Authors: Tawna Fenske
He was a very nice man. Perfectly attractive, perfectly wealthy, perfectly smart, perfectly
normal
.
Violet found her iPod and returned to the living room. Drew was just coming back through the front door, looking disheveled and a little rain soaked. Violet watched as he kicked off his shoes and headed back toward the living room.
“Found a cable,” he said, holding up a snakey black cord.
“You always carry stereo cables in your car?”
“I use them to tie up my dates.”
Violet rolled her eyes, pretty sure he was kidding. She followed him into the living room and set the iPod on the floor beside a speaker. Drew knelt down again and began fiddling with the stereo.
“Actually,” he said, “it comes with the job. You’d be surprised how much time I spend messing with sound equipment.”
“No I wouldn’t. I have to listen to it every day.”
“You get used to it. Just ask Moonbeam.”
“Hmmm,” Violet said. She stood a few feet behind him, admiring the view. Okay, so the jeans were a little ratty, but they looked soft as cashmere. Violet thought about stroking the back of his thigh and felt herself flush. Really, he filled out the jeans very nicely. The perfect curve right there—
“When you’re done staring at my ass, would it be possible to get a glass of water?”
Violet jumped. “What? I wasn’t—”
“I can see your reflection in the glass,” Drew said as he tapped the cabinet door with his knuckle. He turned around and grinned at her. “Call it even. For ogling your ass right after we met. And when you were standing on the desk. And again at the juggling store. And again over dinner tonight.”
“At least you admit you’re a pervert,” Violet called as she trudged to the kitchen.
“Certainly. Proud to be. Repressed people miss out on all the fun.”
Violet reached up and grabbed a glass out of the cabinet over her head. “I have plenty of fun.”
“You’re saying you’re repressed?”
“Isn’t that what you were suggesting?”
He didn’t answer, so Violet dropped ice cubes in a glass and filled it with tap water. She realized she was biting her lip and forced herself to stop. “Does Moonbeam know you go to the Portland City Grill every Monday?”
She looked across the counter in time to see him shrug. “Probably. I’ve even invited her once or twice, but she said there weren’t enough vegan selections on the menu. Why?”
Violet moved back into the living room and handed him the glass of water. “No reason. She just seemed to want me to go there tonight with Dr. Abbott, that’s all.”
“Huh,” Drew said, swallowing the water in three quick gulps. “Maybe she wanted me to know you’re already spoken for?”
“I’m not spoken for. It wasn’t even really a date. We were going over the books for his practice. I’m going to be doing some temp accounting for him.”
Drew snorted. “He touched your arm at least a dozen times during dinner. He shared his sushi with you. I saw him look down your blouse twice. He thinks it was a date.”
“He doesn’t—”
“Trust me.”
Violet shut up for a minute. “Well, that’s a good thing, then. If you’re right, I mean. I could do worse than a man like Dr. Abbott.”
“Sure you could.”
“He’s good marriage material, don’t you think?”
Drew didn’t look up at her, but she saw his hands go still on the wire he’d been fiddling with. “Shouldn’t you be on a first-name basis with the guy before you start planning your wedding?”
Violet ignored him. “
Chris
is a normal guy. A safe guy. A wholesome, healthy guy.”
“You make him sound like a salad.”
Violet glared at his back. Drew looked up and grinned. “Can I have a little more water, please? I’ve almost got you hooked up.”
Violet grabbed the glass and marched back to the kitchen. “So what about you?”
“What about me?”
“You said you’ve been married before. How long?”
“Two years. It was a while ago.”
“What was she like?” Violet asked, turning the tap on and filling Drew’s glass.
“You.”
Violet shut off the tap, not sure she’d heard him right.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“It sounded like you said ‘you.’”
Drew shrugged. “She was very high-strung. Divorce attorney. She wanted me to have a career that didn’t involve sweeping peanut shells off the floor and hiring men to dance in their underwear twice a week.”
“Imagine that.”
Drew turned around and frowned at her, the playfulness suddenly gone from his expression. “I like my job. I worked hard to build this business, and I’m damn good at it.”
Violet walked back to the living room and set the water down beside him, feeling cautious all of a sudden. “Hey, I’m not knocking it. You’ve built a pretty great place, from what I could see.”
Drew took a sip of water, his happy-go-lucky expression back in place. “What you could see was filtered through four Manhattans, but thanks. Come over sometime. Sober, and not screaming at me. I’ll give you a tour of the place.”
“I’d like that.”
Drew finished fiddling with the wires and took a sip of water. He sat back on his heels and looked at her. “Okay, you want to choose your songs here?”
Violet sat down on the sofa and picked up the wineglass she’d abandoned earlier. She took a small sip. “You choose. Something mellow. Something nice to listen to before bed.”
Something flickered in Drew’s eyes on the word
bed
. Something warm and dark and predatory. Violet felt her pulse kick up and she gripped her wineglass tighter. Still, she didn’t look away. She held his eyes with hers and she thought about tearing her shirt off and begging him to touch her.
Why was that a bad idea again?
You’re a fake psychic.
He
wants
to
steal
your
mom’s shop space.
He’s
not
the
normal
guy
you’re looking for.
“Get a grip.” She didn’t realize she’d said it aloud until Drew smiled.
“Right. Good plan.” He looked down at the iPod. “Mellow bedtime music, coming right up.”
Violet watched as he sat quietly scrolling and pressing buttons. His head was bent in concentration, the dark, tousled hair falling over his forehead. She stretched her legs out along the sofa as she stared at his fingers working the iPod controls. There was something oddly erotic about that, watching him push buttons and swirl his fingertip over the control wheel. Violet took another sip of wine and felt her skin tingle pleasantly as she flexed her bare feet.
At last, Drew set the iPod down and stood up. He strode over to the sofa in three quick steps, then hesitated.
“Need me to move my legs?” Violet asked.
“Unless you’d like me to sit on them.”
She grinned and started to draw her legs back toward her. That’s when the spasm gripped her calf.
“Ow!” She yelped. “Dammit! Charley horse.”
She started to set down her wine to massage the leg cramp, but Drew grabbed both her feet and pulled her legs straight. His hands were solid and commanding, and Violet went still at his touch.
“Relax,” he said. “I’ve got it. Which one?”
“Left,” she whimpered as the cramp twisted the muscle again. “Yeowch!”
He dropped onto the sofa and pulled both her legs onto his lap. He slid up the hem of her silk pajama pants to reveal her calves, and Violet said a silent prayer of thanks she’d remembered to shave. She expected his touch, but still gasped as his fingers slid over her bare skin. He cupped her left calf in one oversized palm and began to knead the muscles with his thumbs.
His hands were warm and skilled, and Violet stifled the urge to whimper. She lay back against the sofa cushions, enjoying the firm pressure of his fingertips, the squeeze of his palms, the roughness of his hands against the twisted muscle of her calf. She closed her eyes and sighed in bliss.
“God, that feels good,” she murmured.
“The four second-best words in the English language.”
“What are the four best?”
“Fuck me again, please.”
She laughed in spite of herself. “Pervert. Did you make that up just then?”
“Not bad, huh?”
Violet smiled as her calf muscle began to relax under his touch. He could probably tell the cramp was gone, but seemed in no hurry to bring the massage to an end. His touch had lightened now, and he was no longer kneading deeply into the muscle with his thumbs. Instead, he traced his fingertips over her flesh, fluttering across her shin bones, dipping into the delicate hollow of her ankle, moving across the arch of her foot. His fingers were so light, so gentle, that Violet had to open her eyes to see what he was doing.
Drew was watching her.
He smiled. “Better?”
“Mmmm.”
“I haven’t learned to decode your groans just yet, but I’ll assume that’s a yes.”
She closed her eyes again. “Yes. Oh, God—
yes
.”
He laughed and shifted her feet in his lap. She expected him to stop massaging, but instead he moved on to the other calf.
“Wonder what causes that?” Drew mused. “Charley horses, I mean.”
“The most common causes are hormonal imbalance, dehydration, a buildup of lactic acid after exercise, or low levels of potassium or calcium in the blood,” Violet replied dreamily. “Studies have shown vitamin B complex can occasionally alleviate them, as well as quinine, which has obvious side effects, and—”
“How about I just keep massaging,” Drew said. “Since I don’t happen to have quinine or vitamin B complex.”
“Okay.”
Violet sighed as she basked in the feel of his hands on her skin, the smell of rain pattering the ferns outside the open window, the sound of the music from Moonbeam’s ancient stereo.
“Interesting musical choice,” she murmured.
“How so?”
“Peter Gabriel’s ‘Mercy Street,’” she replied. “You remind me of John Cusack.”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
She gave a blissful sigh, then hoped he didn’t mistake it for impatience. “There’s that scene in the movie
Say
Anything
where he stands outside her window with a boom box playing a Peter Gabriel song.”
“‘In Your Eyes,’ right,” Drew said, squeezing her calf. “I can change the song and go get a boom box, if you want.”
Violet laughed and took another sip of wine. “I appreciate the offer, but you’re fine right where you are.”
“So when will Moonbeam be able to get back to work?”
“They want to keep her at the hospital for a few more days and then transfer her to rehab. There’s a sort of rehab halfway house near the hospital where she may end up going. That way she’s close by and we don’t have to shuttle her back and forth or make the house wheelchair friendly right away.”
“How long can you be away from your other job?”
“They’ve been good about letting me work remotely so far,” she said. “I’ve been stockpiling vacation time for years though, so I can dip into that if I have to.”
“You don’t take vacations?”
“Not much. I visit Moonbeam a few times a year.”
“No beachcombing in the Caribbean? Hiking in the Alps? Leisurely stays at your favorite nudist colony?”
Violet shrugged. “I work a lot.”
“Because you like it or because you have to?”
“Both.”
Drew was studying her with a funny expression, and Violet felt oddly self-conscious. She sipped at her wine again, grateful for the steady pressure of Drew’s hands on her calves. He trailed his fingers along her left shin and Violet gasped. He smiled and did it again to the other calf.
Maybe she
should
plan a vacation. She’d never seen Greece. She’d always wanted to go—
“Isn’t there an expression about not taking vacations?” Drew said, interrupting her fantasy. “Something like ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.’”
“If I’m supposed to be Jack here, that’s not such a bad thing.”
“You want to be dull?”
“I want to be
normal
.”
Drew laughed. “I don’t know about normal, but you’re the furthest thing from dull I’ve ever seen.”
Violet looked down at her wine, pretty sure she’d just been complimented. He slid his fingertips into the hollow at the back of her knee and she gasped.
“Ticklish?”
“No.”
“Want me to stop?”
“
No
. Please.”
He laughed and kept stroking her calf. The Peter Gabriel song ended, and Violet waited to hear what would start playing next. She wasn’t sure if Drew had made a playlist or if he just programmed the iPod to pick songs to match the first one selected. She still wasn’t certain when Howard Jones began singing “The Prisoner.”
Drew looked at her, his expression serious all of a sudden. “So you want a normal life with a normal guy in a normal house in a normal town.”
“I could do with an abnormal house. All the rest, pretty much.”
Drew laughed. “At least you’re honest.”
Violet felt a small stab of guilt somewhere in the vicinity of her spleen.
Honest.
She was impersonating a psychic to support a business she wasn’t sure she believed in. How honest was that?
Drew shifted a little, moving her feet closer to his knees. She glanced at his lap and resisted the urge to smile. Was it her imagination, or was Drew getting turned on? She couldn’t quite tell, with the fly of his jeans in the way, but it looked like—
“You can’t ogle my ass when I’m sitting down, so now you’re staring at my crotch?”
She looked up and blinked. “What?”
“You know what.” He squeezed her calf, but didn’t stop massaging. “You have a filthy mind, but you won’t admit it. You also have a master plan for your life with no room for spontaneity.”
“No,” Violet said, hoping that covered both statements.
Yes
, screamed her body.
Violet ignored her body.
Drew, however, did not. He slid his fingers farther up her leg, lingering for a few seconds in the hollow behind her knee before traveling higher. Her pajama pants were hiked above her knees now, exposing the bottoms of her thighs. Drew’s fingers drifted there, stroking, teasing. Violet felt her pulse kick up. She was breathing fast now, her head swimming in a cloud of lust and a desperate urge to be touched.