Lady

I was having a bad day. My startup company had folded, I was in debt for a fortune, I couldn't even get a decent job and my girl had gone off with a doctor -- a female doctor.

I'd been flying high for a while, a very little while, and now I was right back where I'd started from. Which meant that the only chance I got to meet great looking women was inside the pages of girlie mags. It's true, what you've never had you never miss, but believe me, what you've had and lost you really mourn for. And I as I looked at all those horny chicks I felt as mournful as a grounded hawk.

A feeling which wasn't improved by checking out all the double cool females inside the covers of the magazine and wondering who the lucky dudes were who were screwing them. Apart from also wondering why I hadn't gone for a nice safe career in the magazine business instead of getting involved in high tech stock market floats: soft bodies are more fun than software and usually a lot easier to sell. Well, unless your name is Bill Gates, I guess.

And then it happened. I could have sworn I was alone in the apartment, the door locked, everything. Until the mag was snatched out of my hands.

I nearly had an heart attack, then looked up to see who was there and every one of my vital organs did go offline for about a second due to pure shock. Because the girl who was standing beside the couch could have stepped straight in amongst the bevy of lust arousing models on the glossy pages and been at home as a flea on a hound dog.

We are talking long blonde hair, a face that would have knocked any king ever sideways on his throne, and a drop dead figure with perky little boobs, all wrapped up -- OK, barely covered -- by "Hey, man, it's like honeymoon time" lingerie.

Maybe there are guys who know exactly how to behave when a living doll like this suddenly steps into their life in her stockings, suspender belt and high heeled shoes. I'm not one of them. I lay there with my arm stuck up in the air like I was pretending to be the statute of liberty and I didn't move a muscle. I didn't even speak, I just kind of quietly spasmed. My heart was back in action and an Indie driver was pumping the gas into it faster than I could burn it.

"Hi, Rand, nice to meet you," she said, and I still gaped at her like it was Independence Day and the earth's skies had been invaded by flying pizzas the size of cities.

"Who -- who are you?" I don't know how it came across to her but I hadn't sounded that squeaky since I was in junior school.

"I'm Chloe, and I'm the best thing that's ever happened to you."

"Where did you come from?"

"Rand, that's like asking where the rainbow comes from. By the time you've finished asking the question, it's gone. Do you want me to go?"

However confused I was about everything else, at least I knew the answer to that question: "Hell, no, I don't want you to go."