Unfinished Business (12 page)

“Uh, no. I try not to eat fish, either. I'll just have a salad, no dressing.”

“Very good, ma'am. Sir.”

The waiter gathered the menus and beat his retreat, just as Mark leaned toward Erica with that irritating little smirk on his face and said, “What are you? One of those people who believes she can fuel her body on the energy of the sun?”

“No,” Erica said defensively. “I'm a vegan.”

“You're a nutcase.”

“Just because I don't believe in eating our fellow creatures doesn't mean I'm a nutcase.”

“Yes, it does,” Mark insisted, his voice rising. He leaned across the table, eyes hard, cheeks flushed with annoyance. “Look, God made man and gave
him dominion over the Earth and all the creatures in it.”

“That doesn't mean He intended for man to
eat
them!”

Mark's smirk flattened to a hard line.

“The early humans were carnivores.”

“The early humans ate a lot more nuts and berries and grains than they did meat. It was too hard to catch and kill!”

“Well, it's easy enough now.”

“And that's the problem. Have you ever been to your typical factory farm? Have you seen how the animals are fed, treated, slaughtered?”

“I know all about it,” he countered. “Meat processing is federally regulated. I'm on the Senate Agricultural Committee.”

“Well, Mr. Senate Agricultural Committee,” Erica shot back, becoming more heated with every sentence the man uttered. “I don't see how you can know about it and still willingly eat it.”

Mark snorted. “There might be some room for improvement in the process, but that's no reason to eschew it completely—”

“It's inhumane.”

“And this conversation is inane,” Mark announced as though he were the sole arbiter of inanity on the planet. “I can't believe this. You're sitting in a five-star steakhouse, planning to eat nothing but lettuce. I could have taken you to a corner deli if I'd known that was all you were gonna eat. It's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of.”

Erica folded her lips, sealing in a dozen pungent responses.

“Well, I guess that finished our business. I hate your guts and I'd never sleep with you in a million, billion years. Good night,” she said calmly,
got to her feet and started moving for the exit with what she hoped would pass for cool and imperial grace, at a speed just a little too fast for a man with a cane.

But damn if the man couldn't move fast when he wanted to—cane or no.

He caught her in the lobby, out of the sight of the main dining room but still in the audience of the same slender hostess who had escorted Erica to her table an hour ago, a half dozen black-jacketed valets, and a few arriving patrons.

“Where the hell do you think you're going?” He growled into her ear, taking her arm.

“Home. You can eat the salad.” She surveyed him quickly. He still didn't look quite well, but he didn't look bad, either. Erica had the feeling he had to be pretty darn sick before he ever looked anything but handsome. “I'm sure you could use it. Might help to get that stick out of your butt.”

She struggled away from him, but his grasp on her arm tightened.

“You are
not
leaving.”

“Watch me.”

“You are
not
leaving.”

“Fine.” Erica pulled away from him again. “I'll just go in the ladies' room.”

“Fine,” Mark agreed. “I'll just go with you.”

His face was set in seriousness. Erica dug in for battle. If he wanted a war, by God, she was prepared to fight.

“Okay. Fine, Mr. Pervert,” she said and started moving, almost pulling him along since he hadn't released her. When they stood right outside the door, Erica felt like a 200-pound weight had been attached to her arm.

“Aw, Erica. C'mon. I didn't mean—”

She pushed on the swinging door marked Ladies and dragged him reluctantly inside.

“Happy now?” she asked.

It was huge, marbled and formal, including a separate room lined with mirrors and several boudoir chairs for the comfortable freshening of faces. Further inside, in the lavatory area, a real live human attendant stood near a clutch of towels, soaps, perfumes and cosmetics. The woman was elderly, round and Hispanic.
Figures
, Erica thought. That was the unspoken mantra of places like this. Keep the brown people out of sight.

“Uh, ma'am, sir,” the attendant stuttered in halting English. “This is de
ladies'
room.”

“I know that! And so does he!” Erica exclaimed, fumbling for her purse. “Is there anyone else in here?”

The attendant shook her carefully hennaed dye job. “Not at the moment, but—”

“Here,” Erica thrust a ten-dollar bill into the woman's hand. “This
gentleman
and I need to have a few
words
with each other in private. Go! And keep everyone else out, too!”

“But ma'am—”

“Five minutes.”

The woman looked at Erica and then the money. She shrugged and exited.

“You really are a prize, you know that?” Mark sputtered, his face red with embarrassed anger. “I'm a United States senator and I'm standing in the fucking ladies' room—”

“Don't curse at me, Mark Newman—”

“I'm in the ladies' room of one of the most exclusive restaurants in this town, for Christ sakes!” he roared. “Do you know who's out there? Lobbyists. Power players. Half the
Congress
—”

“Then you should have let me leave like I wanted
to! But no, you have to manhandle people. You have to assert yourself. Big important
senator
that you are!”

“Aw, cut it out. You know I'm not like that. I just meant—”

“I don't know anything but what you keep showing me. And that's that you're pretty damned impressed with yourself. That you think you're right about everything and when you're not, you just steamroll over any objections. Or objectors. Well, let's get this straight, for once and for all. I'm not at all impressed with you and I'm not going to be steamrolled and I'm not going to fawn all over you because you're a senator or a hero or anything more than a man!” Erica turned away from him. “Now, if you'll excuse me, this ugly dress that you don't like needs to be returned to Angelique.”

And once again, she marched away from him.

I don't need this infuriating asshole.
The words bubbled in her brain, hot with the passion of her anger.
He may be a great kisser and he may be smart and good-looking and clever, but I don't need him or his bullshit—

She had reached the door of the ladies' room when he stopped her with, “Erica, wait.”

His tone was soft, almost sad. As much as she wanted to ignore it, as much as she wanted to pretend like there was no making up, no going back, no way he could apologize or make it right, she stopped and turned slowly toward him.

“I…” he began, his eyes on one of the glossy Italianate ceramic floor tiles between them. “I didn't mean the dress was ugly. I just meant…” He cast around the room as though he were looking for the right words to finish the sentence, the words to erase the impact of what he'd said before. Finally, he just sighed. “What I meant was you'd look beautiful in
a paper sack,” he said gruffly, his eyes finding hers at last.

Erica paused, weighing the sincerity of his words in her mind.

“Look, Mark,” she said, taking a step away from the door. A step closer to him. “We can't just fight all the time.” She sighed. “And that's not what I came here for tonight. I came here to…” she paused, searching for the words. “I don't know. Find out who you are. Try to see you differently. Or maybe just to prove that what happened in your office was some kind of weird accident. But one thing I know”—she made her voice firm and held his eyes with her own just so he'd understand how serious this was, how she'd expect to be treated before they took another step deeper into territories unknown—“I
believe
in this stuff—whether you call it crap or not. I've dedicated my life to this stuff you call crap. I may not have been in a war, and I may not know how to use a gun, and I may even be scared of blood, but that doesn't mean I don't consider what I believe in worth fighting for. Worth dying for, as much as anything you believe in. I don't need to spend my mealtimes—or any time—having the very essence of who I am insulted. And if you can't stop yourself from doing that, then—”

“Okay, okay.” He sighed, rubbing his face. Again, Erica thought she noticed a slight tick of pain in his smirk as he took a halting step closer to her, bridging the distance between them. “I'm sorry, okay?” He reached out a hand in a gesture of peace. “I've never been good with this sort of stuff, and I'm way out of practice,” he offered. “Gimme a little time to get back in the game, okay?”

Erica glanced at the ladies' room door again, but there was no reason to leave now, not when the man was standing there with his hand outstretched, just
waiting for her to take it, just waiting for another chance.

“I guess,” she murmured, taking the last step toward him and entwining her fingers in his. His hand was warm and steady and strong. “I suppose we're both trying to figure out this business between us.”

With one hand—the other was locked around the cane—he pulled her against him so quickly, Erica gasped in surprise. An instant later his mouth descended on hers with a force so sudden, she felt as though he were trying to crush the words back down her throat. Thrown, surprised, she resisted at first, and then responded, winding her arms around his neck with a shuddering passion that made her knees weak and her resolve weaker. Every part of her body from her breasts to her crotch turned to liquid as she strained against him. His good hand squeezed the globes of her behind, lifting the subdued blue silk to caress the bare skin beneath.

Oh my God
. Erica shuddered, probing his mouth with her tongue, teasing him with the promise of what her lips could do. She let her hand slip to the bulge in his trousers and felt his manhood jump in response, insistent under her touch, while his marauding hand maneuvered its way downward until a finger brushed against her tenderest nub. Erica jumped with the power of her body's response.
Oh my God
, she thought again, as her insides sucked at his finger in quivering excitement.
It's been way too long.

“That's what you wanted all along,” he murmured along the side of her neck, as she let out a ragged moan of suppressed desire.

Erica stroked his erection through his pants. “What about you? Your soldier's standing at attention. You want me much more than I want you. Admit it.”

He nuzzled the side of her face, while another fin
ger slipped deeper into the vise of her thighs. “Admit you want me, first,” he breathed into her ear. “Admit it, or else.”

She wanted to deny it, but it was hard, now that her whole body had come alive. She clung to him for fear her shaking knees would give out and she'd end up on the bathroom floor.

“Or else what?” she purred, while a quiver of nervousness swept over her. The only thing he could do that would annoy her at that moment was stop the steady thrumming of those fingers between her legs. And to assure he wouldn't, Erica moved herself against them, reaching up to caress his face with her palm, watching the hard line of resolve on his forehead grow smooth under her touch. She brushed his mouth gently with a fingertip and he closed his eyes. She could feel his chest rise slowly in a deep inhale. She drew him forward, taking his lips in a gentle exploration of their softness, and then gave him another excruciatingly slow butterfly tease, and another, before giving him more, the deeper one, the one that made him groan with an urgency neither of them could contain. In a flash Erica imagined them entwined together in a big, soft bed somewhere. A shiver of anticipation swept through her body.

“I need to be inside you,” he whispered. “Let's just skip all this ‘get to know you' stuff and—”

Great
. Erica yanked herself away from him, breaking the connection of fingers on skin at every level as she pulled Angelique's dress back down over her hips.
He thinks I'm easy.
She pushed aside the fact that she'd been imagining just how it would feel to make love to this man only seconds ago. After all, it was one thing to think about it herself, and another thing for the man to simply assume it was going to happen.

“What?” he asked, a stricken look on his face. “What did I do?”

“You ruin everything, Mark,” she hissed in a tone that made it clear she was highly offended. “You just have to ruin everything.”

“Why? You're a liberated woman, right? I thought your kind didn't blush at the idea of premarital sex. You bra-burning girls practically invented it, for heaven's sake.”

Erica sighed.

“Did you hear what I just said to you?”

His eyebrows shot up in genuine confusion. “Was that wrong?”

“This could never work,” Erica shook her head and stepped away from him. “Forget the white-black thing, you're just too—too—”

But once again he caught her in his arms and pulled her close, kissing her again, long and hard. Erica felt herself melting against him, meeting him.

“Too?” he asked, and when he finally released her, she was too woozy and confused to consider him “too” anything.

“I—I don't understand this,” she murmured. “I absolutely loathe you.”

“Yes, I know.”

“And yet…”

“Yet…”

Erica shook her head. “It doesn't make any sense. The more we're around each other the more clear it becomes: We could never make this work. Even when you're trying, everything you say is wrong. Everything you do…”