“I haven’t seen you in two weeks,” Quon says when I open the door. “Are you seeing another delivery man?”
“Never! You know I am one hundred percent loyal to you. I was in Los Angeles for a couple days,” I say, then invite him in. “You want some noodles with me today, Quon?”
“No, no, I am super busy today.”
“Super busy, not regular busy, but super busy?”
“Super busy, super busy. Like my six-year-old niece says.”
“My son says that too. You have a hot date tonight?”
“Ha-ha. You are very funny, Jane.”
Quon is still recovering from a wounded heart when his girlfriend left him six months ago. “Hot date for you?” he fires back.
“I wish,” I say as an answer. I wish I had a hot date with Matthew. But the sooner I get to writing and to recording and to cutting an album, the sooner I can explore all the possibilities of that man. Damn, the prospect of getting to know him—in every way—is all I need to write my ass off this afternoon.
I place the cartons on the kitchen counter.
As I pay Quon, adding in a fifty-dollar tip today as a thank-you from the Grammy, my phone rings. Quon mouths, “Thank you” several times as he steps backward out of the door.
“You were fantastic.” It’s Matthew, and I beam even though he can’t see me.
“You listened?”
I walk across the living room to my sliding glass door, pushing it open, enjoying both the crisp, cool air and the midday sunshine.
“Of course I listened,” he says as I sit down in the lone chair, and a thrill races through me that he tuned in. Sure, it’s his job. But I hope he listened for other reasons too. “What are you doing right now?”
“I’m sitting on my deck.”
“Lucky deck.”
Lucky deck. Lucky deck. I turn those two words over in my head. I like the sound of them together. They fit.
“You think my deck is lucky, do you?”
“I’d like to be on that deck getting lucky,” he says.
I laugh instantly, loving the boldness in the statement. “Maybe someday,” I tease.
“You let me know when I can put that someday on my calendar,” he tosses back. Then he clears his throat. “So did Cohain hit on you?”
There’s a jealous note to his voice that doesn’t go unnoticed. Or un-enjoyed, and I can’t resist toying. “As a matter of fact, he asked me out. He wanted to show me his record collection.”
“What did you say?”
“I said no. Why? Are you jealous?”
“Completely. Though I’m thrilled you declined, and not merely because I don’t want you talking to other reporters,” he says, and if he’s going to flirt like this the whole time we work on the article, I might go insane with pent-up longing. But then, I’d likely welcome that kind of crazy right now. “So, how are those gift cards doing?” he asks, shifting gears.
“Burning a hole in my pocket. I have nineteen more. Wait. Make that twenty. You didn’t let me use that one at all.”
“I would be delighted to not let you use another one. Sometime soon, I hope,” he says, stripping his voice of all the teasing, and speaking only with what I hope is sincerity. “You know, I like to cook too, though.”
“I hate cooking. What do you cook? Lamb, sausages, bread pudding?”
“Actually, my orders from the Queen are relaxed at home. I’ll have you know I make a wonderful pasta primavera. I usually go to the farmer’s market on Wednesdays in Union Square to get vegetables. It’s near my office.”
“Get out of here!”
“No, I really do,” he insists.
I quickly explain my exuberance. “My sister runs the market. I usually go there too. Not to buy food, of course. I go for the jewelry.”
“We should have a cup of coffee there Wednesday. We could get started on the story right away. Do our first official interview and discuss a time frame for the rest, schedule it, you know.”
“Sure, I’ll probably head over around ten. That work?”
“Absolutely. Let’s meet by the Waffle Guy. You know where he is?”
“Of course.”
“Don’t you work on Wednesdays?” I ask curiously.
“Yeah, I do. As a matter of fact, this Wednesday I have an interview scheduled with this year’s Grammy winner for best album.”
“Duh,” I say, laughing at my own faux pas.
“So it’s a date then.”
“Is it?” I ask, wanting to know what he’ll say.
“Probably the most painful one I’ll ever go on since I’ll have to pretend I’m not dying to kiss you again. And, you know, do a hell of a lot more than that. So I’ll see you tomorrow.”
And on that note, I head back inside, dig into my cold noodles, and bust my butt to write a song about a hell of a lot more.
The problem is I can’t focus on the music. My naughty imagination is far too busy occupying every inch of real estate in my brain, and a hell of a lot more.
Chapter Twelve
I performed at the farmer’s market once. I brought the old acoustic and sat cross-legged on a blanket by the entrance to the market while Aidan made animal balloons for the kids and Ethan handed them out, always the helpful “assistant” as he liked to say. Young kids clapped along to “This Land is my Land” as I sang my heart out for the preschool set of Manhattan.
Every time I come back, I can’t help but picture the little fledgling indie rock singer who strummed for the five-and-under crowd, even though my little one isn’t with me today. It’s a school day for Ethan, but I’m just here today as a civilian anyway. I’m wearing a soft black sweater, jeans, boots, and a warm coat. I find Matthew leaning against the Waffle Guy’s truck, his eyes fixed down on the pages of his book. I feel a little sneaky, like I’m spying on him, watching him from a distance, but the view is worth it. I make note of the cut of his jeans, well-worn but trim, his jacket, the same black leather, and his shoes, black combat boots this time. He doesn’t look dashing or proper. He looks the part, like a rock critic.
He looks cool.
“Lost in a good book?” I ask as I reach him.
“A very good book,” he says, tapping the cover. He’s moved on to Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep.
“You finished L.A. Confidential?”
“Just last night. Started this one this morning. I find that with a thirty-minute subway ride to our offices in Gramercy Park I can get a lot of reading in.”
“The Big Sleep is in Los Angeles too. So what’s this Los Angeles fascination of yours all about?”
He tucks the book into his backpack. “I enjoy the fascination with superficiality, the obsession with stars, the rampant sunshine. We don’t have much of that, of course, back home. And the whole city was really a big fight over water rights, and the rise and fall of the water company was the foundation of the city. The history of LA is fascinating and the city is teeming with stories. Plus, my little brother lives there, and I’m determined to know more about LA than him. We have to constantly find ways to compete.”
“I’ve never really been a big LA person.”
“Well, I should probably go now. You don’t like to cook and you don’t like LA. I’m not sure what else we’ll talk about.”
“You’re right. This was silly. I’ll just go home.” I pretend I’m about to walk off.
“Wait.” He reaches for my arm. My eyes are immediately drawn to his hand on me. Even through my coat and sweater, I can feel my skin calling out for his touch. “I have an idea, and I bet the vegetarian in you will be powerless to resist.”
“Try me.”
“Do you want to come over to my offices for lunch? I could make you that pasta primavera and we could chat there.”
I narrow my eyes. “Does Beat have a lot of pasta-primavera-making reporters to support a kitchen? Or is it just you whipping up the veggies?”
He laughs. “It’s a prerequisite of working there. Everyone is required to have a signatur
e dish to cook once a week. Or, it might be that we happen to share office space with a sister magazine owned by the same company. Tastes Delicious and they have a full and proper kitchen.”
Too bad he’s not taking me back to his apartment. Because then it wouldn’t be the vegetarian in me that’s powerless to resist. It would be the woman.
But vegetables will have to do for now.
“Let’s see what sort of secrets you can wheedle out of me using pasta as a hook,” I say as I flash him a challenging stare.
“Oh, just you wait until you try my pasta primavera. I’ll have you eating out of the palm of my—” Then he stops himself and holds up a hand. “See, I find it very challenging not to turn everything into an innuendo with you, especially when it involves things like hands and eating,” he says, emphasizing the last word as he raises his eyebrows, then turns on his heel to head for a stall stuffed with ten thousand varieties of mushrooms.
“Mushrooms will distract me from how gorgeous you look today,” he says in a low voice as he checks out the mushrooms. I grin privately, thrilled with his compliments.
Then he heads for a food stall with asparagus and another with carrots. He makes what he swears will be his final purchase—green peas—then tips his forehead between two stalls that ring the edge of the market.
“It’s a shame it’s not June,” Matthew says, and we both stop to look up at the wintry sky, the color of slate. Gloom-filled clouds have claimed the once-blue real estate.
“Because it would be warm and wonderful and we could wear shorts and tank tops?”
He rakes me over with his blue eyes, lingering on my chest in a way that would bug me if he were a random guy on the street, but that instead heats my body given that he’s not. “Tank tops are a big yes. That, and summer fruit,” he adds. “I love coming here in June and July. They have the most amazing peaches. Honey-kissed peaches,” he says, as if he enjoys the way those words take shape on his tongue as he’s looking at me. My chest feels hot, and I bite my lip absently, barely even aware I’m doing it. But he picks up on my signals, the cues that my body’s giving off. He leans closer and brings his mouth to my ear, his breath warm against my skin, sending shivers through me. “Isn’t that a great description for peaches?”
I sway slightly, and he steadies me with a hand on my elbow. There’s a table full of bread behind me that I may topple into if he keeps doing this. “You need to stop talking to me about fruit as if it’s foreplay,” I say breathily.
“I do?” he asks, far too innocently to be believed.
“Yes. You do.”
“Why?”
“Because,” I say in a jagged whisper.
“Because why?”
“Because it makes me want more,” I admit, even though there’s a part of me that’s terrified to say that, but another part of me—probably the part controlled by this sharp, sweet ache in my body—is demanding as hell.
“They’re incredible peaches, though,” he says, never taking his eyes off me, as he continues seducing me in the alley at the market. “Juicy and sweet. And they have cherries. Summer cherries. I’ll buy a carton and stand by my sink and eat them all. I can’t help myself. They taste delicious. And sun-ripened apricots,” he says, shaking his head several times as if he’s savoring the memory of the taste on his tongue. “I’ll have one, then another, then more please…” He lets the last words linger between us, deliberately burning me up.
I pull at my sweater, as if it’s summer and it’s sticking to my skin. And suddenly, it’s no longer cold outside. It’s hot and the sun is beating down on me and I want to strip away my layers of clothes. I want to lift my face to the sun. I want to inhale the smell of ripe, tantalizing fruit. I want to pin my hair up, let my skin turn warm, feel Matthew’s lips on the back of my neck, his arms wrapped around my waist, my body tangled up in his.
“You like torturing me,” I say.
He shakes his head. “No. I don’t like it. I love it.” He places his hand on my back, and guides me out of the market and onto the crowded sidewalk. “But do you want me to stop?”
“No. I want you not to stop. That’s the problem.”
“Does it make you feel any better if I told you it’s torture for me too?”
“Sure,” I say with a laugh. “That makes everything better.”
“Because,” he says as we turn onto his block, and he says in a completely deadpan voice, “It really is torture waiting for that summer fruit.”
I swat his arm playfully. “Thanks,” I say sarcastically. “Way to give a girl a complex.”
He grins and shrugs, his admission that he likes to have fun. We reach his office building and head through the lobby to the banks of elevators. We wait in silence, and then once we step inside the lift, the doors close, and it’s just us, he turns to me. “I want more too,” he says in that low and sexy voice that turns me inside out. “And I swear this will be the last time for a while, but I can’t resist doing this right now.”
He drops the bags from the farmer’s market on the floor of the elevator, backs me against the wall, and cups my face. My breath catches as he moves closer, then presses his hips into mine, lining up his tall, trim frame against me in a way that makes it clear how much more he wants me too. Then he delivers a scorching kiss, deep and hungry and desperate, threatening to send me up in flames. I feel it across every inch of my skin, inside every cell in my body, and it’s like the end of a rock anthem, a searing coda to an epic song, as he explores my mouth with his tongue. One hand drops away from my face, and in an instant I feel his fingers on the waistband of my jeans. He draws a quick line across my belly with his index finger, and I arch into him, wishing there were time for his fingers to undo the button, then the zipper, then slide inside my panties and save me from this excruciating ache between my legs. But I have no such luck because the elevator is slowing, and he’s lingering on my lips, in an exquisitely cruel letting go, the final note held long and lasting, reverberating through your bones.
The moment ends all too soon. Seconds later the doors open, and I exit the elevator, in some sort of heady, drugged state that I’d like to stay in for a long, long time.
Chapter Thirteen
I stop by the ladies’ room to splash cold water on my face. Yes, I’ve become this person. This crazily turned-on woman who hasn’t been touched in years. Now, give her a few choice words said in a swoonworthy voice, a hot kiss in an elevator, and she needs to be doused in cold water in order to function.
I stare at myself in the mirror for a moment, wondering if I can wipe the stupid lust from my eyes. Or if I even need to. Then I turn those words around in my head. Stupid lust. Stupid kiss. Stupid heart.
I grab my phone from my back pocket and send those words to myself in an e-mail. Who knows? Maybe they’ll spur a song. Because the more songs I write, the better off we all are. But for now, I excise the kiss from my head to focus on the story.
I leave the bathroom and join Matthew in the gourmet kitchen in his office building. It’s all white, with stainless-steel appliances, and unbearably tiny by the rest of the world standard, but it’s massive for Manhattan. Massive meaning a few square feet. “I would offer to help, but I’m a disaster in the kitchen. Can I wash something or set the table?”
Matthew shakes his head as he deftly wields a glinting steel knife, chopping the asparagus and the mushrooms. “So tell me about your deep-seated hatred of kitchens, food, cooking. Where does it stem from, Jane Black?”
“I’m sure it goes back to my childhood. I remember as a young girl, having a terrible fear of pots and pans,” I say, quickly going along with the playful banter. It helps keep my brain clean of naughty thoughts. Besides, he’s already moved on to this other side, so I might as well go with it.
“I’ve heard of that,” he says as he moves onto the carrots. “It can scar you for life, rendering you completely dependent on Chinese takeaway.”
“I’m afraid that’s what’s happened. I had a bat lin
e to China Hunan set up in my apartment. My relationship with the delivery guy has been my closest with a man in the last year and I’m thinking of having an IV drip installed for Chinese food.”
He puts down the knife, takes a step closer, and lays his hand against my forehead, as if taking my temperature. He nods sagely. “Your condition is much more serious than I thought.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.” I hang my head low. Then shift gears. “Do you have any tea?”
“Do I have any tea? Is that like a joke or a test? Cupboard next to the fridge,” he says, gesturing.
I move a millimeter or two to the right and open the cabinet door. I’m greeted by a shelf full of tea—tins with black tea in all varieties. I grab the English Breakfast teabags and two mugs, then start filling the mugs from the tap.
“I am going to pretend you didn’t just do that.”
“Do what?”
He turns away from the frying pan where he’s just tossed the chopped vegetables. “I’m English. We don’t microwave our tea. We put the kettle on, make it properly.”
“Oh, excuse my American ways,” I tease, making a mental note that he refers to himself as English, though I prefer to use British most of the time. Sounds so classy and sophisticated. But whether I call him British or English, Matthew is always sexy to me. He steps away from the stove and moves a couple inches closer to me, reaching over my head into the cupboard. I don’t move at all. I stand there, his body suddenly near enough that if I were to step one or two inches closer, I could feel his chest, his belly, his belt buckle against me, like in the elevator. I could reach for his belt with one hand and pull him against me and reenact the prior scene. Take it further. Make it last longer. Hit the alarm on the elevator so it stops. This time, I’d turn the tables on him. I’d back him up against the wall, run my hands through his hair, make him moan, make him want me desperately. I could take his shirt off, run my fingers over his chest, trace the lines of his stomach.
We could finish what we started. Except we’re in his office, and Matthew has already turned that side off and seems to be back in this other zone, where we’re all chitchat and teasing, and I like it. Really, I do. I enjoy being with him so much, even though the ease with which he slips between Matthew the Reporter and Matthew the Hot-as-Sin, Kiss-Me-In-the-Elevator Man throws me off. I watch him silently as he fills the kettle with water, places it on a burner, and then plunks the tea bags into the mugs. “I can drink tea any time of day,” he muses.
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