Open Invitation?

by Karen Kendall

  She opened her mouth, but he held up a hand. “I promise you that if you come, I’ll be a perfect gentleman. You can have your own hotel room, no strings attached. Believe it or not, I am capable of taking ‘no’ for an answer. Even if I don’t like it.”

  She put down her fork, lifted her cappuccino cup to her lips and eyed him over the rim. “I don’t know, Dan.”

  “I’ll make it worth your while. I’ll pay you. We’ll fly first-class. Shoot, I’ll even throw in some shopping on Bond Street and a Big Ben shot glass.” He grinned.

  “Dan, you know I could never go shopping on your tab. That’s out of the question.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m not your wife or your daughter!”

  “So?”

  “Dan. It would be…behaving like your mistress. There’s an element of sleaziness to it. Do you see?”

  “No. It’s a gift.”

  “It’s not a gift. A gift is something you choose, wrap and present for a special occasion.”

  “But I’d screw that up, I know it. Better for you to choose.”

  “Maybe I’m just hopelessly old-fashioned, but I can’t accept a shopping spree from you.”

  “Unless I marry you first.”

  Her eyes flew to his, startled, and he laughed. “You’re just so damned cute with all your strange little rules. Most women would jump at the chance to grab my credit cards for the afternoon.”

  She sipped her cappuccino. “I do thank you for the offer. It’s very kind of you.”

  He sighed. “But socially unacceptable. See, that’s what I’m talking about. I had no idea! That’s why I need you to come with me to the wedding. You can stomp on my toe or jab me in the butt with your pocketbook when I screw up.”

  Lil came close to spitting her coffee onto her dessert, but she managed to swallow it, her shoulders shaking. “Dan, you’re doing very well, really. And I could never do physical violence to you in the name of etiquette—”

  “It sorta defeats the purpose, don’t it?”

  “In a word, yes. There are more subtle signals.”

  “Lilia, you know by now that I can’t even spell the word subtle.”

  Her eyes twinkled.

  “So you’ll come?”

  She sighed. “Dan, I’ve already put off my vacation once. And given the, um, physical tension between us, my traveling to England with you is simply not a good idea.”

  “But I need you. And I’ll pay for that vacation of yours later. And I promise to be a gentleman.”

  “Mmm.” She toyed with her own slice of chocolate torte, taking a bit onto her fork but then laying it down on the dessert plate again. He knew she wanted it—he’d learned by now that she loved chocolate—so why wouldn’t she allow herself the pleasure? She wasn’t in any danger at all of getting fat.

  “The problem inherent in your request, Dan, and indeed, in our working relationship, is that…oh, dear. Should I really say this? You’ve hired me to transform you into a gentleman. But I like you so much more as a rude, sexually-charged, tasty cowboy.”

  Lilia took her napkin and put it casually, correctly to the left of her plate while he stared at her.

  Seeming surprised at her own words, she reached for her tiny handbag, her elegant, shiny hair swinging as she bent to retrieve it. “Will you excuse me while I find the ladies’ room?”

  And he gazed after her as the confounded woman walked away from the table, her rear view something to be framed for Vogue or Harper’s Bazaar. Tasty?

  LIL WALKED like a lady all the way to the ladies’ room, but once inside she collapsed on the velvet fainting couch, since she felt like, well, fainting.

  Had she really just said that to Dan Granger? But it was true. There was something about the man that held enormous appeal for her. He was larger than life, crude, rude and…unbelievably sweet. Sexy as hell. She might not be able to do it, but it made her hot and breathless that he’d asked her to sit on his beautifully shaped, reckless, hedonistic mouth.

  Lil squirmed and pressed her thighs together, just as the door opened and another woman came in.

  She glanced at Lil and enquired, “Are you all right?”

  Lil nodded. “Yes, thank you for asking.” I just have a terminal case of cowboy. It’s most improper, and being proper just happens to be my job.

  She pulled a compact and some lipstick from her bag while the woman went on to one of the stalls. She stared at her tiny, circular reflection and the features that had always marked her as different from the Anglo-Saxon girls at school, kept a lot of the Anglo-Saxon boys from asking her out. She had tiny, precise lips, almond-shaped eyes, blue-black hair. She looked like her mother, with her father’s more Anglo nose.

  There was nothing so remarkable about her face that Dan Granger should think it wildly beautiful. And nothing about her thin, virtually hairless body that should make him crave her. It was far easier for her to pinpoint what it was about him that drew her.

  For if one were to burn the dreadful belt with his name on it, he could appear as a particularly tanned Olympian on a white, marble, Greek pediment…though he’d be the only one wearing ropers and a big, dashing hat.

  Lil blinked and realized that by now, she’d put on an awful lot of lipstick. In fact, she looked like a small, half-Vietnamese Bozo. She reached for a tissue and wiped it off.

  She’d really gotten herself into a pickle, now. Because she’d told Dan straight out that she liked him in the raw, so to speak. But her job was to turn him into filet mignon with a stylish garnish.

  And she’d also basically admitted to him that she liked his sexual pursuit of her, embarrassing as it was at times. So if she were to go on this trip to England, things were bound to be…complicated.

  Mortifying, but it had taken someone with his unbelievable brashness to get through her nice-girl defenses. And get through them he had.

  Lil washed her hands, straightened her skirt and smoothed her hair, having come to no useful conclusions at all. Bottom line: she shouldn’t have said what she’d said to him. What was wrong with her?

  It was as if some long-buried, renegade voice was bubbling up inside of her and making itself heard at the least opportune moments. It was most unwelcome…and worse, the voice wasn’t always polite.

  She made her way back to the table, where Dan sat fielding glances from women all over the restaurant. The sixty-year-old in the back corner with the diamonds, the woman in her mid-forties with the cleavage and even a woman in her twenties who was there with a good-looking date.

  While she was partly proud, an unfamiliar territorial feeling swept through Lil. She wanted to taser each of the women, sending the sixty-year-old nosefirst into her lamb entrée, Ms. Cleavage into her salad and the cute young thing into her grilled portobello.

  Lil pasted a serene, genteel smile on her face to disguise her malicious thoughts. Dan got up and pulled out her chair for her—very nice. She sat down at the table and he eased the chair in a couple of inches as she’d taught him.

  “Would you like a cognac?” he asked.

  “That would be lovely, thank you.”

  Dan signaled the waiter just by raising a brow. “Yes, the lady would like a cognac, Courvoisier VSOP, please.”

  “And for you, sir?”

  “No, thank you. The lady herself goes to my head.”

  Oh, my. Her lips twitched. “Aren’t you smooth tonight?”

  He simply smiled at her. The Dan she was used to would have turned her words against her and into some sexual invitation. Where was he? He’d turned his inner wolf into a lapdog.

  Lil realized suddenly that he was still on his best behavior so that she’d agree to go to the wedding with him. How could she explain to him that while she hadn’t approved of his raunchy pursuit of her, she’d liked it because it made her feel desired for the first time in her life?

  Her cognac arrived and she took a sip of it. Wait, what was she thinking? She wasn’t about to explain anything to Dan, except
for why she was most certainly not accompanying him to England. Because she didn’t do casual sex, there was no future in this relationship, and he stole from her the very thing she needed to make her living: her status and identity as a lady.

  “So.” Dan interrupted her musings. “I just want to say that I’m flattered—no, touched—that you like me the way that I am. But you don’t approve of me the way I am, do you, Lil?”

  She opened her mouth and closed it again. How was she supposed to answer that, for Heaven’s sake?

  “Approval is a whole different ball game, isn’t it? And approval connotes respect. Well, I want your respect, Lil, about as bad as I want…other things. So I’m asking you to keep working with me. To come to England not only as my date, as my guest, but as my coach.”

  Still she said nothing. She picked up her fork again and pushed at the chocolate torte. It looked delicious. But it was empty calories, and she’d had doughnuts this week.

  “Would you just go ahead and eat some of that? It’s not a capital offense, for crying out loud.”

  Her eyes flew to his, which were half amused, half annoyed. “I—”

  “You deny yourself pleasure. Why?”

  “I do not. I slept with you. I just ate a wonderful meal and I’m sipping cognac.”

  “Let me rephrase that. You skimp on pleasure. You tantalize yourself with it, and then you put it just out of reach, like you don’t deserve it or something. What is up with that?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Okay, whatever you say. But eat your damn cake. It’s delicious and you’ll insult me if you let it go to waste. You’ll insult the chef, too.”

  Lil had forgotten to put her napkin back in her lap. She did so and looked again at the slice of cake, which winked at her like a wedge of sin. She didn’t want to insult anyone. She put a bite of it into her mouth and the rich flavor seduced her immediately.

  “Atta girl.” He grinned.

  She could feel the cake landing with an evil splat right on her hips, but told herself that men didn’t like swizzle-stick women whose ribs and elbows poked them in bed. Right?

  “Now, back to the topic of England. When was the last time you left the country, Lil?”

  “High school,” she admitted. She’d gone with a study-abroad class to Paris, but they’d been heavily organized, scheduled and chaperoned. Since then she’d been afraid to go too far because of Nana Lisbeth’s age and health.

  “High school. So it’s been years. I tell you what. You come with me to England, and we’ll have a good time. A good platonic time. Then I’ll send you on a trip for a couple of weeks to anywhere you want to go. What do you want to see most in the world, Lil?”

  “Vietnam,” she said. “My mother’s birthplace. I’ve been brought up utterly American—the other side of my heritage has always been…swept under the rug. My grandmother never, ever said so, but I think she was shocked when her son married outside of his culture, outside of his country. I have relatives in Vietnam who I’ve never even met. I don’t speak the language. I regret that.”

  She ate another bite of chocolate cake. And another. “I think that’s why I’m so interested in the customs and etiquette of other countries. I have always felt somewhat other. Outside of the mainstream. Not white, like all the kids I went to school with. Not white like my grandmother.”

  “Who cares what color you are? You’re beautiful.” Dan reached across the table and took her free hand, looking like the embodiment of all her youthful, girlish dreams.

  Her pulse kicked up, and she ate more of the chocolate torte so she wouldn’t eat him. So he was rude, crude and socially unacceptable. So what? She was acceptable, even desired, by him.

  “I’ll be forever in your debt if you come to England with me, Lil. Let’s explore another culture together. Then you go on your own personal journey to find your roots. All expenses paid. No strings attached.”

  She put down her fork, all the cake gone, and hesitated. She pulled her hand gently from his, and his face fell, the glow in his eyes dimming.

  “Okay, Dan. I’ll go to England with you.”

  Dan blinked in surprise, then let out a whoop that had every head in the elegant dining room turning their way. Lil resisted the urge to crawl under the table.

  He cleared his throat. “Sorry. I’m just excited. And elated. Thank you.”

  She couldn’t help but smile at the man, even though she wasn’t at all sure what she’d just gotten herself into.

  He smiled back. Then he reached a hand across the table and used his index finger to wipe something from the corner of her mouth. “You got chocolate on your face, Lil. I think it’s real cute.”

  He popped the finger into his mouth. “Tastes good, too. We could always ask the chef for a bucket of icing, stop to get a paintbrush on the way back to the hotel, and have a lot of fun together naked.” He waggled his brows.

  Dan’s inner wolf had gobbled the lapdog in a single bite. He was back in rare form…but she couldn’t tell him that she was relieved.

  “No, Dan,” Lil said.

  He shrugged as if to say it had been worth the try, and nodded to their waiter. “Check, please.”

  16

  LIL’S EYES WIDENED as she and Dan entered the Terraces Lounge, British Airways’ luxury waiting area for first-class travelers. As far as she knew, they were in JFK Airport, but the Terraces transported them to another planet.

  A cross between a bar and a full-service spa, the lounge featured reclining lounge chairs under white umbrellas, trickling water fountains and the scent of freshly cut grass. She even heard birds chirping, though it seemed unlikely that they were nestling behind the übermodern steel bar among the pricey liquor bottles.

  “Sweet, ain’t it?” said Dan. “I mean, isn’t it.”

  Sweet, indeed. And exclusive.

  “Would you like a preflight massage?” he asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “They have reflexology, too.”

  Lil wasn’t sure she wanted some unknown person manhandling her body or her feet. “No, thank you.”

  “There you go, denying yourself pleasure again. How about a drink? You seemed to like that cognac a few nights ago.”

  Yes, but it had made her so drunk that she’d almost lost all resolve and ordered that bucket of chocolate icing from the chef.

  “A cognac for the lady, please.” Dan was already ordering. “And a margarita for me. Top shelf, with salt.”

  She wasn’t sure why, but she wanted to drink what he was drinking. Share something with him. “Actually, I’ll have the same.”

  Dan quirked a brow. “Gonna join me in a little te-kill-ya, eh? Well, why not. It’ll help you sleep on the flight.”

  They took seats on the royal-blue and silver padded bar stools, next to a man who resembled a bad-tempered sea lion. Dan nodded at him, and the man inclined his head. “What’s your destination?” His accent identified him as Australian.

  “Heathrow.”

  “You may be delayed, mate. My flight’s just been canceled due to inclement weather, and it’s by no means the only one.”

  Dan took a large sip of the margarita delivered to him by the bartender. “That’s not good. We did notice that it’s foggy out there, but they went ahead and checked us in, took our bags.”

  The sea lion shrugged. “Perhaps all’s well for you, then. Cheers. I’m bloody waiting to see if it’ll clear out and I can get on the next flight to Hong Kong.”

  Lil made a sympathetic noise and put her own margarita glass to her lips, relishing the taste of salt, lime and tequila. Little crystals of salt stuck in the corners of her mouth and she had to lick them off.

  “Otherwise,” the man continued, “I’ll get stuck in a seedy airport hotel overnight.”

  Dan looked thoughtful, but said nothing. He turned to Lil, smiled and rubbed off a salt crystal she’d missed. Just the touch of his thumb against the corner of her mouth sent a shock of awareness
through her, and she wondered how she planned to travel with the man for the next week without, as Shannon would say, jumping his bones.

  They chatted idly with the sea lion for the next half-hour, during which Lil discovered that margaritas were as potent as cosmopolitans but tasted even better.

  The Australian was a high-level manager for an international bank, married with children and a “vile, stinking ferret” that his wife’s “bugger of a stepbrother” had bestowed upon his niece and nephews.

  Lil listened politely, burying her smile in her margarita glass and guessing that the sea lion had consumed a couple too many gin and tonics. Really, people ought to learn to hold their liquor so they weren’t loud in public.

  She peered down at her feet, which were shod in beige Ferragamo sling-backs and seemed very far away. Surely tequila didn’t cause one’s legs to lengthen?

  Dan shot a glance at her and she smiled happily, listening to the absurd taped chirping of the birds in the background. He pushed a bowl of mixed nuts down the bar to her. “Lil, you should eat something.”

  “No, thank you. I loathe nuts. Little particles stick in your teeth.”

  “Would you like some olives, then? A sandwich?”

  She leaned forward conspiratorially. “Know what I’d really like?”

  “What’s that?”

  “A bowl full of maraschino cherries.”

  “O-kaay. Would you like a spoon with that?”

  She shook her head and whispered, “I like to eat them with my fingers.”

  Dan’s mouth twitched, but he signaled the bartender. “Can we get a small bowl of maraschino cherries for the lady, please?”

  The man nodded.

  “When I was around eight and met Jane,” Lil confessed, “her dad would buy them for me. Once I sliced a bunch of them in half and stuck them on the ends of all my fingers. He called me Miss Cherry Jubilee.”