by Haley Pierce
He shrugs. “I like museums. And when I was growing up, I lived a few blocks from it, so I have a thing for the place.”
“Okay. The museum it is.” I’d been there, once, in high school. I think about it, our fake first date, and I can almost see us strolling the exhibits together, hand in hand. Suddenly, it hits me. “Who am I?”
He gives me a quizzical look.
“Well. You want a woman who wears Valentine clothes, who— “
“Valentino,” he corrects.
“Right, Valentino,” I say. “Who skis. Who acts a certain way. I know you introduced me as Lily, but who am I?”
His gaze gets even deeper. “Just the woman you are, I suppose.”
“But is that the woman who would be your fiancé? I’m a jeans and t-shirt girl. If anyone asks me where I want to eat, I usually say Mickey D’s. I live in a shithole in Lodi. And until a few days ago, I was a waitress. If I say any of that to your brother or father, won’t they have a hard time believing you could have proposed to me?” I ask. “What sort of woman do you want me to be? I’ll play any part you want.”
He leans forward, thinking. “Yes. I see your point.” He takes a breath. “I think you should be an attorney. You should live in Tribeca, which would still be a good area, but not so close by that they might want to stop in and see you.”
He crosses his arms, and starts listing more and more things that his perfect woman would be. Not only does she ski and run, she does yoga, and meditates. She gets weekly mani-peds and doesn’t let her roots show. She’s well-traveled, has a subscription to Cosmopolitan, is wholly conscious of the food she puts in her body and tries to eat mostly vegetables . . .
The truth is, it’s obvious why he is single. He has such a specific picture of a woman in his mind, she can’t possibly exist. The more characteristics he lists, the less this woman sounds like a woman, and the more she sounds like a goddess from another planet.
I find myself struggling not to roll my eyes. The woman he wants for his wife is, without a doubt . . . my worst nightmare. I’d never be her friend. In fact, I’d have a hard time not punching her if I saw her on the street.
And he wants me to be her.
“ . . . Additionally,” he adds, finally coming to the end of his list. “She’d be very affectionate toward me, with a kinky side, and share my insatiable appetite for sex.”
My jaw drops. I blush crimson, and it’s definitely too hot in here. “Kinky?” I choke out. “Insatiable?”
He nods.
“Like . . . what kinky?” I honestly don’t know. Heck, in my world, kissing with a tiny bit of tongue is about as kinky as I’ve gotten.
He leans forward and whispers, “She likes to be tied up. And spanked. And that’s why we’re compatible. Because I love doing that to her.”
I find myself averting his eyes as my mouth hangs open. My heart is beating out of my chest.
A slow, sly smile breaks over his face. “Good thing this is just pretend.”
Just then, I hear a key jiggling in the lock. I jump to standing, which is stupid, because we’re just talking. We’re not actually . . . doing those kinky things he said . . . although, we might as well have been, for as hot as I feel now.
Cara walks in a second later, and drops her bag to the ground. She’s studying Max suspiciously. “Is this your doctor friend?” she asks me.
It occurs to me that as much as we’d been talking about what part I’m supposed to be playing, we also should have been talking about his part, too. “Um. Yes,” I say. “Um, Max, this is Cara. Cara, Max.”
They exchange polite hellos as her eyes scrape over his three-piece suit. “Oh, so you’re the reason there’s a stretch limo taking up most of the parking lot out there.”
Thank goodness, Max doesn’t let on that he’s not the doctor. I say, “Dinner’s in the microwave. Did you finish your project?”
“Huh?” She looks around, confused. “Oh. Yeah.”
“As long as you’re home . . . Do you mind if we go out for a bit, then?”
She shakes her head, looking dazed. “No. No, it’s okay.”
Max stands up and starts to walk toward the door. I have to laugh. He has a Cheerio that must have been on the couch, stuck to the back of his perfectly creased pant leg. Thank god; so he’s not infallible.
I reach over and pick it off without him noticing, as he gets the front door for me.
Max
I’m a Manhattan-ite all the way. Born and bred in the heart of the city, I attended the Trinity School on the Upper West Side from kindergarten through high school. College was NYU. Other going skiing in the Rockies or Switzerland or heading down to the Caribbean for vacation, I don’t ever cross out of the city, I’m one of those people who thinks there’s no sense in leaving the island. In fact, I never do it, unless it’s an emergency.
And yet, for some reason, I couldn’t wait to get out of the city tonight.
Her neighborhood was definitely old and broken-down, the homes built on top of one another, like dominos. There were overflowing dumpsters in the parking lot and even the sad, small patches of grass on the lawn outside were mostly weeds.
I might have minded it, but I was oblivious to it all. I wanted to see her.
No, more than that. I wanted to be with her.
I know what I’d vowed, that I had to keep this professional. That was my plan. Plan A.
But a small part of me wanted to stray far past that line. Plan B was always in the back of my mind, fighting its way out.
My cock wanted Plan B, and kept jockeying for it whenever it could. And it wasn’t just wanting. I’d put painstaking effort into developing that plan, planning exactly what I’d say and do to get her to capitulate. I never usually had to make such overtures with women; sex just happened. But as the limo drove me over the George Washington bridge, I’d imagined Lily Brogan tucking her small charge into bed, and being her usual coy self. Then, when we were alone, and the little one was asleep, I would work my magic.
When she opened the door, I wanted that more than ever. She was standing there, in tight, ratty, hole-up jeans, and a body-clinging t-shirt. No bra. Fuck, it was gorgeous, the way the thin pink fabric outlined the points of her nipples. She was nothing like the woman people would picture on my arm, as my fiancé, and I. Didn’t. Care.
Right then, decorum went straight to hell.
My cock sprung into command, and Plan B was put into motion: I’d coax her out of her clothes, and into my lap.
But that all went out the window the second I saw that she had not just one small charge, but an entire zoo of them. She wasn’t just babysitting. These were her siblings.
And she was far from being in a frisky mood. She was tired, frazzled, running around like a lunatic, like I didn’t even exist, and the last thing she needed was a man trying to be amorous with her.
And it turned me on unlike anything else.
God, she was sexy. It wasn’t just the way her tits swayed against her shirt, jiggling loose against that t-shirt every time she chased after her brothers, or that when she’d reached up to pull the Candy Land from the shelf in the closet, she bared the tightest waist and. .. what was that, a belly ring? It was the way she moved cheerfully about, smiling through her exhaustion, making little self-deprecating jokes as she catered to her siblings’ whims. She was clearly in her element, confident, in control, and . . . gorgeous.
I stood there, speechless and mesmerized as I watched her. Occasionally I tried to help, but she didn’t need me. The longer I watched, the more one thing became clear: If my cock didn’t get what it came over the bridge for, it was going to make me sorry.
Eventually, when she got the kids in bed, and calmed down enough to relax a little. By then, I’d played five games of Candy Land with an adorable, ringlet-covered platinum blonde who has Lily’s sad brown eyes. A moment later, her sister came home, and we made the decision to go out for a late dinner to “talk”.
At that moment, I decided tha
t Plan B might not be dead in the water, yet.
Now, as we walk to the limo in the cool summer air, I want to put my arm around her. I want to pull her to me and lift her shirt and see if that really was a belly ring.
She’s going on about how Cara is usually so good and comes home right away, but she’s also very studious and wants to get into a good college. There’s something about a project, and the library, and I’m not sure what else because I can’t believe that Lily, who seems so intelligent, can be this naïve and oblivious. I stop her mid-sentence to say:
“You realize your sister was with a boy, right?”
It’s the wrong thing to say. Because no, from Lily’s baffled expression, she did not realize that in the least.
Earl opens the door to let us into the limo, and once I slide in beside her, she shakes her head. “Oh. No, she had a project to do.”
I laugh at her and point to my neck. “Fresh hickeys. And it was like she was bathing in cheap men’s cologne. I smelled it on her when we passed her.”
She shakes her head, thinking. “No, you’re wrong. That must be . . .”
She stops before I can tell her that I couldn’t be more certain. One doesn’t have to be Sherlock to notice the way her sister had practically been drowning in guilt.
“Wait.” She must be putting the pieces together in her head because her jaw drops. “What? I didn’t notice . . . and . . . how did you?“
“I was a teenager once. And obviously, from the way you’re looking at me, you weren’t.” I shrug at her deer-in-headlights expression, then look out the window. We’re pulling out of her street, which is choked with cars. “You may want to prepare yourself for the fact that she could be sexually active.”
That was an even worse thing to say. The shock grows. She covers her mouth with her hand.
I have to appease her, or Plan B will be dead and she might just decide to go home and lock her sister in her bedroom for the rest of her life.
“Though, not likely. The hickeys suggest that her partner’s good with kissing and heavy petting, and they haven’t moved on to . . .” I wiggle my eyebrows. “the show.”
The shock melts into misery. Now both hands are covering her mouth. “I think I’m going to throw up.”
I try to give her a calming smile. “Relax. It’s not the end of the world. How old is she?”
“Only sixteen!” she shouts, like it’s the end of the world.
“It’s okay. It’s natural.”
That doesn’t calm her any. I suppose virginity is always a big deal, until you lose it. For her, it’s a mountain she’s yet to climb, and nothing about it is natural. “Natural? When did you lose your virginity?”
I think back, a thousand years ago. I’d been left home alone a lot, just me and the servants. One of the maids was new, and didn’t speak English, so we’d communicated in the universal language. “Thirteen.”
“Thirteen?” She’s staring at me in the darkness like I’m a freak of nature.
I realize that the notion of her climbing onto my cock and taking a ride is about light-years away, at this point. It only makes me more rabid for it. Her breathing is tense and rabbit-quick. She’s hyperventilating. I’m worried she’s going to have an asthma attack in my limo, so I reach for her hand, but she pushes it away.
“I can’t believe it. That little snot. She lied to me. She never used to . . .” She’s gone right past the denial stage, and now she’s in the anger stage.
“You seem to have her believing that I’m a doctor?” I point out.
She whips her head to me. “That’s different! I very well can’t explain how we met!” She crosses her arms over her body and slumps far into the leather seat. “What a snot! Why didn’t she just tell me if she had a boyfriend?”
“She’s probably embarrassed.”
“God! I can’t do this. I really wish I had my parents,” she says miserably.
It’s hard to think about sex when she’s like this. I actually have an inexplicable need to make her feel better. And that’s totally not like me.
“Hey,” I say, finally succeeding in taking her hand. I do the calming circles on it. “It’s all right.”
But she’s babbling, more to herself. “She’s on the pill for her periods, like I am. She’s safe that way. But . . . this was a thing I was hoping I wouldn’t have to tackle for like, another decade.”
The limo pulls up in a near-empty parking lot next to the Sunrise Diner, a place that’s just as broken-down as the rest of the neighborhood. Earl lets us out and she’s shaking visibly, so I put an arm around her, pulling her trembling body against mine. I feel the swell of her braless tit against my chest, and my cock jumps.
We walk inside, and the hostess raises her eyebrow. Talk about two people who don’t belong. I’m in my custom suit, and she’s in a messy ponytail, no make-up, and flip-flops. “Table for two?” she asks while smacking her gum, lifting two menus from a pile at the hostess stand.
I nod.
The hostess shows us to a booth, and by the time we slide in across from each other, she seems to have calmed a bit. She says, “You said you wanted a dozen kids. I never wanted them.”
I find it hard to believe that she doesn’t want kids, as good as she was with her siblings. I tell her not to worry, again and again, but she doesn’t seem to hear me. “You have a lot of responsibility on you, for someone so young.”
She picks up the menu and looks through it. “Well, the alternative was splitting us all up into different foster homes. And with Joey in the hospital, the last thing he needs is seeing us all scattered like that.”
“Joey? Another brother?”
“Yeah. He’s eight. He has acute lymphocytic leukemia.” She says this matter-of-factly, without expecting sympathy.
I find myself clenching my teeth. When I was her age, I was finishing college, and the most responsibility I had was making sure I made it to class somewhat sober. “Hell.”
“Thus the Suitors Club,” she says softly, looking around nervously so no one might hear. “He needs these outrageously expensive treatments. Believe me, your money is going to good use.”
I blink. So that was why she was there? “That was your first time there?”
She nods. “Yours?”
“Same.” I open the menu, which is dotted with old grease and crusty ketchup stains. I think of telling her that Seth had recommended me the place to help me solve my predicament, but suddenly, my predicament seems so goddamn small and unimportant. So selfish. “I’m glad my money could go toward something useful.”
She closes her menu and shoves her hands at her sides, sitting on them. The waitress comes by, and we place our order—cokes and burgers. When the waitress leaves, she gives me an astonished look. “You eat burgers?”
I stare at her. “And?”
“Well, I just didn’t think you were one for grease. Your perfect woman only ate the best of everything.”
I shrug. “It’s a diner. I was afraid anything fresh might be laced with salmonella. A burger seemed the safer choice.”
She’s smiling at me, as baffled expression on her face.
“What?”
She shrugs. “I just think it’s so odd that you have absolutely no interest in ever having a fiancé, and yet you know exactly what your fiancé would be like. Seems like for something you don’t want, you spent a long time thinking about her.”
“Well. It just makes sense. Certain people just go together.”
“And we don’t, in case you didn’t notice,” she says.
“Well. I’m sure if you asked anyone who they’d see me with, they’d have an idea. Just like I look at you, and I know exactly who your type would be.”
“Oh, really? This I’ve got to hear.”
“You want a man who is tall, handsome. Who is good with children. And who will be patient with you.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Every woman wants that.”
I nod. “And every man wants the woman I desc
ribed to you.”
She leans forward. “A snooty bitch?”
I burst out laughing. “That’s not what she is.”
She rolls her eyes. “Whatever. I suppose then that I will stay single for the rest of my life, too. Because in case you didn’t notice, I’m nothing like her.”
I smile at her. “You’re not that bad.”
“Oh, gee. Thanks,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Although it is kind of alarming that my sixteen year old sister has rounded more bases than I have.”
I could tell her I’m happy to help her play catch-up, but I restrain myself. “Why?”
She blushes. “Why what? Other than the fact that I’m not the ideal woman? I don’t know. I just haven’t ran into any man that made me want to play the game, I guess.”
I find myself studying her, wondering what would get her to play the game. I would certainly like to move her to home and help her start heading for first.
“And,” she adds with exasperation, “Considering I’m so repellant to men, I suppose I will never find a man who wants to play with me.”
I smirk at her. “You could get lucky.”
“Funny,” She says without much humor. “What about opposites attracting?”
I nod. Because goddamn, she’s my opposite, but the pull I’m feeling toward her is magnetic. “They may attract. But they don’t stick.”
“Is that right?” She narrows her eyes at me. “And tell me, how long was your longest relationship?”
I think for a moment, as the waitress brings our food. Big plates heaped with French fries and the most heart-attack inducing greasy burgers I’ve ever seen. She jumps on the ketchup and starts to drizzle it all over her fries. We are opposites; I prefer to make a puddle on the side for dipping. I say, “Three weeks.”
She looks up from the ketchup and freezes. Then she starts laughing at me again. When I give her a questioning look, she says, “Three weeks? Seriously?”
“Dead serious.”
She laughs even harder.
“I fail to see the punch line. You said you’ve never even dated.”
