EXTRACT FOR
The Midas Touch and The Photo Shoot
(Author Unknown)

BOOK 1 ??" THE MIDAS TOUCH

    

    I did not weep at our wedding as my ex-wife was fond of telling anybody who would listen.  Of course, if I had known then what I discovered only a few months later, I would have broken down and bawled like a baby.

    Mary, bless her gold digging heart, thought I was rich.  We both were in college at the time and I can see how she could be under that impression.  I drove a fancy sports car and lived off campus in a real nice townhouse.  Her impression was understandable, but unfounded.  It was a classic case of people being married who didn't really know each other. Also with a dash of too young and too stupid.

    I suppose if the truth were known I was in lust.  Mary was my first real love or what I thought was love.  While we were dating she seemed to be unable to get enough sex.  I didn't have to ask her for it because she initiated sex.  I thought I had to be the luckiest man alive to have such a hot-blooded woman.

    Things weren't all that bad at first.  For nearly a year after we married we were happy.  At least I was happy.  Apparently for Mary it wasn't all that blissful.  Of course, it was about a month into the deal when she found out that I personally didn't have two quarters to rub together.  My grandparents had money, but I didn't.  Everything I had, they gave me.  My parents died when I was a child.  It came as a great shock to my wife that I had to work for a living.

    From the moment my grandfather died and left his money to his mistress things went downhill fast.  Often I would catch Mary looking at me like...I don't know.  Maybe like some uncouth stranger happened to be in her house.  Things in the bedroom department went from 'just barely' to 'no way'.

    The next thing I knew, Mary had me served with divorce papers and hauled ass out of town, taking everything we owned, up to, but not quite including my balls.  She even sold the townhouse my grandparents gave us as a wedding present.  Naturally, I didn't see a dime of the proceeds.  Mary and her asshole lawyer got all of it.

    Poor ol' dumb Mary.  If she had only waited another few months until Granny passed on, she would have been a rich woman...well, at least a rich bitch.  What Mary didn't know and was too dumb to wait and find out was my grandfather had very little money of his own.  Granny was the one with all the loot.  I, Alan Oldmann, being the only living relative, got every dime of it, including the company I worked for. Tough shit, Mary, you money grubbing bitch.

    Oh, of course when Mary heard about my windfall, she came running.  At first she tried to con me into thinking she had just simply made a tiny mistake and she was ready to forgive and forget.  When that didn't work she brought in her asshole lawyer.  "I'll see your lawyer and raise you ten lawyers," I informed the former Mrs. Oldmann.  It is a true and proven fact.  You do get all the justice you can afford, and I could afford a lot of justice.  I sent her skanky ass back out of town without a dime of my money.

    It took nearly six months to get Granny's will straighten out, but eventually I became the president, CEO, and chairman of the board of Granny's company, The Oldmann Group.  I also was the proud owner of ninety percent of the stock.  Granny never allowed Gramps to sell her stock to the public.  The ten percent I didn't own had been given to a couple of old  and loyal employees.  I think they were shocked when I fired both of them. 

    Hey, I wasn't being mean.  Both old codger's were helping Gramps keep his mistress a secret from Granny and neither of them were worth a damn.  Anyway they were RIP, retired in place.  I just showed them the way out of the door.  I offered them a fair price for their stock, but they declined.  I knew they'd come around someday or I would buy the stock from their heirs.

    So there I was, twenty-four, single, handsome as all get out, and richer than Midas.  Yeah, I know the story, but I vowed to be neither greedy nor foolish.  In fact, for the record, If Mary had even attempted to be pleasant during the divorce; I would have given her something besides my foot in her ass.

    This, of course, is just background and not the actual story.  The real story started when I first saw Lynn.  Julia Lynn Brown, according to the personnel records I had the personnel officer bring me.  Nineteen years old, single, and a high school graduate working as a temp in my bookkeeping department.

    What the files didn't show was that Lynn Brown was drop dead gorgeous.  I'm not just talking pretty, I'm talking breath-taking, heart pounding, crotch grabbing, beautiful.  She had yellow golden hair that shimmered in the florescent lighting of the bookkeeping department. Tall, but not too tall...maybe five feet eight.  Curves everywhere.  Great rack and a bubble butt.  And yes, I got all that while glancing through the blind covered windows of the bookkeeping spaces.  Later I was able to determine she had startling green eyes and dimples in both cheeks.

    I took the file on Miss Julia Lynn Brown back to personnel where I was told it was no longer personnel, but human resources, and went directly to the bookkeeping department to have myself another look.

    My brief look through the window had been right on the money.  Lynn, as she preferred to be called, was absolutely stunning. 

    "Can I help you?" a female voice asked.  I suddenly realized that I was standing in front of her desk, staring at her.  It was her voice I heard and it sounded like angelic harp music to me.  Okay, that's a little over the top, but it was a nice voice.  I just wish my voice hadn't been high and cracked when I finally managed to summon enough spit to talk.

    "No...Yes...I mean...Ah, shit."  Reaching down deep inside I managed to make my legs work and got the hell out of there.  I got back up to the fifth floor where my office was and closed the door.  I looked around the office for something to kill myself with.  What a pitiful first meeting with an angel. 

    I calmed myself with a couple cups of high octane coffee and tried to think how I could undo what I had done.  Nothing came to mind except that she was a temp.  She could be replaced at any moment.  I didn't not want that to happen so I called the personnel office and asked the woman in charge if Lynn had applied for full time work.

    "Yes, sir," my head of humans and their resources replied. "She pretty far down on the list so I don't foresee her being hired anytime in the near future.  Also she doesn't have many skills in that area."

    "Yes she does," I said.  "Put her at the top of the hire list.  Thank you." 

    "Excuse me?" the woman said.  "Did you say the top of the list?  I'm sorry, sir, but that violates our policy."  I set my fifth cup of coffee down with a hand that shook from the effects of massive doses of caffeine and explained to my soon to be former head of human resources that I was the chief policy maker.  I explained in no uncertain terms that if I made that policy, which I was pretty sure I hadn't, I could jolly well violate it if I so desired.  My HR manager may be a crabby old bitch, but she catches on to things pretty quick.  I hung up while she was still assuring me that it would happen.

    My Gramps may have been an old lecherous libertine, but he certainly knew how to run a company.  Even with the aforementioned old farts that I dismissed, he had a good, well-oiled machine.  He had hired the brightest stars to work for him and I wasn't about to change anything.  The firing of the two old gomers had a magical effect on the other old gomers.  All of them were working their old, wrinkled asses off.  The younger ones picked up the pace a step or two, also.

    I discovered a valuable basic business principal that college hadn't taught me.  When you have smart people working for you, shut up, listen to them, and get out of the way as much as possible and let them make you look good.  That, coupled to the old saying that "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", was working great. 

    My job was making the big tough decisions.  The only problem was that took only about thirty minutes a day and not even every day at that.  I had a lot of time on my hands and I didn't know what to do with it except peek into the bookkeeping department now and then while hoping she wouldn't see me.

    Two weeks after my embarrassing encounter at Lynn's desk, my HR manager called to inform me that Lynn was now a full time employee.  For some reason the old crab saw fit to remind me of the company's sexual harassment policy.  I politely thanked her and slammed the phone down in frustration.  Damn!  If it wasn't one thing it was another.  I was going to need some expert advice and I called my old friend Frog.

***

    Frog is going to need some explaining.  The problem with that is, Frog is hard to explain.  I first met Frog in junior high when his family moved into the community.  He came to school a couple of weeks after school had already started.  The class clowns and the several bullies took one look at him and rubbed their hands with glee. 

    Alvin Miller, his name before I changed it to Frog, was an automatic target for the larger boys and all the jocks.  He looked like some poor slob that should be picked on.  To this day I don't know why I took the poor kid under my wing, but I did.  That was even before I knew he was a super genius.  The boy had brains he hadn't even used. 

    Since everybody in the school knew me and knew I had no problem fighting, they left Frog alone.  I wasn't a mean person I just enjoyed a good fight.  Truthfully, Frog was a pitiful creature.  He came from a brainy family who cared nothing about style or anything else that wasn't in a test tube or some other scientific project. 

    Because I lived with my wealthy grandparents, I had money to buy the latest style clothing.  I had the necessary gadgets that a teenager has to have.  A car, Walkman which was high tech at the time, and anything else I wanted.  Frog didn't know what a Walkman was and didn't care that he was ignorant of such necessary electronics.  He rode a bike to school.  Not a motorcycle, which would have been cool, but a thirty-year-old bicycle with huge tires and a saddle for a seat.  I toyed with calling him Schwinn for a while except for two things...one, I thought it sounded stupid and secondly, I didn't know how to spell it and I was afraid I might have to at some point.

    It was I who took Frog and made a typical high school kid out of him.  Something his parents and two older siblings didn't understand or appreciated.  Frogs older brother was a doctor.  Not a medical doctor, but a professor type doctor.  His older sister was a real medical doctor. A brain surgeon to be exact.  I figured Frog had been conceived accidentally late in life, and was mostly left to his own devices.  I don't mean to imply that they were mean parents.  They were just too busy with scientific crap to pay him any attention. 

    How did he get the name Frog?  As a matter of fact it came about quite accidentally.  It was about four months into our symbiotic relationship.  Frog, still Alvin at the time, figured out very quickly that I had his back.  While he and I were friends, nobody would mess with him.  What did he give in return?  Damned good company and that was about all until I realized how smart he was.  He was a homework doing fool.  But enough about that for the time being.  I was explaining how he got the name Frog. 

    Sophomore year, fourth period biology class.  One of the students called a frog a toad and got a fifteen minute lecture from ol' Alvin.  Even the teacher learned a few things about toads and frogs.  All I got out of it was a name for my little buddy.  From that moment on he was Frog.

    All during high school Frog and I were nearly inseparable.  It took me nearly three years to get him to come completely out of his shell, but I managed.  I made sure he had dates for important things like dances and school proms.  Of course, I made sure he got laid, too.  That may have been when he came right on out of his shell.  When Frog discovered girls he came unglued.  He became a regular horn-dog and always on the make.  That's something that scares the hell out of most high school girls.  Fortuitously we had a non-typical girl at our school.  Allie May Overly was not very pretty, but she would put out for Frog who wasn't very pretty either.  I suppose that also was a semi-symbiotic relationship.

    It was Frog who taught me about symbiosis.  Frog had a long-winded definition, but simply put, it's when two unlike organisms live in close association for mutual advantage.  I think it perfectly described Frog and my relationship at first.  I got smarter and he got protection.  Later it was just plain old friendship.  I found I actually liked Frog.  When I could get his nose out of a book, he was a lot of fun.  Okay, I'm man enough to say it.  I love the little shit.

    After high school, I was given a graduation trip to Europe by my grandparents.  Of course, I took my buddy, Frog, and for sixty wonderful days we toured Europe.  Well it was wonderful for us.  I'm not sure, but I think Frog and I may have had something to do with the overall decline in the relationship between France and the US.  I am certain they asked us to leave their country, so we got home a few days earlier than we were supposed to.

    Frog had scholarship offers from every college in the country.  He elected to go to M.I.T.  While I played around at a couple of Ivy League schools, Frog got his degree from MIT in three years and a couple doctorates from Cal State and some other universities.  He had at least one doctorate before I figured out my major.

    All the years we were separated we stayed in close contact.  After Al Gore invented the internet we used the computer to communicate.  E-mail is a wonderful thing, but the only problem is, most of the e-mails I got from Frog, I couldn't understand. 

    Suddenly, about the time I got married, Frog disappeared.  I didn't hear from him for six or seven months and a few months after I got divorced, he reappeared. 	When I asked him where he had been he would just grin and say it was secret spy stuff and he would have to have me killed if he told me. 

    Just as soon as Frog reappeared, he called me and we resumed our camaraderie.  He only grunted when I mentioned my ex-wife and he never mentioned her name again.  From the beginning, it was obvious he wasn't a big fan of my wife, but he was careful not to say anything derogatory about her.  At least to me

    I'll try to describe Frog's habitat, but it won't be easy.  Frog lives in an old two story house that somehow escaped the wrecking ball.  On either side of his house are new office buildings and his old house really looks out of place among all the brick, stainless steel, and glass.  It reminded me of a wart on the face of a beauty queen.

    I always feel funny when I go to his house.  The first thing I notice is a strange feeling when I approach it.  I mean the hair on my neck actually stands up for a moment as I approach his front door.  There's nothing to see, but it like I walked through some sort of electrical barrier.  When I ring the front doorbell there is a series of clicks like the unlocking of several locks.

    While the outside of the house doesn't look remarkable the inside is extraordinary.  Good and mostly expensive furniture and every sort of electronic gadget known to man is inside.

    Upstairs there is a room that looks like it could have been decorated by Bill Gates.  Computers of every size abound.  There are at least a dozen big flat screen monitors displaying a variety of images and there is a constant sound of hard drives and the hum of processors.  Frog  usually has the sound of blue-grass music playing to mask the other sounds.  Personally, I can only take so much fiddle and banjo racket. 

    The years since high school haven't changed Frog all that much.  He still looks like someone the big kids should pick on.  He could care less what he was wearing or if it looked good.  To Frog, clothes were just something to keep him warm and cover his nakedness.