Jeez.
She’d forgotten about her panties. Having tea with Ma, and she hadn’t even been wearing her panties. How was it possible to forget? Funny. Being with Walker seemed more like a dream. This was her real life, broken toilets and the ceiling caving in. It reminded her of Chicken Little. After brushing her teeth, she crawled beneath the comforter.
It had been well over an hour. He’d have turned his phone off, but she called so she could say she had.
“Hello.”
Shit. He wasn’t supposed to answer. “Hi, it’s Cleo. I’m home safe and sound—thanks for a lovely evening.” She said it all in one breath.
“It was my pleasure. I’d like to see you again.”
“That’s not possible.” He was a dream. Expecting or even wanting anything 112
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more was stupid. She had too many obligations. The house was falling down, her car was on its last legs, and she needed every spare moment with Heidi to repair the damage to their relationship. Now was not the time to bring a new friend with benefits into her life.
“Anything is possible, Cleo.”
She snuggled under the covers. His voice. Over the phone, it was deeper. Though he was far away, it was as potent as the moment he’d buried himself inside her.
“I’m not ready for this right now, Walker.” But she wanted it. “You’re a sweet man.” Hot, sexy, hard, delicious, and she wished she’d tasted him. “But tonight was a mistake.” A mistake she could make over and over if she let herself. Suddenly, after one evening with Walker, she wasn’t exhausted anymore. He made her feel alive again. He made life fun.
“Cleo.”
God, the way he said her name, just that, nothing else, she was wet, burning up. “What?”
“We will fuck again, you know.”
She wanted to say he was wrong—she couldn’t afford him—but he wasn’t. 113
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5
“THANKS FOR EMBARRASSING ME BY BEING LATE.” HEIDI SLAMMED the car door, slouched down in her seat, and crossed her arms.
“Please don’t be rude.” Dammit, Cleo had overslept, a bad combination of a late night and good sex. See, you let a man step into your zone and things got all screwed up. Not to mention waking up at five a.m. worrying about the ceiling. Somewhere around the time the sun began to rise, Cleo had slept like the dead, having forgotten to set the alarm because it was Saturday morning. Thus she was late picking Heidi up from the sleepover at Cat’s.
“I’m not being rude,” Heidi snapped. “I’m trying to teach you about being punctual.”
If it wasn’t another one of those fights and another one of those mornings, Cleo would have laughed. As a child, Heidi had been precocious. Cleo remembered picking her up after school—Heidi would have been seven or so—
and she was babbling a mile a minute about the bunny that a girl had brought to class. One of the teachers stopped to speak to Cleo. After a few seconds, Heidi piped up, “Excuse me, but you interrupted. I haven’t finished yet.” It had been amusing, the teacher apologized, and Heidi finished her story. It was Heidi’s tone that had changed over the last year, the snappishness. Cleo had already apologized to Cat’s mom, and to Heidi, too. But Heidi kept on riding her.
“We had a problem with the upstairs toilet in the middle of the night.”
“I told you there was something wrong in there.”
For the life of her, Cleo couldn’t remember Heidi saying any such thing. But honestly, she couldn’t be sure. She had so much on her mind, and Heidi had taken up the habit of mumbling something, then walking away. I just can’t talk to you right now. Cleo wanted to say the words so badly, but they would only make things worse. She kept her mouth shut because anything she said would be wrong.
Back at the house, Heidi stomped up to her room. Fifteen minutes later she stomped back downstairs. “Misha asked if I could go to the mall with her. Can I go to the mall?”
Cleo was folding clothes in the laundry room. “Is your homework done?”
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Heidi rolled her eyes. “Yes. Would you like to check it?”
Part of her wanted to say yes. But while Heidi was sullen and uncommunicative, her grades were good. “Please be home at least half an hour before dinner.”
Please and thank you and I’m sorry. She said that a lot, whereas before it had always been implicit.
Heidi stomped out. She was home by four thirty, right when she was supposed to be. Yet everything was done with a sneer and a roll of her eyes. Cleo left the house early for her shift at the restaurant before she actually called her own daughter a bitch. With every altercation, the ache in Cleo’s heart grew larger.
God, she wished she had someone to talk with about it. Ma didn’t count. They had their own issues that would get in the way. Maybe another single mom. Someone to tell her she wasn’t just a bad mother who was too busy with her own life to give her daughter what she really needed. But Cleo didn’t have a lot of friends. At work, the receptionist was always someone you passed by on the way in or out, so she hadn’t managed to make friends. Despite three years at the restaurant, she’d failed to find a common ground there, too. Except for Walker.
For the first time on a Saturday night, Walker wasn’t at Bella’s. She had sex with him, then poof, just like that, he was gone. Despite what he’d said to her on the phone in the wee hours of the morning. Okay, she’d told him she didn’t have time for a man, and honestly, she didn’t. Bad timing all around.
Contrary to all that, she hadn’t expected him to vanish so quickly.
MONDAY, MIDMORNING, AFTER AN INTERESTING RIDE ON BART INTO the city, Walker sprawled in the chair and put his booted feet on Isabel’s desk. Mostly because he knew she’d hate it.
“Walker, you have your boots on my desk.” She didn’t smile, her gaze ice blue.
“Yes, Isabel, I know.” He suppressed a smile.
Her office was like the woman, elegant but with many facets. A grandfather clock in the corner, a pair of Cloisonné plates on the wall, an ornate Satsuma vase on a long cherrywood sideboard, a Meissen figurine, an eclectic mix that 115
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somehow went together seamlessly. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason, as if she’d seen each piece at one time or another, fell in love with it, had to add it to the beauty she’d placed around her.
“You like pushing my buttons, don’t you,” she said evenly.
“Yeah.” Walker nodded. “I love it.”
He’d always found her attractive. Yet even when he was a client, he’d never slept with her, never asked. There was something about Isabel, polished and professional yet somehow aloof. He could have had sex with her, and it would have been great, just as it was with his clients. But she would be holding back. Walker didn’t want his women holding back. He enjoyed women who needed him. Isabel didn’t need anyone.
So he’d never asked.
He, did, however, enjoy putting his boots on her desk because she gave him that look, part blonde ice queen, part neat freak, part sexy, disapproving schoolteacher. He’d had a crush on Mrs. Winters in the fifth grade. He knew something else about Isabel. While she could admit she was wrong and apologize for it, she never backed down when she was pushed.
“I suppose,” he drawled, “that if I don’t get my feet off your desk, you won’t tell me why Estelle canceled on Friday.”
“Exactly.”
It was an odd face-saver. They both won because they both got what they wanted. Walker removed his feet, crossing one boot over his knee. “So tell me.”
Isabel grimaced and blew the dust off the edge of her desk. “Her cat died.”
He steepled his fingers beneath his chin. Speaking of school analogies . . . “Is this like the dog-ate-my-homework excuse?”
Isabel’s lips twitched. “Some people become very attached to their pets.”
“I’m not dissing pets. I just
believe she was more nervous about our meeting than she told you. Was she married?”
“That’s something I can’t discuss.”
There were things her clients told Isabel in confidence. In that case, he gleaned all he could from a woman’s actions, what she didn’t say. After three years of giving women what they wanted, he considered himself an expert on figuring out what they needed even if they couldn’t articulate it. Lonely ladies who needed to be wanted, he made them feel desired. Women who felt impotent in their real lives, he gave them power. Women too busy to take time 116
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for themselves, he pampered them for a night. Suddenly my cat died wasn’t so amusing. It sounded like a woman on the precipice between asking for what she wanted and being terrified of it. That was the only thing Walker couldn’t do: make her take what he offered.
What did Cleo need?
Isabel tapped the capped tip of her pen on the desk. “So, you could have called me to find out all about the demise of your client’s cat. To what do I truly owe the pleasure of a visit?” She smiled big. Like a jungle feline. Cleo was the reason he’d come to Isabel’s office. “I’m considering a hiatus.”
Isabel stared.
“You’re catching flies, Isabel.”
“I thought I’d heard that incorrectly.”
“You didn’t.”
“Because of the cat woman?” she said, aghast.
He snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Then why?”
“I’ve met somebody.”
He wasn’t clear on exactly what he wanted from Cleo. Sex, yeah. To learn more about her. Oh yeah. To become a part of her life? Maybe. He couldn’t do it while he was fucking other women for money. No matter his reasons for being a courtesan.
Now Isabel really was catching flies for several seconds. “Oh my God, do not tell me you’re in love.”
He hadn’t quite thought of it like that. Cleo was a mystery in so many ways. She had a daughter. She’d never been married. She worked her ass off to take care of her kid, loved her to death, but things were not so sweet right now. The rest was a mystery he wanted to solve. But the fact remained: you could lust after a mystery woman, obsess about her, but if you loved her, you loved a fantasy you’d created in your own mind.
“Not yet.” Then he gave Isabel a look. “But if I was, why would you be so shocked?”
“Because ...” She paused, as if suddenly realizing she’d said too much.
“Because?”
She put her elbows on the desk, laced her fingers. “I don’t mean this with a negative connotation. In fact I consider myself to be like you in a lot of ways. 117
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And we’re not people for deep relationships.”
He wasn’t easily offended. He liked living without a lot of entanglement and mess. On Saturday night, for the first time, he hadn’t been thinking about the client he was with. He hadn’t been trying to figure out what she needed to feel important or worthy. That wasn’t like him, either. He’d changed his reservation from Bella’s to a fancy fondue place in Saratoga. He hadn’t wanted to entertain in front of Cleo. The way he ran his chosen profession had changed because of Cleo and Friday night, because of a no-show and a split-second decision.
“My mind wasn’t in it on Saturday,” he told Isabel.
“I didn’t receive any complaints.”
“I didn’t let her know.”
“Who is this woman who’s captured your attention?”
“No one you know.”
“Does she know about . . .” Isabel waved her hand expressively, encompassing his body.
“No.”
“Are you going to tell her?”
There were few people he would allow this third degree. He did so only for Isabel because she knew him well and liked him anyway. He was also sure she was headed toward a point.
“I haven’t made that decision yet,” he said.
Isabel leaned back in her chair, laying her hands flat on the armrests. “You should make that decision right now.”
He eased his head to the side, regarded her. And waited.
“Whatever you decide now is what you’ll be stuck with. Whether it’s the lie or it’s the truth.”
Now, didn’t that sound like the voice of experience. Another of Isabel’s many facets.
“I appreciate your concern—”
She didn’t let him finish. “She’ll either accept you the way you are, or she’ll hate you for the lie when it comes out.”
Cleo wasn’t like that. She wasn’t judgmental. She’d seen him with women. A lot of women. She wouldn’t have any illusions about him. Then again, he’d already admitted to himself that he didn’t believe any woman, even Cleo, could accept what he did.
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“I’ll keep that in mind, Isabel.”
She smiled, then shook her head. “You’re not going to listen to me, are you?”
“I’m one of those people who has to make my own mistakes in order to learn from them.”
“I like you, Walker.”
“The feeling is mutual.”
“You enjoy women. Most men think of us as tools. But you, you like us. I think you’d like us even without sex.” She smiled, and any shadow he might have seen—or imagined—was gone. “You can come back anytime.”
“I appreciate that, Isabel.” He rose.
“And you don’t need to be a stranger, either.”
He nodded slowly, letting an answering smile rise to his lips. “I’ll be around.”
He was almost to the door when she said his name. She waited until he’d turned before she spoke.
“Whoever she is, she’ll be lucky to have you in her life.”
Once outside her door, he laughed. Cleo had already told him to get out of her life. He just had no intention of listening to her. 119
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6
MONDAY HAD BEEN A DISASTER. THE INSURANCE COMPANY CLAIMED the leaking toilet was a replacement issue that wasn’t covered by the policy, and they wouldn’t even send someone out to assess it. The plumber came in to look at the toilet. If she’d noticed in time—dammit, dammit—the fix would have been easy, but the toilet, which was wall-mounted, had been leaking just behind the wall, into the floorboards and the plaster below. The damages were astronomical.
In desperation, Cleo met with the accounting manager at work only to be told they were hiring an applicant from outside the company who had better accounts payable qualifications.
She wanted to stab her eyes out with a rusty fork. Okay, bit of an exaggeration. Not everything was bad. Bella’s was closed Sunday, and she’d spent some quality time with Heidi and her mom, even if it was in front of the TV watching Lost in Austen. Not her cup of tea, but Heidi, for whatever reason, was into the whole Jane Austen craze. She’d even signed out Pride and Prejudice from the school library. Then tonight, Monday, Walker was back at Bella’s. He arrived late, and he was alone. Cleo hated to admit how relieved she’d felt, experiencing heart palpations and mixed emotions, happy to see him, worried he’d ask her out again, afraid he wouldn’t, undecided what she would say if he did. He’d acted as if they’d never had sex, and she had mixed emotions about that, too.
She brought back his credit card slip. Her feet ached, but she was done for the night after she handled one other customer’s check.
“I’d like to talk to you when you’re off work,” Walker said. Her pulse raced. She should say no, but she didn’t want to argue with people watching. “I’ll be done in five minutes,” she said. But warned, “It’s late, though, and I have to get home.”
He smiled, his eyes a gentle brown. “I won’t keep you long.”
When she left the back entrance, he was waiting by her car, leaning against the passenger side in a pool of lamplight.
Oh man, he looked good. Beneath a skintight black-and-white sweater, his 120
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biceps bulged, and the ripple of his pecs as he pushed away from the car mesmerized her. She adored bald, and she itched to feel the smooth skin against her fingertips.
The night air was cold. Cleo pulled her jacket tighter. There were so many things she hadn’t tried with him. A long kiss. A sip of his come. Burying her face against his skin and drinking in his scent. God, what she wouldn’t give for this to have happened six months ago. Or even six months from now when she’d had time to fix things between her and Heidi. She didn’t have the six months to wait.
He didn’t touch her, but he was so close his body heat jumped across the brief distance. An answering fire spontaneously combusted inside her, but she backed up slightly in case anyone was watching through the back windows.
“I want to see you.” Walker’s low voice was like a stroke along her skin. “I’m willing to do it on your terms.”
Have sex with me now. Those could easily be her terms. But not her priority.
“I wish we could, but it’s not good timing for me, Walker.” Oh, the truth hurt. Friday night he’d given her something just for her. She wanted it again. Even if she couldn’t have it. “My daughter, a bunch of other stuff going on now.” She spread her hands, trying to encompass everything with the gesture.
“I don’t want to take away. Only add to.”
She didn’t have time, needing every extra hour for Heidi. But oh how she wanted.
He cupped her cheek, sending shock waves through her. Remembering Friday night, how good it had been, she closed her eyes, wanting to lean in to his touch.
“Poor Cleo. No time for yourself.”
Her rule for Heidi was bed by ten on a school night. Cleo didn’t get home until ten thirty, sometimes later, and Heidi was already asleep. Would it matter if once in a while Cleo came home half an hour later?
That would be little more than a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am. No holding, no talking, no cuddling.
He smiled gently. “I can see you wavering.”
Yeah. Then she shook her head. “Things are tough with Heidi right now.” She didn’t get terribly personal with Walker but he knew she’d transferred Heidi between schools.
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