Asking for Trouble (23 page)

Alyssa paced the living room on a Friday night several weeks
later. Around the couch to the kitchen entrance, a U-turn and on to the front
door, then around the couch again. And repeat.

She’d got the text forty-five minutes earlier—
after
she’d spent a half-hour trying on
and discarding clothes until she’d settled, as she’d known she would all along,
on the red sweater and skirt she’d been wearing when Joe had picked her up on
his motorcycle. Her club clothes, and she’d gone ahead and worn her cutout
ankle-strap heels too, because she loved them. She couldn’t walk too far in
them, but she was pretty sure she wouldn’t have to, because Joe was never going
to make her hike halfway across the City to his car.

She’d made up her eyes so they were huge and mysterious,
kept her lips understated, because they were full enough without help, and she
didn’t want to look like a vampire. She’d bent from the waist and stood up
again so her hair was just-enough disheveled. She’d looked in the full-length
mirror in her room, turned and twisted and nodded with satisfaction. A little
bit wild, and a whole lot naughty. Joe was going to like it. He was going to
love
it.

And then she’d got the text.
Sorry late. Emergency. Half hour.

Forty-five minutes now. She was hungry, but she was worried
too. What was the emergency? She’d texted him back at the time with
Hope all OK see you then,
and that was
the last she’d heard. Finally, she fished her phone out of her little date
purse and called him.

“Hi,” she heard right away. “Sorry. I’m almost done. I’ll be
there.”

“What? Almost done with what? What happened?”

 
“Problem with this app. I need to get a
guy started on it tomorrow, and I’ve got to work it out.”

“Wait a second,” she said, feeling
her heart rate kicking up a fatal few notches. “Hold on. The crisis is
work,
on
Friday night?
Nobody’s dying? Nobody’s even
bleeding?”

The sigh came right over the line.
“No. But I have to get this done first. I’m sorry.”

“You’re still there. You haven’t
even left the office.”

“No, but . . . almost. I’ll be
there soon.”

“Right. You’re busy. Then I guess
you shouldn’t have asked me out.”

She didn’t wait for an answer. She
hung up on him.

Sherry came out of the kitchen.
“Joe not here yet?”

“No.” Alyssa shoved the phone back
into her bag. “I’m going out,” she decided.

“Uh . . . by yourself?”

“You want to come?”

“Nah. Sorry. I’m in
pajamas-and-popcorn mode tonight. Too hard to get dressed again.”

Alyssa nodded jerkily. That would
have been fine with her too, if that had been the
plan.
She went into the kitchen and ate a bowl of cereal standing
up, because she really was too hungry not to, and the whole time she was doing
it, she was getting madder. She brushed her teeth again, reapplied her
lipstick, called a cab. And she went out.

Joe was swearing at himself.
Stupid. Idiot.
When he’d found the bug,
he’d thought it would be quick. Had felt the urgency of fixing it, like always,
had been glad he’d remembered to text Alyssa. A niggle of uncertainty had troubled
him while he was doing it, but getting the work done, right the hell now, was
too deeply ingrained in him, his fingers itching to get back to it, his brain
making a connection right then, even as he texted, that had him turning back to
the computer.

But when she’d called, he’d
realized that he should have listened to the niggle. Because he’d screwed up. He’d
screwed up bad.

He’d logged off, ridden home,
showered and changed in about ten minutes flat, climbed into the Audi and
headed for her apartment. Endured frustrating minutes of circling for a parking
space, until he gave it up and parked in front of a hydrant. A ticket seemed
like the least of his worries.

He walked fast to her building,
pressed the doorbell, and waited.

Sherry’s voice on the intercom.
“Yes?”

“It’s Joe,” he said. “Here for
Alyssa.”

“You’d better come up.” The buzz
came, and he was inside, and up the stairs.

No Alyssa at the door. Sherry
instead, in her pajamas.

“She isn’t here,” she said,
looking not very happy with him at all, not even asking him in. “Seems her date
stood her up, so she went out by herself.”

“I didn’t stand her up,” Joe tried
to explain. “I just got held up.”

“Uh-huh. Well, good luck telling
her that. Women are funny that way. When the guy doesn’t show, they tend to think
he doesn’t care that much, you know?”
 

“I—” Joe stopped. He had a
feeling he needed to save the explaining for Alyssa. “Where did she go?”

Sherry shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Well, can you guess?” He blew out
a breath, tried not to sound impatient. “Please,” he added. “Can you guess? Did
she say anything?”

Sherry still looked reluctant, but
she answered. “I think probably wherever you guys were planning to go. You were
going to some jazz club, right?”

“Right.”

Another shrug. “Then that’s it.
That’d be my guess. She probably went to some jazz club.”

“But why would she go by herself?”
He was still confused.

“You really don’t know women, do
you?” She was looking at him with a little pity now, and if she’d ever had a
thing for him, he had a feeling the thing was gone. “She’s showing you. My
guess is, she’s out there where she was going to be with you. She’s dancing
with other guys instead of you. She’s showing you.”

She was in the third place he
tried, a good hour later. The Boom Boom Room. He’d headed to the front of the
line, nodded to the guy on the door. “Hey, Marcus.”

“Hey, Joe. How you doin’?” A gold
tooth shone in the smile as Marcus held out a hand. Joe shook, slid the fifty
into the broad palm, and it was in Marcus’s pocket in one quick move, even as Marcus
lifted the velvet rope and moved his bulk out of the way.

Inside, Joe’s ears were assailed
by the sound of a live band in full swing, the babble of dozens of voices
shouting to be heard, the whir of the huge fan cooling the dancers on the packed
floor. He scanned the bar, the groups perched on stools or standing with drinks
in hand. No Alyssa. He moved closer to the noise, the action, prowled back and
forth, searching the dimly lit dance floor, the couples shifting and moving,
the light picking out first one group, than another.

He was about to give it up as yet
another dead end when he saw her. Dancing with her eyes half-closed, her head
tossing, her body swaying, looking like a wet dream in that damn red sweater.
And the guy opposite her looking like he’d hit the jackpot.
His
eyes weren’t half-closed.

Joe began to push a path through
the crowd of dancers as the song ended. From the vantage point of his height,
he could see Alyssa saying something to the guy, heading off the floor, only to
be intercepted by somebody else, somebody he guessed she’d been talking to
earlier, because New Guy touched her shoulder, smiled, put his hand on her back
to turn her onto the floor, and she was smiling back, tossing her hair, and Joe
was burning.

She caught sight of Joe as he
twisted and shoved his way through the crowd, packed ever more tightly as he
got closer to the stage. Her eyes widened as they met his, then she turned her
back on him, did a wriggle and a shake, her elbows up over her head, her hands waving
like some kind of welcome sign, and her partner was moving closer, his eyes
avid, reaching out a hand and grabbing a hip, and Joe had reached his limit.

He got to them, finally. The band
was loud up here, and they were near the fan, and it was blowing Alyssa’s
skirt, her hair, and the music was pumping.

She turned, glanced at him, then
deliberately away, and kept dancing. And the guy with her, if possible, looked
even less welcoming than she did, his hand tightening on her hip, and Joe
wanted to deck him
now.

“Alyssa.”

“Go away.” He couldn’t hear her,
but he got the message anyway.

“Come on.” He grabbed her hand,
pulled her away from her new friend. “Outside.”

“Hey. Back off, buddy,” the other
guy said, and Joe could hear that just fine, and Alyssa was pulling her hand
out of his.

“No,” Joe said. “You back off.
Right now.” And in case the guy couldn’t hear, Joe made sure he got his point
across.

The guy glared back at him, and
Joe didn’t think he’d made it onto his Christmas card list. But he backed off
all the same, melted right into the crowd. So much for his chivalrous impulses.
 

“Go
away,”
Alyssa said again, almost loud enough for him to hear this
time. “Leave me
alone.”

“Alyssa. Come on. Talk to me.” He
wanted to grab her again, but he didn’t. He might not know women, but he knew
Alyssa. He jerked his head toward the door. “Come on. Now.”

She came with him, maybe
reluctantly, but she came.

“Got a coat?” he asked when they
were near the exit, the music not quite as loud. She fished in her purse,
handed him the ticket, and he went to the coat-check and retrieved it, handed
it to her.

Marcus raised an eyebrow when Joe
hit the door again. And then he saw Alyssa, and the tooth flashed again. “Hey,
brother. Have a good night.”

Joe barely noticed. He had
Alyssa’s elbow, was leading her around the corner, to the alley that led to the
back entrance. Although he had absolutely no idea what he was going to say.

“You’re going to make this about
me,” she said as soon as he’d turned the corner, once they were in the alley.
Next to the dumpsters. First he’d stood her up, now he was taking her for a
chat by the
dumpsters.
And this was
the guy she’d spent fifteen years wanting? “You’re going to make it like I did
something wrong.” She twisted her elbow out of his grip. “I’m
on
my date.
I
showed up. It’s not my fault I’m here alone.”

“Alyssa. Wait,” he commanded, and
she shut up, but she glowered at him all the same.

“I’m waiting,” she said when he
just stood there. “But what comes out of your mouth had better be an apology.”

“I’m sorry,” he burst out. “All
right, I’m sorry. I screwed up. I’m just so . . .” He broke off, shrugged, a
heavy, helpless movement, and despite her hurt and anger, she could see him.
She could
feel
him. “It’s just always
been so important to get it done.”

“But don’t you
see?”
she tried to tell him. “Don’t you
see that when you say that, you’re saying I’m
not
important?”

“I get it,” he said, running a
hand over his head and looking at the ground. “I do.”

“No,” she said. “No, I don’t think
you do, or you wouldn’t have done it. I was
excited
.
This was supposed to be my big celebration for the board saying yes to Geek
Day. I know it isn’t really a big deal, not like your job. I know it, I know
I’m just . . . little, but it was a big deal to me. It was the biggest deal to
me I’ve ever had at work, and I thought you knew. I thought you
cared
about it. I thought you wanted to
take me out and celebrate. I looked forward to it all
day.
More than all day. It was my
celebration,
and turns out it didn’t matter to you.”

The tears were close to the
surface now, and she blinked them back, because she needed to tell him. She’d
felt so bad, and she wanted to be comforted, and he wasn’t the man who could do
it after all. “And when I realized it
wasn’t
an emergency,” she said, “that it was just your work, that I didn’t matter
as much as some work problem, that you didn’t care that I hadn’t had dinner, you
didn’t care that I was waiting for you, when I knew I was that low on your
list, it . . .”

The tears were there, and she was
ruining her makeup, not that it mattered, because if anybody had ever had a
disastrous evening, this was it. “It hurt so
much,”
she finished, and she couldn’t help crying. She couldn’t help it at
all. “I thought I was special to you, and I’m not, and it
hurts.”

“You are,” he said, and he looked
miserable, the wooden expression gone for once. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think,
that’s all.”

“Yeah, well,” she said, doing her
best to rally her forces, running a knuckle over the corners of her eyes,
wishing she had a Kleenex. “You should have. You
should
have. I got ready. I wanted to look nice for you. I wanted
you to be proud of me. And I felt so . . .” She was crying again, because she
couldn’t help it. “I felt so
stupid.
Because
I did it again. I thought you cared about me, that you were the right guy. But
you’re not. You’re just a guy. Just another guy.”

“No,” he said. “Alyssa.
Sweetheart. No. Wait. Let me try. No, I’m not. I’m stupid sometimes, but I’m
not just a guy. At least, I am. I’m a guy who’s crazy about you. That’s why I’m
here, because I know I screwed up. I left as soon as I talked to you. I came as
fast as I could, and I’ve been looking for you . . .” He exhaled, cast an arm
out. “All over. Worrying about what you were doing, that you’d be too mad to
call me this time if you got in trouble.”

She couldn’t help it. She
softened. “You have? You’ve been looking for me?”

He reached out for her, then. “All
over,” he said, one arm around her waist, his other hand smoothing back a wisp
of hair that had fallen in her face. “How about going back in there with me,
giving me another chance?”

“You admit that you were wrong?”

He groaned. “Oh, man. You’re going
to make me say it, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. I am. I felt really bad,
Joe. I really did. You have to at least say the word.”

“All right,” he said, tucking the
hair behind her ear, his thumb caressing her cheek. “I was wrong. I screwed up.
Now will you come dance with me?”

“Maybe.” She leaned into him, because
he was so big, and so warm, and she didn’t want to fight, she wanted Joe.
“Maybe if you kiss me like you mean it first.”

He had a hand behind her head, and
the other one around her, and he was kissing her the way she liked it.
Thoroughly, and a little bit hard, and like he meant it. She had her hands
around his shoulders, and she could hear herself making little noises into his
mouth, because she was back in his arms, and it felt like he wanted her there,
and she wanted him to want her more.

She was vaguely aware that he was
backing her up, but she didn’t realize what was happening until her back hit
the wall, until he had reached down to pull her legs up, wrap them around his
waist. And she was against the wall, his hand behind her head, and the
knowledge that he was holding her up with one arm was thrilling, and what that
didn’t do, his mouth against hers was taking care of.

He shoved harder into her, and she
wrapped her legs around him more tightly, pulled him closer, and kissed him
back, her hands under his leather jacket, under his shirt, against the bulk of
muscle at his side, coming to rest on either side of his spine, then running up
and down there, her fingers reaching down under his waistband, stroking his
skin down low, near his tailbone.

“Do it now,” she breathed. Her
fingers were circling, and she could feel him jerking against her as if there
were a direct line of electric current running there, just like the one that
was zinging from her neck, where his teeth were closing on her skin, straight
to her center, making her need him inside her right now. Right
now.
“Come on, Joe,” she begged. “Do it
now.”

His mouth stilled, and he pulled
his head away, rested it against the bulk of his arm for a moment. He stood
back, lowered her to the ground, steadied her against him. “No. You make me so
damn crazy. No. Not in the alley.”

She straightened her skirt,
smoothed her hair where his hand had ruffled it, feeing bereft and angry and
confused, because why was she mad?

“You say I make you crazy,” she
said. “But you never
act
crazy. You
never lose control.”

“What?” He was the one looking
confused now. “I’m
supposed
to do you
against the wall, where anyone could see? I thought I was supposed to make you
feel special.”

She shrugged, not sure how to tell
him that knowing he couldn’t stand not to be inside her, that he had to do it
now,
that she’d pushed him past his boundaries,
was what she needed from him tonight.

“That’s not happening,” he said. “Not
here. But how about dancing? How about a do-over on that?” He smoothed her hair
some more for her, like he needed to touch her, and she forgave him a little.

“You want to dance with me? You
sure?” she asked, trying for her usual sassy tone. “Don’t you have some work to
do?”

“No,” he said. “No more work. It’s
all about you tonight, all night long. And right now, I want to dance with you.
At least, I want to watch you dance. But only if you promise to do all those
things you were doing before to make me jealous. Only if you do them all for
me.”

“You could tell that’s what I was
doing?” she asked as he took her hand and they rounded the corner, past the
doorman again, who let them in with a grin for Joe.

“I knew what you were doing,” he
said just before the noise level rose too high for her to hear. “And it
worked.”

Dancing was good, but after an
hour of showing off her moves for him, of watching those pale blue eyes leveled
on her, the intensity in them while she did it, she needed something else.

“You like me?” she asked, as close
to his ear as she could reach as they swayed to a slow, bluesy number, as Joe
put a hand on her lower back to pull her closer. “You like to touch me?”

“You know I do.” And if she
hadn’t, what she was feeling against her would have let her know.

“Then show me.” She moved her hand
inside the collar of his dark gray shirt, stroked the side of his neck, up over
the rasp of his hair, keeping her touch light. She lifted her cheek from his
chest and kissed him there, not caring who was watching. He smelled faintly of
soap, and of man. He smelled like Joe.

He had her hand in his again, was taking
her off the dance floor for the second time that night. A quick detour for her
coat, and he was helping her into it, all without attempting to speak over the
throb of music, the incessant waves of conversation washing over them.

The quiet, the chill outside were
a shock. Joe said a couple words to the guy at the door, and Alyssa saw the
flash of a bill changing hands, then the guy was speaking into a phone, and
another, only slightly smaller man was out the door of the club and jogging
down the street.

A brief wait in the night air,
then. Joe’s silence, rather than annoying her, was exciting her. Something
about the look of him, so still, so set. As if he were saving his energy.

He held the door for her when the
car pulled up with a screech of tires, then swung up beside her and was
driving, headed north, to his place. He was almost there, she could feel it
like a physical thing in the confined space, the tension between them. But she
wanted him further gone. She wanted him all the way, because she needed to
know.

“Guess I’m glad I didn’t give any
of those guys my number after all,” she tried. “Or let them take me home,
either. I bet they didn’t valet park. We’d still be walking.”

She could see his jaw set, his
body stiffen, and she shivered. Yep. That had worked.

“You’d better not have given it to
them,” he told her. “And we’re not even going to talk about them taking you
home. You need to be clear about this. I don’t care if we have a fight. I don’t
care how mad you are at me. It’s not OK to go out and dance with other guys.
It’s not OK to let them put their hands on you.”

“You’re jealous, huh? You should
be jealous.” She was just torturing him now, and she knew it, and she was doing
it anyway. “If you don’t want me to be with anybody else, then I guess you
should take better care of me, shouldn’t you?”

He’d reached his loft, because it
was only a few blocks. They could have walked, except that she’d been right,
Joe would never make her walk. The garage door rolled up as they approached,
and he pulled the car inside, and she listened to the grinding sound of the
door shutting again behind them.

“I’m not joking,” he said, not
making any move to get out, his expression hard in the faint light. “All right,
I screwed up. I won’t do that again, but I’ll do something else wrong, because
I’m a guy. You can yell at me, and you can fight with me. But you can’t do what
you did tonight.”

“Or what?”

“Or . . .
what?”
he repeated, staring at her.

“Or what?” She shrugged. “What are
you going to do, if you really care that much? What are you going to do, if I
was so bad?”

He looked stunned for a moment, and
then he spoke, the warning clear. “Alyssa. You’d better stop.”

“If you want to show me,” she
challenged, “show me. Don’t tell me.”

Another pause. “You are just
asking for trouble,” he finally said, and the intensity she heard in his voice set
up a faint answering drumbeat deep inside her. “You keep on acting like a
naughty little girl, you’re asking to get a spanking like one.”

“Huh.” She tossed her head and
opened her car door, her heart beating hard. “Big talker.” She slammed the
door, headed off without waiting for him.

He was out of the car and at the
entry door, punching in the code, with all the speed his normally deliberate
moves belied. And then he had her by the hand once more, was pulling her
through the hallway, but not all the way to the bedroom, not like she’d
expected. He stopped at the living room, next to one of the wide brown leather
couches.

“Take off your coat,” he said,
shrugging out of his own jacket and tossing it onto the opposite couch, and she
did the same with a pang of disappointment, adding her bag while she was at it.
Well, this wasn’t exactly sexy.

“Now take off your underwear,” he said,
and that was a whole lot better.

“What?” She played along. She’d
wanted to see what he would do, had pushed as hard as she’d dared. Was he
really going to do it?

“You heard me. Right now, Alyssa.”
There was no mistaking the purpose in his voice, or the look on his face.

His pale blue eyes never left
hers, and she felt her eyes widen in spite of herself as she reached slowly
under her skirt, because she
had
pushed
hard, and now he actually looked dangerous.

“Turn around,” he said. “I want to
watch.”

She turned her back to him, her
breath coming short, hiked her skirt up, pulled the scrap of fabric down with
both hands, leaning over to ease it over her heels, her skirt falling back down
around her bare thighs.

“Put them on the end table,” he
said, and she did it, the scrap of pink making an incongruous, frivolous
contrast against the solid, heavy wood, its polish gleaming in the soft light
of the lamp.

He sat down in the center of the
couch, looking a little less certain now, and she held her breath, wondering if
he was going to lose his nerve. She’d be willing to bet he’d never done this
before. Not that she had either, but she’d thought about it often enough, over
the years. And the hand doing it had always been Joe’s.