Do-Over

by Dorien Kelly

  To shock her.

  He hitched his thumb toward a closed door.

  “I haven’t seen it all. Will that be your bedroom?”

  She nodded.

  “Show it to me.”

  Color began to blossom on her arched cheekbones. “It’s just another room, big and empty like this one.”

  “I’d like to see it.”

  She didn’t answer. He knew that he was unsettling her, and he was pleased. Whatever she felt at this moment wasn’t even a fraction of the frustration he’d been experiencing for the past week.

  “Afraid?” he asked, knowing that Cara Adams was incapable of turning down a challenge.

  “No. Of course not.” She marched to the closed door and flung it open. “See?”

  He walked into the room, and as he expected, she followed.

  He swung around to face her. “Take off your panties.”

  Her mouth worked in a silent, shocked oval before she squeaked, “What?”

  He smiled as he gained some measure of relief. At least now he had an honest reaction from her.

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  Mark could hear the sounds of the construction workers on the floors beneath them: radios, the distinctive hissing, gunshot of a pneumatic nailer, the occasional shouted comments from one worker to another.

  “I’ve never been more serious. You’ve got a real case of nerves going today, don’t you?” He was taking criminal advantage of her weakness, but it was only fair. He’d told her that she was his one vulnerability, and then she’d pulled away from him.

  “My panties? Juvenile, Morgan,” she said in a “been there, done that” tone that he knew was pure B.S. She reached up under her black skirt and wriggled a little. Bracing her hand on the wall, she slipped a bit of light blue fabric down one leg, over her sandal, then freed it from her other foot.

  She dangled the underwear between her fingers. “Happy now?”

  He was hard, that much was for sure. He took the panties and tucked them in his hip pocket.

  “I’m getting there.”

  Mark backed her against the wall and kissed her, because if he didn’t, he’d lose control altogether. Cara didn’t fight him. Her mouth against his gentled him. God, she smelled so good—like spicy flowers—and she tasted like sass and cinnamon.

  She was wearing a scoop-necked top made of a stretchy white fabric. Mark hooked his finger into the neckline and pulled it down far enough to settle his lips on the tender skin just below her collarbone. Her fingers wove through his hair, holding him to her skin.

  She sighed, a sexy little sound of pleasure. “This feels so good.”

  Mark’s initial jolt of satisfaction faded when he focused on her words. Not an “I’ve missed you,” or “You feel so good,” but an impersonal “this.” He worked his way back up to her mouth. With his tongue, his teeth, he tried to sway her to give what she was withholding. The stakes were high, but he knew he could be a persuasive man.

  Soon, her hands slipped beneath the belt at his waist, pulled his shirt loose from his trousers, and started working the buttons down the front.

  Somewhere below, one of the workers laughed as though he’d heard the best joke ever. Cara froze. Eyes enormous, she asked, “What are we doing?”

  “It’s okay,” he said before kissing her again. “Just a minute more.”

  He slid a hand to her bottom, stroking her through the fabric of her skirt. Knowing that just beneath that material awaited soft, warm skin ready for the taking, blew his mind. Hers, too, apparently. Her nails dug into his back, right through his shirt. Yes, he was a persuasive man, and he had something to prove.

  “Still want to stop?” he asked, drawing her skirt slowly upward.

  “The jury’s out,” she gasped.

  “Let’s keep ’em there for a while.”

  He tantalized, tempted, came close to giving her what she wanted, but held back. She rocked against him. “Just do it.”

  “Do what?” he teased.

  “Touch me.”

  He sent his hand around to her front, low on her belly. “Open your legs for me,” he said.

  She complied. They were both breathing hard, the humid air closing in on them. He gathered the fabric with his fingertips, pushing it upward.

  He didn’t need to look. He knew this and all parts of Cara’s body as well as he knew his own. Except her heart. It seemed he knew nothing of her heart.

  “Look at me,” he said.

  She did. He brushed his fingertips against damp curls and smiled at the shuddering breath she drew.

  As he stroked deeper with one finger, into a hot, clinging wetness that rocked his world, he watched her reactions.

  He had her now. She was his—every heartbeat, every sharp breath. She couldn’t turn him from her life now.

  “More,” she gasped.

  He kissed her, his tongue sweeping in and tangling with hers. She fumbled with his belt, opened his trousers and reached in to hold him, turning his method of persuasion back on him.

  Eyes closed, he tipped his head toward the cavernous ceiling. “I shouldn’t have started this.”

  She ran her fingers up and down his length. “But you did. I want you to be my first.”

  He opened his eyes. “Your first?”

  “The first man to make love to me in my new bedroom.” His body tightened under her hand. “Please, Mark.”

  She was his fatal weakness. With nothing more than a please, she’d tipped the scales in her favor.

  “Get my wallet from my back pocket.”

  She did, and he rolled a condom down a degree of hardness that just plain damn ached.

  As he lifted her, he said, “Wrap your legs around me.”

  He braced her against the unfinished drywall and entered her. It was a hot, tight slide, a mix of fire and heaven.

  “Not bad for my first,” she said, half-gasping, half-laughing.

  Her first. God, how he hated what that implied.

  “Your only.” He moved in and out of her with powerful intent. “I want to be the only man to have you in here.”

  Words. All it took was words for Cara to arch and shatter. She closed her teeth over the cords of muscle where Mark’s neck met his shoulder, and he came perilously close to spending himself. He held her until she returned to the world, then again said, “Look at me.”

  He was shaking. He loved her, and he was so goddamn scared that it wasn’t going to be enough to keep her.

  “Only me,” he repeated as he renewed a deep rhythm.

  His climax slammed through him, so sudden, strong and hard that he called out to her. He wasn’t alone. Cara’s cries joined his, echoing against the concrete floor and the metal ductwork exposed above. As they quieted and stilled, the construction workers’ music cut off, nailing stopped, and hoots and applause started.

  Shit.

  Still shaking, Cara buried her forehead on his shoulder. “They heard us. I’m so embarrassed…. I can’t believe I did this.”

  He left her body, and her legs slid slowly to the ground.

  “I need to get myself together,” she said. Her voice trembled and tears rimmed her lower lashes. “This was…wrong.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, though the words seemed so inadequate for pushing her too far, too fast, for stealing what she wouldn’t freely give.

  “So am I.”

  Her reply was a knife to Mark’s soul. Once again, he was alone.

  Cara avoided Mark until he left for New York and the Newby closing. This time, he did the smart thing: He let her.

  ON FRIDAY AFTERNOON around four, Cara entered Retreads with a bottle of champagne in one hand and two glasses in the other.

  Bri looked up from her wedding planner. “So what are we celebrating?” she asked. “I know it’s a celebration because champagne isn’t pity party stuff.”

  “I accepted a new job this morning.”

  “No!”

  “I did! It’s right here in Royal O
ak, and I’ll be the most neurotic person in the firm.”

  Bri snorted. “Like you weren’t already.”

  Cara handed the bottle to her. “Just for that, you can open this beast.” Any excuse worked when you were afraid of champagne corks.

  Cara’s friend made short work of the bottle and filled the glass flutes with bubbly. They toasted, then Cara settled on her favorite couch.

  “Much as I never turn down free booze, shouldn’t you be drinking this with the shark-man?” Bri asked.

  “He’s in New York.” Cara sipped her drink. “And I never told him I was looking for a new job, anyway.”

  Bri stalked closer, her vintage Carmen Miranda banana-girl dress flouncing as she walked. “Excuse me, but the last time we talked, weren’t you all fluttery and saying how this could be the real thing?”

  “Um…yes?”

  “And you haven’t even told him you’re leaving your job? Honey, I think you need a better therapist’s couch than this one,” she said, nudging its wooden claw foot with her big toe. “So what’s the deal with you and Mark?”

  “Things have been a little weird between us lately.”

  “Weird,” Bri echoed.

  “Yeah, weird,” she said in her best take-no-crap voice. Bri was her best friend, but some things still remained private. She didn’t like to think about, let alone discuss, sex with Mark and how he’d scared her with his intensity. And how she’d scared herself….

  “Okay, I know when to drop something.” Bri drained half of the liquid in the narrow flute, then said, “So tell me about this new job.”

  “It’s kind of a good-news, bad-news thing,” Cara said. “The good news is that I’ll be doing a lot of stuff I’ve always wanted to try. The bad news is that the job pays about forty percent less than what I’m making now.”

  She said the rest of the bad news in a rush, as though it would cut the pain. Nothing would, though. Giving up on a dream was supposed to hurt; that’s what made a girl keep one until the bitter end.

  “I backed out on my condo deal today.”

  Bri spun back from the metal worktable, where she’d set the champagne bottle. “No way.”

  “I’ll never be able to afford it now. I’m out my initial deposit, but that beats trying to pull this off and eventually having the place foreclosed from under me. Besides, my apartment is okay. It’s a little colorless compared to the condo, maybe, but it has all its parts.”

  So what if the difference between the apartment’s parts and the condo’s parts was sort of like the difference between her parts and a supermodel’s parts?

  “You can do wonders with paint,” Bri pointed out.

  “Sure,” Cara agreed.

  Bri topped off Cara’s glass for her. Cara looked at it and decided she didn’t have the energy left to talk with Bri about the other decision she’d made—the one about cutting all ties with Saperstein, Underwood. It didn’t seem right with good wine in her hand and a friend in front of her who’d already put up with too much Adams-type drama. She changed the subject.

  “You and Seth have been saving money for that Ireland trip, right?”

  Bri shrugged, making the layers of white ruffles covering her chest dance. “The money’s no big deal. Two plane tickets, our bikes…some money to cover nights at bed-and-breakfasts. The challenge is someone to run this place.”

  “Well, that’s where I come in. Now that I’m joining the ranks of the never-gonna-be rich, it’s not like I can buy you fancy china for a wedding gift that you’d never use. What I do have is time. I told the people at the new firm that I can’t start until the week after Labor Day. I want you two to take that month you’ve always been talking about.”

  “No!” Bri screeched.

  Cara laughed. “Yes.”

  “Even Wenda? You’ll take care of Wenda?”

  She’d forgotten about the cat. But hell, if she could spend her days dressing drag queens, she could spend her nights hanging out with an obese, cranky feline. “Even Wenda.”

  Bri launched herself at Cara. “I love you!”

  The fainting couch slid along the linoleum floor, and both women were bathed in champagne. Cara hugged Bri back. “Jeez, for a little thing, you pack a punch, girl.”

  ON THE MONDAY after returning from the Newby closing, Mark made the critical mistake of entering Saperstein, Underwood’s front door.

  Annabeth was there, but this time dressed in a manner nearly befitting a receptionist. No spikes, no collar, no big gold ring in her nose, which she’d had pierced recently. He knew if he commented, she’d just bare her claws and drag them down his chest, so he settled for a sedate, “Good morning.”

  “You’re just a regular kiss of death, aren’t you?” she snapped.

  This wasn’t her usual Princess of Darkness garbage. She was really furious. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean Cara. You’ve chased her right out of the firm. She gave her two-weeks notice today.”

  Operating on pure anger, Mark made it to Cara’s office. Vic Mancini and a few of the younger associates were hanging around, drinking coffee and laughing with her.

  “Out.”

  No one even hesitated. They simply filed out the door.

  “Nice way you have of working a crowd,” Cara said.

  “No jokes. I think you have something to tell me.”

  She folded one hand over the other and sat there like a polite schoolgirl. “I’m leaving Saperstein, Underwood.”

  “So you were interviewing.”

  She swallowed once, then said, “I’ve taken a job with a small firm in Royal Oak. I’ll be doing general practice, maybe even get into court every now and then.” Her smile was a little weak, Mark thought—to the extent he could think at all. “I’ve always wanted to try my hand at litigation.”

  “So you interviewed and took a new job without even a word to me?”

  “I didn’t think it would be helpful.”

  His heart began to hammer so hard that he could hear his blood rushing in his ears. “Helpful? Jesus, Cara, we’re together about every waking hour—not to mention our share of sleeping hours—and you think it wouldn’t be helpful to talk to me?”

  “Mark, I don’t know how to go about this…what to say…but I need you not to yell at me so I can keep it together.”

  “I’m not yelling.” But he knew that he was.

  “Since you came here, my life has been kind of a mess. Actually, to be fair, it was that way long before you arrived. I just hadn’t seen it yet.”

  She looked down at her folded hands. “You asked me a while back if I was happy. The answer was no. I’ve been doing things because they were what I thought I was supposed to do, and not because I got any pleasure out of them.”

  “Does that include your time with me?”

  “No, of course not! But here it is…I’ve decided I need to make some changes before it’s too late. I’ve given up the deposit on my condo and I’m going to downscale.”

  The roaring in his ears slowed. “That’s it? You really had me scared—”

  “I also don’t think it would be a good idea for us to see each other. I mean, I know I’m making the right decision about leaving S.U., but I also know I’m no saint. When I look at you, it’s like being mocked with all I’m giving up. I’m—I’m going to end up resenting you, and I never want that to happen.”

  He stood stone-cold silent. Cara wasn’t the only one who could disappear.

  “I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s not you. It’s me.”

  Had someone given her a copy of the guys’ breakup manual?

  “Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind,” he said, fury scorching his soul.

  Mark left. All in all, he’d liked it better when Cara Adams had thrown up on his shoes.

  14

  Cara’s Rule for Success 14:

  Here’s the only rule that counts…

  Follow your heart.

  ON THE SECOND SATURDAY in August, Bri’s wedding da
y arrived. Cara woke early, and a wonderful sort of optimism enveloped her. Maybe she hadn’t gotten this love thing just right, but Bri had. Last night had been absent of those nightmarish calls that other maids of honor told of, when the bride calls drunk and sobbing at three in the morning, sure she’s making the biggest mistake of her life.

  Bri and Seth were packed and ready to take off for Ireland tomorrow afternoon, and Cara was looking forward to running Retreads for a month. Amazingly, she’d even worked a sort of peace with Wenda, high queen of cats.

  In a bid to continue her progress on the new, improved Cara Adams, she had also signed up for an evening Pilates class and had bought an enormous stack of books to read for the sheer pleasure of reading.

  Of course, she had her eye on a few changes she’d like to make to the organization of Bri’s store. A girl couldn’t totally change her ways in a matter of weeks, after all.

  At nine, Cara met Bri and the other bridesmaids at a hair salon in downtown Royal Oak. It was one of those upper-end places with Detroit’s signature techno music, impossibly exotic-looking stylists and enormous plate-glass windows looking out onto the street.

  For Bri, Cara and the bridesmaids, updos and professional makeup were the order of the morning. As the stylist used some heavy persuasion and heavier mousse to get Cara’s flyaway hair to stay “up,” Cara watched the reflection of the morning street scene in the mirror in front of her.

  Joggers, dog-walkers, friends out for a morning coffee, it was a perfect summer morning. One day, a million years from now, she’d have the money to live in the middle of this. In the meantime, she would have the kind of job that permitted her a morning in a coffeehouse, files in front of her, or an occasional non-vacation-day afternoon in the park doing nothing at all.

  Suddenly, Cara’s pulse skipped. On the sidewalk across Fourth Street was her one regret: Mark. She hadn’t seen him since he and Stewart Harbedian had made a brief partner-type appearance at her going-away party a week ago. His dark eyes void of emotion, Mark had wished her luck and made arrangements to pick up the bar tab. Cara had wished that she’d been drunk enough to chase him. But no, she’d had only one drink and had still retained her self-restraint. Barely.