by Ren Benton
“My mistake. You look a lot alike.” He inspected her face as if cataloging the similarities. “It’s a shame. I had more fun with your doppelgänger in one day than I’ve had during the entirety of lengthier relationships.”
“Two days?” she teased, which seemed to be a reflex around him.
“Sometimes as many as three. The Duchess topped them all. And the sex...” He gave an enigmatic shrug and forked a healthy portion of taco into his mouth without elaborating.
Her lack of shame about discussing sex within earshot of a heavily traveled walkway could be attributed to the subject being an imaginary character, not her. “Do tell.”
He searched his bowl for whatever morsel he’d deemed tastiest and casually continued, “It could have been better.”
Her eyes narrowed. She hadn’t heard him complaining at the time. “You don’t say.”
His lips quirked at her acid tone. “The potential was there, but the execution would have benefitted from practice. It would have been an excellent test of Gladwell’s theory that mastery can be achieved with ten thousand hours of practice.”
Her thighs clenched at the thought of that much practice with him. “Mostly it would achieve chafing.”
He didn’t laugh at her attempt to alleviate the charge building between them. Either he didn’t feel it, or he meant to be taken seriously. “I don’t doubt Ivy Miller labors under the burden of expectations regarding the kind of woman she’s supposed to be, but every time you say something like that, I hear the Duchess screaming to be released from her prison.”
“She doesn’t fit in around here.” Her family could only withstand one daughter running rampant. She’d be fired on the spot if she ceased to filter every word she uttered at work. All of her friends were friends with sensible, responsible, inoffensive Ivy. “She’d destroy everything in my life.”
“Keep her out of your life. Let her out to play with me. Your reputation as a mild-mannered angel is safe. I won’t tell a soul you’re secretly cynical, obstinate, and greedy.”
Harsh.
True.
Each adjective he chose to describe her tugged a ribbon inside her that spiraled down to the dark place where unsavory aspects of her nature slept, tranquilized. His acknowledgment prodded them awake. They stretched and purred and prowled the boundaries of their enclosure.
She reinforced the bars of the cage. She couldn’t let the animals out just because he made it sound fun, particularly only minutes after determining fun turned her into an awful person. Even if what he suggested wasn’t the antithesis of sensible — which it most definitely was — she worked sometimes sixty hours a week and took care of Holly’s kids for more than half of every month. She didn’t have time to practice the skills of a cynical, obstinate, greedy sex expert.
Dangling temptation she couldn’t squeeze into her schedule had to be another form of punishment. “I was pretending to be someone I’m not and never have been.”
She couldn’t say whether the regret weighing down the words was for his benefit or hers.
“I believe the Duchess — sans palace and buckets of money — is who you’d be if no one was judging.”
He wasn’t offering her alternate Sundays with parents, cookouts with friends, and schmoozing at the office, where judgment was the measure of a person’s worth. His proposal was to get together, have a few laughs, and fuck. Just the two of them. Maybe once, maybe a dozen times, expiring whenever she ran out of time or he ran out of interest.
Without question, she would trade an hour of sleep for an hour of sex with him, so the scheduling issue was moot.
She still worried about the separation between the woman she was every day and the woman she was with him. How long could she keep Boring Old Ivy from intruding on their fun?
How long could she play the Duchess before that fictional creation invaded Ivy’s real life?
Once again, what she wanted warred with the sensible thing to do. “What if you’re wrong?”
He shrugged as if it didn’t matter to him one way or the other. “Then we walk away and conduct ourselves cordially in the unlikely event we bump into each other again. I won’t follow you around with flowers and stuffed bears, sullenly requesting your company.”
He had too many other options to chase her; she had too little time to stalk him. They had been in the same city this whole time without running into each other. There was little chance they would suddenly be tripping over each other all the time now. “I won’t follow you around, either.”
“You would never do anything so undignified. The Duchess would never do anything so desperate. Best of both worlds.”
She’d never been called the best of any world while striving to be appropriate. She’d been more like the dirt underfoot — good for standing on but otherwise unnoticed.
Griff didn’t share her problem with indecision. He had a plan he meant to act upon, with or without her. “I have a reservation at Stål tonight. I’ll be in the bar at seven if you’d care to join me.”
He wouldn’t be lonely long if she didn’t. “Provided you survive the street food, that is.”
“There’s always the risk of danger when you’re involved,” he admitted. “If I don’t pull through, don’t let the reservation go to waste.”
4
Her unsavory qualities — taunted with the promise of escape, only to be thwarted at the exit — tested their boundaries throughout the afternoon.
Cynicism raked its claws at a bride who claimed her daddy would pay any amount for her dress, contrary to the budget dictated by the man himself five minutes earlier. Before wasting two hours of everyone’s time, Ivy asked him to clarify the discrepancy. Daddy said no to a dress that cost as much as a midsize sedan and dragged his tantruming princess from the store. Ivy would get no commission, but it was better than spending two hours with the brat and then getting no commission.
Obstinacy physically obstructed the door of the dressing room when another consultant with a no-show took it upon herself to bring a dress to Ivy’s final bride of the day and failed to back down from a polite no thanks. The interloper left muttering about PMS, but she wouldn’t be stealing half of that commission.
Greed manifested as intense bodily hunger that underscored all her bad behavior. Griffin Dunleavy wanted her. He didn’t need her to raise his kids or to convince his mother he was capable of making good life choices or to be an inoffensive advocate for him at the company barbecue.
He wanted her because they had a good time together.
She liked feeling coveted. She wanted more of that feeling. Now.
But Boring Old Ivy had a host of sensible reasons to deprive her unsavory qualities of their designated playtime. She wasn’t dressed for a restaurant with a diacritic in the name. There wasn’t time to drive all the way out to the burbs, change, and drive all the way to the other side of town before her date found someone else to seduce. If she didn’t do laundry tonight, she’d have to sniff test a skirt to wear tomorrow. She wasn’t a hundred percent sure she’d done any hair removal above her knees since the last time Griff explored that region, and how damaging would it be to his ego if she beat him in a contest of who had the hairiest thighs?
She wondered if Griff’s list of perverse turn-ons included sulking. If so, she was his fantasy come to life. Too bad he’d miss it because she had three baskets of clothes to spot treat.
That had been her plan for the evening all along, and before lunch, she’d been perfectly satisfied with it. Well, that was overstating a bit. She’d been content. Perhaps resigned.
But then he had to entice her with hours of sexual practice, and of course none of the chores that made up her life were going to seem like a good use of time after that.
The sooner she accepted she couldn’t have everything she wanted, the sooner the beasts trying to claw off her skin from the inside would settle down.
She tidied her dressing room and headed for the exit and a hot date with the washing machine.
Rita hailed her as she passed the office. Ivy backtracked and found herself at the boss’s desk for the second time that day with the coworker who’d seen her obstinacy in the wild.
Sabrina complained, “Ivy shoved me out of the room when I brought a dress for her bride.”
If I shoved you, you would have been on your ass and everyone in the store would have seen it. “I’d already pulled half a dozen dresses Liesha asked to see.”
Rita launched into her oft-recited teamwork lecture, flat from overuse. “Sometimes another consultant brings a fresh perspective to the appointment.”
Ivy waited for the regularly scheduled pause to interject, “And sometimes she brings a ten-thousand-dollar dress to a two-thousand-dollar budget.”
That brought the lecture to a halt. Rita pinched the bridge of her nose. “Sabrina.”
“I didn’t know!”
“You’ve been here too long to use that excuse.” Before Ivy had a chance to relish that setdown — petty apparently being another of her unsavory adjectives — Rita added, “Ivy, I rely on you to help train the newer consultants.”
Ivy began helping before she’d graduated from the ranks of new herself. Naturally, the first time Rita acknowledged her reliance coincided with the first lapse in helpfulness in five years. “I apologize for being abrupt. It won’t happen again.”
“I trust it won’t. Did you find a bride for the news?”
“Right after lunch, and it’s all set up with Martina. I emailed you the details.”
“Good.” Rita flapped her hand toward the door. “It’s late. Both of you get out of here, and shut the door before more trouble floats in.”
Sabrina darted from the office. Ivy followed at a more sedate pace, closing the door behind her.
“What’s going on with the news?”
The younger woman stood in the way of escape. Ivy was confident one swing of the Bag of Infinite Holding would send her flying.
She wasn’t inclined to share information about her project. “Rita will let everyone know when she’s ready. This is the third time this month you’ve butted in on one of my appointments. Are you having a hard time meeting quota?”
“No, I’m over already, but you know how it is.” Sabrina flashed her teeth. She had the pointiest canines Ivy had seen outside of a vampire movie. “Gotta be noticed if you want to get anywhere in this world.”
Yeah, Ivy knew. Sabrina commanded the boss’s attention half a dozen times a day for screwing up or sucking up. Despite her glaring mistakes and less than half of Ivy’s experience, she was also being considered for the management slot, so her technique was effective.
The routine was familiar. Holly had always been a whirlwind of chaos, sucking up the attention of parents, teachers, counselors, law enforcement, and men and dropping the consequences before zooming off to destroy her next target.
No one paid any attention to the invisible woman quietly cleaning up the mess left behind, simply relying on the fact that the messes had always been cleaned up and always would be.
A man who didn’t overlook her would be waiting for her in a bar at seven.
To hell with laundry.
If unkempt legs turned out to be an issue, she’d tell him it drove men wild in Dangereusia and mock him for being so American.
Her race for the parking lot took her past one of the mirrors placed everywhere a bride might want to stop and admire herself. The shadow she glimpsed in passing brought her to a halt. She blended into negative space. If she went to Stål looking like this, people would complain to the manager that she hadn’t refilled their water glasses in a timely fashion.
She checked her watch. 6:27. Going home to change was even more out of the question than it had been earlier.
She adjusted her course and ran downstairs to the formalwear department. One of their consultants was tidying the inventory. “Alexis, I have a dating emergency. Do you have anything off the rack that will fit me?”
“Sure. What’s your budget?”
“If it’s a choice between a dress and paying my electric bill, I’d rather go home and do laundry.”
“I hope that’s a reflection on your finances and not your date. Tanya put aside some things for clearance this afternoon.”
There was always a good reason a dress didn’t sell at full price, but Ivy was in no position to be too picky for the rack of shame.
She and Alexis worked from opposite ends, sliding hangers along the bar as they dismissed one option after another.
“Size double zero.”
“Size twenty-six.”
“Mother of the bride.”
“Grandmother of the bride.”
“Here we go.” Alexis pulled sweep of royal blue from the lineup. “A non-matronly eight.”
Ivy didn’t bother with a second glance. Manufacturers of street clothes were occasionally kind enough to allow her into an eight, but as prices increased, admission requirements of a garment shrank. “In cruelty sizing, I’m no less than a ten.” More often a twelve. Sometimes a fourteen.
“Your boobs are an eight, and this Empire waist doesn’t care about your ten-and-up parts. Try it on.” She shoved Ivy into the nearest fitting room.
The deep V neckline wasn’t bra friendly, but cups sewn into the bodice approximated the shape of contained boobs, and the Empire seam was too snug around her ribs to permit drooping. The swish of the skirt concealed her oversized parts and didn’t cling to her thigh smoother when she walked.
The cap sleeves, however, left her arms exposed.
Alexis snatched open the curtain. “Looks great. Go get him.”
“I can’t wear—”
“The register is closed. You can settle up in the morning.”
“But—”
“I’ll take your clothes for collateral.” She scooped Ivy’s black garb from the chair in the fitting room. “I have to get home to the kids. Have fun.”
She was gone before Ivy recovered from the invasion and theft.
If she wore stock out of the store, shop rules said she had to buy it. Unless she wanted to leave naked, the dress was hers now.
Since full nudity in public was even less acceptable than bare arms, she left the store wearing her new dress and hailed a cab. The fare to and from the restaurant would be cheaper than tipping the valet to hide her minivan from Griff to postpone shattering his illusions about her glamorous life.
Being a passenger also provided a few minutes to powder the shine off her face, refresh her lipstick, and run a brush through her hair until it crackled. By the time the cab pulled into the circular drive in front of Stål, she had better odds of passing muster with the doorman.
The car stopped. She checked her watch. 7:08.
She might as well tell the driver to take her back to the kidmobile with the Frozen soundtrack in the CD player and Goldfish in the cracks of the car seats. Griffin Dunleavy wouldn’t sit around crying into his drink because a woman who hadn’t even agreed to meet him didn’t show up on time. She’d get inside and he’d be practicing with triplet lingerie models rather than let that eight minutes go to waste.
Her unsavory qualities snarled and took over. She slapped money into the driver’s hand and swung her legs out of the car when the valet opened the door. The Duchess was permitted to be fashionably late. Part of her mystique was whether she would put in an appearance at all.
As if sensing her royal bearing, the doorman bowed slightly as he admitted her.
She stepped inside and tried not to gawk like a peasant. The black marble under her feet had been shined to a finish that made her squeeze her knees together to defend against an upskirt peek, but who would be looking at the floor when the entire ceiling was covered with silver mesh that made the lights above it appear to twinkle as she passed beneath? Walls to her left and right were covered by rough vertical planks stained dark as soot. The darkness was relieved by a translucent white wall directly ahead that glittered like a sunlit glacier.
“Good evening.” The maitre d’ greeted her when she failed to approach his station of her own accord. “Do you have a reservation?”
She’d never met anyone in a bar before. A script would come in handy. “I’m meeting someone in the bar.”
That was the correct line, evidently. “You’ll find the bar to your left. Please let me know if there’s anything you need.”
“Thank you.”
She would peek. If Griff was with someone else, she could turn around and leave before he even knew she was there.
To her dismay, the layout thwarted peeking, designed instead for making a grand entrance like the star of an old MGM picture. Twelve stairs descending in a nautilus curve made a pedestal of the entry, while a crystal chandelier suspended overhead spotlighted new arrivals.
The only eyes that weren’t drawn to the newcomer were Griff’s. His were occupied gazing into those of a blonde with her hand on his thigh.
On the bright side, he wouldn’t witness Ivy fleeing with her tail tucked between her probably unshaven thighs.
Before she could retreat, he glanced toward the entrance, gave her a casual once over, and returned his attention to the blonde.
Her teeth clenched at the dismissal. The Duchess would throw a drink in his face.
No. The Duchess wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d hurt her feelings. Scratch that — the Duchess wouldn’t have hurt feelings because she could have her pick of companions, too. She would saunter over to the bartender, order the finest champagne, and strike up a conversation with the two gentlemen sitting at the end of the bar.
Ivy’s manners got in the way of bravado. She didn’t want to intrude if those gentlemen were on a date.
She came full circle on the idea of fleeing just as Griff’s gaze snapped back to her, needle sharp, pricking her skin with little shocks of recognition. His head rotated toward her, then his torso.
A slow, wolfish grin curved his lips. Into it, she read, I wasn’t expecting you. Now that you’re here, I’m going to eat you alive.