“Oh. I…I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“My mistake.”
“No. No, it was fine. I’m just not. I don’t…” She lifted her hand, then let it drop helplessly, and gestured to the ladies’ changing room entrance. “I should go.”
He opened his mouth to stop her, then stopped himself instead. This encounter had gone from good to bad to worse, until she was dying to get away from him. Though for all he knew, she just wanted to get back to her new date to share the story of what she’d seen here so they could come back and reenact it.
Frustration hit him. “You’ll be around?”
“Yes.” She was already backing away from him. His frustration turned to a strange panic, like in grade school when he’d wanted to ask Mindy Jacobs out, had been talking to her outside the lunchroom, minutes ticking by with no asking happening, just pressure strangling his vocal cords until her giggling friends had come to her rescue.
“May.”
“Yes.” She stopped edging away.
“Are you going to be alone here this week?”
She glanced at the couple enjoying their afterglow back in the Jacuzzi, then turned to Beck, eyes calm and direct, a slight tip of her head making her look the sensual siren again. “Yes. I am.”
“Can I call you?”
“To help with your book?”
He put a hand to the back of his neck. The book. God, he hadn’t even been thinking of it. For once. “And because we’re both here alone and company is nice.”
The woman in the Jacuzzi burst out laughing and Beck cringed. Yeah, Mindy didn’t think he was that smooth in high school, either.
May shot an angry glare over to the tub, then relaxed. He turned to find the couple still immersed in each other, and smiled at his and May’s shared paranoia, and her willingness to defend him. “What do you say?”
“I’d like that.” She sent him a sexy smile; at the same time a blush stained her cheeks. Then she turned and walked unselfconsciously through the door to the ladies’ changing area.
Beck stared after her, hands on his hips, fascinated more than he cared to be, more than two brief meetings warranted, though as a writer it was his job to be fascinated by people. Plenty of women sent deliberate go and stop signals, enjoying the power it gave them, but what kind of woman sent them with what appeared to be utter sincerity on both counts?
Whatever kind it was, the more he saw of May Ellison, the more interested he was in finding out.
MAY REACHED her room and noticed another invitation under her door. Oh, great. What other wild spontaneous thing had Trevor planned months in advance for every woman he brought here?
This one turned out to be a reservation for dinner that night at Amuse Bouche, the hotel’s elegant restaurant. Oh, what a lovely publicly lonely meal that would be. At eight o’clock—she’d starve to death long before that.
She spread her arms out wide and let herself fall back onto the king-size bed in what had narrowly escaped being her and Trevor’s room. Staring at the spotless ceiling, she thought about how the sprinkler head looked like the spur on a cowboy’s boot. And how the air in the room smelled fresh, and slightly herbal, like the lobby. And how the rooms were fabulously insulated—she could barely hear the traffic noises and wasn’t aware by so much as a thud that anyone else was staying on her floor. And finally, yes, how she couldn’t believe she’d just stood in a public area and watched people having sex.
She screwed her eyes tight shut, heat gathering in her cheeks and forehead. How she’d managed to maintain anything resembling cool she had no idea. On the one hand, she’d been mortified. And shocked. And vaguely repelled. And…well, Geez-o-Pete as her father always said, they were having sex in public.
On the other hand…
She rolled over and lay on her stomach, hands in fists close to her hips, head turned toward the window. As mortified and shocked and vaguely repelled as she’d been, she’d also been as wildly and completely and urgently turned-on as she’d ever been in her life.
Not only because the couple was young and extremely attractive. Not only because the excitement they took in each other expanded to include Beck and her. But also, because standing there watching these two beautiful people pleasure each other, she’d felt such a strong pull to Beck, such a strangely intimate erotic bond, it was almost as if they’d been having sex themselves. Except they hadn’t and that was her fault.
The squawking call of a seagull pulled her off the bed and drew her to the window. She pushed back the curtain and watched the bird swoop by, then away on some mysterious errand.
It was easy to forget Manhattan was an island. Right now she felt like one herself. A deserted island, in the middle of an ocean of strangeness. She couldn’t even call and report something like this to Ginny. For all Ginny’s breezy fascination with life in the fast lane, she was, at heart, the daughter her minister father raised.
For a few minutes spent watching the bustling street below, May indulged in a longing for Dan, for her quiet, controlled, all-planned-out life in Oshkosh. Working at the university nine-to-five, five days a week. Working out at the university pool. Coming home, eating with Dan or out with Ginny or alone. Sometimes catching a movie. Sleeping alone or with Dan. It was a nice routine. Comforting. Fulfilling, for all but a few strange restless moments now and then.
Nothing like coming to New York, being jilted, then deciding to stay anyway, Trevor be damned. Getting the makeover of her life. Watching strangers have sex in public. Being propositioned by a fabulous celebrity author.
And how did she react to her first shot at this big thrill she thought she was after? She’d tossed Beck a few panicked sentence fragments and fled back here to the dull safety of her room as fast as her waxed legs would carry her.
Oh, yeah. She totally belonged in the fast lane. You just couldn’t rattle old May, no way, no how. Unless you did something out-of-control wild, like breathed in her presence.
She let the curtain fall, blocking out the sight of the city, grabbed her pad and sketched a picture of herself, drowning in the buildings of New York, as if they were quicksand.
He’d wanted her. Which was exactly what she hoped for. What she’d decided to stay for while she was swimming. But when faced with what she hoped for and decided to stay for…she freaked.
Maybe she should just—
May dropped the sketch pad, put her fists to the sides of her face and growled in frustration and disgust. If she thought “maybe she should just go home” one more time, she was going to scream. Maybe she this, maybe she that… Maybe she’d been named May, short for Maybe.
Yes. Yes, she was staying. No. No, she wasn’t going home.
Yes, she’d been caught in a bizarre situation, which…uh…life in Oshkosh hadn’t quite prepared her for. No, she couldn’t imagine anything short of growing up in a swinger’s club would prepare one for public sex.
Yes, she was going to stay and have a good time if it killed her. No, she was not going to allow herself to be easily flustered again. Veronica Lake would be super-glued to her image. No more cracks, no more flaws, no more failures.
And yes. If Beck asked again if she’d like to go to his room, she’d say yes. If he asked if she’d tell him how she masturbated, she’d say yes. How she gave blow jobs? Yes. How one day she did seventeen men at once before breakfast? Yes, yes, yes, she was going to say yes and not look back or second-, third- and fourth-guess herself to death.
In fact she was going to call Beck right now and invite him to dinner with her that night. And in a page out of Clarissa’s no doubt fascinating book, she’d graciously allow Trevor to pay. Ha! She marched over to the phone, dialed the first three numbers of Beck’s extension and slammed the phone down. Smacked herself on the head. Maybe—
No. More. Maybe. She was going to do this. Another way.
Over at the room’s elegant desk, she yanked open a drawer. Notecards with envelopes, the kind that held her spa and dinner invitations. Perfect
. She picked up the black pen with the pink HUSH logo and sat in the cushioned desk chair to write.
Dear Beck,
I’d like to invite you to dinner with me at the hotel restaurant tonight. I’ve made a reservation at eight. See you there.
May
Smiling she stuffed the note into the envelope, smiling wickedly. Nice touch not asking him to RSVP, just telling him she’d be there and assuming he’d show. That should make up for some of her caught-off-guard ineptitude by the pool.
So. All that was behind her now. Onward and upward, Veronica. She’d pop out to Beck’s room right now, and shove the note under the door….
No. She’d call the concierge and have the note delivered. Much classier. And then Beck wouldn’t happen to hear her and fling open the door while she was still shoving the note under, and she wouldn’t be caught squatting in the hall outside his room looking like a doofus. From now on, she’d do this right.
Because there was no longer any “maybe” involved. She was going to have her big thrill this week at HUSH Hotel with Beck Desmond, and not one blessed thing was going to stop her.
Especially not herself.
5
Note on Amuse Bouche Restaurant staff board:
I assume we’re still serving Trevor’s champagne to Ms. Ellison and whomever she’s dining with tonight? I’ll go ahead unless I hear otherwise.
Jean
SEVEN FIFTY-FIVE and time for Veronica. Wearing the little black dress she’d chosen for dinner with Beck, May studied herself in the full-length mirror on the bathroom door. She’d owned the dress for two years, but this was its first outing, and she adored it as much as the day she bought it. The dress had thin straps and a wide scooped neckline that flirted with the tops of her breasts—and she better stop thinking how empty the space between them looked without Dan’s grandmother’s locket. Below, the soft material hugged her body, not so tightly that she’d get those I-really-needed-a-larger-size horizontal creases across her abdomen, but tight enough. She’d worn a strapless bra, so if the straps maneuvered their way off one shoulder or the other…Oops! No problem. Quite the opposite.
She’d even managed to get her hair and makeup done nearly as well as Nico and his henchwomen earlier at Luxe.
Beck had called after receiving her invitation, and since May expected that he might, Veronica had been firmly in control. She’d pitched her voice low and borderline suggestive, managed some fabulous lilting laughs and even ended the call with a “see you tonight” that sounded as if she was hot and naked already.
This was going to be a great night. Dinner dates with men involved only a lot of nodding and beaming. How hard could it be? She was even ready for his questions about her solo sex life.
She was pretty sure.
But first…some things you needed a girlfriend for, and getting ready for a hot date was one of them.
She rushed to her purse and dug her cell phone out to call Ginny.
“Hello?”
“It’s May.”
“May! You better not be calling me from Oshkosh…”
“No, I’m still in New York.”
Long loud sigh of relief. “Thank God. Now tell me everything.”
“Well…for one, I got a makeover.” She turned one way and then the other in front of the mirror, enjoying the heck out of her uncharacteristic vanity.
“Ohmigosh, a good makeover?”
May laughed. “Yes, an incredible one.”
“Not like the free one we got from Huckaby’s Salon where they fried your hair and turned mine orange and then made us up like Brides of Dracula?”
“Not like that.”
“Tell me.”
May went into elaborate detail, the massage, hair, the nails, the skin, the lunch, the Brazilian…
“Ow!”
“Yeah, no kidding. That part wasn’t the most fun I’ve ever had.”
“I’ve read about them, but…” Ginny made a shuddering sound. “So what are you going to do tonight?”
“Funny you should ask…”
Ginny gasped. “You have a date! I knew you’d find someone. Who is he?”
“Beck Desmond.”
“No way. No way. You are totally lying.”
“I’m not.” She laughed and turned away from the mirror. “I’m really not.”
“My God, Beck Desmond is even cuter than Alec Baldwin. I saw his picture in People. How did this happen?”
“He’s at the hotel writing a book.”
“Shut up!” Ginny demanded the entire story, which May told her, minus the spectacle in the hot tub.
“Oh, oh, oh, I’m so excited, I’m probably more excited than you. Okay, so what are you wearing?”
“Remember that black dress we bought at Boston Store, two years ago?”
“Ohmigawd, he’s going to get a stiffy just looking at you. I love that dress! The one Dan never let you wear.”
May frowned. Let her wear? “He just never thought it was right. I mean how many fancy occasions did he take me to?”
“Um…let’s see, that would be…none.” Ginny’s voice was sharp. She hadn’t taken kindly to Dan skewering May’s heart, which was her role as best friend, one May would gladly take on if the skewer had been in the other hand.
“In any case, it’s perfect for my date tonight.”
“I’ll say. I’m so glad you didn’t leave New York. I hope it works out with Beck, even just for this week. You deserve someone who thinks you’re as amazing as you are.”
May rolled her eyes at the subtle dig. Even when she and Dan were dating, Ginny hadn’t been his biggest fan. She meant well, and wanted May to be happy. She just didn’t understand the degree to which Dan had been that happiness. “Thanks. I better go.”
“Okay, but I will require a detailed postmortem.”
“Done. See ya.” She clicked off the phone, stuffed it back into her purse, grateful for Ginny’s infectious enthusiasm. One last glance in the mirror and she was ready.
So. Onward.
Deep breath, hand on the doorknob, then door open, and out into the cool hallway, down the elevator, one foot elegantly placed in front of the other, hips swaying but not too much, all the way across the lobby, where Eartha Kitty sat on one of the black chairs all alone, bathing herself, pink gem-studded collar sparkling in the light. As May passed, Eartha interrupted her paw-washing activity to deliver a long green haughty stare.
May winked. “I hear you. We are queens of the world who need no one. I won’t forget that tonight.”
At the entrance to the restaurant on the far side of Erotique, the gorgeous—of course—black-haired maitre d’greeted her with a friendly-yet-professional smile that showed stunning white teeth against his dark-toned skin.
“Good evening and welcome to Amuse Bouche, Ms. Ellison.”
“Good evening…” She trailed off, since she’d been about to give her name for the reservation, and gave him a demure smile instead.
“Your table is ready, would you like to sit or wait for your companion to arrive?”
Which was more polite? To heck with that, which was more alluring? If she waited here, Beck could see the full effect of her dress, which she hoped he found considerable. “I’ll wait. I’m sure he won’t be long.”
“No he won’t be.” His voice was right behind her. “Hello, May.”
She affected the perfect pose, the perfect parted lips, the perfect sensually nonchalant expression, turned, met his gaze, and broke into a wide goofy smile she couldn’t stop. Something about looking into those eyes made her giddy.
But smiling was fine, even Veronica could smile, though May would prefer sultry. And guess what, he was smiling just as hard as she was, making the dimple indent his cheek. “Hello, Beck.”
“You look stunning this evening.”
“You’re quite stunning yourself.” No lie. He wore a light summer suit, a shirt with a hint of blue and a blue-gray abstract tie that brought out the same hues in those haunting
eyes. Classy, cool, fresh and…unbearably sexy.
Steady, Veronica. You’re in charge tonight.
They followed the maitre d’ into the nearly full restaurant where couples and occasional foursomes sat at well-spaced tables similar to those in the bar next door. The atmosphere was casually elegant, and the discreet use of partitions created the illusion of intimacy at each table. Oh, wouldn’t it be nice to get used to living like this. And happy day, they were seated at one of the cozy twosomes against the wall, separated from the tables behind and ahead by slender black urns holding dried arrangements of pink roses, pencil cattails and wheat, punctuated by dramatically gnarled lengths of thin black branches. No doubt Clarissa’s artistry at work.
A waiter, tall, lean and gracious, showed up seconds after their pink napkins hit their laps, and introduced himself as George. Seconds later, unexpectedly, another waiter—no, he was probably the sommelier, known in her family as “the wine guy”—brought over a bottle of champagne and a silver ice bucket.
Oh, now that would hit the spot. Beck must have called in the order ahead. An auspicious beginning. May sent him a cool smile, trying not to look overly pleased, as if men ordered bottles of expensive champagne for her every day of the week.
Except instead of wearing a smug only-for-you-darling expression, he was looking blank.
The sommelier presented the bottle for approval. To May. Which he wouldn’t if Beck had ordered it.
Oh, no. Champagne on Tuesday at dinner. Another item on the Trevor agenda.
She studied the label, not registering a single word, and nodded her who-the-hell-knows approval to the Wine Guy, who untwisted the bottle’s wire cage, took the cork out with a soft pop and poured for both of them. Thank God she didn’t have to go through the farce of tasting it. What she knew about wine would fit in a single-cell amoeba.
“Enjoy your dinner.” Mr. Wine Guy smiled, nestled the bottle back into the ice bucket and left in search of his next duty.
May gestured to the bubble-filled crystal. “I hope you like champagne. I thought it would be a nice start to the evening.”
Thrill Me Page 7
