Hot Pink

by Susan Johnson

  He was tall, taller up close or maybe she was just more aware of his size when he looked at her like that. Like she might be his favorite dessert.

  “Rocco Vinelli.” He smiled and shook her hand.

  The last time she felt a tingle like that a vibrator was involved. “I have a friend from the Range with relatives named Vinelli,” she said, telling herself to get a grip. So he was good-looking. It didn’t mean he’d be good in bed. Oops, wrong thought—not at all helpful.

  “Where on the Range?” He started moving toward his car.

  She had to rerun his question in her mind as she followed him because she was still on the “good in bed” speculation and sort of undressing him in her mind when she shouldn’t be doing any such thing. When she should be reminding herself that sexy good looks and a hugely buff body like his were superficial and much less important than, say, integrity or intelligence. Why was he looking at her like that? Oops, the question. “Tess is from Gilbert,” she quickly said.

  He smiled. “She must be a relative. One of a couple hundred.”

  “Then we’re practically friends.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  How good, she wanted to say—I mean you in bed? She didn’t, of course; she censured her errant libido, which was really aiding and abetting way too much tonight. “Nice car,” she said instead. Men always liked their cars. That was safe, conversational, like talking about the weather.

  “Thanks. I like the sound system.”

  He was standing very close as he opened her car door—his cologne filled her nostrils; she could practically touch the dark sweep of his brows.

  “The seats are low.” He held out his hand.

  She took it and sucked in a breath—as in constraint. She was literally trembling. A decided first in her life.

  Jesus, he thought, his own constraint not fully functioning; he had an instant hard-on. “Careful,” he said. “It’s a long way down.” Or in, a perverse little voice murmured inside his head as she sat.

  He had a serious conversation with himself as he walked around the back of the car and opened his door—something to do with picking up strange women in elevators. But his next thought had to do with condoms, which was serious, he supposed, but not exactly the voice of reason he was trying to sustain.

  “Are you married or engaged?” she blurted out the instant he slid into his seat. Flushing with embarrassment, she began to stammer some implausible excuse that didn’t even make sense to her.

  “No, I’m not,” he said, interrupting her erratic, jumpy explanation, his voice calm as though the question wasn’t way out there. The party from which he’d just escaped flashed into his mind. “No,” he said again, more firmly this time. “Neither one.”

  Yesss! she thought. “I shouldn’t have asked,” she said instead, lying through her teeth.

  “Not a problem.” He jabbed the CD button and shot her a quick smile. “Really. Where do you live?”

  “On Grand, just east of Marshall. I’ve been working for three solid weeks, not sleeping much, so I’m slightly loopy.”

  “Doing what?” He didn’t need U2 telling him to make love tonight. He hit next and was relieved to hear the Red Hot Chili Peppers rocking up a storm.

  “Graphic and web design. I have my own small firm. What about you?” He had the longest lashes she’d ever seen on a man; his hands on the wheel were strong and tanned; when he pressed on the accelerator, you could see his thigh muscles flex under the pale linen of his slacks—just . . . like . . . that. Oh. My. God.

  “I’m in marketing for Diversified Foods.” He backed out of the no-parking zone into the street.

  “Small world. I just did the web site for their new Graham Crunchies.” She was pleased to hear the bland civility in her voice. Now if she could only rein in her more troublesome inclination to run her hand over his leg and feel his muscled thigh and everything else hard and male and—STOP THIS INSTANT, she silently screamed, gripping her purse as though it was her lifeline to sanity.

  “You’re dealing with Bill Martell, then.” His voice was low, taut, his dark gaze holding hers.

  She nodded, having run out of civility, unsure she could keep her voice steady.

  Lust was palpable in the darkened interior, almost suffocating.

  Neither was entirely sure of what they were saying . . . or cared.

  “This is very weird,” Chloe whispered.

  Rocco blew out a breath, his hands clenched hard on the wheel. “Definitely.”

  “I’m figuring it’s because I haven’t had sex for so long.” She couldn’t say it was him, that he was like a King Kong–sized magnet for her libido. And don’t even think about the phallic symbolism in the Empire State Building, she warned herself.

  Going without sex wasn’t Rocco’s problem. Nor was her statement very helpful when he was trying to talk himself out of sleeping with a woman he’d met in an elevator ten minutes ago. “You’re probably overtired.”

  She slanted a glance at him, one brow raised. Was he blowing her off? Did she care if he was blowing her off? Was she losing her mind that she was questioning if she cared if he was blowing her off?

  He grinned. “I’m trying to be polite.”

  A flooding relief inundated her psyche, and she came face to face with the unsavory realization that she was perhaps more vain than she would have liked to acknowledge. “That’s fine. There’s always my vibrator.” One casual comment deserved another.

  “I could help you if you like.” Not a scintilla of casualness was evident in his tone this time.

  She met his dark gaze for a potent moment. “Are you asking?”

  He focused on the complexities in his life for an equivocal moment. “Yeah,” he said, his libido taking charge. “I’m asking.”

  He was really astonishingly handsome. Or charismatic. Or both. Or maybe she was just highly charged—hormonally—and the Empire State Building was turning her on. “I’d like that.”

  “Good.” He pressed his foot down on the accelerator and the car leaped forward.

  How could so simple a word make her tremble with desire? Bracing her hands on the seat, she drew in a deep breath.

  He touched her arm. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes—no—probably not.” She grinned. “This is way out of my league.”

  He dipped his head. “Maybe we’re both walking the edge tonight.” He smiled. “But say no anytime. You can change your mind.”

  Her brows raised. “I don’t need your permission.”

  “No doubt.”

  She shot him a censorious look. “What does that mean?”

  “It means it looks as though you can take care of yourself.”

  “Well, I can.”

  “No argument there.”

  Her mouth twitched in a faint smile. “Are we fighting?”

  “I never fight.”

  “Never?”

  “What’s the point?”

  “What if I tell you to do something?”

  “Something?” He grinned.

  “You know.”

  “I’d do it.”

  “Liar.”

  “I’d probably do it.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “You’re going to say whatever it takes, aren’t you?”

  He laughed. “Wouldn’t you?”

  “No.”

  He shrugged. “We’re different then.”

  “Not that I’m complaining about the differences.”

  He smiled. “Amen to that.”

  “You certainly are amenable. What am I going to have to do to get a rise out of you?” she inquired playfully.

  “No problem there.” His glance flicked downward.

  Her gaze followed his, she felt her body open in welcome at the glorious sight, and she was right back where she’d been a few moments ago—trembling and ravenous.

  He could tell. He punched the accelerator, ravenous too. And focused.

  She c
ould have taken issue with his speed, but she was feeling such a wild impatience she watched the streets zipping by with a sense of relief. The smell of the river struck her nostrils as they crossed the Hennepin Avenue Bridge, and bracing herself as he downshifted for the turn off the bridge onto Marshall, she seriously considered the concept of pheromones for the first time in her life. She’d never felt like this before. Not once.

  It wasn’t as though Rocco had never picked up a girl in a bar and slept with her before, he thought, feeling the car’s rear end drift a little on the squealing turn. What was different was the jolt in the stomach or—okay—lower, when he’d first seen Chloe in the elevator. He didn’t get jolts like that. Never.

  “Turn right at the corner.” She pointed and at the next cross street, she said, “That’s my place. That brick building.”

  He turned left, pulled up to the curb and cut the engine.

  The sudden silence was electric.

  Taking his keys from the ignition, he looked at her. “You’re sure now?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  He smiled. “Oh yeah.”

  “Then come see my place.” Feeling the way she was feeling, there was no way she was going to change her mind.

  He swung out of the car, came around to help her out and then stood on the grassy boulevard and looked at the two-story brick building. “The old corner grocery, I’ll bet. Nice,” he said.

  The neighborhood had originally been home to Eastern European immigrants, so there was a church practically on every block. Polish Catholic, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, the occasional Lutheran church or Jewish temple, every ethnic group was represented. But in the last decade, the NordEast neighborhood had become home to an increasing number of artists’ studios, architects’ offices, small galleries and edgy cafes. Chloe’s graphic-design business had fit in perfectly.

  “I bought it a few years ago. An artist friend of mine was moving to Nepal—to find himself. And he had a trust fund so he could find himself just about anywhere in the world. It was affordable. He didn’t care about making a profit.”

  “Nice kind of friend to have.”

  She frowned. “He wasn’t that kind of friend.”

  “Sorry. None of my business.”

  “He was married.”

  So? he wanted to say. “Ah . . .” he said instead.

  “Women aren’t like men. They can be just friends with the opposite sex.”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “It was your tone.”

  “Sorry.”

  A tenuous moment of indecision assailed her. “I don’t ever do this—invite someone I don’t know over,” she said slowly. “But then, I don’t expect you to believe me.” She shrugged away her brief moment of unease. “Why should you?”

  “I believe you.” Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t, but he’d never wanted to sleep with a woman he’d met in an elevator before—so what the hell . . . she could be telling the truth.

  “Not that it matters.” She didn’t have to explain anything to him.

  “True. It looks like you have your office downstairs,” he said, nodding in the direction of the large plateglass windows on the ground floor.

  He was changing the subject, being polite enough to get laid. “You had a fight with some woman tonight, didn’t you?”

  “Not really. A difference of opinion.”

  “Are you using this”—she waved her hand in the general direction of her bedroom—“to get back at her?”

  “Not even remotely. Are you trying to get back at the man who didn’t like your hair?”

  “No, and it’s not pink.”

  “I know. Only under certain lights.”

  She grinned. “I won’t ask you how you know that.”

  “My sister has hair your color. Well, almost that color.”

  “You have a sister?”

  “Yep. She’s an accountant. She works on her own.”

  “She doesn’t like to take orders.”

  “Same as you.”

  “I can see we’re going to get along real fine.”

  “That’s what I was hoping,” he said with a grin. “Are we done now?”

  “With the interrogation?”

  “Yeah . . . did I pass?”

  “So far.”

  He nodded at her building. “Why not ask the rest of your questions inside?”

  “You’re impatient,” she murmured, pulling him toward the side door.

  “And you’re not?”

  “I’m already in overdrive.” She laughed. “I don’t mean to frighten you.”

  “No way. I’m counting my blessings.”

  She punched in the numbers on her code lock, opened the door and flicked on the lights. The stairway to the second floor was carpeted in a riotous floral carpet in tones of pink and green.

  “You do like pink.”

  “I like color.”

  An understatement, he realized as they reached the top of the stairs and entered a small foyer resplendent with emerald green moire wall covering, gilded mirrors and a large stuffed bear.

  “Jesus,” he said under his breath, the bear looming, arms raised, claws out and teeth bared, over his six-foot-four-inch frame.

  “Meet Yogi Bear.”

  “Where the hell did you get that?” The bear was eight feet tall, shoulder-height.

  “It came with the building. My friend Cecil’s grandfather shot it in Alaska, I think, poor dear. But Yogi’s found a good home. We talk.”

  He pulled her to a stop. “How serious are you about this?”

  “Sleeping with you?”

  “No, talking to this bear.”

  She smiled. “If I talked to this bear, wouldn’t you sleep with me?” She glanced down at his blatant erection.

  He slipped his finger under her chin and lifted it. “Hey.”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “Something normal.”

  “I haven’t had sex for a long time. I shouldn’t have invited you up here, since I don’t know you other than you’re some relative of Tess’s. But I’d really like to see that”—she brushed his hand away from her chin and pointed at his erection—“up close and personal. So, I guess it’s your move.”

  “Don’t be shy.”

  “I never am.”

  “Is there another bear in your bedroom?”

  “Come in and see—or don’t. It’s your call.”

  They were only inches apart, the sudden tension thick enough to cut with a knife.

  Abruptly bending, he scooped her up into his arms and began walking across the foyer. “Where’s your bedroom?”

  “Through that door, turn left, down the hall. It overlooks the park across the street.”

  “Good. I’m interested in a view.”

  “I thought you might be.”

  He looked down at her, his gaze heated. “I’m going to eat you alive.”

  “It depends who gets to the buffet first. You forget, I’ve been starved.”

  He laughed. “A race to the buffet line.”

  “It better not be a race.”

  “You give orders in bed?”

  “Sometimes.” She could practically see the gears clicking in his head, but he didn’t break stride, and when he finally looked at her again, he winked.

  “Should be interesting.”

  “Yeah,” she murmured, his effortless strength in carrying what was not a size-four woman revving up her already revved-up libido. “It looks that way.” And then in an altogether different tone, she quickly said, “That door there, and I’m warning you, I like color.”

  He braced himself after the brilliant stair carpet and foyer—this man who lived in a home furnished in earth tones. Even then, when she reached over, opened the door and flicked on the lights, he was momentarily stunned at the blinding colors and textures. The large room fronted the building, the view of the park no doubt visible through the run of French doors, now curtained in swagged, flowered chintz. The h
uge bed was decoupaged in literally thousands of roses—bouquets, garden scenes, single blossoms, the seven-foot headboard sinuous and faintly art nouveau. Large overstuffed chairs were upholstered in fringed and tasseled silks, their colors bright as an Arabian bazaar. And pictures and paintings were everywhere—on the walls, on tables, leaning against shelves. But the light was even more fantastic than the furnishings, soft, golden, glowing through patterned silk shades dripping with shimmering glass beads.

  “Wow,” he whispered.

  “Does it pass?” But she was pleased. It was a good wow.

  “You’ll have to show me your work.”

  “Later.” Reaching up, she pulled his head down and kissed him—a light, brushing kiss.

  It shouldn’t have triggered such an intense reaction. He’d been kissed like that by his aunts or grandmother. It was something about her; there had been something about this girl named Chloe even before he knew her name.

  Something that had brought him here to this Aladdin’s cave of a room.

  Something—fuck if he knew . . . but something.

  Chloe was in a more practical mood, attributing her unusual attraction to more mundane reasons: Rocco’s drop-dead looks; her outrageous sexual neediness, hunger, craving—whatever this current insanity was; and of course—his drop-dead good looks. Okay, at times, she could be as shallow as the next guy. But it wasn’t only his handsome face. Rocco knew when to shut up and when to talk and most of all, when to pick up on her cues.

  Like now.

  He’d set her on her feet as though he could read her mind.

  Then turning her gently, he’d begun unzipping her dress.

  THREE

  HER DRESS WAS ONE OF THOSE SUMMER dresses for clubbing, the ones that looked more like slips than dresses, the ones you couldn’t wear with a bra—green flowered organza, little straps, short, ruffled hem and it lay at her feet in about three seconds flat.

  She kicked it aside and spun around—so easy on four-inch heels. “My turn,” she said with a smile.

  He smiled back. “Be my guest.” His gaze flickered down. “Nice pearls.” Her thong was a tiny triangle of seed pearls just covering what it was supposed to cover.

  “I like pearls.”

  His gaze was appreciative. “So do I.”