When a widowed professor decides dating is back in the books, her new neighbor - a silver fox fireman - volunteers to school her in rekindling a flame between the sheets.

I'm forty, flabby, and frustrated.

Don't get me wrong, I have a good home, a decent job, and great children. I had a loving marriage for twenty years where we had our ups and downs. It wasn't perfect, but it wasn't awful.

Then he died.

After the grief took its course, and the reality of my new life settled in, I grew frustrated. It wasn't the bills or the struggle to keep my interest in my career. It was life without a man – the only man I'd been with for two decades. And before you go all feminist on me, it wasn't that I couldn't be an independent woman.

There were just certain areas where a man was necessary.

You need a f*ck buddy, my friend said.

I didn't even know what that meant.

Is it friends with benefits? I asked.

Better, you don't even have to be friends.

Boy, did I need an education in the modern workings of dating . . . and sex.

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From L.B. Dunbar is her original sexy silver fox standalone about second chances after loss and falling in love over 40.