by Piper Denna
“You’re apologizing to him? You do know of all the women who’ve come forward admitting to…”
“Admitting. Good word. Because they all knew what they were doing, just the same as he did, right Matt? And as far as that goes, I’m past worrying about it. Bill and I have settled things amicably. I’m sick of him being branded a cheating athlete or a philanderer. He’s a human being, with two sons who look up to him. I’d like it very much if some of the hosts of those tabloid news magazines could be scrutinized in the manner that my husband has been. How many of them can boast a happy fourteen-year marriage?”
“You’d label your marriage as happy, after all that you now know?”
“Damn straight.”
“Oh.” Poor Matt was a bit befuddled. “Well. Do you think your divorce will affect your writing style or your ability to view the world through rose-colored glasses?”
“No. I’m just as happy right now as I ever was in my first marriage.” Oops. Freudian slip.
“First marriage? Oh, that brings me to the question of the tandem bike. Is this you?” He held up the photo of Cam and I.
“Yes,” I answered, without a bit of shame. “An elderly couple came by, talking about their marriage of fifty years and it was a joke when Ca—CJ told them we were married. They sent the reporter over, who apparently tailed us around town, taking invasive photos.”
“And was this research, for another romance novel?” He held up the Hypnosis by Chocolate photo.
“No. That,” I said, pointing at the photo, “is the picture of a woman hopelessly, helplessly in love with a man she didn’t plan to fall for.”
“Ah. Unrequited love. The stuff romances are made of. What did you do about it?”
“I dug my heels in and protested and denied and fought and resisted. And I waited for him to seduce and convince and coerce and talk me into it, like any other red-blooded American woman would. It’s what we’re taught to do.”
“What did he do? Did he talk you into it?”
“No. He waited. Patiently. And I almost lost him before I understood what he needed from me. When I finally offered it to him, he didn’t believe me.”
“And does he now?”
“I’m on my way to make sure.”
Since it was obvious I was ready to leave, Matt stood, taken aback, to shake my hand. “Ah, thanks… Alison Smyth.” I’d already made it halfway across the stage when he said, “The book is Love on the Back Nine. Buy it, love it.”
My legs couldn’t run me fast enough down the hallway to the Green Room. Cam met me at the door, swooped me up and swung me around while I kissed him.
“Cam,” I said breathlessly, “put me down. I have to ask you something.”
“What is it? Yes, I believe you.”
“No. Not that.”
He put me down, grudgingly, but didn’t let go of me.
I shimmied out of his grip and went down on one knee.
“Ali? What is this?” He knelt, too.
“Okay. Have it your way,” I laughed, ignoring the guy with the camera on his shoulder out in the hallway.
Carol sighed with delight when I took Cam’s hands in mine.
“Cam. Here’s what I want for us.” A smile played at the corners of his mouth. “I want us to grow old together. I wanta share my life with you. My home, my body, my heart, everything.”
My phone rang. I answered, “Hey Shurre. Can you hang on just a minute, Hon? Thanks.” I laid the phone on the back of a nearby easy chair.
“Where was I? Oh. Forever. That’s what I want for us. I know sometimes forever doesn’t happen, so if you ever fall out of love with me, please tell me before you go looking for somebody else, and maybe we can fix it. Oh. And when the time comes that I can marry again, if you ask me, I’ll accept.” Cam’s dimples flashed with his grin. “I wanta raise these babies with you, and who knows, maybe more if they don’t kill me. In fifty years, I want us to go to Prescott, Arizona and ride a bike together, and let the damn news guys take our picture then!” He started pulling me to him for a kiss, but I stopped him. “But here’s the really big thing I want.”
There were several people crowded around the guy with the camera, craning their necks to see in the room.
“Psst! A ring, Alison, you want a ring, Dear!” Carol whispered.
I ducked my head and laughed. “No. Not that. I wanta tell you I love you, and I want you to know it’s true, Cam. I’ve loved you since…” Taking note of the gathering crowd, I decided to keep some things between us. “…well, a long time before I thought I did. I love you, Cam Moreton. You hear me?”
“I hear you. And I love you too. Now can I kiss you?”
He didn’t wait for my answer, just stood and swept me up in the most romantic kiss. I melted into him and we traded much more than physical contact. The smattering of clapping around us didn’t slow us down. What finally did was a tinny voice yelling out of my open cell phone.
“Oh. Shurre!” I covered my mouth to stifle my laugh, then picked up the phone.
“Can we use this?” the camera guy asked.
I shook my head no, Cam shrugged, and Carol cried, “Yes! Use it now, today! She’s the new queen of romance! Tell the world!”
“Carol!” I protested. I hadn’t said those things to Cam because I wanted a public show. I said them because I needed to.
“It’s not Carol, goddammit, it’s Shurre!” my phone blasted against my ear.
“Cam, are you okay with…” The crew was gone, but Cam didn’t seem to care. He relaxed in the easy chair and put his feet on the coffee table in front of him, watching the monitor above.
“ALI!” Shurre yelled again. “Are you there, or what?”
“Jesus Christ, my ear! Yes I’m here. Damn! I guess you’re feeling better.”
“What the hell? Are you just too damn famous to spare some time for the little people now, or what?”
“Oh, I’ll never forget you little people, Hon,” I teased. “Did you watch it?”
“Did I watch it?” she repeated in disgust. “Of course, you dumb rich twit. You’re my best friend since we chased down Bobby Kilpatrick and tag-team kissed him under the monkey bars in kindergarten. Of course I watched. I went off my morphine drip to make sure I’d be awake to watch. What I called to say to you was that, oh my God! You’re on TV again. Hold on!” I heard her volume turn up so loud that I could hear it better than I could hear the monitor in front of me. Cam reached back and held my hand while we watched my declarations of love play on national TV.
“Jesus, what a sap,” Shurre muttered, but I heard her sniffle. When the segment ended, she muted her TV and said, “What I called to tell you was you are still my coolest friend ever. Flirting with Matt Lauer? Oh my God!”
“Shurre, I was not flirting with Matt.”
Cam said that yes I was, and Carol cooed agreement.
“The hell you weren’t. God, what a cutie he is. Anyway, you didn’t let me finish. You’re cool even though you broke the CARDINAL RULE OF DIVORCE,” I held my phone away from the ear she seemed so intent on damaging, “by apologizing to that snake. Hell-O? Apologizing on national TV? Have I taught you nothing? And your tits, my God. Pretty risque for such a good girl, and on daytime TV, too. Made me proud.”
I looked self-consciously down at my chest. “If I didn’t know you better, I’d think you went to the Silicone Drive-Through on your way there. And hello? Showing Matt your ass? Which is not your ass, I might add. Where did you pick that up? And…”
“Shurre. Jesus!” I laughed. “I’m glad you feel better.”
“Yeah, guess who Uncle Horny left his estate to?”
“Um… You?” Would that be bad, or good?
“My kids.” Silence followed, for I had no good words. “And since he named me administrator of their very substantial trust, I think they might be having a new pool built by next summer. And maybe adding on a game room and remodeling the awful kitchen they have to suffer daily.”
“I
love you, Shurre. You know that?”
“Yeah, you sap. I know. Some nurse is coming in to feel my tits again. I gotta go. Hey, go get laid good. You earned it today.”
Yes, I did. And I was ready to collect.
Only problem was, Carol insisted on taking us to breakfast.
“Um, Carol, we really need to get back to our room and,” unmake the bed, “um, get our stuff before check-out time,” I protested.
“Oh, of course I’ll take you by there on my way. I won’t take no for an answer, Dear. How often do I get to take my favorite client out to eat?”
I figured whoever she was with at the moment was probably her favorite client, but all the easy publicity I’d earned that summer must count for something. No amount of protesting or arguing would sway her, so Cam and I exchanged an understanding, if impatient, look. We spent the rest of our time in New York with a woman who chattered endlessly about how romantic we were, but just couldn’t grasp that we wanted to go use that romance in a physical way.
By the time we’d boarded our plane, both Cam’s phone and mine had put in a full day of fielding calls from everyone who knew us. I gathered from his conversation with his mother that she approved of me, and his dad came on the line to let him know he approved of my cha-chas.
My Mom was appalled that I admitted to being in love with “another man” on national TV and as good as confessed to being pregnant with his babies. She also told me my books were little more than pornography, but she was still proud of me. And she thought Cam seemed like a nice enough guy, for someone outside the church.
Bill called to thank me for being such a good person and told me he hoped Cam deserved me. We both cried before that call was over.
*
Cam parked my Mustang inside his garage, then killed the engine. “This way, nobody knows we’re here, and nobody interrupts,” he explained. He lugged our suitcases inside while I looked around. The place had the definite feel of having been used infrequently, lately. Mail was heaped in a lopsided pile on a nice Corian countertop. His kitchen was full of clean, white appliances. The fridge and dishwasher had notes spelled out with magnetic letters.
DAD,
U ARE BEST
LUV EM
I LUV YOO 2
DAD
His living room sported a leather sofa and ottoman, and Emily’s kid-size recliner. For a cable guy, his TV was pretty small. A tall, neat stack of newspapers stood on the end-table near the couch. The top one was dated Sunday, May 28. The Prescott Free Press. The paper was well-worn, and I opened it right to the page with our photos. The other papers were all exactly the same, neatly folded and never opened. “What is this?” I laughed.
“I drove up there that day, took Em riding, and bought every one I could find. Thought you might like to have some, one day. Hoped.”
“Cam.”
He smiled and kissed me.
“There’s more.” A stack of different papers was piled on the bottom of the table. Cam showed them to me. They were all the major papers he could get his hands on when the AP picked up our photo story.
“I love you,” I told him.
“I know.”
He picked me up then, and carried me over his real hardwood floors, down a wood-paneled hallway and into his room where he deposited me on his handmade log bed. The blinds were shut against the bright late afternoon outside, leaving us in dim, romantic light. My thoughts grew hazy when he lay across me and kissed me. I tasted his tongue, his teeth, tickled the roof of his mouth.
“You know how long I’ve fantasized about having you, here?” The words, in his deep voice against my neck, ran shivers up and down my spine.
“Tell me.”
“Since that second day, when it was so hot with us, and you asked about Emily and I said you were pretty. When you told me it was only sex with us.”
“I was wrong.” It was easy to admit, there in his bed, with his weight on me, his tongue flicking in my new cleavage.
“I knew you were. Tell me when you knew it was more.” He lifted me and pulled my tunic over my head, slipped the bra off, moaned.
“When I wrote the poem. I knew I’d lose you, and it hurt.”
“You’ll never lose me.” His mouth closed on an already-hard nipple. Powerful waves of pleasure rocked me.
“Holy God. Oh, God!” I gasped.
He intensified what he was doing, moaning against my breast. I was shocked when I came merely from his mouth on my nipple. “Whoa, that was… oh God.”
“Horny little thing, aren’t you?” he teased.
“I think I’m glad you’re a boob-man.”
“Ali,” he said against my mouth, “I love you.”
“I know.”
“Remember that thing you kept wanting to do?” He put my hand on his crotch, to remind me. “And I wouldn’t let you?”
“Uh-huh.” I unbuttoned his shorts, getting excited.
“Will you do it now?”
“I… nah. I’m not really in the mood for it now.”
His face fell, and I laughed. I wiggled down to him, pushing off the pants, the boxers.
“You’ll need to take off the shirt, I’m afraid.” God, that chest of his. I took him in my mouth and he moaned. He was hot and rock-hard. It wouldn’t take long. Already his lubricant advanced, salting my mouth with its taste.
“Hold on,” he said.
I was impatient; what excuse would he use to put me off again? But he pulled my jeans off and tugged my bottom over, on top of him.
“Oh.” Sixty-nine with Cam? No complaints from me!
His tongue went to work on me while I buried his cock in my mouth. It was hard work concentrating on the task at hand with his tongue touching me everywhere down there, his lips pinching my clit between them ‘til I arched and bucked. His hips thrust and he moaned into my wetness. I spread my legs more for him. His fingers went inside me and pressed my button, making me sob against his shaft. With one final explosive thrust, he came. I felt it tickle as it shot down my throat, and I held him there, gulping around his head until he’d finished. The deed was done—I’d swallowed his essence, captured his heart. I felt a second of exuberance before seizing and coming, spraying a mess of my own essence all over us both.
“Ah, fuck, Ali. Oh! Yeah, baby!” Cam picked me up bodily and planted me on his cock, facing him again. His entire face and neck were wet, and I laughed ‘til he kissed me and I tasted myself in his mouth. He rolled us over and begged against my mouth, “Tell me you love me.”
My engorged muscles were tight around him. Tight, but slick. His movements made me wild inside all over again.
“I love you,” I said. He thrust faster. “Love you,” I repeated. I watched that one dimple appear when he climaxed, and he watched the tears come when I did. Then his heavy, muscled body collapsed in dead weight on top of me and our two babies and we dozed, all of us.
*
Later, in the night-dark room, surrounded by the smells of our pleasure, he rolled off and hugged me to his sweaty chest.
I asked, “You know my poem about the pine seed that grew on the rocky ledge?”
“Mmm,” he mumbled. “The one that didn’t have enough soil, so it was doomed?”
“Mm-hmm. It has a surprise ending.”
“Yeah? What?”
“It decided to quit worrying about how things looked on the surface, and keep growing its roots. Kinda fly in the face of adversity, you know? And it turned out the rock it was on wasn’t so big or deep, and there was soil right there that it could reach. The tree’s biggest obstacle was its own fears.”
“So it thrived?”
“Yeah, and the rock? It ended up embedded in the bottom of the tree. It actually helped the tree keep grounded and not fall over sometimes when the wind blew really hard.”
“You gonna write that down?”
“I think I will.”
About Piper Denna
Piper Denna bases her writing on one belief: Romance is sexy. Wit
h few exceptions, romantic love affairs share one common trait – the parties involved at least fantasize about consummating their love. Conversely, sex is romantic. Two people finding each another irresistible, even if it’s just for one interlude? Definitely romantic.
Piper has lived in several states as an adult, but always seems to come “home” to Colorado, where she currently lives with her husband and kids. She has always dabbled in poetry and short stories, but during a long, awful time away from Colorado, she started seriously writing a novel in the summer of 2005. Since then, she has completed six novels and started three more.
When she’s not writing, she’s probably working at her day job (which will be history as soon as possible), performing mom-type tasks around the house, or reading. Piper considers herself an Equal Opportunity Reader (EOR). As long as the novel has characters she really likes (or hates!), a plot to hold her attention, and believable dialogue, she’ll like it. No genre prejudices.
Things she loves: sunny days, cheesecake in most any form, her iPod full of 80’s music, that fluttery feeling she gets at the first spark of romance in a great book or movie, hot baths, power walking, and laughter (anyone else’s or her own).
Reader mail: [email protected]
Piper’s website: www.piperdenna.com
www.myspace.com/piperdenna
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