Chapter 1

On this bright spring day, as Megan looked back over all the problems she'd had in her relatively young life, she was sure there had to be a way to deal with this latest one. It was going to be a stinker, but she was sure it could be done. She turned to Hamako Fukuji, a slim dark-haired girl with glasses that masked, to some degree, her Oriental features.

"Are you sure about this, Hamako?" she asked.

"I'm certain," said the girl. Her English was flawless, because she was a graduate student in the Engineering school and had spent six years in the United States. Megan had hired her as a translator when a Japanese industrialist expressed interest in producing her invention. "My sources in Tokyo were very clear. Mr. Nakimura is very well known as a successful industrialist, but very traditional man. He is old school in ways you would not understand. Because you have signed everything with just your initials, he has no idea you are female. If he finds this out, though, he will refuse to do business with you. He would lose face with his colleagues if he negotiated with a woman.

"He talks to you!" Megan pointed out.

"In his mind, I am merely an underling, someone to whom you ... a man ... has entrusted certain communication tasks. All I do is speak and translate Japanese. He might wish to bed me, but as far as business goes, I am nothing."

"That's kind of harsh," said Megan.

Hamako shrugged. "It is the way things are in Japan. Change comes very slowly there."

"But he wants to come here!" said Megan. "He wants to talk to the inventor!"

"Did I not translate that information for you?" Hamako sounded injured.

"Of course you did," moaned Megan. "How am I supposed to become a man in just three weeks? I have too much invested in this for the bottom to drop out now. Men are so pig-headed!" She finished with a snarl.

"Why do you think I have found ways to remain here?" asked the thoroughly Americanized young Japanese woman. "You think I want to go back home and take up my traditional role as a subservient, tip-toeing, non-speaking woman? Not me, sister!"

"I need this to work, Hamako," pleaded Megan.

"Then find yourself a husband for Mr. Nakimura to negotiate with," said the girl, simply.

"Like they grow on trees," snorted Megan.

"I am plain," said Hamako, humbly. "Yet men hit on me constantly. You are beautiful. You should have no problem getting a man."

"I don't want a man!" moaned Megan. "I've had two. The first one was a jerk and the second one was the love of my life and was taken from me. My track record with men ain't great, Hamako.

"You have many friends. Hire one to become your husband, until Mr. Nakimura leaves. He is only coming for a site visit and to have face time with his intended business partner. He could send anyone to do his bidding, but he wants to come himself and throw his weight around, impress and manipulate you. He probably thinks that by being here in person he can save ten times what it will cost him to come here. This is something Japanese men do. He will come, boast, do business, and leave. He has many irons in the fire, and as long as the company here is well run, he will not think of it again."

"How can I run the company well if he can't know I'm a woman?" moaned Megan.

"He doesn't know you are a woman now. A little trick while he's here will maintain that subterfuge. Once he leaves, and the plant is built, it will be too late for him to back out. All you need is a man to front for you while he's here ... sort of a rental husband."

"A rental husband," sighed Megan. "That doesn't sound all that great to me."

"Well, you must do something. Confucius say even a turtle only makes progress when it sticks its neck out. Besides, maybe you can find someone to rent who is handsome ... friendly ... maybe even fun to be with," said Hamako.

"Someone handsome, friendly and fun to be with is the last thing I need," growled Megan. She caught herself before she said how long it had been since she'd had sex. It had been so long, in fact, that she couldn't remember what it had been like. She didn't need a man messing up her life again ... dragging all those feelings out of her mental closet, where she'd stuffed them.

"This is America," said Hamako. "Surely there is a rent-a-man type company here somewhere."

"Now you're making it sound like there will be expenses involved. I don't have much money. I've spent it all developing the invention."

"If I had any money I'd love to get in on the ground floor. Maybe you can barter a piece of the company in exchange for his help with this little problem. Surely you know someone in the business community, someone you've done business with."

The answer appeared in Megan's mind like a burst of fireworks. She couldn't believe she hadn't thought of him immediately. He already knew a lot about the invention. She had bounced ideas off of him for years, and he had given her good advice. He did know business, having run his own for a decade, and he had contacts all over the place he could enlist to help them pull it off.

Bob Tomlinson leaned against the corral gate, rolling a cigarette and split his glances between that task and looking at Megan Tomlinson. He'd looked at her a lot, over the years, starting with when his little brother, Sam, had gone all moon-eyed over her in high school.

He licked the edge of the paper and completed the roll, shaping the final product with his fingers.

"Let me get this straight," he said. "A Japanese industrialist is interested in your invention, and wants to build a plant to make it here, in the U.S.A., and he's coming to meet you to get that ball rolling ... except he thinks you're a man."

"Right," Megan nodded.

"But as anyone can plainly see," said Bob, his eyes darting down and back up again, "You are clearly not a man."

"Right," she nodded again.

"And you want me to find you some man to pretend to be your husband ... and the inventor of The Stitch Bitch."

She frowned. "I'm not calling it The Stitch Bitch any more," she said. "I liked that name, but it just won't work on a global basis."

"So what are you calling it now?" asked Bob.

"I don't know," she said. "I'm looking at several things. But that's not the point, Bob. This is my big chance, and I don't want to blow it."

"Blow it," mused Bob. "Hold that thought."

Robert Meredith Tomlinson, former CEO of Techron Plastics, which he had started, built and then sold, making him a man worth hundreds of millions, was leaning against the corral that held some of his hundred thousand dollar hobbies. He reached into his torn and dusty jeans, pulling out a strike anywhere match. With well-practiced motions he brought the nail of his right thumb to the white tip of the match and, holding the stick firmly with the other fingers of that hand, nicked the surface with a quick jerk. The match flared to life and he touched the ball of fire to the tip of the freshly rolled cigarette he had put in his mouth with the other hand. He took a long drag, blew it out with a long sigh, and dropped the rest of the cigarette to the ground, where the tip of his dusty cowboy boot ground it into the dirt.

"I wish I still smoked," he sighed.

"Based on what I just saw ... you do," said Megan, her voice wry.

"I only take that first drag," he complained.

"It's still smoking," she pointed out.

"A pack a day is smoking," he argued.

"Come on, Bob. You're supposed to be helping me."

There had been another reason for Bob's extended ritual involving his cigarette. He only carried the little bag of cut tobacco and papers when he was working with his horses. It was part of his "costume" as he thought of it. But the real use it had just served was to get him past her comment about "blowing it."

Bob Tomlinson had been a hard-driving college sophomore back when his little brother had started dating Megan Trimble. Bob was in the chemical engineering program, and it was kicking his ass, That was because, while classes took up only six hours a day, the homework and studying for those classes required double that, leaving only six hours for eating, sleeping, going to the toilet and everything else there is in life. It's pretty hard to have a successful romance when you can only offer your true love half an hour a day, max. For that reason, his social life was put on hold until such time as he could get through some of the hairier courses. Living at home helped financially, but there were too many distractions from studying.

Like little Megan Trimble, who wasn't so little. She began to turn up more and more often at their house, and it was clear that Sam was smitten by her. She was cute as a bug, and Bob had dozens of fantasies about her, young as she was. Of course he didn't do anything about it. She was Sam's, after all. And much too young.

Then there was the revelation that she was pregnant - something that had happened pre-Sam - and the even bigger revelation, at least for Bob, that Sam didn't care. After that he could see the pain in Megan's eyes sometimes, and pretty soon he didn't care who the father of her child was either. He learned that there is something about a pregnant woman that makes her sexy by default. He could look at any woman walking down the street and imagine that she might be willing to be intimate with a man. Such as himself. But looking at Megan, he saw a woman who was undeniably willing to be intimate with a man. She had been intimate with a man. The evidence was right there, sticking out for all the world to see. And if she'd done it for sure with whoever ... then the fantasy that involved him was easy to think about. Fantasy was about all he had time for anyway.

He kept an infrequent eye on her as his studies got even more demanding, and when she and his little brother decided to get married, he shoved his fantasies about her into a hidden place in his mind and was happy for them.

It was as his own dreams of owning a company began to come true, that his brother's dreams, and those of his wife, were crushed. Sam's death hit them all hard, but it was especially rough on Megan. Then his father's Alzheimer's progressed to the point where his mother had her own hands full. She wanted to keep him at home as long as possible. So it fell to Bob to try to take care of Megan and his "niece", though he still had trouble viewing the cute little girl in that capacity, while running his burgeoning company, and keeping an eye on his parents too.

It was a lot to put on any man's plate, but Bob had been born to slay dragons, in a world where there weren't any. So he sallied forth to defeat other beasts, in the form of problems that people he loved were having.

Eventually Megan got back on her feet. Raleigh, who leaned on him heavily to be a stable male presence in her life, was impossible not to love. What they had gone through with Sam prepared them, at least a little, for the loss of Bob's father, when the Alzheimer's took him. Then, only six short months later his mother, lost without the man she'd spent the last forty-five years with, abandoned the will to live and slipped into eternity to go find him.

Obituaries often use the words "survived by" as they list the people left behind. In losing first his little brother, and then his parents, he finally understood what "survived" actually meant. He had no one but his little brother's widow and her daughter. And they had little more than him.

But it was complicated. There was some question as to whether Bob Tomlinson, and Megan Tomlinson were still officially related. There was no question at all that Raleigh had none of the blood of his family running in her veins. And yet, they were still indelibly linked by being survivors. That bond was as strong as a blood bond, at least as far as Bob was concerned.

His business, thanks to all those hours he'd put in studying, flourished. He had several really good people working for him. He won multiple government contracts, which was when the sharks started circling. But he knew about the sharks, and instead of waiting for his share of wealth to come from future profits, he sold the company to the sharks and took his profits then and there, banking more than three hundred million. That let him 'retire' at the tender age of thirty. He bought the ranch and some breeding stock, and took it easy for a while. Being there for Megan and Raleigh was just part of life, so he kept doing that too.

He experienced the same issues that almost anyone does who comes into a lot of money. There are literally thousands of people who desperately want to help spend it. Not only that, they somehow feel that they have the right to help spend it. And, while he now had time for women in his life, the kind of women he met these days were more attracted to his money than to him, which didn't serve his needs worth squat. Truth be told, he could hire a live-in hooker for less than a girlfriend would cost him, but he wasn't interested in casual sex. He had that with his hand, whenever it was needed. And that was free.

So, after a thoroughly unsatisfying period of about six months, he more or less became celibate and concentrated on his horses, and thinking up new ideas for plastics.

There came a time when Megan turned down his offers of "a loan" and began her stubborn drive to be completely independent, and capable of raising her daughter without anyone's help. He was still welcome in their home, but not his money. She had always loved sewing, and supported herself as a seamstress. Part of that involved fancy embroidery, which could be done by hand - at enormous expense - or by machine. But the computerized machines that did this kind of work would accept only proprietary software, which the sewing machine companies invariably contracted out the development of. When the contract was finished, there was no support for the software problems that invariably popped up over time. The sewing machine companies were in business to build machines, not update and upgrade software. It was very frustrating to the (mostly) women who used that software.

So, educating herself on how these systems worked, Megan designed an embroidery module that could be used with any machine, via adapters that were specific to each brand. Bob's advice and counsel was welcome, but she refused his offers to buy into "the company," seeing them as more attempts at charity. They weren't. His mother had had an expensive sewing machine, with an embroidery module, but the company refused to keep up with technological advancements, meaning the module couldn't be used after a year or two, unless one had an antiquated computer to slave it to. In a world where some people had never even seen a three and a quarter inch floppy disk, that was all that would work with that extremely expensive system.

Megan had solved all that by creating a software translator. So her system could be used on any machine, and would be able to be updated at her website, once it was built, regardless of the brand of machine the customer had. The potential for sales was enormous, and Bob knew that. Owning a piece of the company would simply be a good investment, in his mind. He had been there when she did the first test, and muttered "Stitch ... bitch!" It had, and he had suddenly been enveloped in the arms of a dancing, screaming woman.

And that, was when Bob was reminded that, with all the troubles and issues he'd had to work through over the last ten or so years, he'd never seemed to find the time to get himself a woman. He was reminded of that by the feel of her breasts crushed between them, and the smell of her hair, and her arms pulling him to her.

And suddenly, little Megan Trimble/Tomlinson represented a whole different kind of woman than she had before. It was as though he had been transported back to those hectic days when he was distracted from studying by that cute, pregnant girl who grinned and chirped "Hi Bob!" when she came over to see Sam.

It only got worse as the next year went by. He was happy with her successes, even though she hadn't been able to turn her invention into a money-maker yet. He did get her to let him fund some prototypes, but she insisted on formal documents, listing it as a loan, to be repaid, with interest. That was fine with him. He just wanted to ensure that she had a chance to succeed, as he had been able to succeed.

But she was still a major distraction in his life. She was healthy, beautiful, and a joyful person just to be around. He tried dating again, but his "wimmen skills" as he thought of them had atrophied. Plus, his money still drew a certain kind of woman he wasn't interested in at all.

Meanwhile Raleigh grew up and got just as distracting as her mother was.

All of which is an admittedly long-winded way of explaining that, when she said she didn't want to "blow it," what Bob Tomlinson had thought of didn't have anything to do with failures in business. And it was to get the image of her soft, pink lips wrapped firmly around his aching erection out of his mind, that he went through his cigarette ritual.

"Bob?" Her voice brought him back to the present. "Surely you know somebody who could help me ... somebody I could trust ... just to get me through this. I'm sure that once Mr. Nakimura sees everything, and we get production going, and get some sales under our belts ... he'll thaw to the idea that a woman invented it. I just need a little help from a man to get me there."

A thoroughbred racing horse named Pickaninny stuck his nose between the slats of the gate and nipped at the shirt covering Bob's shoulder. He got some of Bob's skin with the shirt and the man ducked away, cursing.

"Hold your people!" he snapped at the horse, which snuffled and stamped, eager to go for a run. He turned to the woman he tried to think of as his friend, or sister-in-law, rather than a MILF.

"Look, you're making this a lot harder than it needs to be. I know you're all proud and stubborn and don't want to take anything from me. But surely I could pose as your husband for a couple of days and it wouldn't hurt your cherished independence."

Megan blinked several times.

"You?" Her voice was high.

"You can even hire me, if it will make you feel better," he said. "I charge a dollar a day, and not a penny less, payable at five in the evening every day I'm on the job."

"You?" she said again, sounding dazed.