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Date Posted: 17:39:18 12/17/09 Thu
Author:

Page
Subject: Brief snippet inside >>>>
In reply to: Page 's message, "I've been drafted" on 17:28:57 12/17/09 Thu

When we left Rhett, she'd just driven past her workplace at ten miles over the posted speed limit, ready to start her life over and have some adventures.

Excerpt from working title Rhett
�2009 by Juli Morgan
Posted for purposes of critique only and does not constitute publication

As it turned out, where Rhett was going was home. She only had a quarter tank of gas left, and her hair wasn�t the right length to either tousle or look sexy. It just looked windblown and messy when she checked it in one of the side mirrors. Besides, it was still too cold to be cruising around with the window down. She parked the car in the garage next to Todd�s grey behemoth, and lowered the garage door. For some reason, she felt like she was breaking a law by being home on a weekday morning, and didn�t want to advertise her presence there to any of the neighbors who might be around.

The phone was ringing as she entered the house through the kitchen door, and a quick check of the caller I.D. confirmed her worst suspicions. It was Wrought Iron Specialties, and the sight of the name spelled out in bold LED letters made her heart flutter in panic. What had she done? All of her earlier bravado vanished at the thought of actually telling her bosses they could take their job and shove it. The house phone was still ringing when the strains of The Razorbacks Fight Song piped up from the counter where her cell phone was plugged into the charger. She dropped her purse onto a bar stool, and leaned over to decipher the number on the phone�s tiny screen. Wrought Iron Specialties. Well, hell. Wasn�t that a little bit of overkill on their part? She breathed a sigh of relief as the kitchen phone stopped ringing, and the cell phone went to voice mail. Almost immediately, though, the land line rang again. The caller I.D. indicated it was Wrought Iron. This time, Rhett wasn�t panicked. In fact, it got her dander up. When the cell phone rang again � yep, Wrought Iron � the woman who had sped past the offices picked up the wall phone. �What?�

�Uh�� The voice on the other end sounded confused, but only for a moment. �Rhett? Is that you?� It was Lane Sterns, the son of Wrought Iron�s owner, and one of the most obnoxious little pricks ever to come out of the University of Texas. And that was saying a lot.

�Yes, Lane, it�s me.� The fire of righteous indignation warmed her, and made her feel ten feet tall. How dare they badger her by telephone? Wasn�t making her uncomfortable in the workplace enough for them? Rhett had had enough.

Lane had evidently recovered his usual level of assholedness. �You are supposed to be at work right now, in case you haven�t noticed. Where are you?�

�Where am I? Where the hell do you think I am, Lane? You called my house, so I�m obviously at home. Furthermore,� she interrupted what she was sure would be a condescending tirade on his part, �I have noticed what time it is, thank you. I have also noticed that I applied for a job as a receptionist, and got stuck being an executive secretary and a billing manager, and that you�re getting all that while still paying me an receptionist�s salary. Another thing I�ve noticed is that there�s no amount of money that would make me stay there and work for you unfriendly, ungrateful, unbearable people. I may be a lot of things, but I�m not stupid. Surprise!�

�Are you quitting?� Lane sounded flabbergasted.

�Very good, Lane. You got it right. Maybe nepotism wasn�t the only reason you got your job after all.� Rhett hung up, cutting Lane off in mid-sputter, and gave the finger to the phone. She was grinning like an idiot, but couldn�t stop. Man, that felt good! Even better than blowing past the office had that morning. Good thing she�d taken no personal effects to the office with her during her eight months of employment. She didn�t think Lane would be disposed to sending any of it back. For a brief instant, she considered calling him back and playing her cell phone ringtone for him, but came to her senses before she could. She�d already made him mad; blasting the Razorbacks Fight Song into the ear of a UT graduate might just make him come over to the house with a gun.

Satisfied with herself, she went into her bedroom to take off her work clothes. She shrugged out of the lavender linen jacket, and reached over her shoulder to unzip her dress. It fell into a puddle at her feet, and she picked it up, noticing for the first time just how butt-ugly it was. What in sam hill had possessed her to buy it in the first place? The thing had no shape to it at all, just a long column of black with a horrible pattern of large blue and lavender flowers around the hemline. Rhett grimaced, thinking it looked like something her own grandmother might have worn. She reached into the closet for a hanger, and stopped, staring at the orderly row of clothes hanging there. They were all ugly, all of them looking like they had been manufactured by Old Hag International. Old lady clothes in muted colors and unflattering shapes. Stunned, she dropped the dress on the floor, and caught sight of her shoes, the serviceable black sandals with the clunky one-inch heel, chosen for comfort, and because they�d go with anything. Shoes she had bought at Wal-Mart because they were cheap. Rhett extended a leg and observed the effect. It wasn�t pretty. In fact, the shoes made her look like she had cankles, which she assuredly did not, thank you very much.

She kicked the shoes off and gathered them up with the offending dress she�d just removed. Holding them out in front of her as if they were covered in offal, she stalked into the bathroom and dropped them into the trash receptacle. Ha. So much for Old Hag International. Of course, they were still good clothes, and someone would undoubtedly be grateful to have them. Rhett stopped in the act of reaching for the discarded garments. If she retrieved them, they�d go right back into the closet. And if they went into the closet, she�d end up wearing them again, ugly or not. She knew herself all too well. With a decisive motion, she ripped a length of toilet paper off the roll and blew her nose into it. Standing over the trash can, she dropped the used tissue on top of the clothes. There. Now she wouldn�t be tempted to ever wear that particular outfit again.

Back in front of the closet she pondered her choices. There wasn�t much there other than the row of old lady clothes. Her gaze lifted to the top shelf where she spied a fold of denim peeping from under the extra quilt she kept for cold nights. She extracted the jeans, still festooned with the tags they had come with. Lilith had given them to her for Christmas, and she�d never tried them on. When she had seen the Neiman-Marcus tags she had cringed, knowing they had probably cost the earth. Vague thoughts of returning them to the store and getting something she�d actually wear had crossed her mind from time to time, but now that so much time had passed, she didn�t think the store would take them back. Not that she�d try, anyway. She never returned unwanted gifts. The proof of that was scattered throughout the house in the form of home d�cor items she abhorred but kept, because someone had taken the time to get them for her for one gift-giving occasion or another.

After heaving the sigh of a woman about to push a boulder from Dallas to Fort Worth, Rhett pulled on the jeans. She approached the full-length mirror on the back of the bedroom door sideways, as if to take her image by surprise. Her eyebrows rose in astonishment, and she faced her reflection head on. Well, hot damn! These things looked nice. No, they looked great. Her thighs actually looked slender, and her legs appeared ten miles long. Smiling in delight, Rhett turned around and looked over her shoulder to take in the rear view. Double hot damn! The jeans made it look as if she still had an ass. What kind of jeans were these, anyway? She pulled out the store tag attached to the waistband and squinted at it until she made out the name. Rhett shrugged. She didn�t know who or what 7 For All Mankind was, but if they � or it � could make a pair of jeans that gave her shapely thighs and an honest-to-goodness ass, they were okay by her.

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[> [> I love Rhett! -- Debi, 20:23:55 12/17/09 Thu

I think you should keep up with Miss Rhett. I know you're working on Carey On and RO, but if Rhett speaks to you, I think you should listen. I, for one, would love to hear what else she has to say.

Can I find a pair of those jeans? ;-) I suspect it'll take a lot more than a pair of jeans to make me look like that, though...;-)

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[> [> [> Thank you! >>> --

Page, 14:10:20 12/19/09 Sat

I'm so glad you like her! And I won't be giving up on her. She won't let me! *G* Whenever she decides to speak up, she's too intriguing to ignore.

Those jeans? Yeah, they're pretty good. I don't own them since I have an aversion to selling any of my organs so I can afford to buy a pair, but I have tried them on. I just stared at myself in the dressing room mirror and found myself wondering how much I could get for a kidney. *G*

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