It's a fantastic damsel in distress story site.There are plenty to enjoy,of which Jeb himself has wrote.
He has very kindly given me permission to post his stories here,and I've chosen this one as it was the first one I read.
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The woman was tall.
And Sophie Da Costa had some experience of tall women-she'd once dated an all-conference basketball player.This woman wasn't quite as tall as that,but she was as imposing a presence as anyone Sophie had seen in ''Cindy's Curios'' for quite some time.Her jacket hung loosely over an athletic frame that suggested easy strength,as did the big,long fingered hands that peered out from the jacket cuffs.The woman's black hair was cut in a modified pageboy style,bluntly trimmed at chin level,and her smoothly tanned face had a hard beautyto it.If she wasn't necessarily what Sophie thought of as her 'type',she had a type of beauty that was compelling and unforgettable,if a little disturbing.
The tall woman was canting her glance about the store on this dull,sun-baked Wednesday morning,her sharp brown eyes clearly looking for something in particular.That was a bit unusual,as the wild mishmash of product in the place usually forced the customer to try and take the place in before starting to focus on something specific.
''Can I help you?'' Sophie called out,and for the first time,the woman seemed to notice her;the young salesgirl found herself shivering slightly as she felt herself being sized up by the woman's gaze as though she was just another item of the store's merchandise.
And there was plenty of merchandise to choose from.While the ''Cindy'' of Cindy's Curios was actually a dyspeptic middle-aged man named Arnold,the store itself was a treasure trove of odd imported items,focusing mainly on the Orient:everything from fine china to cheap toys,women's clothing and men's accessories,pottery,statues,jewelry,chess sets,sarongs...Some of it was cheap touristy crap of course,but some were quite exquisite;Sophie had just been running her hands lovingly over a new shipment of long,brightly coloured scarves of impossibly soft silk when the tall woman had entered.
''Just looking,'' came the time honoured response,and the woman's voice,while not unappealing,had the same hardness to it that made her face even more intimidating than it was attractive.
Feeling slightly relieved to be off the hook,Sophie returned her attention to the silk scarves.
Two more months of this,Sophie sighed to herself,but that first day of Graduate School seems SO far off-doubly so while enduring customers as well supplied with attitude as this one seemed to be.Usually,the presence of an attractive woman in the store would have led to some genial conversation,possibly even a bit of mild flirtation-anything to relieve the tedium of her eight-hour day of retail.That was clearly not happening now,and with this one,that was probably a good thing.
She heard the tinkle of the bell over the door,turned to look,and wondered if her maths skills,or eyesight,were playing tricks on her;she knew perfectly well that there were now two women in the shop,but her eyes could only register the newest visitor.
The woman wasn't as tall as the first one,but she had a bearing about her that radiated the authority of someone accustomed to looking down on others.Not in a 'stuck-up' way-there was nothing of the snob on the woman's face-but as though it were simply her destiny to command-to dominate.
