Hot Pink

by Susan Johnson

  When he returned to the bedroom, she was dressed.

  Some miracle must have occurred, he decided, but carefully refrained from expressing his opinion. It was one of those days.

  What had actually happened was that Chloe had recalled the possible dynamics of their car ride north and understood that nothing but a dress would be functional. Which eliminated three quarters of her choices, maybe even seven eighths of her choices, seriously minimizing the theory of randomness, seriously simplifying her decision.

  “Nice,” he said, really meaning it. What he didn’t say was that it looked easy to take off.

  “Thank you. Did you pick out a suit?”

  “I put a couple in the truck.” Omission was diplomatic, not mendacious. “You can decide at the lake.”

  “And the food?”

  “In the truck. We’re all set.”

  She smiled. “You’re very accommodating, aren’t you?”

  “We try, Ma’am.”

  “That was a sexual innuendo wasn’t it?”

  He shook his head and tried to keep from grinning.

  Her gaze narrowed. “Everything’s always about sex with you.”

  His brows arched. “Excuse me?”

  “Let’s go.”

  He waved her past and kept his thoughts to himself. There were times like this when it paid to have a poor memory.

  * * *

  SHE CHECKED TO see that her door was properly locked when she closed it, just in case. Amy wasn’t going to stop being a wacko overnight.

  He noticed, but wasn’t going to touch that subject with the proverbial pole. He took her hand in his instead and said, “Thanks for coming along.”

  She supposed it wasn’t sensible to say, “I’ll go with you anywhere, anytime,” in the event she sounded like a complete pushover. Especially when she’d only known him a couple weeks and her mother’s lecture was still fresh in her mind. “It doesn’t hurt to take a day off once and a while,” she casually said.

  He looked at her oddly.

  She hated to think Mrs. Magnuson, the high school drama teacher, had been right when she’d said, “Stick with art, Chloe. I mean it,” but maybe she’d overdone the casual tone. “I’m thrilled to go,” she corrected. “I dreamt of you all night.”

  His expression lightened.

  There was no point in mentioning Antonio Banderas and Visnjic. Men didn’t understand comparison shopping.

  As they moved toward his truck, she took note of the lawn furniture piled in the back of the pickup and wondered if he knew she was a pushover or whether he would have gone up north with or without her. She wasn’t sure she liked either choice. She waved her hand toward the furniture. “It looks as though you were planning on going anyway.”

  “If you didn’t want to go, I would have taken the truck back home and gotten my car. We could have done something here in town.”

  “Oh.” Men’s simple directness could be charming.

  He helped her into the cab of his truck and walked around the back, checking the ties on the furniture in a manly kind of fashion she found inexpressibly sexy, as though men were intrinsically take-charge kinds of people. Leaning against the passenger door, she lifted her legs up onto the bench seat and waited for him, her pulse beginning to race a little as she followed him with her gaze. He climbed up on the back fender to tighten a rope running over a wooden chaise. The play of muscles in his arms and shoulders as he worked was terribly arousing. She squirmed a little on the seat.

  “You look really good,” she said as he entered the cab a few moments later.

  He knew that tone. His gaze swung around and held hers. “Not as good as you. Come here.” Reaching out, he grabbed her shoulders and pulled her close enough to kiss. “Thanks for coming. Really, thanks.”

  And he kissed her so the tingles went clear down to her toes.

  But he abruptly stopped kissing her and let her go. “I want to get there today.” Blowing out a breath, he ran his fingers through his hair, inhaled, then turned on the ignition and, giving her a quick glance, took off.

  She was sitting utterly still trying to decide whether she’d break the spell if she moved—the spell that was causing her body to glow like a nuclear reactor.

  He shot her another look. “I want to get out of town at least.”

  She knew what he meant; they both did.

  She turned her head toward him, but slowly so as not to destroy the shimmering enchantment. “How far out of town?”

  His grip on the steering wheel tightened. “Lexington.” He was thinking, “I hope,” because his erection was aching something fierce.

  It must have been mental telepathy.

  Her gaze dropped to his lap and she smiled. “Or maybe before.”

  “Give me some of that caramel roll,” he said, thinking distraction, pointing to the small box from the bakery on the floor.

  “After that, though, promise?”

  He nodded and smiled. “Oh, yeah.” They were both on the same racing train.

  The distraction served its purpose; she fed him small pieces of the roll, ate some herself and by the time they’d reached the beltway, they were semi in control of their libidos. As they took the cloverleaf to get onto 35W, he said, “Take a look up ahead. There’s a billboard I want you to see.”

  There it was. Her billboard. A bottle of Hot Pink perfume was set left of center on a pure white background, the green base and pink flower top in dramatic contrast to the immaculate white. To the right in magenta script were the words pure pleasure. Maybe this was love, she thought, wanting to hug the world and more precisely, one man. Which she did. “It’s stunning,” she whispered, kissing his cheek.

  Curling his arm around her shoulders, he pulled her close and held her against the warmth of his body. “It’s for you, babe, as they say in the song. And you’re my pure pleasure, in case you were wondering.” He didn’t mention it cost him his season tickets for both the Vikings and the Gophers, along with his firstborn, for Sam to have his firm put together this one billboard and the TV ad in less than a week. Not to mention the triple overtime he’d promised to pay.

  Chloe melted inside. “I’m speechless . . . and happy,” she added. “And very, very horny. Do you suppose extravagant gestures like that are an aphrodisiac?”

  “Anything’s an aphrodisiac for you, sweetheart. And I mean it in the nicest way.”

  “We’re almost to Lexington.”

  “I know.”

  “And no one can see us with these tinted windows.”

  “Yup.”

  “And there’s no oncoming traffic.”

  “True.”

  “Does the seat push back a little more?”

  He hit the switch and the seat slid back another six inches.

  “Now try and relax,” she teased, running her hand over the bulge in his jeans.

  Brushing her hand aside, he unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans. “You can probably help me there,” he said with a small smile, driving with one hand, sliding the other under the skirt of her dress, slipping a finger inside the crotch of her panties, stroking her slick labia in passing before pushing into her honeyed warmth. “If you have some time in the next four hours.”

  She almost came when he said four hours, the thought of having him inside her for four long, delectable, exquisite, explosive hours almost too much to resist. And she didn’t come right then because he added another finger and then another to his soft stroking massage, and he talked softly of what he was going to do to her when they reached the lake, how he’d make love to her, and she wanted the pleasure to last. But she did come before he’d finished telling her about having sex with him on his boyhood bed.

  Wiping his fingers on his jeans, he pulled her against his body while she came back to earth. In that quiet interval, he found himself questioning the really scary probability that he might never have run into her that night in the elevator. Everything about that evening had been unforeseen—his going to Amy’s family part
y in the first place, the fact that it was downtown instead of at the country club, the rarest happenstance that he and Chloe had left their respective parties at the same time. The odds that Chloe had held the elevator door for him. Most people wouldn’t.

  So was he lucky or what?

  “Do you know how lucky we are?” he said softly, stroking her arm.

  “Cinderella and Prince Charming lucky,” she said, her eyes still half shut. “And I don’t mean the fairy-tale love stuff, I mean that we met at all.”

  It must be a sign, he thought. They were beginning to think alike. “No shit,” he said, totally unromantic.

  But she knew what he meant.

  “We’re past Lexington, right?” She sat up and stretched.

  “Way past.”

  She looked at him. “So you’re due.”

  “I have more patience than you.”

  “So you can wait until we get to the lake?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Lucky for you, you didn’t.”

  He grinned and glanced down at his erection, thrusting up through his opened jeans and boxers. “You think I couldn’t get it if I wanted to?”

  She took one look and tried to speak in a normal tone of voice. “Don’t be smug.”

  He grinned again. “We’re not smug. Just seasoned veterans.”

  “I don’t want to hear about that, either.”

  “Retired veterans.”

  “That’s better.”

  “Seriously, I don’t know about you, but I’m in love. You can jack me around and I’ll take it.”

  “Really?”

  He laughed. “Don’t look so hopeful.”

  He was so sweet in that masculine, nonsentimental way that was nevertheless as touching as the most saccharin tripe. “I’m feeling as though love might not be so scary after all.”

  “That’s a start.”

  He winked, a wicked seductive wink that didn’t have a hint of romance, but was assured as hell, sexy as hell and started up her engines again. “You shouldn’t wink like that. It makes me hot.”

  “That’s the idea. Here.” He held out his hand. “Why don’t you check out the traffic behind us.”

  It was amazing how he had only to look at her like that and give her those sexy orders in his husky tone and she was damned near reaching for her next orgasm. Her hand was shaking a little as she placed it in his, and he said, “Steady,” in a deep, low voice, as though understanding. She hoped he didn’t understand because this was the two thousand and tenth time he’d done this in his truck, but she quickly dismissed her caviling paranoia because he kissed her gently just then and said, “I’m really happy,” in that perfect, sincere way he had so you knew he meant it.

  He helped her straddle him, helped her slide down his hard, rigid penis. He groaned softly as she settled on his thighs, the full length of his erection buried inside her. She liked that small, vulnerable sound. She liked more that he was moving inside her from side to side as though keeping rhythm with the road. And when he pushed up, she liked that even more.

  He drove with one hand. With the other he stroked her back or her breasts or slid his hand between her legs, lazily tracing the contours of her clitoris as he moved in her, as she moved on him. Soon their skin was slippery with sweat even though the air conditioning was on full blast. His eyes were slits against the sun and the violence of his lust. She’d come so many times, hers were half closed as she lay on his shoulder and felt him inside her, mile after mile.

  She fell asleep in his arms by the time they reached Hinckley and he turned on the CD system and listened to all the variations of love songs that finally made sense.

  When she woke up at the Cloquet turnoff, she moved off him and leaned against the door, resting her feet in his lap. And they drank their iced lattes that had melted and ate the rest of the caramel roll and cream puff and talked as though they’d known each other forever.

  She even invited him for dinner at her parents’ in a moment of weakness, but when she tried to renege, stammering and stumbling over a really lame excuse, he said, “Hey, it’s okay. I have to meet them eventually.”

  “But things don’t always work out, and then what?” She meant for herself. She had a long history of relationships not working out.

  He took his eyes off the road and smiled at her. “A day at a time, babe. We’re not building the pyramids. We don’t need any long-range plans.”

  She felt such a sense of relief she wondered if she wasn’t really a completely mature adult. “Perfect.”

  “See how easy it is?”

  “Are you sure you’re not a therapist?” He seemed to understand her in a mildly troubling way.

  “How about I’m your therapist.” He flashed her a smile. “Let me know when you need more love and affection and chocolate-chip cookies.”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  VERMILLION WAS QUIET, ALTHOUGH SOME of the cabins had families there for the summer. But the racing boats and water skiers and droves of fishermen from the weekend were gone.

  Rocco’s cabin had been built in the forties, the logs painted and repainted scores of times, the two-story structure perched on a cliff over the lake, surrounded by towering Norway pines and beautifully secluded—which wasn’t always the case on Vermillion. He showed her around the main cabin and then took her down to the shore on a switchback staircase that wound through the pines clinging to the granite. The beach was lovely white sand. A boathouse and sauna were set on the shore along with another small guest cabin. At the end of the dock a small sunfish sailboat was anchored.

  He was different at the lake, a little less smart-ass, quieter, she would have almost said boyish, although with their ride up such a recent memory, the word didn’t quite fit. He made them lunch from a well-stocked refrigerator and pantry, ham sandwiches, an antipasto salad from one of the local resorts, potato chips that some woman in Ely made by hand and sold for about a hundred dollars an ounce. But they were definitely worth it. They drank a beer from the brewery in Duluth with their lunch and then went to sit on the screened porch overlooking the lake.

  Chloe sat while Rocco carried in the new outdoor furniture he’d brought up. She’d offered to help, but he’d said, “Take it easy,” leaving the rest unsaid, the part about her needing her strength for later. But he’d smiled when he’d said it, so she knew.

  They made love in his boyhood bed, and if her day wasn’t perfect enough, he said, afterward, while he was holding her in his twin bed next to the one his brother had slept in, “I’ve never done this before—in this bed, I mean.”

  She got a little misty-eyed for a moment thinking of him being young and at his grandparents’ lake place, of saving his bed for her, but then he spoiled it all by adding, “I think I broke my toe on the bed post.”

  But that was the smallest of little blips in her happiness radar that day because there was no question he was happy and she was happy and the world in general—the warm sunshine and singing birds and clear blue sky—was a backdrop to their bliss. He couldn’t get enough of her, which worked out just fine because that not getting enough worked in reverse, too.

  Late that night, bundled up against the cool night air, they shared a chaise he’d carried down the steep steps, and watched the fire he’d built on the beach. The northern lights shimmered green and red overhead, outshining the moon and stars.

  He’d brought down what they needed for s’mores, and they’d been waiting for the fire to burn down. Roasting marshmallows required coals, he’d said, and she was so mellow and content, she didn’t tell him she always made torches out of her marshmallows because she couldn’t wait.

  But waiting wasn’t a problem tonight as she lay between his legs, her back to his chest, his arms around her. This kind of waiting was right up there with Christmas presents and learning to ride a bike. Unalloyed joy.

  When the coals were ready, he squatted before the fire and made them both s’mores with a simple ease and naturalness that remind
ed her how little she knew about him.

  But learning more would be fun, she thought, clutching the wool plaid blanket around her, gazing at the stark beauty of his face in profile against the firelight, the strength of his body beneath his jeans and flannel shirt hers to share.

  She watched him roast the marshmallows and assemble the s’mores, thinking, how did he know she liked the Hershey bars all the way to the edge of the graham crackers, and how did he know she liked her marshmallows roasted until they had a little touch of black—like that—so the faint taste of charcoal melted into the chocolate?

  She’d never had the occasion to think, let alone use the phrase, “soul mates,” but at that moment she was sorely tempted.

  But he turned just then with the gooey cracker in his hand, arresting her imminent gaucherie. “Here,” he said in that lush husky tone she adored. “I’ll feed you.”

  This must be love, she thought—marshmallows, chocolate, firelight, the moon in the sky and Rocco smiling at her like that.

  There was a real good chance this might work out after all. . . .

  SUSAN JOHNSON, award-winning author of nationally bestselling novels, lives in the country near North Branch, Minnesota. A former art historian, she considers the life of a writer the best of all possible worlds. Researching her novels takes her to past and distant places, and bringing characters to life allows her imagination full rein. But perhaps most important . . . writing stories is fun. Please visit her webpage at www.susanjohnsonauthor.net.

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