Viv had to admit, the eye candy meant a pleasant diversion on a slow afternoon. But, she conceded with a sigh, the only thing Lance could do for her was agree to invest in her expansion project. Viv was great at coming up with creative ideas. She let Vicki worry about the other stuff, like details and the long-term.
The telephone rang and she reached for it and the printout from the register. “Guilty Pleasures, where it’s no sin to indulge.”
“You know, one of these days somebody’s gonna take that the wrong way.”
Viv smiled and settled back into the soft leather chair in her office. “And how are you taking it?”
“Never you mind.”
“One of these days I’m going to persuade you to totally release those inhibitions.”
“Promises, promises.”
She chuckled, enjoying the easy bantering with Julian. “What can I do for you this evening?”
“Are you done at the shop?”
“Just about.”
“Then you can have dinner with me. I’ll pick you up in fifteen minutes. There’s a new restaurant downtown that we must christen.”
Viv did a quick estimate of the work she’d yet to finish, including payroll for her three full-time and two part-time clerks. She’d planned to order Chinese takeout and catch up on all of her paperwork tonight. But spending time with Julian suddenly seemed a much better idea. She could count on him to lift her spirits. That she needed her spirits lifted gave testimony to how hard she’d been working lately—and to how hard she’d been trying to win that bet with her sister.
“Forty-five minutes,” she bargained.
“Thirty.”
She tapped her pen on the surface of her desk, an antique secretary she’d purchased in Milan. “Forty. I’ll meet you there. Have my Cosmopolitan waiting, and make sure it’s—”
“Shaken not stirred.”
“You’re an angel,” she said. “And I have news.”
“Hint.”
“Unh-uh. I’m gonna make you suffer.”
“Witch.”
This time she did laugh. “That’s why you love me.”
“You know I do,” he said before giving her the address of the restaurant and ringing off.
Smiling, Viv slowly replaced the receiver. Twice now Julian Gerard had asked her to marry him. Twice now she’d put him off. Not because she didn’t love him. She did. Sort of. She just...
Viv sighed. She didn’t know what the “just” was. Staring at her pen without seeing it, she readjusted her thoughts.
Sometimes she thought she wanted the stability and comfort of marriage, but if she had it, it had to be without the attendant strings that most men would demand. Like children. That thought alone sent frissons of revulsion rippling through her. At twenty-seven, Viv was in what many would call her prime childbearing years. But she’d never, ever wanted children, not biological ones, not adopted ones, not step ones.
Julian on the other hand, professed to want the textbook American life, complete with picket fence and cocker spaniel. The new Viv just wanted to make a good living and provide for the people who depended on her, including her employees and her sister. Well, that, and be the center of the Universe. That’s why being a model, with all eyes on her as she pranced down a runway, had been ideal. It stroked her ego, boosted her in ways she didn’t want to examine too closely. Running Guilty Pleasures was fun, but she needed something else.
With a sigh, she again concentrated on the work in front of her.
She printed off the paychecks for her staff and then the bonuses each got for selling certain commissioned pieces, mostly art and jewelry. The salesclerks could earn commissions on the furniture, too, but no one had this pay period. The chaise was the shop’s bestseller. An identical one graced her sister’s bedroom at home as well as her own. The artisan who crafted them offered a nice bonus to the clerks for every customer who ordered one.
On her Outlook calendar, Viv made a note to call Lucia Allen. Customers had really taken to the jewelry designer’s work, and Viv wanted to make sure she had enough of the funky brooches, earrings and bangles on hand to meet demand during the upcoming pajama party at the store.
“Not bad for yourself this period,” she murmured as she made out a bonus check in the amount of $350.38 for Dakota. In addition to working at Guilty Pleasures Dakota did some catalog modeling. Next to her sister, Dakota was the closest thing to a friend that Viv had. She’d never really gotten along with women; that included female photographers, even though some of the best work in her portfolio had been shot by women.
She finished payroll, then made a neat stack of the work she’d do first thing in the morning. She’d made the mistake of telling her accountant Basil about her expansion ideas. He’d proceeded to shoot her down and had even followed up with a detailed letter outlining the reasons why it wouldn’t work. For a couple of weeks, Viv put off answering that letter. Since he’d decided to jump all official and send it on letterhead, she’d respond in the same way.
But not right now.
She put his nasty-gram in a floral folder—it was always better to wrap unpleasant things in pretty packaging. She stuffed in that same folder a couple of other notes on tasks she’d been delaying and placed the folder on top of the stack of other work to do.
Julian was definitely the diversion she needed tonight.
Cloud 9 was tucked between a former bank that had been converted into a trendy furniture store and an artist’s cooperative that doubled as a small performing arts venue. The restaurant was small, but Viv loved it the moment she walked in the door. Calming blues and creams made up the overall decor. The tables were covered in layered fabrics of the same colors. And everywhere she looked, angels peeked at her, naughty ones, sexy ones, angelic ones.
A mural on a wall illustrated an artist’s interpretation of what it meant to ride on cloud nine: angels were hanging ten on surfboards, a couple of them zipped by a fluffy cloud on a Harley, and in obvious deference to the heavy military presence in the region, one gave a jaunty wave while piloting an F-15 fighter jet. And when a server passed by with a tray of drinks, Viv grinned. Angel wings sprouted from the woman’s back.
“Just what the doctor ordered,” she said.
A moment later, she spotted Julian at the bar. As usual, he was dressed in black. She’d been trying, obviously to no avail, to get him to drop the New York night-at-the-art-gallery look, but he’d insisted that as a publicist he had a certain style to live up to. He apparently didn’t mind that he looked like a cliché.
When they’d first met, Viv would have put money on the table that Julian was gay. From his speech to his mannerisms, everything about him put her gaydar on full alert. But he insisted he was straight, and he’d been playing a mighty convincing role of heterosexual all this time. No matter his sexual preference, she loved him dearly.
Viv paused, her brow furrowing for a moment. The answer to her relationship problems was right there, if she could just put her finger on it. But before she could narrow the focus of her thoughts, Julian flagged her.
“There you are, Viv,” he said, approaching with what undoubtedly was a rum and Coke in one hand. “Isn’t this place wonderful?”
After air kisses, she let Julian steer her to a table for two tucked in a corner. Viv frowned. He knew she liked to be at the best table in the house.
“I just ordered your Cosmopolitan,” he said. “They make them with Grand Marnier and a cherry cranberry juice. I think you’ll like it.”
“Julian, this table . . .”
His face scrunched into a moue. “I know. But we didn’t have reservations. I had to drop a twenty just to get this.”
She decided to forgive him. This time. But she wondered if a man like Lance Heart Smith would be escorted to a table in the corner, reservation or not.
They dissected the menu, argued over what sounded interesting, asked the waiter in pale-blue wings and sparkling white shirt for recommendations and ended up ordering
a sampler platter of appetizers and adventurous entrees.
As she sat with Julian, chitchatting about the day, she realized she’d yet to share with him the most significant occurrence: Lance Heart Smith showing up at her store. Viv wondered at the omission and what that might be saying about her relationship with Julian. She’d been giving somewhat serious thought to marrying him. Life with Julian would never be dull, and they could be content together. She supposed.
Content.
Now there was a dull word if ever she’d heard one. There should be more than that to recommend a life commitment. Maybe, as Vicki always said, she was just looking for something that didn’t exist. Or, maybe she considered marrying Julian just because marriage represented something she’d never done. It was uncharted territory—and it didn’t have to last forever.
It didn’t even have to last six months.
That thought cheered her for about three seconds, long enough to realize just how pathetic it was. Julian was a nice guy, fun to be around and not bad—but not great—in bed. He deserved better than what Viv had to offer emotionally.
By the time he cut into the ostrich he’d ordered and Viv stared at her plate of marinated mahi-mahi, the appetite she’d had earlier was gone, her mind on more important things. Like the future.
“Julian,” she said, interrupting his story about . . . With a start, Viv realized she didn’t know what he was talking about.
Did she make a habit of tuning him out?
Everything was high drama with Julian, which usually meant everything sounded the same. He could talk about getting gas to fill the tank of his BMW and the tale would be filled with all the flair and adventure of an Arthurian quest.
“Yes, love?”
She put her fork down. “Where are we going?”
He blinked. “What do you mean? After we leave here? Well,” he said suggestively, wagging an eyebrow, “my place . . .”
She shook her head. “I mean this relationship. Our . . . friendship?” She reached for her drink. Did she need the alcohol to have this conversation with him? On some level Viv knew she’d been putting this off for a while. She didn’t need to add dulled senses to what could turn into an unpleasant confrontation. Then again, maybe she did. She took a fortifying sip of her second Cosmopolitan.
“Well, what brought that on?” he asked. “I thought that topic had a do not enter sign posted.”
So had Viv when she’d turned him down the last time.
“I met someone today.”
His expression changed, grew wary. “Oh?”
Viv detected a world of hurt and a river of regret in that one word from him. Her brown eyes connected with his green ones—well, green today given the contacts. Sometimes he had blue eyes, and occasionally gray. She wasn’t even sure what his real eye color was. Probably basic brown. But Julian didn’t like anything basic or average. That, she suspected, was why she appealed to him.
She opened her mouth to explain, to give him some idea of the restlessness and the longing she felt—the sense that life was passing her by. But since even she didn’t know what it was that she longed for, it was impossible to describe her fears to him.
None of the right words came. Her mind raced with explanations, reasons, apologies. She wanted to articulate the sense of time running out that she felt, even though the things that mattered to other people, the things that got them thinking they might be running out of time, didn’t apply to her situation. Other people worried about illnesses like cancer and AIDS, or divorce and the myriad problems that sent them into a tailspin of regret and pain and depression.
Viv got there without the attendant drama.
Julian reached for her free hand, lifted it to his lips and kissed it. “You say the word, Viv, and I’m standing next to you with a ring and a priest.”
She cast her eyes up at him. Hadn’t she just barely an hour ago decided that if he asked her again she’d say yes?
She knew meeting with Lance Heart Smith today had everything to do with her hesitation. Lance reminded her of the life she’d left behind—fast times, every moment a feel-good party. Julian also left her with vestiges of the glamour and drama of her former life. But Lance was hardly the settling down type. He was everything she was trying to overcome: sexy come-ons and one-night stands. Between the two, Julian offered the better bet.
This restlessness had been with her for a while. It was there before the trip to Rhode Island, before she’d seriously started thinking about expanding the Guilty Pleasures operation. It had been there for a long time.
If she could pinpoint it at all, it started with Basil laughing in her face, telling her she’d never make a go of an underwear store. Basil refusing to cosign the loan she’d needed to complete her financing package. Basil telling her she was pretty window-dressing and nothing else. He’d reminded her time and again that when her figure and her face changed with pounds and age, she’d have nothing. The thought—and the inevitable brutality of it—left her anxious and tense.
The sober reminder and reality of what she could look like and where she’d be without her looks and figure filled her with fear bordering on hysteria.
“Viv?”
She started at his touch, then realized she’d clutched the delicate stem of the martini glass so hard that it snapped in two. The red of the liqueur and cranberry juice in the Cosmopolitan stained the creamy white linen of the overlay and quickly soaked through to the blue layer of tablecloth. Mixed with the alcohol was the deeper red of Viv’s blood where she’d cut a finger on the glass.
Julian sprang into action, efficiently hailing a waiter, staunching the trickle of blood by applying pressure to her hand. Viv watched, almost as if in a trance or viewing a distinctly unpleasant stage play, one not worth leaving because the tickets were paid for, but not worth staying because surely there had to be a better way to kill time.
Killing time.
That’s what she’d been doing the last many years of her life, hopping from man to man. She was twenty-seven going on forty-seven in many respects. Julian had been a safe diversion; Basil an annoying thornbush in her garden. But in the end, she’d been doing nothing more than treading water in a shallow pond; afraid to go deep where the bigger fish swam in unknown depths.
A small group of Cloud 9 staff, all male, gathered at the table, fussing over her while Julian directed the action. A clean white cloth, ice at its center, was pressed to her finger. The manager clucked, the waiter murmured, the others spoke in a rush of sound that seemed to be leading to an eardrum-bursting crescendo.
She had to get some air. Now.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I’m fine.”
She pushed her chair back and accepted a hand up from a man—the wine steward?—with orange highlights in his box blond hair. “Where’s the ladies’ room?”
A moment later, safe from the suffocating fawning, Viv stood before a full-length mirror in the women’s rest room. She didn’t have to study her image to know what was reflected there. Her face had been on enough billboards and buses and in enough magazines over the years to know what she looked like—and not be all that impressed. Not in the total scheme of things. Now, as always, the outer package remained what it was: an attention getter. Something she’d never taken for granted though. Time and circumstances were too fleeting to take anything in life for granted.
Would the men out there—Julian, the restaurant manager, the waiter, and the wine steward—react to her the way they did if she didn’t have the voluptuous curves, the sexy smile and wide dark eyes? Would they?
Viv knew the answer. And it hurt just as much as it always did.
Taking a deep breath, she turned on the faucet and stuck her hand under cold running water. Barely a nick, the cut on her finger wouldn’t even require a tiny bandage, let alone warrant the kind of fuss being made out there.
Suddenly feeling as though she might burst into tears any moment and wanting nothing more than to go to a quiet place to sort out the raw e
motions that bubbled to the surface, she looked around for an escape. The breakdown she’d been trying to outrun for months seemed upon her.
She could fight it though. She would fight it.
She stared at her reflection for a moment then dried her hands, ignoring the assortment of lotions and oils available on the vanity and pulled the door open, steeling herself for the circus that awaited.
Two steps forward and she confronted a solid wall of man.
“Excuse me,” he said, extending a hand to steady her while fiddling with a cell phone with the other. “I had a call.”
Everything in Viv went on full alert. Awareness trickled through her, waves of wanting and neediness washed across her senses, her body responding in the elemental way it had done once before today.
“Lance?”
Their gazes connected then. And a slow, indulgent smile spread across his face. “Vivienne.”
He said her name like a caress and Viv suddenly knew what she wanted, what she needed. She’d spent most of the day trying to convince herself that there was nothing special about him, nothing that she hadn’t already experienced. But like recognized like and deep called unto deep.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said.
Without a word, Lance pocketed his phone and led her through the maze of tables toward the door.
“Viv?” Julian called out.
Not only did she not answer him, she didn’t even look back.
“Where?” Lance asked after he settled behind the wheel of his Jaguar.
Viv glanced around. “How about there?” she said, pointing to the Marriott a few blocks down the street.
Not many minutes later, Lance closed and locked the hotel room door behind him. Viv was undoing his silk tie and he her bustier. She wanted this now, fast and furious. And he seemed to understand the urgency, the need riding her hard. Few words were spoken as a trail of clothing fell behind them. He backed her into the room until her legs bumped the edge of the bed.
“Leave the shoes on,” he murmured. “I like them.”
His hand crept up her thigh, the smooth skin soft and warm. “Viv, are you sure? You said no earlier.”
Enchanted Heart Page 3
