HOT AND BOTHERED

by Jo Leigh

  She headed for the trunk and he hurried out, wondering if it would be too pushy to ask to stay the night. Or maybe he should just go upstairs and see what happened.

  He pressed the electronic key and the trunk popped up. He reached for her bags, but she beat him to it. "You don't have to come up," she said. "I can manage."

  The disappointment surprised him. Not that he felt it, but that it was so acute. "I don't mind," he said. "It's no problem."

  "Suit yourself."

  He took the bigger of the two bags and followed Lee inside her building. The doorman smiled at her—or maybe leered was a better word for it. Trevor hadn't noticed this guy before. He was a lot younger than the other one. Trevor hated him on sight.

  Lee led him to the elevator, oblivious to his reaction. They rode up quietly, her leaning against the wall, eyes closed. They got to her floor, and he followed her to her apartment, watching how she leaned a bit to her left with the weight of the suitcase. How her hair swayed across her back.

  When she got to her door, she fished out her keys and went inside. He followed, knowing he shouldn't be hoping she'd ask him to stay, but hoping anyway.

  The cats were there to greet her, and she picked up both of them to carry them to the couch. He closed the door, debating whether he should say something. Maybe she assumed he didn't want to stay, and that's why she didn't ask.

  "I missed you," she said to Ira, while scratching George behind the ear. "Were you good boys?" They answered her with purrs, and with a great deal of face rubbing. Trevor knew just how they felt Lee looked at him and smiled. She put the cats on the couch, and stood up again. With each step she took toward him, his hope diminished. He could see it in her eyes. She wanted him to go.

  Which was fine. No problem. It was silly to have thought otherwise. The weekend was over.

  "Thank you," she said, taking his hands in hers. "It was the best weekend I've ever had."

  "Me, too."

  "I imagine we'll both get lots of phone calls tonight."

  He laughed. "What do you say we torture them, and don't answer?"

  She shook her head. "They'd never give up. Or forgive us."

  "Yeah," he said, wanting to kiss her. Wanting to do a lot more than kiss her.

  She stood on tiptoe, and gave him a quick peck on the cheek. "I love you," she said.

  He smiled. "I love you, too."

  "Now go get some sleep. It's back to the salt mines in the morning."

  "Right," he said.

  "You okay?"

  "Sure. I'm fine." He stepped back and reached for the doorknob. "I'll call you tomorrow."

  "Great."

  "Bye."

  She waved her fingers at him. Waited for him to get the hell out. So he did.

  The whole way back to the car, he wondered what it meant, if he'd gotten things wrong. But then he thought about last night. How she'd looked at him when they made love.

  They might be back in the real world, but it wasn't the same world. Things would never be the same again.

  He whistled as he got into the car.

  * * *

  Chapter 10

  « ^ »

  "Well?"

  "If you don't start talking soon, there's going to be bloodshed."

  Lee looked at Katy and Susan, sitting across the table from her at Veselka, her favorite little Ukrainian restaurant. The pirogi had just been brought to the table, with lovely sides of crisp sautéed onions and beet relish. She'd been dreaming of pirogi for the past month, wanting them desperately, but now that they were here, she seemed to have lost her appetite.

  "It was nice," she said, keeping her voice down so that the other diners in the small café couldn't hear, even though the Monday night crowd was pretty light.

  "Nice?" Susan gave her a look that singed her eyelashes. "Nice? That's all you're going to say?"

  Lee was just as surprised as her friends at her reluctance to talk about the weekend. Since college, they'd shared everything: the good, the bad and the ugly. So, why wasn't she telling them about Trevor? These were her best buddies. Surely they could help with her confusion, and her doubt. They knew Trevor almost as well as she did, so their insights would be particularly useful.

  Dammit, everything was going haywire. It wasn't enough that she was feeling all mushy over Trevor, but now she couldn't even talk to Katy and Susan.

  "What happened?" Katy asked again.

  Susan shook her head. "Couldn't he get it up?"

  Lee coughed, glad she hadn't been eating anything. She'd have choked.

  "If she doesn't want to tell us, then she doesn't have to," Katy said, but it was just a line. Lee could tell she was dying for details. And why shouldn't she tell them? Maybe if she did, she'd stop blowing things out of proportion.

  "Okay," she said. "It was fantastic. More than fantastic. It was the single best experience of my life. Are you happy now?"

  Katy looked at Susan, then back at Lee. "So, you're upset because…?"

  "Because it was the single best experience of my life."

  "Ah." Susan nodded. "Now I get it." Then she turned to Katy and rolled her eyes.

  "I'm not complaining," Lee said. "Honest. It was better than my wildest dreams. But…"

  Susan, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, her outfit an Audrey Hepburn ensemble, complete with black turtleneck, black capris and little black ballet slippers, stuck her fork into a steaming potato dumpling and proceeded to put the whole thing in her mouth.

  Katy ignored Susan and touched Lee's hand. "Come on. Maybe we can help."

  "You can't. No one can. I've made this bed, and, pardon the pun, but I have to sleep in it."

  Susan lifted her hand for silence, swallowed twice, then said, "What bed? What the hell happened?"

  "I just didn't count on it being so … so…"

  "What, for God's sake?" Katy said, her voice just this side of desperate.

  "So romantic."

  Katy and Susan exchanged glances again. Then they looked at her as if she'd gone neatly around the bend.

  "Don't you get it?" she said. "It was supposed to be sex. Plain, simple, don't - let - the - door - slam - you - on - the - ass sex."

  "And it turned out to be what?" Susan asked.

  Lee sighed, sat back in her chair, shook her head. "The goddamn earth moved. The angels wept. There was a great hue and cry across the land."

  "Wow," Katy said. "We are talking about you and Trevor, right?"

  "Of course. Dammit, I wasn't supposed to feel anything."

  "Honey," Susan said, "if that was your expectation, I think you've been doing it wrong."

  "I meant emotionally. Romantically."

  "Oh," Katy said, stretching the word into a little song. "That's not good."

  "No kidding." Lee couldn't stand it. She took a pirogi and cut it on her plate, added some onions and beets and ate it. It was beyond heavenly, and she took three more dumplings from the big platter.

  "I still don't see what the problem is," Susan said. "You love him, he loves you. It was great between the sheets. You should be happy."

  "I should be a size two, but I'm not. Susan, I don't want to be in love with Trevor. I don't want to want Trevor. Get it?"

  "Maybe he feels the same way. Maybe it's not a problem."

  Katy shook her head. "Trevor doesn't want a relationship."

  Lee nodded. "That's an understatement. I don't either, not really. I mean, if I'd wanted a relationship, I wouldn't have done it with him. He was supposed to be my safe guy."

  Katy, still dressed in her attorney clothes, a gray tweed suit with a pale-blue silk blouse, tucked her napkin under her chin and dug in to the pirogi. It should have looked ridiculous, but it didn't. In a weird way, the napkin bib was charming. "So," she said between bites. "What now? Does he know?"

  "No, he doesn't. I'm not going to tell him, either."

  "Are you going to sleep with him again?" Susan asked.

  "No. Well, maybe. Oh, God, I hope so."

/>   Katy laughed. "I still can't get over it. Trevor made the angels weep. How do you like that."

  "I like it too much. Oh, man, he did everything right. More than right. It was like out of a movie. The room, the fire, the champagne."

  Susan's right brow lifted. "You had champagne?"

  Lee nodded. "And you should have seen this bathroom. A claw-foot tub for two."

  "Don't tell me," Katy said. "You did a Bull Durham, right?"

  Susan's left brow lifted so she had a matched pair. "Huh?"

  "Bull Durham," Lee explained. "Susan Sarandon and Kevin Costner. They took a bath together."

  "Not a bath," Katy said. "The bath. Candles everywhere, sloshing water. Susan, you have to see the movie. I've told you that before."

  "Baseball isn't my thing."

  "Baseball isn't what the movie's about," Katy said. "Personally, I give it four vibrators. My highest rating."

  Lee laughed.

  "Remember that scene in The Big Easy? This one is better."

  Susan shrugged her shoulders. "Okay, I'll watch it this weekend." She sipped her tea for a moment. "Four vibrators, huh?"

  Katy grinned. "Have a change of batteries on hand." She turned to Lee. "What's the plan, kiddo?"

  "I don't have one. I'm so afraid of making him uncomfortable. I don't want to risk the friendship."

  "Your feelings are that strong?"

  Lee nodded. "That strong plus ten. I don't know what to do."

  "Give yourself a little time," Susan said. "Don't see him for a while. Give it a chance to blow over."

  "Good idea," Lee said. "I just won't see him. That's all. At least for a week, maybe two. By then, I'm sure I'll be able to think more clearly."

  * * *

  Trevor picked up the phone on the second ring and carried it with him to the bedroom. "Hello."

  "Hey."

  It was Ben, so Trevor went on changing clothes.

  "How was your weekend?"

  "Great."

  "Good. That's great."

  "Yeah," Trevor said, making sure the T-shirt he'd picked was clean and had no stains.

  "So, you think this thing is gonna happen?" Ben asked.

  "Yeah. I'm heading over to her place now."

  "I thought she was out to dinner with the girls."

  "Hold on a sec." Trevor put the phone on the bed as he slipped the T-shirt on, then picked it up again. "They just finished. Lee called from the restaurant."

  "Okay. Great. See you on Saturday."

  "Huh?"

  "The wedding."

  Trevor nodded. "Oh, yeah. Okay. See you then." He hung up, then headed to the bathroom to shave. Maybe he should leave a razor over at Lee's. Nah. She'd probably think he meant something by it, and be put off. The last thing he wanted to do was scare her.

  * * *

  Trevor slipped Lee his handkerchief. She sniffed, then dabbed under her eyes. When he looked over at Katy, sitting on his other side, he saw she was crying, too. What was it about women and weddings?

  He leaned back, and saw Ben staring at the ceiling. Trevor couldn't see Susan, but Peter, who sat on the aisle, wasn't watching the happy couple, either. Peter was staring at something across the way, and when Trevor tried to figure out what, he saw Andy Broeder, another college friend. Interesting. Peter and Andy had been an item for about ten minutes during senior year, but then Peter had discovered theater arts, and that was the end of that.

  Sighing, Trevor turned his attention back to the ceremony. The rabbi was speaking Hebrew to David and Marilyn, which he knew for a fact the groom didn't understand. David had confessed years ago that he'd only learned enough of the traditional language to get through his bar mitzvah, then promptly forgotten everything. Maybe Marilyn understood. Or maybe the ritual was so ingrained that no one had to understand each word. The gist was clear: love, honor, cherish. Sickness and health. Yada, yada, yada. What the rabbi should be asking is if these two people had the same spending habits. Were they both night people, or early risers? Did they have a sense of humor, and would he promise, on pain of death, to put his clothes into the hamper instead of on the floor?

  But they never talked about that stuff at weddings. They went for the mystical, which was well and good, but it didn't do squat to insure a compatible marriage. There ought to be a test, a real test, that had questions about toilet seats and toothpaste caps. His parents would have failed that one. Each time. Which would have been better for everyone.

  Ben and Katy? They'd pass that test. And now that he had almost a whole week under his belt, so to speak, with Lee, he knew they would pass it, too. Not that they were heading in that direction, but the compatibility test was also useful for other relationships. Friends who slept with friends, for example. God, it sounded like a Jerry Springer show.

  He looked down, and saw a couple of stray gray hairs on his tuxedo pants. George. Or Ira. The cats had welcomed him with a leg rub when he'd picked Lee up for this soiree. Man, had she looked gorgeous.

  His gaze slid next door, looking first at her face, still a little teary-eyed and wistful. Then he perused the dress. It was a new one, he thought. He'd have remembered it if he'd seen if before. Hunter-green, off the shoulder, it reminded him of something Kim Bassinger would have worn in L.A. Confidential. The long slim skirt and the tailored waist made Lee look delicious, and her hair, all wavy like that, made him think of Rita Hayworth.

  He liked her in the dress, but he liked her better out of it. As he thought the words, she turned and smiled at him for just a second, then went back to watching the action under the chupa. He kept his focus on her. On the most amazing week he'd ever had.

  His days had been excellent. He'd felt sharper than a blade, completely on his game. His articles had been easy to write. His editor had asked him to work on a major wine guide. He'd even managed to take down all the dark wood paneling in his den. Of course now he had to figure out what to do with the walls, but that wasn't the issue. The thing was, he felt able to take on the world.

  Because of one woman.

  She sniffed again, and he watched her cry. Her eyelashes had become wet and spiky, and he had the sudden urge to kiss the moisture away. What was she doing to him?

  Whatever it was, he hoped it wouldn't stop anytime soon. Their nights together had been indescribable. Every time he felt they'd reached the pinnacle, they went higher, hotter, deeper. All she had to do was look at him, and he sprang to attention like a private on parade. He couldn't get enough of her.

  The rabbi was speaking English again, and it sounded like he was heading toward home plate. David said his vows, and Marilyn said hers. The ring went on her finger. Then David smashed the glass under his foot, and a chorus of "Mazel Tovs" filled the sanctuary.

  Lee grabbed Trevor's hand, and she squeezed it tight. For a wild second, just as David and Marilyn kissed for the first time as husband and wife, Trevor saw himself as Lee's groom. He saw himself growing old with her by his side. As if looking through a kaleidoscope, he saw a completely different kind of life than he'd ever imagined before. Little pictures, tumbling one on top of the other, of laughter, making love, feeding babies and waking up each day to her smile.

  It ended as quickly as it had hit. Once more, he was just a guy in the fifth row of the temple, standing up to watch as the new couple walked down the aisle. But he didn't breathe well for a while. Not until he realized that it was the atmosphere, the wedding and all those crying women that had gotten to him. No big deal. Just one of those moments that had no relevance at all.

  * * *

  Lee sat down between Susan and Trevor. She'd repaired her face, wiping away all traces of her sentimental tears. Katy and Ben sat across from her, and Peter's seat was there, too, only she hadn't seen him since they'd walked from the sanctuary to the banquet room.

  Everything looked so beautiful. The bride's colors were powder-blue and white, and the decorations followed that scheme down to the napkins and matchbooks. The floral centerpieces mixed blue irises an
d orchids: simple, elegant and as chic as the bride herself.

  "God, I hate weddings."

  Lee turned sharply to shush Susan. Everyone else had the same idea and it ended up sounding like the table had sprung a leak.

  "Well, I do. It's a horrible custom. You know where it came from? Property. Ownership. Men invented marriage so that they would have a line of descendants. It had nothing to do with love. And back then, people only lived to, like, thirty or something, and when they got married for life, they were looking at fifteen years, tops. They'd have laughed themselves silly if they heard people were supposed to be a couple for fifty years."

  "Susan," Katy said, "your point is well taken, and your logic impeccable. But if you don't keep your voice down, I'm going to throttle you."

  "Fine," Susan said, grabbing her glass of kosher Chablis. "I won't say another word."

  "Didn't she look incredible?" Katy said to no one in particular. "I never used to think Marilyn was that… She's just bloomed, don't you think? David's crazy about her. They're gonna try for kids right away."

  Lee had reached for her water glass, but she paused. Something was funny about Katy's voice. She couldn't put her finger on it, but it wasn't normal somehow.

  Katy looked at Ben, then he whispered something to her, looked around the room, and got up. He took off, leaving a smiling Katy behind.

  "What's going on?" Lee asked, looking at Trevor to see if he knew something. But he wasn't even paying attention. The band had started playing, and Trevor seemed fascinated by the violinist.

  She turned back to Katy, but before she could ask what was up, Ben came back to the table, Peter in tow. The boys sat down and Peter grabbed his wine. Ben grabbed Katy's hand and nodded, and Katy kissed him lightly on the lips before facing the group. "We have an announcement."

  Lee's pulse kicked into high gear, and her tummy clenched. It could only be one thing. The one thing the two of them wanted more than anything else, that they'd been praying for for over a year.

  "We're pregnant," Katy said, her joy making her voice go high, making her smile shine like sunlight.