by Peggy Bird
He picked up on the first ring and didn’t bother with hello. “Am I forgiven?”
“There’s nothing to forgive. It was work. You don’t owe me an explanation.”
“Yes, I do. I stood you up for breakfast. So I’ll make it up with dinner tonight. We didn’t get around to setting a time, did we? Does seven work?” He sounded like he usually did, warm, friendly, good-guy Tony.
“Since we hadn’t made definite plans I said I’d have dinner with Danny.”
“You can see her when you’re back in Portland. Tell her there’s a change of plans.”
“I hate women who break dates with their female friends as soon as the first man comes along and asks them out.”
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t call me ‘the first man who comes along’ and remind you that we had a date before you made plans with her.” His voice softened. “Please, Margo. We need to talk.”
Her stomach lurched. We need to talk? Oh, God, when was that sentence ever good? Tony wouldn’t do that, would he? Or would he? What had she been telling herself all day? “Yeah, I guess we should talk.”
“So, you’ll come for dinner?”
“How about drinks here at the hotel. Wouldn’t that be better?”
He was silent for a few moments. “No, but if that’s the best I can get, it’ll do. What time?”
“Six-thirty?”
“I’ll be at your suite at six-thirty.”
“No, not here.” She couldn’t bear to have him back in her room again. The space was already too full of him, his cologne, their lovemaking. “The bar downstairs.”
“The bar.” Another silence. “Okay, if that’s what you want. See you then.”
Margo called Danny and begged her forgiveness for what she was doing, explaining that she had to get something straightened out with Tony. Danny laughed and said she would run over her own mother to get something straight with Tall, Dark and Sexy.
Getting ready for their drink, she tried on every combination of clothes she had with her. Nothing seemed right. But then, she wasn’t exactly sure what the appropriate dress was for meeting a man who was about to let you down gently after sleeping with you. At least she hoped it would be gently.
Finally, she settled on the gray linen pants she’d just gotten back from the hotel cleaners, the white camisole and a wide black belt that emphasized her slender waist. He might not notice how she looked but it made her more confident to feel attractive. Attractive. As she said that to herself, she heard the sharp intake of his breath as he looked at her when she was naked, when he told her how beautiful she was. The image of him standing beside the bed, half dressed, staring at her, was burned into her brain.
Oh, God, how was she going to get through the next hour?
She carefully applied make-up and lip-gloss, sprayed on perfume. On the way down to the lobby she did the deep breathing exercises she’d learned in a meditation class but only seemed to use when she was in a panic, never when she actually tried to meditate.
Hoping to be the first to arrive, she’d gone to the bar early only to find he was already there, looking good enough to eat with a spoon. How he could make ordinary black trousers and a white shirt look sexy, she didn’t know but he did.
As soon as he saw her he slid out of the booth he’d claimed for them — the one they’d sat in the night before, she noticed — and stood to greet her. He flashed the glacier-melting smile but after he kissed her cheek, he frowned.
“You okay? You look … ”
“Yes, of course I’m okay. Why wouldn’t I be?” She slipped into the back of the booth, not sitting close to him, trying not to notice the question in his eyes. Two glasses, which appeared to have Scotch in them, were sitting on cocktail napkins, one at his place and the other next to him. She moved the second glass in front of her and took a large sip.
“I ordered bruschetta for you. You still like it, don’t you?” he said indicating the plate with four slices of toasted bread topped with tomatoes and chopped basil.
“Yes, thanks. That was nice of you. But I’m not very hungry right now.”
“How was the conference today? Go to any interesting sessions?” He picked up his glass and touched it to hers.
“Is that what you wanted to talk about?”
“No, but I thought … ”
“Why did you say we needed to talk?”
“Okay, no small talk. Got it.” He took a sip of his drink, “About last night … ”
God, here it comes. She looked down into her glass, counting the ice cubes, which suddenly seemed of infinite interest.
“Walking home last night, I got to thinking, we made … well, I made … a big mistake.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right. Don’t worry. I didn’t take it seriously.” She used her nail to move an ice cube around in the glass.
He frowned. “Didn’t take what seriously?”
“You made a mistake. I get it. We’ll just go on from here.” She continued to play with the ice in her glass, avoiding his eyes, hoping he didn’t see that she was beginning to tear up.
“Margo, if I promise to circle back later and try to figure out what the hell you’re talking about, will you let me finish what I started to say?” He didn’t wait for a response, but went on. “As I was saying, walking home I realized I made a mistake last night. I should have taken you to my place. Then I wouldn’t have had to leave; you won’t run into Greer or anyone else you know there. So, how about you check out of the hotel and stay at my apartment until you go back to Portland on Sunday?”
She was sure she looked as stunned as she felt.
The confident look he’d been wearing began to fade. “If you don’t think it’s a good idea, that’s okay. I mean, you were worried about our families knowing about dinner so maybe you won’t want to stay with me. It was just a thought.”
A laugh bubbled up from deep inside her. When the eruption had passed and she could talk again, she said, “The mistake you made was not taking me to your apartment? That’s what you wanted to talk about?”
“Yeah, and that’s funny because … ?”
“It’s not funny. It’s great. I’d love to spend the weekend with you.” She picked up a slice of the bread from the platter and ate it in two bites. “I expected you to say … never mind. It doesn’t matter.”
“What? You expected me to say what?”
“It’s not important. Really.” She shrugged her shoulders, talking through a mouth full of bruschetta.
He reached over and brushed breadcrumbs from the side of her mouth. “It must have been important. I’ve seen suspects on a perp walk look happier than you did when you came in here. And you turned down bruschetta, which must be a first. Tell me what you expected.”
She swallowed what she’d been chewing. “I thought … I was afraid you were going to say we made … you made … a big mistake going to bed with me last night and we should forget it happened.”
“Jesus, sugar, I don’t want to forget last night; I want to repeat it.” His smile warmed every part of her he’d kissed the night before. “Is that the reason you wouldn’t come to dinner at my place? You thought I was softening you up so I could dump you?”
“Well, let me down gently, was what I thought. But yes, that’s the general idea.”
“I’ll be damned. I thought you wanted to meet in public because you were going to give me hell and wanted people around so I wouldn’t lose my temper. But when you walked in you looked unhappy, not angry, I couldn’t figure it out.”
“Why would I want to give you hell?”
“I don’t know. Standing you up for breakfast? Not nailing down our dinner? Leaving you in the middle of the night? Being bad in bed?”
“Bad in bed? That’s the last reason … Didn’t I say last night that you were good at … ?” She could feel her face flush and stopped talking when she saw his grin, this time more sexy than sweet.
“Oh, I remember what you said. I just wanted to hear it agai
n.” He finished his Scotch. “Drink up, I have a dinner waiting.” He took her hand. “We back on solid ground here, Keyes? No more sad-puppy eyes because you’re sure I’m about to — what was it you said — let you down gently?”
“Yeah, we’re okay. Thanks. Or I’m sorry. Maybe both.”
He kissed the inside of her wrist. “I love the perfume you wear. What’s it called?”
She untangled her hand from his, picked up her glass and drained the last of the Scotch from it. “It’s one of those embarrassing names.”
“If it’s ‘Seduce Me Tonight,’ I’d be happy to oblige.”
She couldn’t tell if he was flirting or making fun of her. “It’s something like that, yes.” After a brief hesitation, she replied, “It’s called ‘Beautiful’.”
“A man gave it to you, I bet. And he was right. You are.”
Tony’s apartment was in a high rise a few blocks from the Bellevue. After they discreetly checked her out of the hotel, they moved her rental car to his parking garage.
He led her to his apartment on the fifteenth floor and opened the door to a living room with dove gray walls and blonde hardwood floors. Minimal furnishings with a masculine style graced the living room: a black leather modular couch on two walls with a low glass table in front of it. In the dining area, a small table on a white and black area rug with two chairs.
She was immediately drawn to the far side of the room where a sliding glass door opened onto a balcony that stretched across the entire length of the apartment’s outside wall with a tiny bit of the statue of Billy Penn on top of City Hall visible from one corner. Coming back into the room she said, “This is wonderful. It feels, I don’t know, serene, peaceful, almost Zen-like.”
“That’s what Mary Ellen said I needed.”
“I forgot, she’s an interior designer, isn’t she? She did a great job.”
“I’ll tell her you liked it.” Gesturing toward a short hallway, he said, “Here, I’ll give you the thirty-second tour of the rest.”
He pointed out a half-bath and a small room furnished with a desk, computer and file cabinet as well as a weight machine. Then he took her suitcase into his bedroom and put it on an armless rocking chair Margo remembered from his mother’s house. A king-size bed with half a dozen pillows and a comforter with thin stripes in shades of gray, black and white and a long double dresser half-covered in family photos with a mirror over it were the only other pieces of furniture in the room.
With her back to him, she opened her bag and tried to decide what she should do next. It’s not like she had a ton of experience spending weekends in men’s apartments. Did you unpack? Wait for instructions? What? She picked up her toiletries bag, feeling awkward.
He seemed to read her thoughts. “Why don’t you put that in the bathroom? You can share with me or you can have the little one to yourself, although the only shower’s in here.”
“Sharing’s fine, thanks.”
In the master bath, she saw that he had not only cleared space on the vanity for her but had put out an extra glass and clean towels. That and the smell of clean linen in the bedroom, as if he’d changed the sheets, too, calmed her.
Before she could decide what to do next, he took her in his arms saying, “You’ve been a major distraction today. I kept looking at my watch, wanting the day to be over so I could see you, hoping I had a chance to do this again.” The kiss went from zero-to-sixty in two seconds flat, picking up where they left off the night before as though it was only minutes ago. It took her breath away and turned her insides all soft and wet.
“You were pretty distracting today, too,” she said when she could breathe again.
“Good distracting like this,” he said as he surfed his hands down her back, moving her close against him and covering her neck with kisses. “Or bad distracting like worried I was about to ditch you.”
“Some of both. Well, maybe mostly the latter. I thought maybe you’d say it would be better to go back to the way we were before.”
He drew her hands up onto his shoulders. “There’s no going back, sugar.”
She started to kiss him again then stopped. “Why do you call me that? I mean, I love it but it’s so Southern and South Philly hardly counts as Southern.”
He gently kissed her lips. “You’ve always tasted sweet when I kissed you. I thought it was some kind of lip-stuff you wore until last night.” He began to unbuckle her belt. “Now I know you taste sweet everyplace.”
She smiled at him, knowing in advance the answer to the question she was about to ask. “What exactly are you doing, Tony?”
Dropping the belt on the bed, he unzipped her linen pants. “It’s hot in here. Don’t you think you have too many clothes on?”
Chapter 8
A while later, he came out of the bathroom dressed only in a pair of cutoff jeans that rode on his hips and cupped his butt almost as closely as she had recently done with her hands. She was in a T-shirt and bikini panties hanging up her suit.
As he walked past, she waylaid him with a smile. “This guy I used to go down the shore with wore cutoffs like that. I always thought he was trying to show off his body.”
“Maybe he thought it would put the idea in your head to show off yours.”
“I was in a bikini. What more could he want?”
He fake-leered at her. “By now you’ve figured it out, I assume.”
She combed her fingers through the cloud of dark fur on his chest and down the line of hair to his navel, which she tickled before hooking her fingers under the waistband of his cutoffs.
Dropping a kiss on her head, he took both her hands in his. “If you want dinner you better not go any further. You’re distracting me. Seriously.”
She squinted at him, as if thinking hard. “And it smells wonderful, like I remember your mother’s kitchen smelled. But you offer me a difficult choice. Do I want to eat pasta cooked by a good Italian cook or do I want to distract a hunky guy. I can’t decide. I want both.”
“You can have both, but first I think I should feed you. You get cranky when you’re hungry. And is that how you describe me to your friends? A hunky guy?”
“No, I say you’re an old friend.”
“I like hunky guy better.”
“I’ll think about it. Although all they’d have to do is see you like this and words wouldn’t be necessary.”
He looked behind her, diverted by something. “You don’t wear this under those lawyer suits of yours, do you?” He reached around and came back with a black lace demi-bra dangling from one finger.
She snatched it back from him. “Yes, sometimes.”
“Jesus, I’m sorry I know that. If I was ever a witness for you in court, I wouldn’t be able to get my testimony straight thinking about what you had on underneath your jacket.”
“No one in their right mind would let me prosecute a case you were involved in, detective. Not after this weekend. I think you’re safe.”
“Thank God.” He pulled on a T-shirt and started for the kitchen. “Ten minutes to dinner. You might want to put some clothes on.” And he disappeared from the bedroom.
After she donned jeans, she followed and was assigned the job of finding music to accompany their meal. She perused his CD collection finding the Springsteen, U2 and Italian opera she expected and some of the same jazz she had, but it was Andrea Bocelli she put on. He approved, but took the fifth when she asked if it was the music he used to seduce women.
After a dinner of pasta with his mother’s marinara sauce, a tossed salad and bread, they moved to the couch. They sat for several hours finishing up a bottle of Chianti Classico talking comfortably, like Tony and Margo, the friends of a thousand years, not awkwardly like lovers of only one day.
Until he said, “Okay, there’s something else I need to say to you,” and she felt tension return to her shoulders. He must have seen it because he said, “It’s nothing bad. It’s more like a confession.”
“Doesn’t that require a prie
st?”
“If I started with a priest tonight, I might still be with him the next time you came back to Philly. No, this is something I have to confess to you.” He took a sip of wine. “It … ah … wasn’t your mom’s idea to sign you up for the reunion. It was mine.”
“Yours? Why?”
“Mary Ellen’s wedding reception. Our unfinished business.”
She looked down into the wine glass. “I half expected you to call or email me after that.”
“When I went back to the room and you weren’t there, I figured you’d changed your mind. I wasn’t sure you wanted to hear from me. I decided I’d start over the next time you were in town, maybe cook dinner for you, like tonight. But I was in D.C. when you were here in April. Then the announcement about the reunion arrived. I told Dolores about it and she said … ”
“She always wants me to do something other than take care of things for her when I come to Philly but I never do.”
“Heard that before, have you? Anyway, she signed you up. Told me when you’d be at her house and suggested I ‘accidently’ run into you and ask you to go with me.”
“So you ran a con on me with my mother’s help? Or was it vice versa?”
“I’m not really sure. Whatever her plan was, mine was to get you here after the reunion dinner, which was where I was headed before my nephew interrupted us at the reception.”
“But we were slow dancing at the reception — well, before you danced me down the hall to that little dark room. And you didn’t want to slow dance at the reunion.”
“Do you remember what song we were dancing to at the wedding?”
“No, do you?”
“It was ‘I Can’t Help Falling In Love With You’ and I’d asked the DJ to play it at the reunion. But the plan sort of went south because you wouldn’t wait until the right song was playing.”
“I can’t believe you remembered something like that.” She reached over and touched his hand. “But I’d say the pager going off was more to blame for the plan blowing up than my insisting we dance to the wrong song.”