Mistletoe'd!

by Cach, Lisa

  I tensed as I heard him approach. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, a tingle running down my spine as I felt the air move and knew he was but inches behind me. My annoyance and embarrassment of a moment before were submerged in a wave of anticipation. Would he touch me?

  His hand lightly stroked down the back of my head, sliding over my hair and setting my nerve endings tingling. He moved his hand over to my shoulder and rested it there. “I’m sorry. I only said so much because I’ve been there myself.”

  Pleasure at his touch rippled through me. I peeped over my shoulder at him. His dark blue eyes met mine with an intimate understanding that unnerved me. I turned back to the less threatening plate of food and he removed his hand, my shoulder feeling cold without it. “What did you do?” I asked.

  “Went to the party and made an ass of myself.”

  I turned fully around, and this time he was the one who stepped away, fingertips sliding into his pockets as he rested his arms akimbo. He had a wry smile on his lips as he shook his head. “I drank too much, hit on every woman there, and even sang karaoke, for God’s sake.”

  My mouth crooked into a smile. “What song?”

  “Copacabana.”

  I giggled.

  ” ‘Her name was Lola; she was a showgirl’,” he sang off-key, bobbing his head and dancing with the awkward stiffness of a thirteen-year-old suburban boy.

  I choked and covered my mouth. “Oh, dear.”

  He shrugged and smiled. “Are you going to eat your eggs? They must be cold by now.”

  I picked up the plate and the mug and headed toward the door. “I’ll nuke ‘em.”

  Two minutes later I was sitting across the kitchen table from Ian, self-consciously eating the breakfast he’d made for me. The shyness of stuffing food in my mouth while he sat back and sipped coffee warred with the desire not to offend by showing insufficient enthusiasm for the food. Hunger and truly excellent eggs won out. “Delicious,” I said around a mouthful.

  “Thanks.”

  I saw his own dishes and the frying pan in the dish drainer, already clean. “Do they raise men differently in Scotland?”

  “What do you mean?”

  I gestured at the food and at the dishes. “You know how to take care of things.”

  “I can darn socks, too.”

  I frowned at him, not sure if he was joking.

  “Truly.” He shrugged. “It was expected that boys learn the basics.”

  “These eggs aren’t basic.”

  “Why be satisfied with mediocre? Life’s too short. Everything around you should be beautiful, your food should be delicious, your clothes should fit well and feel good against your body, you should have fresh flowers on your table and perfumed soap in your bath.”

  “Who has the time or money for all that?”

  “Who has a life to waste, living in unpleasant surroundings and eating bad food? All that we have of life are the pleasures of today.”

  “That sounds like the philosophy of a hedonist.”

  He shrugged, unoffended. “And if so?”

  “There’s a lot more to life than physical pleasure. There’s friends and family, work that’s interesting, creativity, learning new things….” I trailed off as I realized I was giving my old maid speech.

  He set his coffee mug down and leaned forward, arms on the table, his dark blue eyes locking with mine. His voice lowered. “But we do need tactile pleasures; pleasures of the senses of touch and taste. Pleasures of vision. Like richly colored soft fabrics sliding against your naked skin. Candlelight, and exquisite food fed to you by a man who adores you. You need to catch sight of yourself in the mirror and smile at the way the silk of your dress follows your body, the way your high heels make your gorgeous legs look long. You need the pleasure of knowing that the man you want will be unable to keep his hands off you.”

  I started to tingle. Touch me, touch me, crawl across the table and smother me, reach your hand down my panties and… “You think I have gorgeous legs?” I croaked.

  He slowly smiled. “And a nice ass.” The smile turned sardonic. “Terrible taste in underwear, though.”

  “They’re comfortable,” I mumbled, looking down at my plate and nudging my toast with a fingertip.

  “So is silk.”

  “I’ve always wanted silk underwear,” I confessed pathetically, aware that I was trying to please him. “Well, fancy underwear, anyway, with ribbons and lace.”

  “Of course you want that.”

  “And a garter belt. And a corset that would push my breasts up to my collarbone,” I added, getting excited as I recounted my fantasy underwear vision. “And maybe a pretty white riding crop with feathers at the end, that I’d slap against my—” I cut myself off, wondering if I’d said too much.

  His eyes sparkled, watching me. “Why haven’t you bought them?”

  I met and held his gaze, imagining him running his hand over my bare butt cheek, its white skin pinkened from the crop. His comment was clearly a come-on. “I’ve had no one to wear them for.”

  “Now you see, that’s exactly what I’ve been talking about!” he exclaimed, slapping the table.

  I blinked, taken aback by his enthusiasm. I couldn’t detect any sign of lust in it. Did he need a clearer hint that there was no toll on this highway? Had I been too subtle?

  “You’re saying I’ve been too long without a man,” I tried, and lowered my voice until it reached a Lauren Bacall huskiness. “You’re right; I’m more than ready for someone to toss me onto the bed and make love to me.”

  He frowned. “Are you coming down with something?”

  A croaking noise of humiliation came out of my throat.

  He got up and poured a glass of water, then handed it to me, watching while I drank it. I smiled sickly at him and put the glass down.

  It was the lip-licking bar scene from my youth, lived again in full color.

  “You’ve wanted luxurious lingerie, but never given it to yourself because there was no man to see it,” Ian said, sitting down. “It’s as if your own pleasure isn’t worth the effort, and you can only have something nice if it benefits someone else. What about you?”

  I’d been trying to get something nice for myself just now. The hint I’d dropped had been pretty broad, and given what Lauren had said about Ian’s womanizing, I doubted he’d missed the hint. Which meant he’d chosen to ignore it.

  Ay-yi. I shouldn’t try to flirt with men. All I ever did was embarrass myself.

  I picked up my plate and went to the sink, stuffing the toast down the disposal with more violence than it deserved, feeling a volcano’s worth of sexual frustration bubbling inside me. Moments ago my body had been molten with aroused desire; now I had wet toast. “What about me?” I said, using my fork to mangle the helpless bread. “I have rent to pay. I can’t spend hundreds of dollars on lingerie that no one will see.”

  “Even if you were the only one who knew you were wearing it, it would change you. It would make your life better.”

  I snorted and flipped the switch to the disposal, reveling in its growl that drowned out the possibility of conversation. Wish I could shove you down there, Ian. Sexist pig.

  “If you felt sexy, you’d act sexy,” he said as soon as I shut the disposal off.

  I flipped it back on for a second, pretending there was more to grind. Rrrrrrr! When I shut it off there was silence. For a moment.

  “And if you acted sexy, you might attract a lover.”

  I turned around and leaned against the counter, arms crossed over my chest. “Do you realize how insulting that is?”

  He raised a brow, all innocence. “Why?”

  I spluttered. Because it means that you don’t find me sexy, was what I was thinking, but I couldn’t say that. “Because! Because it suggests that no man will be interested in me just for myself; that being smart and educated and independent aren’t important. That being a good person or having a sense of humor doesn’t matter. That sex appeal is all th
at counts.” That sex appeal is all that matters to you, and that you’ve clearly found me lacking.

  “Are you saying that you didn’t know this?”

  I gaped at him.

  “We are talking about attracting men, after all,” he said.

  “What type of men?! Not a type that any self-respecting woman would want!”

  He waved away my protest. “It’s true of all men. A man has to find something sexy about a woman to be interested in her. And there’s nothing sexier than a woman who feels sexy. She could be the Hound of the Baskervilles, but she’d have a pack of men following her anyway if she walked with a sway that said she knew how to ride a man, and enjoyed it.”

  “You’re sick.”

  He took a sip of his coffee, unperturbed. “You’re only making such a fuss because you know it’s true.”

  “It’s what’s wrong with male-female relations.”

  “I’d say it’s what’s exactly right. I should think you’d applaud such a statement,” he said, a twinkle in his eye.

  I was too incensed to let that twinkle sidetrack me. “Applaud it? Applaud such a shallow, sex-obsessed viewpoint?”

  “Yes, applaud it. It means that every woman can be beautiful, whatever her size or features. I thought that that’s what women had been complaining about for the past few decades: impossible standards of beauty. I’m saying that the beauty comes from within, from the confidence with which a woman carries herself, and from her acceptance of her own desires and her willingness to explore them.”

  I suddenly felt as stiff and prim and awkward as a Victorian spinster. No wonder he didn’t find me sexy. I had none of that. “So to get back to where this conversation started, that must mean that the secret to loving one’s body lies in buying lingerie,” I said dryly, trying to regain ground in this losing battle. “I don’t think so.”

  “Have you tried it?”

  “I don’t always wear granny panties, you know. I do own a thong.” Not that I ever wore it. “Although why anyone would find sexy a piece of elastic running through a woman’s private parts, I’ll never know.” I remembered the sight of myself in the thong, and scowled. “Foul, useless thing,” I muttered.

  “Mm,” was his only comment.

  An awkward silence stretched between us. I heard a car going up the hill outside. The neighbor’s terrier barked madly at it, the barking cut off by an irate shout from the dog’s owner. The sounds were so mundane, and my conversation with Ian had been so outlandish by comparison, I suddenly chuckled and rolled my eyes, as much at myself as at Ian. “I don’t want to spend the day discussing underpants. Is there anything you’d like to do to pass the time? I have a bunch of novels, if you’d like to read. There are some shops you could walk to, or you could walk around Green Lake. You could take the bus downtown.” I hoped he’d take one of those last options, just to get him out of the house. I wasn’t going to be able to relax with him here.

  “What are you going to be doing?” he asked.

  “Me? Oh, this and that. Hanging around, mostly.” I tried to make my day sound boring. I’d just realized that I needed to go to the bathroom, and I’d prefer to wait until he was out of earshot and wouldn’t be aware of how long I was in there. Which meant he had to be out of the house.

  “No plans?”

  I shrugged. “Not really. More sewing. Writing some Christmas cards.”

  “Excellent! Then you can give me a tour of your fair city.”

  I didn’t answer at first, my brain having trouble taking in this proposition. When would I go to the bathroom?

  It was a slow shift of gears to change from thinking I’d have a slobby, stay-at-home sort of day with bathroom privacy to having a “tool around Seattle with Scottish uber-hottie who makes me nervous” sort of day.

  But as my brain wrapped itself around the idea of giving Ian a tour, my sweatshirt began to feel like an unflattering sack, and my feet in their oversize socks were suddenly itching to be confined to shoes and carrying me about in the brisk December air. It might be nice to clean myself up a bit and go downtown. It would be fun to soak in some of the Christmas hubbub and good cheer.

  I could always run the water in the tub to mask any noises I made in the bathroom.

  “Sure, a tour sounds like fun,” I said. I’d show Ian that I could act normal and be charming.

  I could be normal, couldn’t I?

  Chapter Four

  “Is that the Space Needle?” Ian asked with a betraying hint of boyish enthusiasm at odds with his suavely elegant appearance.

  I didn’t have to look out the bus window at the tall, narrow tower with its flying saucer-shaped restaurant on top in order to answer. “Yes.”

  “Are we going—”

  “No,” I said as the bus continued past an empty parking lot where visitors on a better day might have left their cars as they visited the Space Needle or the multicolored, lumpish building at its base that was the Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum.

  “Why not?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, patting his knee as if soothing a child, “but it’s a code amongst the natives of the city. Only tourists are allowed to go to the Space Needle. It’s a mark of shame for a resident like myself to notice its existence.”

  “But it’s the most recognizable landmark in the city.”

  “And Elvis made a movie there.”

  “No.”

  I cocked an eyebrow, amused. “Yes. Unfortunately. It Happened at the World’s Fair. Not one of his better efforts.”

  Ian frowned.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I’m trying to think of an Elvis song to sing, to persuade you to go to the Space Needle with me.”

  “Oh dear. We don’t want a repeat of the Copacabana incident.” I affected a mighty sigh. “Maybe on the way home.”

  He put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me against his side, used his hand to tilt my head toward him, and planted a quick kiss on top of my hair. I was too surprised to enjoy it, and then his arm was gone and I was sitting silent and stunned, already missing the weight and warmth of his arm.

  It was less than five minutes later that we were getting off the bus in Pioneer Square, the historic old town part of Seattle. I’d insisted we take the bus in order to avoid the madness of trying to park downtown on one of the last shopping days before Christmas.

  “This is historic Seattle,” I said as we cleared the small crowd of fellow bus riders and made our way down the sidewalk. It was a district of dark brick buildings occupied by art galleries, rug dealers, and antique shops, the sidewalks punctuated by leafless trees wearing their winter gear of white fairy lights. “I know that our history is painfully short compared to Scotland’s or England’s, but if you want to hear about Native Americans, or miners preparing to head north to the Yukon gold rush, we have that.”

  Instead of answering, he grabbed my arm and pulled me after him into a gallery of handblown glass. “Beautiful,” he said. “Look at these colors.”

  I held my arms close to my side, afraid of bumping into any of the vases or bowls perched atop white stands and shelves. The colors made a kaleidoscope of the gallery, and above us hung dozens of blown-glass shades illuminated by bulbs within.

  “We need to sell something like this,” he said, reaching up and touching a golden glass chandelier.

  “We?”

  “My company.”

  I reached up and tapped the dangling price tag until it spun around. “Your company sells three thousand dollar chandeliers?”

  He met my eyes and grinned. “We sell three hundred pound knockoffs of three thousand dollar chandeliers.”

  “So not the real thing.”

  ” ‘Real’ is a relative term. It’s real enough to the middleclass flat owner who can never hope to afford the original.”

  I gave him a questioning look.

  “We all want a little better than we have or can afford,” Ian explained. “We all want to take our lives a st
ep up from where they are. We want to be a little richer, a little smarter, a little more talented or more beautiful, or possessed of greater taste and discernment than we deep down know ourselves to have. My company lets people indulge the illusion that they are rich, cultured, and possessed of the finer sensibilities.”

  “It sounds like you cater to their vanity.”

  “Of course! Oh, don’t look at me that way,” he chided, putting his arm around my shoulders and leading me back out the door. “Every business caters to vanity of one sort or another; to how people want to think of themselves. We’re helping people to feel good about themselves. We put their hearts’ desires just beyond their financial reach, then put it on sale. They grab it, and then every time they look at their bargain chandelier over their dining table, or their seven hundred-thread-count sheets, or their lead-crystal stemware, they feel like life’s pretty good, they’re pretty clever, and they’re doing all right in this world, after all.”

  I shrugged off his arm as we reached the sidewalk. “I’ve never heard anything so depressing and empty.”

  “But true.” His gaze searched over my face, as if trying to find some secret hidden there. “Most of life is a game of façades.”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “Your entire career is based upon pretending.”

  “But everyone agrees to take part in the illusion of a play, for the sake of fun. There’s no deception in it.”

  “And yet you love that deception more than you love your own life. You said yourself that the clothes of another era are magical to you in a way that today’s clothes are not. We all need our illusions, our make-believe, to make life more bearable.”

  I shook my head again, refusing to agree. “Life doesn’t need to be that way. There is joy in it simply as it is. Friendship. Love. Those are real things. Real, not make-believe.”

  “But even with those we love we hide parts of ourselves. We try to appear better than we are, afraid of losing them if they see what sorry creatures we truly are.”

  I shook my head again, even as I felt the dart of truth hit home. Hadn’t I always felt compelled to hide part of myself in every relationship I’d had with a man? I’d never been so trusting of a man’s affection that I could lay my soul bare before him. “You’ve never had a truly loving romantic relationship,” I said. I suddenly knew it was true; knew it only because it was true of myself, and I could see that same lack of trust hiding behind the perfection of Ian’s clothes and the handsome angles of his features. He wanted people to believe the façade, and not question too closely what it was that lay beneath.