Samhain Publishing, $2.50, ISBN 978-1-60504-032-5
Contemporary Erotica, 2008

Amy Lee – no, not that banshee from the emo rock group Evanescence – decides that it is time she lands the big one in her architectural firm. No, she’s not aiming for some skyscraper project. She’s aiming for the skyscraper of Ridge Casey, her boss. No, people, don’t be mean. She’s not trying to sleep her way into a promotion. This is true lust we are talking about. At any rate, her short skirt and thong do the trick and soon Ridge is thinking all kinds of naughty thoughts about her.

Between a Ridge and a Hard Place is a very, very short story so I don’t have much to write about in this review. It is what you may expect: the plot is just a quick set-up to get the characters to do the ugly, with some quickie “I love you” tossed out towards the end so that people will not confuse this story with other sleazy stories that are written solely to titillate raincoat-wearing dirty old men.

It’s too bad that Amy Lee is such a cliché of the dumb bunny who looks like a hot babe but acts like a nitwit. Ridge comes off like a sleazy corporate type who will sleep with every woman in the workplace in real life, so it’s a shame that Amy Lee isn’t a mercenary ambitious woman intending to sleep with the boss just to move up the corporate ladder. That story would be more interesting than this lightning crash course on Harlequin Blaze clichés, I’d think.