What happens when everyone around you is blissfully popping babies like so many rabbits, your mother wants a grandchild more than anything else in the world, but you're just not interested? Meet Audrey Mills, a 35-year-old Silicon Valley techie who has a loving live-in boyfriend, a decent job, and a passion for old movies, but who suffers from a sort of divine discontent. Something's missing in Audrey's life-one she has spent trying to please her former Hollywood actress mother, her competitive sister and everyone else but herself-and she's determined to find out what it is now. Enter Tyrone Power look-alike, Aldo. He's not only handsome, he's smart, fun, and most of all, devastatingly sexy. Should Audrey risk giving up the security and love she already has for this charmer who seems too good to be true? Audrey starts to realize that life isn't a dress rehearsal and you sure can't call "cut" the way you do in the movies. Will she be able to write her own happy ending?"A great read!"-Krista Appel, Sidekick"A superbly written novel that many women, men, and families can relate to."-Jennifer L. B. Leese, It's Only Ink "The conversational tone imparts to readers the sense of listening while a troubled friend unfolds layers of a story composed of decades of interwoven influences."-Seattle Press "An entertaining book [that] kept my interest and imagination working throughout the entire book." -- Dovie Jacoby - Romance Central - "Smart, witty and thoroughly modern...[with] an interesting plot and wonderful character development." -- Astrid Kinn - Romance Wendy Tokunaga is a writer and web producer. Her short stories have appeared in Yomimono, Abiko Literary Quarterly and The Plaza. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband. It was a familiar sound but startling nonetheless. It began as a lone piercing scream in the distance about a half-dozen cubicles away from mine. It was a female voice of course not even a eunuch's voice could soar that high. Then I heard more and more of these calls that reminded me of birds - of crows cawing or parrots screeching. "Ooh, ooh!" the voices shrieked. At first these were the only words I could make out but then others became clear. "Keee -- yute!" "Precious!" "Just adorable!" The voices got louder and louder. One shouted my name. "Audrey!" I saw the administrative assistant, Teri, as I turned around. "Come on! Yvonne Callahan's brought in her new baby!" Teri said the word "baby" as if she was singing in a hallelujah chorus. This was the third baby visit this week. Five of my co-workers had gotten pregnant about ten or eleven months ago and now each one was bringing in her accomplishment. "What happened, Teri? Was there some kind of pregnancy Legionnaire's Disease virus that seeped through our air conditioning vents?" I smirked. She laughed and broke into a healthy trot as she made her way over to the display showcase in one of our co-worker's cubes. I didn't have anything against babies particularly but it was nothing to get goofy about. Yet I felt that I'd be thought of as some kind of office outcast if I didn't mosey on over and pay my respects to the latest boy king, especially since there'd been a company-wide e-mail sent proclaiming Yvonne's visit. I perused the scene of about ten women oohing and ahing over a newborn wrapped in a pastel blue blanket that I remembered Yvonne receiving at the shower we'd been coerced into giving her at the office. Yvonne was thirty-six just a year older than me and had to have an amnio. By the time of the shower she knew she was going to have a boy. What was the name of that old movie where Jimmy Cagney smashed the grapefruit into Mae Clark's face? Well, my mother Lylah would know and would be disappointed that I'd forgotten. But this was what newborn babies looked like to me as if someone had smashed a grapefruit into their face. "Oh, Rodney! What a sweetie, my little baby-waby Rodney. Aren't you the cutest little Rodney I've ever seen? Rod-ney! Rod-ney!" My boss Carole turned her cooing into some sort of mantra, accenting a different syllable each time. Rodney's face proved my grapefruit theory; it was blotchy pink and all scrunched up. Maybe he looked more like a grapefruit rather than a recipient of one with his big round face and sallow yellow wisps of hair on a mostly bald head. Oh, he was a healthy baby all right (didn't look anything like the newborn in Eraserhead) but he was a baby nonetheless and couldn't hold my attention for long. Besides, I had to call back a software developer who was incensed that the software upgrade one of the support staff sent him still didn't solve his class library problem. "Whoa!" I shouted at the onset of a smell more deadly than when all the toilets backed up in my old apartment building. "What happened? Has the bundle of joy turned into a bundle of poop?" "Baby's poop doesn't smell," Yvonne said, as if it was common knowledge. "I think Rodney must have made a little