C.j.'s Fate

Chapter One "C.J., can't you put that book down for ten minutes?" The exasperated voice, coming from the willowy blonde seated next to C.J. in the cab, contained more than a thread of real irritation. C.J. lifted her burnished copper head and directed a somewhat quizzical look at her friend, then sighed and marked her place, closing the heavy book and leaving it to rest on her lap. "Sorry, Jan," she murmured. Jan leaned forward to address the third occupant of the cab, who was sitting on the other side of C.J. "Want to bet she starts reading again the moment we check in?" The brunette on C.J.'s right shook her head with a long-suffering sigh, her brown eyes merry. "That's the trouble with geniuses--they just can't stop being geniuses." "I'm not a genius, Tami," C.J. protested, her quiet voice mild but very slightly impatient. "Lord knows that just looking at you no one would take you for a brain," Jan said. "You're no bigger than a pixie, and those ridiculous yellow eyes make you look like a bewildered kitten!" "It's disgusting!" Tami chimed in, her voice lifting in mock outrage. "All the men cluster around you like bees at a honey pot, until you utterly dumbfound them by saying very seriously that Charlemagne was a terrific king--or whatever he was--and that the Romans were great people in spite of the orgies." C.J. sighed again as her friends' laughter attacked her ears from both sides. They meant well--they really did. But since she had spent both school days and vacations with them all through the years, these kinds of comments were beginning to grow stale. If asked, C.J. would have replied quite honestly that the tradition of marriage seemed a fine idea and was, after all, what one made of it. To each his own. Her "own" was blessed singleness. The love of her life was history; no flesh-and-blood man had succeeded in peeling away so much as one layer of that set of abstractions she had long ago wrapped herself in. C.J. saw nothing wrong with that, nothing missing from her life. She was well-traveled, very well educated, and perfectly capable of holding her own in any social situation. The problem was--said her friends--that she didn't particularly care one way or the other about the normal feminine preoccupations. Her copper hair was curly and kept short for convenience; it rarely saw a brush and never a beauty salon. She wore whatever she happened to pull from closet or drawer, usually casual slacks or jeans and, depending on the season, a sweater or T-shirt. She made no effort to cover with makeup the light sprinkling of freckles on her nose, or to emphasize the catlike slant or color of her tawny eyes. And far from encouraging the attentions of a man, she was more likely to fix him with a ruthlessly clear-seeing gaze, and demand to know what all the pretty speeches were for. Still, her friends had tried. During the last ten years, they had "fixed her up" with one man after another. She had been ruthlessly pulled from the books in her study time after time to attend a party, see a play, hear a concert. And vacations had been riddled with seemingly casual meetings with suitable, hopefully interesting bachelors. C.J. had only the vaguest recollection of faces and none at all of names. Four of her friends were now married and Kathy, the last to succumb to the lure of "happily ever after," was scheduled to trip down the aisle exactly one week from today. The result, unfortunately for C.J., was that her friends were now more determined than ever to see her meet her own Prince Charming. She was aware they would give her no peace until she demonstrated herself to be a perfectly normal female and got married. Or had an affair. Even a fling would give them hope. Jolted from her thoughts when the caHooper, Kay is the author of 'C.j.'s Fate ', published 2007 under ISBN 9780553590487 and ISBN 0553590480.