Читать книгу Mystery Date - Crystal Green, Crystal Green - Страница 11

3

DANI COULDN’T WAIT a minute more to find out what was happening with Leigh, even if her friend might still be in the middle of her date.

Fifteen minutes ago she’d gotten off a catering job in Tulare, where she and Riley rented a house. The gig was for the same outfit she’d been with for years now—although she longed for the day when she could open her own small company. She’d headed directly for the lingerie shop nearby, browsing the massage oil and accessory section, but the whole time, she’d been obsessing about checking on Leigh. After all, what if the date was going badly? What if her friend needed an emergency call to end the night?

She decided to compromise with a text.

You good?

Dani didn’t get an answer right away, so she drove the short distance from the boutique to her little stucco home with its trimmed lawn, perennial flowers and bird fountain. Riley’s truck was in the drive, and she grasped her pink shopping bag and rushed into the house to see him.

Since he’d had the day off from his small-estate management job, he had prepped steaks for dinner, plus a salad, sautéed mushrooms and French bread. It all waited on the kitchen table for her. But when she saw her fiancé, his dark hair tousled, his blue eyes bright as he smiled at her, she dropped her bag and ran into his arms.

“Dinner smells great,” she said, nestling her face in his neck as she stood on her tiptoes. He always smelled so good, too, like laundry detergent. Clean and fresh.

He kissed the top of her head and murmured, “I was just about to put the steaks on.”

“You sure they can’t wait?” She drew back from him and dangled the pink shopping bag.

At first Riley got a look on his face that she’d grown all too used to since she’d been doing a lot of lingerie shopping after their fraternity/sorority reunion. She wouldn’t say it was sadness, exactly. Maybe just a second of resignation, of thinking that he missed the sweet, docile girl she used to be before she’d had her epiphany about being stronger and more adventurous.

Just as Margot had been with her basket, and now Leigh.

And maybe Dani had gone a bit off the deep end. She had taken a good look at herself after her friends had arranged that basket auction to raise money for the big wedding she’d wanted ever since she was a child. The one she and Riley couldn’t afford these days.

It was just that her friends’ gesture had rubbed her the wrong way. Had everyone always looked at Dani as if she was helpless? And how much longer was she going to be able to live with that?

So she’d decided that it was high time to grow up—to become a success like Margot and Leigh, not the contented former home-ec major who worked for a catering company she didn’t even own. Although she still had to work for someone else for a while, she planned to open her own catering outfit soon.

Best of all, she had started jazzing up her sex life with Riley, inspired by Margot’s steamy basket and how much it had turned on Clint Barrows, who was now the love of her life.

Dani and Riley never looked at each other the way Margot and Clint did. Why not? Dani had wondered. Why couldn’t they have combustible chemistry like that?

When she had started nudging Riley into more exotic intimate situations, he’d been surprised at first, wondering if she was just suffering from cold feet before their upcoming wedding. Wondering if she was freaking out because her parents had gotten a terrible divorce several years ago and she feared turning out exactly like them.

But he had decided that they should get to know each other all over again. He wanted to “court” her. It was a fairly sweet word for what they’d been doing.

Just as Riley was about to say something in response to her pink shopping bag, her phone rang.

“It’s got to be Leigh,” she said, dropping her purchases.

Riley merely smiled at her, then went to the patio door, no doubt to get their steaks going.

Dani watched him leave, her heart fisting in her chest as the phone rang again. She was going to make him happy tonight—and for the rest of their lives. She just had to figure out how to feel happy herself.

When he was gone, she grabbed her phone, looked at the ID screen, then put the call on speakerphone. “Are you alive?” she asked.

Leigh laughed. “No, I’m coming at you from the Other Side. Boo!”

“Stop it. I was just worried about you.”

“You shouldn’t have been. I’m outside Mystery Man’s house by the gate, waiting for Margot to pick me up.”

“And...?”

Leigh’s voice lowered. “It was...different.”

“How?”

“First off, he never showed himself to me.”

Why did Dani’s thoughts immediately go to somewhere horny? Probably because of what was in her pink bag.

“Do you mean that he kept being Mystery Man?” she asked. “The whole night?”

“That’s exactly what I mean.”

Dani started to hum the Twilight Zone theme until Leigh shushed her.

“The situation really wasn’t as oddball as it sounds.” Leigh skipped a beat. “I think.”

“You sound as confused as I am.”

“It’s just that I got used to the way he was running things. After Beth brought me up to the house, I did meet him. Sort of. He was on a phone.”

Dani frowned. “That’s how it stayed the entire time? With him talking to you on an electronic device?”

“It was fun. Like...phone sex. I don’t know how to explain it.”

“You guys had phone sex?”

“No.” Leigh laughed again. “He watched me cook dinner as we chatted—”

“Did he have a TV to watch you on? Is that how he was keeping an eye on you?” This was getting kookier by the second.

“I’m not sure how he was watching me. Anyway, after I cooked, I ate the dinner.”

“By yourself.”

“Right. Actually, I didn’t eat. I wasn’t very hungry.”

It was probably a rich meal anyway, and Dani knew that Leigh was always watching her intake. “Did he eat?”

“Not with me. A good way to put it is that while I was at the table, I ate the most of the honey and some bread while he watched me from wherever he was.”

Dani sucked in a breath, then whispered, “You did food sex?”

“I won’t get into details, but it actually was fun. And I think it was the first time I ever had any real fun on a date. Usually, you just go through the motions with a guy, trying to impress him, trying to be polite and not get food between your teeth or look like a pig at dinner. Boring as hell, right? Until now.”

Dani sat in a nearby chair. “You liked it. You’re into some kink and you never even knew it.”

Leigh got a teasing tone to her voice. “Maybe you’re right. Because I’m going back there.”

“You’re what?”

“I said I’m going back. I think. He pretty much invited me to the house again at the end of dinner.”

Riley ambled into the room with a plate of steaks in hand. Dani took in the aroma, along with the smell of mushrooms that already permeated the kitchen.

He nodded toward the phone. “Hey, Leigh, are you still alive or did the boogeyman get you?”

“Hah-hah,” Leigh said. “You two must share thoughts as well as everything else.”

He set the steaks down and began to put them on two plates. “I’m just checking up on you. We’d kind of like to have you around, in one piece.”

“That’s sweet, Riley.” Leigh changed topic. “Oh—here’s Margot. Talk to you all soon, okay?”

Dani shook a finger at the phone. “You be careful when you go back there.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

They signed off, leaving Dani and Riley at the table, alone at last.

He glanced at the pink bag on the floor but didn’t say anything about it as he sat, opening a bottle of beer for her, then one for him.

“I’m not even going to ask what happened on that date,” he said.

Even though she and Riley shared everything—as Leigh had pointed out—Dani hesitated to tell him the details of the night. They were just too...

She was about to say “insane,” but then she got that flippy-floppy turn of the stomach, telling her that Leigh’s date had actually captured her imagination.

Phone sex. A dark stranger.

Dani bypassed her steak and beer, pulling her chair closer to Riley’s and grabbing her pink bag on the way.

“Do you think we could hold off on the steak and take a little break before dinner?” she asked.

This time, instead of that sadness in his gaze, she detected a spark. And when she brought out the pair of blue fuzzy handcuffs she’d purchased, he put down his beer.

She got out of her chair and went to an odds-and-ends drawer near the oven, taking out a length of blue fabric she occasionally used to decorate the center of the table. She showed it to him.

“I wonder,” she said, “how it felt when Leigh realized that her date wasn’t going to show her who he was tonight.”

Riley cocked a brow. “He did what?”

“Long story.” She went over to him, then trailed the material over his shoulder. “I want to know what it feels like to have some mystery going on with us, Riley.”

He grabbed the material, wrapping it around his hand, and she knew that they’d started some courting.

Not long ago, when she had told Riley that she wanted to push their boundaries in the bedroom, he had asked her if she was unhappy in their relationship. She wasn’t. Hadn’t ever been.

But there were so many things she hadn’t enjoyed in life yet. Would she regret never exploring those things before they got married and then realize years down the road that it was too late?

She sat on his lap, snuggling her butt toward his groin, which was already straining against his button fly.

“Blindfold me,” she said.

He looked at the steaks, as practical a man as ever, until she cupped his chin with a hand and made him focus on her.

“Those can wait,” she said, already sounding like the type of woman who would go into a dark house to meet a dark man.

He grinned, and it wasn’t a carefree Riley grin, either. It was a hungry one, and it shocked her deep in her groin.

As he slid a hand up her ribs, over her breast, on his way to grab the material, she gasped. Then, almost roughly, he turned her around on his lap.

He wrapped the material to cover her eyes, tying it securely. “This is what you want?” he asked in a gruff voice.

He didn’t sound like himself, either, and her blood pushed through her veins as she tried to match the voice with her image of him. But even blindfolded, she still saw Riley.

She pointed toward the cuffs on the table. “You’ll want to make sure I can’t take off this blindfold.”

“Why?”

“Because even though you don’t want me to know your identity, I’m dying to see who you are.” Or who he was going to play at being.

She’d meant it teasingly, but was he thinking that she should know who he was by now? It felt as if a piece of her heart had crumbled because she wasn’t sure just how invested he was in all these games she was introducing.

Was she seeing how far he would go before he left her? Would she be getting a divorce from him before they were married thirty-seven years just like her parents had been, saving them the time and heartache?

As she felt Riley reach for the handcuffs, she remembered the first time she had seen him, during a party. He’d been leaning against the outside wall of the fraternity house by the pool with some friends, smiling and drinking a soda, and she had thought what a nice guy he probably was. She’d been a freshman who didn’t know much about boys, and she and Riley had ended up friends. It’d only been after college that she had met up with him again and the fireworks had started.

It had been smooth sailing ever since...until now, when she felt the handcuffs close around her wrists.

She turned her face to him, forgetting for a moment that she couldn’t see him from under the blindfold.

“This is how you want it?” he asked again.

She nodded, and he stood, taking her by the waist at the same time, then putting her on the chair and raising her hands above her head. She rested her palms on her head, feeling vulnerable, her breasts pushing against her sweater.

As her pulse flailed, he pulled up her skirt, and her first instinct was to close her legs. But he guided them back open.

Heat sang through her, but so did a little bit of fear, as her clit throbbed in anticipation.

“Do you like not being able to see me, Dani?” he asked. “Is this dangerous for you?”

“It’s safe enough.” Always safe with Riley.

At least, that was what she thought until he slipped his hand between her legs, touching her at her most sensitive point.

She made a desperate sound, and he tugged her panties away from her body. Air tickled her.

“Who am I tonight?” he asked, and she detected a trace of that sadness in him again. “Who do you want me to be?”

“I...”

She wanted to say “Riley,” but that didn’t go along with the dark-man fantasy.

When he eased his fingers between her legs and strummed her, she breathed in and clamped her arms around her head. He put his mouth close to her ear, and when he spoke, she startled.

“You need to think about who you really want, Dani,” he said softly.

Was he saying that she needed to name an identity for him so that the fantasy would work? Or was there something more important he wanted her to think about?

She bit her lip as he worked her with his fingers, pushing her toward a place where, hopefully, she was going to see the light.

* * *

DURING THE CAR ride to the Sea Breeze Suites where Margot and Leigh were staying for a couple of nights, Leigh answered every question Margot had about the date. Even when they’d gotten back to their room, camped out on their beds while hardly able to even think about getting to sleep yet, Margot didn’t stop her inquisition.

“Really?” she asked for about the twentieth time. “You’re going on another date with him?”

The more Margot disbelieved her, the more determined Leigh was to have her next encounter with Callum.

Leigh Vaughn, with her skinny jeans and a whole new attitude. She hadn’t realized how boring her life was until tonight, when she’d experienced a little bit of adventure.

And craved more.

“You bet I’m going back,” she said. “And you know what? If he can play a game with me, I can play just as well. You should’ve seen me at dinner with the honey. You would’ve been proud.”

Seemingly persuaded, Margot leaned back against the pillows she’d propped against the headboard. Then she smiled like a well-fed cat. “Leigh has arrived.”

Was that a blush she felt creeping up her face?

Nah. Women who flirted with unknown men didn’t blush.

After kicking off her hand-tooled red boots and putting her feet on the mattress, she leaned back against the headboard, too.

“I’ve been asking myself one question since I left,” she said. “What kind of man invites over a well-known cook he somehow knew from college and cuts out of the date as if his house is on fire?”

“You really want me to answer that?” In the car, Margot had compared Callum to everyone from Count Dracula to the Marquis de Sade. You just never knew, she said. But now she sighed. “I was on the computer while you were gone, conducting another search of Phi Rho Mu. But there’re no millionaires who matched the name Callum.”

“Whoever he is, I think he’s kind of shy.”

“Shy? Some of the things he said to you—especially that opening line about coming—aren’t the stuff shy men say.”

“Playing a game can make a person brassier than they usually are.” Leigh thought about the moment she’d licked the honey off her fingers and when she’d spread it over the bread with suggestive slowness. “I know that having him in the shadows did something to me. It gave me some...”

“Power?”

“Yeah.” Leigh turned her head so she could look at Margot. “I’ve never had power before.”

“Yes, you have. You’ve got a TV show. You’re a rising star, Leigh. That’s some power.”

“Business is different.”

They were both quiet for a moment. In fact, Margot seemed too quiet. And she had that expression on her face that she got whenever she and Leigh talked about their jobs.

Enough was enough. “What’s going on with you, Marg?”

It must’ve been the compassionate tone of her voice, because Margot closed her eyes, then put on an embarrassed smile.

“I was going to tell you sometime or another. Might as well be now.”

“Is everything okay?”

“More than okay. In most ways.” She tucked a dark strand of hair behind her ear. “Do you know why I’m not writing the ‘single woman on the go’ books anymore?”

Something was already sinking inside Leigh’s chest. “No.”

Margot shrugged. “My publisher canceled my last contract. Sales were declining, they said.”

“Oh, Margot.” Leigh sat away from the headboard.

She held up a hand. “No pity, please. Don’t they say that when a door closes on you, a window opens? Well, that’s what happened with this new blog and the ‘city girl goes country’ book I’m working on. You know the blog’s getting a lot of hits, and maybe that could lead to another publisher buying a book or two. And then there’s Clint.” Margot got a dreamy look in her eyes. “He’s the best opened window of all.”

“So life is good?”

“How can it not be with him around? Everything’s great, including the fact that his brothers, who were about to sue the pants off of him because he didn’t want to sell the cutting-horse ranch, have backed down now that we’ve got a bulldog lawyer on our side.”

Leigh leaned against the headboard again, smiling at her friend.

Margot returned the gesture. “Know what the worst part of all this was, though?”

“What?”

“Telling you that I’d failed.”

Leigh knit her brows, about to argue, but Margot went on.

“We’ve had this competitive thing going on since college. Last month you even told me that you’ve always wanted to be just like me, and that everything came so easily to me.”

Leigh remembered. They’d been in a bridal shop, perusing gowns for Dani. She had gotten a pang that day—the sense that she would probably never get married because her inner chubby girl kept telling her no man would want her in the long run, after she inevitably gained all her weight back. She’d told Margot that she more or less envied her because Margot had always been the perfect one, but then her friend had gotten that expression on her face....

Now Leigh understood the reason.

“In my eyes,” she said to Margot, “you’re always going to be a winner. Look at how you’ve bounced back already.”

Margot smiled, and she was just about to say something when Leigh’s cell phone rang.

They looked at each other, gazes wide.

“Well?” Margot said, nearly bursting. “Are you going to get that or what?”

Leigh promised to talk to Margot later as she grabbed the phone and peered at the ID screen.

“It’s Beth Dahrling,” she said, her pulse whipping into a frenzy again, just before she pushed the answer button.

* * *

WHEN ADAM RECEIVED Beth’s Skype call on his computer that night, he was in his bedroom near the attic of the mansion, a room that hadn’t been included in Leigh’s tour.

He pushed aside the quarterly projections for one of the biofuel companies he’d invested in and focused on Beth instead.

She was wearing a silk dressing gown, her hair in a bun at her nape, as she sat at a desk in the guest cottage on the mansion’s property. “I just thought you might want to know that Leigh officially said yes to tomorrow.”

Adam sat back in his chair, smiling. He’d been trying to steady his heartbeat for the past couple of hours while wondering if Leigh would sincerely want to have a second encounter with “Callum.” He’d ended the date so abruptly that he thought he might’ve made a mistake in trying to leave her with her curiosity about him intact.

“You’ll make arrangements for a limousine to pick her up at her hotel tomorrow?” he asked.

“Yes, and I told her where to wait on the beach below the mansion after she’s dropped off. After your date, it’ll be taking her back to her hotel, too.”

“She’ll be here just in time to enjoy the sunset.”

He had a little something planned—slow seduction, heated suggestion, sweet words on a phone as she strolled down the shoreline much as she’d strolled through his rented mansion tonight, flirting with him.... He wasn’t sure what would come after that, though.

All he knew was that he had to see her again. Hear her voice, her laugh.

Beth reached for the keyboard as if to terminate the connection.

“Wait,” he said. “You’re not still angry with me.”

“Angry isn’t the word.” She looked away from the computer, offscreen.

“Then what’s going on with you?”

Her jaw tightened, and he could tell he was in for it.

“We’ve known each other a fairly long time, Adam,” she said, still unwilling to meet his computer gaze. “I didn’t know you in college—you weren’t there long enough for that—but you were still young when you and Carla hired me to manage your business affairs.”

“My late twenties wasn’t that young. Especially after what I’d gone through when Dad died.” And a few years later, he’d felt even older after watching how much Carla had suffered with the damned cancer.

“Believe it or not,” Beth said, finally looking into the computer’s eye, “you were different back then. You were...normal.”

The word struck him. “Normal?”

“You actually had the capacity to feel. You wouldn’t have shut yourself away and screwed with a woman’s head like you did tonight...and like you’re probably going to do tomorrow. Unless I’m wrong and you’re going to be Adam Morgan with her.”

A short laugh escaped him. “What’s normal anyway?”

Was it setting yourself up like a target and waiting for life to shoot bullets at you? Was it taking those bullets and pretending that they hadn’t ripped you apart? Or was “normal” the opposite—putting on layers and layers of protection just so you could make sure you never got hit again?

Beth was shaking her head. “Don’t ever ask me what normal is, Adam. I might not have the definition, but I know it’s not this. And I don’t think for a minute that this Callum act is going to make you happy in the end. As I told you earlier, someone’s going to get burned in your little game, and I’m pretty sure it’s not going to be you.”

He bristled. “Overly concerned for Leigh, are we?”

“She was one of my sorority sisters and in general she’s a nice person. I don’t like to see people hurt.” She tilted her head. “I don’t like to see you hurting, either.”

At that moment, he wished he could be different, if only for Beth’s sake. But he liked being this way, didn’t he? Or maybe he just had to be this way to tolerate what life dealt out.

“Truthfully,” Beth said, drawing her robe around her tighter, “I’m surprised Leigh is going for this.”