The Cougar and the Cowboy

Why did it bother her what he did? It wasn’t like they were interested in each other. She was ready for this trip to end.

CHAPTER 18

CAMILLE HAD HER laptop as well as her phone up and running with the available wi-fi although she did have to resort to calling Collier to help her with it. Her tech skills were adequate for her needs most of the time. At the office, if something failed, there was a tech support person available. Here, however, relying on only her own knowledge was a different story. Perhaps she should’ve enrolled in a few courses before she came to Montana. She dismissed that thought as she always found that hindsight was a wonderful but unproductive thing.

At an attempt at small talk, when he came to fix her router settings, she apologized for needing him again for such a small matter. She assured him she was capable of many things but she had indeed become spoiled by the availability of help where she lived and worked. It had been since college that she needed to do ‘fix-it’ tasks for herself. Being careful to not divulge too much personal information, she chatted without giving specifics.

Later in the day, after everything was up and running, she called Allie to hear the latest happenings at Mavis’ Mag. There were other features besides the one she was working on, after all, and she liked to keep her finger on the pulse of each monthly edition as it was put together. That was one of the advantages of owning a small publication; she could be involved in all aspects of it.

“Is your first monthly article nearly ready?” Allie inquired.

“I’ll send it in a few days. I may have to fictionalize a portion of it, Allie. Simply because there hasn’t been as much action as I’d hoped for. I’m well aware of the fact my profile and picture isn’t so irresistible that every man on the site wants to contact me, but I guess I did think there would be a few more. As you’ll see when you receive the first installment, I’ve been writing about 90 year-olds or just really creepy individuals,” she laughed.

“You should probably know we had a meeting and took the liberty of adding your profile to another site, Camille. If this is going to be as interesting as we hope, you need to have proposals from every age dimension and every walk of life. The new site is basically for much younger people. Hopefully that will get you some contacts. You know, the younger men who have a need for a cougar in their lives.” She giggled as she said it, then continued before Camille could make a comment. “We decreased the distance, too by adding the requirement that the respondents had to live within a one-hundred mile radius of Bozeman. That should narrow the field and keep you from having to drive all over the state to meet someone.”

“Hmmm, I guess you’re right about the distance but I thought the first site we chose was for younger people. That is the point of this whole plan, right? To have the dating and interaction between an older woman and a younger man? Did I miss something somewhere along the line? I hope not or I might as well pack up and come home. I can write a boring dating column from my office.”

Feeling as though she needed to defend herself, Allie quickly responded, “No, no, you’re correct. But in reviewing the profiles of most of the men on the first site, it seemed as though they were all in their fifties and older. That probably explains the interest from the ninety-year-olds. Truthfully, I believe those men see themselves as ‘young’ and sign up for the site. We made sure the profiles on the new one truly are young.”

“Great, now I’ll get messages from twenty-year-olds. I may have to ask for their ID so I won’t go to jail. How can this be so difficult? I know…I’ll make that one of my topics…finding the right site for each person. I’ll title it, A Daunting Dating Task.”

Moving on to another topic, Camille asked, “Are you getting any responses to the request for real-life scenarios from our readers?”

“Oh, boy, are we! I didn’t realize how many older woman/much younger man couples there were out there. The responses so far have been from relationships that worked beautifully to the ones that were absolute ‘train wrecks’. And to our delight, the women have not been bashful about telling the reasons why…in fact, there were a few descriptions of sex lives that I’m pretty sure we can’t print.”

They both laughed out loud at that statement with Camille telling her, “Don’t dispose of those even if they can’t be used. I’d like to read all of them.”

Before saying good-bye, Camille asked Allie, “Have you had any more dates with Will?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, we’ve been out several times. We saw a movie, had dinner, went to some of his favorite night spots and he’s teaching me to golf. I’m sure I’ll never be any good at it, but I like his arms around me when he’s showing me how to swing the golf club.”

“Good…good. That sounds like a relationship that’s progressing,” Camille offered before she had to end the conversation.

She leaned back in the office chair and tried to analyze why that last bit of information totally seemed to piss her off. After all, she was the one who set them up so why did she care if Allie was having a good time? Plus the fact she had no interest in Will…or did she?

The contacts on the site were interesting. She had set a few rules for herself in the beginning: she would not answer any contacts that had no profile picture, she wouldn’t answer any if their marital status was left blank as that was a sure sign they weren’t single, she wouldn’t answer any who stated they were looking for violent sexual encounters. As she drank an iced tea on the deck, she decided to revisit those decisions, except for the last one. She would answer the ‘no picture and no marital status’ invitations so she could describe the things women might find if they joined a dating site. She would still avoid the violent ones as she didn’t want to end up down the side of a mountain or something equivalent.

As she considered all of it, Collier pulled into the drive. As he walked toward the porch, she tried to calculate his age. She didn’t believe he was fifty, like Will, but he wasn’t thirty, either. His body, at least what she’d seen of it, looked like he was twenty, but the laugh lines around his eyes and the way he walked and talked told her he was probably in his early forties. She could just ask but thought better of it.

He came up the porch steps and sat in the chair next to her.

“Been working hard?” he teased as he smiled that disarming grin.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I have,” she answered. “Just because I don’t do physical labor as you do, doesn’t mean I’m not working.”

“I know, I know. Don’t get so defensive. Can I ask what you write? I mean is it novels or freelance or what?”

‘Careful, Camille. Not too much information or you’ll be exposed. Answer in general terms.’

“I do a lot of freelancing for magazines plus I am working on a novel so the six months here is a good place to concentrate on that.”

“What kind of novel? I mean, what specific genre?”

‘Whoa, I’m impressed, Collier that you know what a genre is.’

He obviously saw the surprised look on her face and teased, “What? You think I’m some hick from back in the mountains and don’t know the word genre?”

“No, that’s not at all what I was thinking. I was pleasantly surprised that you would inquire about it, that’s all. Anyway, it’s a romance novel but it has a few twists and its audience isn’t the normal ‘twenty-somethings’ but rather middle-aged women.” That wasn’t a total lie.