When she was
younger, Erin had hated her white skin, but now it didn’t bother her. She figured
she was pretty enough, but she certainly wasn’t stunning enough to attract the
Seth Thomases of the world.
She wouldn’t
want him anyway.
“Thanks, Dad.
I’ll go talk to him.”
As she walked
over, she reminded herself that she wasn’t shy anymore. She didn’t live in
daydreams anymore. She didn’t cast herself as the heroine of stories in her
mind and then get disappointed when the world couldn’t live up to them.
She’d outgrown
all of that.
And she
wouldn’t let Seth make her feel like that twelve-year-old girl.
He glanced
toward her as she approached and then took off his sunglasses, as if confirming
that she was really coming over to talk to him.
He didn’t look
away until she stood beside him. Then he shifted his eyes to a large gravestone
in the older section of the cemetery, probably more than a hundred years old, on
which was engraved an abbreviated form of the Ten Commandments beneath the name
and dates of a man’s life.
“Checking off the
list of your sins?” she asked, relieved when irony—her friend of many years—saved
her from an onset of nerves.
His mouth
tilted up in an irresistibly dry expression. The same half-smile he’d given her
fifteen years ago. “How did you guess? I think I can check off all of them.”
Despite the
fact that she didn’t like or respect this man, she had trouble not answering
his expression. “I hope you’re missing the sixth.”
He gave an
amused huff, still not quite smiling. “Well, some people say I’m just as guilty
as the murderers I defend, so I think I can claim the Sixth Commandment
vicariously.”
There was
nothing at all she could say to that.
She looked back
at the grave. “What kind of man would put the Ten Commandments on his
gravestone?”
“I guess
someone deluded enough to think he managed to keep them.”
This was the only
conversation Erin had ever had with Seth, and she suddenly realized why he was
able to attract so many desirable women, even with a reputation for womanizing
and legal ruthlessness.
The man wasn’t
just handsome. He wasn’t just sexy. He didn’t just have a charming way with
words and a great body.
He felt
deep
.
Like there were hidden layers and vast depths that his confident surface could
barely contain.
She’d felt that
depth all those years ago in the library, but she’d convinced herself it was
the product of her silly, girlish fantasies.
She was
different now, and she knew—very well—that deep men could be bastards just like
shallow ones.
“So you’re the
sacrificial lamb sent over to be nice to me?”
She turned back
to Seth with a little twitch of surprise and was relieved to see his expression
was still wry. “Can you blame them? Everyone loved Mac, and they think you
didn’t treat him right.”
“I know.”
The mood had
shifted, and Seth’s expression was suddenly distant. He stared over to the
freshly dug grave where they’d buried the only relative he had.
“Why did you
come?” Erin asked, for no good reason.
He shook his
head, and she assumed this meant he wasn’t going to answer. She didn’t blame him.
It was a rude question, and the two of them shared nothing but an idle
conversation.
Finally, he
said without warning, “Do you ever feel like you had one chance, and you blew
it?”
She was so
surprised she answered honestly. “Are you serious? I was in law school at Duke.”
“You were?”
“Yeah. I had almost
two years there before I dropped out.”
“What
happened?”
“I got married.
His job transferred him. And I…I went with him.”
He glanced down
at her left hand, and she realized he was checking for a ring. She showed her
empty finger. “Happily divorced now. It was a mistake in every way.”
She’d done well
in college. She’d been doing well in law school. She’d never wanted to be a
trial attorney or do corporate law, so she’d planned on doing legal work for
some sort of non-profit with a good cause after she graduated.
She’d fallen in
love with Marcus, though—a high-powered business executive—and she’d believed
all her romantic dreams were coming true at last.
She’d sacrificed
everything for that dream of romance.
She was never
going to be so stupid again.
She’d thought about
going back to law school after she got divorced and moved to Atlanta, but it
would mean living on loans for years, and she was just too tired and
disillusioned to tackle such a mountain.
She wasn’t sad
or even angry about it anymore. Life sucked a lot of the time. You lived with
it and moved on.
“That was my
chance, and I blew it.” She glanced back over at Seth. “What did you blow?”
His eyebrows
arched slightly in an expression that was somehow both hot and taunting at
once.
She choked on a
laugh. “I said ‘what’, not ‘who’—so keep your mind out of the gutter.”
“The gutter is
where my mind is most at home.”
She laughed—she
couldn’t help it—but a new resonance had entered their conversation. She was
suddenly aware that this man was incredibly attractive, power evident in his
broad shoulders, his lean length, his square jaw, his blue eyes, his
astonishingly sharp mind.
Something
inside her wanted it. Wanted
him
. She felt desire, more visceral than
any daydream, tightening in her body.
Ignoring her
response, since it was ridiculous, she said, “I asked you a question you never
answered.”
Seth thought
back. Then shook his head. “There was a reason I didn’t answer the question.”
Erin saw his
eyes still resting on Mac’s grave, and she suddenly knew the answer.
Seth had grown
up without a real family.
He’d had one
chance to get one—Mac had wanted to be that family for him—and he’d blown it.
He’d just blown
it.
“I think I’m
going to get drunk now,” Seth announced in a matter-of-fact tone.
The wave of
pity and understanding for his lost opportunity for family was the only
possible reason for Erin’s responding as she did.
She asked, “Do
you want any company?”
*
* *
“You think your ex always
needing to be on top is annoying?” Seth began, three hours later, his voice just
slightly slurred. “I was engaged to a woman once who would only have sex on
Saturdays. Because of our schedules, we only got together on Saturdays, so I
had no idea she had the rule until I’d given her the ring.”
Erin laughed
hysterically, the amount of Scotch she’d drunk thus far making his story even funnier
than it should have been. They’d ended up at a little hole-in-the-wall in a
nearby town. They’d been the first customers of the evening, and the place
still wasn’t crowded, although the country music was blaring.
“Was that why
you broke up?” She raised her glass to him in a pseudo-toast, since it felt
appropriate for some reason.
They both
drank, Seth nearly emptying his glass and Erin only taking a medium-sized sip.
She didn’t really like Scotch enough to gulp it down, even after the amount
she’d already drunk.
“Nah,” Seth
replied once he’d swallowed. “It was when she had sex on a Saturday with
someone else.”
Even that Erin
found funny. “Did she break your heart?”
“It is a truth
universally acknowledged that I have no heart to break.”
She reached
over and patted his arm across the table. “Poor Seth. Unfairly reviled by the
world and reduced to stealing lines from Jane Austen.”
Seth chuckled,
a leisurely, husky laugh that made her shiver a little.
“That’s a
really good laugh,” she offered, very generously, as she finished off her drink.
“I aim to
please in all things.” Seth picked up the bottle, refilled her glass, and then topped
off his. “But I wasn’t stealing lines. My use of the quotation was transformative
rather than derivative and so would clearly fall under Fair Use, even if the
material was copyrighted. Which it’s not. Austen is in the public domain now.
They both drank
again, and Erin watched as Seth licked the residual liquid off his lips.
She had the
irrational desire to lick his lips for him. She shifted slightly against the
hard wooden chair, since she wasn’t normally inflicted with such ludicrous
urges.
To distract
herself, she raised her glass. “To Jane Austen.”
“To Jane Austen.
And all the girly movies I’ve been forced to watch, thanks to her.” After he
drank, he licked his lips again, and Erin stared at his mouth relentlessly, thinking
it might get him to stop.
“What?” Seth
demanded, apparently noticing her distraction. “We were toasting Austen,
weren’t we?” He looked around the room, as if searching for confirmation of
this fact.
“Stop licking
your lips.” Erin leaned forward and gave him her most authoritative stare.
“Sorry. What’s
wrong with that?” Seth blinked at her in slightly dazed surprise, as if he’d
realized she was serious about this. He’d had significantly more to drink than
she had, but they seemed to be at about the same degree of intoxication.
“Licking your
lips is giving me lascivious thoughts.”
“Ah,” he murmured,
slumping farther down against the hard bench and nearly draining his glass. “That
makes sense.” His eyes crawled over the part of her body he could see above the
table. “While we’re on the subject, you can do something about your nipples.”
Erin looked
down in surprise at her chest. Her nipples poked out visibly through her thin,
stretchy top. “Oh. When did that happen?”
“They’ve been
like that for a half-hour now. Very inconsiderate of you.”
“Sorry. Not
sure what I can do about it.”
“Probably
nothing. Thus I’ll try to ignore them.”
“Thank you.” Erin
thought this was very kind and reasonable on Seth’s part and decided she would
do her best to ignore any more incidents of lip-licking that occurred.
Then she thought
back to what he’d just said and added admiringly, “Excellent use of the word
‘thus.’ I’m impressed.”
“You should be.
I’m particularly lucid tonight.”
“I need to
pee.” She put down her glass and waved Seth away when he tried to refill it.
He nodded, as
if she’d made an insightful point. “Always good to recognize such things.”
Erin was a
little dizzy when she stood up, but she made it to the bathroom without
incident. After she’d gone, she stared at herself in the mirror. She was
flushed and groggy-looking. Her long blond hair hung messily around her
shoulders, and her nipples were still clearly visible. She tried to adjust her
shirt to hide them, but they wouldn’t go away.
She wandered
back to the table, grumbling about the stubbornness of nipples, to find Seth
staring broodingly at his empty glass.
She watched him
for a minute. Then, “Are you all right?”
He jerked his
head toward her, as if he hadn’t realized she’d returned. “Yeah.”
Studying him
closely, she decided she didn’t believe him. He was flushed from warmth and the
Scotch, adorably rumpled in his wrinkled suit and loosened tie, and sprawled
out on the booth seat. But he looked vulnerable somehow.
Wounded.
She sat down
beside him, instead of in her chair. “I’m switching to water. If I drink any
more, I might throw up.” This she said by way of explanation, so he wouldn’t
think she was giving up on their evening.
“Very sensible
of you.”
“Throwing up in
front of you would be embarrassing.”
Seth nodded. “It
wouldn’t be very pleasant for me either.”
Then he licked
his lips the way he had before.
Erin watched
his tongue slide across the supple line of each lip, moistening each as it
went.
She moved
toward him. Slid her hands up his chest until they settled on his shoulders. “I
asked you to stop licking your lips.”
His mouth
parted slightly, perhaps in surprise, but he didn’t have time to say anything.
She took a
moment to remind herself she wasn’t shy anymore. Nothing and no one was
controlling her.
Ever since her
divorce, she’d cultivated a number of strongholds—her independence, her
no-nonsense attitude, her career, her rejection of romance—everything that
would keep her from falling into the same powerlessness she’d felt with Marcus.
Now she could
do anything she wanted.
Leaning her
face forward, she pressed her lips into his. He was warm and solid beneath her,
and he made a little grunt in his throat.
He tasted and
smelled like Scotch, and also something fainter, more masculine.
When she
relaxed her mouth on his, he murmured against her lips, “What was that?”
“That,” she
pronounced, pleased she was thinking so clearly, “was a kiss.”
*
* *
A few hours later, they stumbled
into one of the bedrooms of Mac’s old house—a house that now belonged to Seth.
By this point, Erin
had sobered up quite a bit. She was buzzed enough for her inhibitions to be significantly
lowered, but she was convinced she knew what she was doing. She figured Seth
was in the same general condition, so going to bed with him seemed a perfectly
reasonable thing to do.
As they fell
into the room, they were already half in an embrace, and Erin started yanking
at Seth’s loosened tie.
They had made
out for a while in the bar, debating the merits of taking it any further. They
both had come up with valid points on either side of the argument.
Erin had been
draped across Seth during most of their conversation, kissing him, nibbling
little lines down his jaw and neck, tangling her fingers through his hair. And
his hands had been busy in places on her body that were fortunately hidden by
the table.