“Are you in bed?!” I asked, horrified.
“Yeah. So? You sound horrified.”
I felt myself flush. “No, not at all. It’s your life. Just…surprised.”
“What time is it?”
“Eleven.”
He yawned. “I should probably get up. Six hours is enough.”
I winced. Another creak, and then I heard him walking around. “So…am I busy tonight? No. Completely free. Hold on.”
Then I heard, very clearly, the sound of a stream of liquid.
“Oh my God! Are you taking a leak, while you’re on the phone to me?!”
“I’m running water into the sink, so I can clean a mug.” The sound stopped. “You think I’m all class, don’t you?” He sounded a little hurt.
“No! Yes! Sorry.” I was pacing around my apartment now. “Look, do you want to come to a party tonight?”
I heard the rattle of a cereal carton. “Sure.”
“It’s not a date,” I said suddenly. And then froze. Why did I say that?!
“I know,” Connor said patiently. “I didn’t think it was.” He paused. “Unless it is? Is it a date?”
I knew he was playing with me now. “No!”
“Are you asking me out on a date, Karen Montfort?”
“No!” Why did he have to be so infuriating?
He chuckled, and I gave him the address through gritted teeth.
***
That afternoon, I fought valiantly…but I was surrounded. Surrounded by giggling, over-helpful friends.
I was sitting on a stool in the center of my lounge. Natasha was behind me, cooking my hair inch by inch with ceramic tongs so powerful I knew my hair would crumble to ash if she left them in one place. Jasmine was in front of me, doing my makeup. Clarissa was sitting next to me, cradling my hand as she painted my nails.
I almost would have felt glamorous except that firstly, glamour isn’t my thing and secondly, I was in my pink fluffy bunny rabbit dressing gown.
I knew there was something going on. They’d encouraged me to get dressed up and go out before, of course—it’s the bane of all single women with attached friends (or “friends who have no problem getting dates” in the case of Jasmine). But this went way beyond anything they’d done before. I would have much rather been left to practice, but saying “No” wasn’t my strong suit.
“Did you hear from Connor?” Natasha wanted to know. “I’m worried there’ll be too many women.”
I grimaced. “Don’t worry. He’s coming, and he’s a walking testosterone factory. Give him five minutes and he’ll have one of those society girls in a broom cupboard.”
I saw a look pass between Clarissa and Natasha. “What?”
“Nothing,” Clarissa told me in a sing-song voice. “Don’t move your hand. Let it dry.” She wheeled her stool around to my other hand.
Natasha leaned down to my ear. “Last time we had a party at our place, there was some use of the broom cupboard.”
I saw Clarissa flush. “You know you called it our place?” she asked, to cover herself. “I don’t know why you keep renting with me. You could just move into the mansion and have a whole wing to keep your shoes in.”
Natasha went quiet. “Not ready yet,” she said after a moment. “What about you and Neil?”
“Neil always comes to our apartment, and I’m not ready to have him move in.” She paused. “I still haven’t been to his place yet.”
There was utter silence.
“You haven’t been to his place yet?!” Jasmine almost screeched. “It’s been months!”
“That does seem a little…unusual,” I offered quietly. “Do you know where he lives, at least?”
“Of course I do!” Clarissa was gripping my hand a little tighter than was really necessary. “It’s…in….”
We all waited.
“Boston,” she said with a shrug.
“Boston?!” Natasha gaped at her. “The best you can do is the city?!”
“You know Neil—he’s a free spirit. When he’s at MIT, he’s at his place in Boston. When he’s in New York, it’s our place, or sometimes he crashes with the bikers at the clubhouse. He doesn’t attach much importance to it. He says ‘A bed’s a bed, y’know?’”
“But does he know that you think it’s important?” I asked. “That you’d like to see where he lives?”
Clarissa went quiet, and then we all went quiet.
“Done!” yelled Natasha, breaking the tension. Jasmine scrabbled to finish my face. “Purse your lips,” she told me.
I pursed.
“What’s that?” she asked, horrified. “You look like Kermit the Frog. Pucker up, like you’re going to kiss someone.”
I tried to imagine kissing someone—not easy, with no one there and your friends around you. I closed my eyes and imagined Sven, my fantasy masseur. But I’d always focused on his body—I had no idea what his face looked like.
“Purse, damn you!” said Jasmine.
Unbidden, Connor’s face swam into my mind and I felt my mouth change. I assumed my jaw was hanging open at the shock of it.
“Perfect,” announced Jasmine, and I felt her go to work with the lipstick.
I tried to push Connor out of my mind, but he refused to move. It’s just because you’ve been so focused on him, I told myself. It doesn’t mean anything.
“Done!” said Jasmine, and stepped back. Relieved, I opened my eyes. Clarissa was blowing frantically on my nails to dry them.
“Can I have a mirror now?” I asked.
“One more thing. Get the dress!” Jasmine was barely restraining herself from clapping her hands together and jumping up and down.
Clarissa went to fetch it, and Jasmine demanded that I close my eyes.
“Oh, come on,” I said weakly, but closed them. They stood me up and hands removed my dressing gown. Then they were stepping my feet into the thing and wriggling it up my hips. I was bundled through to my bedroom.
“There,” said Jasmine. “Open them.”
I opened my eyes.
People sometimes say I didn’t recognize myself, but it’s usually an exaggeration. This wasn’t.
I’d never seen myself with perfectly straight hair before. Without all the curls and frizz I looked somehow sleeker and more sophisticated. More feminine, in a way. My face was actually on show, instead of being hidden behind a thick curtain.
I had mixed feelings about that. I liked that curtain.
Suddenly, I had cheekbones, a gentle brush of color giving me the elegance I’d never had. Jasmine had worked subtle magic with my eyes to make them look huge. And my lips, normally pressed thin with worry, were plumped up and shining. I don’t know if they were kissable but they at least looked like lips someone might contemplate kissing.
I was bare all the way down to below my shoulders, the dress having no visible means of support. It was square across the neckline and gave me a hint of cleavage. Glossy fabric the color of fine wine hugged me down to my thighs and managed to make even my modest legs look long.
“It’s gorgeous,” I said weakly. “Thank you. All of you.”
“Wait till you get the heels on,” Jasmine told me.
I had a feeling she didn’t mean my usual ones. “Oh, no….” I said weakly.
But she was back in minutes with the Heels of Death from my wardrobe. They were stilettos, and I’d worn them only once after being talked into buying them by Jasmine. On that occasion I’d toppled sideways, not six feet from the door of my building, and very nearly gone under a bus—hence the name.
“It’s easy,” said Jasmine. “They’re only four inches. They’re basically flats.” She showed me the five-inchers she’d be wearing herself.
I would have protested, but Natasha was already strapping one on while Clarissa did the other. They had me walk—well, totter—up and down the lounge.
“Keep your eyes on a point at the end of the room,” Clarissa said. “Imagine you’re on a catwalk.”
“Pla
nt your feet with more confidence,” Natasha told me.
“Let your ass sway,” said Jasmine. “I don’t get it. In the movies, the geeky heroine always gets the hang of it in a few minutes.”
“That’s a training montage, you idiot,” I said between gritted teeth. I went sideways and had to grab for the table, and the shock of it made me finally snap. “This is ridiculous!” I told them. “Why are you even doing all this? I’m not stupid—why the dress and the heels and the makeover? What’s going on?”
They all looked at me guiltily.
“It was after you got…upset about the recital,” Natasha told me. “We were worried about you. We thought maybe you needed a day off, away from music.”
“We thought…I don’t know. Maybe if you went to the party and met someone…we just want you to be happy.”
They all looked at me hopefully and I felt awful. All they were trying to do was help.
“Let me have another go in the heels,” I said tiredly. They all cheered.
“I’ll put on Eye of the Tiger,” said Jasmine.
***
I’d met Darrell quite a few times, when he came to Fenbrook to pick up Natasha. But unlike the others, I’d never actually been to the mansion. As the cab pulled up with a crunch of gravel, they all climbed out without a thought and I was left dumbstruck in the back seat.
Three floors. Too many windows to count. A gravel driveway that was already filling up with sports cars. A water feature big enough to swim in. The front door was open, the men silhouetted by the warm light inside as they came out to meet their women. First Darrell’s tall, muscled body, his well-cut suit doing nothing to hide his strong shoulders and forearms. I remembered Natasha telling us how he’d caught her when she’d fallen from the stage, and I could imagine it.
Behind him, looking far less comfortable in his blazer and jeans, a silhouette that could only be Neil. The blazer, I suspected, was Clarissa’s influence. He still wore his hair long and loose, still looked every inch the biker.
Darrell put his arm around Natasha and pulled her close. Neil swept Clarissa right off her feet and into a kiss, and Jasmine and I awwed in unison. Whatever problems they were having, the four of them still made insanely cute couples.
I exchanged looks with Jasmine: And we’re on our own. It wasn’t like I minded—I was used to being the single one. But I was glad she was there with me.
Inside, there were waiters with trays of champagne flutes and canapés, a band and many more people than I’d been expecting—at least a hundred. Everyone seemed to be either a leggy blonde in her twenties or a white-haired, rotund man in his fifties—the high society types Darrell knew from charity fundraisers. I could see now why Natasha had wanted Connor to even things out a little—it could have done with Connor and about twenty of his friends. Speaking of which…I looked around, but couldn’t see him anywhere. And it wasn’t like he wouldn’t stand out. He probably couldn’t be bothered, I thought with relief. Relief and maybe just a tiny hint of disappointment.
“What about him?” said Jasmine’s voice in my ear. She gently turned my head to show me who to look at. He was in his early forties, at a guess, with black hair dusted with only a little silver at his temples. Short for a guy—barely taller than me—but in better shape than most of the other guys there, with an ex-athlete’s physique. Attractive, in an older man sort of a way.
“What about him?” I asked. Did she mean what do you think he does? “I don’t know, is he a CEO or something? Something corporate?” I craned my neck round to look at her, and that’s when I saw her expression.
She hadn’t meant “What about him?” She’d meant “What about him?”
“Are you kidding?!” I said, as loudly as a whisper would allow. I turned my back to the man. “He’s old enough to be my—”
“Don’t exaggerate. He’s barely over forty. Anyway, I thought you might like that.”
“A sugar daddy?!”
“Safe. Responsible. Knows what he wants in life. Tell me that isn’t close to your wish list.”
That threw me a bit, because it was eerily close to my boyfriend features list. “But he’s….”
“Don’t think of it as him being old. Think of it as enhancing your youth. Just think how amazing you’ll look in ten years’ time, at 31, when all his friends’ wives are 41 or 51. Of course, they will all hate you.”
I stared at her. “Please tell me you’re not serious.”
She smiled, and I saw that she was—or at least as serious as she ever got about anything.
“I am not going to talk to him,” I told her. Then wondered why she kept glancing over my shoulder and smiling.
No. Surely she wasn’t—
“Hi,” said a voice behind me. A voice that I just knew went with silver temples.
“Hi!” said Jasmine, doing her big-eyed, honored-just-to-speak-to-you look. “I’m Jasmine. This is Karen.”
“I am going,” I said between gritted teeth, “to kill you.” And then, because I was too polite to do anything else, I turned around and smiled at him, just as Jasmine knew I would.
“Kurt Barker-Ross.” I got the impression that I was meant to react to that, but I had about as much knowledge of New York high society as Neil did. I settled for nodding politely.
“Karen’s a musician,” Jasmine told him. Then, before I could stop her, “A cellist.”
I saw him do the thing. The instinctive reaction all men have when they find out you play the cello. He stared at me, and I knew he was picturing me with my legs spread. I saw a smile touch the corners of his lips and could feel myself bristling.
“Let me get you another one of those,” Kurt said, taking my glass.
As he turned to pluck a full one from a waiter’s tray, Jasmine whispered in my ear. “Be nice! Maybe he’ll ask you to play in his basement, like Natasha!”
“That was completely different!” I whispered. But then Kurt was handing me a full glass and, to my horror, Jasmine excused herself and left.
Kurt smiled at me, and I told myself that maybe this wouldn’t be so bad. I had no intention of dating him, let alone sleeping with him, but everyone was always telling me I needed to get out more. If I could brace myself and carry on a conversation like a normal human being, even if I didn’t particularly like the guy, that was good practice. Right?
“You’re lovely, Karen.” said Kurt.
That threw me a little. “…right. Okay. Thank you.”
“Do I shock you? Not everyone can admit that they like a man who’s direct. But deep down, a lot of women like that. Do you, Karen?”
“Um…” I looked around the room for Natasha, or Clarissa. Knowing Jasmine, she’d spirited them away to “Give us some time alone together.”
He stepped closer. “I think you do.” His voice became very slow and deliberate, emphasizing certain words. “I think…you want a man”—and his hand turned to point almost casually at his own chest—“who knows how to give you what you want.” It felt like he was trying to hypnotize me. He was staring straight into my eyes without blinking and it wasn’t “intense” or “entrancing”—it was just creepy.
“I think you read certain books,” he said, “and you wonder if men like me—CEOs—are really like that. If power in the boardroom translates to power in the bedroom. Well let me tell you…yes it does.”
“Okay,” I said, stepping back. “I think—”
He stepped close again, thrusting his face right up to mine. “Have you ever had a man withhold an orgasm from you, until you were crying and begging to come?”
“Yes,” said Connor. “But only when she’s been very, very bad.”
He stepped between us, a protective wall of muscle and attitude. Kurt had to crane his neck to look him in the eye.
“I’m—” Kurt said.
“Leaving.” Connor told him, with exactly the sort of authority Kurt had been trying for.
Kurt suddenly saw something of great interest across the room and went to l
ook at it.
Connor turned to me. “Isn’t that three times I’ve saved you?”
“What makes you think I needed saving?” I said hotly.
“You wanted Fifty Shades of Gray…Hair?”
“I don’t think what I want need be any concern of yours, Connor.”
“I’m serious, you know.”
He sounded so sincere that I took him seriously, for a second. “About what?”
“I’d let you come. Unless you were really bad.”
I stalked away, leaving him smirking. My face was hot, a point between my shoulder blades tingling as I felt his gaze there. In the next room, I ran into Natasha.
“Having a good time?” She was smirking, too. Jasmine must have told her about leaving me with Kurt.
“Spectacular. I have a contract I’m going to need a lawyer to look over, and then I’ll be needing some handcuffs and a blindfold.”
“What?!”
“Where’s Jasmine? I need to kill her.”
“Outside, flirting with a waiter. Hey, could you do me a favor and see what’s keeping Darrell? I sent him down to his workshop to fetch an extra folding table and he’s disappeared.”
I suspected she was just giving me time to cool off, but maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea. I needed a few deep breaths before I saw Jasmine…or Connor.
In the elevator on the way down, my traitorous mind went straight back to Connor. I was glad he’d showed up, even if I’d never admit it to him. But why did he have to be such a jerk? Why all the jokes about sleeping with me?
The doors opened, and the first thing I saw was the polished wooden stage Darrell had installed for Natasha when she’d starting dancing for him. I hadn’t appreciated how big it was…or, as I stepped out and looked around, just how big the basement was. I tried to imagine the two of them down here: Natasha jumping and pirouetting up on the stage, Darrell watching her, the two of them gradually falling in love…although from what she’d told me, there hadn’t been much gradual about it. Was that why they were having problems now, because they’d plunged in so fast?
I looked down the length of the room, seeing what I took to be workbenches and heavy machinery. I had to guess at most of them, because everything was covered in dust sheets. He really had stopped, then, this man who’d been driven to the point of burnout by his work. That was good…right?
In Harmony Page 8
