by Bryn Donovan
“I like ivory better. But I’m afraid Mom’ll get mad. She won’t want everyone to think I’m not a virgin.”
Andi snorted. “Who thinks you’re a virgin?”
“Great-aunt Marta will want to pretend.” Lissa put the rejected dress back on its hanger.
“I saw this lace thing that was sort of off-white,” Andi suggested. “You want me to go grab it?”
“Yeah, let’s try it,” her sister agreed. “Get a size six. These things run small.”
Andi found the dress on the rack, thinking it must be nice to get a size six when clothes ran small. She brought it back to Lissa, saying, “It’s kind of romantic.”
“Thanks.” Lissa looked it over. “I don’t think it’s too foofy. I like it.”
The spaghetti-strap gown made her look like a vintage Vogue model. Andi told Lissa she had to go back to the three-way mirror to look.
“God,” Lissa breathed, marveling at the reflection. “It’s gorgeous.”
“You’re gorgeous.”
“I love it,” she declared, flushing with pleasure. “Oh my God, Andi, I’m getting married! I’m so excited.”
Andi hugged her. When the saleslady came over, Andi told her, “I think we have a winner.”
The tailor pinned the dress where it needed to be taken in a little, just under the bust. After Lissa changed into her street clothes again and they left the store, she asked Andi, in a conciliatory way, “So, what is on your mind? About David, I mean.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” If she started talking about the house, she wouldn’t be able to keep herself from talking about the apparition. And if she talked about that, her family would think she was crazy again, and they’d worry about her until she really did lose her mind.
“David was just telling me about when he was growing up,” she told her sister as they headed toward Lissa’s car. “It sounds like things were really rough.”
“Oh, yeah?” Lissa asked. “Poor little rich boy, eh?”
“I’m serious! I really feel bad for him.”
Her sister’s brows knitted. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know—he was talking about his dad abusing women.”
“Oh.” Lissa got into the driver’s seat and slammed the door shut as Andi slid into the passenger side. “His dad was, like, a wife-beater? Andi, that’s not good.”
“Obviously it’s not,” Andi snapped.
“No, I mean…a lot of times when people grow up around stuff like that, they act the same way.”
Andi’s temper flared, even though David himself thought that very same thing. He kept women at arm’s length so he couldn’t hurt them…so they weren’t in striking distance.
As Lissa turned the key in the ignition, Andi said, “He’s not like that.”
“So, was he telling you about all this before or after you had sex with him? Tell me it wasn’t during.”
“You know what? Shut up.”
“I’m sorry! I get worried about you.”
“Well, it was after. He just told me the other day.”
Lissa pulled onto the ramp that led to the mall. Andi pitched to one side in her seat. “Oh my God, slow down,” she told her sister.
“All right, all right,” Lissa mumbled, easing off the gas. “Look, I do feel bad for David. I guess even people who seem like they have it made, they’ve still got their problems, huh?”
“Exactly.”
“I’ll be super nice to him next time I see him,” Lissa promised. “When am I going to get to see him again?”
“You will if you’re around when he picks me up on Saturday. You’re going shopping with me now, right? You’ve got to help me find a good date dress.”
“Yes, I’ll help. You’re going to need it. You don’t even know how to shop.”
“I know how. It’s just not my favorite thing.”
“You shop like a guy,” her sister told her. “You go in and grab some jeans and, like, a plaid shirt, and you buy them and leave. And then later you’re all, ‘These jeans don’t fit!’ Maybe you should have tried them on!” Lissa laughed at her own description which, Andi had to admit, was pretty accurate.
“Well, I’m trying things on today. You have to tell me what looks good. I need something I can wear to your rehearsal dinner, too.”
“Hey, you ought to invite him to the wedding!”
Andi wasn’t about to tell Lissa she already did, and she hadn’t gotten an answer yet. “Even if I did, he couldn’t sit with me. I’m sitting with the bridesmaids, right? Who are they again?”
“There’s Janelle—my college roommate? And cousin Olivia.”
“Olivia? Isn’t she more like flower girl age?”
“She’s seventeen now,” Lissa said.
“Oh my God.”
“I know, right?” Her sister looked over at her. “So what do you think? Do you want to bring David?”
“I don’t know.” She imagined David all dressed up and holding her close for a romantic slow dance. Then she considered what embarrassing things her relatives might say to him. A wedding almost guaranteed awkward moments.
She didn’t care. Life could be awkward. She wanted him there.
“Tell you what,” Lissa said. “I’ll figure on Andi plus guest. You can bring David, or you can just bring one of your friends, like Vinita or whoever.” They pulled into the parking lot of the mall. “Come on. Let’s go find something for you to wear that’ll knock him off his feet.”
* * *
When Andi answered the door, David said, “Jesus.”
She’d bought a cobalt dress that revealed only her bare arms and a hint of cleavage. Lissa had told her it brought out the blue in her eyes. Between the way Lissa had fixed her hair—an elaborate braided updo she’d found on Pinterest—and the bronze sandals, Andi worried she was overdressed, like a grown woman belatedly going to prom.
“What?” she demanded. David wore a suit and tie, as expected. She didn’t look so much fancier than he did, did she?
“You look amazing,” he said.
“Really? I was just going for pretty.” She grinned. “You look pretty amazing yourself.” She noticed just a hint of expensive-smelling cologne.
The restaurant, Arcadia, was on the forty-fourth floor of the Chicago Stock Exchange. “This place is gorgeous,” Andi murmured as they walked in. Above the modern dining room, crystal chandeliers twinkled. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, the city skyline added to the sparkle.
“Hi. David Girard,” he said to the host.
“Of course, we remember you, Mr. Girard,” the man replied. “Right this way.”
Once they sat down and opened their menus, David asked, “What sounds good?”
“Amuses Bouche,” Andi read aloud. “I didn’t say that right, huh?”
“Close enough.”
“What does that mean? ‘Amuse the mouth’? Like, appetizers?”
“Exactly like appetizers.”
Andi scanned further down the menu at the entrées. Dry Aged New York Steak, Celery Heart, Sauce Choron, Potato Gnocchi. Maybe David would order that. Filet of Venison, Wild Huckleberries, Braised Pear, Alsace Knepfla. What the hell was knepfla?
“I was thinking of getting the farmer’s cheeses and a bottle of Chardonnay to start?” David said. “You said you like cheese.”
“I love cheese. But I think I’m going to have that plus one of the salads as an entrée.”
“What?” David looked down at the menu again, then back at Andi. “There’s nothing vegetarian.”
“It’s okay. I get creative with ordering all the time.”
“I called, and they said they usually have a couple of vegetarian entrees,” he said, sounding agitated.
“You don’t need to get all worried about it,” she told him, even though she found it charming. “That’s going to happen at a place where they change the menu every day.”
The server came up to their table. “Good evening. Welcome to Arcadia,” he began.
Andi looked around. At the table next to her, a server brought a young couple their entrees. The food sat at the centers of the white plates, pristine and precious and tiny.
It was fun to get dressed up and go into a fancy restaurant, but this food was not her kind of thing at all. She had skipped lunch, because for her, going out to eat meant a hearty meal.
“We can go anywhere you want,” David said.
* * *
No one else at the Peace Out Cafe wore a suit and tie or, for that matter, a silk dress and heels. Mellowed hippies and grungy grad students stared at David and Andi. As they sat down at one of the Formica tables, littered with flyers advertising political rallies and Reiki healing, David joked, “Doesn’t anyone dress up for dinner anymore?”
“I love this place,” Andi confessed. “It’s so nice to have it just a couple of blocks from our apartment.”
“Well,” David said, regarding her with a lustful stare, “at least I stand a chance of getting a good dessert.”
“You do,” Andi teased back.
Her favorite waitress came up to the table: a woman in her sixties, maybe, with a wild mane of silver hair. As usual, she wore a flowing robe-like dress. Andi always thought she looked like some kind of Celtic goddess.
“I’ll start with a beer,” David said. “How about a Bohemia?”
“Make that two,” Andi added.
“I’ll be right back, children,” the waitress intoned, floating off.
“I know it’s a little crunchy,” she said, “but food is really good. Seriously.”
“Hmm.” He took a dubious look at the menu. “What should I get?”
“I always get the stuffed acorn squash in the fall. But I think you should try the black bean burger with the sweet potato fries.”
He frowned.
“Trust me,” she urged him as the waitress returned with the beer.
“I always trust you.” David clinked his bottle against hers. “I never saw you with your hair like that before. Is that hard to do?”
“It’s too hard for me. Lissa did it.”
“Oh. That was nice.”
“Yeah, I think it’s the kind of thing you learn how to do if you’re on the pompom squad in high school.”
“You didn’t do pompoms?”
She shook her head. “But I was shop class student of the year. It was a big deal because there were only two girls in shop class.”
“You’re good with your hands,” he deadpanned.
She rolled her eyes. “What did you do in high school?”
“Eh, debate, wrestling, football.”
“That’s quite a combination. I always thought debate was for smart geeks.”
“I’m not smart?” he objected.
“You’ve never been a geek in your life.”
“Obviously you still don’t know me that well.”
She toyed with the neck of her beer bottle. “I’m working on it.”
* * *
They went back to Andi’s, where they discovered they would have to be quiet because Lissa was there, asleep. In Andi’s bedroom, when she unbuttoned David’s shirt, she decided to ask.
She ran her hand lightly along the faint, circular scars she’d noticed before, below the collarbone. “David,” she whispered, “what is this? What happened here?”
He pulled away then took her hand in his, removing it from his chest. “I don’t want to talk about that,” he murmured, leaning in to kiss her.
She didn’t know whether she was being kind or merciless, but she couldn’t let it slide. “Why not? I thought you trusted me.”
“I do. It’s just boring.”
“Boring?” She steeled herself. “They look like cigarette burns.” He made no response. “Am I right?”
“Yeah,” he said, not looking at her. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Your dad.”
“Andi, it was a long time ago. I was six, okay?”
“What?” This was worse than she’d expected. How could anyone—even someone horrible, like David’s dad—do that to a small child? Just thinking about it made her sick.
David said, “I’m just saying, I’m over it.”
How could he be? “Those scars on your back. You weren’t in a fight in a biker bar.”
“Actually, I was in a fight in a biker bar once. But I won.”
“Do I even want to know the details of that?”
“Probably not.”
“You’re a good fighter,” she said, thinking about how easily he’d bested Carlos. “Because of defending yourself against your dad,” she guessed.
“Yeah. By the time I was fourteen, he didn’t mess with me anymore.” He sighed. “Can we stop this now? This is pretty much the worst pillow talk ever.”
She gently touched the odd raised scars on his back. She didn’t ask, but the question hung in the air.
“It was an electrical cord,” he told her, without emotion. “Used like a whip.”
“God, David,” she said, close to tears. “How many times did he…do things like this to you?”
He shook his head.
“Didn’t you ever tell anyone else?”
“No.” He sounded a little surprised himself at that. “I sometimes thought about telling Mr. Willingham—you know, the gardener guy we met the other day.”
“Yeah, why didn’t you? He liked you.”
David laughed without humor. “I liked him, and I was a dumb kid. I thought he’d confront my dad, and my dad would fire him. Or kill him.” He shrugged. “Mr. Willingham wasn’t that stupid. He probably would have just called DFS.”
“And you could have gotten out of there.”
“Most of the time my dad just forgot I was there. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been. You know, after law school, I interned in a public prosecutor’s office. There are so many cases that are so much worse.”
He downplayed what happened to him. Probably he didn’t like the idea of himself as vulnerable, a victim, even though he’d only been a child then.
“I don’t understand how you turned out the way you did.”
“A soulless lawyer?”
“Soulless? Why would you say that? You’re smart and you’re kind and you’re a good man.”
He flinched when she touched his cheek, then closed his eyes and leaned slightly against her hand. “Andi, you’re the one who brings out the good in me.”
“That’s not true.” Andi pulled him closer.
She reveled in the sensation of his powerful, bare body against her own. She thought of what that body had been through, when he hadn’t been powerful, at all…pain that went beyond what the scars could show. And in spite of all of that—or because of it?—he was the strongest man she knew.
As they kissed, Andi ran her hands along his back, as though she could smooth away the marks of the past. He deepened their kiss, melting her to the core. Gently, she pushed him to lie on his back on the bed. She thought he would resist. He wasn’t one to relinquish control. But after a slight hesitation, he stretched out on his back. Good. She wanted to take care of him.
Andi kissed his chest, and then lower, on his abdomen, feeling a shudder go through him in response. He lay compliant, aroused. The sight of him stirred both her tenderness and her lust. She unbuckled his jeans and undressed him, taking the opportunity to plant a biting kiss in the delicious hollow just alongside the hipbone.
To let him feel her wetness, Andi lightly straddled his leg. She stroked his erection with one cupped hand, then tended to him with both. His eyes stayed closed, and she enjoyed the play of sensations flickering across his face. He reached out like a blind man to caress her.
When she bent her head to run her tongue up the length of his shaft, he stirred and said in a low voice, with a half-laugh, “I don’t deserve this.”
Something told he
r he actually believed that. “Yeah, you do,” she said softly.
She couldn’t take his whole magnificent cock into her mouth, but she took him as deeply as she could, brushing her fingertips over his balls as she served him in the way she had often imagined.
“God, Andi,” he said on a harsh breath, and his fingers touched her hair and brushed her temple, the softest of caresses. No coercion, just pure appreciation.
She took her time until her jaw began to ache, and until her own hunger was too sharp to ignore. Then she rose up and mounted him. His hands moved her hips. The pleasure of having him sunk to the hilt inside her made her gasp.
Andi met his eyes. “Don’t look at me,” she whispered.
“I want to watch you.”
She burned from his hot stare and the rising heat of her desire.
Soon she no longer cared if he watched. She cried out once, and then again. Even if she had wanted to, she couldn’t hide any part of herself from him. She screamed his name as she came undone around him.
“Love,” he breathed, and in the next moment he joined her in release.
Andi leaned over to lay her head on his chest as the after-tremors of her climax thrummed through her body.
His large hand cradled the back of her head, and he pulled his head up enough to kiss her cheek. “Thank you.” He sounded so guileless.
She laughed. “You don’t have to thank me.”
“You’re really good to me.”
“You’re good to me, too,” she said. “I like how that works out.”
Chapter Eleven
“When time did you tell Gloria you would be there?” Andi asked as they drove to Evanston.
“Nine o’clock.”
“We kind of overslept, I guess.”
David stepped on the gas. “We’ll make it.”
“You don’t need to go that fast.”
Her chiding made him smile. “Mr. Willingham’s probably out there already. He’s clearing out all those shrubs and taking out the trees today.”
“You like him a lot, don’t you.”
“He’s a good guy.”
When they got there, Gloria told them, “The first floor looks great.” She wore a golden yellow jacket, a slim gray skirt and heels. David supposed she would be showing houses later that day. “The fresh paint makes such a difference, and the woodwork is amazing.”