Once again she came early, set up her laptop at the head of the table, and watched while the servers came in and out with platters loaded with fat deli sandwiches and thick brownies the size of paperbacks. The brownies did not, alas, look as good as Greene’s chocolate cake.
Greene. Her silly skin got all tingly at the name, but what could she do? He’d be here soon and she couldn’t wait. Having seen and heard nothing from him since Saturday, she felt deprived of something essential, as if her lungs had started breathing only every other breath.
She wanted—needed?—to see him, and no longer seemed to care what dastardly deeds he’d committed. Bad publicity for her? Public humiliation? Crimes against humanity? No problem. It had crossed her mind, more than once, that he could walk in and show her his membership card to Al Qaeda and it wouldn’t affect her feelings one bit. So what if she didn’t trust him? Seeing him today was all that mattered.
But when the door banged open, jarring the sedate serenity of the room, it was Pat, not Greene, who flew in. Seeing Simone by the buffet table, she jammed her hands on her hips and glowered.
Simone hung her head and wished she could hide under the big table. At last count, Pat had called eight times since Monday, leaving messages with Freddie, who didn’t understand why Simone wouldn’t call Pat back. Simone had hoped she could ignore Pat indefinitely, but she should’ve known better.
Simone forced a wide smile and thrilled voice. “Pat!” she began. “It’s so good—”
Slamming the door behind her, Pat marched in and threw her briefcase on the table. “Don’t even try it! Where’ve you been? No, don’t bother. You’ve been at the office ignoring me, haven’t you?”
“Well, I—”
“Why’s that? Did you not get my message that that reporter keeps calling me for a comment?”
“I’ve been—”
“Do you not care? Is that it? You’re just gonna leave me hanging forever—the agent who can’t get her client on the phone? Huh? Speak up!”
“You told her no comment, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, but this ‘no comment’ stuff isn’t gonna fly forever, Simone. We need to sue this bastard and get the Web site off—”
Simone held up a hand. “It’s off. He pulled it.”
“
Whaaat?
Since when?”
“The other day.”
“Well. Thank God for small favors, huh?”
“I guess.”
“What if he puts it back, though? We still need to sue—”
“I don’t
want
to sue him,” Simone said firmly. “That’s why I haven’t called you back.” She took her seat at the head of the table and waited for the backlash.
“Why not?” Pat hurried after her and took the chair to her right. “Gimme something I can work with here, Simone. Help me understand.”
Simone’s urge to crawl under the table came back again, stronger than before. She was about to reveal the single most personal detail of her life to
Pat,
a woman with the delicacy and tact of a bull in the pen with a cow in heat. No doubt Simone would be dead of mortification before the hour was out. But Simone needed to talk to someone. Who else was there? Certainly not her mother.
“Everything we discuss is confidential, right, Pat?”
“Of course! Attorney-client privilege. Get to the point.”
Simone kept her voice low even though they were alone in the room. “I know, but this is…sensitive.”
Pat made an exasperated noise. “Simone!” she bellowed in a voice loud enough to carry outside and down to the street, several stories below. “I am the soul of discretion!”
“Well, the thing is…the reason I don’t want to sue Greene is because there are some…things in my past that would probably hurt my career if they came to light in a lawsuit.”
Pat clapped a hand over her heart. “Oh, no. You cheated on your boards! They’re gonna revoke your license!”
“No, no. Nothing like that.”
“Well, what’s in your past then?”
“It’s more like…what
isn’t
in my past.” Gulping, Simone decided to just plow ahead. “I haven’t really ever had a serious boyfriend.”
“Oh, Snow White,” Pat said with obvious relief. She gave Simone a reassuring rub on her back and smiled encouragingly. “Who hasn’t had a couple dozen one-night stands in our lives?”
“Uh, no.” Vaguely disturbed by this previously undisclosed side of Pat, Simone made a mental note to have the safe-sex talk with her later. “I have the opposite issue.”
Pat gave her an annoyed, uncomprehending look. “What’s the bottom line here, honey? We’re not getting any younger.”
“I’m a virgin.”
Pat’s ten-second blank stare was followed by a sputter of laughter or disbelief, Simone couldn’t tell which. Then Pat threw back her head and guffawed until tears streamed down her face.
“Oh, that’s good, honey! You had me going there for a minute with the big gray innocent eyes!”
Simone was not amused. For the first time in her life, she’d spoken her closely guarded secret aloud, and look at the reaction she got. “I don’t think you understand, Pat,” she said coolly. “I have never had sex with a man. Ever. In my life.”
Pat’s smile took forever to disappear from her frozen face. Finally she began to flounder. “You—you mean you’re a…a…”
Simone decided to help her since Pat couldn’t quite get the word out. “Virgin.”
“But you’re thirty-four!”
“I know.”
“You’ve lived all over the world!”
“I know.”
“You went to
college!
How can you be a virgin?”
Simone had to laugh. Pat made it sound as if she’d spent the night in the grotto at the Playboy Mansion and emerged unscathed. “I know.”
“Men throw themselves all over you! I’ve seen it! How is this possible?”
Before Simone could answer, the door swung open and a server came in with a relish tray.
Simone dropped her voice again. “Look, Pat. The meeting’s about to start.
Now
do you understand why I can’t sue Greene?”
Pat, whose face was now a sickly gray color, nodded so vigorously Simone thought she might give herself a concussion. “Virgin sex therapist. Your career’s dead in the water. Got it.”
“Good.” Simone patted her on the arm. “Okay. Well. You go ahead and leave and I’ll have my meeting. See ya.”
Pat stood and, as if in a daze, picked up her briefcase and went to the door, where she turned. “We’ll talk about this.”
“Fine.”
“Good grief,” Pat muttered as the door shut behind her.
Simone smoothed her hair, swiped on a touch of lipstick from her purse, and waited for Greene.
But Greene never came. For the next twenty minutes, every time the door opened, Simone felt the foolish leap of her heart, and every time it turned out to be someone else, she died a little death. Especially when Juan came as she made her way through the buffet line.
“Simone!” he cried with obvious delight, as if his life could begin anew now that he’d seen her again. “How ju been? I miss ju!”
“Hi, Juan.” She made a point of holding her plate in front of her, but a plate, it turned out, was no protection from Juan. Leaning over it, he grabbed her around the shoulders for the inevitable hug and kiss.
“I call ju,” he said when he pulled back. “Ju get my message?”
Pat wasn’t the only person she’d been avoiding. “I did. I’m sorry, I’ve just been so busy…”
“Ees okay,” he said graciously. “We talk later. Ju in auction, right? Date wit ju? Wit feesh?”
It took Simone a minute to figure out what he meant, but then she remembered her other “duty” for the auction. In a moment of weakness and/or insanity, she’d agreed to donate a date for the auction. She could hardly wait to be bid and bargained for like a slave. The possibilities for humiliation were mind-boggling.
“Oh! Yes,” she told him. “People can bid on a date with me to go to the Newport Aquarium and feed the fish. I like to scuba dive.”
A cryptic smile she didn’t particularly care for crept over his face, but then he meandered off to greet some of the others. Simone thanked her lucky stars she’d escaped so easily this time. Juan was a very attractive man, no question about it, but he wasn’t her type.
For one thing, dating him would be like dating King Kong. Where had those forearms come from? Some sort of genetically altered substance, no doubt. She didn’t particularly want to be with a man who could break her in half like a toothpick if she made him angry. And he was a little too smooth for her tastes, a little…smarmy. Not at all like…
Where was Greene?
Finally she started the meeting without him, and at twelve forty-five, when Mary was giving her subcommittee report, a server came in and stooped to whisper in Simone’s ear.
“Sorry. Alex Greene called about an hour ago and I got busy with the food and forgot to give it to you.” He handed her a pink message slip with handwriting scrawled on it.
Greene had called, then. Simone felt a foolish wave of relief that he hadn’t forgotten all about her.
Can’t come. My meeting is running late. Sorry.
Crippling disappointment slashed through her, and that was when she knew. Greene was right: there was something between them, and it wouldn’t go away, no matter how much she wanted it to. They had to pursue it, just a little. She had to see him again, and soon.
Otherwise, she felt like she would die.
Chapter 17
F
irst thing Friday, Alex pulled on his Bengals cap, stepped outside his front door and took a deep breath of the crisp, pure morning air. Unfortunately, it did nothing to clear the permanent fog in his brain. Neither did the sun streaming through the leaves to shine on his face, the glowing blue sky, the singing robins, or the fragrant white peonies.
All the things he normally enjoyed about his morning jog, in fact, only pissed him off today. What right did the day have to be so beautiful when he felt so miserable? The air felt a little cool and he thought about going back inside to ditch his nylon shorts in favor of pants, but he’d warm up soon enough and, anyway, what difference did it make? He couldn’t seem to work up a care about anything.
Other than Simone.
Trotting down the steps, he started down the quiet street at a brisk walk to give his body time to warm up. Simone’s image filled his mind’s eye. Trying to think about something else seemed ridiculous and impossible, like trying to dig a hole to China.
At the corner he stopped to decide which way to go, not that he gave a darn. Did he feel like sprinting up the big hill today, or was he feeling lazy—
The rubberized thwack-thwack of a runner coming up behind him broke into his thoughts. Squinting against the sun and stepping to the side to get out of the way, he turned, prepared to nod and say hello. But then he saw who it was, and his thoughts disappeared as if someone had stuck a vacuum’s hose attachment to one of his ears and sucked them all out.
Simone.
Still twenty feet away, she was a tiny figure with long, shapely legs in between dark shorts and well-worn jogging shoes. A dark hooded sweatshirt covered the top half of her body, and sunglasses covered her eyes.
As she came closer, he saw wind-ruffled hair and a flushed, slightly damp face scrubbed clean of all makeup and more beautiful than he’d ever seen it. He’d happily give his right arm to verify that this was exactly how she looked in bed, making love.
She slowed but didn’t stop as she went by at a faster pace than he’d have expected from someone so short. Looking up at him, her sweet lips curled into a smile designed for the sole purpose of bringing him to his knees.
“You call that running, Greene?”
Gaping, he opened his mouth with every intention of saying something coherent, like
hello,
but it was not to be. “Er…”
Her smile flashed and then she was gone, zipping around the corner and heading toward the big hill he’d nicknamed Kilimanjaro.
When she was half a block away, it occurred to his dimwitted brain that he could stand here alone, admiring the view from behind, or he could go with her and actually talk to her, assuming, of course, he recovered his powers of speech.
He chose the latter.
With a burst of euphoric energy, he sprinted after her, caught up, and fell into pace beside her with only a minor shortening of his stride. “What’re you doing here?” he asked, excitement, not exertion, turning his voice into a pant.
“Jogging,” she said, not sounding winded at all.
“Here?”
“Well.” She shot him a shy, sidelong glance. “I felt like a little company this morning.”
He grinned, unable to resist teasing her—just a little. “If you like a lot of chatter when you exercise, sounds like you need to join a gym.”
With an outraged little squeak, she stopped, jammed her fists on her hips and pouted. “If you don’t want me here—”
He never gave her the chance to finish. “
Don’t want you?
Are you
insane?
” Stooping slightly, he wrapped his arms around her supple waist and hefted her until they were eye level.
She screeched, kicking her feet, but it was a delighted, playful sound. Laughing, she smacked him, hard, on his forearms. “Put me down, Greene!”
Impossible. Light, but surprisingly toned and strong, with firm, full breasts smooshed against his chest, her body felt better than any earthly thing had a right to. Nothing had ever felt as good as holding this woman in his arms—not a hot shower, a massage, or even sex.
Nothing.
“No.” Loosening one arm, he reached up and snatched off her glasses so he could see her eyes.
To his immense satisfaction, they were feverishly bright.
Her chest heaved against him. “The neighbors will see.”
“I don’t care.”
“I’m sweaty!”
“I
really
don’t care. Sweaty’s sexy.”
Electricity pulsed between them, as hot and dangerous as a curling iron tossed into a bubble bath. Suddenly she smiled, and that happy smile was more of a reward for pulling the blog than a million dollars could ever be. Overjoyed, he threw his head back and laughed as he’d never laughed before. She laughed too, and he swung her in a circle, twirling like a child. Squealing, she closed her eyes and pressed her face to his neck.