Unmasking Love: A Holiday for Romance

by Peggy Bird

  When she came back to earth, he was nuzzling her neck, stroking her breast, insinuating his knee between her legs, beginning to build the need in her again. But she wanted something else first. Catching him off balance as he shifted his weight, she managed to turn him on his back and straddle him, pressing her sex against his erection, pinning his hands to the pillow beneath his head.

  She knew he could reverse her move with little or no effort, but his grin said he wasn’t going to.

  “Now what, beautiful?”

  “Now I get to enjoy tasting your gorgeous body.” Matching her actions to her words, she pressed her breasts against his chest while she nibbled her way around his jawline to one ear, where she licked and blew softly, murmuring as she did, “You taste so good. Every part of you.”

  It was his turn to squirm. She could feel his hips under hers moving, pressing, grinding against her. She thought he must be on the brink of exploding. His desire stoked her own as gradually she, too, began to rock her pelvis.

  “Condom, Juliet. Now,” he said through gritted teeth.

  She groped beneath the pillow, but, paying more attention to the press of his erection against her than to her quest, she couldn’t find what she was looking for. Taking advantage of her distraction, he flipped her onto her back, found the foil packet, ripped it open with his teeth, and handed it to her.

  “Hurry, get this on me.”

  Hands shaky with need, she complied. When he was covered, he entered her with one swift thrust. But after a few strokes he stilled.

  “I love how you feel when you’re inside me,” she whispered. “You don’t know how good it feels.”

  He pulled his head back far enough so she could see his smile. “I have a fairly good idea how it feels, don’t you think?”

  She laughed. Not only was sex with this man earth shattering, but it was also fun. “Yes, I guess you do.”

  “As good as you remember?”

  “Better. I can see your face this time.”

  Then he began to move again, pulling out of her almost all the way, then driving back in. Slowly at first. Then harder. Faster. Taking her with him as they swirled around and around, climbing, looking for relief from the need growing with each stroke. Finding the world in each other’s arms.

  As her orgasm overtook her, she cried out, “Trace, oh, my God, Trace!” and with one last thrust, he came, too.

  Chapter 12

  Trace held her, kissing the top of her head, stroking her arm, murmuring unintelligible sounds because he wasn’t capable of putting a sentence together. She had once again blown the top of his head off with her passion, her total immersion in their lovemaking. He was riding a swift current over a steep hill, falling faster and faster into a bottomless whirlpool with this woman. And he didn’t care.

  Julie stirred in his arms. “Thank you.”

  “What for this time?” He kissed her softly.

  “For finding me.”

  “There was never any question I would, Juliet, if it had taken me until I was cashing in my IRA.” Hugging her closer, he continued, “I wanted to hear what I heard tonight too badly.”

  “What did you hear tonight?” she asked.

  “You said my name when you came.”

  “What did I say before?”

  “It was something like, ‘oh, God, oh, God, oh, God.’”

  “Ah, the orgasm prayer.”

  He snorted. “Where the hell did you hear that?”

  “Just made it up. Why?”

  “I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to hear some clergyman say ‘oh, God,’ again without thinking of you and orgasms.”

  “Nice to know I’ve left my mark on you.”

  He tilted her face so he could look at her straight on. “You have no idea what a mark you’ve left on me.”

  “Enough so you’ll stay the night?”

  “Will I have to sneak out the back tomorrow morning?”

  “We’ll worry about tomorrow when it gets here.” She yawned and stretched. It was such a sensuous move, he was tempted to try for one more round of sex. But she looked tired and emotionally drained. Now that he’d found her, had loved her again, there would be time for more later.

  Turning her so her back was against his chest, he whispered, “Time to sleep, beautiful.” He put his arm around her waist and his foot over hers, and felt her relax against him. In minutes, her breathing was even, and her body completely lax. She was asleep.

  He fought joining her. Wrapped around her, absorbing the soft feel of her skin, the sound of her breath, the scent of her perfume mingled with the smell of sex and his soap, he didn’t think he’d ever been so content.

  • • •

  Julie woke at first light after the best night’s sleep she’d had in forever. Apparently Trace was not only a good dinner companion and an amazing lover, but he was also an effective sleeping aid. He was still draped around her; she didn’t think either of them had moved all night.

  “Good morning.” The greeting came from behind her, accompanied by a kiss on the shoulder.

  “It is a good morning, isn’t it?” She wriggled out of his arms and rolled over.

  He touched her face. “Indeed it is. I’ve spent a lot of mornings over the past month or so being pissed off because I dreamed about a mysterious woman in a mask and then woke up to find out she wasn’t there. It is one hell of a lot better to wake up and find her beside me.”

  “Then let’s celebrate. How about breakfast at Brothers’ with the morning paper?”

  “I haven’t been to Brothers’ since Fred and I ate there the morning after your party. Let’s do it.” He started to slide out from under the covers.

  “Oh, hell. That’s it.”

  “What’s it?” He turned back toward her with a puzzled look on his face.

  “That first meeting, in your office. Part of the reason I thought you recognized me was I thought you looked familiar to me, too, but I couldn’t place you. Now I can.” She fought hard to keep a grin from breaking out. “What do you remember about that breakfast at Brothers’ with your friend?”

  “Let’s see … the eggs were perfectly done. The bacon was a little too crisp. The toast was good.”

  “That’s it? That’s all you remember?”

  “Well, I remember having two lattes dumped in my lap, but I don’t imagine that’s what you mean.”

  “Actually, it is what I mean.”

  “How did you know …?”

  “I’m sorta … kinda … maybe I’m the person who put those lattes there.”

  He stared at her for a second or two, then burst out laughing. When he stopped, he took her face in his hand and said, “I looked at every face in the whole damn place, every dark-haired woman on the street, looking for the one woman I wanted to find. Turns out, she tried to get my attention, and I didn’t notice.”

  “Don’t ascribe a good motive to me. I was so busy looking around to make sure no one was there who might know what I’d done the night before, I didn’t see I was on a collision course with the waiter.”

  He skated his hand along her waist and hip. “The real Romeo and Juliet didn’t have this much trouble recognizing each other, did they?”

  “The real Romeo and Juliet, assuming you mean the Shakespeare characters, died at the end of the play.” She picked up his hand and kissed each knuckle. “Let’s not get too carried away with that particular metaphor.”

  “Good point.” He returned the kisses on her hand. “Let’s go get breakfast.”

  “And then do something fun.”

  “The kind of fun that we have naked?”

  “I was thinking more of the kind with clothes on. Outdoors. It’s supposed to be clear today. Maybe for the last time this month, who knows? We should take advantage of it. Are you an outdoor person?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where’s your favorite place to hike?”

  “I haven’t been here long enough to find it.”

  “Lucky for you, I
happen to know a bunch of places.”

  “Okay, but first fun things first,” he said as he pressed his erection against her.

  • • •

  After breakfast, they hiked up the Pilot Rock trail so she could show him the stunning views of Southern Oregon and Northern California at the trail’s end. Dinner back at Julie’s house capped off their weekend.

  After they’d eaten, Julie brought up something she’d been mulling over all day.

  “I think you should know, I’m going to recuse myself from the negotiations with the bank. I’ll find another lawyer for my clients and get myself off the hook I’m on at the moment.”

  “What hook? When you thought I wanted you to back off, you said you’d never desert your clients. Why now?”

  “That was when I thought you might try to … well, to … persuade me, shall we say, by revealing my Portland past.”

  “Why is it different because you’re sleeping with me?”

  “Because it is. Don’t you see? They at least need to know we’re seeing each other socially. If I don’t tell them and they find out, which they will, it’ll look like I’m trying to hide something.”

  “Suppose it doesn’t matter to them.”

  “Then I’ll stay with them. And if it does matter, I’ll leave. It’s that simple.”

  “If it’s any help, the news I called to give you on Friday was the bank is prepared to make whole everyone who had money stolen from their accounts. It will also help them with credit watches on their credit scores for as long as needed.”

  “Really? You found the weakness in your security program?”

  “The head of IT still doesn’t understand what happened. He can’t find anything wrong with the security program; there’s no evidence of hacking. He and his crew are still working on it. But the bank wants to make a good faith effort to keep our customers happy, even if we haven’t figured out what happened yet.”

  “Can I pass this along to my clients—my ex-clients—whichever they turn out to be?”

  “Absolutely. When you meet with them, give them my news, then tell them our news. See what they say. I’m betting they won’t be turning down the best damn lawyer in the county because she’s sleeping with the bank manager.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, I’m not telling them we’re sleeping together.”

  “Are you distracting me with the orgasm prayer on purpose?” He drew her hand to his mouth and kissed it.

  “That’s not the orgasm prayer, and you know it. You’re trying to change the subject.”

  “Yeah, I am. I was hoping a mention of orgasm would remind you how good it feels to have one. Then I can get you back in bed one more time before I leave and go home to my lonely but considerably larger bed which, by the way, would be much more comfortable for the two of us.”

  “I know. I deliberately bought a double bed instead of a queen or king to remind myself I was going to live a more discrete life.”

  “Why not a single, then?”

  “Too nun-like.”

  “I had no idea bed sizes represented points on a moral compass that judged one’s life choices. I thought it was about having a comfortable place to sleep.”

  “Well, now you know. It isn’t that simple.”

  Chapter 13

  Julie moved the furniture around in her tiny conference room, and changed the way the cookies were arranged on the plate and the napkins were displayed, trying to keep busy waiting for the arrival of her client group’s leaders. She’d already practiced the speech she planned to give more times than she’d practiced some of her opening and closing statements to juries. Neither the speech prep nor the cookie rearranging was working to calm her down, however.

  It was a relief when the first arrivals made an appearance. As usual, Martha Combes, a longtime local activist who’d become a friend in addition to a client, was early. She was followed shortly after by two men Julie had met when she’d given a talk at the senior center. The remaining representatives, two students from the university, were late, as they often were because of class schedules. Julie tried for small talk while they waited, but chitchat was harder for her than usual. She hoped no one noticed. Eventually the two students arrived, and after the preliminaries were out of the way, Julie launched into her speech.

  “First, I want to tell you about the progress we’ve made with the bank in getting things under control. The head of their IT department has been personally looking into this, and he can’t find any security breeches or evidence of hacking.”

  One of the older men snorted. “Then he has no business running an IT department.”

  The other one said, “Maybe the Chinese military or some bored kid in a basement in Ukraine is smarter than he is.”

  Julie continued as if she hadn’t heard. “However, as a gesture of goodwill to their customers, while they continue to investigate, they’ve offered to cover the losses of anyone who had money taken from their accounts. They’ll also get surveillance put on everyone’s credit records for a year or longer if problems arise.”

  “That’s it? That’s what we’re gonna get for all this trouble?” one student said.

  “It’s their opening offer, a good-faith gesture. But remember I said this wouldn’t be the big casino payout you were hoping for,” Julie said. She’d tried several times to explain to this guy that getting a huge settlement from the bank was unlikely, unless they could prove significant damages. He hadn’t listened then. He wasn’t listening now.

  “And before you hear it from someone who saw us, you should know I … ah … I went to dinner with Trace Watkins, the new bank manager, over the weekend. And he’s asked me to have dinner with him again this week.” She was sure she was blushing. But her omission of sex on the list of things she was doing with Trace didn’t seem to fool Martha, who had what could only be described as a leer on her face. “I had no intention of seeing him socially but … well, it happened when he contacted me on Saturday about the offer from the bank. We got to talking and …” She let the sentence trail off.

  She tried to read the faces of those sitting around the table, but other than Martha’s, she couldn’t. “No suit has been filed yet, and I’m still hopeful we can come to agreement on a settlement. But I completely understand if you think I have a conflict of interest now and you want me to remove myself from the negotiations.”

  “Remove yourself?” Martha said. “Hell no. Honey, you are now sitting in the catbird seat. Mister Tall, Dark, and Yummy isn’t stupid. He’ll do whatever it takes to impress you. Up to and including making sure you get a good settlement for your clients.”

  “Yeah,” the disgruntled student said, “or she’ll do whatever it takes to keep him interested and sabotage the case.”

  “This is where I leave so you can discuss those different ways of looking at it,” Julie said. “I’ll abide by your decision. If you want another attorney, I’ll help you look and will, of course, make sure there’s a smooth transition.” She rose to leave. “You know where the coffee and cookies are. I’ll go back to my office while you talk. Someone come get me when you’ve made a decision.”

  Surprisingly, it took them less than ten minutes to make a decision and send Martha to deliver the news.

  “We don’t want you to back out, Julie. You were willing to take this case on when no one else would, and you’ve been upfront with us all along about everything. We don’t see why this will change things.” She had a twinkle in her brown eyes. “And on a personal note, honey? I’m happy it’s you who snagged him. If I were forty years younger, I’d give you a run for your money, but since I’m not, I’m glad it’s you.”

  Julie could hardly wait to tell Trace he had an admirer.

  • • •

  The remainder of the year went by quickly. Trace became a welcome and influential presence in the business community. Julie’s practice continued to be interesting. They spent time together every weekend, enjoying each other’s company as well as what Ashland’s restauran
ts and theaters had to offer. Julie got to know Fred Arnett and Amber Lake, who’d returned from her TV stint tanned and fit but not the big winner. They told Fred and Amber a version of how, on Halloween night, Trace had seen Julie on the street and he’d looked for her ever since he’d been back in Ashland, only recognizing her when he saw her tattoo. They didn’t include the details of what had followed on Halloween, although Julie thought Fred had his suspicions, and Amber looked about to ask Trace a question or two before the subject got changed.

  Just before New Year’s, Trace held the open house he’d been planning, with Julie acting as official hostess. They referred to it between themselves as their “coming out” party. Not that the whole town didn’t already know about their relationship. After their fourth or fifth appearance together in a restaurant, a movie theater, or at a play, it was common knowledge. He heard it from his employees at work. She heard it from her theater friends and her book club.

  The bank fraud mystery was still unsolved, although everyone who’d lost money had been made whole, and no more withdrawals from bank accounts had occurred. It seemed like everything was returning to normal.

  Then the Oregon Shakespeare Festival opened a new season.

  Since the opening coincided with Julie’s birthday, Trace planned a celebration with dinner at Pasta Piatti, where they’d had their first dinner together, and tickets to the Festival’s opening production of Twelfth Night. It was a perfect romantic evening. Julie even thought he might finally tell her he loved her.

  But her past intervened.

  As they were waiting in the Bowmer Theater’s lobby for the doors to open so they could take their seats, Julie heard a familiar voice call a now not-so-familiar name.

  “Greer? Greer Payne? Is that you? It is, isn’t it?”

  She closed her eyes and thought about ignoring the voice. However, when Trace gave her a questioning look complete with raised eyebrow, she knew he’d heard it, too. Reluctantly she turned to face the owner of the voice. “Hi, Margo. Yeah, it’s me.”