.

Once she informed her parents about her career path, of course they warned her about the long road of studying ahead of her, but they never tried to talk her out of her dream. In fact, her mother and father were cheering the loudest when she walked across the stage at graduation.

Making her way over to the bench a few feet away from the frozen pond, Sapphire brushed away the light dusting of snow with her glove, took a seat and took another sip of the hot cocoa. She loved her career.

Being a dentist gave her a chance to diagnose and treat problems with her client’s mouths if they came in early enough for her to fix it. She didn’t want to be the dentist everyone was afraid to visit once a year. She wanted to be the dentist all her patients loved coming to see because of the outstanding treatment they received from her and her staff.

For the first couple of years of her career, Sapphire had worked as a dental associate with a few other dentists to get her feet wet but after about four years in that particular work environment she made a decision to become a solo practitioner which meant she would have her own business.

The thought of being her own boss over other people had scared her immensely, but she pushed her fears away and went forward. In the end it turned out to be the best decision for her; however, after getting everything the way she envisioned it at her practice she still had some excess energy she needed to burn off. Without a doubt, she was an overachiever in every aspect of the word. She always wanted to be doing more and more.

Not knowing exactly what she still wanted to do with her free time Sapphire decided to start writing in a journal again like she’d done all through high school and in college to ease her nerves before big tests.

Anytime things got too overwhelming for her at school and she needed an outlet to release all of her bent up energy, writing always did the trick for her. After one particularly long workday she’d come home and started writing in her journal and she was almost done when a thought crossed her mind. She wondered what it would be like to share her day with people on the internet like a personal blog. The second the idea came to her she’d loved it, but getting it started was harder than she thought it would be.

Her biggest concern was getting someone too interested in her life and that wasn’t what she wanted from this experience. All she wanted to gain was to see if other people out there were having the same problems as her. Some days she loved her job and life, then there were the days the thought of getting out of bed made her pull the covers over her head.

Why shouldn’t she share her daily thoughts with other people?

Sapphire had laid her journal to the side and got on the internet researching all of the blog sites that she could find. Google was an excellent tool. She got a lot further in one day with the click of a mouse than she could have done doing research at the library.

After printing out everything she could on the subject, Sapphire took the rest of the day working on designing how she wanted her blog to look before she typed in her first post. At first, she didn’t get too many hits but as soon as she incorporated topics from her personal life more and more people joined and became followers of her blog. Some of them even recommended her to others. Six months after starting her blog,
Sapphire’s World
was more successful than she could have ever dreamt with new followers joining her every day.

Later on, when Sapphire finally had come clean and told Emerald and Shauntie about her pastime after work, it had gone worse than she thought it might. They called her crazy and tried to talk her into taking it down. Emerald thought she was out of her mind for sharing her most private thoughts with a group of strangers, but she didn’t see it like that.

About 90% of her followers posted their own personal experiences too which made all of her life experiences seem a lot less over the top.

Most of the individuals who clicked into her blog deserved her respect by making her next blog entry something valuable and worthwhile. Usually if she ran into a dry spell with the blog, Sapphire would review a book or post about a childhood memory about what her and her sisters did for fun; but this time she was fresh out of ideas.

What am I going to do
? Sapphire thought

She needed to think of something and
fast
. Half of her followers constantly commented about how they thought her topics had great content and insight, yet this time
Sapphire’s World
might be lacking in that department.

God, she truly hoped being away from her usual writing spot would push her imagination up to a new level, because if she didn’t get any new visions for it her blog writing days might be over.

People liked her blog because it was written by her, not a business or ‘ghost writer.’ Every typed word was done by her and no one else. Seeing her blog littered with comments gave her an immense pleasure.

Sapphire shoved the doubt devil off her shoulder preventing him from whispering in her ear any more. She had never been and didn’t believe in not giving something your all. Therefore, she sure in the hell wasn’t about to give up something that gave her such immense pleasure...not just
yet

For once in her life, Sapphire felt like everything was going the way it should with the exception of her less than exciting love life. Who in the hell knew when that would change? How could she have such a successful career, cool as hell friends and a house she loved coming home to but no one to share any of these things with?

Was it her? Was she too picky? Should she just live in the moment and go out with every guy who asked her out on a date and not think of it beyond the here and now? Could her lack of love life be the factor causing her writer’s block?

Every single time she feared no new ideas would come to her, something always appeared out of the blue. Taking a deep breath, Sapphire allowed the fresh air to ease into her lungs. As much as she would love to stay outside and unwind in this beautiful weather and the harmony of her surroundings, Sapphire knew she still had bags to unpack and she wasn’t going to have any dinner tonight unless she figured out what to cook.

Getting up from the bench, Sapphire took one last lingering look at the pond already planning to make another trip down here tomorrow to ice skate. Something about this place made her feel like her life change was going to transform more than she could have ever thought possible.

Yeah, this might be the best decision of her life.

Chapter Four

Tossing his dark blue duffle bag down on the porch, Brian Terry allowed his gaze to wander over the nature surrounding him. Back at home, he’d fought against coming way out here to clear his mind but Nash wasn’t going to leave him alone until he finally gave in.

Brian wasn’t positive that a trip to a cottage was going to help him soothe his mood at all. He didn’t understand why Nash cared if he lost himself in his own self pity. The road his life traveled had nothing to do with his best friend. Nash had to understand that they no longer had the same relationship since his buddy started dating Shauntie. Even Chance agreed with him.

Nash had turned into someone different and it wasn’t for the worst, but he was more ‘in touch’ with his ‘softer side’ than he was before. He went out of his way now to see what was going on in his friend’s lives and worked on solutions to fix their problems. He hadn’t signed up for a self-help show or asked for any free advice. He might not be in the best mood at the very moment, but it would change as long as Nash stopped acting like he had a Ph.D in the love department.

Shauntie wasn’t a bad girlfriend for Nash. He really liked her and anytime he came over to Nash’s house Shauntie greeted him with a smile and offered to get him something to drink or eat. Most of the time, he turned her down because he felt a little uncomfortable having Nash’s woman getting him something out of the kitchen. After she talked to him for a minute or two, Shauntie would leave so he could have his weekly guy’s night with Nash.

Most girlfriends would get jealous or offended when their boyfriends didn’t want to change their weekly man cave meeting with beer, hot wings and sometimes a large pepperoni pizza. However, Shauntie let them have the house while she would go over to one of her girlfriend’s houses.

He was beginning to have a sneaky suspicion that Shauntie loved his and Chance’s weekly visits so she could do some things without Nash following behind her like a love sick teenager instead of a forty-something year old man. His best friend had it bad for Shauntie and he never made a secret of it. He would shout his love for Shauntie from the sky if he could do it without getting in trouble.

A small hint of jealousy burned in the pit of Brian’s stomach at how Nash finally had gotten everything he had wanted.