by Tara Rose
But could Julie do this? Could she walk in there as a customer? Would it invite speculation? Maddox had said no one would know she’d spent the night with him and she believed him, but what if Kari, Alexa, or another Racy resident starting asking questions? And they would. Julie Carruthers didn’t buy sexy lingerie. Her mere presence in this shop would invite gossip and speculation.
Yesterday, on Monday, another box had been delivered, this one containing a bottle of very expensive musky perfume. The note asked her to wear it on Saturday:
I want to breathe this in as I hold you Saturday night. Will you wear it for me?
Julie had never had a man send her flowers or gifts after having sex. She’d never had anyone write her notes. She liked it—a lot. It made her feel sexy and special. It hadn’t been a one-night stand for him. He hadn’t been lying about there being a next time. He wanted to see her again. Surely that was enough to chase away the fear of gossip.
When it looked as though only a few people were in the shop, Julie pulled into the driveway and got out of her car. She shivered in the cold wind as she sprinted up the front steps. Inside the shop was warm and bright, and the colors were vibrant and inviting. The air smelled like mulled spice, and soft music played in the background. Kari and Alexa had done an amazing job with this.
Alexa was talking to Chase and another man Julie thought she recognized but couldn’t place a name to. His face was turned away. Kari saw her and smiled brightly. “Julie, it’s so good to see you here. How are you? Did you come to see Alexa?”
Julie shook her head, cutting her gaze to where Alexa stood, hoping she hadn’t heard Kari, but she was engrossed in her conversation with Chase and the other man. “No. I’m here as a customer.”
A quick flash of surprise registered in Kari’s gray eyes. “Oh, okay. Is there anything special I can help you with?’
Julie nodded. “Lingerie. Sexy and dark purple.” She just couldn’t buy black. It was too bold.
“We have that. Are we talking club wear or strictly for private viewing?”
Shit. She had no idea. Surely Maddox wouldn’t want to stay downstairs with her on Saturday, would he? “Not sure, but I think private.”
Kari nodded. If she knew or suspected anything, her face didn’t give it away. “Okay. It’s over here. We’ve finally been able to move all the clothing to its own space.”
It looked as though they’d broken down a wall and made a three-sided room just for clothing. No one else was in there, and Julie was grateful for that.
“I’ll leave you to browse, and if you have any questions, just let me know.” Kari pointed to two doors in one wall. “Fitting rooms are in there, and they’re unlocked. Try on anything you like, but if you try on panties or a thong just leave on your underwear, okay?”
“Sure. Thanks, Kari.” Julie breathed a sigh of relief. She’d always liked Kari Tye. She was intelligent and discreet. Julie had no idea what Maddox would like, and there was no one to ask, so she just let her imagination run wild. After trying on several pieces, she finally selected a dark purple lace-trimmed corset that tied up the front, black stockings, and a dark purple lace-trimmed garter belt. At the last minute she grabbed dark purple crotchless panties as well.
She walked back into the main shop with them, glancing around to admire the seductive prints on the walls, and smacked into a hard muscled chest, dropping her lingerie and her purse.
* * * *
Detective Sean Brennan bent over to pick up the lingerie Julie had dropped, just as she dove for it at the same time. They bumped heads, and both came up at the same time. Julie’s expression was a cross between intense embarrassment and astonishment. They’d rarely seen each other since graduating from high school, except around town now and then. Sean remembered Julie as painfully shy and intelligent. He knew she was Alexa’s shrink, of course, but he was shocked as hell to see her here as a customer.
He rubbed the goose egg on his head and handed her the lingerie she’d dropped. A quick picture of her dressed in it flashed through his mind, but he pushed that away. Down, boy. You don’t even know her. “I hope you weren’t trying to steal this,” he said, grinning to cover up his erotic thoughts of her. “Otherwise I’d have to arrest you.”
The quick look of molten desire in her pretty blue eyes shocked him. In school Julie had been known as a cold fish, although Sean always wondered if that had simply been talk.
“No…no I’m buying it.”
“The color suits you well.” He scanned her hair and face, and suddenly realized what was different about her appearance. Her hair was loose, not pulled back in the usual ponytail. It was very flattering that way. Should he tell her that, or would he sound ridiculous?
She cast her gaze to the floor. “Thanks, Sean.”
“The shop is beautiful, isn’t it?” Why was he trying to keep her here, making mundane small talk?
“Yes, yes it is. They’ve both done an amazing job.”
He’d come here to give Alexa news about her crazy ex-Dom, Brad Foster. Brad had shown up in Racy last month looking for Alexa, and Sean had arrested him for breaking and entering. He’d come here today to tell her that Brad was locked up on Riker’s, awaiting trial for a host of charges in New York. But now that he’d done that, the evening he’d been planning in front of his TV with a couple bottles of beer suddenly didn’t seem as inviting as it had an hour ago.
“Have you eaten dinner, Julie?”
She shook her head.
“Neither have I. Want to grab a bite? We could catch up.”
* * * *
Julie held her breath. Sean Brennan was one of the guys she remembered from school, just like Maddox, that were so off-limits she would have had more of a chance of being struck by lightning than of having a conversation with them. She’d had a secret crush on Sean for thirty years, but she doubted he knew that.
“Just dinner, Julie, between two former classmates.” His grin nearly made her drop the lingerie again. “Unless of course you decide to model this pretty underwear for me later.”
Was he teasing her? She’d thought the same thing about Maddox and he had most definitely not been teasing.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“I’m not upset that you did.” Julie blinked at the sound of her voice. It was smoky and seductive. What the hell?
“Does that mean you will?” His turquoise eyes twinkled with amusement. Now she was convinced he’d been teasing her, but she wasn’t sure whether she should be disappointed or relieved at the realization.
“Sure, Sean. I’ll even stand on the table at dinner so you can get a better look.” It was the boldest thing Julie had ever said to a man, and she was absolutely certain she never would have said it to Sean had Friday night with Maddox not happened.
He laughed, and the sound washed over her like a warm shower. “I guess that means you’ll have dinner with me then, right?”
What would be the harm in dinner? They’d be in public, and it wasn’t like it would be that unusual. No reason for anyone to gossip or speculate. “I’d love to. Just let me pay for these.”
“I’ll wait for you outside.”
Alexa was nowhere in sight when Julie took her purchases to the front, and for that she was grateful. Kari rang them up. “Thank you, Julie. I hope to see you in here again.”
“You will.” She didn’t know if she would or not, but it seemed like the polite thing to say. Taking a deep breath, she walked outside and let the chilly air clear her head. She’d done it. She’d walked into a sex shop right here in Racy—the only sex shop in Racy—and she’d bought the most revealing lingerie she’d ever owned. She hoped Maddox would like it.
Sean leaned against his patrol car, looking like the picture of sin itself. Tall, long lean legs clad in jeans, boots, and a body that his heavy winter coat couldn’t conceal. His sandy-blond hair hung in his eyes, exactly the same way she remembered it from biology class in tenth grade. Every chance she’d had, sh
e’d found a reason to glance toward the back of the class just to look at him, and had fought every time against an urge to walk over and brush that hair out of his eyes.
His eyes had the most unique turquoise cast to them that she’d ever seen. The first time she’d seen him, she’d gone home and asked her mother how someone could have eyes that were green and blue at the same time, and her mother had smiled and shook her head, probably recognizing that her daughter had been smitten at five years old. Julie bit back a sigh as she walked over to where he now waited. She was still smitten.
“All set?” he asked.
“Yes.” This close, it didn’t look like he’d aged much at all since graduation seventeen years earlier. His face was a bit more angular than it had been in school, and the dimple in his chin was accentuated by a smattering of stubble. She wondered what that hair would feel like when dragged across her nipples, and had to avert her gaze until the image passed.
“Where would you like to eat?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
His eyes twinkled with light. Had they always done that? “How about Nan’s Place? Although, I’m not sure it’s the best place to stand on a table and model sexy underwear.”
It was her turn to laugh, but she did it more to cover up her embarrassment. Nan’s Place had been a popular high school hangout, and Julie’s stomach lurched at the thought of eating greasy cheeseburgers and fries for dinner, but it was the perfect place to go. No one would question them being there together. “You’re probably right, but I’d like to go there any way. I’ll follow you.”
She hid her bag from Tye Me Up in the trunk and followed Sean’s patrol car the three miles into town. She parked a few spots down from him and tingled at the way he watched her walk toward him. “I haven’t been here in years,” she said.
He held the door open for her “It hasn’t changed much, including the food. I hope you have plenty of Tums at home.”
She chuckled, stepping across the threshold to scan the patrons. She recognized Dustin Alexander, the veterinarian who owned the Racy Animal Clinic. He was sitting at the counter next to Chad Bristol, a detective like Sean. Sean waved to them both as her gaze panned to the right and she caught the curious glances from John Houston, the minister of the Racy Church of Christ, and his wife Angela. Guilt washed over her as she returned their waves. What would they say if they could have seen her Friday night, draped over Maddox’s knee while he paddled her?
“How about over there?” She followed Sean’s finger as he pointed to a corner booth. Perfect. She could sit with her back to the door.
As soon as they were seated, she picked up the menu. He was right. Hardly anything had changed, but at least she could get a side salad rather than onion rings or fries. Maybe she’d only be up half the night with indigestion.
After they gave their orders, Sean sipped his water and fixed her with a thoughtful gaze. “So, I guess we have a lot of years to catch up with. I heard you got your PhD in Chicago, is that right?”
“Yes. I did both my undergrad and graduate work at Northwestern.”
“I worked at the twenty-second in Chicago for a while after graduating from the Academy. It serves the Morgan Park area.”
“I didn’t know that.” She took a large sip of water because her mouth was dry. She was sitting in public, talking to Sean Brennan, as if they did this every day. “What brought you back home?”
A shadow of pain crossed his face, but all he did was shrug. What was that about? What had happened in Chicago? “I like it here.”
She’d met him kindergarten, but her endless infatuation with him had really started in first grade when he’d brought one of his dad’s college textbooks to show-and-tell and proceeded to explain to the class what his dad was going to do at Notus. Notus was the power plant that owned the wind turbines, and most of Racy’s residents either worked there or were associated with it in some way. Sean’s father had been one of Notus’s first employees. “So do I. That’s why I never considered opening my practice anywhere else. If you were working in Chicago, I guess that explains why you weren’t here for the tenth reunion.”
A quick shadow of pain crossed his face again, and she was about to ask if something had happened to keep him away, but he’d already started talking again.
“I know you can’t talk about specifics, but I understand you’ve been helping Alexa.”
“Yes, that’s right. I even attended her birthday party Friday night at Maddox’s club.” Why had she told him that?
His eyes narrowed slightly and a muscle twitched under his left eye. “Afraid I missed the party. I was working. In fact, part of the reason I missed it was because of what I came to the shop today to tell Alexa. The creep who cracked their shop’s security code last month is in jail in New York without bail. I’m confident this is finally over for her and Kari.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful news, Sean.”
“Yeah. I’m pretty impressed with how cooperative the NYPD has been at keeping me up to speed.” He took another sip of water and watched her carefully. “Julie, I hardly ever see you out and about in town. What do you do for fun?”
She nearly choked on her water. “Oh, I don’t know. The same things as others I suppose.”
The corners of his mouth turned up. “You were always like that.”
“Like what?”
“Vague and evasive when asked a direct question. Do you remember tenth grade biology with Mr. Watson? He asked you what back then seemed like a hundred questions about those papers we all had to do on genealogy, because he was convinced you’d plagiarized yours. We were sitting in the back—me, Maddox, and Ellis—laughing our asses off because we knew you were smart enough to have turned in a killer paper. It was killing Watson not to be able to make you look bad in class.”
She remembered it, but she was stunned to realize that until now, what she’d recalled as mocking laughter from the back row hadn’t been directed at her. It had been because of their ridiculous teacher. She was also just as shocked to know that Sean remembered the incident. He’d ignored her in high school. “Mr. Watson hated me, and I never knew why.”
Sean laughed, and Julie shivered. What would that soft, teasing laugh sound like in the dark with their naked bodies tangled together in the sheets? “Are you kidding? He hated you because you were a freaking genius but weren’t a show-off like some of the other smart girls in our grade. He couldn’t crack your cool demeanor, no matter how much he tried to.”
“He was a sadistic bastard, wasn’t he?” Is that how Sean had thought of her in school? Cool as a cucumber and smart? No wonder he’d ignored her. But he, Maddox and Ellis—Maddox’s cousin—hadn’t been laughing at her that day. All these years and she’d never known that.
“Not only that.” Sean leaned close, and Julie breathed in his warm scent. Her head swam with erotic images and she found it difficult to take a full breath. What was going on with her? Less than one week ago she’d been stuck in a sexless, dateless rut. Now she was fantasizing about one man and fucking another. Were the planets about to align and the sun implode? “He’s in jail.”
“What?” She hadn’t heard a word he’d just said.
“I said Mr. Watson is in jail. He was arrested five years ago on charges of kiddie porn.”
“Oh…”
“Yeah. His preference was for prepubescent boys.”
“Oh shit. He wasn’t abusing anyone here in Racy, was he?”
Sean shook his head. “No. At least, not that we know of. He tried to buy it on the Internet and got caught that way.”
Julie glanced around at people she’d known her entire life. “I guess you really don’t know what goes on behind closed doors, do you?”
“Obviously not.”
She snapped her attention back to his face. “Why do you say it that way?” Her cheeks burned with embarrassment.
“What way?” The grin was back, and so was a fresh flood of wetness to her panties.
“Don’t
play cop with me, Sean. I know all the tricks. You said ‘obviously not’ with an undertone as if you were talking about me.”
Their food arrived, and Julie deliberately took a bite of her cheeseburger so she’d have time to think if he asked her a question. Why the hell hadn’t she simply kept her big mouth shut? He’d have her verbally backed into a corner within thirty seconds and they both knew it.
He wiped his mouth with a napkin and put down his burger. “Okay, Miss Psychologist. Here’s the deal. For thirty years, give or take the few I worked in Chicago, I’ve watched you blend into the woodwork. You’re single, you live alone, you go to the grocery store on Tuesday afternoons because it’s the one afternoon you don’t see clients, you open the office on Saturdays if need be, just to accommodate your clients, and you would do anything for anybody in this town, no questions asked. Have I pretty much got it right so far?”
Julie put down her fork. Suddenly she wasn’t hungry. This would be easier to take if Sean were a vindictive asshole who was teasing her, but he wasn’t. His eyes held a note of sadness behind the twinkling light, and she couldn’t figure out why. But he wasn’t mocking her right now. He was simply telling her the same truth that was probably obvious to everyone in Racy.
“I’ll take your silence as a ‘yes.’ But today something entirely different and out of character happened. Today I found Julie Carruthers in a sex shop buying the prettiest purple lingerie I’ve ever seen. So, being a cop and all, I had to ask myself why.”
They stared into each other’s eyes for long moments. Julie became aware of sounds around her—clinking of silverware, conversation, and music from the eighties. Had those noises been there all along?
“And I reached the only possible conclusion. Julie has a lover.”
“That’s the only possible conclusion?”
