by J. Kenner
“Well, it’s not very imaginative, but how about dinner?”
“Oh.” She narrows her eyes as she looks at me. “You’re right. That’s not very imaginative.”
“I can’t reveal all my tricks. You have to say yes to see what’s in store.”
Her smile is like sunshine. “Well, I guess that’s fair. Yes.”
“How’s seven?”
“Tonight?” Her eyes are wide.
“You’re planning on not eating tonight?”
“No. I mean yes. Yes, I’m eating.” Her eyes crinkle in what looks like confusion, then her face clears. “Yes, I’m eating. And you know what? Why not? Seven it is. Where should we meet?”
“Are you still at The Driskill? I can come by and pick you up.”
“Door to door service? Fancy.”
We smile at each other like idiots, and it actually feels nice.
“Yo! Gracie! You’re up.”
“Oh!” She jumps, then shoots me an apologetic grimace. “Tonight,” she says, then sprints across the room.
I watch her go, paying particular attention when she takes off the robe and tosses it over a director’s chair, leaving her standing there, curvaceous and lovely, in a red corset, a matching garter belt, and sheer black stockings.
She looks good enough to eat.
And what do you know? I’m the guy who’s taking her to dinner.
Chapter Seven
The evening is going well. Magically, even. If it weren’t for the lies and deception floating like sewage under our feet, I’d even go out on a limb and say that it’s one of the best nights of my life with the sexiest, funniest, most charming woman to ever sneak her way into my world.
Because that’s what she’s done.
Even though I know that she’s some other man’s girl—even though I know that she’s a Vivien and not a Mona—every second with Gracie is like a bite from a warm cookie. Sweet and delicious and just a little bit bad for me.
And you know what? At this point, I don’t even care.
Tonight, I’m going the method acting route. I barely know her. She barely knows me. She’s Gracie. I’m Cayden. And the two of us are out on the town, a first date with the snap, crackle, and pop of possibility looming there in front of us.
I can hate my job tomorrow. Tonight, I just want to savor my time with this woman.
A woman who, at this particular moment, is looking at me with a wry grin that brings out the very kissable dimple in her cheek. “You’re far, far away,” she says. “Want to take me along with you?”
“You already are,” I assure her, taking her hand. “I was just ruminating over the metaphysical implications of Esther’s Follies.” We’ve just come from the eight o’clock show, where we’d roared with laughter along with the rest of the crowd at the always-sold-out Austin revue that’s like the lovechild of vaudeville and Saturday Night Live.
“Wow,” she says. “You’re way more in touch with the universe than I am. I was just contemplating that dinner you promised me.”
“I did, didn’t I?”
“Mmm,” she says. “You don’t think I agreed to this date for the witty banter, excellent entertainment, and exceptional company did you? I mean, a girl’s got to eat.”
“The lady makes a good point,” I say, offering her my arm. “I assure you, chivalry is not dead, and dinner is just around the corner. Literally.”
We’d veered onto a side street in order to avoid some of the insanity that is Sixth Street on a Friday night. Now, though, I steer her back onto the popular street, which is blocked off for pedestrians only at this time of night. Even so, the crowd is thick with tourists, locals, and boatloads of university students. We meander through the crowd, finally stopping at a pizza place that sells slices to passers by from a case that opens onto the sidewalk.
“Pepperoni work for you?” I ask.
“Always,” she says, and I indicate that we want two slices to go to the girl behind the counter—who, with her partially shaved head, facial tattoos, and multiple piercings, fits right into the downtown milieu.
Moments later we’ve rounded a corner and are perched on a metal step that was probably once part of a fire escape but now just seems like an architectural oddity.
“Good, right?” I say, regretting taking such a big bite, as the cheese is burning my tongue. “I walk down here for lunch some days.”
“It’s amazing. And without the benefit of that pesky china and those cloth napkins I was expecting to go with dinner.”
I wince. “Bad choice on the pizza?”
She takes a bite, and a long string of cheese extends from her lips all the way to the triangle of pizza. She laughs, trying to reel it in, finally twisting the cheese around her finger. “No,” she says, with such a bright smile and laughter in her voice that I don’t doubt her at all. “This is perfect. Absolutely perfect.”
Relief washes over me. “You said to use my imagination. This is how I imagined you.”
“Wrangling cheese? Plucking pepperonis?”
I shake my head as she pops a pepperoni into her mouth. “In the moonlight,” I say, looking up at the huge full moon that hangs heavy in the sky, its light too much of a match even for the bright downtown glare. “Of course, I also imagined you walking along the river, but now I’m thinking that six blocks is too far to go just so we can stroll hand-in-hand on crushed granite.”
“Probably,” she says. “How do you feel about three or four blocks—I have no idea where we are—down a crowded sidewalk back to my hotel? And,” she adds in a softer voice, “you can still hold my hand.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I think I’d like that.” I take her pizza, guide it to my mouth, and take a bite.
“Oh, now you’re in trouble.” She laughs, then shoulder bumps me before taking another bite herself, then offering me the last of her slice.
I take it, finish it, then stand. “Shall I see you to your door, m’lady?” I ask, offering her my hand.
She takes it, and as she twines her fingers with mine I have the oddest sense of a fragile permanency. Like the completion of a jigsaw puzzle that’s been on a coffee table for years, just waiting for that final piece. But it’s never varnished, and if the table’s knocked over, the picture it makes will completely disappear again.
“You okay?”
“What? Oh, yeah. Sorry. Just getting my bearings.” I look up and down the street as if I’ve gotten turned around. Then point west, toward Congress Avenue and my office and The Driskill, as if I’ve only just figured out where I am in this town I grew up in and on this street where I work. “That way,” I say. “Shall we?”
She squeezes my hand. “We shall.”
We walk in silence for a while, my mind whirring. I have the almost uncontrollable urge to pull her into the shadows and kiss her, but I’m as terrified that she would push me away as I am that she would kiss me back with abandon—and absolutely no thought for the man she’s going to marry. I’ve never experienced such warring thoughts with any woman I’ve gone out with, and the experience has completely disarmed me. Is she a serial cheater? Is she unhappy with the man she supposedly loves? Could she be happy with me?
If this were a date, I might gather the courage and ask her. Like Kerrie said, I fought in the Middle East and survived. How much more harrowing could that conversation be?
But this isn’t a date, it’s a job. And the fact that I keep forgetting this is also messing with my head.
All of which means that I’m a flustered wreck, all the more so since that isn’t my usual state.
“You haven’t told me what you do,” she says, and it’s such a dangerous comment it yanks me out of my sappy, befuddled state and straight back into work mode. “Other than escort your niece to photo shoots in the middle of the day, I mean.”
“I work in security,” I tell her, happy for this tiny sliver of honesty between us. “Installing systems, some protection details, stuff like that.”
“Really?” The s
park of interest in her eye doesn’t surprise me. Most people find the job more glamorous than it is. I mean, it has its moments, but I’m hardly living an action flick. “That’s so weird. I just—”
“What?”
She coughs. “Sorry. Dust. Um, I just think that’s a really cool job.”
It’s so obviously not what she was going to say that I don’t press her. How can I fault her for being evasive when I’m keeping secrets, too? Instead, I change the subject to one I hope is safer. “How about you? How’d you get into modeling?”
“Fell into it, actually. Almost literally.” She laughs at my incredulous expression. “No, really. In fourth grade, I fell and banged up my knee walking home with my best friend. It hurt like hell to walk and my parents weren’t around—I was a latchkey kid. So my friend called her mom to come pick us up. Her mom was high up in an agency and I’d never actually met her before. But she saw me, then asked if I’d like to audition for an ad campaign.” She shrugs. “I got it.”
“And the rest is history.”
“If you’re talking literal history—as in complicated and bloody—then it absolutely was.”
“Not an easy ride? I’m guessing it’s pretty stressful.”
She lifts a shoulder. “I was skinny then. But when I hit my teens, the only way I could stay a size two—which is ridiculously tiny, but it's what they expect—was to live on next to no food and work out all the time. I was exhausted and my grades slipped and even though I actually loved the work, I was miserable.”
We’ve reached the intersection of Sixth and Brazos, right across from The Driskill. But I don’t lead her there yet. I want to hear what she has to say, and so I pause beside one of the trees that line the sidewalk, then lean against a stone barrier, my hand still tight in hers. “What did you do?”
“I quit my senior year, right when they told me I was on the verge of breaking out big. And then I started eating like a normal person. And biking near the beach—this was in Orange County, I grew up in Southern California—and working out at a gym with my friends. By the time I got to college I was in great shape and a size fourteen—that’s what I am now, by the way.”
“In that case, a fourteen is perfect, because you’re beautiful.” I can’t imagine her as a two. I don’t know shit about women’s sizing, but I can count. She must have looked like a skinny little kid, not a woman.
“Not in modeling, it’s not. Perfect, I mean. Which is ironic since it’s pretty average in the real world. Anyway, I’d walked away from modeling. But then I bumped into my friend’s mom again, and she was vile. Told me that I’d thrown away a career with both hands and that I didn’t understand how to sacrifice for beauty and that I was lazy and wasn’t willing to do the work and on and on and on.”
She grins, and it’s just a little wicked. “She lit a fire. Seriously, she made me so angry that I blew off my classes for a week—I was at UCLA by that time—and went to every modeling agency that would have me. Turns out that my national average size fourteen is plus size in the modeling world. Which is stupid, but at this point I don’t care. Because it got me back in.” She pauses, her brow furrowing.
“What?”
“Nothing. I just can’t believe I spewed all that out on you. I don’t usually do that. My standard answer is that I love my job and I’m honored that I’ve started making a name for myself.”
“Have you?”
She nods. “Yeah. I’ve got steady work, I’m the face—or body, I guess—of a swimwear line, and I have a fan base. Which is mostly good, but sometimes weird.”
“Weird?”
She shakes her head. “Just being on display. That’s the part of the job I don’t like.”
“I’m confused. Isn’t being a model all about being on display?”
“Sure. As the representative of something else. But nowadays everyone is on social media, and the line between the ads and my real life has blurred. That’s why I—you know what? Never mind. This conversation has gotten way too serious.”
I want to hear what she has to say, but I also don’t want to push her. “Fair enough.” I nod across the street toward her hotel. “Can I buy you a drink?”
She smiles, revealing those dimples. “That depends. Are you planning on getting me drunk and taking advantage of me?”
My mouth goes dry; the idea is far too appealing, and I force myself to remember my job. My mission. “What if I am? Would that be okay?”
She tilts her head, almost shyly, not meeting my eyes. The gesture is sweet. And I’m not sure if I’m charmed by it or infuriated. Since, after all, I know the truth.
Don’t I?
I’m no longer sure. Because everything I know about this woman contradicts everything I know. Everything I’ve seen and felt in my time with her.
Is Peterman wrong? Is she completely innocent?
Or is she a Vivien, weaving her spell and keeping her secrets? Showing one version of herself to me and keeping everything else locked secretly away?
I draw in a breath, thinking both about the woman in front of me and also about the job. “About that drink,” I say. “How do you feel about room service?”
She licks her lips, and all I want to do is lean in and kiss her. “I—well, I never really do that.”
“Drink?”
That earns a laugh. “Invite a man to my room.”
“Technically, you didn’t.”
“Good point.” She tugs me toward the crosswalk. “In that case, I guess it’s okay.”
“You’re sure?” I ask as we enter the hotel.
She leads me toward the elevator. And then, when the doors are closing and the elevator rising, she nods and says, “I’m sure.”
We don’t speak again until we’ve reached her room, and damned if I’m not as nervous as a teenager on his first date. I want her to push me away—to tell me she made a mistake.
And I want her to pull me close. To slide her hands around my neck so I feel the press of her breasts against my chest as I cup her ass and draw her tight against me. I want to lose myself in her, and I hate that I want what I can’t have.
And I hate even more that she can’t ever know why.
At her door, she flashes me a nervous smile. “This is me,” she says, moving aside the Do Not Disturb sign so that she can press the card key to the handle. I hear the lock click, and she pushes the door open. “Home sweet home. It’s kind of a mess.”
Books and magazines are strewn about, and I see both a nightgown tossed over the arm of a sofa and a bra dangling from the back of a chair.
It’s strangely enticing, and my body tightens as a wave of desire cuts through me—then tightens even more as she moves to my side, meets my eyes, and kisses me.
It’s soft and sweet, and she tastes of pizza and heaven, and this is so much better than my fantasy—and so much worse. Because it’s real and I want it—want her. But I can’t have her, not really, and yet I can’t push her away when all I want to do is pull her closer and never let go.
But then she draws back, gasping, her eyes wide, and reality slams back against me. “I’m sorry,” she says, her hand over her mouth. “I’m not usually that forward. I just—I just like you. You make me feel safe.”
The word hangs oddly in the air between us.
“So, should we order those drinks?” Her smile is both shy and full of possibility, and I can see exactly where this evening is going—along a path I crave and at the same time want to run from.
“Gracie—I’m sorry.”
She frowns, blushing a little. “Did I—?”
“No, no. It’s just—” Shit. “It’s just that I really like you, too. But I have to go.” Not because of the job—and not because she just came on to someone not her boyfriend, proving my case and all of Peterman’s fears—but because I can’t deceive Gracie like this. I can’t take this any further and not be the man she thinks I am.
“I don’t—”
“I know,” I say. “I’m sorry. I’m so, s
o sorry.”
And as I walk back out her door into the hallway of the beautiful, old hotel, my heart aches. Because I know that no matter how much I might crave this woman, I’m never going to see her again.
Chapter Eight
“At least the client will be happy,” Connor says, then makes a face as he considers his words. “Well, not so much happy as relieved to have the truth before he says his vows.”
I nod agreement, but I feel no satisfaction. There’s no question but that Gracie was willing to go as far as I wanted to take her, which means that she was diving into that forbidden pool that Peterman feared she was already swimming in.
Congrats to me for a job well done—except I don’t feel like celebrating at all. Instead I feel numb.
“I guess we sort of saw it coming,” Kerrie says, dipping her spoon into a plastic yogurt cup. “She was pretty flirty at the shoot.” I glance at her, frowning, but she just shrugs. “Well, she was. You were, too.”
Since she’s not wrong, I say nothing. From my side, of course, it was all about the job. And as for Gracie… honestly, I’m tired of even thinking about it. All it does is mess with my head.
We’re in the break room as I wait for Peterman to show up for his ten o’clock appointment. He’s fifteen minutes late, and I’m getting antsy. Mostly because I want to get this over with.
And so I sigh with relief when the intercom buzzes and Pierce—who agreed to watch the front desk so that Kerrie could grab a bite—says that I have a client in the reception area.
I hurry out the door, make an immediate left into the hall, walk the short distance to reception, and stop cold.
Because it’s not Thomas Peterman I see.
It’s Gracie.
“Gracie,” I say, then glance around stupidly as if Peterman is hiding behind the furniture. “What are you doing here?”
“I want to hire you,” she says, as if I’ve just asked the most inane question ever. “I saw your ad. I’ve got a stalker.”
A stalker?
Before I can process that unexpected twist, I hear Kerrie. “I can take over the desk again,” she says, her voice preceding her into the area. “Thanks for covering for—Gracie?”
