Getting Even

by Avril Tremayne

  “Oh I know that. Believe me I know that very well,” he said, stalking back to the table and looming at her across it. “You must want my book bad to fuck a guy you hate as enthusiastically as you did last night.”

  “Just doing as asked. Not mere acquiescing, right? Going hard? Exorcisms Anonymous? And you see, I’ve learned to compartmentalize, Rafael. Sex and love—they’re different things. These days I can do sex without love.”

  “Fair enough,” he said, and sat, all hard-edged business. “So why don’t we do some compartmentalizing? Set some boundaries? A schedule maybe?”

  “You mean like divide the day into work and sex?”

  “Why not?”

  “Why not indeed! How perfect. How do you want to structure it? Work all day, fuck all night?”

  “Sure,” he said. “A lovely home-cooked meal together at seven each evening, then I get use of your body from eight until...say...four o’clock in the morning? How does that sound?”

  “Depends what happens at four.”

  “Gotta get some sleep, right? That gives you sixteen hours’ recovery time. Is that enough?”

  “Recovery time? What makes you think I need recovery time?”

  “The fact that you fell asleep at three—an hour before I was ready to stop.”

  “Maybe that was boredom,” she said. Madness, but what the hell?

  He raked her with his eyes—from the top of her messy head to chest, where his gaze stuck. A tic jumped to life in his cheek and she found herself breathing in time with it. Endless moment. The air was thick with anger, but it was also ripe with the scent of sex. On her, she knew, but it was more than that. Every molecule in the room seemed to be pulsating with lust.

  “Are you saying I left you unsatisfied?” he asked low and silky.

  “And if I am?”

  “If you’re horny, all you need to do is beg me, and I’ll see what I can do.”

  “I thought you were the one who was supposed to beg.”

  “I’ll beg when you make me beg. But I’m here now, if you’re horny, so ask me nicely and you can come on over.” His hands went below the table; she heard the zipper of his jeans come down.

  Ohhhh. Ohhhhhhhh! She was so glad she’d resisted that urge to put her arms around him. It was time to give her voodoo doll a jab—and she knew exactly where to stick a pin. Right up its ass.

  “Well, it’s tempting, Rafael, very tempting,” she said, and paused, head tilted to the side as though considering that offer. “But...on balance, no. I’m kind of horny, but not so horny I can’t wait. When I said I didn’t need recovery time, I meant—and sorry if this hurts your feelings—that what you did last night didn’t exactly cause any undue stress on my body and therefore only the briefest period of recovery was necessary.” She got to her feet. “Let’s see if there’s a comparison I can think of... Hmm... How about draining a cyst under local anesthetic as opposed to triple bypass surgery? One you can go home same day, the other you need a week in hospital.”

  “My dick being the cyst? Better than an amputation, I guess.”

  And of course she laughed—she simply could not hold it in—and try as she might to bury that giveaway snort, it was there in all its ghastly glory, defeating her eyebrows à la Johnson.

  He laughed, too, and that took her breath away so that when she said, “Don’t push your luck,” it came out all girly and flirty, which wasn’t at all what she’d intended.

  His laughter faded to a smile and their eyes locked, and his face softened as though he were remembering exactly what she was remembering—when laughing had been so easy. “Yeah, well, my dick is what’s getting you the book, so be careful what you do with that voodoo doll of yours, okay?” he said, and the crush of melancholy in her chest for what she’d lost made her want to cry, with real tears, if only, only she had them.

  But she didn’t have them—and that was his fault.

  Whatever they’d had at college—the sex and the fun and the books and the laughter and the loyalty—it hadn’t been enough because he’d left her and she’d let him go, and there were reasons for that, there had to be. Which meant she had to harden her heart against those insidious memories and concentrate on the here and now. On getting the book and saying goodbye.

  “Oh, I’ll be super careful,” she said. “It won’t be my fault if the book deal falls through. I intend to earn every page of that manuscript if I have to bang the brains right out of your head after every damn dinner I cook you to make sure the deal is watertight. So I suggest you get some rest—I’ll need that cock of yours in perfect working order by eight o’clock tonight.”

  And with that, she picked up her plate, took it into the kitchen, stacked it in the dishwasher and headed for the door.

  She stopped halfway, looked at him over her shoulder. “And you might want to set up the second bedroom as a study, an office, whatever you want to call it. That way you won’t be distracted by my goings and...er...comings.”

  She bent over, as though to examine a spot on the floor, knowing her T-shirt was riding up and exposing not only her ass but a perfect rear view of her pussy.

  To make doubly certain Rafael was getting a royal eyeful, she hunched up her shoulders, letting the hem climb further. She knew he was watching because he sucked in a very audible breath then let it out slow-slow-slowly.

  And then she straightened, looked at him over her shoulder again. “Sorry—did I distract you? I thought there was an insect on the floor but it’s just a scuff mark.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  IT WASN’T UNTIL Rafael was barricaded in the second bedroom, having closed the door with a definitive I-am-in-control-goddamn-it click, that he took a proper breath. If you could call the great, slurping gust of air he sucked in then blew out with a “Fuck” attached to it an actual breath.

  He threw his manuscript on the bed and proceeded to tear at his hair until his scalp hurt.

  She’d had to walk into the kitchen just as he’d finished reading the damn death scene—more vibrant, more badass, more seductive, more everything than the inadequate Hope his moronic Alejandro was tormenting himself over in Stomp—and slay him where he stood. Or where he sat. Hell, he couldn’t remember what he’d been doing. Sitting? Standing?

  Drooling, either way, his dick twanging like a divining rod in her direction all through that conversation in the kitchen.

  So what had he done?

  He’d set. A goddamn. Schedule!

  Good job, imbécil.

  No idea how he was supposed to fuck her out of his head within two weeks when she was off-limits to him for sixteen out of every twenty-four hours! And it wasn’t like she was going to let him play happy families with her for the other eight hours—which was the point she was making with that strategic bend-over at the end.

  Insect? Scuff mark?

  “Give me a fucking break,” he muttered.

  She’d known exactly what she was doing. Almost-wearing that goddamn T-shirt as a goddamn dress, which was obviously a cast-off of one of her motherfucking husbands. Talking about earning his book, banging his brains out.

  And the really sick thing about the whole situation was that everything about what she’d said and done in that kitchen encapsulated why he’d fallen so hard for her in college. Because she moved in whatever kind of line she had to, to get what she wanted—straight or curved or twisted—but always forward, never backing away.

  He’d been a fool not to predict she’d cut him off at the knees when he’d left, no matter how many emails he’d sent, calls he’d made or letters he’d written promising to come back. He just...just hadn’t expected her to do that when she loved him as much as he loved her. Hence the books. A form of therapy to get him past the anger and hurt—and still, he’d never come to terms with it.

  Yet now, years later, all it had taken was one moment, her bending
over in a kitchen, for him to not only understand why she’d done what she’d done, but to actually admire her for it. She’d made a straight-line decision because he’d taken the curved-and twisted-line options away by leaving without telling her why he was going or even that he was going.

  Hope in Stomp wouldn’t have had the strength to kick him to the curb so decisively!

  Which is why he was falling way out of love with the languishing Hope. So out of love, he was going to rewrite her. Make her kick more/kiss less ass.

  He picked up the manuscript, took it over to the window and thumbed his way through to the part where Hope touched Alejandro in her fake sleep. The murmur...the hand reaching out...settling over his heart...stupid Alejandro being glad that she was so weak for him, not guessing it was subterfuge.

  Subterfuge—not something anyone would ever accuse Veronica Johnson of. When she faked sleep, she made it damn obvious. She used to do it every Sunday when he’d get back from his run. Stretching seductively, letting the sheet slip so a breast, a leg, one ass cheek, something, was exposed, looking like she was about to burst out giggling but keeping her eyes closed.

  He started laughing.

  Well, fuck. Ripping that whole scene out of Stomp was a good place to start rethinking the book. Then he could rebuild Hope’s character so that when she died of that broken heart she did it in a “take that, asshole” kind of way instead of her current woe-is-me style. Hell, he’d go through the manuscript line by line, starting now, and write himself some revision notes.

  He pulled out his computer, set it up on the vanity table and got to work.

  * * *

  Of all the things Rafael had said in the kitchen, one line above all others kept replaying in Veronica’s head. I’m thinking of the sex scene I just read in Stomp—the hero, Alejandro, bending Hope, the heroine, over the couch and taking her from behind—and wondering if perhaps I should try it with you just to refresh my memory of what it was like when I did that to you that night in DC when we had the place to ourselves.

  Not only because hearing that scene described dredged up the actual memory, although of course it did, but because of the part about him having just read it in Stomp.

  I should be writing erotica, he’d said—but he wasn’t writing erotica. He was writing a literary novel. So why was that scene in there? And how had he used it?

  Questions without answers until she got her hands on the book.

  The disquiet she’d felt at the mausoleum came trickling back, the sense that something wasn’t quite right, the frustration that she didn’t know the right questions to ask. Add that to his reaction this morning when she’d asked to read Stomp, and the way those pages had literally disappeared off the kitchen table when she’d closed her eyes for longer than a blink, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out she was in yet another book—apparently bent over a couch this time.

  Not that that was the end of the world. It was his memory as well as hers—why shouldn’t he use it? And she’d be unidentifiable—she’d have to be. Otherwise it would take some mega-size cojones to agree to sell it to Johnson/Charles, because that was one book her father would definitely read. Rafael would need one hell of a catastrophe scale to get through a meeting with Holden Johnson after that. And then Scarlett would sic her enforcer onto him for a kneecap removal service. And her mother would harvest those kneecaps, grate them over a bowl of Veronica’s spaghetti Bolognese in lieu of Parmesan cheese and force him to eat them.

  Okay, given all that, she couldn’t possibly be a main character. A glimpse of her in a secondary character, perhaps—no problem with that. A cameo, fine. The couch scene? Who cared as long as the female participant wasn’t a short, skinny blonde with greenish-blue eyes?

  That was how he’d written Julie in Catch & Keep, which she knew in her bone marrow had become Catch, Tag, Release—although his words had been “petite,” “willowy,” “platinum” and “turquoise”! Talk about seeing someone through rose-colored glasses. Veronica had made him change Julie to a golden-eyed, statuesque redhead. And she had to assume those changes had stuck, because nobody had recognized Veronica in that character or for sure she would have been tipped off.

  Nobody had recognized her and yet as she heard her sister’s voice in her head telling her to read his damn books, her heart started to thump because she knew the time had come.

  * * *

  She had to stop reading at Chapter 16 of Catch, Tag, Release. Which seemed prophetic, since that was where he’d stalled on the first draft of Catch & Keep two days before graduation, but was really all about getting dinner started because her chili needed two hours’ simmering time.

  She figured she’d get back to reading the book once the chili was on the stove. But as she dumped the ingredients in a pot, then arranged the sides in dishes to be stored in the fridge, scenes from the book kept popping into her mind—scenes that hadn’t disturbed her while she’d been engrossed in reading, but which were now taking on a slightly sinister cast—and she started having second thoughts about continuing.

  Julie was the problem. Julie, who insisted she didn’t want to be swallowed whole by the privileged life that had been mapped out for her since birth...but whose actions seemed to run counter to that goal. Julie, who was getting her wild on with the hero of the piece, the financially challenged Eric, but seemed to be hedging her bets and encouraging wealthy investment banker Niles.

  Still, Veronica had to admit it was possible she was overinterpreting because she knew she was Julie and Eric was obviously Rafael, so she made a decision to read on as far as she could before dinner.

  She made it halfway through Chapter 17, stalling after a scene involving a bottle of champagne and a teeny, tiny jar of caviar that was straight out of her life with Rafael. There was no way to misinterpret what it meant. Rafael had first thought about leaving her the night before graduation—right in the middle of making love to her, if Eric the not-much-of-a-hero’s thought processes were to be believed.

  Ooooh. She was going to make him pay for that.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  VERONICA HAD SET out all the sides on the dining table and was transferring the chili from the pot on the stove to a serving dish when she heard Rafael come into the kitchen at precisely seven o’clock.

  She tried to picture what he was seeing. Just the back of her—her ponytail tied with an innocent pink ribbon, her back demurely covered in black, her lower half shielded by the kitchen island.

  But it was amazing what could be done to the hem and neckline of a little black dress with a pair of kitchen scissors and a hotel sewing kit.

  She finished transferring the chili and picked up the dish. But when she took a deep breath to steady herself for the reveal, she felt something suddenly give at nipple level. A look down had a startled giggle erupting, which she choked back down. She’d known she’d attacked the neckline of her dress a little too vigorously and had hoped the frill of lace purloined from her white silk top would preserve some modesty—but there were her nipples, sitting all the way up and out.

  She had a lightning-fast debate with herself over whether or not to put down the dish so she could shove her nipples back in, but decided they could stay exactly as they were, nestling in that frill of lace like two plump berries floating in cream. She could think of no punishment more apt than flaunting herself at Rafael when he had to wait until eight o’clock to touch her—that would show the schedule-setting bastard that she wasn’t a woman to be messed with!

  “Can I help?” Rafael asked—probably wondering why she was standing motionless making choking sounds.

  “Table’s all set, as you can see,” she said, strangling the words out. “Just take a seat, maybe pour us some wine—the bottle’s open on the table, the glasses are next to it. Better taste it, though—I’m not familiar with that label.”

  She heard the wine glug into the glasses,
then took another deep breath and got control of herself by counting down seconds to guess when he would have a mouthful of red wine...

  Aaand...

  “Right,” she said brightly, and turned. “I’ll just bring this—” Breaking off and biting a quivering lip: he had, after all, just sprayed a mouthful of wine across the table. “Oh no! Is there something wrong with the wine? Choose another bottle if you like.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with the wine, Veronica,” he gritted out, putting his glass carefully on the table and dabbing at the mess he’d made with his table napkin.

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “You know what the problem is.”

  “No, I really don’t think I do,” she said, and waited for him to put down the sodden napkin before coming out from behind the island holding the bowl full of chili.

  “Fuck!” he said, and took a reeling step backward. “Fuck, fuck.”

  She reached the table, put the dish of chili down. “Fuck? But it’s not eight o’clock.”

  “What the...the fuck are you wearing?”

  “Oh, this old thing? I always cook in this,” she said, perjuring herself without compunction as she took her seat.

  “You always cook wearing a top as a dress, stockings and a suspender belt, and your...your chest on display?”

  “My chest?” She laughed. “You know, my mother always said you were the classy one out of the two of us. Finally, I see she’s correct, because I’d call what I’m showing off tits and ass.”

  “Bullshit,” he said.

  “You mean I wouldn’t call it tits and ass? I assure you I—”

  “I mean your mother. She didn’t say that. About...about me being classy.”

  “Oh yes she did! Girl Scout’s honor! You wouldn’t have been sent off to finishing school.” She held out her hand for him to pass his plate. “By the way, if Deanne Cahill in Catch, Tag, Release is supposed to be my mother, I’ll have to give you a fail on characterization. You always did get my mother wrong. She’s not the Antichrist. Now...I need your plate please.”