The Misadventures of the Laundry Hag 00 - Swept Under the Rug

of the merman. He pushed the button for the fifth floor. Coffee colored hairs were visible on his forearms, along with thin white stripes, possibly old scars. He didn’t shift or fidget, just gazed as the numbers on the elevator lit up with the car’s progress. I tried to think of something to say, but my mind had gone out to lunch. He seemed content to absorb the Kenny Logins Muzak and drip on the floor. The door dinged open all too soon.
    He ambled halfway down the hall as if he didn’t have a care and inserted the key card. The light turned green and he gripped the handle, pushed open the door. My brain chose that moment to reappear and panic gripped my lungs in a vice.
    “I’ll just wait for you here.” I toed at the carpet like a lost child.
    He gave me a hard stare, allowing the silence to amplify my statement. A flash of something that might have been disappointment came and went. Or maybe it was just my severely battered heart, making me see things not really there. Wanting to be wanted. Hazel green eyes bore into me and it felt as if he sized me up, like he could read my thoughts as easily as he had found a diamond in an underwater sand dune.
    “You’ll be all right.” His deep voice sparked something in me, something totally unfamiliar that I craved with rabid desperation. I nodded even though he hadn’t phrased it as a question.
    Without a backward glance, he entered the room and shut the door. I stared at the brass numbers, 517, trying to jumpstart my brain. What the hell had just happened? Who was this guy?
    I gazed at the ring in my hand through new eyes. When I had started driving last night, my only intention had been to exorcize The Jackass from my heart and get rid of this final reminder of him in one grand gesture. And I had. The ring had been cleansed in the ocean, a materialistic baptism which wiped the remaining vestiges of sentiment from my mind. I saw it now not as a reminder of The Jackass, but as the means to a fresh start. The gorgeous merman had known this, and had given me a new chance.
    “Thank you,” I whispered at number 517. I touched the door, but jumped when I heard footsteps inside. I ran and only Merv Griffin knew how fast.

Like Fifty Shades?

    You’re gonna love Daisy

    Publisher’s Weekly Says:

    “The chemistry is sizzling, the sex steamy, and the BDSM erotic.”

    Daisy Dominatrix , A chickliterotica title & Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award quarterfinalist

    By the bestselling author of

    Who Needs A Hero?

    Jennifer L. Hart

Chapter One

    W hen I was eight years old I sat with my Aunt Roberta in the front porch swing, listening to crickets and watching lightning bugs when she asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up.
    “Catwoman,” I answered, then returned to my wild cherry Kool Aide.
    “That’s interesting. Why Catwoman?”
    I thought about it for a second. “Because she’s cool and she has an awesome costume and gets to kiss Batman.”
    “Sweetie, you know Catwoman doesn’t really exist, right?” Aunt Robbie said.
    “Sure she does. She’s not always Catwoman, sometimes she’s in other movies.”
    My mother breezed out on a cloud of Elizabeth Arden’s Sunflowers. “What are we talking about?”
    “Michelle Pfeiffer. Here, have some Kool Aide.”
    “That stuff rots your insides,” my mother sniffed and then hurried out to the car to meet her date.
    That was the end of the Catwoman discussion, but the idea never left me. Sure, at eight I thought growing up to be Catwoman was a legitimate profession and as I got older I found ways to rationalize the idea. Boys loved Catwoman, she was up there with Princess Leia on the fantasy wall in the boy’s locker room, or so my best friend Tad told me. Everyone knew Catwoman was hot.
    “Do you really think she’s hot?” I asked him while we studied for our algebra test.
    “Not as hot as Batman,” Tad said.
    I agreed with him on that score, Batman was hot, but I didn’t want to be Batman.
    The memory was fresh in my mind the morning that changed my life.
    Sitting across from Rowena Metcalf, aspiring author, and trundling through her tax receipts, it dawned on me that Catwoman must have a day job somewhere. Sure, she died and was revived by cats but where did she keep her catsuit when she was showering?
    Tim Burton had never returned my calls on the subject so I was stuck doing other people’s taxes in order to pay my bills.
    “Rowena, you can’t write off fifty three gallons of Moose Tracks ice