A MAN CALLED BLUE

by EC Sheedy

  "You don't like salad?" Simone asked.

  "Hate lettuce. Have since I was a kid."

  Simone realized she'd just asked him a personal question. Her first. She also noticed he answered her in his normal voice.

  "Nobody hates lettuce. It's practically un-American."

  He leaned back, ran a finger back and forth over the polished edge of the table, and watched her. "Everybody hates something. I figure lettuce is pretty harmless."

  The subject of lettuce exhausted, they lapsed into silence, until Mrs. Dreiser brought their main course.

  Abruptly, Blue stood. "This is stupid," he said, and striding down to Simone's end of the table, he scooped up her plate under the eyes of a stunned Mrs. Dreiser. "Marie, would you please bring my plate, some cutlery and whatever, to—" He glanced around, then back toward the room they'd been in before dinner. He gestured toward it with his shoulder. "In there." With his free hand, he grasped Simone's wrist and tugged her to her feet. Too surprised to resist, she went along.

  He towed her back to the smoking room.

  Blue selected a small table from a side wall and placed it between the two wingback chairs in front of the fireplace, and while Mrs. Dreiser briskly set it, he put on a CD from Simone's collection. Soft jazz.

  He refilled her wineglass and sat opposite her. "This is more like it. Never eat with a person if you can't see the whites of their eyes, my dad always said."

  Underneath the small table, their knees touched. She tried to ignore it. "Really?"

  Blue chuckled. "No, but if he'd thought of it, he would have. Between spits and ales, that is," he added.

  Simone warmed. "I'm truly sorry about that, Blue. I wasn't thinking."

  He shrugged off her apology. "It's okay." He ate a piece of thinly sliced roast beef. "So tell me. Do you always eat like Elizabeth the First?"

  She answered with a question of her own. "Where do you usually eat?"

  "On the deck of Three Wishes, watching the sun go down, whenever I can."

  "Three Wishes?"

  "Fifty-three feet of sleek lines and purring engines. She's one beautiful lady. We're inseparable."

  Simone gave him a questioning look.

  "My boat."

  "Sounds like a case of true love."

  "It is."

  "No real-life lady in your life?" She couldn't believe she'd asked the question, but didn't deny the tightness in her breast as she waited for his answer.

  "Around it? Yes. In it? No."

  Pleased with his answer, Simone didn't bother analyzing why. Instead, she sipped her wine. The room, the music, the big comfortable chair were relaxing. It had been forever since she eased back, let go. She slipped off her shoes and sank deeper into her seat, pushing her plate to the side. Suddenly, she wasn't the least bit hungry—except for more of Blue's voice.

  "So tell me about her, this boat you love so much."

  He stopped eating and smiled. "Never ask a man to talk about his boat or his golf score. Unless, of course, you're planning to spend the night with him," he teased.

  "Isn't that what we're doing?"

  He shook his head. "Uh-uh. What we're doing is spending the evening together. Different thing entirely. Besides, I'd rather we talk about you."

  She shifted uneasily. "Shall I use the trite line there's nothing to tell—or shall I be honest and say I'm uncomfortable talking about myself."

  Blue's eyes locked with hers. They were filled with an intense, fixed interest, and she had the crazy notion his eyes were keys, keys that could unlock secret places, opening them to the light and air.

  He, too, pushed aside his plate, his meal half-eaten.

  "I'd like to get past that," he said softly. "I'd like you to be comfortable with me."

  Simone squirmed under the strength of his gaze. She couldn't imagine herself ever being truly at ease with this man. "My life isn't easily understood."

  A ghost of a smile played over his mouth. "With a mother like Josephine, I'm not surprised."

  Simone tensed, then, realizing his words were neither sarcastic nor unkind, relaxed.

  When she didn't respond, he went on, "She's an outstanding woman, your mother. We had quite a conversation this morning."

  "I wondered what you two would find to talk about."

  "Before or after she asked me if I was gay?" he asked, shifting in the big chair to let his legs stretch fully.

  Simone let out a disbelieving breath. "She didn't?"

  "She did, and although your mother has the best poker face I've ever seen, I could see the truth about my sexual preference mattered a great deal. Everything after that was anticlimactic." When Blue's gaze deepened questioningly, Simone looked away. He went on, "She doesn't like me—or my sex in general," he stated.

  "She's wary, that's all. It comes with running an international corporation in a man's world." The evasion stuck briefly at the base of her throat when she thought of the father she never knew, the husband Josephine spoke of with such consuming disdain. She reached for her glass of water.

  "And now you're the one running the company. I guess that makes you wary, too." Blue inclined his head, idly thumbing and folding the edge of his napkin as he watched her.

  "Seems like common sense to me," she said.

  "Common sense, or a job requirement?"

  Too close to home. She started to stand. "I've got better things to do than listen to your unsolicited opinions about—"

  "Sit down," he commanded softly.

  "Excuse me?"

  He took her hand. "I said sit down—please. You're right. I'm out of line. I'm sorry, and if you'll sit down, I promise there'll be no more probes into what makes Simone Doucet tick. I'll ignore my fascination—temporarily—and concentrate on being my usual entertaining self. Deal?"

  Simone weighed the beckoning satin of the sheets in her bedroom against Blue being his usual entertaining self. When the two started to merge, her knees weakened and she sat down.

  "Deal," she said, her voice an octave lower than usual.

  "So tell me how you came to meet Nolan," he said, his tone again easy and conversational.

  She relaxed marginally. "Now that's a question I've been wanting to ask you," she countered. "You have to admit your friendship is unusual."

  "Yeah, I guess it is." He paused before continuing. "Nole and I practically grew up together—from the age of about ten on. That's about the time I started mooching his mom's cheesecake. My mother died when I was five, so Evie Smythe and her cheesecake filled a big void in my life. Anyway, Nole and I went through school more or less together, then on to Harvard. After that, with our MBA's the only bright spot in our otherwise very skinny resumes, we went to New York."

  Simone heard a delicate cough coming from the direction of the door; Mrs. Dreiser, come to clear their plates and ask if they wanted desert. Both declined and requested coffee.

  When she was gone, Simone picked up the conversation where they left off. "Why New York?"

  "Nolan wanted to act, and I—" he stopped. For the first time, Simone saw him hesitate.

  "Go on," she urged, sipping her wine.

  "I had this idea I'd be a playwright."

  "This may seem a dumb question, but if that's what you wanted, why did you go to Harvard for an MBA?"

  "Could have been because we both had intensely practical fathers and a business degree was expected of us. Although I doubt either of us would have had any real opposition if we'd chosen something else."

  "And New York, what happened?"

  He laughed. "It was a disaster. We were always dead broke—or as Nolan put it 'financially impaired.' I lasted a couple of years before taking a job at a brokerage house. Nole gave it a solid three before deciding his real meal ticket was his MBA degree." He smiled into her eyes. "I'd guess you know his background from that point on."

  She nodded silently, still imagining two impulsive young men full of dreams taking such an exciting detour. Her detour was anything but exciting. Unles
s you were into pain.

  "It was New York where you lived together?"

  "We never actually lived together. For a time, we each rented rooms in a kind of communal dump reserved for theater groupies and assorted—" he made quote figures in the air "—artists. I didn't stay long. It was more Nolan's scene than mine, so I got a place of my own."

  "When did you learn Nolan was gay?"

  "In the tenth grade."

  "And it didn't inhibit your friendship?"

  Blue was quiet for a time, as if intent on choosing the right words. "I wish that were true. That I was always so open-minded it didn't bother me a bit—but it did. At the time he told me, I was an ignorant, macho, full-of-himself sixteen-year-old, and I reacted from that bias. It might have been easier if I'd had a clue, but I didn't. Nolan was a damned good actor even back then." His expression wry, he added, "Then, one night, we got into his dad's beer—sixteen-year-olds tend to do that—and he told me. I remember he was crying."

  "What did you do?"

  His eyes slipped away from hers. He hesitated. "Kissed him off. Abandoned him with the same ignorant unconcern given to lepers in the Middle Ages."

  Chapter 6

  Simone tried to read Blue's expression, now a complex mixture of clouded memories, old regret, and guilt. She wanted to know more. "But you ended up in New York after all. What happened?"

  "A couple of things. One was my dad, the astute Thomas Bludell, Sr., asking me why Nolan hadn't come around for a few weeks. I told him there was a problem, that Nolan was into liking boys, so I wasn't hanging out with him anymore. I figured he'd agree with my decision to end the friendship. Instead, he looked me in the eye and said, 'So? Thomas, are you one of these boys Nolan likes?' " Blue paused and rubbed his index finger thoughtfully across his chin. "I remember I went red as a damned beet, then huffed and puffed that, of course, I wasn't."

  "What did your father say to that?"

  "He said, 'Then the only problem you have, Thomas, is to put a value on friendship.' "

  "That's all he said?"

  "That's it. He said he'd talk to me again after I'd thought it through."

  Simone remained silent, waiting for Blue to finish.

  "What I thought was, he was nuts. No way was I going to hang out with a gay guy. No way, at all. I stayed clear of Nolan—and his mother, for the rest of the school year."

  He looked away briefly. "I've never been proud of that. Anyway, it might have ended there if Nolan and I hadn't been enrolled in the same junior mariner training program that summer. We were both boat crazy. Anyway, the abridged version is I fell overboard during rough—make that very rough—weather, and Nole, the idiot, jumped in and pulled me out. The next day when I went to thank him, he gave me a look that would scald chrome and told me to get stuffed. He said a few other things, too."

  Simone laughed softly. "I'll bet. Nolan can be forthright."

  "When I said I owed him, he said I owed him zilch, that he was planning to take a swim anyway, and I just happened to be there polluting the ocean, so he heaved me out. Said he was afraid I'd give some nice shark the cramps."

  "Ouch!"

  "Yeah, ouch," Blue agreed, his expression sardonic. "So we talked. I'd missed the crazy ass, but of course couldn't manage to spit the words out. As for Nole, he said it was too damn bad he wasn't 'man enough' to be my friend, but he'd spent enough time trying to be something he wasn't, and he wasn't going to do it anymore, not for me, not for anyone. After his I-am-what-I-am speech, I understood better what he'd been going through." His face took on an unreadable expression.

  She waited.

  Blue went on, "The fact is we were never as close as we'd been as kids, but given our differences, I suppose that was unavoidable. But we came to understand each other better and accept each other's choices." He lifted a shoulder and dropped it. "As friendships go, it's still as good or better than most."

  Lapsing into silence, he poured the last of the coffee.

  Simone thoughtfully stroked the stem of her empty wineglass. "You gave it value, like your father said," she mused, thinking she would have liked Blue's father.

  His smile turned soft, enticing, his voice deepened as he smoothly changed the subject. "I'd have valued it even more if I'd known it was going to lead me to a hot-looking CEO with killer gray eyes." His own eyes glinted in the pale lamplight.

  Even as she chided herself for being too vulnerable to the old standbys of soft music, a quiet dinner, and intimate surroundings, his words warmed her. At this moment in time, she wanted to savor his appreciation, not spurn it. She knew the risks, but couldn't help herself anymore than a spring bulb could stop itself from reaching for the sun.

  So she smiled, deeply and fully, for the first time in too long to remember. She felt her lips curve to accent her mouth, her cheeks lift, and the skin soften around her eyes. She felt a gentle heat warm her chest. Good. It felt good.

  "You shouldn't be saying things like that," she said, but knew her words lacked conviction, knew her voice wasn't much above a throaty whisper.

  He nodded, his eyes seemingly transfixed by her mouth. She heard him draw a long breath, watched him briefly close his eyes. "You're right, I shouldn't. What I should do is go about my business and let you go about yours. Right?"

  It was her turn to nod. He was right. That's exactly how it should be.

  Abruptly, Blue stood, turned, and looked down at her. He looked perplexed, angry. "Then why don't I? Why do I keep trying to get under your skin? And into your bed. We're two of the most mismatched people on the face of the earth."

  This time Simone drew a breath, and with it a trace of sanity. "Right again."

  "You're everything I don't want in a woman—career-obsessed, bossy, spoiled." He took a step away, then back again. "And you're too damned rich for your own good," he accused.

  Simone began to take a delicious pleasure in his confusion. "Nobody's that rich," she said, deliberately goading him.

  "Add to that you've got a tongue with rasp enough to debarnacle the hull on the Queen Mary," he said flatly.

  She leaped to her feet. "I do not! You know nothing about me—or for that matter, how damned rasping my tongue can be!"

  At that he grinned, the smile coming as quickly as his brief show of temper, a smile that turned wicked when his gaze dropped to her mouth. "Exactly—but I sure as hell want to find out."

  She glared at him across the three feet that separated them. Three feet. It wasn't enough.

  It was too much.

  Blue reached for her and pulled her close. If he didn't kiss this woman—and soon—he'd go crazy. He held her by the wrists, grasping them high near his shoulders. He looked into her eyes, seeking a sign, a trace of desire, and saw only shock, mixed with female outrage at his caveman behavior, but still he held her, bringing her arms and his down to rest at their sides. They faced each other now, both breathing hard, unevenly.

  "Kiss me," he urged, his voice low, impatient.

  She lifted her eyes. He wanted them to shine into his, pour into his. He wanted to see passion, desire; what he saw was indecision, a trace of fear. What he heard was a soft grumble, half regret, half resignation.

  "I shouldn't do this," she whispered, more to herself than to him, then, snaking her arms around his neck, she pulled his head down and touched her mouth to his so softly, so tentatively, he thought for a moment he'd imagined it. He closed his eyes and went still. It wasn't exactly the kind of kiss he had in mind, but it held promise, and God, did she feel good in his arms! The way he read it, the rest was up to him.

  He pulled her close, wanting, then reveling in the feel of her breasts crushed against him. He tested the loose seal of her lips, running his tongue along it, licking, tasting until his sex hardened and ached. He heard his own groan when she leaned into him and opened her mouth. A sexual mist gathered in his head as the scent of exotic perfume and erotic woman merged to swirl around him. Her mouth was warm, her tongue a natural mate to his, and her head,
now held in his hands as he positioned her to deepen the kiss, total perfection. He wanted more. He wanted all of her, but she wrested herself from his arms.

  He stared mutely as she stumbled back from him. Her hand, now a fist, pressed against her lips. She looked stunned—and scared.

  Ignoring the pounding in his loins, Blue followed her lead, taking a step back. When, and if, he ever breathed normally again, he'd speak.

  "That was a mistake. I'm sorry," she said.

  "Say anything, Tiger, be anything, but for God's sake, don't be sorry. You're like no one I've ever—"

  She raised a hand to silence him and shook her head."Don't. Don't say anymore. There's too much you don't understand about me. About Anjana." She walked away a few steps and turned to face him, "It's complicated. I've made promises. To myself and others. Promises I intend to keep."

  She stopped as suddenly as she began, staring at him as if unsure about the path ahead, how much to say, how much not to say. For a moment neither of them spoke.

  Blue struggled to make the switch from turned on to tuned in with no transitional segue. He ran a hand roughly through his hair and caught her gaze, holding it with his. "So tell me about these promises." He reached over and lifted her chin with his knuckle. "And please don't tell me you've pledged not to have sex until you're forty?"

  She pulled her head away sharply. "This isn't a joke."

  "Okay, then fill me in. What promise precludes two consenting adults from doing what consenting adults have been doing since the galaxy spit planet Earth into this universe."

  Her lower lip trembled slightly. Damn! It made his insides the consistency of eroding rubber. He wished he was one of those new improved males who knew exactly what to do at times like this, but he wasn't. All he could do was wait.

  "I was married once. Did you know that?" she finally said.

  He nodded. "Nolan mentioned it. What happened?"

  She stared past him a moment, then stiffened. "He left." The words were bullets, hard and uncompromising. Her mouth tensed. "Josephine said I should have expected it, but I didn't. I was young, rebellious, and determined to prove her wrong. I've worked hard these past few years, but nowhere near as hard as I worked at my marriage. It lasted two years." She stopped, shaking her head over old memories. "Then he walked out."