Excerpt of Executive Impulse by Genie Davis

There was this one guy she'd met, pure rebound, on the plane back from Reno.

He had an amazing smile, intense blue–grey eyes with long lashes, off set by a ruggedly masculine jaw and strong cheekbones. His hair was a little long in the back and unruly on the sides and thick. He was the kind of physical package that would've immediately wowed any woman, at least any woman who hadn't just gotten an ostensibly zip–less yet somehow still incredibly painful divorce.

But in spite of her well justified reserve that afternoon, it didn't take him all that long to win her over. Just the hour the plane sat on the runway due to mechanical difficulties, and then, once they were finally towed back to the terminal, the hour it took them to consume some uninspired Cheez–Whiz based nachos and weak Margaritas at El Tortilla, which was what passed for a Mexican restaurant in the Reno airport.

It was that smile, really, and the way he kept somehow making her laugh, effortlessly, the way she hadn't laughed in a long time, that convinced her to spend the evening with him.

They were rescheduled for a midnight flight, and after the El Tortilla dining experience, they had five more hours to kill. They'd already acquainted themselves with and bonded over the similar aspects of their careers – he was a newspaper reporter who worked crime beat, so they were both involved in pursuing, either for arrest or attribution, various criminal low–lifes. They exchanged mutually amusing, cynical anecdotes about their work. They easily discovered they were both unattached, that Kate was newly unattached, and that he should avoid that subject altogether, although she'd tried not to be too prickly about it. And they determined that neither one of them was into feeding dollar bills and quarters in to airport slot machines. So, they decided to take a ride.

He rented a car, the only one available he said, a very sexy choice, a Cadillac convertible. He drove it top down through a warm summery night, headed for the deep blue waters of Lake Tahoe where he'd spent the preceding long weekend, fishing.

He took her to a fine little place he knew for dinner, with a porch looking over the water, a row of white lights strung from the roof, substantially better margaritas, cold beer, fresh trout, baked potatoes, and a rich chocolate lava cake for desert. He told jokes and she laughed. He was a very funny guy, smart funny. She started telling jokes herself, and he laughed, too. She'd never realized before just how funny she was.

And then his leg touched her leg under the table. His hand brushed her arm. Her hand wrapped around his neck and pulled him close, and there they were, on the way back to the convertible, kissing under the pines. And the kiss lasted so long and made her so breathless that they just had to kiss again, and then he was kissing her neck, her shoulders, her arms right down to her fingers, until at last they were hungrily mouth to mouth again. It was this third kiss that led them into the back seat of the convertible where they became deeply involved in the removal of her bra and his belt, while keeping the kissing going, so involved that they didn't notice when it began to rain.

The rain was just a sprinkle at first, and with his shirt all untucked and belt dangling he climbed into the front seat and turned the ignition and pressed the button that was supposed to make the roof go up, but it didn't.

Laughing, she joined him, bra straps loose, skirt all bunched up, and sure, they got a little distracted by each other's disarray, they took a few moments to do a little more groping and kissing and undressing – lose the bra altogether, pull off his shirt – but they did try, they honestly did try to get the roof up on the car. She even pulled the service manual from the glove box, read the instructions twice to be sure because they were a little bit hard to follow with him licking and kissing her breasts, his hand working up under her skirt.

Eventually, they both put some of their clothes back on and got out of the car and tried manually tugging the roof up, but it wouldn't rise more than half way, they got absolutely soaked, and the car was flooding.

So really what choice did they have but to drive to the nearest covered parking garage – attached to a Best Western just down the road – and leave the car in its berth while they took a room for the night.

It was one hell of a night, too, they were peeling off their wet clothes again while they were still in the elevator, his shirt gone, her dress unzipped, they kicked off their shoes and fell across the bed and didn't quite finish taking off everything until the third time they made love, giggling, watching themselves in the bathroom mirror. He still had one sock on even then.

The rain stopped by morning, it was a beautiful, radiant day, sunshine streaming in, the lake a devastating azure. He suggested they stay another day, rent out a boat; but she had work to get back to, a life she had to put back together, a checked bag already making its way to Burbank. And things were just happening too fast, it couldn't possibly be real, what she was feeling, how much she just plain liked this guy and how much he just plain liked her.

No, she knew it was all just rebound, all just sex. It had to be. So she put her damp, wrinkled dress on again, and they drove back to the airport.The rental car company wasn't exactly thrilled with the condition of the interior of the car, but agreed, after Kate flashed her badge, that the damage was not caused by their negligence but by vehicle maintenance issues. <