“Hello there. Rémi Bouchard, isn’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Dez could smell her, like an orchard in summer, floating up behind her. She turned in her chair. “Victoria.”
“Dez. I thought that was you over here.”
“Yes. Rémi was just introducing me to your place. It’s very nice.”
“You should see the bookstore upstairs. I’m especially proud of it.”
“I will one of these days,” Dez nodded. “Thanks.”
She was having a hard time trying not to stare. Up close, Victoria’s full-bodied beauty played havoc with her senses. Dez remembered kissing her, the taste of her lush mouth, the noises she made when Dez bit and sucked her lips.
Victoria fiddled with the strap of her shoulder bag. “We open in a couple of hours but you can come up and see it now if you like. It’s not like I don’t have a key to the place.” She smiled softly, another kind of invitation.
Rémi seemed to sense her friend’s reluctance, maybe even the lingering
something
between the two women. “Yeah, why don’t you go on up there, D? I’ll be right here when you get back.”
“I can just see the store when it’s open. No need to break out the special keys just for me.”
“When a woman offers to open her special place just for you, you don’t tell her ‘another time.’ ” Rémi kicked her under the table. “Go, before I ask to take your place.” She delivered that smile of hers again to Victoria.
Dez knew her friend was joking, but she stood up anyway and turned to Victoria. “After you.”
It wasn’t difficult to follow the gently swaying hips into the café and up the wide staircase to the bookstore. The hardship came with following through with a resolution to cut this one loose and focus her energies elsewhere. By the time Victoria opened the door to the sunlit attic space and closed it behind them, Dez couldn’t see the harm in seeing where this could go.
Victoria dropped her bag on a neatly arranged shelf behind the register. “Well, this is it.” She spun to indicate the surprisingly large and airy room with its neat rows of bookshelves, lush flowers, and smell of new paper.
“It’s very nice.” Dez didn’t take her eyes off Victoria.
“How did the rest of your dinner party go the other night?”
Victoria seemed surprised at the question. She looked around the store, Dez supposed, checking by habit to see if anyone was nearby, then back at Dez. “It went all right. We finished up not long after you left. Abena was disappointed that you had to go.”
“I think that she’s perceptive enough to realize that I couldn’t stay.”
“Yeah.” Her voice drifted off into apologetic silence.
“Look.” Dez stepped closer. “That night’s over. Life has gone on since then, so why don’t we?”
“Absolutely. I was hoping you’d say that. I still want to make it up to you.”
Dez liked the sound of that. In her experience, apologies from truly penitent women were often the sweetest. Her voice dropped two octaves. “How do you plan on doing that?”
Victoria chuckled. “Not
that
way. At least not yet. Why don’t we start with breakfast? I’m not sure what you and Rémi have planned, but if you’re free why don’t you two join me up here for a bite.”
“No. Next time we get together I want to have you just to myself.”
“Exactly. Next time. But for today, why not? After all, she’s your friend, not mine, and so far she seems pretty nice.” And there came the teasing smile, a la Mrs. Renfroe. Dez couldn’t even breathe, much less refuse her.
Victoria went down to fetch Rémi and breakfast, leaving Dez to her breathing lessons. As instructed, she went out to the balcony to wait. The day was gorgeous. Now risen to full flush, the sun shone brilliantly on another jewel of a Miami winter day, crisp but with the promise of even more warmth to come. The past few days of low temperatures seemed to be over. It might even hit seventy today. The wood of the railing felt warm under her hands, although some of the night’s moisture still lingered to tease Dez’s fingertips. The foot traffic on the small avenue was picking up. It was mostly people in their workday suits and business-casual Polo shirts and slacks running into Victoriana’s for the morning hit of caffeine.
“Here we are. Bagels all around.” Victoria walked in with two steaming cups in her hands while Rémi sauntered up behind her holding a tray with their breakfast.
“I was just going to head home when the lovely Ms. Jackson invited me to come up here and dine with you all.” She put the tray on the table. “She’s very persuasive.”
“At least I’m not the only one finding that out today.” Dez thanked Victoria for her fresh cup of coffee as she took it off her hands.
“Enough with all this foreplay. I’m dying of curiosity. What’s going on between you two?” Rémi looked at Dez just because she didn’t know Victoria well enough to interrogate her yet.
Victoria answered anyway. “Nothing. But I’m hoping that something will.”
“The way my friend here was looking at your ass you don’t have to hope for anything. It’s
going
to happen.”
“Thanks, Rémi. Now I know why I don’t let you help me get girls.” At least not girls she wanted to hang around for a while. Dez spread the vegetable-flecked cream cheese on her sesame-seed bagel and took a bite.
“This is for me, baby, not you. I want to know in case the time is ever right for me to toss my hat into the ring.”
“Keep that hat on your head, Rémi. The ring is a little full right now.”
“Is it?” Victoria smiled.
Dez chose to slowly chew her bagel, saying nothing. Rémi merely looked thoughtful and, as always, amused.
“I think we both have our answer, Ms. Bouchard.”
“Call me Rémi, please. Since I suspect that we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other.”
“Of course. And by all means, call me Tori.”
To Dez, she was Victoria. Alluring, subtly intruding into her awareness until she was a firmly fixed reference point. Last night had drained Dez physically. Earlier in the evening she and Rémi seduced a woman, bent her over a chair in her Ritz-Carlton suite. Her body had been so soft, like Victoria’s, arching back into her in the smooth, come-fuck-me way she’d imagined Victoria doing many times. Rémi had been content in the beginning to have the woman eat her out as she sat in the heavy, high-backed chair with her eyes closed, lost in her own fantasies. She was easy to ignore. The woman groaned and gasped, wet, eager, and sweaty with the promise of an easy come. Dez pounded into her from behind, grunting in her exertion. Beyond the windows of the hotel suite, the Atlantic spread out lush and blue, peaceful. She wanted to say that the woman’s name had been Victoire or Vita or some variation of the woman she’d wanted instead. But she knew that it wasn’t.
“So, Victoria.” Dez took a sip of her coffee. “What’s the story with you and my brother? I never pictured him for running with such classy company.”
“Then I guess you underestimate him, don’t you?”
Rémi smirked.
Get yourself out of that one
, her look said. “So my mother keeps saying.” She didn’t bother to apologize about Derrick.
“I’m curious, too,” Rémi said. “Isn’t Derrick one of those—what’s the polite term for it—homophobes? Now Dez and I find out that he has a dyke for a best friend.”
“Derrick isn’t like that.” Victoria bit into her croissant, then daintily wiped the crumbs from her mouth. “He and I met in school when he was getting his law degree and I was getting my doctorate. He was—still is—very macho, yet sweet. At one point he wanted to take me out but when I told him that I don’t date men, he was all right with it. We’ve had a friendship ever since then.”
“He never once tried to get you to change your mind?” Her mouth twisted at Rémi’s question. “Once. But he was drunk and didn’t know what he was doing.”
“Right,” Dez said. She and Rémi shared a cynical glance.
“If he’s anything like me, he probably thinks about changing your mind about men at least once a day.”
“Maybe in the beginning,” Victoria admitted. “But we’ve been friends for over five years now and I like to think that he—we—are beyond that.”
She might be right. Dez had no claims to knowing her brother, and definitely not as well as she knew herself. If she had a “best friend” like Victoria around, there wouldn’t be a single minute of the day when she wouldn’t think of touching her, of showing her just how good she could be. Her heated gaze told the other woman as much.
Rémi chuckled. “Should I leave you two alone?” Victoria blushed. “No.”
“Maybe for an hour or so,” Dez said at the same time.
Rémi looked at her. “Can you really go another round or are you just talking shit?”
“You’ll never know, will you?”
Victoria looked from one woman to the other. “What are you two talking about?”
“Nothing important.” Rémi stood. “Gotta run. I need to power up for tonight at the club.”
Dez pushed back her chair, too. Despite the two cups of coffee and the double shot of Victoria, her energy was draining. If she didn’t go to bed now, there would be no point in going to sleep at all.
“I know that you have to open up the bookstore soon, so I won’t linger either,” she said. “Thank you for your hospitality. I’ll give you a call soon.”
“Why does that sound like a kiss-off?” Victoria put her hot chocolate aside and wrinkled her nose.
“It’s not,” Rémi said from the sidelines. “She’ll probably be calling you sooner than you’d like.”
“Shut up.” Dez shoved her through the door before turning her attention to Victoria. “I will call. One thing you should remember about me now is that I don’t make promises I can’t keep.” The memory of the dinner conversation with Victoria’s friends rose up between them. “Okay?”
“Okay.”
Only after seeing Victoria’s answering smile did she follow Rémi out of the cozy building and out into the sun. It was time to find some sleep.
Chapter 15
D
ez rolled over in her rumpled bed and stared at the clock. Barely ten o’clock. Warrick and his other family were supposed to arrive in town today. She didn’t want to deal with them. Not today. Even talking with Claudia on the phone the day before and hearing her stiff-upper-lip act couldn’t force her to be in the same room with the man who’d effectively ruined her teenage years with his sudden, post-coming out abortion of her from his life. And yes, Dez knew she was being dramatic, but she was just immature enough to want to indulge herself. Screw maturity for a little while.
Once upon a time she would have been glad to see him. Any smile, any time, he had to share with her would have been more welcome than the sun. When she was younger, she lived all of the father-daughter clichés. She was a daddy’s girl and loved it. He came home early from work some days just to take her (and Derrick) to the park; she rode on his shoulders through the crowded streets of Disneyland while the rest of the world passed like a parade before her; he bought and taught her how to ride her first bicycle; Warrick even helped to coach her softball team. From the moment she was born they were a mutual admiration society. In her eyes, he could do no wrong. And Dez thought he felt the same about her. He didn’t.
“Your father will only be here for the weekend,” her mother said yesterday. “We can all bear his presence for a little while. Right?”
Dez couldn’t. She left a message on Claudia’s voice mail, some bullshit about her being too busy to see Warrick. Her mother would be able to read through the lines. No need to explain further.
After her workout and a shower, Dez indulged in a leisurely breakfast on the terrace. She savored every bite of her spinach-and-cheese omelet, each sweet mouthful of her fresh strawberry-and-papaya smoothie. With every swallow she teased herself with thoughts of another sweet mouthful she would love the chance to enjoy. While the breakfast plates and pots went through the dishwasher, she dialed a number she recently programmed into her cell phone. She tried for nonchalance when Victoria answered.
“What are you up to?”
“Not much. Making lunch.”
“And you didn’t call to invite me over.”
“I figured you might be busy with one of your women.”
“Not at all. Right now I’m completely focused on you.”
Ain’t that the truth?
“Would you like to join me for lunch?”
Dez laughed. “I thought you’d never ask.”
She left the plates to fend for themselves in the dishwasher and went to make herself presentable. Faded jeans, a tight vintage T-shirt, and a big-buckled leather belt replaced the boxers and wife-beater Dez had put on after her shower. Before she left the house, she checked her look in the mirror. Hot. Available. Not
too
hungry. Perfect.
“Hey,” Victoria said as she opened her door to Dez’s knock.
The tall woman found herself smiling at the vision Victoria made in the doorway, her hair loose, a curling halo around her face and shoulders.