Thirty-year-old Tanya left her husband, Nick, after he beat her one too many times, and tried to rape her to boot.
She had to start all over again – a new place, a new job, new everything.
She gets a job working in Dot Blots, a retail store. She struggles with learning her new job, helping customers, and becoming friends with her co-workers.
She begins dating Seth, a newly divorced man near … newly divorced man near her own age, who works at the store with her. But her boss, JR, kept catching her eyes. He was older than her – at least by 20 years – and employees and management weren’t allowed to date. He dressed in awful, mismatched clothes. He was a joke, really.
Besides, she was still dealing with leaving her husband and she was dating Seth to boot!
But JR kept returning to her thoughts and dreams.
JR, Seth, and all her other co-workers all were one big happy family, but JR and Seth had their own competition to see who would win the fair Tanya’s hand.
When disaster happens and she almost dies, who will rescue her? And which man will she end up with?
A slow-burn, happily ever after story with lots of heat and steamy scenes.
A short excerpt:
“Tanya never noticed how JR’s heart melted whenever he looked at her. Being her boss, they chatted daily. She never realized how he paid attention to her more than anyone else. They didn’t have a lot in common, but they both loved books and going to the movies, so they’d often talk about the latest releases.
She found herself in the spotlight more than the other employees; JR was always talking about her, praising her customer service, her team spirit, whatever. Her face got red, and she put her hands in front of her face in an effort to hide from the attention. Her heart would skip a beat.
On the other hand, she found herself disappointed if he didn’t single her out. She wondered what he did for fun. She found herself preoccupied with his funny outfits – he might be wearing a red plaid shirt with green khaki pants. Instead of laughing about the ridiculous clothes, she spent hours daydreaming about what he would look like wearing nothing at all.”
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I have never read a book for. Natasha Hart and This was really good. I hope there is another story with these characters. Thank you Natasha for getting this book to my hands. Please read and review your books.
Starting over and finding love along the way
Fifty and Bendy is the first book I have read by Natasha Hart so I was not sure what to expect. The book description looked like it held promise so I decided to pick it up. This is a short story about Tanya and her journey. She is twenty-five years old and is trying to rebuild her life after leaving her abusive marriage of five years to a police officer. She moved into a house with three girl friends – Kelli, Alex and Shannon. Tanya had worked part-time for a not for profit doing office work during her marriage and she quickly realizes that she needs to get another job to support herself. She gets a job at Dot Blots working as a cashier and settling in to a routine of working at both places, being with her friends and also seeing a counselor. The store manager is transferred to another store after a while and a new manager, TJ, transfers in. TJ is fifty years old, divorced with grown children and grandchildren. He is a caring man who manages with encouraging words of praise, digs into every task that needs to be done and puts a quick stop to any staff bickering. Tanya is promoted to department head, gets a small raise and quits her other job as she can support herself working at Dot Blots full-time.
Tanya is asked out by Seth, a man around her age who works as the store receiver and plays drums for a band that plays the bars in the area. They start dating and after several weeks of making out like teenagers steaming up the car windows, it turns intimate. Tanya and Seth are good together and soon adjust their shifts at the store to be together more. However, one night while working overnight at the store a fire breaks which traps Tanya in the break room where she passes out from a panic attack. Seth tries to reach her but is pulled out by the firefighters. It is TJ who gets to Tanya, not wanting her to be alone, and the firefighters get them both out. After this she sees Seth differently, as he did not rescue her. She also sees TJ as her rescuer and starts to have even more feelings for him, which are reciprocated from him. But he is too old for her so they cannot be together right? At least that is what he believes. But it will take being apart for a while when TJ transfers to a different store for them to both realize that they are meant for each other, as this feels too right.
I found this to be a sweet and mild love story. It is nicely written as a narrative story but we never get a true fell of the characters, which resulted in a lack of depth to them. As I was reading I quickly realized that this was going to be a “mild” story with just a bit of heat but not a lot. It was even hard to feel the spark between the characters other than a little tremor. So while I enjoyed this quick read I finished thinking that it was okay but not what I was expecting, especially based on the book description and the cover photo.