Sexy As Sin

by Julie Kriss

  “I get it,” he growled. “You’re pushing me. It’s what you do. Are you trying to see how far you can go?”

  My voice came out breathy. God, I could smell him. “I’m not doing anything,” I said, and we both knew it was a lie.

  “What do you want?” Dane said, thick with frustration. “Do you want me to say I’m sorry?”

  My hands went cold and my breath stopped. “Sorry for what?”

  “You know what. Sorry for what I did the last time I saw you.”

  He thought he had to apologize for that? As if he had done something wrong? Had he thought that all this time? I couldn’t bear the idea. “No,” I told him. “Don’t say you’re sorry for that.”

  He still watched me, his voice softening a little. “I’ll say it if you want me to.”

  “Don’t,” I choked out. “Don’t.”

  A muscle in his jaw twitched, and then he shook his head, backing off. “Can I at least put my clothes on now?”

  I didn’t answer, and he didn’t wait for it. He grabbed his clothes and shoes and put them under his arm. “I’m going to dress in the men’s room,” he growled. “I’d like some privacy for a second.”

  I still couldn’t speak. Dane walked away, and I downed the rest of the champagne in my glass, gulping it. He thought I wanted him to apologize. That fucking man.

  That brilliant, stupid, utterly infuriating man.

  I put my heels back on and stood up, looking at the suits and fabrics in the room. Now that the measurements were—mostly—done, I talked to the tailor about cuts, fabrics, and colors. Dane would need two suits, I estimated, as well as several sets of dress pants, shirts, and ties, sport jackets, and half-zip sweaters. Socks and shoes. With a week’s lead time, nothing would be custom made, but we had time to alter existing pieces. Then my phone rang, and I talked to Tyrell, the hairstylist, about squeezing Dane in. Only after I hung up did I realize that Dane hadn’t come out of the bathroom, which was around the corner and down the hall.

  “Would you like me to go find him?” the tailor asked politely.

  “No need,” I said as suspicion bloomed in my gut. I walked around the corner myself, pushing open the door to the men’s room. “Dane!”

  The room was empty.

  “Fuck,” I said as the tailor came in after me. I turned to him. “Is there a back door?”

  He looked stunned. Most likely, none of his rich clients had ever made an escape while getting measured for a bespoke suit. “At the end of the hall,” he said.

  “Fuck,” I said again. I half-ran down the hall, moving as fast as I could in my three-inch heels. I slammed the back door open and saw nothing but parking lot.

  Dane was gone.

  Seven

  Dane

  * * *

  I got as far as the Lexus, and then I stopped, my hands balled into fists. Damn it. What the hell was I doing?

  You’re bailing on her, that’s what.

  It had taken barely an hour. I’d stripped and Ava had sat there—doing what, exactly? Talking, asking questions, poking at me. Pretending like she didn’t give a shit about me. And she didn’t, I knew that, but somehow it still made me crazy. I was hot for her and guilty and pissed off, all at once.

  So I left.

  Fuck. Not my best moment.

  I stood next to my expensive car and mentally kicked myself. I didn’t want to go back in there, but at the same time, by abandoning her, I breaking my rule: I was being disrespectful to Ava. So I stood there like an idiot, trying to figure out what to do.

  The sound of heels clicking on the pavement came up behind me. “Dane Scotland!”

  I turned to face her. “Listen, Ava—”

  “You ditched me!” She was carrying a fashionable handbag, and in her fury she threw it at me with all the strength in her arm. She was likely aiming for my head, but the bag hit me in the middle of the chest with a hard smack. It was a lot heavier than it looked. I caught the bag as it fell.

  “Ava, hold on,” I said.

  “Do you know what you just did?” She was on a tear now. She had come up close to me, her hair coming out of its clasp, her eyes full of hurt. “You embarrassed me in front of the best menswear tailor in Chicago. You’ve tried to ruin this job when I desperately need it, because you don’t care. And then you tried to apologize for proposing to me!”

  The words hit me like punches. She needed this job? I thought she was successful, that this job didn’t matter to her. But I realized now I was an idiot, because the success story was another one of Ava’s illusions, one of the weapons she used to pretend she didn’t need anyone. She wouldn’t come all the way to Chicago, all the way to me, unless she really needed the money.

  And yes. I had just apologized to her for asking her to marry me seven years ago, on the last day we’d seen each other. Because I’d been a jerk that day, and my behavior had haunted me ever since.

  I didn’t know what words to use, how to make anything right. I didn’t know how to say anything I was thinking or feeling. I only knew this was Ava, and her brown eyes were filling with tears, and the sight of it was a knife in my gut. “You know I owed you an apology,” I said. “We were over. I saw you on a date with another guy, and I acted like an asshole.” We hadn’t seen each other in two years, but I’d proposed to her on the spot: in public, in the restaurant, while she was on a date. Ava had not only turned me down, she’d been furious, and she’d been right. We’d ended in a stormy fight, and I’d never said I was sorry. Until today.

  “You did act like an asshole,” Ava said, “but I wasn’t mad for very long. You didn’t do it to hurt or embarrass me. You didn’t even do it because you loved me. You did it because of the baby.”

  The words hung there, heavy and sharp in the late-afternoon air. Cars drove by on the street. A breeze blew. If the tailor guy inside was wondering where we both went, he didn’t come out to look.

  You did it because of the baby.

  That crazy, happy winter when I was twenty-three, I hadn’t just taken Ava’s virginity and given her mine. I’d also knocked her up. It was an accident—she was on the pill, but somehow, something didn’t work at the wrong time. We never knew why. We only knew that she wasn’t pregnant, and then she was sore and tired, throwing up every few hours. Because she was going to have a baby.

  My baby. Our baby.

  Incredibly, the other guys, including Aidan, thought Ava had the flu. They never caught on. They were twenty-three-year-old guys who didn’t know what pregnancy looked like. We had just sold my software and were launching a new company, working crazy hours, rarely home. Still, they would have figured it out, considering Ava and I were pretty much panicked. It would have become obvious if the pregnancy had lasted. But it didn’t.

  A week after her symptoms started, Ava started bleeding, and then she wasn’t pregnant anymore. She didn’t have time to get to her first doctor’s appointment before it was over. She spent a couple of days in bed while I was sick with worry, and then she was up again. She said she didn’t want to talk about it.

  I was angry and sad and relieved all at once. I was pissed at the world and mad at myself for some reason I couldn’t fathom. And I wasn’t finished with Ava—not even close. I still wanted her in every way it was possible to want her.

  But we were done. She’d just miscarried my baby at nineteen years old. Where were we supposed to go from there? We’d never even had a real relationship, and we were both out of our depth. So it was over just as abruptly as it began.

  We all moved out of the apartment and went our separate ways. I stayed in Chicago while the others spread to their respective cities. Ava stayed in Chicago for a few more years, taking fashion and makeup art classes before making the move to New York. We’d been over for so long, but when I saw her in that restaurant, on a date with another guy, it felt like seconds. I’d walked in there and interrupted them as if no time had passed at all. And the only thing I could think of to do was propose.

  Fucki
ng propose.

  Not my finest moment. Just like this one wasn’t.

  You didn’t even do it because you loved me.

  That was what she thought, and I didn’t blame her. But it still hurt like hell.

  Ava wiped the skin just under her eyes, in that careful way of women wearing mascara. “It was a long time ago, Dane,” she said. “But let me give you a tip. Even when your reasons were bad, don’t ever apologize to a girl for proposing to her.”

  I stepped forward. I took her face in my hands, gently, as if it were a valuable piece of china. A priceless vase. I tilted her chin up so she was looking at me.

  “Ava,” I said, “let’s go get a fucking drink.”

  Eight

  Ava

  * * *

  “I don’t know,” I said, sipping my margarita. “I wasn’t paying much attention. But I thought Rey should have had hot sex with that Kylo Ren guy.”

  Dane put his head in his hands, cradling his forehead. “Ava.”

  “What? I like tall, skinny men.”

  “Do you even know the plot of any of the Star Wars movies? Name one.”

  I frowned at him. We were sitting in a bar downtown, a two-level place full of pool tables and TV screens. It was early, barely dinnertime, and the place wasn’t packed yet. Dane and I sat at the corner of the near-empty bar, him with a pint of dark, bitter beer, me with my fancy drink.

  “I don’t need to know the plot,” I said. “I know a hot guy when I see one.”

  This was my favorite game with Dane—or it used to be. You could call it Bait the Nerd. The rules were that I would say something absurd about a nerdy thing Dane cared about, and Dane would get mad. Over the years, I’d become a master at it.

  Who’s the guy with the dark glasses and the lasers coming out of his eyes? What’s his deal, anyway?

  How does Batman pee in that suit?

  Why doesn’t Black Widow have superpowers like the rest of them? Is it because she’s a girl?

  Do you think Captain America is a virgin?

  Why is Wolverine so hung up on that Jean Grey chick? She isn’t even hot.

  Made. Him. Crazy. Hence, Bait the Nerd.

  I actually didn’t mind most of Dane’s nerdy stuff, and I paid more attention than I let on. But it was too much fun to drive him nuts, so I never admitted the truth.

  “The whole movie should have been about Carrie Fisher,” I said, taking another sip and watching Dane’s face. “Actually, all of the movies should have been about her. I mean, what the fuck.”

  “You’re making me day drink,” Dane said, lifting his head and sipping deeply on his beer.

  “Good,” I said. “I like drunk Dane.”

  “He doesn’t come out very often.” Dane drank again.

  “Tell me what you’ve been reading.”

  He did, and I knew some of it. I told him some of my favorite books—I didn’t read as much as Dane did, and a lot of what I read was romance, but reading was one of my favorite pastimes, especially on my phone during a boring day on set. Dane didn’t judge, and he asked me questions. We talked about TV, though neither of us watched much of it. We drank, and he made me laugh.

  After the gut-wrenching way we’d had it out earlier, it was a relief. I felt the muscles between my shoulder blades loosen, my turning stomach ease. And at the same time, I couldn’t deny the other thing I was feeling: butterflies. Deep in my stomach, down between my legs, even while we talked about Game of Thrones.

  It wasn’t a date, because Dane and I had too much history to be on a date. And we weren’t friends. If Dane was my friend, I wouldn’t be picturing him in his boxer briefs as we talked. I wouldn’t be wondering if he was different in bed now, slower maybe, more experienced, less frantic. I wouldn’t be asking myself if all that new muscle made him heavier, if it made his weight different, the way he moved different. My mouth was dry just thinking about it, so I took another drink.

  “What?” Dane said when I was too quiet. “What is it?”

  I swallowed. The margarita was going to my head, making me feel pleasantly fuzzy. And turned on. “All these changes,” I said, motioning to him, up and down. “They’re hot.”

  Dane’s dark eyes looked briefly surprised, and then he looked away. The bar was dark and he had a beard on his cheeks, but I thought he might be blushing. “That wasn’t what I was going for,” he said.

  “Really?” I said in disbelief. “Paying for laser surgery? Doing, I assume, months of workouts? You weren’t trying to get hot?”

  “Not specifically.” He frowned. “I just wanted to change. Be less me. Or maybe more me. I didn’t really analyze it.” He looked at me, his gaze frank. “You’ve always been hot, even before you were blonde. Though you didn’t need to lose the weight.”

  My spine straightened. “Are you passing judgment on my weight, Dane Scotland?”

  “No, ma’am,” he said instantly. “It’s just an observation. You’re hot either way.”

  That gave me tingles, which was bad, so I said, “I work in the fashion industry in New York. I assure you I definitely needed to lose the weight. And I need to lose more.” I took a deep sip of my margarita.

  “Why? You’re behind the camera, not in front of it.”

  “You sweet, innocent baby,” I said. “Everyone in the business needs to look good, no exceptions. In exchange for the body image issues, I get clothes.” I motioned to my leopard-print dress.

  “It’s very nice,” Dane said.

  “Nice? It’s eight hundred dollars nice, though I didn’t pay anything close to that. And these.” I flexed my leg out, showing him my black high heel—and, incidentally, my bare calf, which I thought looked pretty sexy now that I’d had a margarita. “You have no idea who designed these shoes, do you?”

  Dane frowned. “If you think I do, then you haven’t been paying attention.”

  I sighed theatrically. “No wonder you need me, Dane. You may be hot, but you don’t know how to dress.”

  “What’s complicated about it?” He sipped his beer. “You find clothes that fit, you put them on. Clothes keep you warm and keep you from being naked. That’s it.”

  I was about to argue, and then I felt my jaw drop. I realized what he was doing: playing Bait the Fashionista, his response to Bait the Nerd. I could tell by the tiny quirk of a smile at the corner of his mouth, the bastard. “For that, you owe me another margarita,” I said, sliding my empty glass over the bar. “I’d like to get tipsy.”

  “Why?” he asked, motioning to the bartender. Drinking hadn’t been my thing when I was a teenager—I’d been more of a square, but I’d changed. I didn’t know a single person in New York who didn’t drink like a fish.

  “Because my bank account is empty and my life is held together by glue and Scotch tape,” I said, realizing as the words came out that the first margarita had hit me hard. “And I’m dressing my ex in the same city as my shitty childhood, the place where my mother still lives.”

  Dane got a cautious look on his face as he slid my drink toward me. He knew everything about my background, my life, the childhood that Aidan and I had. “Are we going to talk about your mother?” he asked.

  “No, we’re not.” I took a deep sip, letting the icy alcohol hit my veins. Aidan and I had grown up fatherless with a single mother. She said she left our father because he hit her, but I always wondered if that was a lie. God knew my mother lied about enough things, big and small.

  Some people should never be a parent, and my mother was one of them. We were in her way; we were a headache who took up her time and cost her money. She had no time for us, no patience. Aidan had let it roll off him somehow, but I never could. I spent my childhood trying to please my mother, hoping to win the affection and love she couldn’t give. I tried, and I tried, and I tried. It never worked.

  When Aidan moved out and I spent more time with the boys, my mother never asked where I was. She never asked if I was safe or happy. When I finally moved out too, she was so relieved s
he didn’t bother to hide it. You’ll be fine, she said, her only words of wisdom. The underlying message was clear: If you’re not fine, I don’t want to hear about it.

  A few years ago, our mother started losing her memory and becoming confused. The degeneration was rapid, so fast that she now lived under 24-hour care in an excellent home, with Aidan paying the bills. Instead of getting the chance to come to terms with my mother, or even reconcile with her, I now had a mother who was quickly forgetting about me altogether.

  Dane knew all of this. He’d been with me for every minute of it since I was eleven. It was both comforting and disconcerting, sitting with someone who knew so much about me. I’d gone to New York to reinvent myself, become a new person. A person who never talked about her increasingly ill mother. I didn’t talk about her now, but it was because I didn’t need to.

  “I guess you know everything,” I said to him, looking at the line of his jaw beneath his beard.

  “I do.” He sipped his beer, which was still his first drink. “I thought we weren’t talking about it.”

  “We aren’t. Where are your parents now?”

  “Divorced,” Dane said. “My mother remarried and moved to Washington state. My father is still in Chicago, working. Neither of them wants my money.”

  I felt my eyebrows go up. I remembered Dane’s parents as always working, leaving him home alone for much of his life. You’d think people like that would be happy to have a rich son. “What do you mean, they don’t want your money?”

  “My father says he wouldn’t know what to do with himself if he wasn’t working. My mother says her new husband does just fine.” Dane rubbed a drop of beer from his bottom lip. “I think both of them think my money is immoral. Like there’s no way you can get as rich as I did without robbing someone or taking what isn’t yours. They used to ignore me, but now they pretty much don’t trust me.”