“I wish I’d have known you had so much free time. I would have cast you as Billy Flynn,” Nigel said with a smirk of regret.
Damn it. That would have been a great role, too. But Garrett bit back any comment he might have wanted to fire at his friend.
“You should be Clark’s understudy,” Nigel suggested, his eyes brightening once more.
“I’m supposed to be working.” Garrett picked up his bucket of tools and began to head up the aisle, the same direction the cast members had traveled minutes prior. Maybe he could catch the beautiful brunette before rehearsal started back up again.
“There’s no reason you can’t do both,” Nigel said, his eyes caressing Garrett like they had when the two were alone on his patio the week before. Garrett knew what that lustful gaze meant: Nigel was imagining Garrett’s cock in his mouth. Or ass. Then Nigel said, “I’ll talk to Tom tomorrow. I’m sure he won’t mind.”
Garrett shook his head. “That’s really not—”
“I know you’re not accustomed to being an understudy, Nav, but wouldn’t it be nice to get paid for learning some lines and music? I’ll get you a book tomorrow, okay?”
“Fine,” he relented. At least he’d get to meet whoever was playing Roxie Hart up close and personal.
Having a job that started at 4 PM and went until midnight was damn near perfect. Since his undergrad days, he’d been on an academic schedule. Eight o’clock classes were de rigueur. And despite all those years of being on that schedule—well over a decade—he had yet to adjust. He was just not a morning person.
He was haunted by the memory of his stepfather storming into his room at half past six to wake him up for school. His bellowing voice pounded into Garrett’s ears like cannons at point-blank range. He never understood why his mother couldn’t wake him up with her soft whispers and a gentle caress. She had been such a sweet, unassuming woman.
He realized, though, it was because his mother would have never been able to get him out of bed. He could have easily ignored her and rolled back over, dozing off, and she’d have stood there, dumbfounded and unsure how to prod him along. Clark never had that issue. He had been the victim of plenty of 0-dark-thirty wakeup calls when he was in the military, and he probably thought it was a rite of passage every young person should endure.
It was noon when he was roused by knocking on his front door. He fell out of bed, found his footing and made his way to the door, rather briskly for someone who had been in a dead sleep only moments before. He peered through the peephole, and it was his landlord. It was October sixth. The rent was due on the first.
He had just gotten his first paycheck the night before but hadn’t had a chance to cash it yet. He’d have to run to the bank, which would, no doubt, piss Fred Munroe, the landlord, off. He tried to explain that to the short, stocky, balding man, who reminded him a bit of George Costanza from Seinfeld, in as succinct and calm terms as possible.
Fred drummed his fingers against the wall in the wide hallway that dissected the building while Garrett promised he’d run right out to get the cash and bring it to the office as soon as he could.
“Immediately,” Fred insisted.
“Don’t I technically have until the seventh?” Garrett questioned.
“That’s a Saturday. Go get the money now,” Fred fired back.
Garrett nodded and pushed the door closed, shaking his head. He was relieved he had actually gotten paid. Some jobs, he had to wait up to four weeks to get on the right cycle and receive a paycheck. He’d only been at the theatre for two weeks, so this check was only for one. But with the meager amount in his checking account and this, he would scrape by. He hadn’t resorted to scraping by in a while, but here he was. He hadn’t forgotten how.
Living my destiny, he reminded himself. Any time he got a little too big for his britches, he heard his stepdad’s voice ringing in his ears. Hardly a day went by that Clark didn’t inform him what a fuck-up he was and always would be.
If I’m lucky, there may be enough left over for a fifth of vodka, he thought with the most excited smirk he had mustered since Nigel insisted he become the understudy for the role of Billy Flynn. That was three nights ago. Even though the theatre manager, his boss Tom, had given his blessing, Garrett hadn’t had a chance to attend rehearsal. There had been a plumbing issue in the main men’s restroom. It took him three nights to get it squared away.
Clark always told me I’d be working with shit someday. How right he was.
The nearest branch of his bank was only a few blocks away, so it made a lot more sense to walk there than to risk losing his prime parking spot. The only place he drove these days was the theatre. He used to take a bus to campus...back when he was teaching. Parking on campus was a ridiculous mess. He got a stabbing pain in his heart whenever he thought about the crushed remnants of his dreams, yet he couldn’t stop his mind from going there several times a day. Parts of him wished he could take the role of Billy Flynn. It would be great to escape into a character—and Billy Flynn was a great character: a slick, sharp-tongued defense attorney known for getting his clients off.
The bank was less crowded than he imagined it would be on a Friday afternoon. He cashed his check and withdrew the rest of the funds needed to make up his rent. His paycheck was only going to be about two-thirds of what his stipend was. Eventually he would have to move. He wasn’t going to be able to keep up with his rent after his piddly savings was depleted.
But I’ll worry about that another day, he thought as he turned the corner and headed down the street to his favorite liquor store. It was a run-down dump, but they always had a selection of offbeat stuff, and he liked to experiment on occasion. Today, though, he was just in the market for the cheapest vodka they had. Whatever could dull his senses enough to get him through the weekend.
A car horn honking in the street distracted him as he was opening the door, so he didn’t notice someone was coming out. They collided with a thud, Garrett catching himself on the brick wall of the building. The woman he crashed into wasn’t so lucky. Her brown paper bag of booze hit the ground, and Garrett heard the glass shattering against itself. Fuck. He probably even said it out loud.
His eyes went from the bag to the woman, who was standing there in a state of shock. Her hair was piled on top of her head in a sleek bun, nearly black in color. She wore black-framed glasses, and the combination of the glasses and bun gave her the look of a fastidious librarian, but below that was a crisp, tailored white button-down shirt with a black pin-stripe tucked into a curve-hugging black pencil skirt. This woman was sex on high heels, and yep, she had those too, burgundy pointy-toed slingbacks with a four-inch heel.
“I’m so sorry,” Garrett groaned, wondering how many dollars of alcohol had been in that bag. It was leaking out now; the whole bag was turning dark brown as the liquid seeped through. “I didn’t even see you.”
A little breath escaped her full, sangria-colored lips as if that was the only communication she could muster. She didn’t reach down for the bag. Before Garrett could offer to help her with it, a store manager appeared with a broom.
“What happened out here?” he barked, seemingly peeved about being summoned to the scene of an accident.
“We ran into each other,” Garrett spoke. “I’m so sorry, ma’am.” He immediately and regretfully wondered if she was old enough to be referred to as “ma’am.” He peered at her again. She looked to be around forty, give or take a few. Definitely older than him. “Ma’am” seemed appropriate.
All those fucking years in academia has made me ridiculously PC, he observed as the manager bent to scoop up the ruined bag and place it into a steel-gray trash bag.
She still hadn’t spoken a word, but she didn’t look pleased. “Do you want to replace the items in the bag?” the manager asked.
“I—I can replace them,” Garrett offered. He locked his eyes on hers, waiting her response. They were like milk chocolate, so rich and wide and clear, he couldn’t tear his gaze away.
He hadn’t noticed before because of the glasses, but they were so extraordinary, now that he’d seen them, he didn’t even notice the glasses.
She had darker skin, a tawny bronze, and he thought she might be Indian, though he had never been good at identifying ethnicities. Everyone who looked at him assumed he was Irish or Scottish because of the red hair and green eyes, but he wasn’t. British and German on his dad’s side and French, Norwegian and Italian on his Mom’s. A western European mutt, he’d always told his students when they covered European politics. He still had no idea where the red hair came from. Not his parents. Maybe his father’s parents. He’d never known them.
He realized all of those thoughts had rumbled through his mind in the time it took for her lips to crack into one of the most beautiful smiles he had ever seen. Her teeth were straight, white, perfect against her ruby lips, and her eyes lit up with sparkles at the same time. “No, I couldn’t allow you to do that,” she said. “It was an accident, and just as much my fault as yours.”
Oh, she does speak! Her smile was contagious, and his own lips spread under her spell. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d smiled, not an actual, genuine smile. He hadn’t had anything to smile about for so long. Her voice was every bit as rich and smooth as her smile and eyes, plus the whole package, glasses, bun, everything—she was stunning. His cock picked up on it too. It had sprung to attention as soon as their eyes met.
“I feel terrible, though.” His voice came out just as sweetly as he hoped. Gentlemanly, even.
“It was four bottles of wine,” the woman said, shrugging. “I’m having a little get-together tonight, and I have plenty at home, but you know, can’t hurt to have more, right?”
“You can never have too much wine,” Garrett agreed, nodding. His eyes never left hers. The manager scoffed as if he couldn’t handle the overt flirting, then stormed back into the store carrying the trash bag full of the shattered wine bottles.
“Do you live around here?” she questioned, stepping toward him. And just like that, he knew he had captured her attention in the same way she had captured his. There was a spark. An undeniable one.
“Yeah, just a few blocks away, why?” he asked, trying to keep his eyebrows from wagging suggestively. If she invited him home with her to spend the rest of the afternoon fucking each other’s brains out, he wouldn’t say no. The landlord would just have to wait. Besides, she looked like the type of woman who went after what she wanted, and that was just the type of woman Garrett was drawn to.
“I know it sounds silly since we just met—”
Her eyes trailed down his body and back up again. He was glad he’d taken a shower that morning as he ran his fingers through his wildfire mane, hoping to tame it just enough that she’d be tempted to mess it up again with her long, elegant fingers. Which were devoid of rings. Not that it mattered to him...not for a fling.
She picked right back up where she had left off, “—but do you want to stop by my get-together later? It’s not really a party, just some adult beverages, hors d'oeuvres and conversation.”
Okay, so it’s not an invitation for a little afternoon delight...he thought with just a smidge of disappointment. “That sounds fun,” he answered. “And, tell you what, I’ll buy two bottles of wine and bring them tonight. That will make up for my half of the accident.” He gave her a flirty wink.
“I think I could allow that.” She grinned and extended her hand to him. “I’m Anjuli.”
“What a beautiful name!” It did sound Indian, after all. He had to take small victories where he could find them these days. He took her hand into both of his, giving it a squeeze and a few slow pumps. “I’m Garrett. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
Four
He had been cooped up for so long in his apartment alone that the sound of so many people filling the cramped space was deafening. He felt like he was moving underwater as his ears and brain tried to work in tandem to block out the noise. Then it was just a faraway murmur, buried under the waves.
He’d been stopped so many times by guests—and there were only maybe fifteen people in attendance—who asked conversationally, “So how do you know Juli?”
Juli. He definitely preferred Anjuli to the diminutive Juli. Her full name was classy and alluring. “Juli” was just “Julie” without the “e.” Too standard for someone of her radiance.
He watched her circulating within the crowd like a queen amongst her court. He didn’t have a good answer for the guests who asked him to define their relationship, and he doubted they would find it amusing if he simply claimed to be “the Queen’s subject.” But that is the way he felt looking at her, his eyes trailing over her the way they might a gleaming gold throne, upon which sat the most dazzling light.
It was much too trite to say he’d run into her at the liquor store.
What kind of first-meet story was that?
It sucked.
He’d have to come up with another one.
He was quite sure she was unaware, but he had already devised how he planned to undress her. How he planned to move so subtly and fluidly that she wouldn’t even know what was happening to her until her clothes were falling to the floor.
He didn’t get the afternoon romp he’d envisioned when they first met over the shattered wine bottles, but he would now get something so much better: a night with her. A night after she’d played hostess and was too exhausted to lift anything but her hips as he sunk his cock deep inside her.
He hadn’t been with a woman in...
Well, not since Mara.
But Mara was a young, vapid co-ed. She was hardly a woman.
Anjuli was the very definition of a woman with her elegantly rounded shoulders and her wide, swaying hips. She was not dressed in business attire as she had been at the liquor store, but instead wore an off-the-shoulder black gown, a simple gold choker at her neck. And in the center was a fully-bloomed rose. If Mara was a tightly sealed rosebud, then Anjuli was at the peak of blossom, her petals exposed and ready to be stroked, savored...devoured.
He couldn’t wait for all these people to leave so he would have his chance. This is just what I need, he thought, just what I need to have my confidence restored. Sure, seeing Nigel was great, and there were a half-dozen other guys he’d seen off and on in the past few years, but it was all chartered territory. All of those butterflies and first-time nerves had been conquered. What remained was the easy comfort of a body your own body knew, with no thrill of discovery to tease and tempt the imagination.
He had gathered from his conversations with fellow party-goers and his own sleuth-like observations that Anjuli was single—maybe divorced?—and had a daughter in college. There was a photo of her and her daughter decked out in a high school graduation gown. In the adjacent frame, the daughter was holding a pennant that read Penn State, so Anjuli was A) old enough to have a college-aged daughter and B) her daughter went to school far enough away that she wouldn’t be home on the weekends.
Not that any of that mattered to Garrett. This was a hook-up and a hook-up only. But gathering this type of information always proved valuable in the art of seduction. One couldn’t approach an unknown, especially a woman of such considerable maturity and elegance, without every tool available. He could slip in a mention of her daughter’s school or how she couldn’t possibly be old enough to have a child in college.
Women loved it when people thought they were younger than they actually were. Hell, men loved it too. Garrett had always looked older than his age, especially when he was a kid. Being 6’3” definitely contributed. He could see that in another decade, he’d be flattered by someone thinking he was still in his thirties. But he had a ways to go yet.
Plenty of time to figure out my life before I turn forty, he thought with a self-deprecating smirk. And it was just about that time that he wandered into what appeared to be Anjuli’s home office. There was a metal and glass desk, very sleek-looking and probably impossible to keep clean. On top was a laptop and an
other monitor, speakers, keyboard. There were some motivational quotes on the walls, all #girlpower type stuff. But it was one wall, the wall just above the long, completely filled bookcase that really caught his attention. There were diplomas neatly displayed in beautiful cherry frames.
And one of them was for a PhD in...he leaned closer to inspect...Clinical Psychology from Duke University.
Though it was like a sucker-punch that the one thing he’d been trying to achieve for his entire adulthood was hanging adroitly on this woman’s wall, it made his desire for her burn even more intensely. He wanted to fuck that fucking degree right out of her, her back arching, her mind numb, her throat scratched from screaming out his name over and over again as she clutched the sheets and forgot how to even spell “clinical psychology.”
He heard the front door of her apartment close and realized the din of the crowd had dissipated. The video playing in his mind of what he planned to do as soon as everyone left abruptly ended as he made his way down the hall to see if they were indeed alone. He found her at the door with what appeared to be the last guests, all smiles and alcohol-induced red cheeks as they bade each other farewell.
When she closed the door for the final time and spun to face him, he was ready, armed with the boyish grin he’d given her earlier at the liquor store. “I guess I should be heading home too,” he said, though he in no way meant it.
Her eyes traced the outline of his figure before returning to his face, where she studied his mouth and its upturned corners briefly before suggesting, “One more drink?”
He hadn’t had anything since early in the evening. He’d done a few shots with a couple he might have considered trying to go home with if he wasn’t so hellbent on fucking the hostess. They were definitely down. He could tell the man was bi, too. He kept winking at Garrett and was obviously aroused when his wife rubbed her ass against Garrett’s backside when some new dance hit came on Anjuli’s Pandora station.
The Navigator (Mountains Series Book 5) Page 4
