“What does that mean?”
“That you don’t keep changing your mind—like, one year you decide to come every month, the next year you come once in the whole year. Children need certainty.”
“Okay then, how about we leave it at once a year, scheduled, and you decide whether or not to allow other visits on a rolling basis.”
“Fine. Then let’s move on to—”
“I’m not finished.”
She waited, watching him warily.
“The kid’s going to be half-American,” he went on, “so if I’m only going to be guaranteed one visit a year, you need to bring it out here once a year. For...I don’t know...heritage purposes.”
“Easy! I’m already here once a year—and I’ll be over more often if I land Suzanne Plieu as a client. She’s keen to open a fine dining restaurant in New York and we’ve had a preliminary chat about what I can do to help her find a partner.”
“New York is Teague’s territory, not mine.”
“Well, yeees.” That same curious look, as though she were trying to work him out. “And if Suzanne needs a lawyer, he’d be—”
“I’m not talking about Suzanne’s restaurants or legal needs. I’m talking about you being needed in San Francisco with me, the kid’s father, not in New York with Teague.”
“It’s going to depend on whether I can afford it.”
“I can afford it.”
“My clients pay for my travel here and you’re not my client.”
“Then start working on your aversion to staying with me. No accommodation costs, and I won’t feel like your client when you sashay in with your briefcase.”
“I can’t stay with you, Matt.”
“Why not? You stay with Teague when you’re in New York.”
“Only when my work is finished.”
“Should I point out that you’re not working tonight?”
Pause. He knew that slight twist to her mouth. She was working out what to say. “Teague’s apartment is...spacious. It’s easier there.”
“And I now have a large house. So when you come with the kid, you stay. As long as your ‘form of words’ contains that, we’re good.”
“We’re not good in that case.”
“Why not?”
And she was up, out of her chair, walking over to the fireplace, dragging her hands through her hair—which she never, ever did.
“Why not?” he asked again, when she just stood there looking into the flames.
“It won’t work.”
“Asking again—why not?”
Shake of her head.
“Romy, what’s going on? Why did I buy a house with a million rooms if you and the kid are going to stay in a hotel?”
She turned to face him then. “But th-that’s not why you bought the house!”
“Isn’t it?”
He saw the breath she took, and prepared himself for an argument.
“Okay then, Matthew,” she said, “in the spirit of negotiation—”
“It’s not negotiable.”
“—I’ll agree to stay here, on the condition that I know in advance who else will be here and I can opt out if I’m uncomfortable.”
“Uncomfortable?”
“I don’t want to impinge on your lifestyle.”
“My ‘lifestyle’?”
“There’ll be times it won’t be appropriate for me to stay, depending on...on who...”
He shot to his feet. “Who I’m fucking? Is that what you mean?” He realized he’d yelled that, but couldn’t get the anger under control enough to care.
“If you’d let me expl—”
“You think I’m going to have someone stashed in my bedroom for after I’ve finished reading my kid a bedtime story?” Yelled again.
“I wouldn’t put it quite like—”
“Will I have to fill out a form? Name, age, occupation, social security number? Nominate what nights of the week I intend to fuck them?”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” she said, firing up at last and yelling back at him. “I already know what nights of the week! Every damn night of every damn week! That’s the problem!”
“I’m glad you appreciate my stamina!”
“That place we shared back in the day had paper-thin walls! We all appreciated your stamina! Veronica and I used to joke about buying shares in Durex, you went through so many jumbo boxes of condoms!”
“So you counted my condoms and listened in? Interesting.”
“Sadly, the pillow I jammed over my head to filter out the moans, grunts and squeals didn’t quite block everything.”
“What can I say? I do a good job. A better job than Teague, now I think of it, since he didn’t ever stay with you overnight.”
“This isn’t about Teague.”
“No, it isn’t, is it, or maybe I would have heard something.”
“Not over the racket going on in your room!”
“Jealous?”
She raised her chin. “Just over it! Okay? I’m over it! I don’t want to hear you anymore! I’ve had enough of hearing you!” And she was on the move again, storming over to the drapes, trying to drag them open as though their very existence was cutting off her oxygen supply.
He stalked across the room, reached her, spun her. “Then how about you stay tonight and test the soundproofing? In the absence of my usual fuck noises you can listen for the loud howl of sexual frustration that’ll be coming out of my room because I haven’t had sex for two fucking weeks! Does that scare you, Romy?”
“Why should it scare me?”
“Because you’re here alone with me and I...I... Arrrggh! It’s dangerous, can’t you see that?”
“Dangerous how?”
“Jesus, Romy, how naive are you?” Matt said. The room was hot, stifling, claustrophobic. He needed air, needed...something! “Fuck this!” He reached past her, grabbed a handful of velvet, yanked on it, heard a satisfying rip, and then the drapes dropped to the floor. He kicked them for good measure. “When are you going to accept that I’m not your damn hero, Romy? I’m not like Teague. I don’t do chastity, and yet I’ve just told you I have done it, for two weeks.”
“So what?”
“So I’m a sex addict. And you’re here.”
“A sex addict would have made a move on me the night we met! God knows I gave you the chance! So don’t talk to me about not ‘doing’ chastity when you’ve been nothing but chaste with me for ten years!”
“You’re not like the others!”
“Well, that just goes to show that you’re an idiot! Because I am like the others. I’m exactly like the others. I want what they want, damn you!”
Sudden, charged silence.
Matt’s skin prickled, his senses going on high alert. “Tell me what you mean,” he said, breathing the words. “What you want.”
She closed her eyes. Heartbeat. Opened them. “You know what I mean. You of all men know what women mean!” And it was as though the angry energy drained out of her, even though her hands had clenched into fists by her sides. “What I want is you. I want...you.”
CHAPTER THREE
TEN YEARS OF not saying the words, and now they were out, hanging between them.
Romy’s heart was beating hard enough to leap out of her body. And Matt looked rigid enough to bounce the poor thing off his chest. Like a stone column. Or...or petrified wood.
Petrified being the operative word.
She choked down a rising bubble of hysterical laughter at the notion that big, bad Matt could be scared of her. She was the one who should be scared. Scared he’d tell her no and leave her with nothing: friendship in tatters, no baby and still no clue about what it was like to...to be with him like all those other women.
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Matt said.
And on the spot, she consigned any last vestige of caution to hell. For ten long years she’d been subjugating her lust for him. That was long enough! “Yes, Matt, I do,” she said. “Exactly what I did say. I want you. But you can call it Plan B if that’s easier for you to deal with.”
“Plan B?”
“I need to get pregnant. You offered to provide the sperm. We’ve discussed the turkey baster method—Plan A—but there’s no reason it can’t be done the old-fashioned way—Plan B.”
“Old-fashioned way.”
“We have a window of opportunity here. It’s almost like fate stepped in.”
“Window of opportunity,” he said, like he was having trouble keeping up.
“Neither of us has someone in our lives—a minor miracle in your case. You said you were sexually frustrated, so you need a release valve, and here I am offering to be it.”
“Release valve.”
“From my perspective, it’s cheaper than IVF. It’s certainly more efficient. Like a direct deposit, cutting out the middleman.”
“Direct deposit.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, stop repeating everything I say,” she semiexploded as her resolve frayed around the edges. “It’s easy to understand, isn’t it? It’s just a one-night stand! We’ve already been through your ground rules about not mistaking sex for anything more, so don’t worry that I’ll be expecting a bourgeois romance. And you’re not the only one who knows what it is to be sexually frustrated, because it’s been a while for me, let me tell you, and I daresay it’ll be a much longer while once I’m pregnant.”
“One-night stand.”
“Yes, one night. No encore required. If it doesn’t work, we simply revert to the turkey baster/courier option and...and...and aren’t you going to say something?”
“No encore.”
“Something that’s not a stupid repeat of what I’ve already said.”
She waited; he stared.
Romy couldn’t recall an instance in which Matt had taken this long to make a decision. She wondered if she should shorthand the argument by taking off her dress.
“Matt...” she said, reaching for the zipper at her left side—but before she could touch it, a log fell in the fireplace, jolting the momentum out of her so that she lost her nerve. “Forget it. It was just a suggestion. If you can’t bring yourself to do it, there’s nothing more to be said. Plan A it is.”
“I’m pretty sure I can bring myself to do it,” he said, and then he started laughing as though she’d told the funniest joke on the world.
She drew herself up, glaring at him. “I’m glad I’ve managed to amuse you.”
She tried to push past him, but he blocked her. “Wait!” he said.
“We’ve wasted enough time. We need to go back to the paperwork.”
Again he blocked her. “I said wait. Let’s at least talk about Plan B.”
“I’m no longer interested in Plan B.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’ve just reminded me how it ends.”
“How can that be when it hasn’t happened yet?”
“It’ll be a carbon copy of the time I told you Jeff Blewett kissed like his mouth was an octopus suction cup and you dared me to let you demonstrate the way you imagined that to be. I was stupid enough to say yes because I thought...I thought...never mind what I thought, it doesn’t matter what I thought, because at the last minute you changed direction and gave me a hickey right here...” jabbing at the center of her forehead “...and no amount of makeup would cover it up so I went around for two days looking like I’d been hit by a cricket ball and you thought it was all hilarious.”
“So how about I try it now?”
“I don’t need another forehead hickey, thank you.”
“I mean I could kiss you for real. And then...well, then you could decide if we go ahead with Plan B.”
“It’d serve you right if I said yes.”
“So say it.”
Romy licked her lips nervously. “Be careful, Matt, or I really will call your bluff.”
“Call it. I dare you to.”
“After the forehead hickey, you’re going to have to convince me you’ll be able to get it up at the crucial moment before I go any further,” she said.
He took a step back from her, which she didn’t consider promising. “One look at me will tell you that’s not going to be a problem. So go on and look.”
She examined his face, trying to gauge his seriousness. She was so keyed up, she’d rip his throat out if she saw so much as a glint of humor in his eye.
“Lower,” he instructed.
Her eyes dropped to his chest.
“Jesus, Romy, are you doing this on purpose? Lower!”
To his jeans. “Oh.”
“Bingo,” he said.
She raised her eyes to his face again. “I’ve heard that’s always there.”
“Are you fucking nuts? I’d never function as a human being if that were the case.” He reached for her then. “But it’s been there since you walked in tonight.” Folded her into his arms. “So if you’re telling me you didn’t feel it in the entrance hall, I’m going to think I’ve shrunk. And I know I’m ten years past my sexual peak, but it seemed to work very...sizably, shall we say, two weeks ago.”
She choked on a laugh. “Your ego is gargantuan.”
“My ego isn’t the thing that’s gargantuan. Although if you really didn’t notice the size of my cock when you first arrived, it’s going to need some stroking.”
“I hope you mean your ego.”
“Actually, I really do mean my cock. So stay riiight...theeere, ahhhhh, that feels good.” Nudging his cock against her. “Think about what it means vis-à-vis your question about whether or not I can bring myself to do it.”
“What it means...” she breathed out, fairly sure she could orgasm just from what he was doing here and now.
“It means yes I can, and when I do it’s going to be amazing. I’ll make it amazing for you, Romy. The moment you say yes.”
Same man she’d been friends with for ten years, same man who’d hugged her, tousled her hair, dragged her onto his lap, forced her earrings through her ill-pierced left earlobe. But this was different. He was different. And she had a premonition that he would always be different, from this moment.
The fear of losing him if she said the “yes” he was asking for was real, because women in whom Matt had a sexual interest were never around for long. The only women who lasted in his life were those who dated his friends—like Veronica, whom he treated like a sister even after her split from Rafael. And wasn’t that at least one reason Romy had transferred her starry eyes from Matt to Teague in their freshman year? Not only because Teague really was perfect but because Matt had brought him to her, thereby marking her place in Matt’s life while she got her head around consigning Matt to the friend zone?
How long would she last if she stepped out of that zone? Matt had said friendship at the end was possible with women he’d had sex with but that most didn’t want it. Why would she be any different from all those other women?
The baby, of course. The baby made her different. But the baby made her vulnerable, too, because it was precious not only for its own sake but because it would be a part of Matt that would always belong to her, a part she was allowed to love. She so wanted to believe Matt would come to love the baby, which would be like loving a part of her, even if he didn’t call it love.
Impossible to risk all that for one night...and yet just as impossible not to after wanting him for so long. Oh, how she wished she could blur the line between sex and friendship instead of stepping over it, keeping everything in its proper place.
If the sex was awful, she probably could. They’d laughingly accept that they’d given it the old college try and there was no harm done whe
ther she was pregnant—experiment concluded successfully—or not—back to Plan A.
If it was awful...
But Romy knew it wouldn’t be awful.
The tightness of her skin told her that. Her racing heart, too. The way the smell of his pine-tree-scented soap made her want to lick him.
Those were the feelings lovers had, not friends.
Lovers.
Love.
Don’t call it love. Call it anything except love. Friendship, camaraderie, affection. A window of opportunity. A cheaper, faster, more efficient method of sperm insertion. Release valve. Direct deposit. Plan B. Sex, just sex.
If she kept all those descriptions in mind, surely she could do this. She could blur the line, she would blur the line, and she’d survive the end.
“All right, yes,” she breathed, both brave and terrified.
He pulled her in even more tightly. “Then I suggest we go upstairs immediately because it’s not your forehead I want to suck right now, and if we don’t move, I’m afraid I’ll drag you down to the floor and have my evil way with you right here.”
She huffed out a desperate laugh. “Evil is fine by me.”
He rubbed his cheek across the top of her head, and she felt him sigh even though she didn’t hear it. “Careful what you say, Romy.”
CHAPTER FOUR
ROMY MADE IT to the entrance hall—and stopped.
“The stairs on the left.” Matt, behind her.
She hesitated. “Do you really think we can be friends at the end of this?” she asked.
“That’s the idea.”
“It didn’t work out that way for Veronica and Rafael. They haven’t spoken to each other since graduation.”
“Those two weren’t friends to start with, Romy. They were a Molotov cocktail from the night we all met, hell-bent on being in love. But you and I are a whole different ball game. We’ve got our plan straight.”
“Plan B,” she said. What a time to realize that for once in her life she didn’t really have a plan—not for the mechanics of what would happen next. She was far from having an encyclopedic knowledge of the Kama Sutra—whereas Matt, whose sexual prowess was the stuff of legend, probably had his own annotated version.
Getting Lucky Page 4
