by Sarah Title
“You know, for positions. And stuff. I didn’t really think this through, did I?”
Somehow, Henry’s embarrassment made her feel less embarrassed, as if she now had permission to say, yup, your best friend showing up on your front porch with plastic dolls to be used for sexual research is totally weird, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening and it’s not funny.
“Come on,” she said, opening the front door and letting George and Tammy make their mad dash for the best spot on the couch. “Bring those inside before people start to talk.”
* * *
“So, what if they went like this?” Henry tried to get Joe’s arm around Barbie’s waist. But Joe’s elbow joints were wonky, and so were Barbie’s, and no matter what Henry tried, they ended up in a straight-armed tangle on the floor.
The tangle on the floor part was OK. Sometimes that happened. People tripped over undergarments and . . . well, maybe that was just him. Anyway, he wasn’t feeling particularly inspired by anything else about posing two plastic dolls into quasi-erotic positions. He could tell by Helen’s skeptical expression that she wasn’t either.
So far G.I. Joe had seductively and straight-armedly removed Barbie’s lab coat and glasses. (She was a Scientist Barbie, so of course she had glasses. And a tiny plastic clipboard. For science.) Then he slid his hands up her pencil skirt while she wrestled with his ammo belt. His clothes were attached with Velcro, which made for a nice Magic Mike–style reveal of his (literally) sculpted chest.
So far Helen had laughed, snorted, expressed pained discomfort (apparently just because Barbie’s legs went up like that did not mean it was a helpful demonstration). She had taken very few notes. She took one picture, but he suspected that was of him getting the dolls into position and would probably require a bribe to keep it off of Instagram.
“Henry, maybe Barbie and Joe aren’t that into each other.”
“They totally are! Look at how her plastic fingers are poking his chest! That’s a lust poke!”
“First of all, I’m writing down ‘lust poke.’ Second, I appreciate what you’re trying to do here, but . . .”
“Dammit, I paid a lot of money for these dolls. They’re going to have sex!”
Helen looked from him to the dolls, then back to him. “I’m writing that down too.”
He tossed G.I. Joe on the floor in frustration. “I thought it would work.”
“Henry, I know how sex works.”
“Yes, but I thought the dolls would help you visualize some interesting new positions. Except they’re not cooperating,” he said accusingly to the inanimate tangle of plastic limbs on the floor.
“I get it. And I can see how that might be helpful,” she conceded.
“You know, figure out angles and what the other hand is doing, and legs and . . .”
“The problem is, these are dolls.”
Henry looked at her. Yes, they were. That was the point.
“I mean, yes, they’re supposed to be humanlike, but they’re not really, are they?”
“Are you suggesting this is not what a normal male chest looks like?” he asked, holding up G.I. Joe.
“True, the men in my experience have all had sculpted chests and no nipples . . .”
“And built-in underwear.”
“Very inconvenient.”
“So, they’re not realistic enough?”
She held up a hand. “Please, do not go out and find more realistic-looking dolls to torture.”
“I wasn’t!” he lied.
“The thought is lovely, and they’re vaguely humanoid. But they’re so . . . hard.” She tapped on Barbie’s back. “And they’re missing all the fun parts of sex. You can’t move their fingers or their mouths. I mean, kissing is about more than just jamming faces together.”
“True.”
“And, no offense to Barbie, but this body is not happening.”
“So . . . this didn’t help at all? You didn’t even get one iota of inspiration?”
“Well, I kind of liked the lift thing.”
Henry beamed with pride. Then he realized he was beaming with pride because he had done sexually inventive things with Barbie and G.I. Joe, and he felt weird. Proud, but weird.
“All in the name of science,” he said.
“And writing. But, gah, I don’t know. There’s still something . . . I can get the big-picture things, like he’ll lift her and ravage her, fine. But it’s the little parts. I can’t seem to slow down and capture them.”
“The little parts, like the jamming-the-face-together things?”
“Yeah. I have a feeling ‘they jammed their faces together’ is not quite what that editor had in mind.”
Henry thought for a minute. She needed to be able to focus on the little moments of lovemaking, from a realistic perspective. Fake people weren’t doing it. They needed real people to do it.
They were real people.
Before he could think too hard about it, he scooted closer to Helen on the couch. “Get ready to take notes,” he said. He leaned in and kissed her.
* * *
One minute Helen was breathing her own air, realizing one of her best friends was more of a dork than she could have possibly imagined.
The next, his dorky lips were on hers.
She didn’t really register it right away. First he was over there, then he was over here. In her space. Very in her space.
Once she got on board, though, she found that thinking about the oddness of kissing a man she had never (well, maybe not never) considered kissing before, absolutely paled in comparison to the actual act of kissing him.
Henry could kiss.
She couldn’t do anything but kiss him right back.
His lips were soft and gentle, but these were clearly lips that knew their way around a woman’s mouth. So she opened up and let him inside, and as his tongue swept across hers, she let out a deep sigh, letting out the breath she was holding all the way in her toes. He was barely touching her, just lightly running one hand up her arm, but the contact made her shiver.
She was about two seconds away from letting her whole body go boneless into his, when Henry pulled away. She blinked. She felt surprised. And confused. And, finally, a little disappointed. For a great kiss, it was kind of short.
“How did that feel?” he asked, his voice a little gruff.
Nope, she wasn’t done with the confusion yet.
He handed her her notebook. “Five senses, right?”
Definitely not done with confusion. “What?”
“That thing you were reading the other day at work. It said to write a really sensual scene, describe all of the five senses, not just sight and touch. Which makes sense. I mean, sensual, sense, right?”
“How long were you reading over my shoulder?”
“I googled it yesterday.”
She must still be in the middle of a kiss haze. He was not making any sense. Or maybe she was hallucinating. Maybe she was really still kissing him, but she got so confused that she astral-projected into this conversation that for the life of her she could not keep up with.
“Once I understood what your problem was—not your problem, your secret. Once I knew the truth, I felt like I should do something to help you. I’m not much of a writer, not of fiction, anyway. And I hadn’t read any romance novels. So I did some research.”
She shook her head. She pinched her forearm. Yup, her brain was on the same plane as her body. And Henry was more of a nerd than she could have imagined.
“You . . . you googled how to write a romance novel?”
“How to write love scenes. That’s what you said you were having trouble with, so that’s what I googled.”
“Oh.”
“You really gotta be careful with those key words, don’t you?”
“Yeah . . . Henry?”
“Mm-hmm?”
“Did you just kiss me?”
His eyes widened in what she could only describe as panic. “Was that terrible? I sho
uld have asked first, but in the book I read, the hero doesn’t ask, he just sort of—” Henry made a growly sound and pulled her close so his lips were about half a growl away from hers. “I was trying to create a mood.” His eyes flicked down to her lips and he let her go. “Sorry if I overstepped.”
“No, no, it’s fine. It was just . . . I was just . . .”
“Yes? How did it feel?”
“Wait, what book?”
“I downloaded a romance novel. One of the ones written by the writer with the sex-writing advice list. It was pretty good.”
“Henry, that was, like, two days ago.”
He shrugged. “I read fast. So. The kiss. How did it feel?”
Helen snorted. “To be honest, it felt great.”
“Great? That’s not good enough, Helen. What was great about it?”
She raised an eyebrow at him, not that he noticed. He was too busy opening her notebook.
“Uh . . .” she said, because apparently she no longer knew how to use words. Not a problem at all for an aspiring writer.
“Let’s go through the senses. What did it look like?”
“Henry, stop.” She put her hand on his to stop his pen flying across the notebook. “What are you doing?”
“Taking notes.”
“Taking notes on my feelings?”
“No! Taking notes on the feelings. The specific feelings of kissing. So you can put them in your book.”
Right, her book. She needed to get a better handle on how to express the experience of a love scene; Henry was offering her a love scene. That made sense.
On the other hand, it made no sense.
“Henry, hold off on the writing for a second here. I just want to be clear. You’re kissing me . . . for the benefit of my novel.”
He nodded, and the sight brought to mind an eager puppy. But an eager puppy who could kiss.
“Internet research isn’t working, the dolls aren’t working, so unless you can think of a better solution, this is it.”
“ ‘This’ meaning—”
“ ‘This’ meaning me. And you. And this notebook.”
“Henry, don’t you think this is maybe pushing the bonds of friendship a little bit?”
He waved away her concerns. “It’s research. It’s work.”
“I understand what you’re saying, so I’ll refrain from pointing out that the notion of making out with me as ‘work’ is pretty insulting.”
“Although by mentioning that you’ll refrain from pointing it out, you really did just point it out.”
“Touché.”
“But it had to be said. That’s not what this is. This is not about you or me or friendship. Or, actually, maybe it is about friendship.”
“How so?”
“I’m a good friend, and I’m willing to be your guinea pig.”
“My sex guinea pig.”
“Your sensual guinea pig. We’ll do things and then you’ll write about them.”
“You realize this is not how most romance novelists work?”
He grabbed her shoulders. “Helen Lee, you are not most romance novelists. You are Helen Lee. You are the master of your own creative process.”
“If I didn’t know you better, I’d say this was just an attempt to get into my sweatpants.”
“I would never. Pay attention this time.”
And then there was his face again, jamming into hers.
This time, she took notes.
Chapter 7
“So the house has been owned and maintained—well, ‘maintained’—by the Glass family since the 1930s, although no one has lived locally since the ’90s, and they seem to have had terrible luck keeping a caretaker.”
Henry looked up from his notes at the long line of steering committee members staring back at him. He didn’t get nervous giving talks. He lectured for a living. But these guys were making him sweat through his bow tie.
Pembroke had already bought the brothel. Well, if it was the brothel. He still had no definitive proof of who had sold the building to the Glass family in the 1930s, or who had owned the house at the turn of the century when business would have been booming, so to speak. One day there was a brothel in Willow Springs; the next day, it was completely wiped from the official historical record. If Kentuckians weren’t such good storytellers, Henry might never have pinpointed the house on Wood Street as the likely site of Madame Renee’s infamous brothel.
Of course, if Kentuckians kept their public records in fireproof storage, he wouldn’t be sweating in front of an esteemed panel of town and college dignitaries. He would just brandish the deed of sale and start thinking about the wording of the historical plaque.
This lack of evidence was not doing his cause any favors. Despite his passion and perseverance, the committee had clearly already made up its mind: Tear down the blighted old building and put up something shiny and new. Not that Henry was against an arts center or something like it. For the past few years folks in Willow Springs had been fixing up old properties, and they finally had an old-fashioned downtown again. There was a bookstore and a coffee shop and a hair salon and a hardware store and, on weekends, a farmers’ market. In spite of all that work, though, downtown Willow Springs was small and charming enough that the mess of a former brothel (alleged former brothel) really stood out.
But what if it wasn’t a mess? Henry couldn’t help thinking about the interesting facade—sort of like a gingerbread house on acid—and how great the building would look if it was actually cleaned up. Unfortunately, it needed more than a fresh coat of paint. Grace’s Jake had confirmed what the building inspector told the committee when they bid on the property: It could be fixed up, but it would be a hell of a lot cheaper to just tear it down.
“So . . . nothing of any historic significance?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say that. The building itself is—”
“Yes, yes, we know, the building itself is original and valuable. It’s also falling apart. I mean something extraordinary, Beckham.”
“There are still some unanswered—”
“So, nothing of specific, historic significance?”
Henry sighed. “Not yet.” He tried to emphasize the “yet.”
Mary Beth gave him a sympathetic look.
If only he could find something . . . but he and Helen had been through the archives. And even though Helen was forever bringing him little tidbits of this and that, there was nothing specific. He knew enough about historical research to know that there was never some magical, hidden document with all the answers, just waiting to be found.
His brothel could very well be just a regular old house that had not aged well.
And it was about to age a hell of a lot more.
* * *
Helen looked at the unlit candles on her dresser. Should she try to set the mood? Make it romantic? But it wasn’t romantic—it was just supposed to resemble romantic. But to resemble romantic, should she light the candles?
She shook her head. Stick to the script, she reminded herself. In her book, Rennie doesn’t light candles. She doesn’t even own candles. She would never have anything as froufrou and potentially hazardous in her bedroom.
Rennie also didn’t have two stinky hounds who slept on the foot of her bed.
“Helen?”
At the sound of Henry’s voice from the front door, George and Tammy forgot that they were too old for long walks and physical exertion and scampered off the bed, howling and barking and tumbling down the hall.
“Hey, mutts.” She heard Henry talking to the dogs—who were not mutts, and she had the DNA test to prove it—as she stomped down the hall at a more dignified pace.
“Hey,” she said to the top of his head.
“Ready?” he asked, and reached for his bow tie.
She laughed. “Hold on. Do you want to come in first?”
“Sure, sure. Sorry. I’m just—” He waved his hands in front of his face.
He was just Henry, she thought. “How’
d the steering committee meeting go?” she asked as she led him into the house.
“Eh.”
“That good, huh?”
“I wish I knew what they were going to do with the house, that’s all. Mary Beth says they can’t make any decisions until they find out if it has historical significance.”
“Which it does.”
“Yeah, according to Willow Springs folklore. It turns out the committee wants some actual proof before they spend millions of dollars restoring it.”
“Mary Beth didn’t even say what the ideas for the house were?”
He shook his head. “She couldn’t. I guess she’s sworn to secrecy or something.”
“Pft, secrets.” She handed Henry a glass of wine. “Are you hungry?”
“No. Just bummed.”
“Poor Henry,” Helen said, then stopped herself. That came out kind of seductive. She wasn’t supposed to be seductive. She was supposed to be seduced.
Henry took a gulp of his wine. “OK,” he said, clapping his hands. “Let’s do this.”
“Such a romantic,” she said, before she remembered this wasn’t supposed to be romantic. This was supposed to be research.
“Are you nervous?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “Psh. No.” If she said it again, she might convince herself.
“Close your eyes,” Henry said. She watched him put his wineglass down, then watched his hand come up to her face, then that was it, because he covered her eyes with his hand. “Take a deep breath.”
She took a deep breath.
“Focus on what you feel and hear. This is about the research. Capture this for your book.”
She nodded.
“Also, let that breath out.”
She exhaled.
“Poor Helen,” Henry said, and she was going to pout and protest that she wasn’t poor anything! But then his hands moved to the sides of her face and she felt his breath warm on her lips, and when he finally kissed her, he tasted like wine. Would Rennie drink wine? Probably. Would Hawk? Tough-guy MMA fighter with a delicate wineglass in his hand? She couldn’t picture it.
“Helen,” Henry said softly against her lips. “Stay with me, here.”
Right, yes, with Henry. Henry, who drank wine and was nothing like tough-guy Hawk, but who was kissing like she imagined Hawk would kiss, strong and sweet, so she put her arms around his neck and ran her fingers through his thick hair (Hawk had a buzz cut, but whatever). She let Henry back her down the hallway into her bedroom, where he kicked the door closed, in spite of George and Tammy’s whines of protest.