Missed Connections: Stepping Out Read Free Page A

was a fight, Conlan—your date—got his head bashed in, then you ditched him in the restaurant?”
    After swallowing a healthy dose of morning wake-up, Gwen gave Mia a detailed blow-by-blow, sparing herself no expense when she also detailed how she’d made out with the creep in the restroom.
    “I can’t believe you did that.”
    “Neither can I.” Gwen groaned, set her coffee on the nightstand, and tried to hide under her comforter.
    Mia wouldn’t let her. She sat down on the bed and pulled the comforter off her. “He’s engaged, Gwen. To a pregnant woman.”
    “I know.” She wanted to curl into a ball and die. “But I can see why he’s such a player. The man had skills. Not that I was buying into him at all, but Jesus, he was sexy. Gross, creepy, scummy, and really, really hot. Even worse, he was a good kisser.”
    The universe was seriously screwed up to allow a dirtbag like Conlan to have such an amazing mouth. “All I know is that I finally told him off and stiffed him with a huge bill. So I did my part for womankind.”
    “After you played tonsil-hockey, you mean.”
    Gwen smacked Mia with her pillow. “Look. He caught me off guard. I haven’t had sex in forever. At least I did the right thing at the end.”
    “True.” They sat staring at each other. “So now what?”
    “Now we get to work. I’m going to set up the rest of this week’s posts, and I’ll start with what happened last night, then ask for opinions. Make a poll to go with it, would you?”
    “Good idea. We also got a stack of advice questions. You’re up to bat.”
    “Deal. And you handle the ad space for next month. We’re getting behind on scheduling guest spots too. You need to catch us up.”
    Mia groaned. “Fine. Go shower and meet me in the office.”
    Hours later, Gwen finished the majority of work she’d planned to accomplish for the day. She’d scheduled a meeting with her editor at the Bend Voice at four, so she hustled to grab both herself and Karen some coffee before walking into the downtown office.
    She waved at a few of her friends, pleased to see they’d saved her a spot at the guest desk, which usually overflowed with paper and yellow sticky notes. She normally did her piece at home, but every now and then she put in an appearance at the office to make Karen happy. The Bend Voice ran independently of the local paper, and the weekly format went out to over a hundred thousand people. A decent platform from which she gathered blog followers as well.
    “About time you got here,” Karen barked in her husky voice, worn down from years of smoking. “We’ve got a great idea for the advice section, something to broaden appeal for us and the Insider .” The Insider —the daily paper.
    “Oh?” Gwen put one cup near Karen, then perched on the seat opposite Karen’s desk and downed some of her own dark roast.
    “Yeah. I was talking with Ted over at the Insider . He’s got a guy who gives advice, and we have you. So we thought about growing our readership and throwing you two together. Advice from a man’s and woman’s point of view.”
    “Hasn’t that been done before?”
    “Yep, but not by either of us in years. We also got you a spot on the local news to push this. Sound good?”
    Gwen was pretty happy with her work at present. But extra publicity never hurt. She could almost hear Mia yelling at her to accept. “Um, sure?” TV? She didn’t have a thing to wear. Not to mention the camera added a good thirty pounds to what she thought she looked like.
    “You can plug your blog. Never hurts for an extra push, am I right?” Karen dangled the extra bait.
    Like the hapless guppy Gwen was turning out to be, she jumped on it. “Fine. I’m in.”
    Karen rubbed her hands together, her gray eyes twinkling behind her glasses. “Outstanding. Your new partner is waiting in the conference room. Go meet and greet and figure out how you two want to handle the TV spot. Just a warning, this one’s a looker. Check