Thrill Me

by Isabel Sharpe

  She wrinkled her nose and complied. Then had to endure the torture of him looking at her work, while she sat there and folded her napkin and sipped water and waited for judgment. Ugh.

  “May, these are really good.” He handed back the sketch pad and gave her a look of admiration tempered by exasperation. “What the hell made you think you were dull and predictable?”

  She stared down at a tiny puddle of broth left at her place. Dan had been the first to verbalize it…but she’d always felt that way, hadn’t she?

  She tried to look up at Beck, but only made it as far as his chin. “You don’t make me feel either dull or predictable.”

  He reached across the table and lifted her chin so she had to meet his eyes. “And what does that tell you?”

  She knew what she wanted it to be telling her, and what she wanted him to feel, too. That we’re destined to be together forever. That after enjoying this thrilling start, instead of moving on to another relationship, he’d see love, marriage, babies and forever in their future. “I don’t know. Tell me something more about you.”

  “Okay.” He ran his thumb over her lips, making her want to sneak her tongue out and taste his skin—so she did, and it was smooth and slightly salty from soy sauce. “What else do you want to know?”

  “Everything.”

  He started to smile, then abruptly, his grin froze, his thumb stopped moving across her lips, his eyes went distant.

  May held her breath. What? What?

  “I have an idea.” He took his hand back across the table. “If you’re sure you want to know more about me…”

  “Yes. Yes, I do.”

  He laughed, shaking his head. “I can’t believe I’m even considering this.”

  “What?” She laughed, partly from nerves, partly because whatever it was, she knew she’d enjoy it if they were together.

  “May Hope Ellison.” He clasped his hands on the table and leaned forward. “How would you like to go to my little brother’s birthday party?”

  11

  MAY EXITED the cab behind Beck onto West 55th Street, not at all sure what to expect. This wasn’t exactly like taking her home to meet his parents, was it? And yet…in fact, he was taking her to meet his parents. And his brothers. And their significant others. And apparently aunts and uncles and cousins and friends and…so on.

  All of them probably as literarily inclined and sophisticated as Beck. How the heck would she fit in? How to make a good impression? Administrative Assistant, oh yeah, now that was earthshakingly fascinating. Just the kind of woman we hoped you’d find, Beck. Forget the graduate degrees, the brilliant background in publishing or research or medicine, we just want you to bring home a secretary from Oshkosh. Seriously.

  She itched to call Ginny. Beck had barely spoken all the way here. She could tell he was nervous, maybe regretting what he admitted was an impulsive offer? And his being nervous only made her more nervous. Would he end up ashamed of her?

  Guess what, she’d soon find out, because here they were, walking into Cucina d’Amore restaurant—past the Closed, Private Party sign.

  At least it was a casual-looking place, not white tablecloths nor terrifyingly trendy. And the soundtrack featured Dean Martin crooning “That’s Amore,” how intimidating could that be? The guests gathered around the bar in the back—sigh of relief, none of them looked to be turned out in the latest fashion. Or even expensive classic fashion. And there wasn’t the army of people she expected, maybe a dozen, give or take. She and Beck must be late enough that the party had lost an uncle or ten.

  One of the dark heads turned toward them. “Hey, it’s Beck.”

  The roar following this announcement was so loud and so unexpected, May nearly stumbled. Beck’s hand tightened around hers and she put on what she hoped was an extremely pleasant smile. That did not sound like the greeting of a crowd of elite sophisticates.

  A dizzying series of introductions followed, featuring many curious but friendly stares directed at May, and a lot of jokes about the prodigal son directed at Beck. And when had he grown so tall? And what grade was he in now?

  Apparently Beck didn’t spend a lot of time with his family. Or at least not enough in their view. So why would he bring her?

  In the chaos of new faces, she managed to fasten on his mother, who hugged her son for easily three minutes, a short, slightly plump woman with a faint Italian accent, warm eyes, pale skin and jet-black hair. Her husband, almost comically taller and with lighter coloring, seemed a man of few words, but those few were unaccented and full of affection for Beck. He must bring the decidedly un-Italian name Desmond into the mix, and undoubtedly his side of the family was responsible for Beck’s non-Mediterranean appearance. Brothers Jeffrey and Zachary were both shorter than Beck, darker and handsome in a beefy obvious kind of way.

  Nobody was what she expected.

  “So, Beck.” His brother Zachary, wearing green shorts and a loud Hawaiian shirt with parrots all over it, clapped him on the back. “What happened to get you here, your hotel burned down?”

  “No.” He grinned, apparently accustomed to the ribbing. “You’re looking particularly swank this evening, Zach.”

  “Ain’t I though?”

  “So, what’s this about?” A woman May thought was Zachary’s wife pushed in under her husband’s arm. “You finished your book?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Then what are you doing here?”

  He made a helpless gesture. “I’m temporarily blocked.”

  “You need more fiber?” This from a voice toward the back of the bar.

  Beck rolled his eyes good-naturedly and laughed with everyone else, his previous tension apparently easing.

  “Okay. Shut up everyone.” Jeffrey, the brother whose birthday/engagement party it was, stood rather un-steadily and raised his glass. “I wan’ propose a toast to the bes’ big brother I ever had. And to congratulate him for bringin’ a woman here tonight, who is almost as hot as my future wife.”

  This time the roar was of disapproval. “Sit down you bum!”

  “Hey! No son of mine is going to talk to a lady like that.” Mrs. Desmond grabbed Jeffrey’s ear and started hauling him out of the room. A tiny woman May recognized was Mary, Jeffrey’s fiancée, leaped off her stool into their path.

  “Stop that!” She grabbed Mrs. Desmond’s hand off her true love.

  Silence descended. Apparently defying the matriarch was simply not done.

  “That’s my job now.” Mary grinned widely, grabbed Jeffrey’s ear herself and led him out of the room to the raucous cheers and taunts of the partygoers.

  May laughed along, and caught Beck grinning down at her. “Is this what you expected?”

  “Um, no.” She chuckled again. “Your family is a riot.”

  “That’s one way of putting it.” He slid his arm around her and bent to murmur into her hair. “Still think New York is out of your league?”

  Her laughter faded into a lovely warm stillness. Was that why he’d brought her here? To share the warmth of his family? To show her another reason she could thrive in New York?

  “You brought me here to prove I’d fit in,” she whispered.

  “Yes, partly.” He kissed her temple, his lips warm and mmm, perfect. “And because I’ve been an AWOL son and brother too often.”

  “Thank you.” She struggled to keep her emotions under control. “It’s one of the nicest things anyone’s done for me.”

  “I’d like to do more, if you’ll let me.”

  Oh, stay cool her melting heart. No one had ever taken such pains to make her feel good about herself. Or seemed to feel it was important to put her needs first. Would he go to all this trouble if he was just after a week or two or three of sex?

  It didn’t seem likely.

  “Yo, Beck.” A cousin of some sort, she couldn’t remember. Mark? Joe? She’d lost track. “I’ve got a great idea for a story for you.”

  May smiled at the glazed-over look on Beck’s
face. Cousin Mark or Joe was followed by a few others, and then a few more, all friendly, all politely interested in May and clearly anxious to catch up with Beck.

  Finally it seemed the group was thinning; even those with sure-sell plots had left Beck alone, and he twined his fingers with hers. “Ready to go?”

  She nodded, hoping there was more to the evening ahead, more that involved the two of them and one room. With a bed in it. “I just need to go to the ladies’.”

  He pointed to a doorway around back of the bar and she made her way into the pleasant and clean two-stall facility. While she was washing her hands with heavenly lavender-scented liquid soap, another woman came in, tall, dark and stunning, with vibrant red lipstick and nails.

  “You’re May, right?”

  May nodded, totally blanking on the woman’s name, but pretty sure she belonged in the “friend of the family” category.

  “I’m Angie.”

  “Angie, that’s right, I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it, you met everyone tonight.” She took a comb out of her purse and started fussing with her medium-length hairdo. “So you’re Beck’s latest, huh.”

  May didn’t know how to answer that, but she also didn’t enjoy the but-not-last implication. “I guess I am.”

  “I was about three girlfriends ago.”

  May turned off the faucet and shook her hands in the sink, wanting to fling the water on Ms. Rain-On-Your-Parade and watch her sink to the floor, screaming, “I’m melting…” She had a bad, bad feeling about where this conversation was going. Since Angie wasn’t making any move to use the empty stall, she must have come in just to talk to May. Or corner her. Or pound her into emotional pulp.

  Ugh. She’d only recently gotten a securely warm fuzzy feeling with Beck and she didn’t want any bitter brunette cooling or defuzzing it.

  “Really?” She tossed the towel into the trash and wondered how rude it would be to walk out.

  “How long have you been dating?”

  May hid a wince. “Four days.”

  Angie turned from staring at May in the mirror and stared at May in person out of two heavily made-up narrowed eyes. “Four days, huh. Well, enjoy it, you’re still in the fun part. He’s taking you places, showing you off. It’s great, isn’t it?”

  Oh, for God’s sake. “Then what, he turns into a pumpkin at midnight?”

  “Something like that.” She returned to looking in the mirror, and began fiddling with her hair, which she was taking a lot of trouble to make look exactly as she had when she walked in. “I became friends with the family so I’ve seen him with his girlfriends over the years. He’s as predictable as the moon.”

  “You know, I don’t really think I want to hear this.”

  Angie shot out a hand and grabbed May’s arm. “I know, you think I’m a bitch. But I wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t warn you.”

  “Okay.” May removed her arm from the red-nailed grasp, still feeling trapped. “I’m listening.”

  “He’s a great guy don’t get me wrong, but a keeper, he’s not. Fun at first, then after the thrill wears off, you start feeling like you’re last week’s garbage.” She shook her head and hardly a strand of the oversprayed hair moved. “You start noticing that he doesn’t share much of himself emotionally. You start noticing that he does what he wants and you have to fit in. You start noticing that he’s not always listening when you talk. And you start noticing that you’re always at your place. Six months before I even knew where he lived.”

  “I have to go.” May sped to the door, but not fast enough. Angie was apparently not finished, and her voice rose as May got farther away.

  “Three years we dated, and he never said I love you, not once. You want marriage? Babies? Look somewhere else. Trust me on this.”

  The door shut on those choice words and May was faced with having to stroll back to Beck pretending that her entire world hadn’t just threatened to crash around her. Okay, maybe the woman was bitter. And maybe her words had touched on every insecurity May had.

  And maybe…she was right.

  “Ready to go?” Beck smiled warmly, looking at her as if she were his lifesaving buoy in a sea of strangeness.

  “Yes.” She’d never been readier for anything in her life.

  They said goodbyes all around, promised visits again soon, then stepped out into the blissfully fresh air and Beck hailed a cab, glancing back at May.

  “You tired?”

  “A little.” She wasn’t. Not tired, not energized, either, not happy, not sad. Sort of in suspended animation. But he’d noticed. Hadn’t he? Angie said…

  She couldn’t keep thinking about what Angie said or she’d go nuts.

  A cab stopped and she got in, staring out the window, not paying attention to the sights around her or to whatever Beck leaned forward and said to the driver.

  His arm came around her; she turned and registered on his face such a look of concern, she told the ghost of Angie to take a big long hike off the edge of the Grand Canyon.

  “I hope that wasn’t too overwhelming.”

  “It was fun.”

  “Sometimes I feel like I must have been kidnapped by aliens and dropped into this family when they couldn’t find my own again to return me.” He grinned ruefully and May’s heart skipped a painful beat. She had a totally irrational desire to go back into his childhood and fix everything for him. At the same time it occurred to her in spite of herself, that he didn’t sound like Angie’s version of a man who never shared his emotional self.

  “But they’re wonderful people. And obviously proud of you.”

  “Yes.” He looked amazed, as if before tonight that hadn’t been part of what he’d sensed, and her heart got even more painful for what he must have suffered. “I enjoyed myself tonight. And it meant a lot to me to have you there, May.”

  She opened her mouth to say “me, too,” when silly female tears announced they were on the way, and she ducked her head to blink rapidly. He lifted her chin; drew her to him, stared into her eyes for a long, beautiful, terrifying moment that turned her heart half upside down, and then he kissed her. And kissed her. And kissed her. Long, slow, languid kisses that made her feel like the world was dissolving around her. His lips were imaginative, varying the pressure, sometimes involving his tongue, sometimes not, tasting every part of her mouth until not only was she a quivering mass of reawakened hormones, but her heart had turned the rest of the way upside down, and she experienced again that sweet, nearly unbearable ache that made her want to all-out bawl even though she felt no conscious reason to be sad.

  “I can’t wait to get you alone.”

  “Same here.” She curled into his side, thinking it might be possible to die of happiness. Regardless of what happened the next day, tonight was going to be about her and about Beck, exactly as she’d hoped. No kink, no research for his book, no other couple involved. Nothing but them, alone in his room at HUSH.

  The cab pulled up at a building on a quiet residential street. May turned dreamily, then sat up and peered at the address, frowning and disoriented. This didn’t look like HUSH.

  “Where are we?”

  “My place.”

  “Really?”

  “You object?”

  Oh, my God. She shook her head. “Not at all.”

  Not at all. Going back to the hotel would have been wonderful. But going to his place was taking their relationship to a new level, further away from fantasy, and more as if he wanted her in his life, as well as his bed.

  And take that, Angie-who-took-six-months-to-find-out-where-he-lived.

  She stopped her thoughts, ashamed of herself. Whoa, Nellie. One step at a time. But she couldn’t help the giddy high that swept through her, building back dangerous hope.

  The doorman greeted them, obviously surprised…and pleased…to see Beck. They rode the elevator to the sixth floor and emerged onto a landing with three apartments. Beck strode to the door on the left and inserted his key.
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br />   Okay, she admitted it, she was overwhelmed with lust for him, she was nearly overcome with feelings for him, but she was dying to see what his apartment looked like. Call it Pandora-like curiosity.

  He opened the door and gestured her into a large-windowed living room with a view of Central Park on one side, and on another, a lit view of an onion-domed Russian Orthodox church across the street. The furniture was comfortable-looking, the art on the walls colorful and modern. A framed book cover—his first?—hung in a place of honor over an end table. The place had a welcoming feel—stylish without being overly decorated, and masculine without being all leather and bookcases.

  Beck made the rounds, opening windows to dispel the stuffy unlived-in smell. Cool night air flowed into the small, neat kitchen, redone with granite counters and stainless steel appliances, into the room with a desk and computer that he must use as an office, and finally, into his bedroom where she followed, both eager and shy.

  “I love your place.”

  “Thanks.” He crossed to the park side of the room and lowered the blinds. “I’ve lived in this building for nearly ten years, though a few years ago I moved down here from a one-bedroom upstairs when I started getting decent royalty checks. The writing life is so uncertain, I didn’t want to go hog wild with a giant mortgage in a more upscale neighborhood.”

  “Makes sense.” She stood in the center of the room, soaking it all in. The hardwood floors, the oriental rugs, the blue, burgundy and cream patterned bedspread. And suddenly and painfully, she wanted the chance to know this room as intimately as he did.

  Could she move here?

  He came toward her and stood a foot away, hands on his hips. “You okay?”

  She smiled bravely. “Very.”

  “Good. I wanted you to see this place so you’d know where I’d keep you if you decide to move. Separate bedrooms even, if you wanted.”

  He looked so disgusted by that idea that she giggled, ran her hands around and over his shoulders, his chest, his abdomen, and then had them meet for a party over the rapidly swelling bulge in his pants. “Or not separate.”