Kill the Competition

by Stephanie Bond

  “Was Atlanta your plan B, Belinda?” Carole asked.

  She pursed her mouth. “Yes, I suppose it was.”

  “What was he like? Your husband, I mean.”

  Husband. It was one of those words that if you said over and over, it sounded nonsensical. “He was…” She conjured up Vince’s pleasant face—mild blue eyes, fresh-scrubbed skin, nondescript hair, average build. “Vince was…” Her tongue faltered as mixed emotions flooded her. What was Vince like? What about him had convinced her that he was the man she’d wanted to spend the rest of her life with? Proximity? Timing? Expectations? Maybe the answers lay in the unopened envelope sitting on her kitchen table at home. Or maybe the answers lay in the fact that she hadn’t yet opened the envelope.

  “Belinda?”

  She pushed aside the jumble of thoughts. “Ask me another day, okay, Carole?”

  Carole nodded. “Guess you don’t want to think about him now that you’ve met someone new.”

  Belinda’s defenses reared. “Julian isn’t ‘someone new.’ He’s just someone…”

  “To sleep with?”

  She squirmed. “I didn’t say that.”

  “It’s really no big deal,” Libby said. “Sometimes a torrid affair is exactly what a woman needs to get her bearings after a divorce.”

  Except Belinda wasn’t divorced. In hindsight, maybe official papers would have given her breakup with Vince a sense of closure, instead of leaving their relationship hanging out there in limbo with a big question mark behind it. WHY?

  “In fact,” Libby said, “maybe I’ll add that one to the book, too. ‘DO engage in retaliatory sex.’ ”

  “Don’t.” In the backseat, Rosemary shook her head. “Women who buy into equal opportunity affairs only wind up hurting themselves.”

  Libby scoffed. “You and your rules, Rosemary.”

  “Rules make your life less complicated,” she replied.

  “You mean less interesting,” Carole said with a laugh.

  Rosemary dismissed them with a wave, shaking her head.

  They all had a point, Belinda conceded. Up until now, her life had been fairly uncomplicated, but fairly uninteresting. She sank into her own thoughts as the girls debated the wisdom and sacrifices of obeying written and unwritten rules. She chewed on her ragged thumbnail. For the first time in her life she’d begun to take chances, and as a result, her life was definitely moving and shaking.

  But was this all-over, quaky, nail-biting consciousness a sustainable condition? Would she acclimate to the keen awareness of a daredevil or eventually implode?

  Implode, Belinda decided as she nervously made her way toward the sauna. She tried to tell herself she was overreacting, that Julian probably wanted a jogging partner, or something equally innocuous. Determined to look breezy, she’d worn basic pull-on navy shorts and a faded white Adidas T-shirt. Her hair, she’d skimmed back into a ponytail. Her pulse kicked even higher when she didn’t see Julian near the sauna door that was located along a hallway, between the men’s and women’s locker rooms.

  Maybe he’d gotten held up at work, she thought, nodding to someone passing by. Maybe he’d forgotten about meeting her. Or maybe he’d simply changed his mind. She noted the Out of Order sign on the sauna door, then turned her back to wait with her face fixed in as offhand an expression as she could manage.

  Maybe this was her chance to bail, she thought, her thumbnail between her teeth. Julian had made no secret of the fact that he desired her, but was she ready to enter into a physical relationship so soon after Vince had trampled on her heart and her femininity? He’d left her within twenty-four hours of leaving her bed—he couldn’t have expressed the fact that she hadn’t satisfied him any larger if he’d rented a billboard.

  A touch to the back of her arm stole her thoughts and her breath. She whirled around to see Julian standing in the open door of the sauna, his mouth curved in a mischievous smile, his finger beckoning. Realization dawned with a thrill, and her feet moved forward. He clasped her hand and pulled her into the twelve-feet-square wood-lined room. A slatted bench ran along three walls. Small puck lights in each corner, combined with the light coming in the small window in the door, cast a warm glow over his smiling face. Lean, long arms and legs extended from pale running shorts and sleeveless tee, and a white towel was draped around his neck. Crisp heat enveloped her, a few degrees shy of uncomfortable. Obviously the sauna was in good working order.

  She angled her head up at him, breathless at his proximity in the semidarkness. “Did you put that sign on the door?”

  “Guilty,” he said, then lifted a towel over her head and settled it around her shoulders. “I thought a private sauna would be fun.”

  Despite the languid pull of her body, her brain was firing off warning signals. SLOW! PROCEED WITH CAUTION. “What if someone comes in?”

  “We’ll throw them out,” he said, nuzzling her ear. “You smell amazing.”

  His voice was guttural, sending barbs of need to long-neglected parts of her body. She reasoned that proximity to the hallway would keep things from getting out of control.

  “I looked up your number and called you last night, but no one answered.”

  She gave him a sheepish smile. “I went a little overboard on the Thai food yesterday. I’m afraid my mouth was out of commission all evening.”

  He made a sorrowful noise in his throat and lowered his mouth to within a whisper of hers. “How is it today?”

  Somehow the darkness made everything…easier. She moved her lips, and for the first time in over two years, Belinda kissed a man other than Vince Whittaker.

  Her senses were jarred by the unfamiliarity of the way Julian tasted, the way he slid his lips and tongue against hers, but she acclimated quickly to his gentle coaxing. She closed her eyes and lifted her hands to his shoulders. His skin was warm and firm beneath her trembling fingers—new textures, new contours. The veteran good girl in her kept thinking the door would burst open any minute and someone would walk in on them. But the newer, younger bad girl in her conceded the thrill of the clandestine kiss a few feet away from where people were walking and talking.

  He moaned into her mouth, then broke the kiss. “Let’s relax.”

  She followed him to the bench and sat next to him, her heart pumping double time. He bent over to remove his shoes and socks, and she did the same, self-consciously. Revealing one’s feet struck her as an intimate act. Thank goodness her do-it-yourself pink pedicure was up to snuff. When he removed his T-shirt, her bare toes curled under on the wood plank floor. Nice.

  Lean shoulders, smooth chest, flat stomach, all covered with a sheen of perspiration. To her disappointment, he put the towel around his shoulders again and leaned against the wall of the sauna, his long legs stretched out in front of him. He shot her a sideways smile, then closed his eyes. “I won’t peek if you want to do the same.”

  Belinda blinked. Remove her shirt? A naughty jolt passed over her at the possibility. She shot a glance toward the door. Occasionally, glimpses of passersby appeared in the small window, but the hum of the dry heater overrode any outside noise. They were wrapped in their own warm little cocoon. If someone stumbled in, she’d be covered with a towel.

  Moving on impulse, she set aside the towel and pulled the hem of her T-shirt over her head. The gods had smiled on her in the bust department, although she had to rely on industrial bras to keep everything in place. After a quick look to make sure his eyes were still closed, she draped the towel over her shoulders and reached around to un-hook her bra. As soon as the air hit her bare breasts, they peaked against the coarse fabric of the towel. She set aside her clothing and leaned back carefully, feeling very liberated and yes, pretty darn sexy.

  “Can I look now?” he asked.

  “I suppose,” she said, holding on to the ends of the towel.

  He surveyed the expanse of skin between the towel, from collarbone to navel, then closed his eyes tight again with a groan. “Quick, let’s talk.” />
  She laughed, feeling a rush of feminine satisfaction. “Okay. You sounded chipper on the radio this morning.”

  “It’s Friday, traffic was light, and no one was killed on my watch. That’s a good day. Plus I was looking forward to seeing you again.”

  In the dark vacuum, she could fully absorb the resonance of his voice. “I’ll bet you’ve seen a lot of things from your helicopter.”

  “Yeah. I love flying, but sometimes it’s depressing, seeing the masses of cars and houses. It can make a person feel…small.”

  Her skin was inundated with the vibration of his voice and the therapeutic heat rolling over the room. She turned her head and studied his striking profile in the low lighting. “But you connect with those masses of people every day.” She wet her lips. “Yours was the first voice I heard when I drove into Atlanta on I-75 two months ago.”

  He opened his eyes and turned his head. “Really?”

  She nodded. “I arrived on a Wednesday afternoon, smack in the middle of rush hour, and I thought, ‘What have I gotten myself into?’ I was flipping through the radio channels and heard your voice. You put me at ease, made me feel not so alone.” She bit into her lip, then smiled. “I’ve had a crush on your voice ever since.”

  His white teeth flashed. “How about the rest of me?”

  She caught his light, playful mood. “I like what I’ve seen so far.”

  In an instant the atmosphere went from hot to sizzling. He leaned toward her and she met him for a slow, exploratory kiss that quickly surged in intensity. Together they shifted to a reclining position, with his body angled above hers. Her towel fell away, baring her breasts to his hooded gaze.

  “Magnificent,” he murmured, thumbing a peak.

  Once again she was assailed by a split second of wrongness in his unfamiliarity. But his fingers were persistent and deft, and soon longing pooled between her thighs.

  “Do you like this?” he whispered.

  “Mm-hm.”

  “How about this?” He lowered his head and took one of the nipples in his teeth, flicking his tongue against it.

  Belinda’s head moved side to side. “Mm-hm.”

  He alternately treated both peaks to tiny bites, bringing her alive with pleasure-pain. She held his head against her breasts, aware of his erection searing into her thigh through their clothes. His body slid against hers, both of them slick with perspiration. He shifted until he was on his side, shielding her body from any would-be intruders. He slid his right hand down her rib cage, over the indention of her navel, and slowly, slowly, into the waistband of her shorts. She inhaled sharply and covered his hand with hers. Maybe this was too much, too soon…too risky.

  “You’re on fire, I can feel it through your clothes,” he said near her ear. “I want to touch you, to make you feel good.”

  Belinda swallowed, willing her pulse to slow and her erogenous zones to decelerate, but her body refused to cooperate with her brain. Frankly, what he was doing felt very, very good, and it was nice to be appreciated by an attractive man. So she removed her hand and found another place to put it that made his breath rush out.

  His fingers dove into her slippery curls, and her hips undulated against his hand. A groan escaped her throat, but he covered her mouth with a deep kiss. He strummed her like an instrument until she felt an orgasm surfacing. Her breathing became more shallow, and she buried her head in his shoulder as she came against his fingers. Her climax was too powerful for longevity, she reasoned when she descended more quickly than she expected.

  And it wasn’t as if they had all day.

  All the while she had been stroking his arousal through his thin shorts. With a ragged breath, Julian pushed down his waistband and freed it into her hands. Long and lean, like his nose—hm—and slick with need. He dipped his head to her ear again.

  “I want to make love to your breasts.”

  His request came with a tweak and a thrill—Vince hadn’t been the adventurous type and had never known quite what to do with her breasts. “Yes,” she murmured, and trusted that this man knew what he was doing. He leveraged himself up and rubbed his lubrication over her cleavage. Moving on instinct, she squeezed her breasts together around his erection and was rewarded with an appreciative groan.

  He pumped his hips fast and furious for a couple of long minutes. She tried to relax and enjoy the new sensation, really she did, but she was distracted by the thought of the silhouette that someone would see if the door opened.

  At last his body jerked, and his fluid spilled over her chest and neck. Warm and sticky, like everything else in the room. He pushed himself up, still breathing hard, and used his towel to gently wipe up the mess.

  “Wow,” he said, smiling down at her.

  “Yes, wow,” she murmured, still a little dazed by what she’d done. Julian, on the other hand, seemed less affected.

  “Listen, I know this is short notice, but I’m flying to Raleigh in the morning for a promo gig, coming back Sunday evening.” He reached out with a finger and caressed her cheek. “I’d love some company.”

  Flying away for the weekend with a hot, sexy man—she’d had worse offers. But she’d already promised the girls she’d spend tomorrow afternoon with them at a spa to take advantage of free-service coupons that Carole had won on a radio call-in contest. And she didn’t want to be the kind of woman who dumped her friends when a new man appeared on the scene. Besides, she was looking forward to a girls’ afternoon in the…suburbs. “Thank you, Julian, but I’ve already made plans for tomorrow.”

  He made a rueful noise. “Guess I’ll have to ask you sooner next time.”

  At least he planned to see her again. And she wanted to see him again, too.

  Didn’t she?

  Belinda reached for her bra, leaned forward to put it on, and was surprised when he moved behind her to fasten it. He took his time, then gave her spine a quick pressure massage with his thumbs and dropped a kiss on the back of her neck. His laugh rumbled in her ear. “I don’t believe I have enough energy left to work out.”

  She rolled her shoulders and murmured agreement.

  “Let’s take a quick nap,” he said, stretching out on the bench. He placed one hand beneath his head and extended his other hand to touch her waist. His eyes fluttered shut, and his breathing immediately settled into a deep rhythm.

  She might have dozed earlier, but now she was wide awake, waiting for remorse to hit her. When it didn’t, she was left feeling even more confused. She found her T-shirt and pulled it over her head, then gathered her socks and shoes and managed to slip out the door without making any noise. In the empty hallway she released a pent-up breath and padded toward the women’s locker room. If remorse was going to hit her in the next few minutes, she might as well be standing under a showerhead getting clean.

  Footsteps sounded behind her—tiny footsteps.

  “Is that you, Belinda?”

  Margo. Belinda closed her eyes briefly, then turned and manufactured a smile for her boss, whose microscopic white leotard was sweat-drenched. “Hi, Margo.”

  “I didn’t see you in the gym.” Her gaze dropped to Belinda’s bare feet. “Taking a sauna?”

  “Well—”

  “Isn’t it out of order?” Margo indicated the sign on the door.

  To her abject horror, the sauna door opened, and a shirtless Julian, looking like he’d been ridden hard and put up wet, stuck out his handsome head. “You forgot something.” He held up a white sock.

  Mortification bled over her. Belinda stepped forward to block Margo’s view, retrieved the sock from his hand, and tucked it into her shoe with as much dignity as she could muster. “Thanks.”

  “I didn’t run you off, did I?” he murmured, an irresistible twinkle in his eye.

  “Er, no. I need to get back to work.”

  “Okay. Be listening for me on the radio.”

  She nodded, thinking perhaps she could pass him off as a mere acquaintance, someone who had happened to be in th
e sauna. Or at least pretend as if nothing of naughty consequence had occurred.

  Then he leaned out farther and waved. “Hey, Margo.”

  Margo lifted her hand. “Hey, Julian.”

  He disappeared into the sauna, and Belinda’s mind raced at the implication of Margo and Julian knowing each other. Despite a nauseous stomach, Belinda conjured up what she hoped was a casual expression for her boss. “You know Julian?”

  “Well, not in the Biblical sense,” Margo said with a dry smile. “How was it?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The sauna—how was it?”

  Remembering the advice of her wedding director, Belinda bent her knees slightly to avoid fainting. “Um, fine. Hot.” She waved her hand over her neck. “Actually, that’s probably why the sign is on the door—the sauna is over-heating. I think.”

  Margo nodded. “And that would explain why your shirt is inside out.”

  Belinda looked down. Sure enough, her T-shirt read “sabibA,” the serged seams exposed, and the fabric content tag in plain view.

  “It’s okay,” Margo said with a shrug. “There was a time when I wouldn’t have minded hooking up with Julian myself, but I guess he prefers redheads.” She angled her head. “Come to think of it, he had a thing for Jeanie Lawford, and she was a freckly little thing.”

  The mounting similarities between herself and Jeanie Lawford were too numerous for easy digestion. She managed a small laugh. “It’s a little unsettling to be compared to a dead woman.”

  “You’re much too smart to wind up like Jeanie.”

  At the odd timbre in Margo’s voice, Belinda’s throat constricted. “What do you mean, ‘wind up like Jeanie’?”

  Margo gave her a rueful smile. “I mean you watch your step.”

  Innocent (if tactless) remark, or veiled warning? Belinda stood, knees bent, holding her socks and shoes, and watched her boss disappear into the locker room.

  Chapter 11

  By the time Belinda got back to her desk, she was a nervous wreck. Fooling around in the workplace—what was she thinking? Here lies Belinda Hennessey. She was indiscreet. The enormity of her lapse was outweighed only by her relief at not having been caught in the act, although it was clear that Margo had a good idea of what had transpired.