“Good morning,” she says softly.
“Good morning. Did you sleep well?”
“Mmm.” She stretches, which is the right thing to do because she shifts her weight just enough to bring her body fully against mine. She feels my erection—the way it’s responding, she’d have to be on another continent not to—and her smile turns to one of artful innocence. “And what, exactly, is that?”
I move against her. “This?” I say innocently.
“Uh huh. That.”
“It’s a present.”
Bailey bats her lashes. Amazing. The night has turned my virgin into a temptress.
“For me?”
“For me too.”
“A present for both of us? I don’t understand.” She understands, all right. I love that she’s teasing me, that her voice has gotten a little hoarse.
“Well,” I say, “let me see if I can show you.”
I move again. She makes a soft, sexy sound and her thighs fall open. I rise to my knees.
Her clit is pink and delicate and waiting for my touch, and I oblige. I take my dick in my hand, lean forward and rub the head of it up and down, up and down, slowly, slowly against her.
Her eyes darken; she catches her breath.
“We can do this,” I tell her. “Unless you don’t like it,” I say and I start to pull back.
Bailey wraps her legs around me.
“You’re a cruel man, Matthew O’Malley,” she whispers. “Trying to keep that present all for yourself.”
I laugh.
Then I stop laughing. I bend down and claim her mouth, and I slide into her, into all that welcoming heat and silky dampness, and we don’t do anymore talking for a long, long time.
* * *
The rain is determined to spoil Vigilant Violet’s plans for the day.
She’s had the hours between now and the wedding all worked out. Meals and activities at the country club. Bailey is reading the info to me from what looks like a timetable embossed with the names of the bride and groom as well as that golden dove.
Today, he isn’t winking. He’s smiling. So am I. My woman is sitting cross-legged in the center of our bed, snug within my encircling arms.
“Let’s see,” she says. “It’s, what, ten o’clock?”
“Mmm,” I say, nuzzling a loop of curls away from her throat. Her skin is warm and fragrant from the bath we took a little while ago in that soaking tub. No actual sex that time. My Bailey is a little sore, so I introduced her to what a creative couple can do with hands and fingers, mouths and tongues.
She turns out to be a wonderfully fast learner.
“So we’ve already missed breakfast. Or—” Her tone goes all dramatic and she takes on a French accent. “Or, Monsieur, perhaps I should say we have missed Le Petit Déjeuner.”
“You’re joking.”
She lifts the page and holds it up so I can read it. “Nope. The meals—breakfast, lunch, dinner—are all listed in French.”
“Because?”
“Because Vi wants it that way, I guess.”
“Is she French?”
Bailey laughs.
“Is Chester?”
She laughs again. I laugh too, even as I reach under the shirt she’s wearing—my shirt, unbuttoned—and cup her breasts.
“What about these, mademoiselle? Are these French?”
She leans her head back against my shoulder. “I love when you do that,” she murmurs as I feather my thumbs over her nipples.
“And a very good thing you do,” I say, kissing the side of her throat, “because I love doing it.”
She tilts her face up to mine and we kiss. It’s a long kiss, and wonderfully tender. In fact, everything about the last hour has been tender. The way I hold her. The way I kiss her. The way she smiles at me. Touches me. Have I ever shared so many tender moments with a woman before? Have I ever shared moments I’d describe as tender at all?
I don’t think so, and the knowledge rocks me.
It also scares the crap out of me, and a little voice in my head starts telling me it’s probably time to get out of this bed, out of this room, and join the real world.
“So,” I say briskly, “what were the If it rains plans for this morning? Knowing your cousin, I’m sure there were some.”
“Well, people were on their own for breakfast.”
I nod. “Find the local McD’s and chow down.”
Bailey laughs. “Or something.”
That’s what we did. The or something part. It’s why we should get out of here now. I start to suggest that. Instead, I hear myself ask about lunch.
“Rain alternative,” she says. “Meet at the clubhouse. Have lunch in the dining room.”
“Excellent idea. Lunch at the clubhouse.”
Bailey turns in my arms. She drops the schedule and puts her arms around my neck. “Actually, it really is an excellent idea. I don’t know about you, but I’m starved.”
I am too, but with Bailey looking up at me, her eyes glittering, her lips curved in a soft smile, the plan to get out and mingle loses appeal.
“Or,” I say, “we could stay right where we are. Order in.”
“The inn doesn’t have a kitchen.”
I tip her face up. “We passed a famous Italian restaurant on our way here yesterday.”
She wrinkles her brow. “A famous Italian restaurant? Are you sure?”
“Am I sure, the woman asks. Of course I’m sure. It was a little place, right on Main Street. Dom-Een-Oh’s.”
“DomEen…?” Bailey laughs. “Domino’s.”
I grin as I lean my forehead against hers. “Garlic? Black olives? Extra cheese?”
“And broccoli.”
Jesus. Broccoli? I smile and manage to repress a shudder. “Oui, mademoiselle. I was going to ask for snails, but broh-coh-lee is better.”
“I thought this was an Italian restaurant, monsieur.”
I grin. “Italian, French, what’s the difference?”
“You’re right. But no snails. I’ve always preferred frog’s legs on my pizza,” she says. Then she rolls her eyes, jabs her finger at her open mouth and makes the most impressive gagging sounds I’ve heard since sixth grade.
In the end, she takes pity on me, maybe because she’s sitting in my lap when I phone in our order and she sees the look on my face as I start to say broccoli.
“Forget the broccoli,” she whispers, and I take time out of placing the order to drop a quick kiss on her lips.
The pizza arrives. We open the champagne we never got to last night, we eat in bed, and it’s more of a feast than good old Violet and the best chef in Paris could ever have concocted.
16
The rain stops in mid-afternoon.
We shower. And, yes, we find a way to put that teak bench in the shower stall to excellent use. Then I put on jeans, a pale blue shirt with a button-down collar and the sleeves rolled up, and my roper boots. Bailey slips into a pair of jeans that make the most of her delectable hips and ass, tops the jeans with a floaty silver thing, and puts on another pair of mules. These are silver. Or maybe gray. Whatever you call them, they’re the perfect finishing touch.
She looks sexy enough for Manhattan and casual enough for a country club, which is where we’re heading.
Tea on the lawn at 3:30, the schedule reads, though we figure that has to be problematic considering all the rain.
Wrong.
The grass is soaked, but the tea party is still on.
A couple of steps and Bailey’s spiked heels sink into the ground like tent stakes the time my Scout troop went camping too close to a New Jersey swamp. It’s happening to all the other women; the lawn is dotted with females staggering from one spot to another.
Not my woman.
Bailey clings to my arm, leans down and yanks off the mules. Then she plants her bare feet in the soggy soil, rolls her cuffs to mid-calf, looks at me and laughs.
“So much for being fashionable,” she says.
What she is, is cute as hell. The staggerers seem to agree because it only takes a few minutes before they eyeball her, dump their fancy shoes and squish their way through the grass the same as she’s doing.
I tuck her shoes into the back pockets of my jeans. Then I take her hand and we head for today’s buffet line. This time we’re both hungry. The pizza was good, but we’ve been blowing through lots of calories.
“Time to refuel,” I say as I hand her a plate, and Bailey does that batting-her-lashes bit and says she definitely wants me to keep my energy levels up.
How could I not have known the woman who’s worked for me all these years?
Long tables offer up an assortment of goodies, though I suspect this isn’t the kind of tea somebody from England would recognize. There are plenty of little cakes and tiny crustless sandwiches, but there’s also real food and despite all the fancy French names, it’s pretty basically American. There’s a guy at a grill turning out burgers and hot dogs, another plucking lobster tails from an enormous kettle. I half expect Bailey to ask the pedigree of the burgers and dogs, but she doesn’t. Turns out the grill guy is also doing a stack of hockey pucks labeled Vegetarian, and that’s what she chooses.
“That way I don’t have to wonder about the meat,” she tells me, her expression earnest and caring and, what the hell, I make the same choice. But we also take lobster tails after the server with the kettle and the tongs sees the hockey puck on her plate. “Harvested off the Maine coast,” he confides, “from carefully managed, environmentally sound waters.”
She thanks him. I do too, because not eating lobster when I know a lobster would happily eat me if our situations were reversed is not high on my list of Doing the Right Thing…Except, I realize as we look for a table, I would have done it to keep my woman happy—and what is with this my woman stuff? I am not a guy who thinks that way. I don’t believe in absolutist language. A woman belongs to herself, same as a dude belongs to himself…
“Bailey? Come sit with us.”
Shit. The bride has spotted us. She and the groom are at a table for four, and she’s beaming the kind of smile you see in toothpaste ads. Big, bright, and phony.
I take Bailey’s hand and dip my head to hers. “Your choice, babe,” I murmur.
“We’d love to,” my girl says, and the only way I know she’s lying is because she squeezes my hand hard enough so her nails dig into my palm.
We join the happy couple.
Elevator Boy starts things off by saying he’s pissed that there was nothing the country club could do about the weather. It’s hard not to go all wide-eyed and say Well, duh, but I manage. Violet the Vixen—that’s the role she’s dressed for in a clingy knit top cut so low I’m amazed her toes aren’t showing and black tights that I suspect make it tough for her to breathe—Violet says they decided to hold the tea outside anyway. Elevator Boy says they didn’t have a choice because the dining room was already booked. Violet shoots him a look and says he really should have told the manager how he felt about that. Elevator Boy says he did. Violet says he should have made his position on the matter more determined.
After that, they fall silent.
I clear my throat. “So,” I say brightly, “where are you two going on your honeymoon?”
“Greece,” Elevator Boy says.
“Chester rented a yacht.”
Elevator Boy swallows. The sound is audible.
“I rented a nice boat,” he says.
“A yacht,” Violet clarifies.
He leans towards her. “It’s a boat. A very nice boat.”
Her eyes narrow. I told you they were narrow to begin with, remember? Well, now they’re just little slits.
“I thought you chose the yacht.”
Chester swallows again. “This weekend,” he says, “the party, the wedding…” He throws me a beseeching look. “You’re in business Mark, right?”
“It’s Matt. And yes. Yes, I am.”
“I bet you understand cash flow issues.”
What I understand is that the guy I envision as Napoleon standing in an elevator with a box of detergent clutched to his chest has probably blown a small fortune to please his almost-wife.
I also understand that I want no part of a blood-letting.
Bailey’s hand is still in mine. I give it a little squeeze that means Please, let’s get the fuck out of here. She gives me a little squeeze in return, but it means Hey, I’m just starting to have fun.
“Actually,” she says, “Matthew never has cash flow problems.”
“No?”
“No.” Her smile would do the Mona Lisa proud. “But then, Matthew has a degree in finance.” She looks at Elevator Boy. “He was on The Street for several years.”
The Street. It’s what people who want to impress other people call Wall Street—and I have never once heard my woman use the term.
Chester—I can no long think of him as either Napoleon or Elevator Boy, not when I’m starting to feel sorry for him—looks glum. Violet looks—I’m not sure how she looks. Envious? Surprised? Angry? How about all those things rolled into one?
Bailey bites into her hockey-puck-on-a-bun and chews. “Umm. This is delicious, sweetheart. Try yours.”
Sweetheart? She’s talking to me. I lift the bun and chomp down.
“Good, isn’t it?”
I nod. For a hockey puck, it’s not bad, but I abandon it in favor of the lobster. Bailey turns her smile on Chester. “Do you have a degree in business?” she asks.
Chester shakes his head. “I have launderettes,” he says, so unhappily that I have to struggle against reaching across the table and patting him on the shoulder.
Okay. I’d never go that far, but I do feel bad for the guy. I mean, somebody has to own launderettes. Evidently, Bailey is starting to take pity on him too, because she changes the topic.
“So,” she says, looking at Violet, “you look great.”
Violet stops glaring at Chester. She turns her attention to Bailey, and suddenly I can feel something bad coming.
“Why, thank you,” she simpers. “And you look—”
“Oh, I know.” My girl lifts our joined hands to her lips and kisses my knuckles. “Matthew is always telling me how wonderful I look and I always point out that it’s his doing.” There it is. That lash-flutter thing. I can feel my gut knotting in anticipation of what comes next. “I wouldn’t admit this to anyone but you, cuz, but, well, it’s the sex. You know? Makes your skin glow.” She giggles. It’s the first time in all the years I know her that I have ever heard Bailey giggle. “Plus, it means no dieting. It helps you lose weight, then keeps you trim.” Violet’s mouth has formed a perfect O. Mine probably has too. Chester pretty much looks like a man fighting for his life, but Bailey’s not finished. “Although,” she says, with a little frown, “come to think of it, my Mom mentioned you wanted to take off a few pounds and don’t get me wrong, you look fabulous, but—” She looks from Violet to Chester and back to Violet again. “You don’t seem to have lost an ounce.”
Holy shit.
I stare at Bailey. She flashes another beatific smile. Then she attacks her lobster tail with vengeance. The rest of us watch in silence. When she’s done, she sighs, pats her lips with her napkin and looks at me.
“We’d better go,” she says sweetly. “The ceremony’s at—what time is it, Vi? Seven?”
“Eight,” Violet the Vanquished says.
Bailey gets to her feet. So do I. She loops her arm through mine. “See you guys then,” she says, and adds coyly, “We’ll try not to be late.”
Then we’re moving across the wet lawn, heading for the parking lot. No guys in Good Humor suits this afternoon, so I don’t have to make a bank withdrawal to claim my car.
“Wow,” I say when we reach it.
“Wow, what?”
Her tone is pure innocence, but there’s laughter in her eyes. I open her door; she slips inside the Corvette and I go around to the driver’s side.
“He was on T
he Street for several years,’” I say, trying—and failing—to mimic her voice.
“Well, you were.”
“Did you ever hear me call it that?”
Bailey snaps her seat belt shut. “No.”
I turn on the engine, step on the gas. The car moves forward.
“And the sex thing…”
“What about it?”
I look at her. She’s blushing.
“I cannot believe you talked about us. Having sex.”
I say it solemnly. No smile. No hint that what I really want to do is laugh.
“I didn’t. I talked about sex. Its benefits. In general.”
I check for traffic and turn onto the road—and suddenly, Bailey gasps. Then she makes a little moaning sound. “Ohmygod,” she says. “I did, didn’t I? Talked about us. Having, you know, sex…”
“The newest diet craze,” I say. “By tomorrow, it’ll be all over the internet. How to Lose Weight and Keep it Off, by Bailey Abrams.”
She buries her face in her hands. “I must have lost my mind! But Violet was always so awful…Talking endlessly about boys and doing it…That’s what she called sex. Doing it. And she never missed the chance to tell me I needed to lose weight.”
I reach for Bailey’s hand.
“You don’t need to lose a thing,” I tell her. “Not an ounce. And definitely not that new attitude.”
“But I lied. I mean, I made it sound as if you and I have been having sex for months and months and—”
I lift her hand to my lips and kiss it. “The only lie you told was when you said we were having sex. We’re making love. And there’s a difference.”
She stares at me.
Jesus H. Christ, if I could, I’d stare at myself. We’re making love? Wasn’t it a couple of hours ago I reminded myself that what we’re doing is fucking?
Okay. Words are just words. That’s what my mother would say. Except my mother must never know about this. Not that I’m fucking Bailey. Shit. Of course she mustn’t know that. For one thing, the last conversation my Mom and I had about sex was when I was seven and I asked her where babies came from.
For another, Mom wouldn’t approve of this. Of my involvement with Bailey. Same as Coop and Casey, she’d point out that Bailey was my friend, my employee, that I would surely be stepping into a mess if I tried to pass myself off as her boyfriend no matter how valid the cause.
The F-Word: A Sexy Romantic Comedy Page 17
