Night Moves

by Thea Devine

  “Maybe not safer.”

  Men had all the answers. “All right. Safer if you go.”

  “Safe for—whom, did you say?” he murmured, sliding his hands gently up and down her midriff.

  Dear Lord, he remembered. Of all the things for him to remember, Carrie thought frantically. It begged the question what else he remembered. She could think of a dozen things, a dozen secrets she thought had been buried long ago.

  This was a major error in judgment. And his face was so close to hers, and his mouth, and those glinting eyes. His warmth. His scent. All the things she remembered that made him so seductive and tantalizing...when she was seventeen. Who was the adult here? she wondered fuzzily. Me.

  “Me,” she said out loud, maybe just a little testily. “And better for you.”

  “Better for now maybe,” he said lightly. “Maybe.”

  “Too many maybes,” Carrie said. “I don’t do maybes.”

  Truck looked at her for a long moment, then he removed his hands. Carrie was in warrior-princess mode, feeling too much and too vulnerable, and prickly as a porcupine, to boot.

  Well, he was a man who knew how to wait. He’d waited fifteen years. He moved away from her and into the living room. Safe neutral territory there.

  “Okay,” he said, untying his shirt and slipping it on. That was safe too, even though he was keenly aware that Carrie watched his every movement. She couldn’t help herself any more than he; there was a highly charged link between them, and it didn’t have much to do with two fumbling teenagers. If Carrie needed to feel safe, he’d make her feel safe as a fortress, so be it.

  “Tell you what,” he said. “Let’s do Saturday instead.”

  Carrie blinked. “What?” She bit her lip. What was she doing, chasing him away and then avidly watching his hands. Oh, those hands, those wicked, tempting hands.

  What had he said? Do Saturday?

  “Sure,” she said, still bemused. “Maybe.”

  4

  MAYBE?

  Maybe not.

  She had to be crazy, Carrie thought. Truck McKelvey was not on her schedule of things to take care of this summer. She could not allow that man anywhere near her or her kitchen ever again. He was too steamy, too alluring, too all-fired there.

  Who would have guessed? Fifteen years had passed, and the effect Truck had on her was just as potent as ever. All she had to do was look at him and her temperature soared just as it had that year that she had let him get so close. Too close. Close enough she’d almost gotten burned, she’d wanted him that bad. But not bad enough to give up her dreams. And she’d been right. She’d been a success, had gotten most of what she’d wanted. She’d had a fabulous career, a high-flying lifestyle, money and mean, and no one to whom she had ever wanted to make a committment. And she’d liked it that way. Until Elliott.

  Her stomach churned just thinking about him. The wonder boy. The creative genius who had set the benchmark for cutting-edge advertising. Elliott had forged a name for himself in the arena of memorable and quirky ad campaigns, and if some of them didn’t quite increase the projected market share, well, Elliott always had a theory and an excuse and another agency hungry to pay him big money for his ideas.

  Global Vision International had been the fifth agency to employ him in four years.

  He had been assigned to Carrie’s team and to one of her top clients, who was looking for a fast way to update a very stodgy image and a product that was losing chunks of market share by the minute. Carrie couldn’t bear to think about the rest. He’d stolen her ideas, and stolen her client, and in the end, Carrie had paid dearly for his lies and her gullibility. Worse even, she had fallen in love with him. They were the dream team who were going to turn the industry upside down.

  Instead Elliott had turned her inside out, broken her heart and walked away to more accolades, a promotion and a still higher salary, and a profile in both the Sunday New York Times magazine and Advertising Age on how he had resuscitated a dying brand name.

  Carrie felt as if he’d cut her to little pieces. She had thought she was experienced enough to deal with him. But she hadn’t been. He’d used her and abandoned her, and the fact that she should have known, she should have seen it coming, made Elliot’s massive betrayal even more humiliating and painful.

  She felt as if she’d barely made it out of New York alive, and even then it had taken her three months with her landlord chomping for the high-priced rent she could no longer afford to pay to make the decision to return to Paradise.

  Paradise. You walk in the door and all your past sins come back to haunt you.

  And Truck McKelvey was one delicious sin, a forbidden temptation, and she wasn’t going to get within a hundred yards of him again if she could help it.

  So the wisest thing for her to do was not to go to the dance. Then she wouldn’t see Truck, wouldn’t put herself in the position of having to dance with him, wouldn’t have to deal with him at all until he came back to finish up at the house.

  That was sensible. Sane.

  She called Jeannie and told her. Later that afternoon, as Carrie was collating yet another set of résumés on the kitchen counter, Jeannie turned up at her door.

  “What are you doing here?” Carrie asked as she admitted her friend and waved her into the kitchen. “I know I told you I wasn’t going to the dance tonight, so really you didn’t have to come.”

  “Sure I did,” Jeannie said, hopping onto a stool. “What’s this? Your résumé?” She picked up the three pages and started reading. “Oh my goodness. Carrie! I had no idea...”

  “Well, all that experience isn’t worth much now, is it?” Carrie murmured as she braced her hip against the opposite stool and continued putting the pages together. “I’ve spent all this time E-mailing, faxing and sending out a hundred of these things with no response. And I’d already gone through the mill with the headhunters before I even left New York. I don’t even know why I’m punishing myself by doing this.”

  “But—you worked on the Sexy Lady account...”

  “I did. But that’s a part of my long-buried past...”

  “I love that perfume! Not that it’s done me any good...”

  Carrie looked up at her sharply. Another pinprick comment that seemed to indicate things weren’t so good between Jeannie and her husband.

  “Anyway,” Jeannie went on, “the point is, tell me again why you aren’t going tonight?”

  “I changed my mind.”

  “Oh.” Jeannie recognized that tone.

  Carrie jumped in before she could say anything further. “You tell me something before you start analyzing my life. What’s going on with you and Eddie? That comment you made about the perfume is—I don’t know—the second or third one you’ve made like that.”

  Jeannie stared at her for a moment, her usually good-natured expression impassive, as if she had suddenly closeted all her feelings. “I was hoping you didn’t notice,” she said finally.

  “I noticed and you’re not going to tell me, are you?” Carrie said softly.

  Jeannie swallowed. “Why don’t you come to the dance tonight?”

  Not wanting to push Jeannie to talk until she was ready, Carrie didn’t persist. There was something there, something Jeannie didn’t want to tell her or ask her. Something deep and hurtful that she was glossing over with her usual good humor. Eddie likes to look—but not at me... Jeannie had said that and then sloughed it off as if she’d been joking. Maybe she wasn’t joking. Maybe things were worse than anyone knew.

  “Okay, I’ll come,” Carrie said, breaking their eye contact to pick up the stack of résumés she’d finished collating.

  “You’re easy,” Jeannie said lightly.

  “You’re not too bad yourself,” Carrie murmured, putting the pile of papers on one of the end tables in the living room. “You know. I could use a secretary. In fact, what I really need is a wife. Do you remember, by the way, that idea was the whole underpinning of the Sexy Lady campaign—mat wome
n should stop thinking of themselves as wives or secretaries or executives or mothers and just turn loose the sexy lady inside them.”

  “I loved those ads, especially the image of the sexy lady emerging from her working-woman clothes. Was that yours?”

  Carrie nodded. “It increased sales instantly. I loved those ads. We wanted women no matter what else they did in their lives to feel as if there were another, more powerful woman inside them that they could let out by just wearing that perfume and the right state of mind.”

  “Oh. Well. The perfume part is easy. How do you get the mindset?”

  “There are ways,” Carrie said teasingly.

  “You sound as if you did research.”

  “I did research,” Carrie said. “We even did a little promo piece for it that we called Secrets of the Sexy Lady, and we had it bound into every women’s magazine before we hit the market. It was fabulous. It sold like crazy.”

  “Got any extras?” Jeannie asked.

  “I think I do. Actually, I could use a refresher course myself.”

  “Was that before or after...what was his name?”

  “Elliott. Long before. I think the sexy-lady thing must have come with an expiration date or something because I was like Silly Putty in his hands. He just bounced me from pillar to post. Hang on a second, I’ll go dig around for it. Why don’t you make some coffee?” Carrie went into the den, and rummaged through the box that held all her old ad projects.

  Jeannie had a tray waiting on the coffee table when Carrie came in from the den, and she was curled up on the ancient sofa, sipping from her cup.

  “Okay. So here’s the condition—” Carrie poured her own cup, and then settled back against the cushions. “You have to do these things because that’s what changes how you think and feel about yourself.”

  “I’m game,” Jeannie murmured, but she wasn’t so sure. Doing sexy things required a certain amount of courage, and she wasn’t certain, after all this time, that she had any left. Still, it was a relief that Carrie had figured out that something was wrong without her having to voice it, and a comfort that she could share her burden. “There aren’t any guarantees, are there?”

  Carrie scanned the booklet. “Nope. And some of the tips sound hopelessly sexist. But this was five or six years ago, so that’s a consideration. Okay, here goes.

  “The copy says, ‘There’s a sexy lady inside every woman... She’s there in the deepest part of your femininity, and in your consciousness, your body, your soul. She’s the woman every woman yearns to be—tantalizing, seductive, sexy...you—’”

  “So far so good,” Jeannie murmured.

  “‘From time immemorial, certain women have exemplified the secrets of the sexy lady. And now we’ve researched them, distilled them, and are pleased to present them to you so that you might emerge from your cocoon the sexy lady you were always meant to be.”’

  “Will it hurt?” Jeannie asked.

  “Probably,” Carrie said. “I’ll just further edit these down to the nut of the idea, okay? You can read the rest later. And anyway, most of these are obvious. Like wearing sexy underwear. Do you?”

  “Do I what?”

  “Wear sexy underthings.”

  “Do you?”

  “Hmm. Not recently. I haven’t been in the mood. However, for the proper mindset, we certainly need to do that tonight.”

  “I outgrew mine,” Jeannie said, her voice quivering a little.

  “No problem. Didn’t I bring trunks full of clothes from my other life?”

  “But I’m not a size ten.”

  “Yeah. Well. Neither am I anymore. Let’s see. It says, sexy ladies wear formfitting clothing. I like that. And no pants. Jeans are abolished as of now.”

  “What are you going to do? What does it say about leather?”

  “I hadn’t thought about it. Okay. We have sexy lingerie and formfitting clothes. Of course, I’m bypassing the full philosophy but basically the sexy lady wants to get noticed.”

  “Exactly,” Jeannie said feelingly.

  “And let’s see, remember that a bosom always commands attention so thank God for the new cleavage bras. Put two of those on the shopping list, preferably made out of silk and lace. Are you keeping a checklist? Is there a naughty-lingerie store anywhere within fifty miles of here?”

  Jeannie laughed. “We can get anything our little old hearts desire in Portland.”

  “That’s good. To go on, it says, ‘The sexy lady knows that to get attention, she must pay attention, because she knows there’s nothing sexier than a good listener. The sexy lady knows that there is nothing more commanding than looking someone straight in the eye, and she makes sure that hers are smoldering with her secret knowledge. The sexy lady expects to get everything that she wants. She tries new things to enhance her desirability and embraces every facet of her sensuality. The sexy lady is bold in the boudoir.”’

  “Is that before or after she removes the lacy lingerie?” Jeannie joked.

  “‘The sexy lady knows how to make a man remember—’ Oh, well, enough of that,” Carrie said, stopping abruptly. “We’re going to make you into a sexy lady tonight, Miss Jeannie.”

  “Oh yeah? How, with my bulky body and your skimpy clothes?”

  “How? There is some good advice in this little pamphlet, and we are going to take it.”

  “You’re damn right we are going to take it,” Jeannie said. “Because I’m not doing anything unless you do it too.”

  Carrie FELT as if she was seventeen again as she and Jeannie threw clothes and underwear all around her bedroom.

  “So everyone will be wearing jeans and we’ll be in skirts and cleavage,” Jeannie grumbled as she tried on one blouse after another.

  “Listen. You’re not that much bigger than I am. You are fine, and there’s nothing wrong with looking like a lady for a change. Come on. Get with the program here. The whole point is, if you look different, you’ll feel different.”

  “And what about you?”

  “I’d love to feel different. I’d love to not feel like a failure.”

  “You didn’t fail. You had circumstances. And at least you took some control. What can I do?”

  “Change your style. For three hours. For one night. What could it hurt? We’ll show some leg, some bosom, and pay close attention to whoever comes into our orbit, and Eddie will sit up and take notice. Trust me.”

  “Who are you going to play sexy lady with?”

  “My mirror,” Carrie said, holding a skirt up against Jeannie’s body. “Remember, I’m doing this for you.” But in truth, she wasn’t sure that she wasn’t doing it for herself as well.

  THE GRANGE HALL was right in the middle of town behind the Main Street antique shops and village stores. Music was already blasting into the starry night when Carrie turned into the crowded parking lot.

  “I’m not sure this is such a good idea,” Jeannie said tentatively.

  “Let’s just go inside and see what Eddie says.”

  “He won’t notice.”

  “He’ll notice,” Carrie said firmly, turning off the ignition. “It’s just you haven’t worn a skirt in so long, you don’t know what to do with your legs.”

  “Yeah. Maybe.”

  “Look, the real key is the pay-attention part, and getting what you expect. So you’d better aim high, Jeannie, because I expect Eddie to hustle you out of there inside an hour.”

  “A nice fantasy, Carrie.”

  “Well, visualize. The mind is very powerful. And you’ve been underutilizing your power. Come on.” Carrie swung out of the car and purposefully went around to Jeannie’s side and opened her door. “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go...”

  “It sounded better when you were reading about it,” Jeannie muttered. “Okay, I’m coming.” She felt naked even though she was smartly and thoroughly clothed. It was just that Carrie’s wardrobe didn’t run to T-shirts, denims, and sneakers.

  Carrie had found a stretchy bodysuit with a surplice
neckline that fit her, and they’d paired that with a long gauzy button-down skirt that revealed a lot of leg, and a pair of sandals. Jeannie had to admit wearing more sophisticated clothes did make her feel different; and they weren’t too outrageous, she consoled herself as she and Carrie climbed the steps to the hall. Of course, everyone probably expected that kind of thing from Carrie, who’d always had a reputation for dressing conspicuously. But her?

  Okay. She had to change that kind of thinking. Carrie had drilled it into her. The attitude tonight was not I can’t. She was supposed to be visualizing I can and I will. I can and I will walk into the crowd and expect that people are going to react positively to me.

  “Hey Jeannie. Wow, you look nice.”

  “Jeeeaannnieee—how you doin’?”

  “Jeannie—come on over...”

  She turned and caught Carrie’s eye. Carrie grinned and waved her on.

  In the center of the hall, the musicians were taking a break and the crowd was milling around waiting for the start of the next set.

  “Jeannie...let me look at you—”

  Carrie heard the affection in their voices as everyone called out to Jeannie, beloved, kind, gentle Jeannie who had been part of the community her whole life.

  Who couldn’t love Jeannie?

  What the hell was wrong with Eddie?

  Jeannie grabbed her arm. “He’s over there,” she whispered. “Near the bandstand. Surrounded as usual.”

  Carrie stared at him. Fifteen years had put weight on Eddie Gerardo, and diminished some of his hair. But otherwise, like Jeannie, he hadn’t changed much. He was still affable, sociable and flashy, and she still didn’t like him. He owned the real-estate business in town, and he and Jeannie were comfortable but obviously not close. Carrie couldn’t help wondering if this was what her life would have been like if she had married young and stayed in town.

  I could never have borne all this unhappiness the way Jeannie has, and they have no children, either, after all this time...