Art of the Lie Delphine Dryden
Truth & Lies, Book Two
Up-and-coming designer Lindy is going through a lot of changes. A fabulous career opportunity, a big show at a local art gallery and even a promising flirtation with the town’s most eligible bachelor. It’s a lot for a shy, small-town girl to handle. Now if she can just find the time (and nerve) to seduce her sexy neighbor Richard. Lindy’s wanted Richard since college, and her unrequited crush hasn’t lessened now that they live in neighboring lofts. A wickedly handsome ladies’ man, Richard isn’t boyfriend material. Lindy knows that. But she suspects he’s perfect for the job she has in mind—getting rid of her pesky virginity once and for all.
An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication
www.ellorascave.com
Art of the Lie ISBN 9781419930089 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Art of the Lie Copyright © 2010 Delphine Dryden Edited by Kelli Collins Cover art by Syneca Electronic book publication September 2010 The terms Romantica® and Quickies® are registered trademarks of Ellora’s Cave Publishing. With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 44310-3502. Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the publisher’s permission. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000. (http://www.fbi.gov/ipr/). Please purchase only authorized electronic or print editions and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted material. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
ART OF THE LIE
Delphine Dryden
The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction: Band-Aid: Johnson & Johnson Corporation Cardinals: St. Louis Cardinals, LLC Colts: Indianapolis Colts, Inc. Cubs, Cubbies: Chicago National League Ball Club, Inc. Etsy: Etsy, Inc. Formica: The Diller Corporation iPod: Apple, Inc. Urban Outfitters: Urban Outfitters, Inc. Victoria’s Secret: V Secret Catalogue, Inc.
Delphine Dryden
Chapter One When Lindy received the first call from Red House she thought it was a prank. “Oh come on. Abel, is this you? You say you’re too busy at work to come to town for my show, but you’re still gobbling up my valuable prep time with prank calls?” Her college friend Abel, gay as the day was long and very fond of practical jokes, seemed the prime suspect. He was actually no fan of her recent artwork, he thought it was gauche, and this sort of trick was right up his alley. Although Lindy was surprised Abel was a skilled enough actor to mask his hopelessly queeny accent so well. A long pause followed her teasing insult, and then the caller repeated his greeting, but slowly, as if a little unsure of her sanity. “No, this is Paul Maddox. Of the Red House stores. I’ve been following your work for some time now and I’m very impressed, Miss Moore.” He sounded as though he was beginning to doubt that judgment. “I called because we’re in the process of expanding our store brand to accessories, and I’d love to meet with you about the possibility of a partnership. We like to go with local designers when we can, and I have to say you’ve been getting some very nice press lately.” Lindy was still distracted, trying to choose between three skeins of similarly colored yarn. The different textures held her attention and she ran her fingers over each of them in turn as she replied. “Uh-huh. Right. A ritzy chain store is cold calling to recruit me as a designer. And then the Colts cheerleading squad is gonna sign on for a lucrative endorsement deal. Give it up, okay? Hey, is Sadie in town right now, do you know? I was going to see if she wanted to go to that new place on Fifth, maybe this weekend some time.” “Delco’s? I don’t recommend it. They have a decent wine list but the chef really hasn’t developed the menu very well yet.” A muffled voice in the background seemed 6
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to be asking the caller something, and his next words were clearly addressed to that voice rather than to Lindy. “Uh, keep this clause but lose the old boilerplate arbitration section, and ask legal if they have the new language ready to go yet. Oh, and Maggie, could you grab me another cup of coffee if there’s any more already made? Thanks. Miss Moore? I apologize for the interruption. Where were we? Besides avoiding Delco’s, I mean.” Lindy’s mouth had fallen open in horror at some point between “arbitration” and “coffee”, and when she finally replied it was in a mortified whisper. “You’re…not Abel, are you?” “I like to think I’m as able as the next man.” “Oh fu— Uh…rats, I mean. Um.” She pounded her fist against her thigh, cursing silently at the mountain of faux pas she seemed to be amassing. “You’re actually Paul Maddox!” “Yes I am.” “I’m— Hi! I’m Lindy. Melinda. Moore, Melinda Moore.” “Yes, I know, Miss Moore. I called you.” No rocks were available for Lindy to crawl under, though she looked hard for one. She thought of the photos she’d seen of Mr. Maddox. Cool and collected, master of all he surveyed. Somebody who, even in a grainy lifestyle-column party snapshot, managed to look crisp and handsome. He was a businessman’s businessman, and he was also on every local magazine’s list of the most eligible bachelors imaginable. Taking a deep breath and letting it out audibly, Lindy focused on the vivid colors in the closest hank of yarn to try to drive the intimidating image of Paul Maddox out of her mind’s eye. “So you did, Mr. Maddox. I apologize for my error. I thought you were somebody else. Well, obviously.”
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“No harm done.” He sounded amused, much to Lindy’s relief. “So how about it? Can we set up a meeting, talk business, that sort of thing? It would give you a chance to meet with our creative director and some of the others, talk about ideas, see if it seems like a good fit. Of course, we have some thoughts based on what you’ve already done, but if you have anything new lurking in your portfolio you can feel free to bring that along too. Or do you have an agent or someone I should be speaking with?” “Oh no, it’s just me. And yes, that would be great. A meeting, that is.” Lindy hoped the man couldn’t hear her doing the happy dance through the phone. Then she quailed at the idea of the meeting Maddox had just described. It was tough enough dealing with owners of small boutiques. She didn’t know if she was quite ready for the CEO of a big store chain. “How would Friday morning work for you?” “Let me just check my calendar.” Lindy stared up at the ceiling of her loft, noting the recent proliferation of cobwebs among the exposed ductwork. “Sure, Friday looks pretty clear.” “My creative director is Stephen Markham, and normally you’d be dealing with him at this point, but he’s had a family emergency so he entrusted me to get the ball rolling for him. We’re still mostly a family-run company,” he explained, “so when somebody is out we all have to help take up the slack. This week, I get to be myself and also Stephen. But he’ll be emailing you later today about what to bring, portfolio and so on.” After sharing more specific details of when and where the meeting would take place, they ended the call. Lindy stood over the phone for a few seconds afterward, staring at it as though it might ring again. She half-expected a call from Abel, cackling uproariously at the success of his joke. Once reality sank in, and she realized she really had been invited to the Red House corporate headquarters to talk about designing accessories for a statewide clothing store chain, Lindy whooped at the top of her lungs. The noise echoed against every hard surface in her studio, ringing joyfully back to her.
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“I heard a shout. Is everything okay?” Lindy hadn’t realized the door to her loft was ajar, and the voice startled her into swinging wildly around on her stool. Her neighbor Richard was leaning into her studio from the hall. “Happy shout. Everything is awesome! Oh my gosh, Richard, I think a big chain of stores wants to buy some of my stuff! Congratulate me!” She spun on the stool like a kid, putting a smile on Richard’s previously anxious face. “Do you have any champagne?” Lindy asked, taking a final spin and then jumping off while the stool was still in motion. “Or even some beer that we can put in champagne glasses and pretend is champagne?” He was leaning against the doorjamb now, watching her with very obvious amusement, and Lindy marveled again at the chance that had made her neighbors with her old art department acquaintance. They’d never kept in touch during the four years after college, but within two months of one another they had moved into this centuryold, barely renovated warehouse. Lindy found that her hopeless crush on Richard, still lingering from college days when he never looked at her twice, was much easier to manage when he lived right across the hall. They had become friends, and were in and out of one another’s lofts all day long. “I can take a look. Aren’t you sort of counting your chickens, though? Congratulations of course. But wouldn’t you rather wait until you’ve actually talked to them, found out if it’s really going to work out? Or if it’s even something you really want to do?” He shouted the last from his own loft as he went in search of a pale bubbly liquid suitable for toasting. “Screw that!” Lindy yelled back, then giggled at her own temerity. “Oh fine. We’ll drink to my upcoming show then. Whatever! I just need to celebrate!” She knew Richard would have beer, at the very least, and she had already pulled two champagne flutes down from her kitchen cabinet and was waiting, perched on the Formica counter, by the time he returned with two frosty bottles in hand. 9
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“Close enough,” she cheered, and held the glasses as he poured. “So you should be celebrating something too. What good thing has happened for you that’s worth drinking to?” Lindy knew he might have to struggle for an answer. Richard was only living in this starving artist’s paradise now because he’d moved out on his girlfriend Natasha after he found her cheating on him in his own bed. His run of early artistic successes, from a well-received gallery showing in New York to a piece being purchased for the permanent collection of a prominent local museum, had screeched to a halt after his breakup. It had been months since he had worked seriously on anything. “It’s my parents’ thirtieth wedding anniversary today,” he conceded. “I guess I could drink to them.” “That’s worth drinking to,” Lindy agreed, clinking his glass with hers and tossing back a hearty swig. Then she coughed at the bitterness. She’d forgotten it wasn’t actually champagne, and she was no beer drinker in the normal course of things. Richard had the sense to bite his lip and keep from laughing out loud. He turned his back and leaned against the counter next to Lindy, crossing his legs at the ankle and propping himself up on one elbow. “But,” Lindy finally continued, “while that’s wonderful for your parents, it doesn’t exactly count as something good that’s happened to you. Something positive.” After a few moments of consideration, he thought of something. “I sold two pieces last week. From the gallery downtown. So I can pay the rent for another couple of months, and I won’t have to decide between food and electricity for a while.” “Well, that is good news.” Lindy knew Richard wasn’t exaggerating. There had been at least one month recently when he’d had to make that decision, and while she was all in favor of electricity, she wasn’t so sure Richard should have chosen that over decent food. “Yeah, that poverty diet was getting sort of old.” “You definitely lost weight on it. Not that you needed to.” 10
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“I didn’t lose much. Thanks to your habit of accidentally making too much food just about every meal.” Lindy smiled. “And here I thought I was being subtle.” “And I was pretty dense. I actually didn’t figure it out for a couple of weeks.” He’d filled back out to his pre-Natasha size now, Lindy noticed, admiring the play of Richard’s biceps against the snug arm of his faded green t-shirt as he tipped his champagne flute back to empty it. She might be more accustomed to him now, but she still couldn’t keep from staring sometimes. Or daydreaming. Or, more recently, outright plotting. “So, your parents. Thirty years, really?” Lindy asked, mainly to distract herself from ogling. “That’s so rare.” “I know. And what’s great is that my parents still really seem to like each other. Turning everything back to myself as usual, because I’m a narcissistic jackass, looking at them always makes me worry that I’ll end up alone. Because how could I ever find something that good?” Richard knew he was handsome, and he used his Renaissance-portrait good looks to his advantage quite shamelessly. But Lindy thought he had just enough selfawareness to know that sort of behavior wouldn’t get him what he wanted in the long run. His parents had set the bar high, but Richard still saw their kind of relationship as his ultimate goal. Lindy wasn’t above teasing him, though. “I see you finding some young, lovesick model who’ll be more than happy just to be an ornament in the great artist’s loft. She’ll live for the few moments of attention you can spare from your painting fugue each day to pass on your timeless artistic wisdom. Between the sheets. She’ll try to turn you into a vegan because she worries about your sensitive system and she’ll tell all her friends she’s your muse.” Richard snorted into his refilled glass. “Okay, I guess I deserved that. You did just describe most of the girls I dated in college.”
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“Yeah, you had a lot of muses back then.” “I was highly amusing.” Lindy groaned at the pun and tapped his hip with her bare toe in a mockery of a kick. “So I guess you just really decided you wanted a drastic change after all that?” Richard shrugged again, suddenly reticent. “Natasha seemed like a good idea at the time. And I think I probably should just leave it at that.” “Good, because I’m sure I don’t want to know,” Lindy countered. She was lying, of course. She was dying to know what the true allure of the pinstriped, spike-heeled, hard-as-nails finance genius had been for Richard. “And we both need to get back to work. But thank you so much for the champagne-beer. And tell your parents congratulations for me, okay? You are going to call them, right? Right?” “Of course,” he assured her, as he moved to the sink and rinsed out his glass. “How’s the exhibit going? Just a few days away, are you about ready?” “Just about.” Lindy sighed. “Is it normal to feel like throwing up every time I think about it?” “Yeah, especially before the first one. But you know me, I hurl if the wind changes. Because of my delicate, sensitive system and all.” “Well, not me. I’m from that hardy peasant stock, I guess.” Lindy pursed her lips as she patted her tummy, which was well hidden under a long, loose t-shirt that ended just inches above the frayed edges of her cut-offs. When she looked back up she caught the end of a funny look from Richard, but he glanced away before she could figure out his expression. “You need to decide where the real celebration will be on Saturday night,” he said, as he walked back toward the door. At Lindy’s obvious bewilderment, he chuckled. “After your show, doofus. You know, when all your friends take you out and everyone whoops it up all night long, then the loyal few who make it all the way through can go out and get copies of the papers to read the reviews? Or check them online, whatever.”
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“We’ll come back here, I guess. Oh my god. Reviews. I hadn’t even thought about that. And now I feel sick again. Thanks, Richard.” “Any time, kiddo,” he said with an evil grin as he started sliding his loft door shut. “Any time.” “Don’t call me that!” It was what she always said when he called her “kiddo”, and as usual Richard ignored her. Lindy tried to get her mind back on work, but her concentration was hopelessly shot by the phone call, by her anxiety over the upcoming exhibition. And by her plotting about Richard. He had been so nice about celebrating with her, such a great neighbor in general. Lindy had grown to really like Richard over the past several months. It hadn’t really affected her crush much one way or the other, and she didn’t think her plans would harm their friendship. She just wanted to utilize a particular skill of Richard’s once…or perhaps a few times. And surely he would be more than happy to help. He was a guy, after all. A guy she had secretly admired for years, although she was trying very hard now to remind herself that he was just a friend and nobody she should risk a romantic entanglement with. In many ways, Richard seemed tailor-made for the job she had in mind, although it had taken Lindy a while to realize he was the perfect candidate. He had extensive experience with women, and she knew he wasn’t usually the type to get emotionally involved. She also knew he wasn’t seeing anybody right now, hadn’t been for months, in fact. And as a practical matter, she knew he was clean. She’d gone with him to the free clinic when he decided to make sure his ex-girlfriend hadn’t left any nasty biological legacies behind. To hear the girls talk in college, Richard was also more than capable of rocking his partner’s world in bed…and she’d heard he liked things on the rough and naughty side, which intrigued her. 13
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All those little pieces of stored information about Richard were more than enough to tip the balance in favor of Lindy’s plan to talk him into sleeping with her. Two days from now, if everything went as she intended. Thursday night, just in case he already had plans for the weekend. She would invite him over for dinner, pop a suggestive movie into the DVD player, ply him with wine and flirting, and then make her move. Because twenty-six was much more than old enough, and Lindy was sick and tired of being a virgin.
***** Richard stared at the canvas, determined not to waste the light for yet another day. The expanse of white, nearly twice his height and two times wider than tall, stared back at him. He had challenged himself by hanging up this behemoth on a scaffold smack in the middle of his loft, but right now the canvas was defeating him. It had been defeating him for months, and he had to resist the temptation to take the challenge to a whole new level by punching right through the damn thing. He couldn’t help a smile at the sharp contrast between this broad, accusatory stretch of nothing and the vivid palette of colors and textures that was Lindy’s studio. Just as she always had in college, she had projects in various stages of completion all over the place. Instead of focusing on the canvas, Richard’s unhelpful mind next offered up the smooth, creamy image of Lindy’s deliciously curved thighs, revealed beneath the fringe of cutoff denim shorts. She’d been so excited about her phone call, and he’d been busy admiring the way her face lit up with that enthusiasm. Her skin had always been like something straight out of a painter’s dream. And her genuine enthusiasm was contagious, drawing him in. Such a marked contrast to the cool calculation he’d grown used to from Natasha.
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Something about Lindy relaxed him—and that caught him off guard, made him feel too comfortable, so he forgot to be careful. Forgot to keep his eyes from wandering away from her face to other, more interesting places. She’d almost caught him looking, too, which was bad. Lindy was a good friend, he reminded himself. His best friend, probably. And a low-down, womanizing dog needs a best friend more than he needs another conquest. No matter how tempting. In college it had been easy to overlook her. She was cute enough back then, but he’d been pretty sure she was a virgin, a class he scrupulously avoided. But then Lindy had helped put him back together after Natasha’s cheating tore him apart, and he’d gotten to really know her. Sweet and quiet Lindy, the girl too innocent to hit on back then, but certainly all grown up now and with curves impossible to overlook. Had that really been over nine months ago? That meant it was almost a year since he’d last done any work worth counting. And over six months he’d been staring at this giant piece of nothing where his latest masterpiece should be taking shape. Trying in vain to get the vision of his sweet neighbor’s surprisingly delectable legs out of his head. Richard closed his eyes and sighed, then turned away from the silent blame of the empty canvas. Tomorrow, he thought, he really should just take the damn thing down.
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Chapter Two Lindy couldn’t stop thinking about the meeting and all the possibilities it might open up for her. Once the initial excitement had faded, she also thought a lot about Richard’s off-the-cuff remark. Or if it’s even something you really want to do? He had a point—a good one. The lure of a big job was tremendous, but Lindy hadn’t really been looking for something on that scale. She was just starting to feel confident about her ability to support herself as an artist and entrepreneur, after all. The choice to leave her temp-agency job and devote herself to designing full-time had been terrifying, but it was turning out better than she’d ever imagined. She’d pictured building her own business slowly, not being thrown into a corporate design world she knew little about. “I can’t believe you’re even debating this with yourself,” her sister Tess said. “Of course you should do it. By the way, you’re getting the works. I hope you didn’t have anything else planned for today.” Lindy frowned at the fluffy white robe in her hands. It bore the logo of the day spa Tess had dragged her to, insisting Lindy needed to be better groomed for her upcoming gallery appearance. Lindy had decided to take the opportunity to groom herself for other things, too, but she was hardly going to tell Tess about her plans to seduce her hunky but dissolute neighbor. Tess had known Richard in college too. She would probably flip out if she knew what Lindy was planning for the following evening. “I really should spend the afternoon getting caught up on some things,” Lindy hedged. “I have two of my student seamstresses coming in tomorrow to do some piecing, too, and—” “The works, Isabelle. Do everything to her. She’s horribly unkempt. Lindy, you can get caught up on work later. This is deep, deep girly preparation stuff, and you need to 16
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catch up on this right now since I finally got you to come here and I’m the one footing the bill.” Lindy smiled uncertainly at the attendant, who was indeed wearing a name tag that read “Isabelle” in elegant italic lettering. The woman was very petite and very sleek, with perfectly smooth, milky skin and a silky sheet of jet-black hair spilling down around her shoulders from a high ponytail that accented her delicate features. She looked like a walking advertisement for the spa. “Don’t worry,” Isabelle said. She had a trace of a French accent. Lindy thought it seemed vastly unfair she should sound like she looked. “We’ll take good care of you. If you have any questions, just ask. And just because Tess has signed you up for something, don’t be afraid to tell us no or ask for a different service. I think she hasn’t gotten much input from you on what you like, has she?” “No, she hasn’t,” agreed Lindy, sticking her tongue out at Tess as soon as Isabelle turned away. “You people never let me have any fun,” Tess mock-pouted. But it was fun, Lindy discovered. Before the day was half over she thought she could easily become just as addicted to the spa experience as Tess was. She’d never been one to focus much attention on her grooming, but it was fascinating to see all the options that were available. An infinite variety of gels, creams and other gooey substances were applied to every inch of her skin. Things were filed, tweaked, trimmed and painted. At one point in the morning she found herself agreeing to be wrapped in seaweed. She felt stupid, but had to admit that afterward her skin was transformed into something she barely recognized, soft and glowing and infinitely touchable. “I’ve never had such an urge to feel myself up,” she confessed to Tess during lunch, as they nibbled finger sandwiches between sips of mineral water and mimosas. “I told you you’d love it. Now you just need to find somebody else to feel you up and you’ll be all set.”
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Lindy blinked, a moment of panic that quickly passed when she realized Tess was just kidding. “Oh. Well. Look who’s talking.” Lindy knew Tess hadn’t dated anybody seriously in months, and that her heavier relationships generally had the shelf life of ripe fruit— good only for a few perfect days and then spoiling overnight. “True. Sad but true. Hey, are you riding with me to the game or driving by yourself?” Lindy felt a twinge of guilt. She hadn’t yet told her family she wouldn’t be attending the first pre-season football scrimmage in her hometown, even though her little brother was the starting quarterback this year. The game was on Friday. She already had the morning meeting with Red House taking up part of the day, and she didn’t want to commit to anything else the day before her exhibit opened. Not to mention the uncertainty of how she might be feeling following her night of lustful frolic. “I’m sorry, Tess. I need to call Mikey and let him know too. I can’t make it, I have to stay around in case there’s any last-minute stuff to do for the show.” Or in case I need extra time to wallow in post-coital bliss. “Lindy! You can’t not go.” “I wouldn’t be any fun anyway, I’m just too nervous. But say hello to Jake for me, okay?” Tess just gave her a withering look. Jake Hogan, hometown boy and longtime family friend, was the man they all assumed Tess would end up with. For years she’d insisted she wasn’t remotely interested, which made it even more fun to rib her about it at every opportunity. After lunch was when things really got interesting. Unbeknownst to Tess, Lindy had indeed made some changes to the agenda her sister had set up for her. To begin with, she got her first real haircut in years, and the new layers allowed her curls to
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spring out in a tumbling auburn frenzy of ringlets. There were styling products involved that kept it from looking frizzy by mystical means she didn’t fully understand. “Supermodel hair,” the stylist had said, clearly pleased with the result. “It’s very Victoria’s Secret catalogue,” Tess had agreed, giving her little sister the critical once-over from the next chair. “In fact, dare I say it, day-um.” Lindy wasn’t sure about Victoria’s Secret or day-um, but she did like the way her hair framed her heart-shaped face now, enhancing her cheekbones and bringing more attention to her eyes. She was also taking a plunge, doing something she’d always wanted to try, but if it turned out badly she didn’t want to hear about it from Tess. She was embarrassed enough as it was, but determined to see it through. While Tess thought Lindy was just getting a bikini-line waxing, Lindy was actually going the whole nine yards with a Brazilian. Everything, front and back, not so much as a landing strip. She had no idea if she’d ever work up the nerve to do it again, and she figured she might as well go all out if it was going to be the only time. She’d always been curious about what it would feel like, the process and the result. And she thought it would be just the thing to boost her confidence; prove to herself she could do daring and sexy things. Besides, she gathered men liked that sort of thing. With any luck, Richard would be among them. Isabelle was very gentle, and applied some sort of cooling gel afterward that worked like magic on the residual tender redness. The whole process was far less painful than Lindy had feared. And the first time Lindy’s fingers sailed over the smooth area where hair had been, she got an immediate erotic thrill. She had gone to the restroom, the better to get acquainted with her newly visible topography, and she didn’t really want to come out when it was time for her next bit of spa treatment. Tess had to knock twice, finally asking her if she was okay.
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“I’m fine!” Lindy assured her sister. She was still standing on her tiptoes in front of the bathroom counter, trying to look her fill of her cleanly waxed pussy in the mirror. And she was more than fine. She felt about as turned-on as she ever remembered feeling. “You’re supposed to be getting a deep-tissue massage in five minutes.” “I’ll be out in a sec.” Staring at herself, she suddenly pictured a pair of familiar eyes watching her, evaluating her. Judging her fitness for pleasure or something Lindy couldn’t put a name to. Dark, intense, wicked bedroom eyes. Richard D’Arco’s eyes. She thought about what a mutual acquaintance had once confessed during a game of I-Never in college, that Richard had spanked her before they had sex and she’d enjoyed it. Lindy felt her labia and clit tingle at the thought, and knew it wasn’t just the wax. Not good. She shouldn’t be looking at her hoo-hoo and daydreaming about Richard and spankings when she still had an afternoon of girly spa junk to get through. Lindy jumped when her cell phone rang, sounding abnormally loud in the small, stone-clad space. It was her generic ring, and she glanced at the caller ID as she pulled the phone from her robe pocket. “Shit,” she said softly when she read the name MaddoxCorp on the little screen. Flipping the phone open, she answered quietly. “Hello?” “Miss Moore? I’m sorry, did I catch you at a bad time?” “No, no. Just, um, getting my hair done.” She glanced down at herself, noted her nipples were as hard as tiny rocks then shifted her gaze to the wall. It didn’t help. Her nipples were still as hard as tiny rocks, even if she couldn’t see them. “What can I do for you, Mr. Maddox?” She realized as she spoke that it sounded suggestive. Her voice was huskier than usual, possibly as a result of all the sexy daydreaming or maybe because of all the mimosas.
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“Call me Paul, for one thing.” Oh man. “Paul.” “I wanted to let you know that I spoke with Stephen and he’s planning to be back in time to meet with you Friday. He’s eager to get a contract signed, and you didn’t return his email right away so he’s worried now that you’re being courted by some other company.” “I’ll email him as soon as I get home tonight,” she promised. “And I’m not being courted by any other companies. It’s just a busy week and I’m really absorbed in this gallery show I have coming up.” Despite herself, Lindy couldn’t help sneaking a hand back down to finger her pussy. She couldn’t keep her hands off herself. The difference in sensation was fascinating, and feeling it was its own reward in more ways than one. “I’m glad to hear that. I really enjoyed talking with you. I’ve been looking over the photos from that article on you, and some samples that Stephen had, and I must say I find your work very stimulating.” “In the good way?” Lindy murmured, distracted by her reflection. “I beg your pardon?” Reality rushed back in with an ugly screech. “Oh! Sorry. Um, thanks. I’ll email Stephen as soon as I can, all right?” Maddox was obviously trying and failing to keep from laughing. “Yeah, please do. I’m sure he’ll be reassured.” “I’m really sorry.” She yanked the robe off the hook and wrapped it around herself to reduce temptation and feel at least somewhat hidden. Here, as at her studio, there was a shortage of rocks to crawl under. “Hey, it’s all right. Stop apologizing.” His tone changed. She could almost see him leaning into the phone. It was a great image. “You don’t have anything to be nervous about, you know. We don’t make calls like this to just everyone.” When he said it, she almost believed it was true.
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“Thank you.” “So this gallery thing, Stephen mentioned that. I think he was planning to go, but I suspect he’ll be playing catch-up at work after he gets back. Maybe I’ll try to make an appearance instead.” “Really?” The light bulb over Lindy’s head finally clicked on. He was flirting with her! That was the tone in his voice. Paul Maddox was actually flirting with her over the phone. Even after he’d seen the picture of her that appeared in the article. Good Lord. “That would be great. I think it’s going to be a great show. Not just my stuff. The other artists, too, they’re both…great.” “That all sounds…great.” Lindy had to restrain herself from beating her head against the counter. She was positive she couldn’t sound any dumber if she tried. “So I have to go. Um, the stylist needs to do some more work, I think.” “Okay. Well, I’ll see you soon, Melinda.” “Okay. Bye.” They both hung up, and Lindy tucked her phone back in her robe pocket, wondering if that surreal conversation had actually happened or had just been a hallucination caused by the seaweed.
***** In retrospect, Lindy realized she shouldn’t have taken the stairs. She was sweaty from the lingering moist heat of the day, and with no protective layer of hair on the sensitive skin of her pubic area, there was a certain amount of unaccustomed chafing along the edges of her underwear. She had just paused and started flapping her skirt in the air, trying to cool off and dry the sweat, when she heard a familiar deep thumping noise. Richard, taking the stairs two or three at a time as usual, stealthy as a herd of drunken elephants in the echo
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chamber formed by the concrete stairwell. Smoothing the skirt down quickly, Lindy turned to see her neighbor leap into view and then spring past her with a wave. “Hey Lind!” he shouted, bouncing up the rest of the stairs and then waiting for her at the third and final landing. He was hardly even out of breath. “You doing okay?” “Yeah,” she said a bit too quickly, picking up her pace and pasting a smile on her face. She hadn’t expected to see him so soon after her bold spa adventure, and had no defense against the immediate attack of nerves that struck her at the sight of him. One more day before she implemented her plan. In just twenty-four hours, he could be looking at the results of all that buffing and waxing. “Doing great.” “You ladies have fun at your spa thingy?” He opened the heavy metal door and held it for her as she reached the landing. Then he did a genuine double take. “Wow. Your hair is…wow.” “Thanks.” “What else did you have done?” He flicked his eyes down her body quickly as she passed. “Just girl stuff.” The vague answer made him frown, but he didn’t comment. As he often did, Richard followed Lindy into her apartment and flopped on one of her two faded futon couches, picking up the remote and turning on the television with the sound off. Cruising the channels, never stopping more than a few seconds on any one show. Lindy’s first stop, even before shrugging off her purse, was at her computer, where she fired off a hasty reply to Stephen Markham’s email. That done, she dumped her purse on the kitchen counter and pulled two water bottles from the refrigerator. She would try to act like it was any other day, she decided. Yep, nothing out of the ordinary here, no seduction plans. Nothing to see, folks. Nobody here but us chickens. “Anything good on?” “No. I wish one of us had cable.”
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But chickens can’t afford cable… “Then one of us would just be paying to have yet more channels of nothing good on.” She handed him a bottle and flopped down on the other couch, not bothering to face the TV. She was unable to hide her gasp when the movement of sitting down caused her panties to tug against her sensitive bits in an unexpected way. “Lindy. Is something wrong?” She shot him a sour look. “Just remind me never to go to a spa with Tess and get all crazy and wild again, okay? I think I’m experiencing some buyer’s remorse.” “Is this remorse about a good or a service?” “I’m not playing twenty questions about this, Richard.” She reached for the remote but he yanked it out of her reach. She sighed, exasperated, and sagged back in her seat, fidgeting a little before she could stop herself. “Just tell me!” “It is too freaking hot to argue.” “Then stop arguing. If I guess, will you tell me?” “What are you, twelve? You know, sometimes you remind me of my little brother so much it’s scary.” Undeterred, Richard slid the remote behind his back and crossed his arms. He contemplated Lindy’s lap, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “I’m going to Sherlock Holmes this motherfucker, then. Get ready for deductive brilliance.” “M’kay.” She downed a big slug of water, trying desperately to appear unconcerned. Things seemed to be headed in a dangerous direction. “So you went to the spa with your sister, and there you underwent a procedure of some sort that seems to have involved a tender portion of your anatomy.” “I’m not exactly floored by the brilliance yet.” “A reaction to mud or sea salt or some shit like that could have caused a rash, resulting in uncomfortable itching. However—” He held a finger up when Lindy 24
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started to interrupt. “However, your legs, arms and face seem free from any unsightly rashes. Quite the contrary, in fact, dear lady. They are smooth and unblemished. And look really, really soft, actually.” “Thank you. But I don’t think Holmes said ‘some shit like that’ when he was deducing stuff,” Lindy pointed out, wishing she could use this time to get in some advance flirting. The problem was she had no clue how to flirt, as the phone call with Paul had made all too clear. She chided herself for not spending more time watching those girls who picked up Richard so easily in college. How on earth had they done it, anyway? Surely it hadn’t sounded anything like this conversation. Waggling his eyebrows, Richard fired back, “You don’t see me wearing the dumbass hat or smoking a pipe, either. Okay, so it isn’t a rash. At least if it is, it’s somehow localized to this area right in here.” He gestured toward her waist and then lower, circling his hand vaguely. “So what beauty procedure specific to that area might result in an uncomfort—” Lindy had been staring at her water bottle as she peeled the label off, but when Richard stopped short she looked up to see him staring at her with his mouth slightly open. He wasn’t staring at her face. “Oh my god,” he said, whispering reverently. “You got waxed, didn’t you?” Lindy rolled her eyes and sighed in defeat. “Maybe.” “Like…the whole thing? Or with a little design or—” “Richard!” She tried to cross her legs, regretted it instantly and slammed her foot back down on the floor. “Well if you don’t want to tell me, you could always just show me.” He gave her a suggestive smirk, and Lindy found herself infuriated that he felt so safe saying something like that. So sure it could only ever be a joke between them. Then, with a shock, she realized this conversation might well be the best opening she’d ever get. They were already talking about sexy things, the night was young, she
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was still a tiny bit buzzed from those mimosas. It might not be what she had planned but maybe it was time to bite the bullet. Do it now, before she could lose her nerve. “If I showed you,” she said hesitantly, “what would you do about it?” Tension, immediate and electric, sizzled between them as Richard met her eyes in stunned silence. He stared at her face, then down at her lap, then up at her face again before his brain finally seemed to reconnect to his mouth. “I guess that would depend on why you were showing me.” Lindy licked her lips, wondering how her mouth could feel so dry when she’d just been drinking cold water. “Well, it seems like a shame to do something like this and not have anybody to appreciate it.” “Oh, I’m sure you could find plenty of people who would be more than appreciative,” he assured her, trying to put his water bottle on the coffee table and missing. He reached out with the bottle again, found the table without looking then pulled back and took another swig before finally setting the bottle down. His nervous fumbling made Lindy feel a little more confident. Reaching one foot out, she nudged his leg with a toe. “So are you saying you don’t want me to show you?” “Wow. Okay, this is not what I expected to happen this afternoon. In fact, I’m not exactly sure what’s happening, here. Can you tell me that, maybe? Tell me just what is happening? Because I have to admit, I’m a little confused.” But he caught her raised foot in his hand and lifted it to his lap, and Lindy couldn’t help but notice that his gaze kept drifting along that leg to the hidden topic of their bizarre conversation. The touch of his fingers on the arch of her foot sent maddening tendrils of sensation up the back of her thigh. Steeling herself, Lindy dropped the bomb. “I’m seducing you.” Even as she said it, Lindy realized that if she had to explain, she was probably doing something very wrong.
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“I got that part,” Richard replied. Well, at least she hadn’t done it entirely wrong. “What I can’t figure out is—why.” Was there more than one reason for seduction? “Because I want you to have sex with me.” “Excuse me?” “I…you heard me.” “What the hell, Lindy?” He leaned closer, sniffing at her. “Have you been drinking?” “No. Well, a tiny bit at the spa, but not enough to count. Listen. Richard. I know this is sudden. And none of this is really going the way I’d planned it. At all. Not even close, actually. But if you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Somebody has to do it, and you’re the perfect person.” She pulled her foot away and sat forward, leaning closer, ready to convince him. “Okay, wait. Back up. Just back up, here.” He put his hands out in a “stop” gesture. “You want me to sleep with you? Out of the blue? Why?” Lindy realized her abrupt approach was failing dismally and she struggled to shift gears. “Well, I really like you. You’re such a good friend. And I trust you. You’re not a total asshole. But you’re also not going to treat it like something it’s not, just because it’s…you know, just because I haven’t done it before. You’ll be cool about it. You will have done me this huge favor and we’ll still be friends afterward.” “You haven’t done what before?” His obvious cluelessness brought Lindy up short. “Um. Sex. I haven’t done sex before. I, uh…thought you knew that.” “Ah, no,” he replied. Hands on his knees, back oddly stiff. “No, I did not know that.” “Oh shit.” “Yeah.”
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“Wow. I really thought you knew. I mean, I thought everybody knew.” She realized she was repeating herself, but she was too startled to censor herself and it was all she could think to say. “I knew back in college. I didn’t know it was still true today.” Lindy sat back and drew her knees up to her chin with her arms wrapped around them, tucking her skirt tightly around her thighs. She’d gone from giddy to mortified in seconds, and was still trying to cope with the change. “Give me a second here,” Richard requested, taking a deep breath and turning to face her. He was still wearing an incredulous expression. “Okay, seriously? You’re how old, twenty-five?” “Twenty-six,” she mumbled into her knees. “Then how is that even possible? I’ve seen you go on dates. And I know you must have had offers. Is this like a religious thing?” “No. It wasn’t on purpose or anything. I didn’t set out to not do it. It just sort of happened.” “Didn’t happen,” he corrected her. “Exactly. And the longer it goes on, the harder and harder it gets. And I—” “That’s a bad visual for me right now, Lind.” He grimaced, shifting in his seat again. She looked down and gaped at the very obvious erection Richard was unable to conceal in his snug jeans. Sighing, he snagged a throw pillow and shoved it onto his lap. “Please, do go on. But watch the language, okay?” “Um.” She cleared her throat, hoping that her furious blush was not as red and blotchy as it felt. “So the longer I’ve waited to do it, just because the time never seemed quite right, or the guy never seemed quite right, the more important the whole thing seems to have gotten. Like, it wouldn’t have been such a big deal five years ago. But now I’m twenty-six. Do you have any idea what kind of response a girl gets if she tells her date she’s a twenty-six-year-old virgin?”
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“Ouch. Yeah, I can see where that would be a problem.” “I don’t really want to wait forever for Mr. Right. But any guy that’s willing to do me with no strings is nobody I’d want to do. At least not the first time. And what’s worse is the guys who think it’s a great thing, and assume I’m saving it on purpose. If that’s their mindset, then believe me, they’re so not attracted once I say I really just want to do it to get it over with. Or they’re all, ‘Oh are you okay, is it okay if I touch you here?’ And I’m thinking, ‘It would have been if you hadn’t asked first. We’re already making out, I already let you get me naked, of course it’s okay to touch me there, idiot. What do you think we’re here for?’ And then I’m just…not in the mood anymore.” Lindy growled in remembered frustration and banged her forehead softly against her knees. “I think this is the weirdest conversation I have ever had.” “Welcome to my dating world for the last several years.” He raised his eyebrows but said nothing. After a pause, Lindy went on. “So now, whenever I meet somebody I actually like, it’s just this huge issue I have to worry about from the very start. When am I going to say it? How am I going to say it? How’s the guy going to react? How do I even want him to react? What if he doesn’t think I look good naked? What if the sex is terrible and how will I even know that?” Richard had raised a hand to interrupt her as she was halfway through her last sentence. “That last one, you don’t need to worry about.” “How will I know if the sex is terrible?” “No,” he said, very slowly and patiently. “What if he doesn’t think you look good naked. Not an issue. Wipe it from your list of concerns. Your very long list of concerns.” He was staring down at the pillow, tugging at a loose thread in one corner. Lindy followed his gaze, remembered what the pillow was hiding and looked away quickly. “That’s nice of you to say.” She was far from convinced.
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“Not really. I came by the other day and your door was open a little, but I didn’t see you anywhere so I thought I should check it out and make sure you were okay. Like, make sure nobody had broken in or anything. So I looked for you and…you know, you just have a loft with no real doors and a transparent shower curtain. Although I noticed it sure steams right up once you start the shower running. Which you did right when I got there, or else I would have heard the water and known where you were to begin with. I locked the door for you on the way out, by the way. You should really be more careful.” “You saw me in the shower? Naked? Richard!” “You’re shocked? You just asked me to deflower you, and now you’re shocked that I accidentally walked in on you in the shower?” “Don’t say ‘deflower’. Oh god, that makes it sound so medieval. It’s a hymen, not a bunch of freaking rose petals. There’s nothing poetic about it. Ugh. You know what? Let’s just not talk about it at all, okay? Just forget I said anything. You just go home and forget this and I’m going to kill myself with an ice cream overdose. Please explain to my family after I’m gone.” She started to get up, planning to head for the nearest convenience store that carried ice cream by the half gallon. And wine. A lot of wine. “Sit back down. You’re not going anywhere.” His voice was quiet, but the steel in his tone made Lindy’s knees weak. She stopped, mid-stand, and sank back onto the deep seat. “Richard, I’m really sorry. I don’t know what came over me, it was just temporary insanity or something. Please, can we just try to get past—” “Are you saying you’re no longer interested?” He looked up at her with an expression she’d never seen on his face before. Harder, more intent. A dark thrill ran down her body and she tried in vain to suppress a shiver. “I’m saying I was nuts to ask you to do this,” she replied, feeling strangely like a kid in the principal’s office being asked to explain herself. Only with much more interesting consequences for misbehavior. 30
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“Why?” He leaned forward until he was only a foot or so away, still staring. Daring her to back away. “Don’t you think I’d do a good job?” Jesus. She tried to find her composure, but it was nowhere to be seen. The tone of his voice had done something to her, prompting a surge of moisture and tingling need between her legs. Her own voice came out as an utterly undignified squeak. “I wouldn’t know the difference. I have no basis for comparison, remember?” “How could I possibly forget?”
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Chapter Three Lindy looked like a deer in headlights. A very, very sexy deer in headlights, Richard amended to himself. Her eyes were wide and a little glassy, and as he watched, she licked her lips. The pink tip of her tongue entranced him, and he had to take drastic measures to keep from swooping down and just attacking her mouth. Thinking as hard as he could of kitten road kill, he moved to sit next to her, closing the final inches between them. Virgin virgin virgin, his hindbrain chanted, and he stuffed the chant firmly down beneath the ill-fated kittens before his overeager penis could take up the battle cry and completely short-circuit his brain. He could have resisted forever, he thought. He could have resisted anything but Lindy actually asking him to sleep with her. To be her first. Because he was such a good friend. He didn’t care if he regretted it later, he was almost dizzy with wanting her. “If I do this,” he said, trying to lighten the mood, “will you still respect me in the morning?” Her upper lip flexed. Not quite a smile, but close. “You’re assuming I respect you now?” “I’m wounded.” He clutched a hand to his heart. “You wound me.” “I will still respect you in the morning. I might even make you pancakes.” “Hmm. Sex for pancakes. I think my virtue is worth pancakes and at least some bacon or something on the side.” “Your virtue?” Lindy shot back. “I thought we were talking about my virtue here?” Now she was smiling. Nervously, but smiling. Much better, he decided. He loved her smile, especially the cute one where she looked at him like he was crazy but she
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liked him anyway. “Hey, you’re not the one who’s talking about giving it up for the price of a few pancakes.” “No, I’m just the one offering to pay for it with pancakes, apparently. But fine, I’ll spring for the bacon.” “Then we have a deal.” “Okay then.” She looked a little stumped about what to do next. She was wringing her hands, also, probably not a good sign. Richard pulled one of her hands free from the tangle, rubbing her palm with his thumb until her fingers relaxed a little. She smelled good, like shampoo and perfume. “So,” he said, trying to sound casual, “we should probably shake hands on it or something. Or, you know, kiss. To seal the deal.” “Oh. Yeah, that makes sense.” Lindy was back in the headlights again but he decided to just go for it. Her mouth—lush, full lips already slightly parted—was just too alluring to resist any longer. He bent and brushed his mouth against hers, featherlight, pulling back when she was clearly expecting more. Never too early to start teasing, he figured. And if he’d gone any further just then, he didn’t know if he could have stopped so easily. He didn’t want to scare her away. Control, that was what he needed here. Iron control. He still couldn’t believe what was happening, though, and control was probably the last thing he had over the situation. Lindy looked up at him, eyes wide and anxious. Placed a hand on each of his shoulders and gave a little jump when Richard put his own hands on her waist, tugging her closer. When he pulled her nearest leg over his lap, she had another moment of evident panic. “You know, I wasn’t planning to do this until tomorrow. I had a whole thing planned,” she blurted. “Really? You’ll have to tell me all about that some time.”
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“Maybe I should’ve gotten drunk first.” Richard felt utterly calm and confident now that they’d started. If he knew one thing, it was how to make out with a girl, and that knowledge had already started to apply itself. “No, this is better. Much better.” He lowered his head and nuzzled the soft hairs behind her ear, pulling a shiver and a sigh from her. When he spoke again his lips and breath teased the taut muscle leading from her jaw to her shoulder. Lindy shuddered at the touch, as if he’d incited a minor riot in her central nervous system. “You wouldn’t want to dull your senses; you’d miss out on too much of the fun.” “You sound pretty sure of yourself.” He chuckled. “About this, I am. Not much else, but this?” He drew back, lifting his hands to her face. “This I’m absolutely certain about. You are going to enjoy the hell out of this experience, Lindy Moore. You are going to be the most well-satisfied ex-virgin in the history of sex by the time I’m through with you.” He stifled her retort with a kiss, the first real kiss he’d ever given her. Determined and insistent, demanding and receiving her full and immediate attention.
***** Alcohol would have been redundant. Lindy felt drunk anyway. Intoxicated with her own bravery and success, and definitely high on Richard D’Arco. She had planned to maintain a certain detachment. But she hadn’t anticipated how overwhelmed she would be by the strength of her own response. Every fantasy she’d ever had about Richard came roaring back into her hormone-flooded brain, fueling her reaction like lighter fluid on hot coals. Before she quite knew how, she found herself straddling Richard’s lap, kissing him back with mindless greed. When he cupped her ass and pulled her closer, pressing her against his stiff cock in a slow cadence, Lindy groaned and rubbed against him even harder, despite the sting it brought to her freshly waxed skin. She was too turned-on to care what she looked like, too turned-on for shame to even register as a blip on her radar. Richard didn’t seem to mind.
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And when her arousal got the best of her just a few minutes later, taking her by surprise and clobbering her with an orgasm, Richard didn’t seem to mind that either. If anything, he helped, grinding into her and biting the muscle in her neck that seemed hardwired to her clitoris. And as Lindy shuddered and keened, he chuckled and marked his spot on her neck with a love bite. “God, that was hot,” he whispered when her high, soft cries had stopped and her trembling finally ebbed. Lindy whimpered and he laughed, squeezing her tight. “Now let’s see what it looks like when you do that naked.” He carried her across the hall to his own bedroom, really just a corner of his loft marked off by two walls that met to make a freestanding right angle. Lindy buried her face in his shoulder, wrapping her legs tighter around his waist, unwilling to let go even for the time it would take him to put her down. He wound up on top of her on the bed and happily resumed the same hypnotic grind he’d executed on the couch. Lindy arched into him, still not quite recovered from her unexpected dose of bliss. Little reverberations kept coursing through her, and she craved more. “Lind, you’re not allergic to latex or anything, right?” He nudged the words into her ear, accompanying them with a series of little nibbles and licks. She shook her head. Latex? Then she realized he meant condoms, and the reality of what they were about to do hit her full force. Lindy opened her eyes and stared up at Richard’s ceiling, which looked so much like her own—all exposed beams and ductwork with too many cobwebs. Light streamed in from the wall of windows. She clutched at Richard’s back, wishing herself back to the couch and the insanity that had forestalled her panic. He noticed. Richard pulled back and gave her a speculative look. Lindy dreaded what she thought was coming next, the buzz-kill words. He was already sitting up, backing away. Are you all right? Is it okay if I do this?
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Instead his question was more specific, and wholly unexpected. Hooking a finger through a tiny hole near the bottom of her well-worn black t-shirt, he stroked his fingertip against her stomach and asked, “Is this shirt special to you in any way?” “Um, no?” “Good.” And he ripped it from hem to neck in one swift move, shoving the cups of her front-clasp bra down impatiently and dipping his head to suckle at one already taut nipple. “Take it all the way off,” he muttered impatiently on his way to the other side, unsnapping her bra expertly in passing but leaving Lindy to figure out how to accomplish the rest. Finally working her arms free of the shirt and bra straps, she flung the clothes away and let herself wallow in the delicious sensations Richard was arousing. “These are so fucking gorgeous. I could spend hours,” he admitted, rearing his head and cupping her full breasts, watching them jiggle slightly as he moved his hands. “No. I wouldn’t last hours. I’d want to fuck them before that.” “Oh,” she said, her breath coming short again. “How does that work, exactly?” His laugh, muffled once more against the crest of one breast, was confident, smug and devastatingly sexy. “Maybe later. That’s the advanced class. Sorry, didn’t mean to freak you out.” “You didn’t,” Lindy whispered, shifting her legs against his hips and trying to tug him closer, get him to lie down on top of her again. “It didn’t freak me out, it made me wet.” She had guessed he might like to hear that, and if his incoherent groan was any indication, she had guessed correctly. Laughing, she resumed her efforts to fully pull him down, only to be thwarted again. “I have to see for myself,” he explained, shifting farther down and pulling her skirt and lace-trimmed cotton panties down with him. “Oh you are definitely trying to kill me, woman.” He pitched the garments over the side of the bed and stared at her for a
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few moments, long enough for Lindy to grow nervous. Had the waxing been a bad idea? She hoped not, because she really liked it. It would be a shame if Richard didn’t. “What?” she finally asked, unable to tolerate the silence. Her fingers fisted in the faded blue comforter that covered Richard’s bed. “Fucking unbelievable. I don’t know whether I want to fuck you or frame you and put you on my wall.” She blushed and dropped her head to the side but she could still feel his eyes on her, and she decided she could grow to like it. Very much. Almost as much as she liked his hands, which were on her next, tracing slow lines from her ankles up the insides of both legs. After a moment, apparently not satisfied with the composition, he gripped her by the ankles and pressed her knees up and out, spreading her wider. “Richard, what are you doing?” She tried to retreat but he was holding her in place too firmly. A dreamy smile played around the corners of his mouth, distracting her. His dark eyes were still focused, laser-sharp, on her cunt. Which, Lindy knew, was wetter than it had ever been in her life. And more creamy moisture was welling up, threatening to spill over. “You’re making me self-conscious.” He shifted his grip and resumed his agonizingly slow exploration of the sensitive skin that lay between his hands and their ultimate goal. “I know. It’s a cute look for you, I like it when you blush. So, do you masturbate or anything like that? Toys or anything? Just sizing up the job before I start the real work.” “Sizing up the job? I am not construction,” she said primly. “Yes, of course I masturbate. Everybody does. And whether I use toys or not is none of your business.” “I’m making it my business,” he insisted with a polite but firm smile. And then he cut to the chase, running one finger all the way up Lindy’s quivering inner thigh and straight to the source of her current frustration. He slid his fingertip over her slick folds, teasing at the opening. “Toys—yes or no?” She bit her lip, not sure which was more embarrassing. To lie and say she had used toys, or to tell the truth and admit she never had. And for that matter, why hadn’t she? 37
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She was a grown woman. She had needs. If she wanted to buy a vibrator, whose business was it but her own anyway? Then her thoughts trailed away again, all her focus on Richard’s fingers, trailing through her heat, finding and stroking her clitoris. “No,” she confessed, and caught an almost gleeful look on Richard’s face before he returned his attention to the matter at hand. Finally, finally pressing his finger into her channel, slow but steady, not stopping at her tiny flinch. His fingers were longer and thicker than hers, of course. She was fairly certain that youthful bike riding accidents, third-base hits and so forth had taken care of some of the work. But only some. Richard cursed softly as he moved his finger in and out, lifting his other hand to play with her throbbing clit. It felt swollen and hot, and when he grazed it with the back of his fingernail she couldn’t keep her hips still. Then he lowered his head and licked. Lindy bit her lip, trying to stifle a cry as a sharp pang of need shot through her. “Don’t hold back. I want to hear everything you’re feeling. Go for it, be a screamer. My neighbor isn’t home to hear you anyway.” He licked her again and then fluttered his tongue against the tight bud of nerve-rich flesh at the same time he thrust his finger in to the hilt, and Lindy bucked toward his hand with a moan. Then she moaned louder in protest when he abandoned her entirely. “Protection,” he reminded her from the side of the bed, where he sat digging in the drawer of the bedside table. She heard a crinkle of plastic, saw a square foil wrapper as he tore it from the pack. He started to toss the remaining row of condoms back in the drawer then, with a shrug, left them out on the bedside table. Lindy saw that Richard was still in his t-shirt and jeans, a gross inequity in their states of dress. She set about remedying it as quickly as possible, crawling up behind him on the bed and pulling the back of his shirt up and over his head. “Take it the rest of the way off,” she growled, nipping boldly at his back, reveling in his throaty laugh as he complied while she reached around to unsnap his jeans. The zipper was a trickier matter. She worried about safety and etiquette, about the danger of his penis getting caught up in the teeth if she did it wrong. Richard made it a moot 38
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point by standing up and turning around, slinging his doffed t-shirt around her shoulders and catching it on the other side. He used this makeshift sling to pull her the last few inches, until her mouth was resting against the troublesome zipper. He then solved the dilemma by unzipping it for her, but she beat him to the next step and surprised him by pushing his jeans and boxers down enough to free his stiff cock at last. It was dark red, almost purple, and bore impressions from its struggle against Richard’s jeans. “It looks kind of pissed off,” she said with a giggle, then bit her lip, knowing it was probably the wrong thing to say. “It’s had to wait very patiently, and it’s ahhh…” Lindy had interrupted Richard’s retort by capturing the tip of his beleaguered penis in a soft but lingering kiss. She thoughtfully swiped her tongue through the large bead of creamy fluid gathered there, mapping the area thoroughly before letting him slip free. Looking up, she saw Richard’s eyes were squeezed shut, as were his fists. He was whispering something frantically under his breath and she rose up on her knees to get closer, trying to hear what he was saying. Box scores. He was reciting box scores. Or at least, with her admittedly limited knowledge of baseball, that’s what it sounded like to Lindy. “Cardinals or Cubbies?” she whispered. “Blasphemy. You know I’m a Cubs fan, woman.” He opened his eyes and she fell right in, lured by their dark-chocolate depths. In most lights they looked almost black. Here, with the late afternoon light streaming in, they were the most delicious shade of brown, almost matching his hair but without the subtle hints of gold. Richard pushed his jeans off and stepped out of them to kneel on the edge of the bed, taking the opportunity to stroke Lindy’s breasts again, plucking her nipples back into tight peaks and then jangling her nerves as he pinched them hard. Lindy closed her eyes, processing the feeling, pain and pleasure dueling until pleasure won out. She sighed and arched her back for more. 39
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“She likes that too. God help me. Advanced lessons, advanced lessons.” “What?” “Nothing.” And then he pulled her into his arms, kissing her senseless, taking time to explore her mouth as he hadn’t before. They were doing things all backward, Lindy thought, with the orgasm first, then getting naked and then necking. But she couldn’t complain when it all felt so good. Wrong was the new right, it seemed. And right was Richard’s tongue sweeping over hers, curling in and out of her mouth, and his lips teasing hers until they were as swollen and sensitive as her pussy felt. Wanting more, too woozy with lust to remember the words to ask for it, Lindy was only able to feel and respond. She did so with growing fervor as Richard hooked one arm behind her knees, sweeping her legs out from under her and lowering her to her back. He stopped kissing her and shifted his weight just long enough to roll the condom on. Lindy noticed with some detached, still-rational part of her mind that his hands were shaking a little, which she thought was incredibly sweet somehow. Then he lowered his hips back between her thighs and kissed her again, and she couldn’t think anymore. From there it was the work of moments. First his finger, slipping into her again, his palm flattening against her clit as he stroked in and out, in and out. And then his finger went away only to be replaced by something larger and smoother, pressing for entrance—and she tilted her hips and it stung like hell and then she wasn’t a virgin anymore. And after the shock wore off, she started to figure out why people made such a fuss. It wasn’t just the feel of Richard’s cock, filling her so full. Or the way he shivered as he held himself still, giving her time to get used to him as the initial pain subsided. No, it was about the look on his face, just inches from hers, when she opened her eyes and saw him looking back at her. His expression of jaw-clenching tension, tinted so sweetly with the expectation of rapture. And the way he brought a trembling hand to her face 40
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and brushed her hair away from her cheek before he kissed her slowly, as if he had all the time in the world. And more than anything else, the way his kiss ended with a very gentle, measured flex of his hips, pressing his cock even deeper inside her. And then the words whispered in her ear. “Feels so good, Lind. God, it feels so good to be inside you.” She moved in response and the moment changed into something else, a different dynamic as he started thrusting deep enough for his pelvis to bump against her clit. After a few halting efforts, her body figured out what to do. Which was to meet Richard in the middle, matching his pace even as he started to lose control, to pump hard enough that it began to hurt again. She didn’t care. She didn’t think. She only moved, and felt. Unexpectedly—she always had to work so hard to come when she did it by herself—another orgasm began to build. She lost the rhythm for a moment, then lost it again for good but it didn’t matter. Pleasure had already started to flow through Lindy’s body, having its way with her, forcing her into the scream Richard had wanted to hear. And then gasping into another one, with his name somewhere in the middle of it, just as he arched into her quivering body with a shout that sounded suspiciously like triumph.
***** When Lindy tried to leave the bed, Richard held her down with one arm and one leg, laughing at her attempt to wriggle free. “You’re not going anywhere. You have to stay for the advanced lessons, remember?” She blushed, thinking about the various “lessons” he had already proposed. “You don’t have to do all that. This was wonderful, but I really think—” His stifling kiss was firm but lazy, confident, just like his voice when he finally released her mouth. “You’re here for the night. Get over it. I’m not through with you.”
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“I thought this was just supposed to be my first time? Thank you, by the way.” “You’re very welcome. My pleasure.” “Yeah, mine too.” He smirked and tossed his hair back out of his face. “I noticed.” “You don’t have to get all smug about it.” She tried to sit up again, to no avail. Richard gave her an appraising look. “I just had great sex, of course I’m smug. I guess that can be lesson number two. If the guy either falls right to sleep or turns into kind of a jackass afterward, you know you were doing something right.” “Gee, good to know. Can you not number the lessons?” “So you admit there will be more lessons. Victory!” “Jackass.” But she was failing at her effort not to smile. “See? Good job.” A snicker escaped. And then a giggle, bringing with it a sudden wave of relief. Lindy rubbed her eyes then stretched, arching her back. The move earned an appreciative hum from Richard, who was unable to resist fondling the closest breast. “You surprised me,” he confessed as he toyed with her. “In more ways than one.” She found it hard to think with his long fingers plumping the tender flesh, thumb scraping a slow back-and-forth over her nipple. A few moments earlier she would have considered herself spent, but Richard’s casual stroking was already sending fresh tendrils of need from her breast down to her thighs. “Surprised how?” she managed. “Well, asking me to do it in the first place caught me off guard, I have to admit,” he said with a wry little smile. “But also…” Lowering his head, he ran his tongue over Lindy’s nipple, then took it between his teeth and pressed just hard enough to pinch. When her eyelids fluttered and she moaned softly, he grinned up at her and released his mouthful. “Also stuff like that. I wouldn’t have expected you to go in for any of the rough stuff.” 42
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Lindy bit her lip. Rough? Had he been rough? She wished she knew. He just seemed confident to her, demanding and a little arrogant, which had always been her ideal. And the pain had seemed different, in this new context. Just another thing to feel at a time when everything felt good. She wondered if spanking would have the same effect; maybe that was the appeal. “You like rough stuff?” After a beat, he nodded. “Yeah, actually I do. Usually. This was good, too, though. More than good.” “So what would be an example of something rough?” He pursed his lips then looked away, scanning her body with obvious appreciation. Then he frowned, pointing to a tiny smear of drying blood at the top of Lindy’s thigh. She saw a similar streak on the condom he had yet to take off. “We should go get cleaned up.” Lindy couldn’t argue with that. She grimaced and sat up, then stood. Richard followed her to the bathroom, to her chagrin. She was further embarrassed when he lifted her up to sit on the counter and then accosted her with a warm, wet washcloth. “I’ve been washing all by myself for years now, Richard.” “Whatever. Spread your legs for me.” He stroked gently with the cloth, looking for any other signs of bleeding and finding none. Focused, intent on his job, very conscientious and thorough. Lindy was almost painfully turned-on again by the time he was finished. When Richard was through with her, he turned his attentions on himself. Lindy watched that process with a certain amount of fascination. She was surprised he was still hard. “So, are you going to tell me what counts as rough or are you still avoiding that for some reason?” Her question seemed to prompt his penis to twitch slightly, and Lindy wondered how to get that response again. “You saw through my ploy.” He had rinsed the cloth, and now hung it neatly over the rail in the shower stall.
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“Well?” “It’s subjective, Lind. It isn’t an either-or thing.” He leaned one hip against the counter next to where she sat, crossed his arms and stared her down. “I’m not going to hurt you, if that’s what you’re worried about. If you don’t like something I’m doing, just tell me to stop and I will. No big deal.” “I wasn’t worried. I was curious. Trying to expand my mind.” “Overachiever. Come on back to bed.” She did go back to bed, although first she banished him from the bathroom. Lindy preferred solitude when she peed. And she still wanted to check out the damage for herself, despite Richard’s careful attention and reassurance that everything looked fine. She’d worried it might sting but it didn’t much, and there was no more bleeding. Just a little soreness, but even that wasn’t really unpleasant. It reminded her of what she had just done. What they had just done. He was waiting when she peered around the corner of the bedroom. Lying on one side on the rumpled sheets, staring out the window, a quirky half-smile curving his lips. For a second, Lindy was actually shy about being naked in front of him. Then he spotted her and grinned. When she ventured closer, he reached out to pull her down on top of him, and she melted at the heavenly sensation of skin touching skin. Nuzzling her nose into Richard’s neck, draping herself over him, Lindy found it too easy to forget he was just doing her a favor. She knew she should have left after the first time, because staying would only make it harder to leave in the long-run. But she had never expected him to ask her to stay; she’d had no defense against that. Now, Lindy thought, her only hope was to play it as casually as she could. “Now,” he said after a few minutes of drowsy groping, “we should get back to work on expanding your mind.” “My mind’s not down there,” she pointed out, squeezing her legs around his questing hand. “Oh I beg to differ,” he quipped. “And if it’s not down there, I think it should be.” 44
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Rolling her over deftly, he started a slow, exploratory slide down Lindy’s body. Stroking, kissing, finding new spots to tease. When he finally fetched up between her thighs, he wrapped his arms around her legs and settled in as though he planned to stay. “I didn’t spend nearly enough time here earlier,” he explained, as though an explanation was necessary. Whatever Lindy had planned to say in response flew out of her head the second Richard’s hot breath swept over her flushed, sensitive labia. She’d been thinking about rough, anticipating that. Instead he gave her agonizing gentleness, never quite enough. At first Lindy thought he was just being careful not to hurt her. She lifted her hips in a vain effort to get closer to his teasing mouth. She was still too shy to just push down on his head, although she seriously considered it. After her third or fourth thwarted attempt to wiggle closer, she chanced a glance down and caught him grinning in a wicked way. He held her gaze while he flicked his tongue out to brush her inner lips. “You’re so sensitive right now,” he whispered. “You’ll probably never be this easy to tease again.” Then he used his thumbs to spread her cunt open, rubbing gently and breathing hot air over her slit, and Lindy groaned as a fresh wave of arousal hit her. She would have been embarrassed at the surge of cream that followed if Richard hadn’t expressed delight and started to lap at it. Then he licked deeper, going for the source, swirling his tongue just inside her pussy. Pulling back again, pressing soft kisses against her tender flesh. Alternating approaches, never letting a rhythm build, until Lindy thought she would go insane with frustrated lust. She could feel her pulse throbbing in her aching clit, which she knew Richard was ignoring on purpose. When he finally did spare a tiny lick across that needy spot, Lindy cried out before she could stop herself. She hadn’t wanted to be that easy, that vulnerable. But she was at his mercy and they both knew it. “I wish I had a headboard,” he murmured, before flicking his tongue out again and pulling a strangled groan from Lindy. “I could tie you to it and torture you like this all day long. Just eat this sweet pussy until you’re begging to come.” He teased at her 45
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opening with one fingertip, petting and pushing but never dipping inside more than a fraction of an inch. “You’re almost there now, though, aren’t you? Do you want to come, baby? Do you need it?” “Yes!” Lindy hardly recognized her own voice. But there was no mistaking Richard’s smug chuckle before he responded in the same slow, sexy voice that had been driving her crazy. “Say please.” “Oh god, please!” she managed to gasp, because he was already nudging his finger deeper, and then his lips found her clit and he did something with his tongue that made Lindy’s brain explode. She screamed as the orgasm slammed into her, a slow-motion crash of pleasure that went on forever. Her climax was coaxed to linger by Richard’s insistent, fluttering tongue and toogently thrusting finger, continuing to tease her higher and higher until Lindy thought she might actually lose consciousness. The little death, leaving her breathless and limp and anything but dead when the bliss finally seeped away. She’d never really understood why people called it that. Now she knew, and wondered if she would ever be the same.
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Chapter Four “Lind. Think your phone is ringin’,” a deep, sleepy voice muttered next to Lindy’s ear. Followed by a gentle shake of her shoulder. Her naked, naked shoulder. “Lindy. It’s kind of early, that might be something important. You want me to get it?” Richard. Lindy tried to form a coherent sentence but was unable to do more than shrug in a noncommittal way. She would have sprung up and dashed away to the relative safety of her own apartment, but sitting up reminded her that her shoulder wasn’t the only naked thing happening in that bed. This actually happened. “If you’re sure. Mmm. Morning,” Richard said with a barely stifled yawn, stroking her bared back languidly. He seemed still half-asleep himself. “Good morning,” she said politely, not turning around. She needed to pee. But that would mean either walking to the bathroom naked, or stealing the sheet and leaving Richard naked. “So can I ask you if you’re okay now?” “Huh?” She turned to see him more alert than she’d thought, watching her with a slight frown. She wasn’t sure if he was concerned or annoyed. “I’m fine. Thank you for asking.” “You’re welcome,” Richard said, one corner of his mouth quirking up. “My, isn’t this nice weather we’re having?”
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For a second she looked at him like he was going crazy, then Lindy smiled. “Awkward with a hundred percent chance of having no idea what to say.” “Oh that’s easy,” Richard said, with no apparent awkwardness whatsoever. “I just say, ‘Get up and make me my damn pancakes and bacon, woman’.” Lindy was still wavering between snickering and whacking Richard on the chest when her phone rang again, giving her the nagging sense she’d forgotten something. “I think you need to answer that, kiddo,” Richard suggested as he swung his long frame out of bed and rose into a stretch. He seemed to be completely unaware of his morning erection, although Lindy was hardly able to tear her eyes away from it. At least Richard had solved her dilemma about walking around naked. Lindy bundled the sheet around her and scuttled across the hall to her own loft quickly, just catching the end of the message being left on her answering machine. It was Stella, her best buyer, her mentor, wondering where Lindy was because she’d missed their scheduled meeting that morning. “That’s what I forgot!” Lindy cried out loud, and cursed as she dashed to her closet to throw on the first clean clothes she found. By the time she flew back into Richard’s loft, purloined sheet streaming behind her like a banner, Richard was standing in the kitchen wearing gym shorts and a t-shirt. He still looked sexily tousled, and the indulgent smile he gave her was enough to make her want to throw him back into bed. Lindy’s heart gave a little lurch as she reminded herself that Richard was just a friend, no matter what they had done the previous night. He had been helping her out, that was all. He was not her sexy bed-head standing there making coffee and bedroom eyes. He was just a sexy bed-head. And his eyes looked like that all the time. “I can’t stay, I’m sorry,” she explained, slinging the sheet over a barstool. It slithered off, and she picked it up and bundled it tighter, shoving it back on the seat firmly. “Is everything okay?”
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“I’m late for a meeting with Stella. I was supposed to be there at eight. It’s after nine now, she’ll be opening in another hour, so I really have to go.” “You could call and reschedule.” He sounded so reasonable. Or rather, he sounded like he was trying very hard to be reasonable in the face of some stronger emotion. Lindy was confused by that, but in too big a hurry to stop and figure it out. “Yeah, no, I really need to go. Because, you know, it’s really important.” Mentally smacking herself on the head, she added, “Not that this isn’t important. Wasn’t important. It was! It was really, really…” She struggled for an adequate adjective for another few seconds, finally snapping her mouth shut without squeezing out another word. She couldn’t think, couldn’t get her brain to operate on any subject other than the one she was so feverishly eager to avoid this morning. “Nice?” suggested Richard. “Look, I’m sure she’ll understand, Lindy. And what’s the point of racing across town? You won’t even get there until she’s almost ready to open. Just reschedule it and stay for breakfast.” “I had planned this all out for tonight, not last night,” Lindy said, a little forlorn. “This is just not turning out the way I thought it would.” Looking down at her shoes, Lindy missed the expression of concern that flickered over Richard’s face. “I really do have to go though.” “So go,” he said a little brusquely, turning back to the coffee, scooping grounds from a canister into the filter top. “I’ll just have to make my own pancakes.” She looked up at him, confused and a little hurt at his sharp tone. “Are you getting pissy with me about this? Seriously?” “No. Maybe it’s just not turning out the way I planned either, you know?” “Why, because you’re having to cook your own pancakes?” “And bacon.” He reached into a lower cabinet and yanked out a heavy skillet, smacking it down on the stove with more force than was wise. “Don’t forget the bacon.”
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“I’m sorry my job is interfering with your domestic plans for me. These things happen,” Lindy said coldly. “I’m not that great a cook anyway, but I’d be happy to give you ten bucks and draw you a map to the nearest pancake place.” She was aware the conversation had nothing to do with pancakes or bacon, and she wished she knew what it actually was about because then she might know why she suddenly felt such an urge to either slap Richard or burst into tears. Or both. He saved it, though, and later Lindy would look back and realize how marvelous it was that he had known how to do that. “Kiddo—” “Please don’t call me kiddo!” Richard closed his eyes and bit his lower lip, looking almost as though he’d been struck. “Lindy. You know that thing you said, where we could do this and then still be friends afterward?” At her embarrassed nod, he went on. “Last night was great. And this morning it’s a little weird. I think we’re both feeling a little more emotional than we thought. Which is probably why people say that doing stuff like this is a bad idea. But,” he emphasized, pointing a wooden spoon in her direction, “that doesn’t mean that we can’t get past it. Right?” Lindy nodded again. “Right.” “Okay. We each had an idea of what this morning would be like, and now the circumstances are just not what we thought. But like you said, these things happen. So I’ll just stay here with my self-made pancakes, and you go do your thing you need to do with Stella, and when you come back we’ll be cool again.” “Just like that?” “Yep.” He twirled the spoon between his fingers. “Just like that.” Lindy doubted it was that easy. But at least she felt a little less miserable when she left. Less miserable, but no less confused.
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***** Although she kept mum on the subject of Richard, Lindy did mention the Red House call when she met with her mentor and client, Stella Devlin. Since she’d “discovered” Lindy a few years before, Stella had become a friend, and once in a while even a confidante. Not often, though. Lindy usually kept her personal issues to herself, even with friends. And right now she was keeping her biggest news to herself, at least until she decided how she actually felt about it. Stella was of two minds about Lindy’s business dilemma. “It must be pretty flattering. But I don’t know, I worry that Red House is trying to push things too far. A store brand, different designers? They’re a great chain, but they’re not an anchor store. I don’t know, sometimes it’s better to just play to strengths. You’re doing surprisingly well working this niche market you’ve found. Doing a bigger contract would mean more money, but it could also be a lot more work than you’re prepared to take on. And you might find yourself in trouble a year later if that company goes belly-up because they’ve overextended. A lot of stores are doing that these days.” “I guess so,” Lindy said dubiously. She was trying first one scarf and then another on the mannequin in Stella’s window, staring at each one critically before removing it. “He seemed really nice.” “Who, the one you talked to? He may be nice, but some recruiting person isn’t really who you judge the whole company by. No, not that one. That teal is way too green. Try this, it picks up the blue in the bag.” Lindy wasn’t sure about the colors but she had learned to trust Stella’s instincts. The woman never looked anything less than perfectly turned out, and she knew more about clothes than anyone Lindy had ever met. Dutifully exchanging the scarf, she cocked her head to examine the new result. “It wasn’t a recruiting person. I meant Paul Maddox. That’s who called me. It seemed like he had a sense of humor. Did I tell you I thought he was my friend Abel? God, that was
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so embarrassing. But he was okay about it.” She looked around at Stella, who was unusually silent. “What?” “He called you himself?” “Yeah. Why?” “Paul Maddox. The Red House heir?” Lindy nodded. “Yes. He said his creative director had to go out of town so he was picking up the slack. What’s wrong with him calling me? They’re his stores, really, right?” “There’s nothing wrong with it, I guess. A little unusual.” Stella cocked her head. “So he seemed nice?” “He sounded nice. Why?” “Nothing. I just know him, that’s all. Or I used to.” “Seriously? You mean back in The Before Time?” It was Stella’s arch term for a period in her life she didn’t like to discuss much, when she was still unhappily married and working as a financial analyst. “And before that, even,” Stella confirmed. “We went to business school together. I met Paul not that long after I got engaged to Don. Little did I know what evil fate was soon to befall me,” she finished wryly. “So is he actually nice?” Stella pursed her lips, considering. “He’s nice. Ethical, but a little impulsive sometimes, maybe? He’s always known he would inherit the family business no matter what, and I think that made him a little careless when he was younger, but I get the impression he’s grown out of some of that. He’s always had his own ideas about what he’d do with the company. I wonder how it’s going for him now that he’s actually in the driver’s seat.” “Are you really afraid he’s going to ruin the business?”
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“Not exactly,” Stella admitted, running a hand through her tidy ginger bob as she seemed to consider the possibility. “I just hope he doesn’t fall into the trap of thinking bigger must be better. He used to say he wanted to take the company public and I think it would be a mistake. It’s always been a family business, and that’s its strength.” Lindy thought about what Paul had mentioned, that he was having to help out because his designer had a family emergency. “I think he gets that.” “I probably just sound jealous.” “No. If you wanted that life you’d still be living it. But I am sort of wondering why you haven’t called him. It sounds like you’ve thought about him a lot.” “Not at all,” Stella protested too quickly. “It’s just when you know somebody and they’re in the news, it catches your eye.” Lindy doubted that Paul Maddox’s musings about whether to take Red House public had really been in the headlines, but she kept her mouth shut and kept trying out her scarves and handbags on Stella’s mannequin. She would have preferred to keep talking. It helped keep her mind from wandering back to the night before, and replaying every moment, every word and touch she’d shared with Richard.
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Chapter Five When she reached the top of the stairs that evening, she could hear soft music coming from Richard’s slightly open door. Jeff Buckley’s cover of “Hallelujah”. Lindy smiled and tapped on the door, walking in when Richard looked up from the couch. “In college one time, I remember you and Tess got into a huge argument about who did the best version of this song. I thought it might come to blows.” Richard nodded and looked chagrined. “Yeah, I remember that night. I still disagree with her, of course. Rufus Wainwright’s too pretty to sing something this angsty.” Sitting down near him, but not right next to him, Lindy pointed out, “But back then you were all for Leonard Cohen. Because everything had to be the original.” “Yeah. Yeah, I was pretty sure about that at the time.” “At the time, I would have argued for this one. You were both wrong.” He cocked his head and considered this, studying her intently as the steady, dreamy chords thrummed between them. “Why didn’t you?” “There was enough arguing going on. Nobody was changing anybody’s mind that night. And it doesn’t matter anyway. I’ve moved on. I like k.d. lang’s version the best now.” “I haven’t heard it.” “You really have to see her sing it to get why it’s the best one. I’m really sorry about this morning,” she said before she could lose her nerve. “I was the jerk, not you.” Richard blinked, taken aback at the abrupt shift. “No. I’m sorry. And I should have been more sensitive. You were freaked out. I have trouble getting my mind around how you have literally no experience with that scenario.”
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Uncomfortable being reminded of that, Lindy sighed and drew her feet up to sit cross-legged. “And I guess you have a lot of experience with that scenario.” “No, not really.” When she seemed about to argue, he cut her off. “Seriously, Lind. It’s not like it was a one-night stand. I knew what it meant to you. And I admit I was a little thrown by that. I didn’t know what you’d be feeling. Hell, the main thing I felt after my first time was— Okay, so the thing is, I did it for the first time when I was sixteen, in the woods on a camping trip. My neighbor’s slutty cousin visiting from Philly. The morning after, she was back in her family’s tent, I was in my family’s tent, we all got up and had scrambled eggs and she and I sort of did that thing where you nod at each other and don’t really make eye contact. But any greater emotions I may have been feeling were pretty much trumped by the fact that I had poison oak starting to spread out all over my ass and legs. Jesus, that was one fucked-up ride home.” He was clearly able to laugh about it, and Lindy couldn’t help but join in. “And yet you got up the courage to try again, even after such a disaster on your first attempt. So brave.” “I have never told anybody that story, and if you tell your sister I will hunt you down no matter where you run, Melinda.” He leaned over and scowled, though not very effectively since he kept snickering. She made a twisting-key motion over her lips. “It’s in the vault.” “Oh it’s in the vault? I think I need to check the seal.” Lindy’s breath caught in her throat when Richard bent forward and kissed her firmly. If it had been a first kiss, she probably would have been able to push him away. First kisses are awkward by their very nature, the nerves and the sheer oddness of figuring out which way to tilt your head to get everybody’s mouths and tongues angled the right way. But this kiss had all the smooth assurance of the previous night’s extensive practice and Lindy felt it all the way down to her toes, from the first moment
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Richard’s lips pressed against hers to the last playful flick of his tongue as he pulled away. When Lindy finally opened her eyes, Richard was staring down at her, looking hungry and determined. “I didn’t mean to do that,” he admitted. He looked far from sorry about it. “I was planning to keep my hands off you.” Lindy couldn’t help but notice that his hands were very much on her just then. One of them on her upper thigh, and one curled loosely around her upper arm, thumb just brushing the side of her breast in a way that might seem accidental if she didn’t know full well it was intentional. “Well, I didn’t exactly scream and push you away,” she pointed out. She wasn’t entirely sure why she hadn’t; it probably would have been the wiser thing to do. But the kiss had obviously shut down the part of her brain where wisdom lived. All she could think about was wanting Richard. She’d always thought “throbbing loins” sounded like a potential medical problem, and the heroines in romance novels probably needed to get that condition looked at. Yet here she was, loins clearly throbbing in a way she couldn’t ignore. Neither could she ignore Richard’s questing lips along her throat as he leaned in to explore the sensitive skin. “Lind, I want you. Just one more night, okay? Before we go back to…just being friends.” “It’s probably a really bad idea.” But she still didn’t scream or push him away. “Advanced lessons,” he reminded her. “I still owe you the advanced lessons, remember?” He dragged his hand from her arm to her breast, grazing roughly against her already-tender nipple. “This was the night I’d planned to do it anyway,” she reasoned aloud. “Hmm. To help relax you before your big meeting?” He was working as he spoke, tugging her tank top off over her head, unfastening her bra.
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“To help me feel more confident,” Lindy confessed. No reason to tell him she’d been planning the seduction for weeks, before she ever heard from Red House. “Oh I think I can boost your confidence. No problem.” She couldn’t help but laugh at Richard’s easy self-assurance, then almost swoon at the smirk she had once hated but currently found too sexy for words. “If it’s anything like last night, I won’t be worried about confidence tomorrow, I’ll be too busy all day trying to ignore how hot and bothered I am.” “Seriously?” He grinned. “I was hot and bothered too. In fact, I almost didn’t leave my door open tonight because I wasn’t sure I could control myself if I saw you again so soon. I sort of wanted to do you on the floor the second you walked in, actually.” “I never would have guessed.” “I know. I’m a good poker player too.” She believed that. Then he licked one of her nipples and she decided she would believe anything he told her. By the time Richard had coaxed her jeans and panties off, Lindy thought he could probably have sold her the Brooklyn Bridge if he’d been so inclined. Though the negotiations would have been a far cry from traditional business practices. “Just this one more night, right?” Lindy whispered when Richard eased her back and pressed her hands over her head, holding them tight against the smooth leather couch cushion. “And then we go back to being friends and it won’t be weird?” “Just tonight,” he said, sounding like he was trying to convince himself too. “We’ll get it out of our systems.” She wasn’t sure that was how it worked, but she was hardly in a mood to argue. Nor did Richard give her the opportunity. Keeping her hands pinned, he kissed her until she felt lightheaded, until she wrapped her legs around his hips and writhed impatiently against him.
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When he finally shifted his grip, relinquishing her hands so he could work his way down, Lindy yanked at his t-shirt and tried to get him undressed as well. She sat up, trying to work around him, but Richard leaned in and pressed her back down to the couch with his superior weight. “You’re getting frisky,” he mock-scolded. “Take your clothes off!” “And pushy.” “Please take your clothes off?” She attempted to bat her eyelashes, and was happy that Richard kept from bursting into outright laughter. She knew it was probably not her best look. “Stay right here. Don’t move. I’ll be right back.” He pushed off the couch but turned swiftly after a step or two, as if to catch her in the act. She was still lying down, already feeling too wobbly to trust her legs. “Right back.” But as soon as he was out of sight around the corner, Lindy noticed that his front door was still open. Horrified, she snatched a throw pillow to her bare chest and pattered over to check that the hallway was clear. In a flash, she had her own door and then Richard’s secured, and had made it just as far as the back of his couch when Richard caught her by the waist. “I said to stay right there,” he reminded her, arms holding her securely as he pressed his now-naked hips forward to rub his cock against her ass. The motion pressed her hips into the cold metal bar that supported the back cushion on his ultramodern couch. Lindy felt the slickness of lubricant, the heat of Richard’s erection through the condom he’d donned, and felt herself grow even hotter and wetter in anticipation of his entrance. The pillow she’d been hugging fell to the floor unheeded. “I was locking the doors,” she explained, her breath catching as his hands explored lower and found the moisture gathering between her legs. “Maybe I wanted them open,” he whispered, pushing her shoulders forward until she was bent over the back of the couch, forced to brace her hands against the seat for 58
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support. A quick nudge of his foot spread her legs wider, exposing her completely. “Maybe I liked the idea of somebody walking down the hall and seeing this. Seeing you bent over while I fuck you. God, you’ve got such a perfect ass, have I mentioned that?” Lindy’s only answer was a whimper as Richard entered her in one smooth thrust, the lubrication and her own greedy slickness conspiring to make it easy for him. He groaned and pulled almost all the way out before plunging in again so deep he bottomed out against her cervix. The flash of pain was wiped out by a deeper, keener pleasure that spread like a blush across Lindy’s body as Richard established a brutal pace. Everything felt good, almost too good, as if she were about to see stars. As if she were literally in danger of passing out with each swift stroke of Richard’s cock inside her. She was almost relieved when he slowed his tempo, allowing her to catch her breath, reassemble her scattered consciousness for a moment. He wove his fingers into the hair near the nape of Lindy’s neck, grabbing firmly and tugging to tip her head to the side and expose her neck for him to molest. Lindy was shocked at how much this aroused her, the feel of Richard’s rough kisses that were very nearly bites, the insistent pull of one big hand in her hair, the bruising grip of the other hand never relinquishing her hip as he fucked her in hard, measured strokes. She had never had a rape fantasy, but she’d had many a daydream that involved being taken forcefully. She’d just never expected those daydreams to materialize, or for the reality to be so much hotter than the fantasy. Richard was actually fucking her like an animal, she thought, and she started laughing just as her orgasm began to crest into inevitability. Obviously puzzled at the unexpected response, Richard lost his rhythm and paused until Lindy’s high-pitched protest and desperate squirming encouraged him to move again. He resumed his original furious pace, and Lindy climaxed almost instantly as he ground deeper, gripped tighter.
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Then, as Richard rode hard to his own brilliant conclusion inside her sated body, she came again—still laughing a little, because now she really was seeing stars.
***** Lindy was awake when the sun came up. She watched the pink light shift its way up the building next door, and listened to Richard’s quiet breathing. He was curled behind her, sound asleep, one hand resting heavily on her hip. It had been past midnight when they finally fell asleep, after raiding Lindy’s refrigerator for a hasty snack of cheese, crackers and apples. And after Richard had taken Lindy against the sandblasted brick of her kitchen wall, holding her legs around his waist with surprising strength as he thrust into her with more restraint than he’d shown earlier. The rough surface had scraped against her skin and the muscles of Richard’s back and shoulders had been taut, jumping and straining under her grasping fingers. She could tell he was holding back again. Being gentle for her sake, because it was still new to her. She knew she should be grateful for that consideration. She was grateful. But she also longed to see him lose control and drag her with him again into the wild abandon she could tell he preferred. At just past four by the bedside clock, Lindy had awakened to the feel of Richard’s cock pressing hard and hot against the small of her back, and his fingers stroking her pussy. She was already sopping wet, already moving her hips in time with his explorations. He kissed her shoulder and then worked his way slowly up to her neck before he whispered in her ear. “I really have to ask. Is this okay?” “Why wouldn’t it be?” “Because I’m being selfish. I should let you sleep but I can’t keep my hands off you. You feel so damn good.” “You do too.” 60
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“Are you sore?” He cupped her mound with his hand, a sweetly possessive gesture. Lindy bit her lip, struck with a sudden despair as she reminded herself not to take his affection too seriously. “Not really.” It was only a little lie. She was sore, and she might regret it later, but it was only this one more night and she wanted him too badly to resist. She was already desperate to feel him moving inside her. “Don’t move.” He got up quickly, leaving Lindy’s back cold, but returned in less than a minute. The telltale crinkle of the condom wrapper in the dark explained his errand and Lindy wished she’d planned ahead better and gone on the Pill before propositioning him. Then he was there again, warm against her back, sliding one leg between hers. A dollop of cold fluid hit Lindy’s pelvis and she gasped. Richard chuckled, scooping the thick stuff up and reapplying it lower, slicking it inside her with two fingers. “Don’t panic, it’s just lube. I know you’re sore, and another round is probably a bad idea right now. If I were a nicer guy I wouldn’t do it at all, but I’m not that nice. The lube will help, though.” It helped, although Lindy still hissed when Richard entered her. The sting only lasted a few seconds but a deeper ache persisted, a pain almost like a bruise. Lindy was surprised to find herself responding despite that. The new angle brought Richard’s cock up sharply against the front wall of her vagina, and his fingers never rested from teasing at her clit. She nearly cried as he started moving more purposefully inside her and she felt an orgasm begin to build. His touch was like a drug, sweetly luring her to her doom with pleasures she could never achieve on her own. Had she become an addict just then, she wondered, or had her downfall come the first time, and she was only just seeing it for what it was? “So tight,” Richard murmured into her neck just as she started to reach the point of no return. “Feels so good. Come for me, Lind. I need to feel you come.”
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She couldn’t have done anything else. She had already started coming, shuddering into a sweet cry of relief when her orgasm finally peaked. She squeezed Richard’s cock tighter inside her and moaned when she felt him pushing through that impossible pressure to reach his own climax with a hoarse shout. He was already asleep when he slipped out of her a few minutes later, and she wondered if she should wake him so he could take the condom off. Instead, she stayed in his arms until the sun began to rise. And after she had watched the lights and colors of the morning long enough, she rolled carefully out from under Richard’s heavy embrace, gathered her clothes and walked back across the hall to her own home to get ready for her big meeting. She had never noticed before what a very long walk it was.
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Chapter Six Coming from an apartment with no air conditioning, Lindy found herself growing chillier by the minute in the sleek and crisply cooled office of Paul Maddox. Everything in the space was smooth and polished, from the glass desk to the glossy black leather and chrome on the Barcelona couch where they sat discussing her designs. “We would probably need to simplify some things for production,” Stephen Markham explained, “but you would have final approval of changes. Getting a source for the knitted stuff might be a challenge, especially now that we’ve stopped using those overseas suppliers. Sweatshops are evil, of course, I give you that. It was the right thing to do. But some of them did fabulous work.” Red House’s creative director was examining a handbag as he spoke, turning it inside out to look at the seams. Lindy was glad she’d lined the purse so the back of the embroidery didn’t show. She had a feeling Stephen’s sharp eyes would catch any mistakes. “Stephen,” Paul Maddox reminded him with a wry smile, “you promised not to reminisce about the sweatshops anymore, remember? I explained all that.” “I remember you asking me to stop,” Stephen said with a shrug and a defiant toss of his bald head. “I don’t remember making any promises.” He pouted at Paul, who just shook his head. Lindy could tell they were teasing, but she still felt compelled to try to broker a peace. “Well, I have a lot of pieces right now with no knitted sections at all. Scarves, in particular. I’ve been working with brocade quite a bit lately. Lots of monochrome, for some reason.” She pulled a gray-on-gray scarf from the bag of samples she’d brought, and spread the fine fabric across the glass coffee table in front of them. As she’d suspected, the 63
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strong lighting in the office and the neutral background of almost-white carpet under the glass made the colors in the scarf pop. Not just gray, it was a thousand subtle shades of gray, a mosaic of hues and varying luminosity like a rainbow spun from spider silk. “Oh! Exquisite!” Stephen immediately cooed and grabbed the pretty stuff for a closer look, prompting another smile from Paul. “Well, that’ll distract him for a while,” he said, as if discussing a toddler who’d found a new toy. “I think we can add that one to the list. It’s looking like four handbags and about half a dozen scarves for this round, and I think we can pretty much work from these samples as prototypes. Well done, Melinda.” “Lindy,” she corrected him. “My friends call me Lindy.” “Lindy,” he repeated. “I like it. I may forget and call you Melinda from time to time, though. I sort of think of you as Melinda already, and I like that name too.” Lindy was surprised enough to learn Paul thought of her as anything that she didn’t catch Stephen’s question about one of the handbags until he repeated it. She had thought he was still absorbed in the gray scarf. “The bottom of this? We could use a stiffer leather to give it a little more structure. I think it would hold the sides out more evenly, show off the design better.” “Oh. Yeah, I agree. I usually don’t work with very hard leathers,” Lindy explained, “because I just don’t have the equipment for it. But I agree, that would be a good idea.” “Mel—sorry, I mean Lindy,” Paul corrected himself with a grin, “I wondered about the silk in this scarf. It’s vintage, isn’t it? So we’d need to look into a more readily available alternative to that.” She couldn’t help but be impressed that Paul knew the silk was old, and from the look on Stephen Markham’s face he was likewise impressed. “Yes, it’s vintage. From the thirties. I bought a trunk full of old fabric remnants and a few full bolts of upholstery silk at an estate sale a few years ago, dirt cheap, and I still use those a lot in my work now. But honestly, that was just a lucky find and I use it to save on costs, not because of any artistic vision. Nonvintage is fine with me.” 64
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“Okay, good to know. Stephen, maybe you should be writing this down?” “Oh are we doing this right now, then? Talking about changes?” He was clearly pleased with the idea. “I think so,” Paul confirmed. “Unless you had any objections, Lindy? We don’t have a contract drawn up yet, I don’t want to pressure you about it. But since we’re all here, maybe we can go ahead and discuss some possible ways to make things work for manufacturing purposes? It’ll be good for you to keep in mind from now on, anyway.” “Absolutely,” she said, tamping down her pang of anxiety about moving so quickly. She didn’t want to lose the opportunity that was right in front of her just because she was too scared to reach out and grab it. “We’ll just keep it hypothetical.” Within minutes, she and Stephen were bent over samples, with Stephen scrawling notes on a legal pad while Lindy looked over each of her pieces with a fresh eye. She learned a great deal in a short time about what types of changes might be needed— hypothetically, of course—to make her quirky, eclectic pieces more amenable to largescale production. And she was surprised to find that, for all his deliberate flamboyance and vocally gushy love of fashion, Stephen was also almost encyclopedic in his knowledge of producers and suppliers, the intricate vagaries of sewing machines at various factories, the current market rates for leather and countless other details. It made Lindy’s head spin to see how quickly he could jump from squealing over a new shiny object—“Adorable!”—to rattling off a list of specific materials and suppliers that might be involved in its manufacture, sometimes right down to fabric catalog numbers. The time went by quickly, and when Paul asked what type of sandwich she’d like, Lindy was startled to realize she was famished. And small wonder, since it was just after noon. “Ham and Swiss? On rye bread if that’s an option. Oh, we’ve been monopolizing your office all morning! I’m so sorry, I didn’t even think—” “Nonsense. I wouldn’t have dreamed of interrupting your flow, anyway,” Paul insisted, then spoke into the phone receiver he’d been holding. “Maggie? Add a ham 65
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and Swiss on rye to that.” He nodded, listening, then covered the receiver to speak to Lindy and Stephen again. “And besides, if you’d gone back to Stephen’s office or the workroom, it would have been nothing but interruptions and he’d have been far too distracted to be any use at all.” “How well you know me,” Stephen quipped. “Better than your father ever did when he was in this office, I’m quite sure.” “He taught me everything I know about you,” Paul assured him. “By the way, he emailed me earlier and said to relay his condolences, and that he’ll send a car for you at eight sharp tomorrow morning for golf.” “Darling man, of course he did,” Stephen murmured, and looked a little bleary. Lindy suddenly felt as though she’d intruded on a private scene. “Sandwich?” Paul asked Stephen, but the older man shook his head and patted his fingers over his chest thoughtfully, toying with his artfully knotted cravat. “I don’t think so. Things to do. But enjoy your lunch with this talented, ravishing creature.” Turning to Lindy, Stephen took her hand in his and lifted her fingers to his lips briefly. “A rare pleasure, Miss Lindy Moore. I certainly hope it will not continue to be so rare.” Then he was off with a perky wave and a spring in his step, and if Lindy hadn’t already seen the tear in his eye, she would never have believed he was having anything but the best day of his life. “His father,” Paul said quietly after Stephen was out of earshot. He had apparently finished relaying the lunch order to Maggie as he was no longer on the phone. “Ninety years old, was dying of liver cancer. Stephen went to try to see him one last time and the old bastard wouldn’t even let him into the house. Died two days later. Stephen’s mother let him come to the funeral since he was already in town, but she wouldn’t talk to him.” “That’s awful!” Lindy said, horrified. “Because he’s gay? I mean…I assume he’s gay?” 66
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Paul laughed, somewhat bitterly. “Yeah, he’s gay. And yes, that’s why. You know, he may take it too far sometimes, joking about sweatshops, but he actually pushed harder for that change than anyone. Stephen’s one of the best people I know, and I’ve known him all my life. It still baffles me now, just like it did when I was a kid, that his parents didn’t see what a fine human being he is. I don’t think I’ll ever understand that.” “I wouldn’t either,” Lindy agreed. “But he’s what, in his early sixties? Times were different when he was growing up, I guess.” “Don’t ever let him hear you guess that close to his actual age, please. And yeah, times were different. But at least he never tried to hide who he was. Not that a gay man is so unusual in the fashion industry, of course. But still, a gay man who’ll give you the custom-tailored shirt off his back? Those people didn’t deserve a son like him.” “How have you known him so long?” She started folding scarves, stacking them neatly, and Paul shifted from his desk chair to the couch to help. From his quick, automatic motions, she wondered if he’d done a stint in the retail side of his family business when he was younger. For somebody who almost certainly grew up with servants in the household, he looked like he’d had a lot of practice folding clothes. “He’s one of my parents’ closest friends. He’s worked for this company since his early twenties, and my grandfather made my dad start at the bottom, so Stephen and my dad became friends and then pretty much came up through the ranks together. He introduced my dad to my mom at a New Year’s party. My middle name is Stephen after him, actually.” After a moment, Lindy asked, “Should I know any of this about him? About his family?” “No,” Paul confessed. “But I just felt like I had to tell somebody. I’m a little worried about him. He’s not holding up as well as he pretends to be, I think.” Patting the completed pile of scarves down neatly, Paul sighed and tried on a smile.
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Concern for a friend was an oddly attractive quality in a man, and Paul was an attractive man to begin with. His handsome, blond, boy-next-door looks had a wholesome charm, a nice balance to his slightly stern corporate demeanor. Lindy was not immune to his appeal. “Your secret’s safe with me,” she told him, and felt rewarded when his smile broadened. “Thanks. And thanks for letting me unload on you.” “That was unloading? Please,” she scoffed. “I have a sister and a cousin who’s basically like a sister, plus a brother who’s still a teenager. And I hang out with artists. They all unload more than that before they say hello on an average day.” Paul chuckled. “Doesn’t that get exhausting?” “Sometimes,” Lindy said, and as she said it she realized how true it was. And how refreshing it was to be around somebody who didn’t seem inclined toward that sort of drama. “I’m used to it, I guess. But I do sometimes feel like I’m becoming the official repository of secrets for the greater Indianapolis area.” “Wow. I would not want that job.” “It isn’t exactly something I applied for. I wouldn’t want your job.” “Fair enough. I didn’t exactly apply for that, either, of course.” The arrival of a tray of sandwiches interrupted them, but by the time the condiments were spread and the refreshments poured, the conversation was once again well underway.
***** The forecast called for cooler weekend weather, but by that evening it was still far too hot. Lindy could feel sweat forming a sticky film under the heavy weight of her hair. It dripped down and puddled in the space between her breasts, held there by her bra, with an occasional droplet sliding down her stomach to punctuate her discomfort. The fabric she worked with, silk and wool and cotton, was all warm and slightly damp 68
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to the touch. Humidity had crept in from outside to permeate the art gallery along with the heat. The floor fan did little to stir the thick air. Peering over the pink-on-pink scarf she was draping carefully around a black spherical support, Lindy gazed enviously at the blonde girl who stood at the far wall of the main gallery space with a measuring tape and a clipboard. Lindy had no idea how Eva, the gallery manager, always appeared so cool and unwrinkled. She looked like she existed in a personal bubble of climate at least fifteen degrees cooler than the surrounding air. While Lindy fretted and frizzed through her preparations for the show, Eva sailed through the heat wave with no signs of stress and with every pale hair neatly in place. Dropping the scarf and just letting it fall over the pedestal into a slouchy spiral that looked surprisingly good, Lindy stretched her arms over her head and thought about the changes the past few days had brought. Even without Red House, things were definitely looking up lately, she reminded herself. Lindy already had more demand from local boutiques than she could possibly supply by herself. The show would bring more press, and she had every reason to hope it would be positive exposure. The local critics seemed to love her work, though she was still always startled to hear herself referred to as a designer rather than an artist. She had only started messing around with fabrics because she needed an extra non-art elective credit in college and the textiles course was cross-listed under home economics. But she’d loved it, and now she was well on the way to making a successful career out of her favorite hobby. And then, of course, there was Richard. Or, she corrected herself, there was the confidence she’d gained by knowing she had finally taken the matter of her overripe virginity into her own hands. So to speak. And perhaps that confidence had even been part of the reason her meeting at Red House had gone so well. But she’d thought having sex with Richard would cure the daydreaming about him, not worsen it. She’d expected greater clarity once she had dealt with the mystique of her 69
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attraction for him by sleeping with him. Instead, she had spent the whole afternoon in a fog after leaving Paul Maddox’s office. She hadn’t seen Richard all day, she had left without talking to him that morning, and now she missed him terribly. And though she tried to deny it, she’d felt guilty more than once during her lunch with Paul. She’d felt guilty for having lunch with a man other than Richard, which was ridiculous since it wasn’t a date and she wasn’t involved with Richard in any case. And she’d felt guilty for thinking about Richard when she was having lunch with Paul, which was equally ridiculous because it still wasn’t a date and she wasn’t involved with Paul, either. Lindy sighed, stretching again and trying to ease the tension in her shoulders and neck caused by long hours of sitting as she worked. She wondered if she’d have time to make it to a Pilates class that night, to work some of the knots out. If she didn’t go to class, she knew, she wouldn’t exercise at all. Her sedentary job took its toll on her back and it certainly didn’t help her waistline, but there was no good way to knit and work out at the same time. And forget using a sewing machine while trying to multitask. When Lindy giggled a little hysterically at the sudden mental image of a treadmill all fitted out with a commercial grade Singer, Eva turned around, raising an eyebrow. “Nothing,” Lindy assured her. “Just thought of something funny. I think the heat is getting to me.” “Yes, it’s very unpleasant,” Eva acknowledged. “The humidity is more of a concern for the artwork than the heat itself, of course.” “Tell me about it.” “Can you give me your input? I’ve been looking at the Weems installation, and I’m concerned about the transition from his section to yours, given the high level of visual interest in both. I’m wondering if we need to move McClure over here and Weems over there instead.” The way Eva said “visual interest” made Lindy suspect she meant “it looks too busy”, and she had to admit that between her vivid fabrics and the hand-painted light panels of Mr. Weems, there was certainly quite a lot to look at. 70
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“I think you might be right, but of course I’d be staying here either way, so I guess it’s up to you. And it’s pretty late in the game. Having to move when they’ve already set up may not make them too happy.” Eva pursed her lips a little. “Well, it’s always better when the artists are happy.” “I am incredibly happy,” Lindy assured her, and turned back to her work. She felt anything but happy, but at least she had a moment of joy a few minutes later when she discovered a ponytail holder in the depths of her jeans pocket. With the heavy mass of her dark auburn hair finally off her neck, Lindy felt vastly better prepared to face the unexpected late September heat. What she wasn’t prepared for was a ghost-touch of fingers against her shoulder, and Richard’s voice in her ear. “Hi.” “Richard, what are you doing here?” She tried to calm her fluttering heartbeat and stifle the buzz of sexual energy his fleeting touch had triggered. “It’s great that you’re here, I just wasn’t expecting to see you.” And she wasn’t expecting him to touch her, or to smell faintly of spicy aftershave, or to have a tiny bead of sweat right at the base of his throat just begging to be licked off. “I figured you’d be pretty caught up in getting ready, so I brought you some dinner.” He held up a white plastic bag that was apparently full of take-out. “That was very nice of you,” she said, “but you didn’t have to do that.” “And yet I did do it. It’s the kind of stuff friends do. Come on, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Just eat.” It was Chinese, and she hadn’t realized how hungry she was until she caught the waft of steam from the beef with broccoli. Eva declined Lindy’s invitation to join them and took herself off to parts unknown while Richard spread out the contents of his bag on a canvas drop cloth, dished up the food and regaled Lindy with amusing commentary about the artwork surrounding them while they ate.
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The problem, Lindy discovered, was that she kept forgetting to distance herself. When Richard grazed his fingers along the inside of her wrist after he passed her the steamed rice, it felt so good that she forgot they weren’t supposed to be doing that now. She had to stop herself from gazing dreamily into his eyes as he spoke. They ate and laughed and any awkwardness of the past few days was forgotten. And that was all. A Chinese picnic dinner in the middle of the gallery and a lot of light conversation. Lindy kept expecting him to make a move, but he never so much as hinted. He kissed her on the cheek when he left, and Lindy was annoyed at herself when she realized she’d been hoping for more. Richard was a great artist and a very good friend, but he was moody and had an abysmal history when it came to relationships. He had earned every bit of his reputation as a player back in college, and although he had cut down on volume since then, he had only done so to get involved with a woman who was disastrously wrong for him. It would be beyond foolish to become his friend with benefits, Lindy told herself firmly. She had started the whole thing harboring a crush that was dangerously close to love already, and she’d been wrong to think she could just walk away from him unaffected. Sleeping with him yet again when she knew he only saw her as a friend, a cute kid…it would be stupid, and Lindy wasn’t that stupid. She watched him walk out then opened her fortune cookie and munched it reflectively as she made a final pass through her exhibit and discovered there really wasn’t anything left to do. When she read her fortune, she had to wonder if there was some truth to the notion that these random slips of paper really did have predictive powers. Or if perhaps Richard had planted it for her, for some reason. It was a quote attributed to H.L. Mencken. “Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.”
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Richard had also placed a single rose with a fat, pink bud on her windshield. He had tucked the tied-on note under a wiper blade to secure it, and there was a faint gray arc smudged over the words he’d written. “Beautiful and unexpected. Reminds me of you. Richard.” Lindy pressed her nose into the flower’s silky, slightly cool petals as she scanned the message and tried to figure out what the hell Richard was playing at.
***** Maintaining the fiction of “just friends” was turning out to be harder than Richard had ever imagined. He had known things were going to be weird. Things were going to be weird any time he was expected to be in a room with Lindy and not think about what it felt like to be inside her. Or any time he was expected to be away from her and not daydream about the way she sometimes smiled in her sleep. He had discovered that, of course, while watching her sleep; he still wasn’t sure why he’d felt compelled to do so. He had been “just friends” with many girls in his time, and some of those friends had come with benefits. But he hadn’t felt like this about any of them, benefits or not, and Richard was beginning to suspect that was because Lindy hadn’t really been “just” a friend for a long time now. It had taken sleeping with her to make him realize that. His problem now was that he couldn’t seem to un-realize it. And he wasn’t sure he wanted to. The one thing he was sure of was that he wanted her again. Leaving Lindy with only that chaste peck on the cheek had taxed Richard’s restraint sorely. He was so distracted he missed a turn on the short drive home from the gallery and he dropped his key twice before finally managing to unlock his door. Once safely inside, he closed his eyes and just let the imagery hit him, the graphic daydream of taking Lindy on the floor of the gallery, takeout boxes and chopsticks flung recklessly aside to make room for their frantic coupling on the paint-spattered
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tarp. Lindy crying out his name as he buried his face in her newly waxed pussy. It was so pink and perfect, as pouty and full as the lips on her face. Those lips he’d imagined before, of course, even before they’d slept together. He was male, she was cute and close at hand, and he had to think about something in the shower. She had always looked great in his imagination, kneeling in front of him with that shy little smile disappearing as she slid those luscious lips around his cock. Of course he’d thought about it. But that early, unfounded fantasy could not remotely compare to the memory of Lindy actually taking him into her mouth. Or the way it had felt to finally, finally push his way into her agonizingly sweet, tight pussy, knowing that he was the first and only one to do so. He tried again to convince himself that Lindy was his buddy, his old college friend, his ideal neighbor. Too nice a girl for him to mess around with. She was all Mona Lisa smiles and homemade soup, and he knew he shouldn’t be thinking about her smooth, velvety pussy lips and how soft her inner thighs had felt against his cheeks. And he should definitely not be dwelling on what she had sounded like when he licked her into a frenzy, sucking and tonguing her hard until she came. By the time he got to the part where he shouldn’t be thinking about Lindy on all fours, her naked pink cunt slick with readiness and his handprints all over her sweetly rounded ass, Richard was in the shower. He fisted his cock hard and cursed at himself as he spent his frustration down the drain. He was stiff again by the time he finished washing his hair.
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Chapter Seven Richard left his door open in the morning, knowing the smell of brewing coffee was usually enough to lure Lindy from her loft. He invited her in at her knock on the doorjamb. “You want breakfast with the coffee you’re here to steal? I only have bagels,” he added apologetically. “No bacon, sorry.” “A bagel sounds great, actually. Onion?” She perched on a bar stool and started braiding her hair. He suspected she was doing it to give herself something to do with her hands, because she seemed a little edgy. He also thought she looked like something Renoir would have stopped whatever else he was doing to paint. “Of course. And I even have lox.” “Perfect.” “So what are your plans for the day? Doing anything to keep your mind off this evening?” “I hadn’t really given it much thought. I got everything done last night, so there’s nothing left to do at the gallery. I guess I should be doing more marketing stuff, putting fliers out and all that.” “Nah. You hate that part.” “So do you.” “Everybody hates that part,” Richard said. “You should do something fun. Go to a movie, go shopping, something like that. But don’t go with your sister, she’ll just stress you out more.” He applauded his own will power for not making the first several suggestions he’d thought of for how to take her mind off things. “True. She’s back home anyway, for Mikey’s game.”
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“Oh that’s right. Your football-hero brother. Matching set with the cheerleader sister, right?” “I know. How could that same family have spawned someone like me?” He pushed a mug of steaming coffee across the bar. “Family finally decided it was time they got a little beauty, culture and intelligence, I guess.” Lindy snorted, trying unsuccessfully to hide a grin. “Smooth, Richard. Very smooth.” “Just practicin’ for the ladies,” he mugged, relieved that his compliment had fallen acceptably within the “friends” guidelines. “Was the rose on my car just practice too?” “Yeah, something like that.” Richard cursed himself silently as he smeared cream cheese on his bagel with more force than necessary. He wanted to suggest they spend the day together but he couldn’t think of any sufficiently tempting activity that didn’t involve copious amounts of sex. And since he was trying to woo on the down-low while he maintained the illusion of mere friendship, he knew he had probably exhausted the “let’s do it just this one last time” reserves. “Richard? You okay?” She was looking at him over the rim of her cup, a bemused expression on her face. He thought about his shower fantasy of the night before and swallowed hard. And he noticed that her hair glowed a perfect carnelian red wherever the morning light struck it. “I’m fine,” he said. “Just thinking about paint colors.”
***** That evening, standing in the middle of the gallery, Lindy was astonished at the transformation. She had been to many openings, of course, but she was always astonished. The lights in their final arrangement, brilliantly highlighting the works on 76
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display. The people milling around with that murmuring chatter unique to gallery openings and upscale cocktail parties. The dissipated critics looking to be proven wrong about their own cynicism. The eager young hopefuls wearing black and looking anything but eager or hopeful because everybody knows that art is suffering. She herself had chosen a teal silk blouse in order to stand out in the crowd. But she was wearing it over a black pencil skirt and a black lace camisole. Lindy smiled and responded to yet another well-wisher, shaking off a compliment with a shy shrug. She sipped from her champagne flute, trying to drown the panicky fluttering of the butterflies in her stomach. “You should just say ‘thank you’ when they compliment you,” Tess recommended as the woman moved on to the next knot of people. “You need to stop running yourself down. Your stuff is great. You can afford to be a little smug now.” “Was I?” Lindy asked. “Running myself down?” “You were probably just being charmingly modest,” her cousin Allison chimed in, approaching with a freshly secured plate of assorted hors d’oeuvres. “Tess, cut her some slack, she’s nervous.” “I’m right, though,” Tess said with assurance. “Is that prosciutto?” “Mm-hmm. And you can get your own. I fought hard for this.” With a long-suffering sigh, Tess took off in search of food, leaving Lindy with Allison for moral support. “That guy looks familiar,” Allison was saying, and Lindy looked in the direction she indicated. And then looked harder and longer at the striking figure of Paul Maddox. She’d paid only modest attention to his looks during their meeting the previous day, but spotting him unexpectedly from across the room, it was hard not to pay serious attention. He was fairly tall, imposing, and he wore his suit like he didn’t care that it was expensive. Lindy looked at it with trained eyes, backed up by years of
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experience in sewing and working with different fabrics. The suit was very expensive indeed, she decided, and beautifully tailored. He had the right build to show it off too. Obviously fit, but not so muscular as to throw off the lines of the suit. Thick blond hair cut with razor precision, intense eyes in a smoothly sculpted face. “Does he?” Lindy wasn’t quite sure why she wasn’t just telling Ally who Paul was. Maybe not trusting the evidence of her own eyes that he really had come to her show, maybe not wanting to jinx her business deal by telling people about it before it was final. “I’m sure I’ve seen his picture in the news or something, but I can’t think of the context.” Allison flagged down Eva, who was roaming the gallery in a seemingly effortless but ruthlessly efficient circuit, making sure the event went as planned. She frowned and clutched her clipboard tighter as she saw Allison’s gesture and veered their way, clearly put off by having to deviate from her intended course. “Is everything all right? People seem very enthusiastic about your work.” She surprised Lindy by adding, “You did a truly outstanding job with your installation.” “Oh, well. I mean…thank you.” “We were actually just wondering who one of the guests was, if you happened to know?” Allison ventured. She pointed discreetly in the direction of the familiar-looking man, and was rewarded with an instant reaction from Eva, who actually looked surprised for a moment. “Oh! Wow. We weren’t expecting him, it was supposed to be somebody else coming from Red House. That’s Paul Maddox.” “Remind me…?” Allison prompted, while Lindy remained studiously silent. “Paul Maddox,” Eva said briskly, recovered from the surprise and ready to return to her duties. “He’s the CEO of the Red House store chain. Well, since his father has officially retired now, I suppose he is the Red House chain. If you’ll excuse me, I really have to—” She was off in mid-sentence, back to her compulsive rounds. 78
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Allison didn’t notice Lindy’s blush because she was too busy looking with new awe at the famous heir to a century-old chain of upscale clothing stores. He was tilting his head as he circled the brilliant scarf Lindy had tossed so carelessly on its display stand. It was a mélange of techniques and textures, quilting and embroidery and crochet, forming a visual fantasy in a hundred subtly different shades of warm pink. For the first time, Lindy noticed that from certain angles the folds of rosy fabric draping over the black stand created a distinctly labial impression. The scarf itself owed nothing to Georgia O’Keeffe, but the presentation might almost be an homage. Paul Maddox seemed to be studying the display intently, and Lindy was startled when he glanced her way and met her gaze with the same keen interest. She shivered, and a dollop of heat slid down her stomach to nestle between her thighs. Then the moment had passed, leaving Lindy to wonder if she had only imagined it. “Holy crap,” Allison said, clearly still intrigued by the appearance of the eligible bachelor himself. “He’s not all that much older than we are. I had no idea he was that young. Or that good-looking.” “I know,” Lindy said, still feeling a little shaky. “You really think he’s goodlooking?” “You mean you don’t?” Allison seemed unable to believe it. “Is there something wrong with your eyes?” “I’m just picky.” Lindy shrugged as though she had lost interest in the topic. But her eyes were still trained on the spot where Paul Maddox had been standing, scrutinizing her as though she were part of the display. “Hey,” Tess asked, looking more closely at the pink scarf as she returned to them, holding a canapé-laden plate. “Is that thing supposed to look like a vagina, or is that just me?” Lindy looked around the room, trying to look nonchalant. Where had Maddox gone? One minute he was staring at her over the vagina scarf—oh no, the description
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was obviously going to stick—and the next he had disappeared. She wasn’t sure whether to feel hurt or relieved.
***** Richard had started flirting casually with Allison at the wine bar, only to receive a five-minute glowing description of her new boyfriend. He knew better than to try Tess, who had eyed him up and down upon their first meeting in college and treated him like another goofy little brother ever since. She was just tomboy enough to pull it off, and he’d seen her do it with any number of guys over the years. It was pretty effective, he had to admit. The guys still found her hot, she stayed friends with all of them, and she could change her mind and reel one in pretty much any time she wanted. Richard knew he would’ve gone for that in a heartbeat. Although maybe not so much anymore, he thought. Lately he had started to think of Tess more like a sister, in direct contrast to the way he had stopped thinking of Lindy as one. Tess was beautiful, undeniably. And formidable. She was the homecoming queen who could also spike a volleyball into your face. But tonight it was Lindy who outshone every other woman in the room, whose eyes sparkled and enchanted fans and critics alike. And her hair—why had he never noticed her hair before her spa visit? The new cut wasn’t that big a change, and she said she hadn’t had it colored. But it was like a banked fire now, hidden embers glowing against the backdrop of artistic black clothing and stark white gallery walls. Even without the knowledge of the deliciously naughty secret nestled between her thighs, Richard thought he would have been looking at Lindy differently tonight. He knew it was stupid to get worked up this way. They’d agreed that they were just friends. That the sex was just sex, and was also over now. But it didn’t seem to matter. He couldn’t stop thinking about it. And he couldn’t take his eyes off her. And neither, he’d noticed, could the suit with the blond hair. Richard watched with mounting irritation as the corporate poster boy circled the room, prowling around
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Lindy like a predator sizing up prey. Just waiting for his moment to strike. And then, when Ally was trying to catch the bartender’s eye and Tess had gone to chide her little brother Mikey for nearly knocking down a sculpture, that was when the suit made his move. Tapping on Lindy’s shoulder from behind, smirking out some fake apology for startling her, it looked like. Richard was circling the room himself without realizing it, stopping to watch the unfolding scene from behind the dubious cover of one of Lindy’s exhibits. One of her scarves, he noticed in passing. Then he stopped and took another look at the rich draped fabric. Huh…looks like a pussy, he noted, before resuming his stalker glare at the gray-suited Lothario chatting up his favorite neighbor. Fuck. Lindy was smiling back at the guy, and it looked like she might be blushing. The guy had taken her hand to shake it but hadn’t let go. Lindy was nodding and laughing, and the guy still hadn’t let go. “Mr. D’Arco?” The voice at his shoulder distracted Richard, and he looked reluctantly down at the cool, slender blonde who ran the gallery. “Yeah, hi. It’s Eva, right?” “Yes, that’s right.” She was obviously flattered he’d remembered her name and Richard’s automatic reaction was to push this advantage. She was truly lovely under those glasses, on closer inspection. But she also reminded him far too much of Natasha. He was through with skinny blondes. “When you stopped by last night, I didn’t know who you were. I knew you were Lindy’s neighbor, she’d mentioned that, but I didn’t recognize you. And I didn’t know you were actually close friends. You even seem to know her family?” Richard nodded, acknowledging the connection. “I went to college with Lindy. And her sister Tess was there part of that time too. She was two years ahead of us, I think. This is a great place you’ve got here, by the way.”
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Eva smiled, a tight, hesitant smile. “I’m flattered you think so. Actually, I saw one of your shows in Indianapolis a few years ago and I’d love to talk to you about exhibiting some work here, if you’re interested? I don’t know what you’re doing these days, of course, and if it’s something thirty feet tall then obviously that’s out of the question, but—” “Twelve by twenty-something, actually,” he hedged. True, he wasn’t actually working on it at the moment, he was just staring at it for long stretches of time, but he certainly had good intentions. “Canvas, not sculpture, so I think you’re safe there. But I also have a number of smaller oils that I could show you.” Earlier stuff, stuff from just after college, but a show was a show. “I’d love that.” As she handed him her card, writing some additional phone numbers on the back, Richard noticed a guy glaring at him in much the same way Richard had been glaring at Gray Suit a few minutes earlier. So shy little Eva had a secret admirer, it looked like. Deciding to help her out, he made the guy glare even harder by touching Eva’s hand deliberately when she handed him the card, leaning in closer and smiling. All unsuspecting, Eva thanked him and resumed her circuit of the room. Just as he’d thought, the guy with the gimlet stare followed her like a puppy as soon as she was out of Richard’s zone of influence. Richard turned back toward Lindy, only to see her disappearing out the fire exit on the arm of Gray Suit.
***** Lindy was almost dizzy with relief when she looked at her watch and realized it was 10:45. In another fifteen minutes the gallery would close, the show would be over and she’d be able to sit down and massage her cheeks back to life after three hours of forced smiling. Her hand actually ached from being shaken. She wondered how politicians ever managed to make it through campaigns.
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As tense as she was, she told herself later, it was little wonder that she trembled all over when she heard the unexpectedly soft voice near her ear. “Is everything all right, Melinda? You look a little fraught.” Lindy whirled around, trying to ignore the shiver that had just coursed through her. “Mr. Maddox! You startled me.” “Paul, remember?” “Paul.” “Sorry, I didn’t mean to sneak up on you.” He was holding out a hand, and Lindy stared at it blankly a moment before realizing he intended her to shake it. She waited just long enough for the pause to become noticeably awkward then thrust her own hand forward. He took it and held it without shaking. Held it a little too firmly for her to pull away gracefully. His hand felt twice the size of hers, and Lindy closed her eyes briefly and swallowed hard, trying to gather the thoughts that seemed to have danced merrily away at the moment her hand landed in Paul Maddox’s. “And…exhale, two, three, four,” he quipped, giving her fingers a little squeeze. “You’ve got to relax before you explode.” “I know,” she said, laughing and feeling just a fraction of tension dissipate from her shoulders. “So this is why I’ve been busy, obviously.” “It looks like it’s been a very successful evening. Congratulations.” She wondered if he’d just forgotten to let go. Not that she minded, really. “Thank you,” Lindy responded. “It’s been quite a night.” She blinked a few times, suddenly aware that the dizziness she’d felt earlier was returning. Maddox said something and she didn’t catch it, but when she asked him to repeat it her lips felt slightly numb. “I asked if you were feeling all right. You just went even paler.”
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“I think I need some fresh air,” she admitted, glancing toward the door. Without missing a beat, Paul took her arm and escorted her across the room to the side exit, where the door had been wedged open with a brick to allow a breeze. The gallery was on a corner, and the less-trafficked street that ran past the side door was quiet, not even the usual gaggle of smokers disturbing the cool night air. He led her to the edge of the raised brick flowerbed that lined the sidewalk. Lindy sat down gratefully, letting her head drop close to her knees. “I’m so sorry,” she said, wondering if she’d apologized already. “I think it was the champagne. I don’t usually drink very much and I haven’t really eaten except for a few hors d’oeuvres.” Things were already starting to clarify again, the horrible swimming feeling in her head and stomach soothed away as the cool air and quiet imposed themselves on her fevered nerves. “How much champagne did you have?” “Two glasses,” she said, and felt a little grumpy when he laughed. Only a little, though; she knew quite well what a lightweight she was. It was pretty laughable. “I prescribe a late dinner.” “I should’ve eaten earlier, I know. I was just too nervous before the show. I thought I might throw up, and that wouldn’t have calmed me down any.” “True. So what are you doing after the show is over?” “Going home and collapsing from nervous exhaustion.” “Okay. You’re making it hard to ask you to dinner.” “Oh.” She sat up, a little faster than was wise, and had to close her eyes for a second while her brain caught up with her head. “Thank you, that’s very nice of you, but you don’t have to—” “But I want to. Assuming you’re not already seeing somebody?”
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She nearly said she was, but stopped herself at the last second and shook her head. No, she was not seeing anybody. Richard was a friend. There was nothing else there. She was a free agent. Lindy was suddenly keenly aware of the length of Paul’s thigh against hers, the contrast between that heat and the sharp, cold edge of the brick on which they sat. Aware of his hand, still on her shoulder, a gesture that had turned into something like an embrace once she’d sat up. Seconds ticked by and the high-pitched whine of the nearby streetlight was slowly drowned out by the rush of Lindy’s own heartbeat as she met Paul’s gaze. “Well,” he said, and then the mood shifted back to normal as they both cleared their throats and scooted slightly apart from one another. “So, dinner?” Lindy stood up, smoothing her snug black pencil skirt back into place. She answered him with genuine regret. “I would love to, but I’m really worn out. I think the closest I’m getting to dinner tonight is ordering a pizza on my way home and hoping the delivery guy doesn’t beat me to the door. And I think some friends of mine are also planning to storm my apartment after this.” “Then tomorrow night.” “Well. I’m not really sure if…” “I know, I’m taking shameless advantage of you in your weakened state. But I really would like to take you to dinner. Of course, we can still also meet and talk about business. Whether or not you agree to dinner. The two are not related in any way.” She couldn’t help but be flattered, and the flattery managed to break down her already limited resistance. She believed him, partly because she trusted Stella’s assessment of him as nice. Rotten ex-husband notwithstanding, Stella was usually a keen judge of character. Besides, Paul was smiling in an endearing way that didn’t entirely match the corporate image that was obviously his usual demeanor. It was a quirky, cockeyed grin that made him look at least five years younger. “We still don’t have a contract.” 85
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“I’ll take my chances. I have to admit, I was very pleasantly surprised at our meeting,” Paul said with a slight deepening of his grin that revealed actual dimples. “Okay, surprised and intrigued. When Stephen first told me about you, I thought ‘knitting’ and I was picturing a little old lady. Or at best a middle-aged spinster. But then I talked to you and saw your picture with that article, and it was clear you were no middle-aged spinster.” “No, knitting is very cool right now,” Lindy countered. “It’s all the rage with the indie-rock, microbrewed-beer hipster crowd.” “So I’ve been schooled,” he said. “Shows how far from hip I’ve become.” She tried to picture him in low-slung jeans, an old concert t-shirt, maybe an unbuttoned western-cut Urban Outfitter shirt over that…no, it was impossible. He had never been, would never be, a hipster. The very thought made her giggle. She found it hilarious anyway that a whole crowd of people suddenly seemed to think it was very cool to act and dress like the art school kids had pretty much always acted and dressed. Only in somewhat brighter colors, with costlier furniture and much less angst. Paul Maddox had a very different kind of cool. A moneyed cool. The noisy rattle of the crash bar on the door made Lindy and Paul jump as it swung open. Richard, hand still on the bar, leaned out and gave Paul a very obvious evil eye. “Everything okay out here, Lind?” Lindy would swear his voice was an octave deeper than usual, and she wondered for what had to be the millionth time why she was even interested in men in the first place, as ridiculously as they so often behaved. Richard took his protective big brother act far too seriously sometimes. And seeing him now, when she was in the middle of what seemed to be a promising talk with another guy, was confusing her already overworked libido. “Everything is fine, Richard. I just needed some fresh air. Too much champers on an empty stomach. Mr. Maddox was keeping the bad guys at bay.” Richard threw Maddox a head nod. “Hey.” 86
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“Hey.” “Paul Maddox, Richard D’Arco. Mr. Maddox runs the Red House store chain. Mr. D’Arco is an artist. He lives in my building.” She was just annoyed enough at the interruption, and just interested enough in Paul Maddox’s dinner invitation, to want to downplay her relationship with Richard. But then she felt a sting of regret at the obvious and immediate hurt in his eyes. “Eva’s about to close up shop,” Richard said. “And you need to eat something. I think your dad and Mikey are heading back to Cranston tonight, but everybody else is headed for your place now. Do you want to ride with me or with Tess?” In just a few sentences, Richard had managed to clarify just how well he knew Lindy after all. At least as far as their public friendship went. She had to give him credit for thinking on his feet, even as she wanted to smack him for interrupting what had been a potentially warm moment with Paul. “Tess isn’t going home tonight?” “I think she planned to stay up and wait for reviews with us.” “Oh. Well, I guess I’ll ride with her then.” “Fine, see you back home. Nice meeting you, dude.” He disappeared back into the gallery, letting the door swing closed behind him. It bounced gently against its brick doorstop a few times, making an unpleasant scraping noise. Lindy sighed. She wondered how many times Paul Maddox had ever been called “dude” in his adult life. “So, I’d better get back in there,” she said. “Thanks for standing guard, I really appreciate it.” Paul stood and held a hand out, lifting Lindy to her feet and sweeping the door open for her with a gallant gesture. “Look, I’ve really enjoyed talking to you and I have to admit I’ve laughed more in our few conversations than I probably have in the last
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month or so. I’d really like to take you out. So if not dinner, then how about the symphony matinee on Sunday? I have great seats.” She felt her heart leap up in her throat, but swallowed her trepidation and answered with a bravery she didn’t feel. “Sure, Sunday. I’d love to.”
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Chapter Eight Lindy admitted afterward that the reviews were very gratifying, well worth waiting up for. Both of them. She shut her laptop after a final unsuccessful browse for more news then looked up and chuckled at the bleary-eyed crew slumped all over her living room. “You guys are the best, but you all look like zombies and I’m afraid you’re going to eat my brains. Plus I’m dying for a shower. So who’s going home and who’s crashing here?” Allison had opted to leave since she lived ten minutes away, Tess was already pulling one of Lindy’s two futon sofas out flat, and Richard had only to walk across the hall. He would have been happy for further excuses to stay, but he couldn’t think of any. The rest of her friends had left hours earlier, and Richard had already spent as much time as possible clearing away the inevitable litter of empty cups, beer bottles and pizza-smeared napkins the small crowd had left behind. “Good thing your neighbor puts up with your crazy all-night parties,” Richard pointed out, stopping to help Tess wrangle the futon. “Did my neighbor’s generosity also extend to cleaning up after said all night party?” Richard just smiled. Futon flattening accomplished, he headed for the door and Lindy followed. “Well, thank you.” “Don’t mention it. It’s the least a fellow artist and guy who lives in your building can do.” He meant to sound amused, but realized he hadn’t fully hidden the touch of bitterness from his tone. “If I apologize for that, will you stop pouting?” 89
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“Don’t know what you mean.” “Richard.” She caught his arm before he could close himself into his loft. “I’m sorry. It was mean. You know you’re one of my best friends. I was just pissy because you interrupted when he was asking me out, okay? But I freely admit that my behavior was uncalled for.” He frowned, remembering why he’d followed her out there in the first place. She’d be singing a different tune if she knew he’d fully intended to interrupt any action that might be taking place. “It’s no big deal,” he said lightly. “Apology accepted.” “Besides, he did ask me out after you left, anyway. So no harm done.” She was beaming, happy to share her exciting news with her friend. He tried to reflect the same enthusiasm but knew he failed miserably. “Congratulations, Lind. Knock ’em dead.” “Yeah, I plan to.” She sounded a little less than sure. “It’s tomorrow, actually. Or rather, today. The symphony.” “Wow. You work quick. You should probably get some sleep, kiddo.” He started pulling on his door, sliding it across the sight of Lindy’s puzzled expression as she lifted her fingers in a little wave. “Good night, Richard.” “G’night,” he said, just before the door clicked shut.
***** “So I admit I didn’t stay up to wait for reviews like you and your friends did, but I did get up and look for them first thing this morning. Congratulations.” “Thanks,” Lindy said, a little embarrassed that Paul knew she’d actually held a gathering for the sole purpose of waiting for those two reviews, positive though they were. “Every little bit helps. And Richard insisted. Everyone else, too. Insisted on waiting.”
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She adjusted the linen napkin in her lap and let her eyes scan the restaurant, hoping she didn’t look like she was gawking. She had eaten at the Glastonbury Hotel restaurant once before, as a kid, but she hadn’t anticipated how luxe the dark paneling, heavy chairs and thick carpets would seem to somebody whose usual idea of eating out involved vinyl-clad booths and sticky tables. This was the afternoon tea crowd, comprised entirely of expensive-looking women in groups and expensive-looking couples on dates. She didn’t know if she fit the bill quite as closely as Paul did. Although he was the one breaking the mold by wildly ordering champagne. “You seem to have a nice crowd of friends.” He was looking at the label, observing the cork the wine steward displayed. It looked, to Lindy, like a piece of cork; to Paul, it was evidently special enough to earn a nod of approval. As the champagne was poured, he went on. “And we have a friend in common, actually. I ran into Stella Cooper at the gallery. We went to business school together.” “She mentioned that. And it’s Devlin, by the way,” Lindy corrected. “Not Cooper. She goes by her maiden name again now.” Paul raised his eyebrows. “Divorced?” She nodded. “For several years, I believe.” “Good for her,” he said, to Lindy’s surprise. “Coop was an asshole. She’s well rid of him. So how do you two know each other?” “She owns a boutique in town. I had a booth at an art show in the city a few years ago, and she discovered me. Started selling some of my stuff, and helped me network with some other local business owners. And she also pointed that interviewer my way, I think, so I got the write-up in the paper. Without Stella I would still be doing temp work and only trying to sell a few things on Etsy.” “That sounds like Stella. So that’s where she got off to. Interesting.” “Got off to?” Lindy took a sip of tea and then nibbled a finger sandwich, stoically resisting the temptation to stuff the entire delicious morsel in her mouth. It was a dense
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artisan bread topped with something savory, and the tangy flavors paired nicely with both the tea and the dry champagne. “After she and Coop got married and left town. We didn’t keep in touch. I’d heard she was divorced and back in town. I didn’t get much of a chance to catch up with her last night, though, she took off pretty early. Said something about having to check on her dogs?” “That sounds like Stella,” Lindy agreed. “Well. Tell her to give me a call some time. My number hasn’t changed. It would be great to catch up.” Over the course of the meal Paul asked Lindy about herself, her schooling and all the other baseline information one typically gathers during an early date. In return, Lindy learned about Paul’s family, his company’s commitment to the local art scene, and his recent experience acquiring and attempting to train a large and rambunctious puppy. Somewhere over dessert, they briefly digressed into a discussion of movies— they each named their top ten and Lindy was pleased to find there were two instances of overlap. It was a good date. She couldn’t fault a single thing about it. Pleasant conversation, delicious food, a few shared laughs. Even the symphony had been perfect, a crisply paced program featuring a world-famous violinist. When he brought her home, he walked her from the car to her door and waited while she opened it, and he kissed the back of her hand much as Stephen had done but with an entirely different look in his eye. It was a look Lindy thought she could probably get used to, given enough time and sufficient motivation.
***** Their next date, the following Saturday, came a few days after Lindy’s second official meeting with the Red House staff. It was another good meeting. Stephen’s mood seemed better, and Lindy met several more members of the creative team. Paul had
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closed by asking her out again once the others left the office. A fine end to a fine day, in Lindy’s mind. It wasn’t until they were halfway through their dinner date that she worked up the courage to ask Paul about the one part of the meeting that had bothered her. “I was wondering why you didn’t have a contract ready Thursday? I don’t really mind, because I wasn’t sure I was ready to sign a contract. And I don’t think you’re trying to take advantage of me or anything like that. But I thought a contract was what you wanted.” “It is,” Paul agreed. He was slicing a ribbon-thin piece from his filet mignon and using it to dab just the right amount of béarnaise sauce from his plate. “Well, then?” “Is it what you want?” Lindy thought about it as she sipped her chardonnay, appreciating the strong vanilla notes and the hint of peach in the finish. “I guess so. I would be crazy not to jump at the chance, right? Everybody seems great to work with. And I’ve heard nothing but good things about the company. I even shop at Red House when I can afford it.” Paul grinned. “As a designer you could probably swing samples of anything you wanted. We could even write that into the contract.” “Oh, that’s tempting.” “And that right there—what you just said—that’s why I didn’t bring out a contract on Thursday.” She could see the hint of regret in his face as he said it, but still wasn’t quite sure what he meant. “What’s wrong with finding samples tempting?” “Nothing. But you’re still only tempted. You’re still trying to be convinced.” Reaching across the table to squeeze her hand, as if to emphasize that he was okay with it, he continued, “The thing I haven’t heard from you is ‘Where do I sign? When do we
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get started? Let’s talk terms’. You’re not eager to do this, Lindy. Even though you think you should be, you’re not.” Lindy started to protest, but shut her mouth when she realized Paul was absolutely right. She had been to meetings, she had talked about designs, she had thrown ideas out there. But the one thing she had never done was ask to sign a contract, or say she was ready to do so. She’d been hedging all along. “I guess I was expecting you to make the first move,” she said at last. “And you know, with anybody else I already would have. I will right now, if that’s what you want. I’ll call up legal and have the papers in my office within ten minutes. It’s been drafted up and ready to go for weeks.” “Oh! Well, that’s…I don’t know. I guess I could read it and—” “See?” He gave her a wry smile. “You’re not ready to do this. And that’s perfectly okay. Although yes, when you do end up a famous designer, you should definitely read over any contract before you sign it. And get a lawyer to read it over too.” “You’re right.” “I know. It’s my curse.” He popped the bite of beef into his mouth and rolled his eyes in pleasure at the flavor. Laughing, Lindy shook her head at him. “So now what?” “Well,” Paul suggested, “I’d love to know why you aren’t ready, for one thing. Because you know, you should be. Talent-wise. You’ve got plenty of ideas. I think it’s just the business part that’s got you worried.” She smiled and shrugged. “I guess so. I’ve only just really started to stand on my own two feet out here. And it’s a good feeling. It was scary at first, because it was so much to learn. But now I sort of like it. I think you’re right, though, I think I don’t want to stretch myself too thin and risk messing up my ability to do art for a living because I don’t know the business end well enough yet. The extra money’s not worth that to me.
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Not right now, anyway. Besides, I never expected to make much money at this in the first place.” His answer wasn’t what she was expecting. “You know, Melinda, I envy you.” “You envy me? I don’t see how that’s even possible.” “Really?” Paul tilted his head to the side and grinned that puckish grin again. Lindy found it very cute. She suspected that many women found it devastatingly so. “To me it seems obvious. I envy you because you actually had the chance to find that out about yourself. You figured out what you wanted to do, and you’re going for it all on your own, at your own pace. That’s incredibly brave. I can’t imagine taking that kind of risk. I’ve never had to do that.” “You could have done something else,” she pointed out. “Gone into something other than the family business.” “True. But I like the family business. I never took that risk because I never really wanted to do anything else. And I’m grateful for that. But I can still admire somebody else for taking that leap.” “Thanks, I guess. So with anybody else you would have pushed for a contract, but not me, huh?” Paul winked. “You’re not anybody else. How’s the salmon?” “Delicious,” she replied, taking a bite. It was mouthwatering, really. The wine was superb. Later, Lindy would also enjoy a dessert involving a cake sort of thing with layers of crunchy meringue and dark chocolate that tasted pretty much like a candy bar having an orgasm in her mouth. So all in all, another noteworthy date. Paul walked her to her door again, waited for her to unlock it and kissed her hand as he had the last time. Then he leaned in and kissed her lips very gently and carefully, and very, very thoroughly. By the time he was through, Lindy was backed up to the
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door and Paul was deep inside her personal space, and both of them were breathing more heavily than was probably safe. “So,” he said, resting his forehead against hers and stealing another brief kiss before he continued. “So. That shouldn’t happen until we’re done figuring out the contract thing.” “Right,” Lindy agreed, closing her eyes and trying to regain her sense of balance. “I thought the contract thing was settled.” “No, I’m planning to make a counterproposal to your refusal of the original offer,” Paul explained. He ran his hands from her shoulders down her arms, twining his fingers in hers. “It’s a big secret. Very hush-hush. Don’t tell the others.” “My lips are sealed,” Lindy said, and blushed as she remembered the circumstances of the last time she’d said that. “Good. That’s good business practice,” Paul said with a nod, moving away a little and releasing her hands. “Better business practice than, you know…what I was doing.” “I was doing it too,” she reminded him. “True. Well, I have to go. Because I shouldn’t stay. But I’ll call you Monday. Or maybe tomorrow. No, Monday, from the office. Okay?” For the first time since she’d met him, Paul looked uncertain. Lindy couldn’t help but smile. He was kind of cute when he had no idea what he was doing. He was kind of cute all the time, really. Any minute now she expected a repeat of the sensual jolt she’d gotten when he glanced her way at the gallery. “Okay by me. You know the number. Thanks for dinner, it was wonderful.” He grinned and waved, backing away down the hall instead of turning around. “Yes it was. So, Monday.” “Monday.” It wasn’t until she was safely inside with the door locked behind her that Lindy’s smile faltered. She lifted a finger to her lips but the sensation had already faded. Just the
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memory lingered, of the movie-perfect moment they’d shared. Following the wonderful date with great conversation and possibly the best meal she’d ever had. And the novelty of watching the valet pull up and look enviously at Paul’s midnight blue Jag as he handed the keys back over. The date was perfectly lovely. She had enjoyed the kiss. And Paul was cute. And that was all. Lindy had hoped that losing her virginity would help her feel more confident in all her relationships, help her move on and get past the shyness that had kept her from too many opportunities in the past. But as an unexpected side effect of awakening her sexuality, she realized she now also knew when she wasn’t interested in having sex with someone. Even when she really wanted to be interested. She took her jacket off and rested her back against the chilly metal of the sliding door, hoping the cold would jolt her out of her funk. But she was too keenly aware that just a door and a hallway and another door and a few more steps away, Richard was probably watching a movie. Or trying to work. Or even kissing a girl, for all she knew. He was certainly entitled to do that. Lindy hated that the idea made her stomach churn.
***** Paul’s counteroffer turned out to be the deal Lindy couldn’t refuse. A simpler, straightforward buyout of a specific number of designs, and instead of being marketed as “Melinda Moore for Red House”, they would be sold under the “Red House Collection” label. The tags would also bear the line “by Melinda Moore” but in much smaller print. And she would be under no obligation to supply further designs, nor would designs be optioned; future deals would be negotiated separately. There was a very generous lump-sum payment involved.
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“You know I still want to talk about a package of designs for the fall, though, right?” He was walking her down to her car from his office, probably more slowly than he would have done with most of his business associates. “Yes, Paul, you’ve mentioned that. About five times now.” She grinned at his sheepish expression. “Just making sure you know,” he demurred. “By the way, Stephen’s not happy about this deal. He really wanted options on your future work.” “Should I be flattered?” “Definitely. But I think he’ll come around. This is simpler, better. I think we were so gung-ho for changes when I took over for my Dad, we might have lost sight of some priorities for a little bit. Slow growth isn’t as thrilling as branching out all over, but it probably suits the company a little better. And it’s definitely a lot less stress.” Smiling, Lindy remembered what Stella had said about Paul, and was pleased she would be able to report back to her mentor favorably. Paul really did know Red House’s strengths and was willing to play to them even if it meant the company stayed small. When they reached Lindy’s car, Paul opened the door for her. “So you’re going to meet me at the movie theater at eight, no dinner first?” he asked. “Should I be worried?” Lindy shook her head. “Absolutely not. My cousin just wants to talk. Normally she calls my sister Tess first for that, but I think Tess probably gave her an answer she didn’t want to hear. So I’m next in line.” “Is this all that unloading you mentioned?” “Sort of,” Lindy said. “Usually Allison is one of the sane ones. I mean, she’s a psychology professor. Not that you necessarily have to be sane for that, but it helps. But right now she’s being sort of emo.” “Emo?”
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“Emo. You know. ‘Cheer up, emo kid’?” At his blank expression, she tried to explain. “Emo, as in emotional in the extreme. Melodrama plus ennui plus self-pity. Traditionally with stringy hair falling in your face and an iPod full of whiny soft punk. It’s a big look around the art schools. And Ally isn’t really emo, she’s just thinking too much about a guy, but it’s starting to get annoying. Wow, with this much explanation it just isn’t an amusing pop culture reference at all.” “Ah. Well, you learn something new every day, I guess.” “I’m sorry that emo was your only new thing today. I’ll try to think up something better for when I see you at eight.” Paul laughed as he handed her into the car with the lightest brush of a kiss on her cheek. “I’ll be eager to see what you come up with.”
***** A few hours later, outside Allison’s apartment building, Lindy was frowning up at the night sky. It was unleashing a light drizzle on the hair she’d spent over half an hour straightening before her meeting with Paul, and she didn’t have an umbrella with her. She flipped up the collar of her black trench coat and broke into a jog to make it to her car a little faster, cursing when her heel caught in a crack in the sidewalk and she pitched forward onto her hands and knees. “Fuck!” As soon as she said it she looked around, hoping nobody had seen or heard. The sidewalk was empty, though, and she was able to limp to her car unobserved. Her heel was ruined, her hem was soaked, her hair was a frizzled mess and there was no way she could show up for a date with Paul looking like this. Cursing again, she picked up her cell phone. Fortunately Paul was understanding and there was a slightly later showing of the movie they’d planned to see. Lindy ended the call with a sigh of relief. She would have just enough time to go home, change clothes and do something with her hair. 99
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Driving slowly in the strengthening rain, she thought back to her conversation with Allison. With any luck, Allison had taken Lindy’s advice and was even now on her way to Seth’s house to sort things out. She was obviously in love with Seth, and it shouldn’t take a genius to see that. But Allison, who probably was a genius, had needed to have somebody else point it out for her. Sighing, Lindy wondered what hope there was for the non-PhDs. Lindy knew she wasn’t a genius herself, and particularly not when it came to love. Here she was dating one of the most prized catches in the state and all she could think about was the reprobate bohemian who lived in the decrepit loft across the hall. Who was she to lecture anybody else about matters of the heart? Not that she’d seen much of Richard lately. Since her show, in fact, she could count the number of times she had seen Richard on the fingers of one hand. Fleeting glances mostly, and one brief, strained conversation about nothing much while waiting for a free dryer in the laundry room. He seemed even more preoccupied than usual and it worried her, but given the history they shared now, she was reluctant to approach him, even to ask what might be wrong. Lindy suspected she knew what was wrong anyway. He was avoiding her, just like he always avoided his conquests after sleeping with them. That had been a known risk. What she hadn’t anticipated was how much she would miss him.
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Chapter Nine It was hard work this time around. Richard looked at the tracery of fine blue lines on his canvas with a grim satisfaction. He didn’t know if it would lead to something good. He didn’t know if the final work would even resemble the faint sketch of a sketch he’d accomplished in his free time over the past few weeks. He just knew it was a start, and for now that was enough. Still, it was a little brutal, like physical therapy on a muscle that hasn’t been used in ages. He wasn’t sure if he should be thanking Lindy or blaming her. Not that he would ever do either of those things to her face. Thinking about Lindy and sex all the time had been bad enough. What Richard was thinking about now was worse, though. Not just sex, although those visions continued to plague him in a way he hadn’t been plagued since high school. No, now he was looking back and realizing just how integral to his life Lindy had become, long before the sex came along to complicate things. She had been there every day for months, a friend, a touchstone. He was as aware of her presence in the background of his days as he was of the sun, which was to say he had taken it for granted and had no real concept of its necessity until it was gone. He had stayed with Natasha long past common sense because he had wanted so much for it to be right, because he had worked so hard on that relationship for the first time in his life. He had chased Natasha instead of the other way around, and he’d thought that was the critical difference. He’d been crushed to realize he had picked the wrong person. But the thing with Lindy had happened without his even noticing. He might have called it effortless, but looking back over the past few months he could see that it hadn’t
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been. It was just that the work was usually so pleasant and the payoff was always worth it. Now Richard looked up a dozen times a day, starting to call out a question or comment to the loft across the hall, only to realize the doors were closed. Not just metaphorically. Their easy back-and-forth, treating the entire floor as one big loft, had ended after Lindy started dating Paul Maddox. Now Richard didn’t even know whether she was home or gone most of the time. And he missed it terribly, that light but almost constant contact. He missed knowing she was just there, in the next room. He missed her. Richard tried to convince himself that if Lindy wanted to be just friends, he could learn to handle that. If he never got to have sex with her again it wouldn’t matter, as long as he was able to talk to her and spend time with her. But he couldn’t believe his own lie. He wanted to see Lindy, wanted to have long conversations with her and quite possibly spend the rest of his life with her, because at some point he had lost the ability to imagine a life without her in it…but he also still wanted to sleep with her in the worst way. Also in several of the best ways. And he couldn’t bear the idea that she might, at any time, start having sex with Maddox. She seemed to spend her nights at home, and he didn’t think she was sleeping with Maddox yet. But that could only be a matter of time. After all, she was no virgin anymore. Hadn’t that been the point? Hadn’t that been his undoing, the reason he had been drawn in like this? Richard’s only consolation was that he couldn’t actually picture that match. His sweet, shy neighbor, turned fiery and daring and utterly magnificent in bed, just didn’t work in Richard’s mind with Maddox and his straight-arrow, conservative demeanor. Maddox was probably a good guy, Richard was willing to admit to himself, but he seemed like vanilla all the way. And Lindy had come in to her own with Richard, whose position on the ice cream flavor scale was probably closer to Rocky Road.
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After a long period of distraction spent trying to decide just what flavor might represent Lindy, Richard gave up even trying to work and put his pencils and chalk aside for the evening. As he was trying to decide what to do next, the phone rang and he was surprised to see Tess Moore’s name on the caller ID. “So can I talk to Lindy?” Tess asked after the opening pleasantries were exchanged. “She’s not here,” Richard replied, puzzled. “Oh. Really?” “Yeah. Pretty sure. I think I’d know if she were hiding under the bed or something, it’s not that big a place.” “I would have thought she’d be back by now. She was at Ally’s earlier, but she left there like fifteen minutes ago.” “Well,” Richard speculated, “she’s probably out on a date. With Paul Maddox.” He was surprised at Tess’ response, a snorting laugh that clearly indicated she found the idea ludicrous. “I did not just hear that. Seriously, can I just talk to her? I need to find out if she can pick up my mail and stuff, I’m going out of town this weekend.” “Tess, she’s not here.” He was starting to get a little annoyed. “I think she’s out with Maddox. They’ve been going out ever since her show at the gallery. You mean you didn’t know?” After a tense pause, Tess asked, “You’re serious, aren’t you?” “Yes. So I guess that’s a ‘yes’ on you not knowing.” “No, I didn’t know. What has she gotten herself into? Man, I don’t have time to deal with this.” “I don’t recall hearing her ask you to deal with it. What would be the problem? He’s supposed to be a great catch, isn’t he?”
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“Of course,” Tess agreed. “But Lindy doesn’t do this. She doesn’t date. As far as I know, she’s never even had a boyfriend. And now she’s setting her sights on somebody like that? She’s bound to get hurt. Somebody needs to talk to her.” Richard shifted in his seat, edgy with the growing irritation at Tess’ big-sister attack and his own desire to defend Lindy without giving up any of her secrets. “Maybe you don’t know her as well as you think. But I know she has…had a boyfriend.” Or something like it, anyway. “And as far as setting her sights on anyone, I don’t know that she’s done that. He asked her out, and so they’ve gone out a few times. Or at least I think it’s been a few times.” “Richard, I’m sure she’s told you she’s had a boyfriend. I mean, come on. She wants to impress you. Just like in college.” “What are you talking about?” “Oh please. You knew she had a crush on you. I’m sure that hasn’t really changed. For all we know, she’s really out pretending to be with some made-up Canadian boyfriend right now. That makes more sense than believing she’s dating Paul Maddox.” Tess made a dismissive noise, and Richard had to force his teeth to unclench. “No, she really is dating Paul Maddox. I’ve seen them.” “Seriously?” “I wouldn’t kid about that. Why are you so convinced it’s impossible they would be dating?” “Well, he’s Paul Maddox. And she’s Lindy. Which, you know, I love her and all, but she’s not exactly the kind of girl you’d expect to see with somebody like—” “Tess, stop. Really. Just keep the rest of that thought to yourself, all right?” He knew Tess didn’t mean to sound abrasive. She just still saw the awkward girl Lindy had been growing up, and wanted to protect that girl. But he still bridled at the implied insult. And his brain was still trying to wrap itself around the other thing Tess had just told him.
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“Lindy,” he said after collecting himself for a few seconds, “is beautiful. And talented, and a great friend, and I could go on but the point is that she’s exactly the kind of girl any man would kill to be with. I don’t know how long it’s been since you took a good look at her, but I’ll tell you again that you don’t seem to know her as well as you think.” “She’s my sister.” “Exactly.” The sound of footsteps in the hall caught Richard’s attention, and he hastened to end the call. “Tess, I have to go. If I talk to Lindy, I’ll tell her you called, okay?” Hanging up in short order, he hurried to the hall in time to see Lindy fumbling with her keys at the door to her loft. When she heard him she turned her head, startled, and something in her eyes reminded him of what Tess had said. Some hesitation, some question waiting to be answered. She had a crush on him. It was like a light bulb going on over Richard’s head. All their interactions, all the seemingly casual comments and sideways little glances, everything was suddenly cast in a new light. She had a crush on him, and she was shy. And she had still mustered up the courage to ask him to sleep with her, to be the first. Even though she had known, or thought she’d known, that he wasn’t interested in anything more than friendship. Because she trusted him that much. It took him a moment to realize that Lindy was struggling with her key because her hands, like the rest of her, were soaking wet and shaking with cold. Her coat was muddy at the hem and her knee was bleeding from a scrape. “You’re a mess.” “Thanks.” He had already taken the key out of her hand and opened the door, and he followed her into the loft without asking.
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“What happened? Are you okay? You’re bleeding.” “Oh crap.” Lindy looked down at the blood with a growl. “I thought it had stopped. The weather happened. I had to run to my car with no umbrella and I slipped.” “The other knee is scraped too.” “It’s really no big deal. I’m fine. I’m just here to get some Band-Aids and change clothes, I’m late for a date.” She has a crush on me. He looked at her face and then down at her bleeding knees, and knew one thing with startling clarity. He couldn’t let her go on that date with Maddox. Even if it meant telling her what he’d been trying to talk himself out of believing for days.
***** To Lindy’s dismay, Richard had crouched down and was examining the damage to her legs close-up, one hand curled around the back of her knee for support. And there it was—the bolt of lustful need she’d been waiting for since she started dating Paul. Traveling from Richard’s fingers straight up the back of her leg and circling around her pussy like a plane just waiting to land. “I’m fine,” she said again and tried to step away, to no avail. “It’s these fuck-me heels you’ve started wearing lately. Those things are lethal. We need to clean this.” He probed carefully at the deeper wound and came away with a tiny piece of what appeared to be gravel. Lindy hoped he mistook her needy whimper for a complaint about the slight pain. “I don’t have time. I’ll do it later, I just need to get a bandage for it right now.” “No,” he said calmly. “We’re going to clean it.” “Richard, I’m fine.” “When was your last tetanus shot?”
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“Within the last ten years. Look, I’m going to be late for the movie. Let me go.” Instead he wrapped both hands more firmly around her legs, holding her in place and managing to look commanding even though he was the one looking up. “So you’re going back out with Mr. Red House?” “Paul.” “You’re shivering and bleeding. You think he would care more about you being late than you taking care of yourself?” “I don’t care what he thinks. I’m going for myself. Because it’s what I want to do. But not without changing first.” Her coat, hanging open, was dripping onto the floor. Lindy pushed it off her shoulders and let it fall, then crossed her arms defiantly across her chest. Richard noticed she was dressed up, a simple black dress accented by a gold-fringed red silk shawl that was now damp around Lindy’s neck where it had ridden up outside her coat. “All this for the movies? Why not just throw on some jeans? It’s raining, it seems dumb to get dressed up.” “Paul will still be in a suit. I can’t go looking all scruffy. I’m not really wet all over, I just need a different pair of shoes and a scarf or something. If you would let go of me.” Richard shrugged and tugged the red shawl from her neck, letting it land on his knee where it contrasted beautifully with the worn black denim of his jeans. “This was pretty. It’s a shame the pussy scarf is still on display at the gallery, you’d have looked great in that.” “Don’t call it that,” she said softly. He looked up again, eyeing her sharply, and Lindy noticed his nostrils were literally flaring. She couldn’t decide if she liked it or not. The look on his face might have scared her coming from anybody else. It was too hard, too much. But it was still
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Richard. And she couldn’t be afraid of Richard. In fact, if fear had an opposite, she thought that might be what she was feeling. “Pussy scarf,” he repeated, flexing his fingers tighter around her hamstrings. “Stop it!” “Pussy scarf, pussy scarf, pussy scarf.” For perhaps the first time in her life, Lindy found that only one retort expressed the depth of her feelings about the situation at hand. “Fuck you, Richard,” she said crisply. “Gladly. Been waiting to hear that since I walked through the door.” And he stood up, grabbed her by the waist and slung her over his shoulder before heading for her bed. Caught off guard and with a little wind knocked out of her, Lindy didn’t even think to start kicking until Richard was almost to the bed. He seemed more amused by her struggles than anything else, pinning her legs easily with one arm and swatting her firmly on the butt. “Dammit, put me down!” “Planning on it.” He slung her onto the bed and straddled her, caging her tightly with his knees and holding up the scarf by one relatively dry corner. Lindy’s eyes widened. “You wouldn’t dare.” He already was, his greater reach making it fairly easy for him to secure first one of her hands and then the other to the conveniently sturdy antique brass headboard that graced Lindy’s bedroom space. It didn’t hurt that her struggles lacked conviction. She’d gone weak and wet at the first tug of the twisted fabric around her wrist, and by the time the second arm was secured she felt like a needy rag doll. Not that she wanted Richard to know that, because she didn’t think this type of behavior should be encouraged. At least, up until now she hadn’t thought so.
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“You want to have sex again so you’re just going to caveman your way through this? Seriously? Just club the virgin on the head and drag her off by the hair to your cave?” Appealing to his higher sensibilities was always worth a shot. A long shot. “You’re not a virgin anymore,” Richard pointed out, pulling off his t-shirt and moving down to the foot of the bed. “And I didn’t club you on the head. I’ll admit to one pop on the ass. But only with the best intentions. And you know you liked it.” “Asshole.” “Maybe, but you still liked it. Straighten your leg.” She complied automatically, and she saw that fact register on Richard’s face as he tied her ankle to the footboard with his shirt. She made a pretense of trying to kick at him with the other foot when he grabbed for it, but she knew he wasn’t fooled. And then he had his belt off and strapped around her ankle and there she was, spread out at his mercy. And about thirty seconds from an orgasm, if he had cared to proceed in that direction. But Richard, it seemed, had calmed down enough to do some forward planning. “Can you feel all your fingers and toes?” Lindy gave him a grudging nod. “Good. Do you have a pair of very strong scissors that aren’t too pointy at the ends? If not I have some at my place.” “On my workbench. Why?” He strode across to the bench, spotted the shears in fairly short order and returned, placing them on Lindy’s nightstand. “Because safety is important. Now I’m going to dial the phone for you, and while I clean up your wounds, you are going to cancel your date with the asshole in the suit and then spend the rest of the weekend in bed with me. And next weekend. Actually, just clear your calendar. For the foreseeable future.” Lindy took a moment to process what Richard was saying, but decided she wasn’t quite ready to give in to the wild hope his words gave her. “He isn’t the one acting like an asshole in this situation, Richard,” she said, arching an eyebrow at him. He ignored it. 109
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“Number, please? Or is this it? MaddoxCorp?” He had scrolled through the recent calls. Lindy nodded. “So what’s to keep me from getting Paul to come rescue me, smart guy? Are you going to hold the shears to my throat or what?” If she’d had any remote fear of his doing so, or if she’d actually wanted rescuing, she wouldn’t have said it. But she was really curious to know what his plan was. She wasn’t expecting the smug smile, the absolute arrogant-jackass expression that prefaced his response. Richard glanced down at her lap and casually flipped up her skirt, revealing her black lace thong. He nodded at her underwear choice in approval. “Very nice. You’ve been turned-on as hell since about the time I slapped your ass. Maybe even before that. Your panties are drenched. I could smell it.” He tugged the narrow strap of the thong to one side, tucking it down next to her leg to expose her pussy. She could feel herself getting wetter as he stared. “We definitely need to talk. And fuck. A lot.” Without further ado, he pressed the dial button and held the phone to Lindy’s ear until she gave up and held it with her shoulder. Paul answered on the third ring, and for one moment Lindy considered yelling like hell, just to show Richard a thing or two. Then Richard reached his free hand down and slid a finger inside her, then a second one, holding her possessively and staring her down. “Paul, this is Lindy. I’m so sorry, I’m afraid I’m going to have to cancel.” Nodding, Richard left her to the conversation and went wandering off, returning shortly with antiseptic wipes and bandages. “I’m fine,” Lindy was saying to Paul as Richard set to work on her knees. “Just soaking wet and chilled. And it’s a weeknight, so I think it’s probably better not to head out quite this late.” “Well, I’m disappointed but I can’t say I blame you.” He didn’t sound very disappointed, and for a second Lindy almost felt hurt by that. “It’s really looking nasty out there. I’m just glad you made it home safely.”
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“Thanks.” She felt a pang of regret. Paul really was so sweet. Richard, while he was many things, was not usually sweet. But it seemed he had only to crook his finger and she would come running. If he wanted this, wanted whatever he meant by fucking and talking a lot, she couldn’t help herself. She had to take a chance on it. “Hey, by the way, thanks for getting me back in touch with Stella. We had a long talk the other day. It sounds like she’s doing really well.” Lindy was surprised, because Stella hadn’t mentioned anything about it. She wondered if that meant Stella wasn’t sure what she herself thought about it yet, and she hoped that was a good thing in this case. “You should go out for coffee,” she suggested. “Or dinner.” “Oh.” Paul sounded slightly confused, but also a little hopeful. “I guess I could do that. But are you sure you’d be all right with that?” “Absolutely,” she assured him. Richard, just putting the final bandage on her knee, gave her a querying look. Unable to shrug her shoulders with the phone propped as it was, Lindy just rolled her eyes and returned to her conversation, trying to ignore the surreal quality of the scene. As Paul spoke again, Richard took Lindy’s wet shoes off and she flexed her restrained feet gratefully. “If you’re sure.” “You know, I really am.” “So, are you trying to say you do want me to ask Stella out, and you don’t want me to ask you out anymore?” Grimacing, Lindy tried to think of an easy answer. None came. “I am saying that, I think. Not that I haven’t enjoyed going out with you, because I really have. It’s just…complicated.” A feral grin crossed Richard’s face, and he leaned over to nip at Lindy’s thigh. She gulped, trying not to yelp.
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“It’s something to do with the guy from your exhibition, right? The one who lives in your building.” Paul was saying. “Yes,” Lindy replied, surprised. Had it been that obvious? Then why hadn’t she noticed it before? “I had a feeling there was something else going on there,” he said, and Lindy thought back over the incident, trying to see it through fresh eyes. Richard’s face, tight and guarded, the tension in his long limbs as he stood in the doorway just a little too long. The way he had slammed the crash bar when he opened the door, almost like he was angry. Because he had been angry. And jealous. He wasn’t being protective. He was being possessive. “There wasn’t anything going on yet at the time,” Lindy said, addressing the emotional factor if not the physical one. “That I knew of, anyway. We’ve been just friends for a long time.” “I doubt he’d say the same,” Paul said, with more understanding than Lindy expected. “But I wish you all the best. And I admit I really did sort of want to ask Stella out. I always had a thing for her back in school. So we’re still okay on the business side of things, right?” “Of course,” she said, feeling that if anything, she was the one who should have been worried about that part. Paul really was a nice guy, it seemed. And then Richard worked his fingers inside her again, finally connecting with the most sensitive spot he could reach, and Lindy wasn’t too sure what she said to end the call. Just that at some point Richard took the receiver from her hand. “Just because I canceled,” Lindy mustered the willpower to say, “doesn’t mean any of this is okay.” “Is that so?” Richard lifted a shiny finger to her lips, pushing it into her mouth until she had to choose between biting him or sucking off the evidence of her body’s
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treachery. She glared at him, scraping her teeth over his knuckle in warning, only to get another look of fierce enjoyment. “My being turned-on has nothing to do with whether or not your behavior is acceptable.” “Are these panties replaceable? A simple yes or no will suffice.” Lindy nodded, and a second later Richard had taken the shears to her thong, stripping the scrap of lace away to leave her completely naked below the waist. “But you harm this dress and you’re a dead man.” “I wouldn’t dream of it. I’ve always thought you looked really good in this dress. It’s washable, though, right? Just in case?” She thought about it for a moment before admitting warily that, yes, it was washable. “But Richard,” she cautioned before he could say or do more, “if this is just about how geographically convenient I am right now, I’m not interested. Really. I can’t do that. I don’t want to be your friend with benefits. That’s not me.” “Lindy, how could you think that?” She was annoyed that he had the nerve to sound affronted. “I could think that because the next morning, all you mentioned was the pancakes. And the bacon, but I think that was probably just a code word for more sex. I admit I had to leave pretty quickly, so I didn’t get to hear more. But then the second time you made such a point of saying it was only one more time, and reminding me that we were just friends. Are you seriously going to keep me tied down here for this conversation?” “Yes I am. Okay, first of all, I would never use bacon as code for sex, because then I might not get the bacon. And second, you were the one who started the whole justfriends thing. I was trying to say what I thought you wanted to hear.” “So you could use that to talk me back into bed.” “For more of the best sex I’d ever had!”
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“How many times have you had the ‘best sex you’ve ever had’? How many girls have heard that?” “One,” he said, shaking his head, clearly hurt. “Just one. But it wasn’t even about the sex, Lindy. How can you not get that?” She tried to steel herself against his wounded tone, remembering all the times she had watched him in school, brushing off the last girl and moving on to the next. “That’s what I was thinking, too, Richard. Right before I told myself what an idiot I was for thinking it.” To his credit, he didn’t argue, just nodded thoughtfully. “Okay. Fair enough, I guess. I can see how you’d feel that way. Do you know what I was thinking? Not during the sex, obviously. Afterward. When I was falling asleep.” When she shook her head, he went on. “I was thinking about what to get you for Christmas.” “It isn’t even Halloween,” she pointed out, puzzled. “No, I know, but you don’t understand. I was thinking about what to get you for Christmas. Lindy, do you know how many women I’ve ever purchased Christmas presents for in my entire life?” She shook her head again, baffled. “Two.” “Two?” “Two,” he confirmed. “And one of them was Natasha, who really doesn’t count because she pretty much told me what to buy her the one Christmas we were together. Sent me an email with a link. Not just a picture as a hint or something, an actual link to the store’s shopping cart. Sucked all the fun out of it. I mean, making a list is one thing, but—” “Who was the other one?” Lindy interrupted softly. Richard smiled down at her, brushing a thumb over her lower lip. “My mom.”
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Lindy considered that for a moment, trying to ignore the delicious teasing of Richard’s fingers against her lips, then her cheek, then trailing down her neck. “I owe you an apology,” she said after a moment. “For dating Mr. Red House? Accepted. I’ve moved on. Consider it forgotten.” Lindy laughed. “No, doofus. For seducing you under false pretenses. I sort of lied by omission.” Her smile faded and she had to force herself to say the last part, the embarrassing confession. “I always liked you. In that way, I mean. I’ve had a crush on you since college. I wouldn’t have ever told you, but I didn’t ever see you as only a friend. I lied about that so you wouldn’t be worried about my getting all clingy and expecting something from you afterward.” “You didn’t lie, exactly. You were willing to walk away afterward, and you did. What you did wasn’t so bad.” “I’m glad you think so. I guess.” “What I did was, though.” “I just didn’t want to— What?” Richard sighed, sitting back on his heels and lacing his fingers behind his head. He stared at the ceiling for a few seconds then squeezed his eyes closed. “When you asked me to have sex with you, I should have said no. Because of what you said about guys thinking they didn’t want to be the first in case you thought it was something it wasn’t. I didn’t realize at the time, but I think that was exactly what I wanted you to feel like. That it meant something.” She was having a little trouble following him. “Richard, are you trying to say you agreed to have sex with me so I would think I was in love with you?” He shrugged, still not opening his eyes. “Yeah. Maybe. Or at least I assumed that would happen, pretty much. I’m not trying to defend it.” “I sort of wish you would. It might help me understand what the hell you were thinking.”
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“I’m not sure I understand it myself.” He looked down at her finally, dropping his arms to his sides, looking miserable but hopelessly adorable. “I didn’t go into it meaning to manipulate you. But afterward I just couldn’t take the idea of anybody else doing that with you. I still can’t. I know you said it was just a hymen. But, you know— rose petals, Lind. It was like that. Freakin’ rose petals. I can’t help it.” Lindy stared at him, flabbergasted. “Who the hell are you?” Richard stared back, not smiling. “The guy who wants to beat the shit out of any other guy who tries to get near his woman’s rose petals.” “Richard,” Lindy said, trying vainly to keep from laughing out loud at the sheer absurdity of the conversation. “I think you’ve pretty much taken care of the rose petal issue.” He let his weight settle a little lower, brushing her pelvis with the seam of his jeans. “Not unless you felt like it meant something.” Lindy arched her back, automatically trying to get closer. Something in his expression gave her the sudden insight that she held a great deal of power in the situation. Being tied down didn’t change that. “Tell me what you wanted it to mean.” “Everything,” he said without missing a beat. Lindy’s heart, however, missed at least one. “Why didn’t you tell me how you felt?” “You said you wanted me as a friend. You never said you’d had a crush on me since college. I guess I won’t ask why you didn’t tell me that.” “Everybody else knew,” she pointed out. “But how would I know? You never did the stuff other girls did. You never threw yourself at me. You never called me. You never flashed your boobs at me at a drunken frat party and asked me to do body shots off you.” “Girls did that?” He shrugged. “I never had to work very hard.”
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“I guess not. Wow. Even if I had been one of those pretty girls, I wouldn’t have done that.” “What are you talking about?” He shook his head, sighing. “Stupid self-esteem issues. You were one of those pretty girls. You still are. You’re one of those beautiful girls. You’re the girl who’s breaking my heart because you slept with me but it didn’t mean anything to you.” His smile took the weight from the words, and Lindy was able to smile back. “It meant something,” she conceded. “I don’t know about everything. Maybe if you showed me again, now that I know what I’m supposed to be looking for?” She scarcely got the words out before Richard swooped down to kiss her, framing her face with his hands, stealing her breath. When he finally released her, he rested his forehead against hers until he had collected himself enough to speak again. “While I can still walk straight, I’m going across the hall for a whole bunch of condoms. Unless you have some here?” He didn’t sound too hopeful of that, and he barely waited for her response before moving away from the bed, leaving her there. All tied up and no place to go. Lindy felt a wave of giddiness, a whole-body giggle. They were doing things backward again—the bondage first and then the kissing and groping, followed by confessions of secret crushes and hidden agendas. When would they get it all in the right order? She could hear Richard’s footsteps—he’d started running like a madman once he was out of her line of sight—marking a beat from his bedroom back to hers, with two pauses to close and lock each door. He stopped short just out of sight, then pretended nonchalance as he sauntered around the corner and over to Lindy’s bed. He took his time undressing, with frequent pauses to torture her to higher and higher states of sweet frustration. His touch was different now. Harder, more certain. He wasn’t holding back as much. Lindy watched him with new interest, wondering just how far he might go. 117
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“Now to take the edge off,” Richard said matter-of-factly, once the rest of his clothes were on the floor. He leaned over and pressed a hot, open-mouthed kiss to Lindy’s cunt, and she arched as far as she could to get closer. “Not so fast,” he warned her. “Patience.” Then he repositioned himself over her, angling his hips until Lindy opened her mouth to take in his cock. It was strange in this position, different and uncomfortable at first. But then she felt a renewed surge of lust at the feel of him stretching her lips, at the musky maleness of him, and the knowledge that he was about to reciprocate. “Fuck, that’s good,” Richard moaned as she swirled her tongue around his girth, feeling for the sensitive ridge just below the head. Then his mouth was on her clit, hot and wet, and Lindy hummed because her mouth was too full to moan. She was so close it almost hurt, and the slide of his heated skin against her lips just made her more eager, anticipating how it would feel when he was finally moving the same way inside her cunt. When she sucked deeper, his rewarding groan against her clit was a blissful agony. Once or twice he flexed his hips harder, testing her willingness, looking for her limits. The idea of learning to swallow his cock to its hilt made her throb and writhe under his talented tongue and long, long fingers, even as she brought him to the breaking point. She swallowed his come, greedily licking for more, and only then shattered into oblivion as he finally allowed her to climax. He turned with a groan and slid himself up until he was resting over Lindy’s chest, allowing her just enough room to breathe. Richard kissed her sweetly, licking her clean. “If I untie you so I can take your dress off,” he said between swipes of his tongue, “will you be a good girl? Or will you try to run away before I can persuade you to stay?” “Are we calling this persuasion now?” “As long as you stick around for it, we can call it anything you want.”
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Chapter Ten The emergency shears weren’t needed. The knots came free so easily, in fact, that it was almost as if Lindy hadn’t been pulling on them very hard at all. She just made a noncommittal noise when Richard pointed this out, and then stretched in a way she obviously knew would distract him pretty thoroughly from the issue. Richard removed Lindy’s dress with exaggerated care, draping it neatly over the back of the chair next to her bed. Then her bra, taking time to admire the delicate black lace. It was—had been—part of a matching set. “No sudden moves,” he warned her, and she thought he was only about seventypercent joking. “You’re a complete nutcase, you know that, right?” “I prefer the term ‘whack job’,” he shot back. “Roll over.” She gave him a look that clearly suggested he should commit a sex act with himself and didn’t move a muscle. It surprised her how quickly he reacted, and she barely managed to conceal her grin when he flipped her over, pinning her shoulders to the bed as he sat on her thighs. Once he seemed sure she wouldn’t move, he ran his hands down to her butt, outlining her curves. Lulling her, but not so well that she couldn’t anticipate what he had planned. Thwack! His hand slapped down on the meatiest part of her rear end, and Lindy yelped. She’d been expecting it, but she hadn’t expected it to be quite so hard. “That was for calling me a nutcase.” Thwack! Thwack!
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She hissed and wriggled her hips, and as the sting on her ass turned to pure heat, she felt a blissful sensation creep through her. Better than relaxation, better than arousal. Something new. “That was two,” Richard said, his voice sounding a little gruff. She could feel him hardening again already, pressing against her thigh, sticky and hot. “One for each week since the last time you slept with me.” “Fair enough,” she murmured. “Next is three, for the total number of times I plan to make love to you before I let you leave this bed again for any reason. That’s three at a minimum.” Her brain registered the new terminology, the change from sex to lovemaking, even as her daze grew deeper and her arousal keener. He changed sides on the third stroke, pulling a gasp from her as the newly assaulted skin absorbed the pain. Richard scratched his nails very lightly over the marks he’d made, humming in clear approval. “You have the most beautiful skin I have ever seen. And your ass drives me insane. Seeing my handprint on it is unreal.” He traced the mark’s outline then pinched the spot, humming again when she gave a soft cry. “What’s four, Lindy?” She tried to think, although she felt like she lacked two functioning brain cells to rub together just then. “The number of knots you used to tie me to my own damn bed,” she grumbled at last. “You liked that almost as much as I did,” he reminded her, stating it as a fact. “The tying-up thing is a definite keeper. But there were only three knots, the belt just got buckled around your ankle and the bedpost.” She felt him move around on the bed then settle back over her legs, and this time instead of his hand, she heard and felt the thuddy slap of leather in four even strokes, back and forth across the very tops of her thighs. Not as painful as his hand, she was startled to find. Lindy looked over her shoulder after the fourth blow. Richard was experimenting with his grip on the belt.
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“This leather is too stiff. I think I’m going to have to make an actual flogger or something,” he said, then shrugged and tossed the accessory away, leaning over her again to nip at the back of her neck. “Or maybe I should get you to make it.” “Make you a whip so you can use it on me? What kind of a masochist do you think I am?” “I don’t know. A really, really hot one?” She laughed out loud, the feeling of surreal giddiness taking over again. “Oh my god, Richard, this is terrible. I am a masochist. That was just never part of the plan. Christmas is coming up and I already have the leather, do you want a black one or a brown one?” It took him aback just long enough to be really rewarding, and she turned her head in time to catch the look of utter delight and awe that transformed his face. “Black,” he said at last. “You are the best girlfriend ever.” She buried her face in her folded arms again, not quite muffling her wordless squeal of joy. So she felt, rather than saw, Richard tugging on her hips to lift them up, spreading her knees wider with his own. Exploring her pussy with his fingers and twisting forward to press on the spot that had brought such a strong reaction earlier. Then his hands slid forward, messy and wet, curving under her ribs to cup her breasts, his weight oddly comforting against her hips and back. He swirled his fingers around her nipples, teasing until she whimpered with frustration. And then he plucked at the stiff peaks, squeezing and tweaking. Manhandling her. It was glorious. Lindy pushed back against his cock, stiff against her rear, as Richard hovered over her. He responded by tucking the hot length between her legs, rubbing and teasing her cunt with it. He freed a hand to hold himself against her then gave up and delved into her again with two fingers, aiming ruthlessly for the tender pad of flesh that seemed to hold the secret to unraveling the last shreds of Lindy’s selfcontrol.
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He’d stowed a condom somewhere close enough that she didn’t feel him moving away to retrieve it. But Lindy still whined in complaint when his hand left her mere seconds before she hit the point of no return. Her complaint stopped abruptly, replaced by a series of short, sharp gasps as Richard entered her abruptly, gripping her hips hard enough to hurt. Lindy grabbed blindly for the bars of the headboard, holding on for leverage, trying in vain to anchor herself in the real world. But Richard’s relentless pace as he took her was all the world Lindy knew. Her heart beat to that pace, it seemed. When he reached a hand beneath her, stroking her clit each time his cock stroked inside her, it was all over. Lindy came with a banshee wail, feeling the walls of her pussy clench even more tightly against the welcome intruder. Richard slammed into her one last time, shuddering and gasping, and Lindy felt the hot throb of his cock as he exploded. When it was all over but the panting, Richard pulled out of her, briefly leaving Lindy cold and bereft. When he got up she let herself fall limply to one side, curling there and shivering occasionally with the last aftershocks of pleasure. She couldn’t move, couldn’t think. After a few moments—she assumed he was dealing with the condom—Richard crawled back into bed, spooning up along her back and wrapping his arm around her waist to pull her closer. He twined a leg through hers, hooking his calf around one of her feet. Then he tucked the covers in firmly around them both, making sure that Lindy was wrapped snugly against his body. “So you can’t escape my evil clutches this time,” he explained, squeezing her firmly and pressing a kiss to her shoulder. Lindy had already decided she had no intention whatsoever of escaping. Richard’s clutches were far from evil, and she couldn’t think of a single place she would rather be.
*****
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It was a long night, and sleep was not a top priority for either one of them. They drowsed and scrounged for food and attacked one another gleefully, and then finally fell into a deeper, exhausted slumber around five in the morning. When Lindy woke up the sun was streaming into the loft, bringing the hot light of early afternoon. She was starving. When she moved, she moaned pitifully. She was sore in most places, stubbleburned in quite a few as well and sticky just about everywhere. She was also happier than she could ever remember being in her life. She let her senses adjust to the day slowly. The faint smells of coffee and bacon. Below that something lighter, sweeter. Somebody whistling, but she didn’t recognize the tune. Closer at hand she heard the rustle of paper, the torn notebook page almost brushed to the floor as she sat up in bed and pulled the comforter aside. The note just said COME TO MY PLACE FOR BREAKFAST in a familiar architectural block print. Underlined three times. Below the drawing was a rough sketch, a hasty dash of pencil strokes, of a sleeping profile mostly obscured by ringlets of hair. Then a little arrow pointing from that to a smiley face. Lindy stared at it for a long time, soaking in its meaning, its assumptions. He had left his shirt on her bed. A chambray button-down, a little worn at the collar and cuffs. It smelled deliciously like Richard. Lindy pulled it on, pleased that the buttons didn’t gap over her bosom. She stood up and found that the shirt fell almost to mid-thigh. Figuring that was sufficient, she wandered into the restroom and then across the hall to the source of the coffee and bacon smells. And yes, pancakes too. Cold, but still appetizing because she was that hungry. The bacon was cold as well, but Lindy liked it that way anyway. The important thing was that the coffee was still hot. Richard, wearing only his faded jeans, spared her a broad grin and then turned wordlessly back to his task. And she understood completely, wouldn’t have distracted him further for all the tea in China. Because he was standing on a stepladder in front of his canvas, using a charcoal pencil to rough out a design in one corner of the vast white expanse that was now about one quarter covered with a fine network of blue lines and
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darker charcoal marks. In his other hand he held his notebook, and Lindy could see he was referring to sketches there. She didn’t know if they were old ideas or new ones. The coffee was perfect. Richard always made great coffee, and he always had fresh milk in his refrigerator. Lindy sipped with appreciation, sitting on a stool at the barheight island that separated the kitchen from the rest of the loft. Watching him work. Wondering what he had in mind for that vast, empty space to his right, but trusting that his mind had enough creative energy to fill it once he started. He had just needed to start. The pancakes were just fine cold, Lindy decided. And the bacon was outstanding.
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About the Author After earning two graduate degrees, practicing law awhile and then working for the public school system for over ten years, Delphine finally got a clue. She tossed all that aside and started doing what she should have been doing all along, writing novels! In hindsight she could see the decision was a no-brainer. Because which sounds like more fun? Being a lawyer/special educator/reading specialist/educational diagnostician…or writing spicy romances? When not writing or doing “mommy stuff”, Delphine reads voraciously, watches home improvement shows, noodles around with html and css coding, and plays computer games with her darling (and very romantic) husband. She is fortunate enough to have two absurdly precocious children and two rotten but endearing rescued mutts. Delphine and her family are all Texas natives, and reside in unapologetic suburban bliss near Houston.
Delphine welcomes comments from readers. You can find her website and email address on her author bio page at www.ellorascave.com.
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Also by Delphine Dryden How to Tell a Lie Snow Job When in Rio
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