Valentine's Day Is Killing Me by Mary Janice Davidson, Susanna Carr, Leslie Esdaile Read Free Book Online

doesn’t make sense,” Scott commented.
    “Love makes you do stupid things.” Hobbes tipped them a two-finger salute. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”
    She left.

Chapter Fifteen
     
     
    “You didn’t get that hysterical when the I.T. guys were ganging up on you,” Scott commented, hours later after they were snuggled into her bed. “This bed blows, by the way.”
    “I live alone and I don’t have a boyfriend. I don’t need anything bigger than a twin,” she pointed out.
    “Remind me to get you a double bed for Easter.”
    “Getting a little ahead of ourselves, aren’t we?”
    “No. You lurrrrrrrrrrrrv me! My God, I thought you were going to pop Hobbes right in the eye. I was torn between anxiety and sexual arousal.”
    “Pig. I just didn’t want to see an innocent man go to jail,” she grumbled.
    “Suuuuuure. Total altruism on your part. Sweetie, you’re a jingle writer, not a homicide detective, but you got yourself ass-deep in my problem, and how come? Because you lurrrrrrrrrrv me.”
    “Stop saying that,” she said, “or I’ll pull off your testicles. I just thought it would be nice if, just once, V-Day wasn’t the worst day of the year. Although, it sure as shit didn’t start off too well…”
    “Ah, but the ending.” He stroked her thigh. “What are you doing tomorrow?”
    “Working.”
    “Call in sick. Let’s stay home and make love and buy something to drink besides milk.”
    “And miss a single day of my wonderful job? Just to stay home and have sex with you?”
    “Well…yeah.” He sounded uncomfortable…almost tentative? Like he wasn’t sure she would want to?
    “I’m teasing, dumb-ass. Of course I will. I’d much rather bone you than write get-well jingles.”
    “Oh, God,” he sighed, pulling her on top of him. “That’s so romantic.”
    “But you have to get older in a hurry. I’m not dating someone in his twenties. It’s just…yech.”
    “Now you’re just being annoying for the sake of being annoying.”
    “Yeah,” she sighed happily, resting her forehead on his. “I guess you don’t mind, though.”
    “I guess not. I overlook all kinds of bad behavior on Valentine’s Day.”
    “Oh, shut up.”

A “ N O D RAMA” V ALENTINE’S
     
     
    Leslie Esdaile
     
     

Chapter One
     
     
    At a little café on Twentieth and Chestnut Streets,
    Philadelphia, PA

    Who needed a man on Valentine’s Day? The species was more trouble than it was worth! Jocelyn Jefferson held up her wide-mouthed teacup and clinked it against three other mugs in the all-female soul-renewal fest. She glanced down at her chamomile tea, smiling as it almost sloshed on the table.
    “This year,” she announced to her three best friends, “we’re gonna have a ‘no drama’ Valentine’s!”
    “I heard that!” Tina said, raking her fingers through her long braids and tossing her hair over her shoulders. “Look at us. We’re all in graduate school; therefore we’re all obviously trying to do something positive with our lives. All of us are under thirty, and not bad on the eyes,” she added with a mischievous grin. “Don’t have kids, have a future, and shouldn’t have to put up with the ‘Oh, baby, see, what had happened was,’ rhetoric.”
    “No lie,” Jacqui chimed in, talking with her hands as her rust-hued dreadlocks bobbed. “I am so sick of it. Every year it’s the same thing. Disappointment, long stories about why he didn’t come through. A bunch of la-la. And, I’m always scratching my head, wondering why it has to be all of this. Why the games?”
    Freddie shook her head with disgust, making a profusion of shiny, onyx curls dance as she spoke. “Chile, pullease. I hear it all, working down at the Galley Mall. Brothers fall into the store, run game while buying their woman or wife perfume. Dawgs. Hear what I’m saying, ladies? Dawgs. And they think because I’m ringing a department store register that I don’t have anything else going on in my life, so I was