Nothing in Common but Life: 5 Short Stories (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781532038679)

Nathan - leaves a job he loves to nurse his wife through her final stage of cancer. Lured back to work several years later, he becomes an unwitting participant in a major procurement scam. Meanwhile he encounters the woman he had an affair with years ago who has haunted his dreams. Will he renew their relationship and revive the passion of his youth, or will he go to jail? Annie - devastated by her divorce, she retreats into a shell of embarrassment, anger and guilt. Grudgingly stepping back into the real world, she meets a suave, debonair man who sweeps her off her feet. When her ex's affair ends he appeals to Annie for forgiveness. Annie's sympathy for him creates a dilemma between old feelings and her new lover. Which man will she choose? Cody - hopes for college end when he is forced to run the family farm after his parents? untimely deaths. He falls in love, but is rejected. Humiliated, he joins the Army and serves two combat tours in Afghanistan. He returns home to Texas, starts college, and meets a rich coed. They fall in love and she gets pregnant. What happens next reinforces Cody's view of life as bitterly unfair. Carol - the African American Lt. Colonel prosecutes sexual harassment cases in the Air Force. Working a case against a popular officer, she uncovers his seamy underside and his political connections in Washington. She is drugged by ?associates? of the accused and posed for lewd pictures. The accused expects the case to be dropped and that Carol submit to his sexual demands using the pictures as blackmail. Carol agonizes over giving in to the man and saving her career or defying him and ruining her life. Bernie - the night watchman finds three million dollars in cash in a duffel bag. He learns from a police friend that a local gang has had their drug money stolen. Bernie cautiously begins to spend the money and the cop, suspicious, threatens to expose Bernie unless he gets a share of the cash. How can Bernie keep his discovery a secret and use the money to give his family a better life? And what should he do about the cop who can ruin it all?