Free Stuck With A Stranger by Grace McCabe

CHAPTER ONE
     
     
    Rachel Thompson took a sip of her coffee and stared
out the window at the curtain of thick, heavy snow swirling
outside. Shit! This was just her luck. Every time she went
out on a limb and tried something new, or something different, or
something that looked like it might pan out and change her life,
luck always seemed to turn against her.
     
    The first straw had been losing her accounting job
the month before, just when she needed it most. Corporate
downsizing, they called it, which was just semantics. Just another
way of saying pack up and get the hell out, we don’t need you
anymore. Then, as if on cue, her five-year relationship with an
asshole who will remain nameless imploded, even before she’d
received her first severance check.
     
    And now this. And who was she kidding, anyway? What
were the odds of meeting a rich, handsome man through an online
introduction service? She’d been crazy to think it would work.
     
    She had signed up with Rich & Amorous on a lark,
after hearing about it from a friend. But now, as she sat stranded
in a truck stop diner in Lone Pine, Colorado, without even a motel
room for the night, the whole thing seemed totally ridiculous. What was I thinking? If I wanted to waste a weekend and a whole
lot of money on a wild goose chase, I should have booked a flight
to the Bahamas instead. At least I’d be warm there, and I could’ve
spent the weekend sipping daiquiris on the beach.
     
    Rachel signed and took another sip of her coffee. The
irony of the whole situation was that she wasn’t the adventurous
type - in fact her ex had accused her of being too conservative and
“boring” on more than one occasion. But after losing her job she
thought that something bold and daring might do her good. And
Tracy, one of her friends for high school, had planted the whole
Rich & Amorous idea in her head.
     
    "You should check it out," Tracy had told her one
evening as they sat in a quiet Dallas restaurant and worked on a
pitcher of margaritas. “Maybe you’ll meet a great guy, somebody who
can take care of you. Not a loser or a jerk like Mark. He took you
for granted, you know he did.”
     
    "What the hell are you talking about?" Rachel had
said, the tequila settling like a warm electric blanket in her
stomach. "Rich & Amorous? That sounds like some kind of crazy
escort service or something."
     
    “It’s more like a private online club for
millionaires,” Tracy told her. "Most of the members are men, and
most of them are single guys looking to meet someone of the
opposite sex.”
     
    Rachel gave Tracy a dubious look. “You mean like one
of those Sugar Daddy sites that they talk about on TV? Where fat,
middle-aged rich guys troll the Internet looking for young women to
be their ‘companions?’”
     
    “It’s not like that, Rae. R&A is more like a
introduction service. They introduce you to one of their members,
and if you seem compatible, they arrange a weekend getaway where
you can meet and....”
     
    “And what?” Rachel asked, stifling back a giggle.
“Fuck each others brains out?”
     
    “Don’t make it sound so cheap,” Tracy said, grabbing
the pitcher and re-filling her margarita glass. “It’s all very
upscale and professional. They do background checks, income
verification, all that stuff. They have a very good
reputation.”
     
    “So how come you know so much about it? Have you
signed up yourself or what?”
     
    Tracy scowled across the table. “I’m married to
Steven, remember? But I do have a friend from work who tried it,
and in fact she met her fiancé through R&A. And she’s never
been happier.”
     
    Rachel frowned and rubbed her eyes. She thought of
herself as an attractive and desirable woman who was still in her
prime, and the idea of resorting to a glorified dating service to
find a man–-even a rich one--seemed ludicrous to her.
     
    “I can see the wheels turning,” Tracy said. “But why
not try it? If nothing else you’ll