All I Want…

by Isabel Sharpe

  She thought of Krista, taking on life’s opportunities without second thoughts or third ones or fourth ones….

  She’d go. God forgive her. She’d go. Maybe Josh was a sign. Maybe he’d been sent either to panic her into saving her relationship or show her it was time to move on. She needed to find out.

  “Okay.” She tried to smile up at him, but after a glimpse into those eyes, the guilt forced her gaze down to her desk. Only it bounced right back up again. “One drink. A platonic drink with a colleague.”

  “Absolutely.” He grinned triumphantly. “My hands will stay in my own lap the whole time. Er, I mean…”

  Lucy giggled; he smiled and winked. A horrible weight lifted from her shoulders…and sank, ker-splash, into the pit of her stomach. She could call this a platonic drink until she was blue in the face, but she was attracted to Josh as she hadn’t been attracted to any man since she’d first set eyes on Link, red-faced, sweating, radiating masculine heat, returning from an early morning jog as she was on her way to an eight o’clock sociology class, carefully dressed and made-up for her day. This one platonic drink was as close to unfaithful as she’d ever been. As close as she was ever going to get.

  She made it through the last hour of work, leaving a choked, forced message for Link that she’d be home late. That she was having a drink after work with a colleague. When she got home she’d tell him who. No point making him sit there miserably thinking the worst when the worst wasn’t even going to come close to happening.

  She ignored the tiny needling voice that told her she’d been a fixture in Link’s life so long he probably wouldn’t even think to get jealous. Which should have relieved her but depressed her even more.

  He took her for granted.

  The second she had the thought, panic bloomed. No, he didn’t. No way. They were meant to be together. She just needed to find a way to make it work.

  She should cancel this drink. She was a fool thinking she could find happiness anywhere but where she belonged. With—

  “Ready?”

  She turned at the sound of Josh’s voice, took in the eager glint in his sexy eyes. Link had looked at her that way once and for years after. He’d looked at her that way even the very first time, when he’d stopped her on her way to class and introduced himself. And she’d been so damn sure he always would.

  “Yes.” She stood and grabbed her purse, put her pen away in the holder on her desk. “I’m ready.”

  They walked together through the offices of Stenkel, Webb and Reese, Josh calling out good-nights to people he knew, which appeared to be everyone. She was flattered he seemed anxious to call attention to them, but frankly she would much rather put on dark glasses, a hat and a trench coat and sneak out on her hands and knees.

  Worse, instead of taking her to one of the bars around Faneuil Hall, where most of the employees of Stenkel, Webb and Reese hung out, where the buzz and press of humanity was comfortingly nonintimate and slightly deafening, he took her in a cab to the Oak Bar at the Copley Plaza Hotel, an elegant place of wood, mirrors, marble and gilt, upholstered chairs and dark wood tables with candles. He even ordered her a glass of champagne, her favorite, remembering some comment she’d made to him weeks ago, when his interest had started becoming apparent.

  A beautiful place. A handsome man. Champagne. Enough to get a girl a bit dizzy. Why didn’t she and Link ever come to places like this? It wasn’t as if they couldn’t afford it. And if Link was too tired to come out, why didn’t she ever buy champagne and bring it home?

  Because champagne was for joy and celebration, and she hadn’t had a lot of reasons for either lately.

  Josh grinned and lifted his martini to her as if she was the most precious thing in his life, and they drank the first sip together, which felt intimate and thrilling and awkwardly wrong all at the same time.

  “So…” He dragged his chair around to the side of the table next to her. “Tell me about Lucy. Something I don’t know and wouldn’t suspect.”

  “Oh, well…” She resisted the urge to shift her own chair away. His knee was inches from hers. “Let’s see. I’m not that exciting really.”

  He snorted in disagreement. “I’ll be the judge of that.”

  She sipped her champagne again, loving the elegant tickle of bubbles in the smooth wine taste, loving that he seemed to think she was so fascinating. “Obviously you know about my job. I have an older sister who is a writer and who lives—”

  “Lucy.” He interrupted gently. “I didn’t ask about your sister.”

  “Oh. Right.” She laughed, feeling stupid, and drank more champagne, suddenly not caring that she was probably emptying the glass too quickly. “I grew up in Framingham. My mom is a kindergarten teacher, my dad runs a print shop. I got good grades, always behaved well, never—”

  “Always?” He lifted both eyebrows, mischievous, challenging.

  “Yeah.” She sighed. “Boring, huh.”

  “You never got into trouble?”

  “Not really.” She wanted to say she was pretty sure she was getting into trouble right then and there, but that might sound as though she was inviting something and she didn’t want that. So she told him a few silly stories of pranks she and Krista had pulled—the usual kid stuff, ringing doorbells, goofy phone calls—jokes Krista loved, which had made Lucy anxious and guilty.

  The way she felt when Josh ordered her more champagne without asking if she’d like another.

  “Are you trying to get me drunk?”

  “No.” He shook his head and grinned his bedroom grin. “I’m trying to get you loose and happy so you can have some fun. I get the feeling you don’t have enough.”

  “Oh.” She frowned down at her fingers twisting in her lap, trying to quell the warmth over his concern for her. “Maybe not. My sister has all the fun. She just called and told me she—”

  He waited, then touched her fingers, squeezed her hand and let go. “She what?”

  Lucy drained her champagne. This was mined territory. “Nothing. I’m sorry. I’m not used to drinking.”

  “It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.” His voice was low, soft, gentle, his eyes deep and soulful as a puppy’s. She loved puppies—and nearly giggled at the thought. Damn her low tolerance for alcohol. “Tell me something else about you, Lucy.”

  She stared at the second glass the waiter had set in front of her. Stared, then picked it up and took a sip. She could guess what would happen if she told him about the singing and the dancing and the acting. A lot of people were excited by that kind of creativity. They equated it to near stardom or something equally crazy.

  But what the hell. “You probably don’t know that I’m a singer. And an equity actress. I sing at Eddie’s Lounge every other Tuesday night.”

  “Wow.” He gazed at her rapturously and she had to look down before she got too giddy. “That’s incredible. Why the hell did you say you were dull?”

  “I don’t know…I’ve been doing it so long, it doesn’t feel so…well, I don’t know why I said that.”

  Why the hell had she said that? Since when had her self-esteem dropped that low?

  She didn’t want to start thinking about Link again….

  “You’re incredible, Lucy. I’d like to come hear you.”

  “Oh. Wow. Thank you.” His praise made her want to get up and sing right there. But the thought of him in the audience at Eddie’s made her uncomfortable. To perform for strangers was one thing. Link had long stopped coming, not that she blamed him, she guessed. But to perform with someone like Josh in the house…

  “Are you performing tomorrow night?”

  “Next week.”

  He clinked his glass to hers. “I’ll be there, babe. Unless you want to go karaoke after this so I can hear you tonight.”

  She was shaking her head before he finished speaking. “I can’t go anywhere after this.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s not a good idea.”r />
  “It’s a great idea. Why do you say that?”

  “I need to get home.” She gripped her glass too hard and had to remind herself to ease up.

  His eyes narrowed quizzically. He leaned forward, which made her want to lean forward, too, and also lean as far away as she could get. “Lucy, I want to be your friend. I think I’ve made that pretty clear. And friends can talk to each other. I want to tell you there is something really creepy about the way you’ve isolated yourself from life for this guy.”

  She nearly spit out a mouthful of champagne. “What?”

  “Look, don’t get me wrong. I don’t know Luke at—”

  “Link.”

  “Link, sorry. I don’t know Link at all. But I’m getting to know you. And I sense that you’re a passionate, exciting, dynamic woman.”

  Her heart gave a little jump on each word, starting with passionate and ending with woman. Oh my lord, she so wanted to be all those things to someone again.

  “Thank you,” she whispered. What the hell else could she say when the only thing going through her alcohol impaired consciousness was Kiss me now and don’t stop?

  “But you’re acting like a timid fifties housewife whose goal in life is to heat Link’s meat loaf for him every night so he won’t starve to death.”

  Lucy’s mouth dropped open. The champagne swimming invitingly through her veins stopped and tread water. “I do not.”

  He winked. “Do, too.”

  She gulped more champagne and laughed so she wouldn’t get angry—or pay too much attention to what he’d just said or to the fear starting to weigh down her chest.

  “Lucy, a man shouldn’t drag you down. He should lift you up. Make you feel like you can do anything, be anything.”

  He covered her hand with his, gazing earnestly, and she didn’t pull it away even though she knew she should.

  “A man should make you feel that through it all he’ll be right there beside you, supporting you.” His voice dropped, became husky and hesitant. “Loving you.”

  Her eyes met his and this time she couldn’t look away. Her head became buzzy and delicious again, and she didn’t think she could entirely blame the alcohol.

  This was completely insane. Worse than she ever imagined. How could she be so stupid as to think it was a good idea to come out with him? What did she imagine it would solve? She’d been crazy to listen to Krista or compare herself at all to her sister. This date was just making a complicated situation much, much more complicated.

  “I need to go.” She got up and fumbled with her purse. “How much is the—”

  “No, no, don’t go. I’m sorry.” He stood and grabbed her arm, pulled her gently until she was much too close and minded much too little. “Please don’t go. I didn’t mean to scare you off. I’m just—I hate to see you unhappy.”

  Lucy swallowed, feeling her face flush hot. She wasn’t unhappy. She wasn’t. She was just in a little teeny rut right now.

  She opened her mouth to speak, changed her mind, opened it again, changed her mind again…and noticed him watching her lips in a very intent way.

  And then—oh my God—she knew. He was going to try to kiss her. And if she didn’t put a stop to it now, right now, immediately, pronto, ASAP, then it was going to be too…

  His lips touched hers once, then again, and a swath of fire roared down her body, heart to her toes and back up.

  Oh no.

  Way, way too late.

  HIS CELL PHONE WAS ringing. Again.

  Seth grabbed a Post-it and stuck it halfway down the page in the file where he’d left off reading. A terminated employee was suing Wellington Department Stores for age discrimination. As far as Seth could tell, she was fired for not showing up to work and not working when she showed up. But no doubt if she got hold of the media or they got hold of her, the story would emerge quite differently.

  He hauled out his cell and rolled his eyes at the display.

  “Hi, Aimee. I’m in the middle of three thousand things. What’s up?”

  “You’re always in the middle of three thousand things.”

  Except when he’d been in the middle of the Maine woods and only one passionate, thrilling thing. “Yeah, well, that’s adulthood.”

  “I want to tell you something really cool.”

  He slumped onto his elbow on the desk. Her idea of cool and his rarely intersected. They were fifteen years apart, but he felt like her grandfather sometimes. At his board meeting the day he left for Maine, he’d barely managed to keep the members’ enthusiasm going for the reopening in spite of the excellent presentation by his head buyer. Everything rested on Aimee and the new ad campaign. Whatever “cool” thing his stepsister had to tell him better not mean trouble. “Okay, I’m listening.”

  “I’m gonna write a novel!” Her normally high voice squeaked higher with excitement. “Isn’t that great?”

  “A novel.” He could barely stand to think about it.

  “Yeah! Juice says I’m a natural writer.”

  “He does.” Seth sat up and then leaned back, let his head drop, staring at the white ceiling of what he still thought of as his father’s office, one he’d been allowed in only a few times, even after he’d joined the company at the retail level in his teens. Juice says? The man couldn’t even find his way to Skowhegan. “And what kind of expert on writing is Juice?”

  “You didn’t know?”

  Seth sighed. “Tell me.”

  “Juice writes poetry. And short stories.”

  Oh, Seth would just bet. Ode to an Overflowing Bra Cup.

  “He’s had a bunch published, one in The New Yorker.

  That got Seth’s head vertical. “You’re kidding.”

  “Well, not really, I mean, he almost got it in. But he has published in magazines. Maybe a couple. I don’t know their names. Anyway, I was talking to him about this idea for a book about this girl who becomes a superstar at, like, age nineteen, and this crazed fan starts harassing her, so she hires a bodyguard and they fall in—”

  “Aimee.”

  “Yeah?”

  “People struggle years and years learning to write before they—”

  “Oh, I know, but Juice already has me with an agent and she thinks they can get me a high-six-figure advance by the middle of the month. The book will probably go to auction.”

  Seth closed his eyes. When this got out, Krista Marlow was going to have no mercy. And neither was his board. It was entirely possible Aimee was the next Faulkner, but he’d bet his drawers she could write only as well as she could act, sing and dance.

  As far as he was concerned, her only brilliant talent was for personal drama.

  He needed to sit down and talk to her. He needed to be a stronger father figure or something. But damn it, for one thing he was not her father. For another, he had an already heavily loaded plate, his own life to live. And for a third…

  He hated getting involved in female hysteria.

  “Are you going to have time to write a novel and act in a show and be the spokesperson for Wellington Department Stores?”

  “Oh, jeez, I did the dumb commercials. How much more is there?”

  “Aimee.” He picked up a pencil and braced it between his thumbs. “The board approved budget for a trial year of appearances and possibly more commercials next year. If this hits, you’re going to be at it a long time.”

  She gave a childish whimper. “I don’t want to.”

  “It’s your family, Aimee.” His attempt at patience wasn’t working very well. “In terms you’d understand, it’s about the money that makes your lifestyle possible. This is only giving back a little.”

  “A little too much.”

  The pencil snapped. “I gave up a huge part of my life for this company and all I expect of you is—”

  “But you like all that boring stuff. It’s who you are. I’m different, I’m more creative, more spontaneous, more…alive.”

  “Right.” He sighed. No point. There was just no poin
t. “Well, Mr. Stuffy here still expects you to toe the company line. Until you’re twenty-five, your money comes through me.”

  “Oh, fine, Seth.” Her auto-tears mechanism kicked in, complete with oh-so-adorable sniffles. “Threaten your own sister. Real nice. Maybe you could just try a little harder to screw up my life, okay?”

  “Good plan. I’ll get right on it.”

  The line went dead.

  And another scintillating conversation with his bratty stepsister was over.

  He went back to the file and removed the Post-it, trying to get his brain to calm down enough to read the words. Exactly how creative, spontaneous and alive was he ever allowed to be?

  One recent time, last Friday to be precise, immediately refilled his imagination. With Krista. In the darkness of the cabin. He had felt alive then in a way that still managed to startle him awake at night, hard as iron.

  Coming back to…this—he closed the file, glanced with disgust around the dark cherrywood old-boy office—had been agony. Like returning to an iron lung when you’d been given time to get out and breathe on your effortless own.

  But Krista couldn’t happen again. How many times could he be a faceless stranger in the dark? Only once. And if Krista found out he was Aimee’s stepbrother, what they had would come crashing down from the weightless freedom of anonymity into the high-gravity prison of a relationship.

  Or assault and battery.

  That kind of perfection shouldn’t be repeated—couldn’t be repeated. No point in giving it another thought. Never mind that way too many of his waking minutes were spent hungry for her again.

  A knock at his door. He glanced at his watch. Nearly seven. He needed to get something to eat. “Come in.”

  “Hello, there.” Mary. Wearing a Santa hat she managed to make look sexy, a short-skirted suit that showed off her long legs and a plunging blouse displaying more cleavage than daytime required. Not that he was complaining.

  “All work and no play, Seth. I was passing by your building on my way home, hoped to entice you into having something to eat.” She sat on the edge of his desk and laid a neatly wrapped package in front of him. “Merry Christmas.”