Читать книгу A Taste Of Fantasy - Isabel Sharpe, Isabel Sharpe - Страница 7

From: Samantha Tyler

Sent: Thursday

To: Erin Thatcher; Tess Norton

Subject: Love

What I can’t seem to get my brain to stop obsessing over is: How do you know when love is real? I was so sure it was real with Brendan. Zero doubts. Zero cold feet. I stood at the altar and did the Death Do Us Part thing with my heart so full I’m surprised it didn’t pop out of my grandma’s dress.

If something that good and that right and that perfect, that I believed in it with every ounce of my naive-assed twenty-something passion, could turn out to be nothing more than neurotic unfounded fantasy, how do you know when it’s real?

That’s why I’m thinking this Men To Do thing might be the way to go right now. I’m not ready for love. Not until I can get my head around this question and get some kind of answer that makes sense.

But I sure as hell could use some sex.

Samantha

SAMANTHA TYLER INCHED THE Chevy Trailblazer into her Lincoln Park bungalow’s garage. Roughly one millimeter to spare on either side or risk scratching the paint. Obviously the garage hadn’t been built to accommodate ludicrously oversized vehicles. But Brendan had insisted they buy the monster, insisted they’d need it when the kids they never had were born. Brendan knew it would be so convenient for all those lovely romantic excursions they never took.

Brendan had tripped over himself leaving it to her in the divorce settlement and had immediately gone out to buy a black Audi TT Roadster to salve his feelings of rejection and failure, not to mention to attract babes. As soon as she had time she’d sell this monster and buy herself a sunshiny yellow Volkswagen Beetle. A chick car, not a Sensible Family Vehicle. As soon as she had time.

She hit the brakes and yanked the gear into park, jerked out the keys and grabbed her briefcase. Opened the door carefully so as not to hit the garage wall, and eased and squeezed her body out the half opening and into the humid August-in-Illinois air. Definitely a Volkswagen.

The garage door let out the usual series of protesting groans on its way down, followed by a final resting thud, to accompany her walk through the overgrown garden bordering the postage-stamp-sized lawn. Weeding. Trimming. Fertilizing. Mowing. Everything she saw represented something to do. As if her supposedly safe home environment was nothing but a series of tasks she was failing at.

Life had always been a joyous battle to be fought and won, or at least wrestled into temporary submission. Today life was overwhelming. She had to stuff her emotions into a bank vault or risk collapse. And she was just plain sick of crying.

Samantha jammed her key into the house lock, twisted, turned the handle, twisted again and was in. Blanche and Fudge, her black and white cats immediately came to greet her, mouths open in accusing meows. Feed us now.

Not cats. Tasks. How had life gotten so mundane? So colorless? So lacking in spark and love? How had she become this cold robotic nightmare of a person? So afraid to feel. But then of course she’d been that way married, too. At least now she had hope of change ahead. She could focus on that.

“My day was fine, thanks, guys.”

Briefcase on the table, shoes kicked off into the corner, rummage for the can opener, dump the food in their bowls, fresh water, a frozen entrée for herself.

The microwave started its impersonal, indifferent hum. Not like the oven, which warmed the food, coddled and cared for it, released gentle smells that permeated the house like love. The microwave heated. Heated ingredients someone wearing a hair net had slopped into nonbiodegradable plastic.

She crossed to her briefcase to check her cell phone, frowning at the grimy traces on the kitchen floor. They should invent linoleum with brown spots and dried-on pieces of lettuce in the pattern. A cleaning lady would probably be worth the money, but Samantha hated the idea of strangers in her house, among her things.

The cell display announced that she had two messages. She stuck the phone to her ear, crossed back to the refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of Chicago-brewed Honker’s Ale out of her refrigerator.

“Hi, it’s Mom. Call us, we want to know how you are.”

Samantha rolled her eyes. Mom wanted to make sure Samantha was miserable so she could point out once again what a mistake Samantha had made. She’d stayed with Samantha’s father through some pretty rough times and what made Samantha think marriage was all roses and poetry and passion anyway?

A sip from the bottle, then a longer one. She didn’t think marriage was all roses and poetry and passion. But it should be some roses and some poetry and some passion at least some of the time. No roses and no poetry and no passion day after day, week after week, year after year, and you might as well be living with your brother.

Next message. “Hello.”

Samantha wrinkled her forehead at the throaty, unfamiliar female voice and touched the gold necklace Brendan had given her for their one-year anniversary.

“You were unbelievable last night, Johnny Orion.”

Samantha’s forehead unwrinkled; she rolled her eyes again. Not another one.

“Oh, Johnny, I didn’t think my body could do all those things. Especially that many times. I can’t stop thinking about you. I want to do it all again. I’m wearing black stockings and black high heels, the way I was dressed last night. I’m crazy all over again— I’m so hot for you. I’m touching myself. My hand is sliding down between my—”

Ew.

Samantha pressed the code to fast-forward the message to the end. She really should put a personal greeting on her voice mail instead of the robot announcement of her number, so these women would know she was not Johnny Orion, whoever he was. But for some reason she wanted to feel anonymous, so that even her closest friends couldn’t really be sure they’d reached Samantha Tyler. She was just a number. Protected. Impenetrable. Seven digits with a hyphen in her middle.

The microwave beeped obnoxiously, announcing that it was time to “stir contents.” She deleted the message, the second one left in as many days for this Johnny Orion person. Two women and one last week, all sounding intelligent and articulate, all extolling his apparently unbelievable virtues in bed, all getting his number wrong. He must sleep with a lot of dyslexic women. Samantha didn’t even want to think about how many others had managed to dial it right.

She dumped the steaming overcooked pasta, reformed chicken bits and pallid vegetables onto a plate, grated parmesan cheese over it, opened another beer and looked around for the paper. Something to read during meals to distract herself from how silent they were now. She’d have to go over work files later, a sexual harassment case, discrimination case, the usual mix of wronged people and greedy people. But not yet. A little unwind time first.

The food was edible, the business section of the Chicago Tribune interesting; her concentration shot. She’d have to do better than this if she wanted to get any work done tonight.

She put her elbows on the table, gripping the neck of the beer, and swung the bottle back and forth between her forearms. Johnny Orion. Probably a made-up name—wasn’t Orion the hunter constellation? The guy sounded more like a predator than a hunter. She imagined a professional wrestling announcer introducing him. And nooooow, Johnnyyyyyyy Predator! Samantha grinned and took a long swig of her beer. Whoever he was, he certainly made women happy. Probably some well-hung young stud who serviced older married types.

The Chicago Tribune business section swished off the table and drifted like a giant falling leaf onto the floor. Samantha took her beer into the TV room which jutted like the short side of an L off the graceful sweep of the kitchen and living room. She pushed magazines aside, sat on the couch, legs curled under and sent a look of loathing to the TV—Brendan’s Other Woman. They had a much more passionate relationship than she did with him.

She gave her work files a half-assed try, then when her usually ironclad willpower failed her, she picked up the book she’d been reading for the Eve’s Apple reading group. The online group had been her salvation over the past two years as her marriage had finally dissolved. Except for Lyssa, loyal friend and officemate, her local friends had been so involved with her and Brendan as a couple that the divorce had been impossible to avoid. Even when they weren’t talking about it, the topic buzzed all over them, like killer bees at a picnic.

The women in the online group knew only what she chose to reveal about herself. The discussions were lively and interesting, the books provocative and fun. And Erin and Tess were her lifeline to sanity sometimes. Her closest friends of the bunch had split off with her to form their own e-mail chat/reading sub-group. Last year the fun had been multiplied by Erin’s idea of Men To Do.

Samantha smiled her second smile of the evening. Men To Do Before Saying I Do, inspired by an article in Cosmo which outlined several male “types” perfect for casual affairs, but hardly the stuff of “as long as we both shall live.” The Vain Guy, The Rich Foreigner, the Dumb Jock and Samantha’s personal favorite—The Swaggering Butthead.

Though the experiment so far hadn’t turned out quite the way they’d planned. Erin got the surprise of her life when her Man To Do, Sebastian Gallo, who started out as The Scary Guy, turned out to be the love of her life. Then as if that weren’t freaky enough, Tess had fallen madly in love with her fling, too. Dash Black, supposed to be The Playboy, but turned out he was happy to stop playing with every woman but her. What were the odds?

So far Samantha hadn’t met anyone who fit the bill. She yawned, ignoring the deep-down honest part of her that said she hadn’t remotely been trying, and forced her eyes to focus on the book. When Amber Burns by Elizabeth Jader. About a woman in a happy though unexciting relationship faced with sexual temptation in the form of another man. Samantha read until her eyes and limbs were heavy and begging for sleep, her body too tired even to become aroused by the sensual words. No bed yet. Not until she was so exhausted she’d slip off immediately. Nighttime was the hardest, alone in that dark silent bedroom.

Finally she gave in, went upstairs, brushed her teeth, got into her nightgown, slid into the bed that felt like a vast empty prairie, turned out the lights and stiffened against the usual incoming creep of lonely pain.

Amazingly, tonight it didn’t come.

This was good. This was progress. Maybe divorce was survivable after all, as the self-help books claimed. Samantha punched her pillow into a more comfortable shape, took in a deep breath and sighed out her relief, let herself drift off, brain minus the anxious tumble of questions and confusions.

Moments later, her bed became a jungle of tangled vines and crawling bugs and suffocating walls of trees. Johnny Orion, well-hung young stud indeed, dark-haired, sweat-sheened, ludicrously civilized in tight jeans and spotless white shirt, hacked his way through to her, eyes glowing red like a demon wolf, burning and clearing a path which widened and melted back until the bed was again a bed, sheets smooth and welcoming. But then he changed, morphed into another stranger who came to her and lay over her. Instead of weight and sweat, this man brought cleansing lightness, relief from the sticky jungle heat and confusion of overgrown vegetation. He lifted his head from her shoulder, cupped her unresisting face and touched her mouth with his…

The instant burn of sexual passion shot her awake. She reached down feverishly, pulled her nightgown up and touched herself until she arched and moaned and came alone in the dark.

She lay back, heart decelerating, breath slowing, stunned at how quickly her body had responded to the fantasy, and burst into laughter.

Hot damn.

Samantha Tyler, twenty-nine-year-old divorced mess-of-a-person, was ready for a Man To Do.

RICK GRINDLE, aka Johnny Orion, clasped his hands behind his head, and lay back on the couch, staring at the smooth white paint on his lakeside condominium ceiling. He yawned, flexed his biceps and rubbed his head absently, liking the prickly stubble feel of his shorn hair. She was thinking about him. Right now. He could tell.

He hadn’t been this taken with a woman on sight in a long time. Hadn’t been this intrigued or felt he would be this challenged in a long, long time. She’d come to Eisemann, Inc.—the lawyer sent to interview the bitch accusing him of sexual harassment, Tanya Banyon. He’d been in the reception area when she walked in. Even that first glimpse had hit him like a sexual storm surge. He’d taken a seat in an empty office with a view of the glass-walled conference room where she sat, pretending to be engrossed in his work, observing and ingesting her expressions and reactions, watching her write, listen, consult papers from a file.

Samantha Tyler. God what a sexy name. Everything about her was sexy. Her figure, her thick blond hair, her feminine power, her assertive body language. And sexiest of all was the sadness and hint of pain lurking in her blue eyes. That sadness gave him hope. Where there was emotional vulnerability, there was always a chance to get in.

She’d felt him watching her once, turned her head and their eyes had met. The jolt of chemistry shot straight down into his pants. He hadn’t reacted, made himself glance casually down at the bare desk in front of him, the anonymous indifferent stranger.

Rick lifted his head and resettled it into his hands. But his image had been planted, at very least in her subconscious. The chemical link would remain dormant in her brain until they met again and he chose to bring it to life, to work it to his advantage on this case and in his quest for Samantha’s…favors.

He grinned at the ceiling, feeling the familiar stirring in his groin when he thought of the thoroughly enjoyable work involved in readying a conquest. Seducing women was an art form, one he’d mastered over his forty-two years. But in the past year or so, the chase had gotten almost too easy. Within about ten minutes he could tell if he’d be successful or not. He’d developed a nearly unerring instinct so that he minimized rejection by avoiding women who’d be impossible to conquer. Tanya Banyon had been a totally uncharacteristic misread. But women like Samantha…seemingly invulnerable but with the gift of that chink. Those women were always the best and the sweetest to overcome, though it took careful planning and patience.

“Feeling women” he called them. The most passionate, the most adventurous. Women like Samantha, who tried to hide her strong sexuality—who probably did hide it from most people. But not from him. He could sense it in the way she walked, the graceful turn of her neck, the fullness of her mouth and the glimpse of passion in her eyes.

A mourning dove announced the hour by cooing its ghostly tune from the birdsong clock on his wall. 11:00 p.m. The bars would be full. Thinking about Samantha had made him horny. Maybe he should try to find another woman tonight. Give her Samantha’s cell number again, pretending it was his own, and tell her to call whenever she wanted him.

He pictured Samantha listening to the messages, wondering who he was, shocked, half-repelled, but definitely fascinated—maybe even turned-on. A woman like her couldn’t help but be fascinated. Who was this Johnny Orion? Why were so many women calling for more? Wouldn’t he be the perfect Man To Do?

He chuckled, got up from the couch, crossed his spacious book-filled, rug-strewn living room into the kitchen and opened the door of his state-of-the-art built-in refrigerator. Cold beer. Or perhaps a nice Beaujolais. Pâté. A baguette from Mon Pain. Strips of bright red pepper. No other women tonight. Tonight he’d sit here, get slowly stewed, maybe hack into her computer and see what else she revealed to her friends, or just think about her and how good it would be between them when he finally landed her.

“HOLD THAT.” JACK HUNTER took a step back and eyed the models critically. The tall brunette—Yvette was it?—stood stiffly, body oiled and bronzed, hair slicked down, wearing a glittering, chest-flattening thong bikini. In front of her, on a clear plastic seat that would not show up in the shoot, back pressed firmly to the tall model’s stomach, arms raised like armrests, sat another model, similarly attired. The overall effect, once the picture was done, would be of a female human piece of furniture.

Jack moved forward and carefully rearranged a wayward strand of the seated model’s hair. Vanessa he thought she was called. “Good. Hold that. No emotion. Stare straight.”

He moved behind the tripod set up with his Hasselblad camera, loaded with two-and-a-quarter-inch film and gazed down into the lens until the models became in the viewfinder what he wanted in his mind. Stiff. Wooden. Unemotional. Perfect. He pressed the shutter. Then again, jaw tight, adrenaline high.

Something about the way female bodies could be molded and manipulated to resemble household objects fascinated him. The ability to represent the inanimate with the living, to merge object and life, to cross the boundaries of function and form. This project was his baby. He didn’t need to do it. Commercial shoots gave him all the work he wanted. But photography for the sake of art instead of in homage to capitalism fed his soul in a way his regular job, no matter how satisfying, never could. The ultimate rebellion from pictures that glorified the mundane in order to seduce the consumer. Cereal as the next Messiah, cars that would change your life and social status, jewelry that would save your marriage.

This shoot was about simplicity, about something as complicated as a human being arranged into something as stark and serviceable as a chair. The contrast was irresistible.

He shot a few more frames, then adjusted the main light brighter, to make the shadows more harsh.

“Yvette.” He raised his head and frowned at the standing model. “Can you take the light out of your eyes? Make them dead. Like you’re blind, like you’re seeing nothing. Can you do that?”

The model unfocused her eyes into dull blank circles.

“Excellent. Almost done.” He bent his head back over his camera and snapped a few more shots, finished the roll and nodded. “Thanks. Good work.”

The women slumped out of their positions with sighs of relief and rolled necks and arms stiff from posing for so long.

Jack clapped his hands in brief applause. “You ladies did great. You can get dressed now. I’ll send you prints for your portfolios in a week or two.”

The women made their way to the changing area at the back of his studio to shower and dress.

Jack shut off lights, labeled his rolls of film and took them to the darkroom. Good day today. He’d nailed several shots exactly as he wanted them. The women had been even better than he hoped. He could afford professional models, but he liked finding women on his own, usually aspiring models or performers who were comfortable in front of a lens already. He gave them the pictures for their portfolios or for their amusement or egos, or whatever they wanted them for, and saved himself contracts and legal hassles.

Best of all, he could go about the project leisurely, wait until he found the right faces, the right bodies for the poses he wanted.

This shoot wrapped up his chair series. His next was even more complicated—women as dining tables. Intimate feasts for two served on a woman’s horizontal spine. Fabulous. Someday he’d do a whole dining set.

He put his Hasselblad away in the cabinet Dad had made for the studio. He was looking for a very special person for the table shoot. Someone who could project the kind of simple sincerity the picture required, to avoid a comic effect. Someone who could fill the frame without trying to—or even while trying not to. He wasn’t even sure what she would look like, only that he’d know when he found her. Something about her would spark certainty that she would photograph well and transform his internal vision into reality.

The women emerged from the bathroom, hair still damp, giggling over some joke.

He threw off the focus and tension that always accompanied his work and grinned. “You ladies interested in having a drink?”

They shot each other sidelong glances that made him feel like a dirty old man. Okay, so he was probably ten years older than they were. Not like he wanted anything more than company for a drink. His big scoring days were over. But having two visions of loveliness on his arm for the evening wasn’t exactly an ego buster. So shoot him, he was human.

“Come on. Do I look like a cradle robber?” He held his hands out in surrender which made the girls giggle. “I’ll buy you a drink to thank you for the good work you did here.”

More sidelong glances. The fluent silent communication that only the female of the species understood.

Hmm. Women didn’t usually respond to his charm as if he were a walking virus. Fine. Forget it. Not like he had anything invested in their company.

“We were thinking.” Yvette sidled up to him on one side and took his arm.

“Oh?” He looked down at her lovely face turned up impishly toward him and couldn’t help grinning. A promising sign.

“Yes.” Vanessa slid around to his other side and took his other arm. “We were thinking.”

“Thinking, huh?” Jack turned to the lovely impish face on his other side and couldn’t help grinning wider. “Is this unusual activity for you?”

Two sweet giggles, high and breathy, one in one ear, one in the other. Okay, so he’d been in worse situations.

“We were thinking maybe…” Vanessa tipped her head to one side and looked at him through half-closed eyes.

“Yes…?” He couldn’t help feeling cocky. They were going to accept. Instead of going to his empty apartment, or going out to eat on his own, he’d have some company, maybe get some flirt. It had been a while; he’d been so intent on his work. Just some harmless fun.

“That maybe…” Yvette took up the sentence. “You’d like to do both of us.”

A burst of incredulous air exited his mouth. What? The girls were barely out of diapers, and they were suggesting a threesome? “Do you?”

“Yeah.” Yvonne wiggled seductively closer. “Both of us.”

“Uh…” Jack swallowed. This was supposed to be every man’s dream. Ten years ago—maybe even five—he’d have instantly gotten so hard his cock would have ripped through his pants.

It wasn’t happening now. Instead of a hard-on, he was suffering from a sudden surge of panic. No question his attitudes about women had changed. His attitudes about a lot of things had changed.

“I’m not sure that would be such a good idea.”

“Awwww.” Yvette stood on tiptoes and trapped his left earlobe between her teeth.

“C’mon.” Vanessa wrapped one leg around his and pressed her pelvis to his right thigh, hands clamped onto his chest. “It’d be fun.”

“I’m sure it would be.” Jack extracted himself from trapping teeth, clamping hands and pressing pelvis, feeling like he was stripping off too-tight clothes. “But I can’t.”

“Why?” Yvette backed off and crossed her arms over her chest.

“Because I don’t need a reputation for hiring models and screwing them.”

“Ha!” Vanessa pouted and shot him the look of a snake to its mousy prey. “You already have one.”

Jack held himself still. Made long, icy eye contact first with one girl, then the other. “I think you should leave.”

They glanced at each other, then grimaced and filed sulkily past him through the reception area to the old freight elevator used when the building was a warehouse.

He waited until he heard the slide and groan of the doors shutting behind them.

Crap.

Youth was like a savage wonderful drug. You thought the world could be yours. You thought you could get away with anything. You thought you could indulge your passions and whims in this glorious free-for-all called adulthood and suffer nothing. No consequences. No guilt. Out of your parents’ house and into the candy store for dinner.

Jack took a quick glance around for anything out of place, turned off the studio lights and took the elevator up to his apartment. Miraculous that he hadn’t made a mistake sooner. Three years ago he’d spent the night with a type of woman he usually avoided. A particularly determined woman, who wouldn’t take no for an answer. Something about her aggressiveness, something about her confidence and primal no-nonsense, bad-girl sexuality had gotten to him, and he gave in to an explosive encounter.

He was still paying for it. The next morning he’d woken up, disoriented and edgy. Sleeping with models was dangerous; he knew that. Until that night he’d felt untouchable, chosen wisely, parted on good terms. But this woman had psycho written all over her and he’d gone ahead anyway, mind blunted by booze, ignoring the fact that someone like her could cause major problems for his blossoming career.

She had. For some screwed-up reason she’d decided that one night entitled her to complete ownership. When he’d rejected her next advance, politely but firmly, she’d turned on him so fast, with such violent and ugly determination, he barely had time to react.

Apparently no one rejected Krista Crotter and lived happily ever after. She made sure as many business associates of his she could get her hands on knew about what had happened. Or at least knew her version of what had happened.

He went into his living room, crossed the Oriental rug over plank flooring and put Annie Lennox’s Diva CD on the ridiculously overpriced sound system he’d splurged on a few years before on some testosterone-laden buying spree. He hit “skip” until he found his favorite tune, about how life felt like walking on broken glass.

It had taken months and months of damage control, of walking the fine line between keeping Krista down and pissing her off more, to extricate himself from the nightmare with his reputation intact.

Fairly intact.

Jack passed his hands over his face and blew out a long breath. No question now, but he needed a drink. He opened his refrigerator, which yawned spotless and practically empty except for the orange box of baking soda. No beer. And he should probably change the baking soda, not that there were any odors in there to absorb at the moment.

The total lack of beer decided him. Even without company, he’d go out, something he rarely did anymore, especially by himself. Booze and available women were easier to avoid if he stayed home.

But tonight he felt restless here in the perfectly organized apartment that usually soothed him. What harm could it do? One beer, maybe two. And if he met a woman, he could prove to himself that he could talk to her without getting his anatomy involved.

He went into his bedroom, frowned at a piece of paper that must have blown off his desk, replaced it and closed the window to the offending night air. Humming along to Annie Lennox, he changed into tan linen pants and a white cotton shirt with a beige stripe and descended to the underground parking area he had built for his staff, clients, and other tenants in the converted industrial building he’d bought five years previous with a loan from Dad. A loan he was well on his way to repaying, even after the damage Krista tried to inflict on his career.

He climbed into his Camry and headed east on Division toward State Street, enjoying the soft air through his rolled-down windows, sweet and summery in spite of the city noise and bustle. Weird sexual invitation aside, he was glad now that Tweedle-gorgeous and Tweedle-more-gorgeous hadn’t accepted his invitation to come out tonight.

It felt good to be alone.