Until You

by Denise Grover Swank

  “Okay.” If Celesta was gifting his-and-hers dildos, she might not be so bad. “I’m trying to imagine the engraving. How does that work?”

  Britt laughed with a shrug, her face turning pink. “Well, more like stamped. I guess you can’t engrave latex, but then I guess they’re not latex, are they? Not with latex allergies and all.” Britt’s eyes widened. “How do you suppose those allergies work? Like with latex condoms, do you think their…you know…their penises get red and itchy?”

  Lanie laughed as she flagged down a passing waitress. “You’re thirty-two years old. If we’re going to have the sex talk, then we need appropriate drinks.” She turned to the waitress. “We’ll take two Pink Pantie Pull-downs.”

  “What?” Brittany gasped, leaning forward.

  Putting her hand on the waitress’s arm to hold her back, Lanie asked, “Does the bartender know how to make them?”

  The waitress laughed. “With a name like that, I’ll be more than happy to look it up for him if he doesn’t.”

  “I don’t need to have the sex talk,” Britt said, but her cheeks were still pink. “My sex life with Randy is just fine.”

  “And about to get even finer with your his-and-hers dildos. Tell me, how did Randy take his personalized gift?” Lanie asked, while she used her napkin to wipe the water off the table.

  “Well…his response was similar to yours, only it was in front of all the shower guests, and he spit out beer instead of water. When he stopped choking, he said he was glad that his was the smaller one.” Both women laughed, then Britt gave her a serious look. “So, tell me about your love life.”

  “Changing the subject, huh? Sorry to disappoint, but my love life is exactly the same as when you asked two weeks ago. Nonexistent.”

  “I just find that so hard to believe.” Britt gave her a soft smile. “With your looks and your almost charming personality—”

  “Very funny.”

  “I would think you’d have men falling over themselves to go out with you.”

  “And we both know that has nothing to do with my lack of male companionship.” She shrugged. “It’s hard to meet guys when I’m hiding behind a building covered in tarp.”

  “You could try Tinder or one of those new dating apps.”

  “I have, but right now I don’t have time for a real relationship.” Plus, her job involved so much secrecy…it was hard to get close to a man when her job was the sum of her existence, and her NDA kept her from discussing it. It had all led to a string of meaningless relationships that had left her feeling emptier with every breakup. Not that she’d been looking for something meaningful. The thought of a serious relationship made her want to break out in hives.

  Brittany studied her face. “Don’t you get lonely?”

  The question chafed, but she brushed it off with a snort. “I’m here with you. Of course I’m not lonely.”

  “You’ve seen me three times in the two months you’ve been here, and you only have one month left. Both of our schedules are about to become insane, which means we’ll spend even less time together.” She paused, and tears filled her eyes. “Who’s your person? The one you call when you have a shitty day? Once upon a time, it used to be me.”

  The question was a double-edged sword, not only reminding Lanie how alone she actually was, but that she’d lost her cousin along the way too.

  She opened her mouth to answer, still unsure what to say, when the waitress appeared with their drinks. She set two tall glasses in front of them, each topped with a lemon slice. “We didn’t have pink lemonade, so the bartender used regular lemonade. And he included tequila along with the vodka.”

  “Tequila and vodka?” Britt asked.

  “And beer,” the waitress said.

  “Perfect,” Lanie said, picking up her glass and taking a sip.

  After the waitress took the two women’s orders, Britt picked up her glass and took a tentative sip. “This isn’t so bad.”

  “But it’s strong as hell, so be careful.”

  Britt took another healthy drink.

  “Now that we have our fortitude, we can have the talk.” Lanie folded her hands on the table and tried to look serious. “Now, when a man loves a woman…”

  “Stop.” Bitt laughed. “I know about sex. We both know I lost my virginity my freshman year of college.”

  Lanie gave her a naughty grin. “And with your matching dildos, it sounds like you’ll have even more experience than me.”

  “Not matching. Randy’s is several inches shorter and much narrower.” Britt took another sip, then added, “But he’s got no reason to be jealous of mine. His manhood is much broader than my dildo.”

  Lanie held up both hands in surrender. “Whoa! TMI. The next time I see Randy, I don’t want to be thinking about his manhood.”

  “He definitely knows how to use it.” Britt gave a little shimmy. “He’s got this move where he—”

  “That’s enough!”

  “Which one of us needs the drink now?” her cousin asked with a wink.

  Lanie picked up her glass and took a sip. “You win.”

  Britt turned serious. “Who’s your person, Lane? I’m not that easily distracted.”

  She hesitated. “My assistant. Stephanie.”

  “Your employee?”

  “She’s not my employee. She works for the same company. We travel together. We spend a lot of time together. We’re friends.”

  “That’s sad.”

  “How is that sad?”

  “All you have is work. Once that goes away, will you still be friends?”

  The hair on the back of Lanie’s neck stood on end. “Who said my work is going away?”

  “I’m not saying it is. But don’t you want more? Friends outside of work? A boyfriend—a husband?”

  Lanie shot her a wry grin. “I doubt my future husband will appreciate me having a boyfriend.”

  “You know what I mean. Don’t you want to settle down and have a family of your own?”

  “That was always your dream, not mine, Britt.” She’d seen how marriage worked, with her parents’ constant bickering and resentment. No thanks.

  “Okay,” Britt conceded. “I’ll cop to that. But there are all kinds of families. It doesn’t necessarily mean kids and a minivan. I can’t see you driving one of those. But don’t let your own experiences sway you. I love my parents and I want to have what they had. Just because your parents didn’t get along doesn’t mean—”

  “Britt, stop. Please don’t psychoanalyze me like I’m one of your marketing research studies. You want me to leave my work checked at the door, but that means you have to, too.” She picked up her phone. “See? I haven’t looked at it once.”

  But then she noticed she had six missed calls from Stephanie. All within fifteen minutes. “Shit.”

  “What?”

  Lanie was already calling her assistant back when she saw the young woman hurrying across the restaurant toward them. Lanie’s heart beat against her chest. In the five years she’d worked with Steph, she’d never seen her look so panicked.

  Lanie stood just as Stephanie reached their table. “What? What happened?”

  Stephanie took several deep lungfuls of air, trying to catch her breath. “Oh my God, that yoga teacher is full of shit. She claimed I’d be able to run a ten-minute mile if I increased my core strength.”

  “A ten-minute mile’s not that great. You need a new yoga place,” Britt said, finishing off her glass. “I want another one of these.” She looked up at Steph. “You should totally go to my studio in Blue Springs. There’s this grandma that teaches some of my classes, and you should see the things she can do with her ass.”

  Lanie’s eyes flew open. “Okay! No more drinks for you. I think I’m scarred for life now. Can we focus?” She turned to her assistant. “What happened?”

  “We got served.”

  Lanie shook her head. “What does that mean?”

  “This.” Stephanie handed her the tri-folded s
et of papers that Lanie had just noticed in her hand.

  Lanie opened the papers and quickly scanned their contents.

  “The man who brought it said we have to shut down all work. It looks like it says we can’t open at all.”

  “No,” Lanie said, still looking over the papers. “It’s a temporary injunction. It says we violated a term of the lease, only it’s not the leasing agency who’s suing. It’s some corporation.” She looked up at Stephanie. “I bet it’s that art store around the corner. They got all pissy because they think we’re going to sell art supplies.”

  Britt shook her head in confusion. “Why would they think you’re an art supply store?”

  “Because the working name for the store is Broad Strokes.” She pushed out a sigh. “I need to call corporate right away.” She glanced back at her cousin. “Oh, crap. I can’t leave you here like this.”

  “Like what?” Britt asked, taking a drink from Lanie’s half-empty glass. “Alone? It’s not like this is the first time you’ve skipped out on me.”

  Lanie sat down beside her. “Britt, they’re shutting down my store. I have to deal with this.”

  “Because your job is your life, Lanie, but jobs are cold, fickle bitches. It will bite you in the ass in the end.”

  “Which will look really good if you go to your cousin’s yoga class,” Steph said.

  Lanie shot her a glare. “Not helping.” Her stomach was twisted into knots. She knew she was about to find out how much of a cold bitch her new VP actually was. “Randy’s office is close to here, right? How about we walk you there?”

  Britt gave her a belligerent look. “I haven’t gotten my Italian Wedding Soup yet. I’m pretty sure it’s bad luck to skip out on wedding soup when you’re getting married.”

  “Then we’ll get it to go.”

  “No!” Britt pointed her finger at Lanie. “I’m finishing my lunch.”

  “I can’t just leave you here.”

  “Why not? You’ve never worried about me before. I’ve worried about you since you started this vagabond life.”

  “Vagabond?” Lanie laughed, trying to lighten the mood. But Britt shot her a glare, and Lanie felt like the world’s biggest bitch. “Britt, of course I care about you.”

  “When was the last time you called me?” Lanie started to speak, but Britt pointed her finger at her again. “And calling to say you were going to be late to lunch—and my shower—doesn’t count.”

  God, she really was a bitch. “Britt, I’m sorry.”

  Tears filled Britt’s eyes. “I made my peace with it a long time ago. But you being here is reopening old wounds. I miss you, Lanie.”

  Lanie’s phone began to ring in her hand.

  “Go deal with your current crisis.”

  Lanie’s stomach twisted even more. What was the right thing to do here? The opening was already running behind schedule. She couldn’t afford to lose any more time. But she’d let Brittany down too many times to count.

  She thrust the papers at Stephanie. “Take these back to the office. Scan them and send them to Eve, then call her and ask her if they have legal covered or if we need to take care of it. Then call those employee interviews we have set up for next week and see if we can conduct them tomorrow. Tell Eve we’re making the most of the shutdown.”

  “You want me to talk to Eve?”

  “You know everything that I know about the job site, so why not?”

  “She’ll want to talk to you.”

  “Tell her I’m not available.”

  “But she’ll be pissed.”

  Lanie took a breath. “I don’t care.” But then she realized she was throwing her assistant under the bus. Every boss Lanie’d had before Eve had done the same to Lanie in one way or the other, but she’d be damned if she did the same to Stephanie. “On second thought, I’ll do it.”

  Stephanie’s eyes narrowed. “Do you think I can’t handle it?”

  “No. Not at all. But just because you can handle it doesn’t mean I should throw you to the wolves.”

  Pride filled Stephanie’s eyes. “Then I’m doing it. You’re the one who always catches all the crap. I’ll take point on this one.” She paused. “But we need to figure out what to do about the interviews. We have confidential information all over our office, and we don’t get the space we set up for interviews until next week.”

  “Then we’ll have them at Starbucks.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “We’ll use the working project name for the store name, but still tell them it’s a clothing store. Then we’ll have the ones who make it to the next step of the process sign NDAs when we interview them in the store space, because we will be open by tomorrow afternoon.”

  Stephanie gulped, then nodded. “Okay.”

  “I’ll be back within an hour.”

  “Okay.”

  Stephanie hurried off, and Lanie turned to find her cousin gawking at her.

  “What have you done?” Brittany asked.

  “Getting my priorities straight.” She sat down and hid her shaking hands in her lap. “Where’s our food? We’re sitting in an empty restaurant. Surely it shouldn’t take this long.”

  “Lanie. Go. I was being a self-centered bitch.”

  “No.” She took a breath to steady her nerves. “Stephanie can take care of it. It’s good experience for her.” Lanie wasn’t about to sabotage her career, but between this latest delay and Eve’s obvious displeasure with the last few openings, Lanie wasn’t confident she was going to have a career at Margo Benson much longer. But maybe changing things up professionally wouldn’t be a bad idea.

  “You should talk to Randy. He can give you advice about the injunction.”

  Lanie gave a tiny shake of her head. “I’m sure corporate will have their own lawyers all over it.”

  “Then talk to him about your own options. You know…just in case.” When Lanie hesitated, Britt added, “It can’t hurt.”

  Then, before Lanie could protest, her cousin grabbed her phone out of her purse and called her fiancé, explaining the situation. Brittany glanced over at Lanie. “Can you go see him first thing tomorrow morning? His first client is at nine, but if you get there by eight thirty, he can see you.”

  Lanie agreed, but she knew she wasn’t meeting him to find out what she could do about the injunction. Yesterday she thought she’d been happy with her job, and now she was strongly considering leaving.

  Those Pink Pantie Pull-downs must be stronger than she’d remembered…

  Chapter Five

  Tyler stood in line at the coffee shop on the first floor of his office building. He had several depositions this morning and early afternoon, and then a consultation, before he met some of the single associates for drinks. He was going to need caffeine to make it through this day.

  His phone vibrated in his pocket, and he groaned when he took it out and saw his father’s name on the screen.

  “Why are you talking to Eric’s principal?” his father demanded without preamble.

  He’d been expecting this call. “Mr. Carter said he’d tried to get ahold of you for two weeks, and you never called him back.”

  “I’ve been busy at the garage, but that doesn’t give you the right to interfere. Besides, since when do you care? Ever since you became that big fancy lawyer, you think you’re too good for us.”

  “Dad, that’s not true.”

  The man in front of Tyler finished his order and stepped to the side.

  “Can I take your order?” the girl at the counter asked, looking annoyed at the phone pressed to his ear.

  He lowered it and said, “Grande Americano.”

  As she rang it up, he brought the phone back to his ear, not surprised that his father was still going through a litany of things Tyler had missed.

  “…you can’t even come over to watch a damn football game.”

  “Dad,” Tyler said with a sigh as he swiped his card in the machine, then stuffed it back in his wallet. “It’s common know
ledge that I’m a bitter disappointment. No need to recite the list all over again. What do you want?”

  The girl behind the counter handed him his coffee.

  “Stay out of our business. We don’t need you.”

  “I never asked to get involved in the first place,” he barked, ending the call before his father could respond. Turning around, he plowed into a woman standing directly behind him.

  The lid to his coffee cup popped off, and the liquid spilled down the front of her blouse. She gasped in shock.

  “Jesus!” He’d just dumped half a cup of burning hot coffee all over the woman’s chest.

  He quickly set the cup and his phone on the counter, then grabbed a handful of napkins from a dispenser next to the register. When he pressed them against her chest, he realized the silky fabric had plastered itself to her breasts, increasing the probability of a damaging burn.

  With that thought in mind, he grabbed the gap between buttons below her breasts and ripped the blouse open. The little pearl buttons flew everywhere, bouncing on the wood floor, and the woman’s eyes flew open in a panic as he pulled the shirt open, exposing her to the now lengthy line behind them.

  He stared at her chest, trying to assess the damage. Why wasn’t her skin red?

  “You’re the guy who stole one of Randy’s beers,” she said in shock as she took a step backward and pulled her shirt back into place. “Musty garage pickup-line guy.”

  Several thoughts went through his head as his gaze lifted to her face. One, she wasn’t burned, thank God. Two, she was the woman he’d met in Randy’s garage. Three, while he’d had the best of intentions, he could very well be facing sexual assault charges. Four, he’d fantasized about her the last two days, about spreading her legs apart on the damn work table and taking her right there, but seeing the swell of her breasts in her lacy, pale blue bra proved she was even more gorgeous under her clothes than he’d imagined. And five, while he’d thought of her as the gorgeous woman he’d met in the garage, she remembered him as musty garage pickup-line guy.

  Musty. Garage. Guy.

  What the actual fuck? How the mighty had fallen.

  He shook his head. “Uh…the name’s Tyler. And I didn’t really steal it.” Great, Norris. Way to sound lame.