by Katie Dowe
“He is a handsome one,” Brian murmured as soon as Peter had left the store.
“Who?” Kimberly asked innocently as she put the spoon inside the cat’s mouth to give him the dosage recommended.
“You know who,” Brian said impatiently. “Is he the one you almost creamed with your bike?”
“Yes,” she answered briefly, checking to see if the others were okay.
“And he came back why?” Brian persisted and Kimberly sighed as she went to get herself a cup of coffee.
“None of your business,” she told him firmly.
*****
“I have dinner plans,” Kimberly told her friends. They were on speaker phone while she rummaged inside her closet to try and find something suitable to wear. She was going out with a man she barely knew and she did not feel the usual reservations about doing so.
“With who?” Deidre demanded.
“Whom,” Kimberly said absently as she examined a black wool dress she had not worn in ages. Was it too sexy, she wondered looking at the deep plunging neckline and remembering that it hugged her figure very close.
“So, you are giving me grammar lessons now?” Deidre asked her friend.
“Aren’t I always?” Kimberly asked teasingly. “Listen guys, it’s no big deal, it’s just this guy I bumped into and I mean that literally, and he came by two days ago to ask me out to dinner. He is Japanese.”
“You are going out with a Japanese guy?” Simone asked her, the tone skeptical.
“I am having dinner with him,” Kimberly corrected her, deciding to wear the dress after all. “You are making it out to be something more than it is.”
“When was the last time you had dinner with a guy?” Simone asked her.
“I cannot remember,” she said impatiently. “You were the ones encouraging me to go out and now I am going and you have a problem with it.”
“What does he do?” Simone asked suspiciously.
“I have not asked him because, as I said before, this is not a relationship, we are just going out.”
*****
They had dinner at a fancy French restaurant downtown. He had picked her up at home in a black sports car. “Midlife crisis comes early for you?” she teased him as he opened the door for her. She shivered a little as the cold air nipped at her cheeks. She had put on a black jacket over her dress and pulled it close to her.
“I love cars, fast ones. It’s one of my vices.” He slid behind the wheel and shoved the stick into gear causing the car to purr like a well-oiled machine.
“I don’t much go for cars, too much pollutants and I am leaning towards green.” He was wearing a dark-blue dress pants and black-and-white sweater. His raven-black hair was combed back from his forehead and his jaw was freshly shaven.
“Is that why you ride a bike?” He glanced at her briefly. When she had opened the door for him when he arrived, he had been pole axed when he had seen her. The dress against her skin and the plunging neckline showing glimpses of her curves.
“Mostly and for the exercise aspect of it too, I don’t get to do that much so improvise.”
*****
“So, what do you do?” She examined the coq au vin and tasted it tentatively. “I have not tried French cuisine much,” she told him. “This is very good,” she decided.
“I am glad you like it,” he told her in amusement. “I am in a management position at a holding company.”
“Do you enjoy being in the corporate world?” she asked him curiously.
“I do.” He nodded, realizing that although he had not lied to her, he had not exactly told her the truth and he knew why. “It’s very fascinating.”
“Holding company? It means that the company has other businesses under its umbrella right?”
“It does. What about you? You always knew you wanted to run an animal daycare?”
She laughed softly and his eyes were riveted to her lips. She was wearing a nude-colored lip gloss, but the shine brought attention to her full lips. “I was a school teacher for two years before I decided it was definitely not for me.”
He looked at her in surprise. “What happened?”
She told him about the incident that had gotten her going to the principal’s office and she had decided there and then that teaching was definitely not for her.
“You are not much for rules are you?” He looked at her contemplatively. Their dinner plates had been removed and they were having crepe Suzettes.
“Not very,” She sipped the wine appreciatively. “My mom and dad were always despairing of me whenever I went anywhere because I always argued my way out of something I did not think was right. That’s why I had to open my own business.”
“What if you had no choice but to follow tradition?” he asked her seriously.
Kimberly looked at him knowing that he was waiting for the answer and it would mean something to him. She had just met him, but for the first time she felt a rapport with someone of the opposite sex. “There is always a choice,” she told him slowly. “Traditions are a part of our lives, but sometimes we need to make our own instead of following someone else’s.”
He swirled the rest of the liquid inside his glass, his expression brooding. “You are right,” he told her quietly. Then with a smile, he changed the subject.
*****
Peter sat in the darkened room with the clothes he had worn to dinner still on. He had taken her home like a gentleman and shook her hand, telling her that he had enjoyed the evening and told her he would call her and then he left.
He had driven home with the silence in the car magnifying his thoughts. He had come home and used the side doors to go up to his suite. He had contemplated moving out several times, but he knew his parents would not approve. They had told him that they would give them an apartment for their wedding gift. He was all set to get everything he had worked so hard for and he did not want to give it up. He knew his father would not be adverse to him having a mistress and with the way his intended bride was behaving, it was something he was probably going to have to do.
He had enjoyed Kimberly’s company and had been drawn to her from the moment she had bumped into him with her bike. He was not supposed to have gone out that morning but had decided to go and get a pretzel on the side of the road like he did sometimes. If he had not gone out that morning, he would not have met her and he would be going into his loveless marriage with no regrets. Now he was having second thoughts!
*****
Kimberly undressed slowly, hanging up her dress carefully and putting it away in the closet. She had had fun and she never thought she would have, but she had enjoyed herself. He was okay even though she was not thinking of a relationship because heck, she did not know the guy! But she definitely felt comfortable with him. He was obviously wealthy because of the clothes he wore and the car he drove, but that did not mean anything to her, she liked him and that was that!
*****
Hs mother was standing at her bedroom window looking when she saw his car drive in. He had told them that he was not going to make dinner and that he had something to do, but she had seen him rush home and shower and change and go back out. He looked definitely like he had a date. She had never been able to relate to him, the son she had borne and nursed for several months before passing him to a nanny to do the bringing up. She had been happy that she had never been able to have more children and besides that would mean having sex with her husband and he did not much enjoy doing so with her. She never enjoyed it either and had endured it because it was her duty. When he had stopped doing so and left her alone, it had been the happiest time of her life!
Chapter 3
He had to see her again! It had been two weeks since they had dinner and he had been weighing the odds and consequences of pursuing this and had tried to reason with himself about what he was going into, but no amount of logic could sway him from the fact that he wanted to see her again. He had not called her, but he thought about her constantly. He never thought a
bout his intended bride at all only when she was at the house for dinner, but here he was thinking about this girl he had just met.
He frowned into his coffee cup and tapped his hands on the desk. He had come in early to deal with the paperwork for a supermarket they had acquired and he could not concentrate on the documents before him. He glanced at the clock on his desk and realized that it was seven-thirty. He knew she always went to work early as she had told him that. With a sudden decision, he reached for his cell phone and dialed her number.
“Hello?” Her voice was a little breathless and he could just imagine her racing from one end of the room to answer the phone.
“You sound like you were running a marathon,” he said softly.
“Peter?”
“Were you expecting someone else?”
“I was actually. I am expecting a call from the President of the United States,” she said facetiously. “If his call comes in, I am going to have to hang up on you.”
He laughed! Ever since he had met her and being around her, he found that he had fun and he could free up himself. “Duly noted. How are you?”
“I am okay. How goes it in the corporate world?”
“As well as can be.” He paused. “I want to see you again.”
She did not hesitate or play coy as some women would do. “I want to see you again too. How about dinner at my place?”
“I thought you did not cook?” he asked in amusement.
“There is such a thing as take-out and it happens to be my best friend,” she told him gaily.
“Friday night works for you?”
“Yes. I will close up at seven and it will take me half hour to get home, so eight is good.”
“I’ll bring the wine.”
*****
“I think I like him,” Kimberly admitted. She and her friends were having lunch at the pizza place near to the store. Deidre worked as a legal secretary for the law firm downtown and Simone had taken her lunch break to coincide with theirs. Kimberly had left Brian to tend to the animals, making sure that everything was okay. “I have never felt so comfortable with someone of the opposite sex before.”
“What do you know about him?” Simone asked her, squeezing the excess oil from her slice of pizza. She was dressed in a green pants suit and her glorious red hair was in a ponytail and bounced each time she moved her head. Deidre was dressed in a chic charcoal-gray suit with a light-blue blouse and Kimberly had on dark blue dress pants and white blouse. Her hair had been braided and the plaits wrapped in a neat chignon. She had on powder-blue dangling earrings and light makeup. They were attracting a lot of attention from the opposite sex who had come in for lunch.
“I know he is in corporate and he wears expensive clothes.” Kimberly grinned, digging into her salad. “I just know that I like him, okay? It’s not a relationship really, we are just having fun together.”
“You do not know anything about the guy and you claim you are having fun with him. You have never been into a real relationship in your life. Do you actually know what you are doing?” Simone asked her.
“You are making a big deal out of this,” Kimberly protested, drinking her water. “We are just having fun.”
*****
Mitsu Kamato sighed contentedly and settled back in the lounge chair. The day was beautiful and she had taken the chance to be with him. She had met Charles Baker during one of her trips to jazz classes. He had come in there looking out of place and their instructor had paired them together. They had hit it off immediately. He was a piano teacher and had lessons at his home. He was a widower without children and spent his time giving lessons and taking all sorts of classes.
“I took a cooking class at the community center just two weeks ago,” he said, his light-blue eyes twinkling as he looked down at her. He was tall and stately and had been in the Army when he was younger. “I learned how to cook breaded chicken and wild rice.”
“That’s all?” she had asked him curiously, feeling herself relax underneath his arms. She was comfortable with him and she had just met him. The way she had never been comfortable with her own husband after thirty years of marriage.
“I also learned to bake carrot cake and chocolate cookies,” he said with a laugh. He had a full head of dark hair liberally streaked with grey.
That was four months ago and they had met for coffee at a way-out coffee house and she had told him about her marriage.
“John and I have an arrangement that worked for the years we have been together.” She stirred the coffee with cinnamon stick. “I never thought to question it because it was a tradition that had been in our family for generations.”
“What about love?” he had asked her gently.
“Love tends to fade.” She looked up at him and felt the spark that she had been feeling since she first met him. She had never cheated on her husband even though she knew he had casual sex with women, which had never mattered to her. “What we have will last for a life time.”
“You have been fed that line all your life so that you started to believe it,” he told her gravely. “I was married to Sophia since we were both in our early twenties and it was a love match. We had our differences, but we were committed to each other and that remained until she was taken from me. The only regret was that we never had children.”
“Tell me some of the things you did together,” she asked him.
He looked at her for a moment as if sensing if she really wanted to know what she had been missing. “We traveled to different places. She was a school teacher and we would scrimp and save for the times when she was on holidays from school and we would go to Europe or the Caribbean or even go to other states but we always try to get away and we never take each other for granted.” He stared across the room wistfully and Mitsui felt her heart as she saw the expression of love on his face. She never had that and she knew now she wanted it.
“That sounds good,” she said faintly, staring down at her rapidly cooling cup of coffee. “I travel sometimes but alone.” She smiled. “John was always too busy to go with me even though he goes away for business.”
He leaned forward and took her slender hands in his large ones. “I loved Sophia and I loved the life we had together as short as it was. I have learned one very important thing in the marriage and in life; the time is too short for us to be in something where we are unhappy. You are the first woman I have ever met since Sophia died that I have ever felt drawn to and I have never thought about being with someone who is married. I am attracted to you and I have been trying to fight it being the gentleman I am.” He smiled at her. “I am not sure I want to fight it anymore.
“Neither am I.” She lifted her gaze and looked at him. “I am not going to fight it anymore.”
So, now they were at his house and he had cooked for her. She had left her house at a quarter to six because on Thursdays her husband went to his club and did not come home until midnight, so she met him every Thursday. “You made pasta. Are you still taking lessons?”
“I knew how to cook this from a long way back,” he told her with a grin as he placed the meal before her. He knew how much money her husband had and made it a point of duty not to talk about him when they were together. “How is the wine?” He took a seat beside her.
“Lovely,” she told him with a smile as she sipped it. They had been meeting together for the past four months now and he had never touched her but had kissed her softly on the mouth one night when she was leaving. She had felt her pulse quicken and her arms tighten around his waist wanting him to deepen the kiss, but he had pulled away from her.
“I wish I could stay here with you,” she told him wistfully.
“I don’t want to do it this way, Mitsu, we need to take our time and go slow,” he told her gently. “In the meantime, let’s enjoy this meal that I spent so much time making perfect,” he said with a grin.
*****
“Right on time,” she said with a smile as she let him in. “And you brought me flower
s and wine.”
He hung up his coat on the hanger and gave her the flowers he had brought her. She sniffed them in appreciation and went to put them in a glass vase of water. “I am going to pour the wine.” She hurried into the kitchen and grabbed two wine glasses.
“How have you been?” he asked her formally. He wanted to touch her, but he had to restrain himself. She was wearing a short denim skirt and short white sweater and was not wearing any shoes. Dark-blue earrings dangled at her lobes and her hair was caught up in a jeweled clip at the nape of her neck.
“Really?” She looked at him with raised brow. His dark hair had blown on his forehead and he looked dark and formally handsome in his black sweater and black denims. “You sound as if you are meeting me for the first time. Come on, let’s go and get drunk.” She took his hand and led him towards the sofa. He felt his pulse jumping at her touch and the desire uncurled inside him.
She sat with her feet curled underneath her and sipped the wine. “I spent the day walking a dog with more energy than I had and when I came back to the store I could not function for several minutes.”
“It keeps you fit as well?” he said lightly, watching the way her face lit up as she told her story and knew that he had to kiss her.
“I never thought of that.” She stretched languidly. “How about dinner?”
“I am not hungry,” he told her abruptly. “I have been struggling with something.”
“What is it?” she asked him curiously.
“I have tried to tell myself that I should not be doing this but I cannot stop myself.” He came and joined her on the sofa. “I am attracted to you.”
“So, what’s wrong with that?” she asked him, softly uncurling her feet from under her.
“I don’t know.” He touched her cheek softly. “I knew the day you charged into me that I was in big trouble.” He laughed shortly. “I never knew how much.” He pulled her onto his lap and framed her face with his hands. “You are so damned beautiful.” He bent his head and took her lips with his slowly. Kimberly opened her mouth beneath his and looped her hands around his neck, sinking into the kiss. Her heart pounded inside her breasts and she felt her body growing warm from the fire within and her nipples stiffened as he deepened the kiss.