Open Invitation?

by Karen Kendall

  “Hooray,” he muttered. He looked down to see if his balls were still attached. As far as he knew, they were still hanging tough, but after a manicure…well, he just didn’t know.

  “IS THIS REALLY necessary?” Dan asked as Lil dragged him into a pink and yellow Victorian with too much gingerbread trim.

  She glanced at his hands. “Yes.”

  “I’m a guy. We don’t do manicures.”

  “Lots of men get manicures.”

  “Not real men.”

  Lilia shook her head at him and stepped up to the reception counter. “Hi, Katy. We have an appointment for Dan Granger. He needs a paraffin dip, too. We need to try to get his hands into shape for a formal event in a couple of weeks.”

  “Okay. I’ll let Tisha know you’re here.”

  Tisha was a young lady of about nineteen who looked thrilled to be giving him any kind of treatment at all. She stuck his hands in two twin bowls of glass marbles and soapy water before digging at his cuticles and nail beds with various strange instruments and then filing and buffing his nails.

  He was the only man in the place except for an old geezer getting a pedicure. The geezer looked blissful as a sweet young thing rubbed his gnarled old feet with lotion and tried not to gag at his funky, yellowed toenails.

  Tisha sawed on some callouses of Dan’s with a pumice stone and then had him walk over to a heated vat of apricot-colored liquid. She dunked each of his hands into it, once, twice, and then three times. It was hot wax, and he had to admit that it felt good.

  Then she covered his hands with plastic baggies and shoved them into strange plastic pockets heated by electrical cords. She sat him down to wait for a few minutes while the wax “conditioned” his skin.

  “Just call me Dansy the Pansy,” he muttered to Lilia, clapping his white plastic paws together. She laughed.

  Why am I doing this again? Oh, yeah. For Claire. Don’t want to embarrass Claire in front of her AristoCat. Damn him. And damn Louella, too, for putting him in this ridiculous position.

  Lilia would tell him that it wasn’t polite to damn his own mother. He supposed it wasn’t. But why couldn’t Louella just accept him the way he was?

  Tisha stuck him back in front of her manicure desk and used the plastic bags to peel off all the apricot wax. Now his hands felt greasy. Wonderful.

  She grabbed one and squirted lotion into the middle of it. Then she began a hand massage.

  Okay. This ain’t bad at all…he thought he might start to purr as the girl rubbed every muscle in his palm and then started working his fingers. In fact, this was really almost erotic. He closed his eyes and imagined it was Lilia doing the rubbing.

  Ten minutes later she and Tish nudged him, interrupting a very interesting dream starring Lilia in a silver satin garter ensemble.

  “Come on, Dan,” she said. “Let’s go and get you fitted for—what did you call it?—a penguin suit.”

  7

  LILIA WONDERED if it was such a great idea to be taking Dan Granger to Nana Lisbeth’s house for formal dinner training. It hadn’t escaped her notice that he’d spent a good part of the day ogling parts of her that he had no business ogling, and the guy had even kissed her yesterday.

  She didn’t think he’d do anything she really objected to, but the more she was around him, the more his animal magnetism was getting to her. What if he did something that she should object to and she didn’t object?

  That was the problem. Lil didn’t believe in even kissing a man until the third date, and yet she had already kissed Dan Granger—on the first day they’d met!—and pictured him naked several times. She’d had salacious thoughts about him. She’d even had a full-blown erotic fantasy while pretending to read a glossy women’s magazine in the nail salon!

  What in Heaven was wrong with her? The blame rested squarely with him: those biceps. Those triceps. Those pecs. The powerful chest. And that bulge that she kept sneaking peeks at, shameless hussy that she… wasn’t.

  She wished she could be more shameless. Modern women just did what they wanted. This was the age of Sex and the City. Why couldn’t she just be a modern woman? Channel an inner Samantha? Look at Shannon.

  She should take a page out of Shannon’s book. In so many ways, Lil was tired of Emily Post’s book. Emily didn’t have much fun, and Lil was pretty sure she’d never had anything as scintillating as an orgasm.

  She’d been too busy making sure everyone followed a lot of rules that became even more obsolete with each passing minute.

  She glanced at Dan out of the corner of her eye and tried not to giggle at the thought of the august Emily in the throes of a five-alarm orgasm.

  Shannon had made an executive decision to take his suitcases, and everything inside them, to the Salvation Army without asking him. He was a little bit steamed, even though she’d replaced a lot of things already.

  “I can’t believe she did that!” he said again, as he took another right and then an immediate left onto Lil’s street.

  “I do apologize,” Lil repeated. “She can get a little overbearing.” She didn’t say that it was all for the best, because most of his wardrobe dated from the early eighties and hadn’t been of good quality to begin with.

  “That’s a hell of an understatement!” Dan growled. “Who does she think she is?”

  “If it’s any consolation, you’re not the only one. Her boyfriend still hasn’t forgiven her for throwing his clothes into a Dumpster. He almost threw her after them.”

  Dan pulled up to Nana Lisbeth’s house as per Lil’s instructions, and she waited for him to come around the Mustang and open her door for her, as she’d taught him.

  She swung her feet out, knees together, and took his extended hand to get out of the seat. It was so big and warm. She imagined it on her—

  “Thank you.” She tried to tug her fingers away from his, but just as he had the first time they’d met, he hung on. Judging from the electricity pulsing from his skin to hers, Dan Granger was the one man on the planet capable of giving Emily Post herself an orgasm. Well, if Miss Post had still been around.

  Lilia almost slapped herself for allowing this kind of nonsense to run through her mind, but Granger’s hazel eyes were vaporizing any intelligent thought before it had a chance to form. She wanted to lick him, and Lil had never licked anyone in her life—definitely not Li Wong.

  She was quite sure that licking people was not good manners in any country.

  “I have to get my keys,” she said, and pulled her hand back. You don’t like cowboys. The Wild West bores you stiff even in the movies. You’ve been a Cary Grant and Sean Connery fan since you were ten. You like your men supersonically civilized. Why do you have the hots for a man who shovels manure?

  She didn’t know. She couldn’t explain it.

  She found her keys and walked up the steps to Nana Lisbeth’s—no, her front door, with the full knowledge that Dan Granger’s eyes were fixated on her backside. Heat bloomed over her skin. And keeping Shannon and Samantha from Sex and the City in mind, she dropped her keys and then bent to pick them up, knowing that her skirt would pull tight as she did so.

  She inserted the key into the lock and watched Dan, reflected in the glass of the door. He actually made a fist and stuck it in his mouth. She was pretty sure that was the man-sign for “hubba hubba” or something like that.

  Smiling to herself, she entered the house and beckoned him in. She’d certainly never inspired Li Wong to stick his fist in his mouth, not that he would ever have considered doing such a thing. Lil almost snorted. It was time she admitted it: Li had been absolutely awful in bed.

  Dan looked around at all of Nana’s antiques, the crisp lace curtains and the little Victorian doilies scattered about. He seemed afraid to walk on the oriental rugs in his boots, and he looked rather oversized in Nana’s house, like a human who’d stumbled into a hobbit’s abode.

  Dan actually winced when he came face-to-face with an oil portrait of Grandfather Henry.

  “
I, uh, didn’t mean to call your grandpa a pompous ass,” he said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “When you put my cowboy hat on him.”

  “Oh.” She dimpled. “That’s all right. I think he would have laughed. He had a good sense of humor.”

  Dan looked relieved.

  “Would you like a glass of wine while I’m heating things up? I know you’d probably rather have beer, but part of tonight’s lesson is learning about wine.”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m not a connoisseur, and neither will you be after only tonight, but we’ll sample a chardonnay, a Pinot grigio, a cabernet and a French Bordeaux. Then we’ll have a little port after dinner. Traditionally, at the end of a formal dinner, the women leave the table and the men linger over port or brandy and cigars. You may very well be doing that at your sister’s wedding, and I want you to be comfortable.”

  She gave him a glass of wine and showed him how to hold it. She poured one for herself—thank God she was feeling human again and wouldn’t have to go anywhere near vodka tonight—and then busied herself with heating the meal.

  They’d picked it up from one of her favorite caterers, since she’d had no time to cook, and the table had been set since yesterday.

  As she puttered, she invited Dan to take a seat or have a look around—whichever he felt more comfortable doing. He stuck his head into the dining room and visibly blanched at the elaborate table setting.

  “It’s not any worse than what you saw earlier,” she told him. “I promise.” She put on some classical music and he grimaced. “You’d better get used to that, too, Dan, because your ballroom dancing lessons begin tomorrow.”

  He sighed and tipped back his wine.

  They began the first course, which was escargot, and once he’d gotten over his initial reaction to eating snails, he admitted that they were delicious.

  Next she served him a different wine and a delicate watercress soup, teaching him how to sip it from the side of his spoon, never inserting the entire bowl of it into his mouth.

  Following that was a crisp salad of field greens, walnuts and goat cheese. Dan declared he’d rather eat tufts of grass than that peppery-tasting hairy stuff called endive.

  Lilia grilled him on what he should do if someone erroneously used his bread plate.

  “Tell ‘em what a moron they are?”

  “No. Either don’t eat any bread, or use the side of your dinner plate for it instead. Remember, manners exist to make others feel comfortable, not uncomfortable.”

  “And if they swipe my coffee cup, too?”

  “Same basic principle. Don’t embarrass anyone.”

  For the main course, she served crown roast of lamb with the French Bordeaux. She could tell that Dan itched to pick up the lamb morsels and gnaw on the bones, and truth to tell, she sympathized with him. But in the name of civilization, they used knives, forks and small, polite bites.

  “This is delicious,” he told her. “Better than any English food I’ve had, I’ll tell you that much.”

  “It’s from a French caterer. I avoid English food whenever possible,” said Lil.

  “Good girl. There are only so many ways to screw up a meal, but the Brits have mastered all of ’em.”

  She laughed. “But of course you won’t share that opinion at an English dinner table.”

  “I won’t? Okay.”

  “I don’t mean to pry, Dan, but how did your mother and sister come to live in England?”

  His expression grew sardonic. “Well, a man named Nigel Leighton happened to visit Amarillo on business about twenty-two years ago. He fell in love with my very married mother’s face, and she fell in love with his accent, his worldly airs, his money and the promise of world travel. She ran off with him and left her husband and fourteen-year-old son behind.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s real funny how she’s also left her accent and her working class roots behind, too. She’s a true English primrose, now. But I happen to know how bad she misses biscuits n’ gravy and tamales.”

  Lil sipped her Bordeaux and reflected ruefully that she liked California merlot much better, no matter how much she tried to train her palate.

  Dan took a sip of his, too, and wrinkled his nose. “I’m sorry, but this stuff tastes like bitter dirt.”

  “It’s very expensive, exclusive wine,” Lil said, smiling. “But I agree with you.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes. The French think that we Americans simply have unsophisticated palates, and it’s probably true, but I’ve never acquired a true fondness for French Bordeaux. A good thing, since it saves me a lot of money.” She got up to remove the dinner plates.

  “I like you, Lilia.” Dan said it suddenly. The candlelight turned the stubble on his face to gold, and lent metallic highlights to his wavy chestnut hair. “I like you a lot, and I expected not to. I thought you’d be some pretentious priss-pot. But you’ve got a nice, refreshing honesty under the whole Audrey Hepburn thing.”

  Audrey Hepburn thing? “Well, thank you, Dan.” She took the plates and retreated into the kitchen with them. I thought you’d be some pretentious priss-pot, he’d said. No—I’m an unpretentious priss-pot. How do you like that?

  She set the plates in the sink and ran water over them. And I’m tired of being a priss-pot. She picked up the glass of Chardonnay that she’d left virtually untouched and drained it.

  What’s the most proper, mannerly way to seduce someone? Where’s Judith Martin’s guide to excruciatingly correct bedroom behavior?

  Lilia took out the key lime cheesecake she’d made two nights ago and garnished with such care. She prepared and started the espresso machine. Then she went back out to the dining room and joined the subject of her most unladylike lust.

  How on earth did you get a man from the dining room to the bedroom with any kind of subtlety? She couldn’t just grab him by the shirt collar and say, “You. Come with me.”

  She couldn’t just whip off her blouse and spray herself with whipped cream, declaring, “I’m your dessert, you big stud.” Shannon might, but there was no way that Lil could.

  She supposed that she could just walk over and start kissing him on that sinfully cleft lower lip of his, but that didn’t seem very subtle, either.

  “What are you thinking about, Miz Lilia?” Dan looked at her lazily in the candlelight, swirling his wine.

  Oh, wouldn’t you like to know.

  I’d like to lose my virginity all over again, but this time to a real man. A guy who knows what to do with it, and doesn’t consider me some lowly half-breed only fit to scrub his floors!

  Li’s racism still boggled her mind. She’d encountered it before, but from Americans. She’d thought she’d be safe from that with Li. How wrong she’d been.

  “What am I thinking about?” she repeated. “Just that I like you, too, Dan—hat, boots and all.” She smiled. “Would you like coffee?”

  “Yes, please. Just black.”

  She brought in the coffee and the key-lime cheesecake. “The only part of the meal that I actually made,” she said, cutting him a thick slice.

  He took a bite and his eyes widened. “Did I say I liked you? Because now I love you. This is incredible.”

  She flushed with pleasure. “It’s my grandmother’s recipe. This was her house.”

  “Did you lose her recently?”

  Lil nodded and focused on her own slice of cheesecake. “Yes. A few months ago. She had a simple knee replacement surgery and though it was painful, she seemed to be doing well. But somehow the knee got infected and the infection got out of control—it was too much for her system. She was in her late eighties.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “Thank you.” She kept her response simple, not wanting to reveal that losing Nana Lisbeth had in effect been losing her entire family in one day. That she still couldn’t get used to living in this house without her, but couldn’t bear to sell it, either. She felt as
if she were the custodian for Nana’s ghost.

  He gestured around him. “I did wonder a little about the antiques and knickknacks. And the place even smells of another century.” He clapped a hand over his mouth at her expression. “I didn’t mean it smells bad—just kind of like an old person lives here.”

  “I know what you mean.” Lilia forgave him. The musty scents were in the eighteenth-century upholstery, the nineteenth-century rugs and the well-worn pages of countless books. No matter how often she cleaned and lemon-oiled the furniture, the rooms of the house did retain those odors.

  He took another hefty bite of his cheesecake and savored it, his eyes running lazily over her. “This place suits you in certain ways…”

  “Are you calling me an antique?” she asked, with a smile.

  “No! God, no. I just meant that you’re a little old-fashioned.”

  “Uptight?”

  “I didn’t say that, now did I? Why, do you think you’re uptight?”

  She left her cheesecake untouched and focused on her coffee. “I—I don’t want to be. But other people seem to think I am. I think it’s how I was raised.”

  “Well, are you lookin’ for someone to lower you, now?” He cocked his head at her and grinned, clearly joking.

  Lil took a deep breath and made up her mind. “Yes, Dan, I am.”

  He stared at her, his eyebrows raised in surprise. “Come again?”

  She clenched her hands around her coffee cup and looked steadily into his eyes, which were now the color of good brandy. “I’m…tired of living like an old lady.”

  Dan laid his fork across his plate, prongs pointed at eleven o’clock, and touched his napkin to his mouth. “Lilia. I’m not real big on subtlety, and I don’t want to get slapped, so I’m just gonna ask this straight out. Was that the invitation that I think it was?”

  Still gripping the cup and unable to recall either the words or the intent behind them, she nodded.

  He dropped his napkin to the left of his plate and leaned back in his chair, a wicked smile playing around those cowboy lips of his. “Well, then, darlin’, I’d like to RSVP.”