First Time: Ian's Story (First Time (Ian) Book 1) (5 page)

I gave him the brush off. “Why don’t you
fuck off over there and give me some privacy?”

“
Nice to meet you, too,”
Danny said, giving me a raised eyebrow of his own. Then, he added,
“He’s been talking about you all day.”

Judas!
Just because he couldn’t have a girlfriend didn’t mean he
needed to sabotage my efforts at getting one.

The temperature seemed to have risen with my
embarrassment. “Well, not all day.”

There was just the right amount of smugness
in her smile to let me know that she was happy to hear that her
name had come up. She pointed to my tie. “So, do you not have any
other clothes? Or is this your park-going suit?”

I wasn’t sure I could speak rationally about
clothing with her standing there wearing very little. And why
wouldn’t she want to run around the city looking the way she did?
She looked phenomenal, especially with wisps of hair falling from
her ponytail and sweat running down her neck into her cleavage—

Eyes up, Pratchett!

“
What?” I couldn’t remember
what she’d asked me.
Clothing. Pay
attention, for Christ’s sake, man.
“Oh. No,
I just came from mass. I’m feeling a wee bit overdressed,
now.”

In the current political climate, admitting
to a religion could be stepping into a minefield. So, when she
said, “Well, I’d better—” I panicked.

“
Yes! Sorry. I didn’t mean
to imperil your cardiovascular fitness.”
She’s freaked out at your Catholicism, and now she’s going to
literally run away! This is probably your last chance, man, and
you’re spouting off a fucking thesaurus!
“But while you’re here, uh, I was planning to call you
tonight. I thought it would look desperate and uncool if I called
you yesterday, but now it’s day two, and I don’t have to look
desperate and uncool, because you’re here and I can just ask you
now.” Oh, for fuck’s sake. Just put some spectacular cleavage in
front of me, and I couldn’t form a fucking sentence. I had to look
away from her if my brain was going to have enough blood to operate
properly. “Would you like to go on another date with me? If you
aren’t busy on Saturday, I was thinking we could go on a picnic. A
legal, daytime picnic.”

She laughed and smiled wide, showing that
single dimple. “I’m totally free. And I would love to go on a
picnic with you.”

I hadn’t meant to spring the
daytime date on her. I think it popped into my mind because of the
way the sun was turning her hair into spun fucking gold. But she’d
accepted. That was all I cared about. That, and the way she was
smiling at me. She didn’t just
want
to go. She would
love
to go.

“
Great. I’ll call you this
week, and we can hash out the details.” Details like who would
bring the food and where we would meet and whether either of us had
a picnic basket. I would think of the logistics later, when I could
actually think.

“
Great,” Penny agreed. She
used her thumb to point over her shoulder. “I’m gonna…”

“
Yeah. Have a good one. I’ll
call you.”
In case she didn’t hear you the
first seven hundred times you mentioned calling her?

I tried not to watch her as she jogged off.
I blame my penis for the fact that I did. She looked over her
shoulder, and I was totally caught. Since there was no sense in
denying it, I nodded in return to the wave she gave me.

Danny almost staggered into me as he came
back. His eyes were as glued to Penny as mine were. I made a mental
note to give him the worst friction burn of his life next time I
had the chance.

“
That’s her?” Danny didn’t
even bother to lower his voice. He was practically shouting while
he pointed her way. “That’s the girl you were with Friday night?
Jesus Christ, Ian!”

A man walking past us
whipped his head around to glower, and I shushed Danny with my
hands. “Will you keep your voice down?
Father
?”

“
That’s the girl you think
you’re going to ‘go slow’ with?” Danny shook his head ruefully.
“It’s no wonder.
I
would wait for that.”

“
You’re not waiting for
anything. You gave the keys to your chastity belt to the man
upstairs.” I, on the other hand, had been freely expressing my
sexuality whenever and with whomever I liked for almost forty
years. That wasn’t something you could just turn off. And nothing
about Penny turned me off, either. When I was twenty-two, if I’d
been asked on a date by a fifty-three year old woman, I would have
been… Well, I might have tried it out, just because I was curious,
so that was a bad example. But there was no reason Penny should
want to go out with me, let alone a second time.

Echoing my inner turmoil, Danny sighed
heavily and said, “I don’t know, Uncle Ian. She’s definitely into
you. Maybe she’s got bad eyesight. Or a daddy fetish.”

That hadn’t occurred to me. And I didn’t
like it now that I’d heard it. What if she really did have a
“daddy” thing? If that were all she saw in me, I would never feel
all right with it. But, for the moment, I wanted to relish the idea
of Penny being interested in me.

I’d just assume she was attracted to my
classically handsome features and sparkling wit, and deal with the
rest should it come up.

Chapter Four

While I had
spent my Sunday in a dreamy haze of infatuation with Penny, when I
got to work on Monday, everything was still in a state of total
clusterfucktastrophe. Everyone thinks being an architect is sitting
around and designing buildings all day. Sometimes, a very, very
small part of the time, that’s true. But I’m a principal architect
and a partner at Pratchett & Baker, and when your name is on
the sign you don’t want it to show up attached to headlines like
“Office Building Collapses; Dozens Still Missing”, so most of my
job involves supervising other people as they fix all of their cock
ups. By midday, I was exhausted beyond belief. I slumped into my
office and shut the door, then went to my couch and collapsed on
it. I put my arm over my face, because blocking out the light made
it easier to pretend I was dead.

If I died, people would hopefully stop
asking me for things.

“
Knock knock,” my partner,
Burt, said in lieu of knocking as he barged right in.

“
I thought I’d locked that,”
I grumbled.

“
So, is Ingham back on
track?” he asked. When I didn’t move my feet for him, he leaned on
the corner of my desk.

Burt Baker looks like a guy from a Cialis
ad. He had shiny white Sears catalogue hair and teeth he’d
purchased from the best dentists in Manhattan. I’d always liked him
as a business partner; he was a better face for clients than my
scowling Scottish mug. Sometimes, he was too Pollyanna for my
tastes, though, and today was one of those days.

“
Absolutely. If by ‘on
track’ you mean there’s still not a chance in Hell those schematics
are going to clear us any permits.” I hated what I had to say next.
“We have to let Kyle go.”

Burt cupped his chin and took in a
thoughtful breath through his nose. “Production hasn’t gone
smoothly.”

“
Well, no shit.” I was
irritated and cranky, and I knew I shouldn’t take it out on Burt,
but he’d made the mistake of coming to my office. “This was his
team, and I don’t have a lot of confidence that he won’t drop the
ball next time, either.”

“
Ingham has been hell,” Burt
admitted. “You’re burned out.”

“
Do you think so?” I laughed
bitterly.

“
Maybe a change of scenery
would do you some good. Somewhere warm and tropical,” he
suggested.

“
Let me just hop on my magic
carpet and go to Tahiti, then.” I was getting a headache behind my
eyes.

“
I was
thinking…Nassau.”

That was oddly specific. I sat up, eyeing
him warily. “Yeah?”

“
Do you remember Carrie
Glynn?” Burt asked. I should have known better than to think he’d
just come in for small talk. He didn’t talk unless he had something
to say.

Carrie Glynn. Of course I remembered Carrie
Glynn. “Sure I do. We were interns together at the Stafford group
back in the eighties.”

“
Well, she remembers you,
too.” Burt grinned. “You were quite the ladies’ man, I
hear.”

“
She wasn’t the only intern
I fucked in those days, but I wouldn’t call myself a ladies’ man.”
I paused. “You’ve talked to Carrie?”

Burt nodded. “She isn’t with Stafford
anymore. Got into the hotel business. And she wants a good, sturdy
firm to work with her on a new resort.” He gave me a moment to let
his words land.

“
She’s looking at our firm?”
I asked, though the answer seemed obvious. Burt’s flair for the
dramatic could wring these conversations into half-hour
meetings.

He nodded. “You could lead the team on this.
It’s going to require temporary relocation, but if either of us are
going to do it, it would have to be you.”

“
And we certainly can’t send
Kyle.” The thought of spending some time in the Bahamas had its
appeal.

“
Carrie is based out of
Madrid these days—”

“
That’s posh, isn’t
it?”

Burt laughed. “I’m not complaining if she
wants to send some of that posh money our way. As I was saying,
she’s based in Madrid, but she’ll be in New York at the end of
November. Maybe, in the meantime, you could get in touch with her
and talk about her plans.”

“
Yeah, not a problem.” It
would be nice to catch up with Carrie, anyway. Even if I didn’t end
up helming the project, we’d always been friendly, so I could
certainly lend the benefit of that tenuous connection to the
firm.

“
Great.” Burt got up and
headed to the door, then paused and said, “Take it easy on Kyle. He
fucked up, but at least he knows how he fucked up and how to fix
it.”

I nodded. “I’ve been a bit a prick of to
him. I’ll back off.”

“
Good.”

After Burt left, I set the alarm on my phone
for a ten-minute nap, then lay back down and thought about palm
trees and warm white sand.

* * * *

I’d never
realized how much planning went into a picnic, but I’m sure we
could have launched a manned space flight with less. I was all
right with this; it gave me a chance to talk to Penny
more.

Central Park on a Saturday in August was a
ridiculous place and time for a date, but we’d agreed to meet at
two o’clock, across the pond from the castle. You couldn’t get more
romantic than that.

I’d managed to get a perfect spot to lay out
our picnic blanket and set down the basket by the time Penny rang
my phone. “I have managed to get us the perfect spot,” I answered.
“But you’ve got to act fast. There are some sinister-looking
hipsters nearby, and they’ve got anti-capitalist literature.”

She giggled, and I could hear her smile
through the phone. “I am in the general vicinity. Stand up, so I
can find you.”

I frowned. “I am standing up. Where are
you?”

I startled at the tap on my shoulder, and
when I turned, Penny stood behind me, wearing that smile I’d just
imagined. She held up the paper bag she carried by the handles.
“Fruit and water, as requested.”

“
Something so you don’t have
to touch the grass,” I said, repeating her words from our
conversation earlier in the week. “And sandwiches.”

She’d worn her hair in a ponytail that was
one big, sleek curl cascading from the back of her head, and just a
little makeup. Living with Gena had taught me an important lesson
about women and makeup: when men thought they weren’t wearing any,
they often were. We were just bad at noticing, or we expected them
to look gorgeous all the time.

Not that Penny wouldn’t look gorgeous, even
if she had the flu.

“
You look very pretty,” I
told her, because if I’d said what I was really thinking, she’d
probably have taken out a restraining order.

She beamed up at me. “Thanks. You look good,
too. I like that you ditched the undertaker look.”

“
Undertaker?” I’d certainly
dressed down for the occasion, in jeans and a linen button-down
with the sleeves pushed up, but I didn’t think it made my suit seem
mortician-ish. “That’s a bit harsh, isn’t it?”

“
Nah. Sometimes, the
undertaker look is sexy.”

Jesus. She must have had terrible eyesight
to apply that adjective to me.

On impulse, I gave her a one-armed hug.
“Let’s sit down. It’s been a battle to not eat both of these
sandwiches myself.”

“
Well, you wouldn’t have had
any water, so you would have gotten thirsty.” She leaned against my
side, so my hug instinct had been correct. She sat on the blanket
and arranged the skirt of her pretty yellow sundress around her
legs. The dress was the kind that had straps that tied at the
shoulders. I’ve never understood how women had the courage to wear
things like that out into a world full of awful, handsy
men.

“
So, I brought strawberries
and peaches,” she said, pulling fruit from the bag. She held up a
nectarine and frowned. “I thought I got peaches. Live and
learn.”

“
In this case, learn the
difference between peaches and nectarines.” I snagged it from her.
“I like these better, anyway.”

“
Show me the goods. You’ve
been bragging up these sandwiches all week.” She reached for the
picnic basket and positioned it between us.