Adam looked at the half-page flyer on pale blue paper taped to the toilet seat and sighed. It was wrinkled and smudged, probably from the last several times he had crumpled it up and thrown it away. First, when he had found it tacked up on the refrigerator. Then, on the TV. The last time, it had been left on the inside of the front door. Brandon must have been pulling it out of the trash. The kid was like a dog with a bone.

Cursing, he ripped it off the toilet lid. He had half a mind to rip the thing into little pieces, drop them into the bowl, and piss on them, leaving them there for Brandon to fish out. Let him try to piece that back together. Common sense and a temperamental septic system won out over his irritation, though.

He simply folded the flyer and stuffed it into his pocket instead. He was going to have a talk with his nephew later and explain in a calm and mature manner that he did not need his nephew’s not-so-subtle matchmaking attempts.

It wasn’t as if Adam wasn’t interested in the possibilities, but the thought that the blonde had pushed the flyer at the kid bothered him. He had learned the hard way that the chances of hitting it off with a woman forward enough to do something like that weren’t good. He was past the “go out and have a good time anyway” stage. He had been for a long time.

Adam sighed, realizing he would be wasting his breath. When he had been Brandon’s age, he wouldn’t have understood, either. How could he explain to a twenty-year-old that sex wasn’t enough after a while? That what he wanted most was what he was most unlikely to find—a woman who satisfied his mind and heart, as well as his cock. Though, to be fair, the sex would have to be pretty good, too.

No, what Adam was looking for was a woman who could just as easily sit in comfortable silence as hold a decent conversation. One who was intelligent and thoughtful. Independent, yet retained an air of innocence. Someone who could live with his old-fashioned, caveman-like mentality without being a doormat.

Someone who, most likely, didn’t exist.

It wasn’t as if he hadn’t looked. Adam didn’t have his brother’s movie star looks, but he was a good-looking enough guy and had a decent, well-paying job. He couldn’t complain; he’d had more than his share of dates and hookups over the years. While he’d had some good times and met some great women, none of them came close to his ideal.

The blonde at the restaurant seemed nice enough, and she had shown interest. If he did go to this book signing thing, she would probably be amenable to coffee, then dinner, maybe even sex. It would be pleasant. Enjoyable, even. But he already knew that was all it would be, because she just didn’t do it for him.

Now that little brunette, she was a different story. She had a voice that stroked him in all the right places, and a husky laugh that made his dick hard and his balls clench. And when she had run all those soft, lush curves into him and looked up at him with those big green eyes, he’d had the sudden urge to throw her over his shoulder and take her out to his truck like the Neanderthal he was.

Even now, he couldn’t seem to go five minutes without thinking about her.

Holly, that was what the blonde had called her. Adam wondered if she would be at the book signing, too. Then he decided it didn’t matter. He wasn’t going.

* * *

HOLLY’S FINGERS FLEW over the keyboard. The visions and words in her head were coming so fast it was hard to keep up. Rather than write complete sentences, she just jotted down phrases and words, enough to get the gist and flow before she forgot them. She would come back and fill in the details later.

Three days. Three days of absolute gold and enough imagined fantasies to finish her alpha-male novel and spawn the continuing storyline through a few sequels. All Holly had to do was close her eyes for a moment, picture the guy from the restaurant, and the ideas came to her.

Tall. Broad. Muscular. Too rugged to ever be called pretty. He was the epitome of her perfect alpha, at least in looks. Thank God he hadn’t said more than a few words and ruined it all. As it was, he had said just enough for her to hear the deep, baritone rumble that fueled the fantasy. If she changed the length of his hair and imagined that body in different period clothing, he could fit into any genre. She could picture him as a brawny Highlander, a fierce SEAL, or an alpha shifter, just as easily as she could see him as the hero in any of her contemporary romances.

At any given time, Holly had between six and ten stories in various stages of development, encompassing a wide range of subgenres. What she chose to work on depended on her mood of the day, as well as her level of sexual frustration. Since Tuesday night, she had been ... inspired.

Granted, it had been embarrassing at the time, running into him like that and landing on her butt. But hey, if it got results like this, she might have to start scoping out various places and deliberately staging a few such “accidents.”

Or better yet, she could just stalk the restaurant guy. She wouldn’t even have to instigate another embarrassing physical encounter. Simply observing from afar would be enough to spawn a few ideas. With his dark hair, pale blue eyes, sculpted features, and hard body, the man was the perfect muse for sweaty, erotic fantasies.

He had to be the guy Liz had spotted in the booth behind them, and boy, she hadn’t been exaggerating when she said he was hot. Not in a polished, pretty boy sort of way, though. There was something inherently male about him, something that made all of Holly’s girlie parts sit up and shout a great big “hey, howdy.”

Smelling of clean male soap and deodorant, a bit of stubble around his strong jaw, and a deep, slightly husky voice that Holly couldn’t seem to get out of her mind, he really was the perfect inspiration.

The only bad thing was, Liz seemed interested in him. She hadn’t come right out and said so, but she had admitted to pumping the server for info and passing along a flyer for the book signing they were going to in a few days.

Holly sighed and absently petted Max with her foot beneath the table. If Liz was interested, her fantasies would have to stay just that—fantasies. For one thing, no man was worth jeopardizing Liz’s friendship. And for another, she didn’t stand a chance.

Most men took one look at Liz and started acting like lovesick puppies. They never looked at Holly, not unless Liz shot them down and they were forced to troll elsewhere. It was one of the main reasons Holly never went anywhere with Liz, except to their girls-only weekly dinners.

Liz was her bestie, her BFF, her only true friend, really, but Holly’s decided lack of people skills and fragile ego couldn’t take the rejection she would inevitably face at Liz’s side. Besides, her pride wouldn’t permit her to knowingly be someone’s second choice.

It was for the best, really. She didn’t need the aggravation and disappointment that inevitably accompanied getting her hopes up. For the first time in her life, Holly felt truly at peace. She had her own place and did her own thing. Her life was all about what she wanted, what made her happy.

Holly once again said her daily prayer of thanks to her late great-aunt, whose bequeathal had allowed her to purchase this little cottage and move out of her hometown for good. Great-Aunt Rose had been the only one who had ever understood Holly’s love of books, of reading and writing and getting lost in a really great story. The only one who had ever encouraged her to follow her dream. With the exception of Liz, no one else got it.

Both of her sisters, one older and one younger, were blessed with social skills and thought her preference for spending the day holed up in her room with a book was weird. And both of her brothers, one older and one younger, thought everything about her was weird. Her parents ... well, they were just disappointed. Disappointed she had hit the big 3-0 and still wasn’t married. Still had no kids. Disappointed she had quit her job as a software engineer to write romance novels, of all things. Disappointed she hadn’t told them she was moving out of town until after the ink on the mortgage papers was already dry.

It had to be that way, though. If they had known about her plans to buy this place, to move out and start living her life the way she wanted, they would have held an intervention. Deep down, they meant well, but they just didn’t, or couldn’t, seem to understand her desire to live alone or spend her life doing what she loved. That sort of thing was reserved for the spinster types. Or lesbians.

Not that there was anything wrong with either, but her family, especially her mother, was convinced that a woman could only be truly happy if she had a husband and children of her own.

At the moment, she was neither a spinster nor a proud member of the LGBT community. Despite the lack of male human companionship, Holly was still a twig and berries kind of girl. Though, if things kept going the way they were, spinsterhood was looking increasingly likely.

However, she did have Max, who was her saving grace. Old maids had cats or parakeets, not dogs. She reminded herself of this known and scientifically proven fact daily.

It wasn’t always easy, but Holly loved her fixer-upper cottage, one of the last remaining outbuildings on what had once been a palatial estate belonging to William Penn, for whom the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was named.

She loved having the freedom to stay in her PJs all day long if she wanted to. And she loved the fact that what little she had was hers and hers alone, and she didn’t have to share with bitchy older siblings, annoying younger ones, or—the worst of all possible creatures—roommates.

She’d had enough of them to last a lifetime. First at home, sharing a room with her sisters. Then at the state university, where she had been paired with a girl whose biggest college achievement was being selected as a little sister in one of the nastiest frats on campus. Really, if you were into that whole “brotherhood/sisterhood” thing, why not at least go for a sorority? And, of course the coup de grace—her disappointing attempts to find a compatible, mature young adult to share an apartment in town.

If there was one thing Holly had learned about herself over the years, it was that she didn’t like having roommates. There was no faster way to dislike a person and ruin what might have been a good friendship than by moving in with someone.

In Holly’s experience, the quiet, shy ones turned out to be noisy and annoying, especially when she was trying to do something that required peace and quiet, like reading or writing, the two things Holly loved to do most. The perfectly coiffed Debs were actually pigs behind closed doors, and the steadfast and loyal types often proved untrustworthy in the end, stiffing her for rent and horking her food.

The absolute worst thing about roommates? It wasn’t sharing a kitchen or microscopic living room, but a communal bathroom. Holly had yet to find anyone aware of, much less a devout practitioner of, the ass-tag convention. Her last cohabiter actually had the nerve to look at her like she was crazy for having even brought it up. As if getting out of the shower and wanting to know that you could dry your face without having to worry if the same towel had just dried someone’s ass was a bad thing!

Honestly. And they thought she was the weird one.

Holly sat back and re-read the last few paragraphs, her face flushing and her body heating from the latest in a series of really hot scenes. She decided her alpha muse would just have to remain in her deepest, darkest fantasies, only coming to life on the pages of her stories and her dreams.

Who needed the real thing when she had a writer’s imagination and Vinny?