by Louisa Trent
It was surprising how little Jeremy's shrug of acceptance had hurt. She thought she ought to be devastated. After all, he was her first lover, the man to whom she'd given her virginity. She should feel crushed!
What she had felt was a tremendous sense of relief. Though she missed the sex, she hadn't missed the man providing the perfunctory orgasms.
Simply put, she hadn't loved Jeremy.
She'd loved only once in her life, a grand passion she'd thought would last forever and painfully hadn't.
In one respect, though, her brief interlude-she couldn't classify it as an affair-with Jeremy had been a flaming success because she'd discovered that she not only liked sex, she loved sex, even tepid sex, and that surprise, surprise, she was quite good at it. And, since the embarrassing business of her virginity was taken care of, she could concentrate on adventure, just as naughty Gillian had made her promise to do.
And whom did she choose for her very first pickup?
Lou! An extraordinarily careful man. A man who wanted to get to know her before fucking her. Just her luck!
He would never know her unless she told him about Gillian.
How could she possibly tell the conservative Lou about the beauty of loving Gill? How could she explain about the tepid rebound affair she'd purposefully initiated to fulfill a promise made to a dead man?
Lou would never understand and she couldn't bear to explain. She just wasn't ready to share Gillian, as she'd had to share him in life.
In death, the man she still loved was all hers.
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CHAPTER NINE
The next day, Lou paid an etiquette call on the two small-time thugs who had scared Blue on the pier.
After reminding the Reilly brothers of their manners, Lou washed off his nicks and cuts, placed a slab of steak over his swollen eye-good thing he wasn't a vegan like Pete—and stuck his bruised knuckles in an ice bucket. When he could open his eyelid and close his fist, he changed his clothes and took a walk down to Water Street; he needed to drop his stained suit off at the dry cleaners.
There were lots of bars on the riverfront. Vasquez and Sons Cleaners was in close proximity to all of them. Since lots of bars equals lots of brawls, the cleaner had lots of experience removing dried blood.
Stain-free suits were important to Lou.
There was always food on the table when he was a kid, but there wasn't much else. His Italian immigrant parents had taught him at a young age to take care of his belongings because what he had, had to last. For much the same reason, they also taught him to take care of his good name. As an adult, Lou was real particular about keeping his wardrobe and reputation clean.
After leaving off his suit at Vasquez & Sons, same as usual on his day off, Lou stopped in at The Pink Flamingo to check on how things were doing.
Things weren't doing so swell.
Claude was throwing another one of his hissy-fits in the kitchen.
Ducking his head, to miss the soufflé pan as it came sailing through the swing doors, Lou walked into the war zone. One look told him that the egg whites had hit the fan.
Managing a club wasn't only about bouncing bellicose patrons and keeping a watchful eye on the dancers: A certain amount of applied human psychology also fell under the job description. From listening to whisky induced bar confessions to calming the bimonthly hysterics of a certain temperamental member of his kitchen staff, he soothed a lot of feathers not all of them pink
The head chef stood in the middle of the kitchen floor toe tapping, arms crossed over the eye-popping girth of his white apron. “I can not work under theeese deplorablah condishions, Loueeese-”
Claude always called him Lou-eeese, never Lou, and always with a thick Frenchie twang, though the chef was born and raised in Fenton. Bogus French accent and overblown ego aside, the dude could cook, so Lou kissed his day off goodbye and said, “What happened?”
“Eeet is the-”
Here, Claude paused to hunt down the right word.
“Ques-ce que c'est—that which controls the heat in the oven?”
“Thermostat,” Lou supplied the translation. Someday Lou was gonna have to tell Claude that just because a chef wasn't born in Paris doesn't mean that chef can't put together a mean ratatouille.
“Ah, alors. Oui! But of course. Merci. The thermostat, she does not work.”
“How do you know the thermostat is blown, Claude?”
The chef hefted a Frisbee-like pastry from the counter.
“Voila! My Grand Marnier soufflé ... she refuses to rise to her usual golden puffy heights.”
Claude burst into sobs.
This is where his applied human psychology came into play. It took almost an hour to mop up the tears, the rest of the day to pretend to change the faulty thermostat.
Pretend because Lou tested the thermostat and the control was working just fine. And what did that matter if the chef isn't working at all?
Tomas Ruiz caught Lou on the way out the bright pink door.
“What the fuck happened to you? You're looking a little dented there, Lou.”
“I ran into the Reilly boys down at the pier last night. They were disrespectful to the lady I was with, so today I stopped by their place to explain the meaning of common courtesy.”
“I hope to fuck they look worse than you, ese.”
“They do.”
Tomas raised his brows. “Lou, you don't go around smashing skulls too often. Who's this lady you went to the boards for?”
Lou couldn't hold back the smile. “She's The One.”
“Say what?” Tomas asked, tweaking the silver hoop in his ear, then crossing his arms over a gaudy red and yellow floral shirt.
Ever since his business associate had met his wife, Seraphina, he'd taken to wearing these real sappy Hawaiian shirts, a drastic departure from his usual all-black wardrobe. The sappy shirts and Seraphina suited Ruiz; Lou had never seen the guy happier. And now that Tomas was about to become a proud papa, he was floating on air.
The owner of The Flamingo came down to earth to give Lou a clap on the back. “Congratulations! How long you been seeing her?”
“We met last night.”
Tomas did a double take. “Let me get this straight, you're calling this woman The One,” he said, making bunny ears with his fingers, “and you only met last night?”
Tomas looked confused, unlike Lou who knew exactly where he was going.
All those fantasies he'd had about T&A when Pete went off to college? All those ideas about sampling as many women as he could get?
Gone.
Blue was The One.
Sowing wild oats ... making up for lost time in the sack ... he wouldn't be doing any of that now. Sometimes it happens fast. One glance, one word, one takeout line, and it's all over, a man is a goner.
'Course, Blue didn't know she was The One for him. And she didn't realize that he was The One for her. When she stumbled upon those realizations, she'd run in the opposite direction.
Lou was prepared. To wait when she ran away. To dodge all the obstacles she'd throw in the path of love. To fight her and anyone else who got in the way. He was ready.
“So-” Tomas asked, scratching his head. “What's her name?”
“Blue Heron.”
Tomas’ grin was lazy. “Blue and Lou. Poetry. I like poetry.”
“I guess it does rhyme, doesn't it?”
“Not only is it poetry, it's poetic justice.”
Lou's brow furrowed. “Hunh?”
“Man, don't look now, but you manage a pink flamingo and a now a blue heron will be managing you. I call that poetic justice.”
“Oh.” Lou shrugged. “Never made the connection.”
“That cuz you got it bad, ese.” Grinning hugely now, Tomas stuck his hands in his pockets. “Wait a minute! Isn't she the artist exhibiting over at GoCA? She's gotta be. There can't be too many ladies with the name Blue Heron flying around Fenton.”
“Yeah. That'
s her. She's one of a kind all right,” Lou said, pride pumping him up. “I'm invited to her gallery opening tonight. I haven't seen her stuff, so I'm not exactly sure what's in the show. Knowing her, it should be interesting.”
Tomas’ shoulders started to heave.
Lou frowned at his laughing friend. “What's so damn funny?”
Between guffaws, Tomas said, “Oh, nothing. Nothing at all. You know how it is, now that Sera is about to deliver the baby, everything these days just sets me off.”
Lou didn't think approaching fatherhood explained Tomas’ sudden laughing fit, but he let it go to ask, “How's the mother-to-be doing, anyway?”
“Doin’ great, taking everything in stride. Better than me. I tell you, this waiting is getting on my nerves. Every time my beeper goes off, I jump clear outta my work boots. We'll be at GoCA tonight, though. Sera wants the baby exposed to the arts right from the womb. And even if she didn't insist, fuck, I'd still be there. Wouldn't miss seeing your face for anything.”
Before Lou could ask him what he meant by that, a laughing Tomas Ruiz walked away.
* * * *
The subject matter of Blue's exhibit was male genitalia.
Or, to be more correct, erect dicks.
Damn! Why hadn't laughing boy Ruiz told him?
Someone should've told him!
His face went hot as soon as he walked into the gallery.
Call him old-fashioned, but as far as Lou was concerned, a man's erection is a private matter, shared between a man and his hand, or if he's real lucky, between a man and his woman. There was something wrong about erect dicks decorating walls and pedestals and hanging suspended from ceilings. Mercy, where was your average up-tight man supposed to look?
Right at ‘em, he guessed. Everybody else was.
Blue hadn't left anyone out. Every size and shape, both uncut and circumcised, from semi-erect to hugely erect, were represented in her multi-media display. Lou hadn't seen this many dicks in a room since his detective years.
And she'd hinted about including him as one of her ‘specimens'. Here he thought she'd liked him for himself! He was just a penis and testicles to her. He felt so cheap. Degraded. Dehumanized, even. Though, he had to say he stacked up pretty damn good against the competition, some of which was pretty damn stiff. He had at least two inches on anything on display. He supposed he should crow like a cock because she wanted to add his member to the club. Or, was that, make his club a member? He knew not which.
But what was with Blue, anyway? Hadn't she declared all self-righteously the day before that The Pink Flamingo objectified women? Didn't her exhibit objectify men?
To his mind, there was no difference. To his mind, he was staring at a double standard not a bunch of erect dicks.
While ruminating, the artist came marching toward him with that determined stride of hers, looking like a queen in an ankle-length purple tunic trimmed in gold.
She kissed him. On the mouth. “I'm so glad you could make it!”
That's when he realized why he was ruminating: In her pursuit of art, Blue must've had more pricks in her hands than a porcupine has on his back.
“I told you I'd be here, Blue,” he said quietly, trying to come to grips with his jealousy.
“I know. But the way we left things yesterday, I thought...” She shook her head. “I owe you an apology, Lou. I can tell you're a man of your word. I just thought you might have changed your mind.”
“I wouldn't stand you up any more than you'd blow me off.”
She laughed. “Oh, but I would. In fact, there's nothing I'd like more.”
“No you wouldn't-”
He stopped, reconsidered. “Oh-”
Her brows lifted.
He straightened his tie. “You look beautiful.” Finished fixing his stickpin, he waved his hand around the room. “And your stuff ... it's ... wow ... finding the right words is certainly ... you know ... hard...”
Her blue eyes crinkled and her white teeth flashed. “Hard. Now there's an interesting word choice.”
“Damn! You know, if I had wanted to come up with a double entendre I would've shot a blank.”
Damn! He did it again.
“I'm a little self-conscious,” he admitted.
“And I'm so glad you're here, Lou. I kept watching the door for you.”
He sighed. Blue had to be the most honest women he'd ever met. When she was hurt, she didn't try to hide it. When she was happy, it showed clear through to the next town. She was happy now, and God help him, he wanted to keep her that way, but she'd shown him what she did for a living, and reciprocation was only fair.
The Pink Flamingo was a job, not a political statement. Would she understand the difference when he told her?
“Blue, I think I should tell you that...” he began.
“I'm naked under this caftan, Lou.”
His cock tightened. “Yeah?”
“Yes. And this reception won't be over for another hour. That's too long to wait,” she said, grabbing his hand and pulling.
“Where you taking me, woman?” he thought to ask.
“Someplace private.”
“But you're the featured artist. Won't you be missed?”
“We're not going far. Just here,” she whispered, and with a tug, drew him under a huge limp dick.
“Watch the pump,” she advised, indicating a foot pedal on the floor. “If you step on that, the penis goes from disinterested to full thrust in less than a minute.”
He tried to maintain his dignity, but composure ain't easy when standing under a huge, limp, rubber dick, especially when the woman you're with says, “I know! Let's play a game!” And that wicked gleam in her eye makes you want to run for cover, and the only place to hide is behind a pair of giant swinging balls. Where's the dignity in that?
“What kind of game?” he asked uneasily, one eye on escape, the other eye on what had to be the world's largest dildo.
“A sex game.”
Damn! He knew it. “Blue, I don't think-”
“Aw, c'mon! It'll be fun. You understand the concept of fun, don't you Lou?”
Why did he feel like this wasn't about his word comprehension? Why did he get the impression that Blue was still miffed about the other night?
His unease grew. “Yeah, I understand the concept of fun.”
“Then you'll understand why I want to do some role-playing. Ward/guardian,” she suggested.
“Hunh?”
“I'll show you.”
With a change of pose and facial expression, right before his eyes, Blue transformed herself. “Oh, please, sir?” she cajoled, batting her gold-tipped lashes. “Why must I do this?”
Lou sighed. Yeah, why? This game wasn't his idea.
“Not a clue,” he answered in exasperation.
Why couldn't they talk about the stuff that mattered? If she was miffed about the other night, why couldn't they just discuss the situation like rational adults?
He started to fix his tie.
“Lou! Cooperate! We're doing role-playing here. You said you wanted us to work things out, well, this will help.”
Great. Role-playing. Right up his alley. Something he did everyday of the week. Almost forty years old, never been on stage, not even a high school production, and he was about to embark on an acting career. Swell. Just damn swell.
But needing her to share what was on her mind, needing to keep the lines of communication open, he agreed. “Okay. Just feed me my cues, nothing too complicated, and I'll follow your lead.”
He would've agreed to anything to keep the give and take going back and forth. So now he was some autocrat, he guessed, and she was his young charge or something. The rules weren't real clear to him.
“Oh, please?” she pleaded. “You cannot possibly expect me to remove all my clothes here! Tut. Tut. Such behavior would be most unseemly, even scandalous!” She grinned, like a pussy rolling in catnip. “But you are my guardian, and I suppose I have little choice but to submit.
” Her hands went to the zipper at her neck.
Damn! Damn! Damn! Were they doing exhibitionism now too?
Nobody told him. Wasn't it enough he'd agreed to leather?
Getting nekkid under a limp dick inside an art gallery during opening night was not his idea of fun. She'd get them both thrown in lock-up for lewd and indecent exposure, that's what she'd do And if Pete ever found out what his old man was up to only one short week after he'd left for college, Lou would never hear the end of it.
He was too old for role-playing, too old to get his butt thrown in the slammer. Enough was enough. Getting arrested was waaay over the limit.
“Listen, Blue-”
She tssked. “Miss Blue to you, sir.”
“Okay. Okay. Miss Blue. How's about we play something else, Miss Blue? Something that maybe won't get us busted? Later on tonight, after this gala is over, I could stop at a convenience store and pick up a can of whipped cream, maybe go wild and scoop up some maraschino cherries too, possibly a bunch of bananas-”
“Whipped cream! Fruit!” she said, cute freckled nose wrinkled. “Are we making ambrosia?”
His voice fell. “It's stuff for kinky sex.”
“Oh, Lou. That's so old. And tame. Bad for the arteries too. Sex games are more inventive now. Where've you been for the last couple of decades?”
Home with his kid, that's where he'd been, spooning whipped cream off the top of chocolate pudding and fantasizing about licking it off something else.
“I like whipped cream,” he said, glumly.
“Dated, Lou. Very dated. Next you'll suggest lavender pleasure balls and they went out years ago.”
Lavender pleasure balls? Sounded like a good time to him...
“Besides,” says she, “these role-playing games promote trust and openness.”
He had to hand it to her, Blue knew all the right buttons to push. Not since Pete decided he needed a dime for every bedtime kiss had he felt so manipulated.
His answer was tightlipped. “Fine. I'll play the damn game. All right?”
If she were anyone else, she would've quit while she was ahead. Not Blue. She pinned him with a look no ward would've dared to give her appointed guardian.