Sweet Liar

by Jude Deveraux

  “I guess you got better things to do than sit here with the likes of me.” His voice was a self-pitying whine. “Maybe you got somebody at home waiting for you.” The implication was that Nelson didn’t have anyone and that’s why he was so unhappy and had to drink and make those marks shooting whatever it was into the inside of his arm.

  “Yeah, I got somebody,” Mike said, and thought of Samantha, of the pure cleanliness of her, and right now he very much wanted to be at home with her. Jeanne should be finished with her apartment by now, and Mike wanted to show it to Sam, to see her face when she saw it. Maybe, when she saw the rooms, she’d be so happy that she’d turn to him, throw her arms around him, he’d kiss her, then—

  Nelson was snapping his fingers in front of Mike’s face. “You leavin’ me, boy? My God, but I think she’s comin’ this way. You gotta see her. Real Classy. And a body like I’ve never seen before.”

  At one time Mike might have been interested in seeing this woman, at least in looking, if in nothing else, but he wasn’t interested in anything that patronized this dive.

  “One of you boys have a light?” came a deep, sultry voice from Mike’s left. With a grimace, he picked up a book of matches from the ashtray, struck one, and turned to light the woman’s cigarette.

  What he saw made him freeze. Samantha, sweet, perfect, innocent little Samantha, was dressed in a red-sequined tank top that was cut so low in the front that he could see nearly all of her breasts, and she wore a tight red skirt that, as far as he could tell, covered nothing whatsoever. All eight or so feet of her legs were showing beneath the “skirt.”

  When she bent forward, he could see the deep, exquisite cleavage made by her large, round, beautiful breasts—the same cleavage that all the bums in this place could see. Samantha put her hand over Mike’s to hold the tip of the cigarette to the match flame. Lighting it, she stood, her hips thrust out, and looked down at him, fluttering her lashes a bit. “Mind if I sit down?”

  Too intent on gawking at her to pay attention to the flame, Mike dropped the match when it burned down to his fingertips.

  “Sit by me, baby,” Nelson said eagerly. “You’re new in here, aren’t you? Who you work for?”

  Holding the cigarette between her two fingers, her elbow resting on her hip, Samantha looked down at Mike. “You going to invite me to sit down or not?”

  “I’m going to kill you,” he said under his breath, but he moved over on the seat so she could sit by him.

  When she was seated she tried to take a draw on the cigarette, but since she’d never smoked in her life, she gave a couple of very unseductresslike coughs.

  Angrily, Mike took the cigarette from her. “Just what do you think you’re playing at?” He started to stub the cigarette out in the ashtray, but on second thought, he put it to his lips and took a very deep draw, a draw that burned the cigarette halfway down to his lips.

  “Mike, I didn’t know you smoked.”

  “I don’t,” he said tightly, letting out the smoke slowly. “I quit two years ago, but then there’s a lot you don’t know about me. A few more weeks around you and I may take up drinking.”

  “Ditto,” she said, looking him in the eyes.

  “Mike,” Nelson said, “looks like you two know each other. You wanta introduce me or you gonna keep her all night? You can’t keep her all night, can you?”

  “You hear that, Samantha? Nelson thinks you’re a prostitute.”

  Leaning toward Mike, she let her lips come near his. “And what do you think I am?” she practically purred.

  “All show,” he said, drinking the last of his beer. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Samantha was not going to leave yet. If she went home with him now, nothing would have changed. For whatever reason he was angry at her, he was still angry. Signaling the waitress to come to the table, she ordered a double shot of tequila gold. “And a quartered lime and a Dos Equis if you have it, and do you have some salsa and chips?”

  Before Mike could say another word, a man came to the table and asked Samantha to dance with him. “I’d love to,” she said, starting to get up, but Mike put his hand on her shoulder, holding her on the seat. “I guess not,” Samantha said to the man apologetically.

  When her drinks came, she turned to Nelson. “So what do you know about my grandmother? I assume you are Nelson, aren’t you?” Well aware of Mike’s eyes on her, Samantha knew that he realized she had to have looked inside his wallet to have seen the note.

  “Not as much as I’d like to know about you, baby,” Nelson answered in what was meant to be a provocative manner.

  Mike was still looking at Samantha, waiting for her to turn to him, but she didn’t. Instead, with all the ostentation, all the sexiness she could manage, she made a fist of her left hand, slowly licked the web of it, poured salt on the wet place, sensually licked the salt away, then lustily tossed back the tequila in one shot, after which she juicily bit into a lime wedge.

  “Lord help us,” Nelson whispered, but Mike didn’t say a word, just kept looking at her profile.

  Picking up a chip, she reached out to the bowl of salsa.

  “Careful of that!” Nelson warned. “Paddy’s stuff is lava.”

  Samantha scooped a lot of the salsa on the chip and ate it while Nelson watched in awe. “In Santa Fe we’d feed this to the babies,” she drawled as she drank some of the dark brown Mexican beer. “Let me give you some advice, Nelson. If someone in Santa Fe warns you that something is hot, be careful, but if a New Yorker says it’s hot, laugh.”

  “That’s enough,” Mike said, grabbing her upper arm and pulling her out of the bench. Leading her onto the dance floor, he surrounded her in his arms and began a slow dance. “What are you trying to do? Out-macho the guys? If that’s your goal, you’ve done it.”

  Rubbing her hips against his, a very serious look on her rather heavily made up face, Samantha said, “Do you think Nelson is the type of person who really cares about the South American rain forests?”

  “What’s wrong with you? And who gave you that getup you have on?”

  “Don’t you like it?”

  “Not on you.”

  “Want to take it off?”

  Holding her at arm’s length, he looked into her eyes “How much have you had to drink?”

  “Not much.” She put her head back down on his shoulder. “Mike, why have you been angry at me today?”

  Her words made him soften, or maybe it was the feel of her in his arms, with her hips moving with his, her breasts rubbing against his chest, or maybe it was the sight of her in this outfit that wouldn’t have adequately covered a three-year-old, but he couldn’t remember why he’d been angry at her. “Ahhh, sweetheart.”

  She seemed to melt into him further. “You haven’t called me anything but Samantha all day. No Sam-Sam or anything else.”

  “You’re killing me, you know that? You’re driving me insane. I think we ought to talk about where we stand with each other.”

  “Isn’t that what the female is supposed to say? Then you’re supposed to say that you don’t want to commit, then I say—”

  “Why don’t you shut up?” He was becoming involved in the slow undulations of the dance now, his hands moving up and down her back, fingers edging down over her buttocks. For all that either of them were aware of the other people in the bar, they may as well have been alone.

  “Do you have any idea how much I want you?”

  “I feel some of it right now.”

  “Don’t laugh at me, Samantha.”

  “Oh, Mike, I’m sorry, it’s just that…”

  “What?” he said rather sharply. “What is it? Tell me!”

  Pulling away from him, she went back to the table, downed the last of her beer, and turned to leave. It had been a mistake dressing up like a tart and trying to entice Mike, because under the sexy clothes, she was still plain ol’ Samantha Elliot, not a femme fatale. She may have been able to turn herself into a chanteuse while wearing Maxie
’s clothes, but even Blair’s micromini couldn’t make her unafraid of sex, unafraid of ruining everything she had with Mike.

  As she turned away from the table, Nelson shoved a piece of paper at her that contained a name and a telephone number. “Call Walden,” he said. “He can tell you lots about Maxie.”

  Taking the paper, shoving it into her bra—where it itched—she nodded and turned away.

  Mike caught her elbow. “You’re not going without me.” He didn’t say another word as he pulled her outside.

  But Mike had other ways of communicating besides words. One minute they were standing on the curb waiting for a taxi and the next Mike had pulled her into the alley beside the bar, his arms going about her as he hungrily began kissing her neck. After the first moment of his passion, Samantha tried to move away from him. When Mike didn’t seem to understand that she didn’t want him to touch her, she had to use force to push away.

  Mike, utterly and absolutely frustrated, as well as confused, leaned back against the brick of the building wall, his hands raised above his head, palms out, as though he were nailed to the wall. “Why?” he asked. “Why, Sam? What is it that you have against me? Was that husband of yours so great in bed that you want to enshrine him? You can’t think of another man besides him?”

  At that Samantha laughed, and Mike, his face full of anger at thinking she was laughing at him, started to move away from the wall, but Samantha leaned toward him. She’d had too much to drink, first at Blair’s apartment and now here, and her slightly inebriated state made her dare to do things that she would not do otherwise.

  Almost as though to tease her, his shirt was open halfway to his waist, and now she put her hands inside it, touching his skin. Mike was angry, seriously angry, she knew that, and he didn’t respond to her touch, but kept his hands against the wall as he watched her.

  “You don’t understand, Mike,” she said softly.

  “Then why don’t you explain it to me.” There was no softness in his voice.

  Since she’d first met him, Samantha’d had a nearly uncontrollable desire to touch him. Now, sliding her hands inside his shirt, she felt the sculptured muscle across his chest. Some women looked at the bodybuilders on TV or on a beach and thought they were too muscular, but not Samantha. When she was in Santa Fe and leading her aerobics classes, there were times when the men in the free-weight side of the room so distracted her that she missed her rhythm. One evening a man named Tim, who had performed in bodybuilding competitions, was squatting five hundred pounds. With two men at either end of the bar, which bowed under the weight of the plates, Tim did a deep knee bend with the full five hundred pounds. After he’d completed his squat, the women in Samantha’s class had burst into laughter, because Samantha had been so engrossed in Tim that she’d forgotten to lead the exercises. Embarrassed, Samantha had given her attention back to the women.

  Now, she was touching one of those muscled men, one of those godlike creatures who looked as though he could lift buildings with his hands.

  “How much do you squat, Mike?” she whispered.

  “Six fifty,” he answered, having no idea why she should ask something like that now. His friends, the ones who’d been to college, pretended that Mike’s power lifting didn’t exist. Their attitude was, Mike’s got a brain in spite of the fact that he’s got some muscle.

  “Bench press?” She was running her hands over his chest, around toward his back, feeling his lats, the muscles that made his back so very wide, made it curve.

  Mike didn’t move from the wall, nor did he make any motion to touch her, for he didn’t want to scare her away. If his acquiescence was what she needed to get her to touch him, then he would remain in one position if it killed him. “Four fifty,” he answered.

  His shirt was old and soft and the buttonholes were loose, and when she touched the buttons, they slipped out of the holes, opening the shirt to his waist. Samantha’s hands slipped lower, down to his stomach, his hard, rippled stomach.

  “Dead lift?” she whispered, meaning the lift where he picked up a weight from the floor to his waist.

  “Seven hundred. Strength has to do with bone density and the bones of the people in my family are a bit more dense than the average Joe’s. Look, Sam, if you want stats—”

  She kept rubbing her hands over his skin. How long had it been since she had really touched a man? For that matter, had she ever really touched one? She had certainly never wanted to touch one as much as she had wanted to touch Mike since the first day she’d looked into his dark eyes, since she’d first felt his lips next to her own. “I want to explain to you.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m listening.” His voice was ragged, as though he were under great strain, but he still had his hands up, away from her. Had anyone seen them, they would have seen what looked to be a man being held at gunpoint by a woman.

  “It’s me, not you. Don’t you understand that? At first I was afraid of you.” Her hands were at his waist, moving toward his back, moving over all that muscle that had not an ounce of fat over it. “Well, maybe not afraid, but I didn’t want anything to do with another man.”

  “You’ve made that abundantly clear. Sam, you want to say what you have to say? I don’t know how much more of this I can stand.”

  “I don’t want to ruin what we have between us.” Sliding her hands up his chest to his shoulders, she moved down over the tops of his arms. In another minute she would have the shirt completely off him. His skin felt so very good, so warm, so smooth, so strong, skin that was tightly draped over yards of heavy muscle. She would have liked to put her lips to his skin, to taste it. Was it salty from the sweat of dancing?

  “What do we have between us?” His voice was harsh, strained, and he closed his eyes for a moment. All his life girls had been easy for him, but the girl he’d most wanted, Sam, seemed to be impossible. She made him think appalling thoughts of taking her out on a lonely road and forcing her, but he knew he’d never be able to live with himself afterward—but, more importantly, neither would she.

  “All the sweetness,” she said. “We have kindness and talk and friendship. We laugh together. Do things together. We—”

  Abruptly, Mike moved his hands down from the wall and put them on her shoulders as he looked into her eyes, searching them. “You think all that will end if we go to bed together?”

  She liked him when he stood still and allowed her to touch him, but she wasn’t drunk enough to not know the truth. “Mike, if you went to bed with me, it would end,” she said in disgust. “I’m rotten at sex.”

  For a moment Mike stood still, not at first understanding what she’d just said, then the first bud of enlightenment came to him. “Yeah, I bet you are,” he said softly, then slipped her arm through his. “Too bad they don’t have a piece of software to teach sex, then you could learn all the right moves and positions.” For the first time in a week he felt good because he understood now, knew what her problem was—but, best of all, he knew how to fix the problem. Never in his life, through many years of mathematics, had he looked forward to a solution more than he did now.

  Leading her toward the street, he put up his hand for a cab.

  Samantha giggled. “That’s a great idea, Mike. Who can we get to write the software program?”

  When a taxi stopped, Mike opened the door for her. “I might have some ideas of what could be put in your software.”

  “Do you, Mike? What research books did you read?”

  “I made up my own positions,” he said companionably. “My own positions, my own motions, even my own feelings. I’ve never read one book on sex.”

  As Samantha got into the cab, she moved to the far side of the seat. “I have. I’ve read many, many books on the subject.”

  “Oh? And who asked you to read these books?”

  “Richard. He said they might help me.” Turning, she looked at him in the dim light from the streets, but his face was turned away. He was staring straight ahead, as though he didn’t wan
t to look at her. “Do you understand now?”

  “Yes,” he said softly. “I now understand everything.”

  He didn’t say another word to her on the ride back uptown to his town house, and with every click of the cab meter, Samantha grew more depressed. She shouldn’t have told him. What was that saying? Better to allow people to think you’re a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. Well, she’d opened her mouth and told Mike about her sex life. He’d said she was all show and she was. She could dress the part of a woman of the night, but she didn’t know how to act the part.

  By the time they reached the house, she was planning what she’d say to Mike, that she’d move out in the morning—that is, if he didn’t want her to leave tonight—and she was sorry she’d cost him so much in time and money and inconvenience.

  Very calmly Mike paid the driver, unlocked the front door, allowed her to go inside, then locked the door behind them.

  “Mike,” she began, ready to recite the little speech she’d prepared, but Mike didn’t give her a chance, for he began to stalk her—stalking being the only way to describe the stealthy, predatory way he moved toward her. “Mike? Are you all right?”

  “All this time I thought it was men you didn’t like. There were times when I thought the problem was me, that I turned you off, but you never turned away from me when I touched you—unless I seemed to want more.”

  “Of course not.” Backing up, she moved toward the living room. “Mike, you frighten me when you look at me like that.”

  “Like hell I do. I’m not sure anything frightens you. You aren’t afraid of me, not in the normal sense, anyway.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “You’re afraid men won’t like you.”

  Samantha could feel herself turning red from the tip of her toes to her hairline. Maybe in the red dress he wouldn’t notice the color of her skin. “You are the most stupid man,” she said, trying to sound nonchalant, trying to make it sound as though she were in control. “Just because I turn down your advances you start to play psychologist and decide that I think men don’t like me. Ha!”