by Poppy Dunne
Goodbye razor, you callous son of a bitch. Dahlia traces her fingers along my chest, my stomach, going straight for my…
Then she tugs me forward and we both go falling into the pool. The world is suddenly cold, and wet, and it goes straight up my goddamn nose. I push to the surface, wiping my hair out of my eyes as Dahlia cackles nearby, splashing and swimming away from me. That woman is dangerous. A menace to society.
Clearly, it’s my job to take her down.
“As Dolph Lundgren said to Sylvester Stallone in that one Rocky movie, now I must break you.” I push off and grab her, holding her against me while she thrashes and laughs. Breathless, she floats in my arms.
“Which movie was that? The first one?” she asks.
I tsk. “A woman with limited Stallone knowledge? Finally, I discover a flaw.”
“Is it really that much of a flaw?” She brushes up against me, her every naked attribute making me very, very excited to be a part of this.
“No. It doesn’t matter all that much.” I kiss her lips, tasting the sweetness of summer on her.
Then I dunk her for good measure, because fair’s fair. Besides, I know she’s going to get her own back.
It’s one of the things I like about her.
10
Dahlia
Maybe plans are overrated. After all, I’ve had plans my entire life, and they always revolved around finding acceptable partners and picking the right house and managing a diverse stock portfolio that’s just conservative enough while also taking a few select risks. But life doesn’t make plans. Life sometimes throws someone gorgeous and mindblowingly good at sex at you, then takes you on a romantic escape to an upstate French fairy tale house. Life doesn’t care about your rules.
Life is a beautiful bastard like that.
I’m sitting on a terrace, looking out over the eastern garden with all those little topiary creatures you might have seen in The Shining. Honestly, I would’ve bought this house just for the topiary creatures.
Probably shouldn’t tell Jack that. He’d think I’m a terrible Stephen King fangirl.
Anyway, I’m sitting on a terrace in a cotton bathrobe that is perhaps made of good dreams and angel farts—that is how soft it is. I’m scrolling through the emails on my phone, still drying off from the pool and waiting for Jack to get out of the shower so we can go raid the kitchen together. Much as the aquatic jaunt made me horny as hell, what with the beautiful man chest on display and all, my hunger for good eats at the moment rivals my hunger for…well, another kind of good eats.
I’m mature.
And hey now, what’s this? An email from Amy Jacobs, with SO EXCITED!!!! in the subject line. Grinning, I read over it.
Hi Dahlia,
I almost never use excessive punctuation, but in this instance I feel like I can’t help myself. Here it goes:
DAN AND I HAD SEX!!!!!
Oh dear. Oh no. I frown, calculating the date number. This was only date one. My rules explicitly state that you shouldn’t even think about the Event Horizon (get it? Because you’re horizontal and it’s a big event? Ha ha?) before date number three. Even then, it’s better to make him wait until date five, but not too much beyond that, because otherwise he’ll get antsy and frustrated. Science, folks. This is all science.
Dan’s going to think she was too fast. He’s going to think he was wrong about her as the future mother of his children. Man, I know you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover (librarian joke, it’s hilarious) but I didn’t think Amy would let herself get swept away like this.
Then I keep reading, and blink to make sure I didn’t hallucinate. She says:
I was thinking about your rules, and how I shouldn’t do it, but I couldn’t help myself. I invited him up for some organic cocktails, and he was so impressed by my first edition of Tennessee Williams and my Avengers cocktail shaker. He said he loved women who were nerdy yet tastefully serious. It made me swoon! Then we started making out, and I was the one who wanted to take it further. He said he didn’t want to make me uncomfortable, but I wanted it! Not to be uncomfortable, of course, but to have sex.
Which we did! Twice!!
This morning, he made me breakfast and told me how much he’d liked me but had been so afraid that I didn’t like him back. He said that he almost didn’t want to have a second date, since I’d been so coy that evening and he couldn’t read me. But I decided to go all in, and now he says he wants to see me again every night!
Can you imagine!!
Another double exclamation mark! Just for you!
The words that are burning holes in my eyes are ‘I’d been so coy that evening and he couldn’t read me.’ Dan almost cancelled a date and broke Amy’s heart because he couldn’t read her signals? The signals I’d coached her on?
The rest of the email is Amy thanking me again and again, even more eloquently with each new paragraph. She certainly does write a lot, but again, she works in a library. And it warms my heart, melts it, even, to see how deliriously happy she is in the email. Amy Jacobs is likely on her way to a happy ever after.
A happy ever after that my advice might have prevented.
I’m trying not to have an existential crisis on a terrace overlooking a charming topiary maze, but I’m not having the greatest success. Biting my thumbnail, I think. If Amy and Dan work out in spite of my advice, not because of it, that means my advice is not one size fits all. Which means that I might be hurting people in addition to helping them.
Which also means that perhaps you can have lasting and truly romantic feelings for a person you simply fall into bed with after a quick date.
Something alarming is building in the back of my mind—
“Dahlia. Ready for dinner?” Jack stands in front of me, wearing jeans but no shirt and toweling off his hair. He smells like sexual thoughts and aftershave. God, he’s so beautiful…
Oh my God. What is happening to me?
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but you really can open your mouth to an impressively wide degree,” he says, reaching out and snapping closed my unhinged jaw. Apparently I’m gaping at him too much for comfort. Can’t blame him there.
“Hope you like fettuccine,” I say, standing up and tugging my robe closed at the throat. Suddenly, I feel very exposed around him.
“Anything Italian tastes good to me.” He winks, and my cheeks flame. He just meant that in a sexy way, not a serious way. A wonderfully sexy way.
God, why did Amy have to send that email? What is wrong with me?
We return to the kitchen, the place where all my daily cares and calorie plans go straight out the window where they belong. As I start boiling the water, chopping vegetables, and preparing some spectacular looking sausages (whoever shops for this man deserves a gold star) I let my mind wander. It’s only me and the food, and the billionaire. No no, me and the food. That’s the way to keep it. Me and the food, the fettuccine and the garlic and the long, throbbing, rigid sausages holy shit sausages were a bad call but I can’t take it back now.
“You look a little tense.” Jack’s leaning against the granite-topped island in the center of the kitchen. His brows knit in concern. “Is something wrong?”
“Nothing. Well.” With the vegetables chopped and the water not pasta ready, there’s nothing else to do but talk. Sliding my hair out of my face, I sigh. “I got an email from a client.”
“Is she okay?”
“Very. That’s the problem.” His look of slight bewilderment demands an elaboration. “She did well on her date because she didn’t follow my advice.”
He thinks about it a minute. “Not to seem all charmingly devil may care here, but is that a bad thing? Not everything works all the time for everybody. Or something like that. I don’t know; I deal in robots. Much easier to force them to have sex with each other, though for sanity’s sake I urge avoiding that.”
I bite my cheek in order not to smile. “I’m worried that I’ve been giving everyone bad advice. I don’t know. I fe
el…unmoored.”
“Elegant word choice.” He shoves off from the counter, comes near, and takes my hand in his. His thumb runs delectable circles over my skin, making heat and electricity buzz through me. “Think of all the happy couples you’ve helped. So one person didn’t fit the mold. Did your advice help her go on the date in the first place?”
It did, actually. “Yes.”
“Then you gave her what she needed, and she took it from there. People aren’t dolls, you know. You can’t make them do what you want when you want.”
Hold on, Mr. Sex Billionaire. I pull my hand out of his. “I’m not forcing people to do things. I’m telling them what does and does not work on average.”
“And this time that piece of advice didn’t work. So?” He runs a hand through his still-tousled, shower-glorious hair. “Why does this bother you so much?”
“It’s. Not. Bothering me.” I kind of sputter those words, because my mind’s working overtime. Is Jack right? Does Amy having sex on the first date and finding what feels like a great connection bother me personally? Because why should it? If she’s happy, she’s happy, and I should be happy for her. But it’s hard to get my mind around the idea that Amy Jacobs, who seems like the most rule-following of all rule-followers, broke one of the sacred commandments of dating and made it work.
Have I missed several connections in my own life because of my rules? Is that why I’m still bouncing around single at thirty-two, while scores of the people I mentor go on to get married?
“Maybe…maybe it bothers me a little,” I admit quietly. Jack says nothing; there’s only the sizzle of the sausage now. I think he’s waiting for me to continue. Closing my eyes, I do. “When I was a kid, I couldn’t organize my thoughts. I couldn’t sit still, I couldn’t focus, I couldn’t remember anything. I wanted to do five things at once, and I was hard to deal with at school.”
“Sounds like ADHD,” he says without a beat. I nod.
“Bingo. Nowadays, it would’ve been fine. But at the time, people were still learning about it. They thought I was lazy, then sick, then they thought I might have a serious mental disorder. I got put on a lot of crazy pills that made me dizzy, and Mom and Dad were upset all the time.” I am not going to cry, dammit. I take a deep breath. “I decided I had to stop it myself; so I got in the habit of organizing everything, down to the minute. When I woke up, what outfit I’d put on, when to do homework, when to eat lunch. It was tough, but I forced myself to do it. Things got better. Then, to top it all off, they figured out what my problem was and got me on the right medication.” Wrapping my arms around myself, I sigh. “My rules made me feel like I wasn’t crazy. So that’s why I hate it when they don’t work.”
Man, that got dramatic and fast. Jack comes up behind me, places his arms around my waist. He holds me against him, rocks me gently back and forth while placing a light kiss on my temple.
“I thought you were an incredible woman the moment I met you. I had no idea how incredible,” he murmurs. Damn, my eyes fill with tears, and I have to blink to get rid of them. He kisses my cheek, all tenderness, and I feel myself relax in his embrace.
I can’t help thinking that if Amy proves my rules could all be wrong…maybe what’s happening with Jack is right? Not only in the sexy billionaire having sexy sex way. In the ‘I love the way he laughs, I love how much fun we have teasing each other’ way.
“Jack.” I bite my lip, trying to figure out what I’m feeling, if anything, and how to talk about it. “I…”
“…am about to burn the sausages? Yes.” He releases me and pokes at the now definitely crisping sausages in the pan. The sizzle, the flare up of the cooking flame, it takes my mind off of whatever it was on two seconds ago. I take over for Jack, grateful to have something to do with my hands. Honestly, I probably was just driving myself crazy over nothing. My feelings are all tied up in how good my business model is; that’s all. I’ve still got a handle on the situation. I’m still in control. That’s the place I like to be.
Or so I thought.
Jack’s phone buzzes on the kitchen counter. He picks it up while I add pasta to the water. “Hey, dude. Mind if I call you back? I’ve got—” He stops dead, listening intently to whoever’s on the other line. Slowly, the smile slides off his face, and his eyes go cold. With the ice blue Daniel Craig eyes, that’s a frightening thing to see.
“Is everything okay?” I dust grains of salt from my fingers, and Jack snaps back to reality.
“It’s fine. I need to take this. Give me five minutes.” He pads out of the kitchen, speaking now in a low, slightly dangerous voice. What happened? A hostile takeover by the competition of one of his companies? Espionage? Sex scandal?
I’m rooting for corporate espionage over the sex scandal. Why? Because I’m a mixed up ball of feelings, that’s why. I stir the sauce while trying to listen in on the conversation. Was it a woman on the other end of that call?
Then I mentally stamp on my imaginary foot in phantom stilettos, which is a weird image. Get over yourself, Dahlia. So what if he was another woman on the side? You’re not official, at all. And it’s all right for him to date around. Come on, you don’t want to get serious about this, do you?
Well. Do you?
My own lack of mental answer alarms me.
11
Jack
When I got the call from my brother, I assumed it was going to be him wanting to shoot the shit for a while. And when cooking half-naked with a beautiful woman, I’m not in the mood for family time.
That was until I heard his voice.
“Jack. Hey.”
Pete’s got this quality to his voice where the more depressed and horrified he is, the quieter and more somber he sounds. He has on his Abraham Lincoln voice, as I like to call it. It sounds like he’s about to give you an address on impoverished masses and what you personally can do to help them.
The more presidential, the more agony he’s in.
“It’s fine. I need to take this,” I tell Dahlia, and get out of the kitchen. Much as I like her—and my God, I do—I don’t think we’re at the level yet where she can hear my baby brother lose his mind over the phone. I hurry into the den, closing the door behind me. The sun’s setting as I look out over the garden, squares of fading sunlight stretched over the carpeted floor. “Dude. What’s wrong?”
“Evelyn took the kids,” Pete says, now so presidential he could be elected in goddamn November. Only a deep, shaking breath betrays his cool. “I know she took them to her mother’s, but…”
This may not seem right, since I give off that shit-eating-grin, devil-may-care billionaire attitude, but growing up Pete was the charming, affable, easygoing one. I learned to cultivate that image through years of hard work, starting after I made my first million. As kids, I was the one stuck out in the garage working on some new, geeky project and cursing out all the assholes at school who made fun of me. A nerd with a fiery temper was I. Pete was the golden boy, the homecoming king, the one with the smooth line for the ladies. Even though he was my younger brother, he taught me how to say all the right things, how to pay attention to a woman’s signals. Granted, he was never the man-whore that I became. Once he met Evelyn in college, that was it.
My brother’s a good man. Sensitive. Intelligent. All he ever wanted was to be a high school English teacher, and that’s just what he became. Evelyn seemed fine with that life…until I went from ‘successful entrepreneur’ to ‘one of the richest under 40s on the planet.’ Until she saw how much better Pete and she and the kids could be living if he joined my company, even though that’s not what he wanted. Until she started ‘hobnobbing’ around in my social set and started an affair with a rich asshole.
I’m not Evelyn’s biggest fan, in case you’re not picking up on that.
Here’s the point: while the divorce is being carried out, Pete’s supposed to have solid visitation rights to those kids. Rights which Evelyn seems happy to piss on and walk all over in her Jimmy Choos.
“Did you call the lawyer? What did he say?” I sit on the arm of the sofa and try not to kick anything.
“They’re still in the state of California. It’s not legally binding yet. The courts are more sympathetic to mothers. The usual.” Pete gives out another shaky breath. “Jack. I hate doing this, but…school’s out for the summer. I have nothing to do. I can’t sit here alone.”
No. He can’t. That’s a one-way ticket to the kind of thoughts you don’t come back from.
“Stay there. Liv will have a car to you in twenty minutes. You’re coming east for a few days, all right? While we sort this out.”
“I’m sorry.” Pete’s losing the cool façade now. “I hate being this weak.”
“You’re not weak, asshole. You’re strong, and you’ll get past this.” I say it affectionately. He was always ‘asshole,’ I was always ‘shithead.’ Brothers, man. No greater bond.
We hang up, and I hustle out of the room. It’ll take an hour for Pete to get to the airfield, another hour on my jet, then another hour to get up here. That means I need to check with the housekeeper on which rooms are fully made up, and…
Dahlia. Holy shit. In my familial zeal, I forgot about her. Christ, she’s probably not going to want to hang around with a massively depressed man for a couple of days. She came here for the sparkling, Prince Charming good time that all women want when they’re schtupping a billionaire. I’ll have to get transportation for her back to the city. Yachting down the river at night sounds halfway romantic and halfway ‘ideal setting for a horror movie to break out.’
She’s waiting when I get back, putting the finishing touches on dinner. My stomach ripples; fuck me, but that smells amazing. She chews her bottom lip.
