Amanda wasn't fat and ugly. Even time he looked at her, he could tell she was thinking about him, probably thinking about him naked. He liked to think about her naked, too. She was so hot.
And now he'd made his first real contact with her, not counting the times he'd said hello on his way into Dr. Tred-way's office. Those times he'd been sort of careful how he spoke to her, because of Louise, but he'd managed to get in a wink or two. He liked the idea of putting one over on Louise. She had it coming.
If only he could see the expression on Amanda's face when she opened the card, but he was too far away. Expressions could tell you a lot. He could always tell from Louise's expression when she was getting mad. She could be kind of scary when she got mad, but kind of exciting, too. Usually he hated having sex with Louise, but when she was mad it wasn't quite so yucky.
But he couldn't see Amanda's expression, especially because this late in the afternoon on a cloudy day, there wasn't much light. Bringing a pair of binoculars to Starbucks and using them to spy on somebody across the street would probably get the management on his case. He didn't want to get anybody on his case.
Maybe he could tell something from her body language. She took her time opening the card. He hoped she liked the kitties on the front. She liked little hummingbirds, and kitties were even cuter. He'd seen the card and thought about Amanda, all soft and cuddly. Or she would be, once he got her alone.
He had most of it planned. First he'd send her a bunch of valentines to get her in the mood. Then on Valentine's Night he'd sneak into her apartment and carry her off, just like in the movies. She might scream at first, and he hadn't worked out what to do about that.
The screaming wouldn't go on long, though, because once she recognized that he was her secret valentine, she'd be happy. He'd use the Mercedes as the getaway car. That should impress her, and it had a great back seat.
He gazed at her standing on the sidewalk and thought about how great it would be, undressing her on that back seat. She would love that. She must have liked the kitties he'd sent her, too, because she stared at them for a long time. She looked cold out there in the wind. He could warm her up fast, but it wasn't time for that, yet. First he had to lay the groundwork.
Amanda had stopped looking at the outside of the card and was finally opening it. He had to clap a hand over his mouth to keep from laughing as he thought about what the inside of the card said. Let's play around.
The minute he'd read that, he'd known it was the perfect card to start with. He'd bet Amanda would love to play around. She always looked as if she could hardly wait to get free of Dr. Tredway. He wouldn't mind getting free of Dr. Tredway, himself, except Louise had said she'd divorce him if he stopped going to stupid therapy.
A divorce wouldn't be so good. He'd been forced to sign a pre-nup, so he wouldn't get any of Louise's money. That would mean going back to the assembly line at the feminine products factory, and he was never doing that again. He'd put up with Louise forever if it meant he didn't have to go back to work.
At first Harvey had hated the idea of sex therapy, but that was before he'd seen Amanda looking so sexy as she sat at the desk in the front office. She had great hooters. She always smiled at him, and her voice was low and sweet, as if she'd like to tell him how much she craved his body, but she didn't dare.
He loved watching her holding his card, her blond silky hair blowing in the wind. She stared at the inside of the card for a long time, too. She must know who'd sent it, considering they'd been secretly flirting with each other for weeks, now. He wondered if she'd plaster the card against her chest, like he'd seen girls do in the movies.
Instead she put it back in the envelope. Maybe girls didn't clutch messages to their chest anymore. She might take the card home with her, though, and put it up on her refrigerator with a couple of magnets. That way she could look at it all the time and think about him.
She started walking down the street, away from him. He imagined what she'd do if he ran across the street, dodging traffic, and caught up with her. If he did that, he'd glance at the card and go, Whatcha got there? And she'd give him a sly smile and go, Wouldn't you like to know? Then he'd go, I already know.
After that they could leave and have a drink together, and she might invite him to her place. But that would be boring. What he had in mind would be way more dramatic. So he wouldn't run across the street.
On her way past a trash can, she tossed something into it. That something looked an awful lot like the card he'd sent. But she wouldn't do that! The card would mean everything to her!
Finally he figured it out. She wanted this to be their little secret. If she kept the evidence around, anybody could find out, like Dr. Tredway, for example. Dr. Tredway wouldn't approve of this. Harvey knew that as sure as he knew the exact length of his dick—six and five-eighths inches long.
Just because Amanda had thrown his valentine in the trash didn't mean that she wasn't thinking of him right this minute. She was thinking of him, Harvey Kenton, and how much she wanted to be alone with him. But being a smart girl, she understood that they had to be careful. There was Dr. Tredway, and there was Louise. Louise kept a shotgun in the closet.
FOUR
Amanda spent far too much time at the G-Spot trying to find a gift that Gloria could give to William. She had to come back with something, or Gloria would probably send her out again tomorrow. Gloria didn't have a lot of time to wage her campaign before Valentine's Day, and she'd obviously decided Amanda would be doing the legwork.
Lack of sleep and decent food must be taking its toll, because Amanda found herself standing in the aisle of the G-Spot mesmerized by a wiggling purple dildo that the proprietor had switched on to grab the customers' attention. With real effort she pulled her gaze from the dancing dildo and continued with her search. Every time she came in here, which seemed to be a lot lately, she got the impression that everyone in the world was having amazing sex. Everyone except her, of course.
She found the nipple clips and put those in the basket dangling from her arm. And finally she decided on the only item she could imagine might fascinate William. Glow-in-the-dark condoms. If he'd ever been a Star Wars fan—and what nerd wasn't?—he might get a kick out of creating his own personal light saber. He might also be curious about how the manufacturers had created the effect.
And that was all the attention she planned to give to the subject, because thinking about William putting on a condom was not helping her goal, which was complete detachment from both him and the topic of sex. Had she passed him on the street she would never have thought of him in connection with that topic. But ever since they'd met on the stairs surrounded by adult toys, William and sex had been linked in her mind.
It was similar to the imprinting syndrome she'd learned about in Psych 101. She and William had met in a sexually charged atmosphere, and now she couldn't think of him without remembering that red vibrator lying across the laces of his brown shoe. Like it or not, that was an erotic image that would stay with her for a long time.
At the last minute she remembered that Gloria wanted William's gift to have something to do with Valentine's Day, and glowing condoms didn't seem to fit that criteria. Fortunately, her store credit allowed her to throw in a box of chocolate truffles she found up near the register. Each one was shaped like a miniature breast.
As the clerk, a young guy named Lester, rang up her purchases, she thought of those breast-shaped truffles riding on the conveyor belt, bouncing and jiggling along, and she began to laugh. Maybe the stress was making her hysterical, too.
"When you get right down to it, sex is hilarious," Lester said.
Amanda cleared her throat. "I suppose so."
"Most people take it way too seriously."
"And you don't?" She studied Lester more closely. He was a skinny man in his mid-twenties, and nobody would accuse him of being handsome. His chin receded and his eyes were set too close together.
"Hell, no," Lester said. "I think sex is s
trictly for fun, and once in a while, you need to do it to keep the human race going. But worrying about how we look naked, or how good we are at the various positions—that's nuts. It's like getting uptight about your score at goofy golf. Sex should be a tension reliever, not a tension creator."
Amanda gazed at him with new respect. "And with that attitude, I'm sure you don't have trouble finding partners."
He smiled, revealing slightly uneven teeth. "Nope."
"I probably should adopt your philosophy."
"Trust me, you'd be a happier person. Pardon my saying, but you don't look all that happy, or you didn't until you started laughing just now."
"Point taken." Amanda picked up the small bag he'd filled with her purchases and started out the door. "Thanks. I'll think about what you said."
"Just being a good salesman. If you follow my advice, you'll need to come back and buy things for yourself instead of always running errands for Dr. Tredway. Then I'll have gained another customer."
"Lester, you're a very together guy." With a wave, she left the warm shop and stepped into the icy blast of a Chicago winter afternoon. Putting up the hood on her parka, she bowed her head and pushed against the wind as she walked back to the office building.
She knew that she took sex too seriously. And even though Gloria put out the same message as Lester, she was so obnoxious that Amanda wasn't ready to hear it coming from her. Lester made the pill more palatable.
Not only was Amanda aware that she took sex too seriously, she'd had enough psych classes to understand why. Her mother, Kathryn, had invested her whole being in her relationship with her husband. She'd abandoned the idea of a job, even a menial one, because that would have drawn her attention away from Timothy.
She'd concentrated so hard on the love of her life that she'd barely had enough time left over for Amanda. When Timothy Rykowsky died at forty of emphysema, Amanda's mother had never recovered, emotionally or financially. After Kathryn's death five years ago, Amanda had vowed that she'd never be that dependent on a man. She'd enrolled in college, determined to have a career.
But last year she'd met Jack Canterbury and let down her guard. After that heartbreaking disaster of a romance, she knew that she was vulnerable to the same dependency issues as her mother, which made her take sex very seriously. She wondered if she had the ability to treat it as recreation the way Lester did. That would be nice, but she didn't quite trust herself to pull it off.
Back in the office, she showed her purchases to Gloria, who was in the process of packing up for the day.
"That will do nicely," Gloria said. "I'll write a little note to go in with the package, and then I want you to call William's office and get his home address. Tell him I need it for my files. Then you can wrap everything up and take it to the post office on your way home."
Amanda wondered if there was any way she could get William's home address without talking directly to William. She'd try. "All right. I'll take care of it," she said.
Moments later Gloria dropped a note on her desk. "That's to go in the package. Send it priority." Gloria pulled on a mink coat that was probably the real thing. Then she paused and looked at Amanda. "I was thinking about that incident with the spilled coffee, and it came to me that you might develop a crush on William if you're not careful."
"Me?"
"It could happen out of sexual frustration and envy for my lifestyle."
Amanda almost choked. "I'm not envious."
"Don't be silly. Of course you are. I have both a career and glamour, while you're little more than a drudge."
Amanda opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
"In any case, I want to make something perfectly clear. You are not to flirt, or whatever passes for flirting in your world, with William. In fact, that goes for any man who walks into this office. Is that understood?"
"Perfectly." If Amanda didn't know better, she'd think Gloria felt a little threatened by her. But that seemed unlikely. And Gloria had nothing to worry about, because there would be no flirting. Flirting wasn't on Amanda's scheduled list of activities.
"Excellent." Gloria wound a colorful scarf around her neck. "I'm off."
Truer words were never said. "I'll see you in the morning, then."
"Don't forget, I won't be in until ten. In fact, I could be a little later than that. Who do I have at ten?"
Amanda glanced at the calendar she kept for Gloria and noticed Gloria's massage at nine. "You have the Kentons at ten." Harvey Kenton seemed like a harmless sort, but Louise gave Amanda the creeps. That was one hard woman.
"Ah, yes. If I'm late, take them into my office and start up a video. Give them a stack of magazines, too. That should keep them busy."
"I'll do that."
Gloria headed for the door. Then she paused and glanced back. "I just thought of something. Does William ever come into Geekland?"
"I've never seen him there."
"That's a shame. If he did, you could talk me up."
"If he ever does, I will." Amanda had decided that she was most definitely on board for this campaign now that William had sent her the valentine, the valentine Gloria would never, ever find out about.
"Good. In the meantime, I want you to observe and take notes on your customers tonight, and report back with anything that might help me snare William. For one thing, I have no idea what nerds drink. I'm sure you're an expert on that by now."
"They order unusual drinks."
"Like imported brandy, that sort of thing?"
"No, mixed drinks with several ingredients. They're constantly trying to come up with new combinations."
Gloria wrinkled her nose. "Sounds like a high school chemistry lab."
"That's not a bad comparison. Flaming shooters are popular."
"I can't imagine. Flaming shooters. I stay far away from all those weird concoctions. Someone offered me a Buttery Nipple once, which I drank because it sounded sexy. Eeuuww. Much too sweet. Give me a gin martini, extra dry, anytime."
"If you're ever in Geekland, I'll remember that." Actually, Amanda enjoyed making the more complicated drinks. Anybody could serve a beer or a glass of wine. But she might be the only bartender in the world who knew how to make a Chi-Town Lakefront Breeze, because it had been invented by her customers at Geekland.
"I don't ever expect to set foot in Geekland. One geek, in the form of William Sloan, is interesting. An entire bar full of them would be a bit much. See you in the morning." With that she whisked out the door in a swirl of dead animal skins.
Once she was gone, Amanda glanced down at the note Gloria had left on the desk. Gloria hadn't bothered to fold it, as if she didn't care whether Amanda read it or not. So she did.
William—I sense animal magnetism in you, although you may be trying to repress it. Did you know that repressed sexual desire can manifest itself in overwork, which can lead to all sorts of health problems?
Amanda paused. She'd thought it was the other way around, that overwork caused a person to repress sexual desire. At least that was how her situation seemed to shape up. Maybe it was a chicken-and-egg sort of argument and nobody really knew which came first. She continued reading.
You are such a young and vibrant man that I would hate to see that sort of thing happen to you. I'm sending these gifts in the spirit of offering you an alternative, one that could easily lead to more productivity for you in the long run. An active penis stimulates the entire man to greater endeavors. Call me.
Then Gloria had scribbled her home phone number, her cell number, and her name, which she'd underlined with a flourish. The note was pure Gloria, and maybe she would be good for William, just as she'd implied. One thing was certain—after a few rounds with Gloria, William wouldn't be sending people valentines with fluffy kittens on the front.
Turning on her computer, Amanda did a quick search for the Cooper and Scott Web site. Then she picked up the phone and dialed the number. While it was ringing, she clicked on the link for brokers. There was William wi
th all his credentials listed.
He'd been quite the academic whiz kid, not that she was surprised by that. If she ever had any money to invest, William would be the go-to guy, for sure. Except after that valentine, she couldn't risk it.
A receptionist answered. "Cooper and Scott. This is Bonnie. How may I direct your call?"
"I'm calling for Dr. Gloria Tredway, who has recently become Willliam Sloan's client," Amanda said in her most official voice. "Dr. Tredway has a policy of keeping all the pertinent information on anyone with whom she does business. She requires the home address and phone of Mr. Sloan for her records. Can you please give me that information?"
"I'm so sorry, but that can only be given out by the brokers themselves," Bonnie said.
Damn, she'd have to talk to him, after all.
"Would you like to speak with Mr. Sloan?" the receptionist asked. "I can see if he's available."
"That would be fine." Amanda found to her dismay that her heart was pounding. Did she think that he'd somehow know that she'd thrown away his valentine? If he hadn't sent it in the first place, she wouldn't feel this awkwardness.
Then William came on the line. She was surprised by the rich, deep quality of his voice. It even sent a little tingle up her spine.
Earlier in the afternoon, she'd been so busy thinking about vibrators and earflaps that she hadn't paid much attention to how he sounded. Turned out he sounded ... sexy-ish. Not that it mattered to her.
"I'm calling for Gloria," she said.
"Hi, Amanda."
She winced at the note of eagerness and prayed he wouldn't allude to the valentine in some veiled way. "Hi, William. Listen, it's Gloria's policy to keep contact information on everyone she does business with, so I need to get your home address and telephone number for our files."
Silence.
"I can assure you the information won't go beyond this office."
William cleared his throat. "I don't know how to say this, but under the circumstances, I would rather not give that information to Gloria."
My Nerdy Valentine Page 4