7 Days and 7 Nights: A Wendy Wax Rom-Com Read online

  Title page

  Copyright © 2022 Wendy Wax

  7 DAYS AND 7 NIGHTS

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is coincidental and/or embellished for literary license.

  The scanning, uploading, and distributing of this book via the internet or via any other means without the permission of the copyright owner is illegal and punishable by law.

  Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials that might damage your electronic devices.

  Your support of the author’s rights is much appreciated and makes it possible for the author to continue writing.

  Contents

  Title page

  Copyright

  Praise for the Novels Of Wendy Wax

  Books By Wendy Wax

  Author’s Note

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  About the Author

  SPECIAL PREVIEW OF THE BESTSELLING TEN BEACH ROAD SERIES

  Praise for the Novels Of Wendy Wax

  “[Wax] writes with breezy wit and keen insight.”

  –The Atlanta Journal Constitution

  “Wax offers her trademark form of fiction, the beach read with substance.” –Booklist

  “The season’s perfect beach read!” –Single Titles

  “Funny, heartbreaking, romantic, and so much more…Just delightful.” – The Best Reviews

  “Reading Wendy Wax is like discovering a witty, wise, and wonderful new friend.”

  – Claire Cook, New York Times Bestselling author of Must Love Dogs

  [A] lovely story that recognizes the power of the female spirit, while being fun, emotional, and a little romantic.

  –Fresh Fiction

  “Beautifully written and constructed by an author who evidently knows what she is doing… One fantastic read.”

  – Book Binge

  Books By Wendy Wax

  Ten Beach Road Novels

  TEN BEACH ROAD

  OCEAN BEACH

  CHRISTMAS AT THE BEACH (e-Novella)

  the house on mermaid point

  sunshine beach

  one good thing

  a bella flora CHRISTMAS (e-Novella)

  best beach ever

  Standalone Novels

  The Break-Up Book Club

  My Ex-Best Friend’s Wedding

  A Week at the Lake

  While We Were Watching Downton Abbey

  Magnolia Wednesdays

  The Accidental Bestseller

  Single in Suburbia

  Hostile Makeover

  Leave it to Cleavage

  7 Days and 7 Nights

  Author’s Note

  As some of you may know, 7 Days and 7 Nights was originally published in 2003. It was my first romantic comedy, and it will always have a special place in my heart. Now, almost 20 years later I’m excited to share this newly updated edition with you.

  When I came up with the idea for 7 Days & 7 Nights, The TV show Survivor had just gone on the air, and I thought it would be fun to put two co-workers with a secret romantic past into that kind of situation. Having hosted a live talk radio show called Desperate & Dateless back in the eighties when I was both, I loved the idea of setting this story in that world.

  Enter talk radio hosts Dr. Olivia Moore and Matt Ransom, both determined to be at the top of their field, and both determined not to let their shared past, or their sexual chemistry put their careers at risk.

  Although I think their story is as relevant today as it was in 2003, the world Olivia and Matt were living in needed some updates! Back then there were no smartphones, no Facebook, no Twitter, and the word “streaming” was more likely to refer to flowing tears than a way to watch TV.

  So, if this is your first time meeting Olivia and Matt, enjoy! And if you’re coming back to 7 Days & 7 Nights a second time, I hope you love the updated world and the updated relationships in the book.

  – Wendy Wax

  "Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.”

  —Katharine Hepburn

  Chapter One

  Olivia Moore’s day began with a cheating husband and went downhill from there. This time the cheating husband didn’t belong to her. Of course, he didn’t belong to the wispy-voiced woman on the other end of the phone, either—a fact Olivia, as host of WTLK Radio’s Liv Live, felt compelled to point out.

  “The man has a wife, Clarice.”

  “But…

  “No, no ‘buts.’ Let’s recap the facts, shall we?”

  Olivia ticked her points off on fingers that her audience could not see. “You’ve never been in his home, and you can’t call him there. You don’t go out together in public. He’s never available on holidays. Your dates take place in hotel rooms.”

  The sniffling began on the other end of the line.

  “What does this tell you, Clarice?”

  More sniffles.

  “This man is not available, Clarice, because he’s married.” Olivia’s tone turned dry. “And unless you’ve been living on a desert island for the last year, you know that I’ve had some personal experience in this area.”

  Clarice stopped sniffling long enough to laugh a little.

  “The bottom line here is, he’s married, you're miserable, and his wife probably isn’t turning cartwheels, either.” Lord knew she hadn’t been when she’d finally stopped pretending that nice, safe, dependable James was just working late.

  “Married men do not belong in the dating pool. They’re like shoes you ordered online that just don’t fit. They may look great, but the pain is not worth it and as soon as you try them on you know you have to send them back.”

  Olivia settled her headphones more firmly in place and squinted out through the small rectangle of glass to the radio station control room beyond. The producer of her call-in advice show, Diane Lowe, cradled a phone between her ear and shoulder, her fingers flying across her computer keyboard as she typed in a list of callers waiting to go on the air with Olivia. After each name, she typed a brief summary of what he or she intended to say.

  Scan
ning the monitor in front of her, Olivia noted four calls holding, two of them in agreement with her advice to Clarice. The other two thought Clarice should proceed more slowly.

  Olivia drummed her fingers on the desk and wondered how many Clarices her own ex-husband had dated. If you believed social media, there had been

  truckloads of them. In the end, of course, the actual number hardly mattered; one or one million, the damage was the same.

  Olivia sat up straighter, her thoughts leading her to ask, “Have you noticed that your boyfriend is the only one who seems to be enjoying himself?”

  There was a sob. A hiccup. The blowing of a nose—all the more graphic for lack of accompanying video—and then a final sniffle.

  “Can you hear me, Clarice?” Olivia leaned into the microphone. She could practically feel Clarice nodding her head.

  “Yes.”

  “Good, because I want you to listen carefully.”

  A barely audible sniff, and then, “Okay.”

  “Get rid of the man, Clarice. Dump him. Send him back. It doesn’t matter what method you choose. Just do it.”

  Olivia hit the “drop” button to kill the call and, without allowing herself time to stop and think, moved on to the next.

  She let half of the women have their say, totally aware of the irony of her advising the "other woman” when she’d spent almost six months imagining fates worse than death for James’s last fling. Then she moved on to a new caller with a new problem, hoping this one wouldn’t hit quite so close to home.

  “Rachel, hello. What’s happening?”

  “Hi, Olivia. It’s, um, about my new boyfriend. And my, um... feet.”

  Olivia heard a snort of laughter from the control room, mercifully out of microphone range, and saw Diane shoot a triumphant fist into the air. Olivia felt the same fine rush of adrenaline; only in radio could the topic move from philandering to feet in less than fifteen seconds.

  Olivia tucked a stray strand of hair firmly behind her ear and got down to work. For several minutes she extracted information from her embarrassed caller. In a

  husky voice Rachel described the hot new boyfriend who only laid hands on her body long enough to get to her big toe.

  Olivia made a mental note to devote a future program to foot and other fetishes. More calls came in, and she started contemplating a book on the subject. Idly, she considered titles. Maybe Frenzied Feet? or Hung Up on Hangnails?

  Glancing down at her own feet in their cushy Nikes, she tried to remember how long it had been since her last pedicure.

  Her schedule allowed exactly no spare time for either toe sucking or pampering. In the year since her embarrassingly public divorce, she’d moved her call-in radio show, Liv Live, from Tampa, Florida, to WTLK in Atlanta and seen her audience expand exponentially.

  The three hours on the air every morning were the most visible part of her day, but the articles she wrote on a regular basis and the fulfillment of her multi-book contract gobbled up what little free time remained. And that was without the promotional appearances the station insisted upon.

  “Rachel, this isn’t a particularly unusual fetish as fetishes go. And it’s only a problem if it’s a problem for you.” She stood up to pace the postage-stamp-sized room—a highly unsatisfying experience for a pacer of her magnitude—while the husky voice described what incredible shape her toes were now in and offered graphic detail about what her boyfriend liked to do to them.

  The walls of the tiny room pressed inward as Olivia realized that her caller's feet were having a much better sex life than Olivia’s entire body.

  She stopped pacing and waited out the moment of dead air while Rachel of the much-loved toes worked up to the real reason for her call.

  “My boyfriend just took a job in the shoe department at Saks. He has his hands on other women’s feet all the time.” Her voice broke. “He comes home from work

  whistling every day.”

  Olivia bit down hard on the inside of her cheek and reminded herself that this was a legitimate problem to Rachel, one that deserved her full and serious consideration. Unfortunately, a glance through the window to the control room told her that neither her producer nor the news anchor getting ready to go on at the top of the hour felt any such obligation; they shook with silent laughter, their bodies doubled over with mirth. Who could blame them? Her own self-control hung by the slimmest of threads.

  “You know, Rachel, as long as you have no reason to believe he’s stepping out on you, I’d be careful not to jump to any conclusions. In fact, I suggest you keep your feet planted firmly on the ground and—” Rachel dissolved into a fit of giggles while Olivia made one last stab at actual advice. “Remember, it’s your feet, I mean, you, he runs home to every night.”

  The opening strains of the show’s theme music in her headphones gave her an out.

  “Saved by the bell,” Olivia thought as she gratefully leaned into the microphone one last time and closed the show with her signature tagline. “I’m Dr. Olivia Moore, reminding you to live your life... live.”

  Olivia removed her headphones and gathered up the notes now strewn across the table. Pushing the microphone back on its retractable arm, she began to clear her things out of the way. In the control room on the other side of the glass, she could see Diane doing the same. Opening the door that separated them, Olivia popped her head into the control room.

  “Nice job today, Di. Thanks.” A quick scan of the room’s flat surfaces revealed no candy wrappers or cookie crumbs, and the usual Egg McMuffin smells were missing.

  "On a new diet?”

  "Yeah. I just started the Everything-but-the-Crust Pizza Diet.”

  “Oh?” Olivia raised an eyebrow. Her producer approached both eating and dieting with equal enthusiasm.

  “Today I get ten green olives, five slices of pepperoni, one slice of cheese, and all the anchovies I can eat.”

  “Wow.” Olivia tried not to wince. She didn’t have time for fad diet lectures or yet another attempt to persuade Diane to look at the emotional triggers behind her eating. If she hurried, she’d just make it to her own lunch with the Atlanta Leisure reporter. With a wave, she backed through the door and into the hall where the Operations Manager’s admin lay in wait.

  “Hey, Olivia. Loved the feet thing. T.J. asked if you could stop by his office on your way out.”

  “Can we make it another time, Anna? I’ve got less than twenty minutes to make it to an interview.”

  The pert brunette shrugged apologetically. The top of her head barely reached Olivia’s shoulder. “Sorry. He told me not to let you get away. I don’t think it’ll take too long.”

  Resigned, Olivia followed Anna down the corridor past two other studios and another control room. They went through a heavy door that swung shut and locked behind them, then crossed the lobby to the station’s general offices.

  T.J. Lawrence smiled and stood when Olivia knocked on his open office door. The sunlight streaming through the window spotlighted his freshly shaved head and glinted off his wire-rimmed glasses. Olivia blinked at the brightness after her stint in the artificially lit studio and took the chair opposite her boss.

  T.J. was a bit of a maverick by current radio standards. In the corporate environment that now permeated the industry, his hands-on approach and personal commitment to local production made him a rarity. It also commanded fierce loyalty from the people who worked for him.

  It had been T.J. who’d talked Olivia into moving her show to WTLK, and T.J. who’d put the station and its resources firmly behind her during the social media frenzy that followed her divorce.

  In an industry that mostly relied on prepackaged syndicated programs, he continued to produce and promote local programming, building his on-air talent and staying personally involved in the direction of their shows. As a rule, he was head strategist and chief cheerleader.

  Today, T.J.'s smile lacked its usual wattage, and his warm brown eyes looked troubled. Olivia settled into her ch
air and looked up at the man perched on the desk in front of her. “What’s the problem, T.J.?”

  He studied her for a moment as if weighing his words. When he folded his arms across his chest and then crossed his long legs at the ankles, Olivia shifted uncomfortably in her seat. As body language went, his was not promising.

  “I know you’re in a hurry, so I’ll spare you the gory details. The problem, as always, is the corporate office in Detroit.” He paused and shook his head in disgust. “Normally, I can handle the suits. But this time when I turned on my Prince Charming act and reiterated the benefits of live and local radio they refused to back off.”

  The picture of T.J. in full Prince Charming regalia notwithstanding, Olivia found herself wishing they were in a cartoon fairytale so that T.J. could just wave a magic wand and make this apparent threat to her show disappear. Uh-oh. She needed to stop thinking about fairytales because the image of Liv Live turning into a pumpkin and being left to rot was not a particularly pleasant one.

  Looking away, Olivia stood and walked to the window, where she stared down at the lunchtime traffic inching along Peachtree Street. T.J. joined her there, and for a long moment they stood side by side watching the ant-like activity seven stories below. “Liv Live’s not in jeopardy, is it?”

  T.J. ran a hand over the dome of his head and sighed. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to take a hard look at it.”

  “Why is that?”

  “It’s one of our most expensive shows. It and Guy Talk pull the biggest audiences and have the most syndication potential, but they’re also the most costly to produce. You and Matt Ransom are WTLK’s highest-paid talent. Based solely on the bottom line, your shows are roughly equivalent.”

  “How can anyone compare Liv Live to Guy Talk? They don’t even belong on the same planet.”

  “Yes, well, that’s pretty much what Matt said. But WTLK is owned by a public company, Olivia. They don’t care what you’re talking about, only how your show affects the bottom line.”