Twenty Times Tempted: A Sexy Contemporary Romance Collection

by Petrova, Em

  With her other hand, my best friend slid an envelope across the table and tapped it with a fingernail.

  “No, I can’t,” was the first thing out of my mouth, because I knew what she was doing and why.

  Cordie tut-tutted that it wasn’t her at all. That barely halted my tactful blubbering but at least it aroused my curiosity. I had yet to open the envelope but I knew it contained funds and the offer to continue to help me out of the pit of despair I’d dug for myself.

  “It’s David, dear. He’s concerned about you.” She flicked the fingernail on the heavyweight bond, shoving it marginally closer. “He doesn’t have children of his own, you know.”

  I didn’t and that had little or no relevance to the Fink making a monetary donation to the Taylor O’Brien sinking ship of lost causes. As far as I was concerned that bit of paper carried a double dose of anthrax. I wasn’t touching it, not with a foot long butter knife.

  Since it was pretty clear I was entrenching on the high moral ground of not taking advantage of friends, Cordie tried another tactic. “You don’t need to spend it. David opened an account in your and his name. There’s a debit card for your use. It’s there if you need it.” She blinked and waited for me to blow my nose on the linen, then continued, “Think of it as your emergency reserve. If you need to come visit, or Michael…”

  Michael.

  Steeling herself, Cordie forged ahead. “If that asshole decides to come after you for more money or tries anything at all, well…”

  Nearly choking on the words, I managed to spit out, “He’s already taken everything I had. Cleaned me out.”

  She had to understand that if I had nothing, there was no reason for him to come after me at all. Stay under the radar and put in the waiting period, five long years because I didn’t understand the law and tried to prove fault in order to reclaim my assets. Had it been by mutual consent, the waiting period would only have been three years.

  I’d been lulled into complacency after going before the judge and obtaining the separazione formale, a legal separation good for one year. Color me stupid when I found out how long my incarceration would really be.

  “That’s why David put it in both your names, love. If Michael tries anything at all, he will have the full weight of the Finklestein’s and the van Horn’s on his ass.”

  “I-I can’t…”

  “You can and you will. David does not take no for an answer.” She glanced down at her lap and blushed, the pinkish rose flushing her cheeks with a naughty glow. “He can be quite … commanding, my David.”

  “I don’t know what to say…”

  She did her classic eyeroll, discussion over. “There are papers to sign and you’ll need a pin number. I believe the bank has full instructions in there.” Sitting back, she nodded in understanding as I debated the pros and cons.

  The bottom line was I had the clothes on my back, a stipend that barely housed me, let alone put food on the table, and no fallback position other than the kindness of distant cousins and a woman whose family had embraced me, a rural black girl from the south, as one of their own.

  Sliding the envelope into the duffel bag, I said, “I’ll pay this back someday, every cent.”

  “I know you will.” She paused for a minute, then said quietly, “One other thing. David’s brother is a lawyer in Boston. His firm does something with international law. If you need help moving this thing along,” the thing being my divorce in a country that made jumping into the bowels of Mt. Vesuvius more attractive, “perhaps Mort can be of some assistance. His card’s in there also.”

  “I don’t know how to thank you, Cordie, I really don’t.”

  “You graduating with an MBA will be thanks enough, kiddo.” She pushed away from the table and announced, “Enough gloom and doom for one morning, don’t you think? How close are we to Rockefeller Center?”

  “Coupla blocks.”

  “Good. I have until two o’clock so let’s just be two old friends out to do the sights, shall we?”

  Arm-in-arm we sauntered over to Sixth Avenue and hung a left while I tried to find some way of bringing up a subject that was burning a hole in my libido: her little brother, the snarky kid who’d grown into a man, a damn fine looking man with a kiss that had sent me into orbit and it shouldn’t have.

  The fact that Cordie hadn’t said word one about Robbie made my skin tingle and my ears burn. It wasn’t like her to hold back.

  Had baby brother called and told her off for dumping such a skank on him? Or had he called, wanting more information? Cordie knew better than to blab my misfortunes to any sympathetic ear, even to a brother who was single, attractive and employed.

  The thing was … my bestest friend in the entire universe was a matchmaker by avocation. She hadn’t needed to include me in that little family celebration last night. Not at all. The woman simply did not just casually kill two birds with one stone; she didn’t have it in her. What she did have was an uncanny knack of shoving two smoldering embers close enough to make sparks fly.

  So Cordie being Cordie, she should have been all over me with well, what did you think of, what about, yadda yadda…

  I could kiss you for that…

  What wasn’t she telling me?

  Chapter Seven

  Rob

  Sally nudged my elbow and took a swipe with the rag, mopping up the foam that oozed over the rim of the tankard. I’d done what I usually do … set the glass directly on the mirror surface, so highly polished you’d see your reflection if you had a mind to look. The coaster was bookmarking my notepad as I toggled back and forth from the Mac to the handwritten scribblings.

  Most of us didn’t bother to stare at our reflection, either on the bar surface or at the mirror on the wall. Not this early in the day. Not on a Saturday after the meager lunch mob had chowed down and gone off doing whatever it is single career guys do of an afternoon in a chilly wet rain on a long weekend. Some, not me, had Monday off. I had a deadline instead. A three hundred word op ed on college recruiting.

  That wasn’t recruiting as in a how to manual, with pros and cons, or who was in, who was on the outs. My editor, old school but a convert to the raw meat approach to all the news unfit to print, was looking to score bonus points with the new management. Suits with entertainment, not exposés in mind. Crimes and misdemeanors were old news and the only ones who cared were alumnae with vested interests in bowl games and bragging rights.

  I was looking to score something new and different. Basically the goal was to ruin lives for families with kids brought up like rock gods and sporting entitlement issues as badges of honor. The lot of us, we were all looking to spear the cult of celebrity with pithy words and sound bite trivia. Forever pursuing the holy grail of having your own words quoted back to you, preferably on ESPN.

  Snarky, out-of-sorts, I could feel my thirty-five years sitting heavy on my shoulders.

  The weather had driven me off campus and into the pub, looking for sustenance and hot coffee. I’d had that, and then some, later graduating to my preferred brew as I surfed the web in pursuit of leads.

  It would have been easier if I’d gotten a decent night’s sleep, but I hadn’t and I could lay blame on my conniving sister, leaving me alone with … her.

  “Can I get you something different, hon?” Sally moved the plate with the half-eaten ham and swiss on rye closer toward her, as if the suds in the sink just beyond my line-of-sight had dibs on the chipped surface.

  Shrugging, I shoved it the rest of the way, remembering my manners and starving children everywhere, letting the hint of guilt creep in with my, “I’m sorry, Sally, guess I’m not very hungry.”

  Sally tsked-tsked at that and reminded me to keep up my strength, I was too skinny, how was I gonna snare the right one looking like a lost soul … and a stream of mutterings that went in one ear and out the other.

  I actually enjoyed the mothering. It grounded me, made me think of home and better times, when the family united against me, the you
ngest, but in a good kind of way. The way that said they loved me unconditionally.

  Maybe not Cordie, though. Cordie came with conditions, all for my own good.

  Like last night. It was a set-up, pure and simple. There was no other reason for it. She and that woman had a shared history that neither me nor the Fink needed to be party to.

  I jotted down a note to unsplit infinitives and went back to doodling on the notepad. I’d written Taylor, Tay-for-Taylor and capital T’s diagonally, horizontally and vertically, nearly filling the page with teenage hormones and thirty-five year old loneliness.

  Sally refilled the glass, my third, and not a good sign for me finishing the piece by game time.

  A few patrons shuffled in and out, keeping Sally occupied but not exactly busy. That brought her back to the damning bit of paper and the inevitable question, “Who’s that, Robbie?”

  Yeah, Robbie, who is that?

  Just somebody I met last night. Nobody. Just a friend, my sister’s friend, the friend I kissed and would have taken to my bed in a heartbeat.

  That nobody.

  Damn.

  “Yo, Horndog, you doing the game tonight?”

  Double damn. My counterpart from The Observer shoved his narrow ass onto the padded seat next to me and grabbed my Guinness, helping himself to a generous sample.

  “Startin’ early, aintcha, boyo?” Paddy was late fifties, irrepressible and a damn good observer of the game when he wasn’t deep in his cups as Mom used to say.

  Recognizing when to quit, I slapped the lid down on the laptop and turned just in time to rescue my ale before Paddy slugged the rest down.

  Sally sauntered over, putting a little more sway in her caboose than what we young turks usually earned for our efforts, and smirked at both of us.

  “More of the same, boys?”

  Paddy glanced from me to the bartender and said with a growl, “Do I have reason to be jealous, heh, Sweetcheeks?” Sally blushed crimson to her dark roots and tittered as my friend ordered a refill for me and a Bushmills with a beer chaser for himself.

  Talk about starting early. I glanced at my watch. Three-thirty and I’d yet to hear from Cordie. She and the Fink had decided to stay over in the city when the good doctor’s professional organization had gone into overtime over rules and regs governing the ruling junta and their vaulted minions. I’d sent courtside tickets over to their hotel just in case one or both decided to break away from all the festivities and see what I did for a living.

  I wasn’t expecting either one to join me but it was the least I could do to repay them for the meal and the show.

  Especially the meal.

  “Ah, boyo, me arse is naught for feeling the love here. What say we relocate to a booth,” and he waved the whiskey in the general direction of a cleared spot by the men’s room.

  Gathering up my equipment and notebooks, I followed Paddy to the darkened corner, glad to be rid of words and dying muses for a while. Sally brought a tray with refills and snacks and left us to our own devices.

  Lighting a cigarette, Paddy inhaled deeply and blew it out in my direction. I didn’t smoke, not anymore, but I appreciated the sharp tang and secondary hit from his English Ovals, smuggled in from Delaware via one of his buddies running a distributorship below the Mason Dixon.

  He held the pack out but I declined with a shake of the head. If I started again, I wouldn’t be able to stop and I had enough sucking my bank account dry without lighting up five dollar bills. Addictions were like that. If I had a sawbuck for every time I thought or said, ‘I can stop whenever I want to’, I’d be shacked up in the Hamptons with an heiress and a deal with Patterson to co-pen his next book.

  Paddy slipped lengthwise along the bench seat, feet up and loafers tipped, rocking off his toes as he sucked down the Bushmills, then the beer and finally a hit of unfiltered, releasing the smoke slowly through his nose on a long sigh. He was a jiggler, a perpetual motion machine and age had done little or nothing to slow him down.

  I wasn’t much better but I kept my trainers laced and legs crossed at the ankles, toes tapping to some inner beat of coulda, woulda, shoulda.

  “Didja hear?”

  Given our recent takeover and the groveling amongst upper management to keep their 401k’s intact, I figured that’s what he meant. We weren’t the only targets. It was a media blitzkrieg with one rag after another falling under the yoke of one corporate owner with the bottom line, not the news, on everyone’s corporate mind.

  “I heard you were next.” I tipped the glass in sympathy and sipped at the rich brew.

  Nodding, he side-stepped the issue and went off on a tangent. “Me girl, she’s putting in a spare. Did I mention that?”

  “Room?” Sometimes a conversation with Paddy meandered down multiple pathways. It helped to stop and smell the shamrock while the man got to the point. Sometimes he did and sometimes he didn’t. The poet in me liked the journey, so I wriggled to get comfortable, prepared to wait him out.

  “She moved back, ya know?”

  Yes, I did, to the Old Country, to their shared roots. Paddy was as American as apple pie, having been born and raised in the mean streets of Boston to Irish immigrant parents who never let him forget his origins and the dreams of people too tough to let them go.

  Palming a handful of salted peanuts, I allowed an observation, “It’s never easy, is it?”

  “No, boyo, ye got that in one.”

  The salt and oils and crunch assaulted my mouth, coating the tongue and reminding me of the odd combination of flavors: caffeine laced with garlic and lemon and the imagined pulse of sweet honey across my lips. I’d barely touched her though every follicle had stood at attention at the bizarre headiness of her surrender and retreat.

  Angry with myself, I brushed at the mop of hair hanging in my eyes and had an epiphany.

  I know you. I’m sure of it. But not as Cordie’s best friend.

  As something … something else.

  Sitting up, I chugged the rest of the ale and asked Paddy, “Do you remember a basketball player, last name O’Brien?” I hastened to add, “WNBA, ten, maybe fifteen years ago?”

  He was a walking encyclopedia, just so long as you gave him enough to work with. From his creased brow, it looked like what I had wasn’t going to do it. Paddy wasn’t into the women’s sports as much as me but if there’d been anything newsworthy, he’d have known about it.

  “Sorry, laddie, not ringing a bell,” he said with regret, but the expression on his face told me he wasn't letting it go. Without meaning to, I had triggered some alerts. He sat up and folded his hands, waiting for me to fill in the blanks.

  Since there was no reason not to, I told him about my evening, how the O’Brien woman had moved, how she’d kick-started my nose for a story. I left out the finger fuck and how she’d come into my arms and how she’d tasted when I’d kissed her like she would break if I didn’t take care.

  Sally interrupted but I already had enough of a buzz on so I passed on another. I still needed to find my way to the Garden and put in my time. My boys were in a smackdown with the Heat and I didn’t hold out much hope for a high scoring game. It had boring written all over it, not a good way to go into my evening. Ergo, me tying one on early.

  The cell buzzed but I let it go to voicemail. It was Cordie, probably asking me to join her and the Fink for a quick dinner, but I was working on contrary and disappointed.

  And feeling the fool for not getting Miz O’Brien’s number so I could call her and… And what? Chat?

  Yeah, right, like that worked out so well last night.

  She was my sister’s friend, her oldest best friend.

  We had nothing in common other than a passion for bloody raw beef and garlic sticks slathered in butter.

  Gawd, I remembered how she’d deep-throated that bread, sucking off the garlicky butter, making her lips shine up and glisten, leaving me hard as a rock and thinking things I had no right to.

  There was something th
ere, I felt it in my bones. I told myself it was a story and didn’t bother to debate how that might just be a lie.

  “She went to VaTech with my sister, graduated around ninety-seven, maybe ninety-eight.” I wasn’t actually sure of the date but it was close enough.

  Paddy asked, “You sure she played here?”

  Here being in the good old USofA. No, I wasn’t sure, but I did mention she spoke Italian, to which my friend did a ‘uh-huh’ and scribbled notes with a chewed up pencil.

  “She got a first name?”

  “Um, yeah, Tay. Taylor.” A few more facts filtered in. “She’s from near Blacksburg, dad farmed if I remember correctly. And she had a scholarship.”

  And she haunted my every waking minute… But Paddy didn’t need to know that. It was bad enough it was happening to me. Like the air I breathed was quicksand, leaving me light-headed and giddy with anticipation.

  I wanted to see her again. I knew where she lived. But I wasn’t asking my sister for her number. I’d shoot myself in the foot before I’d stoop to that.

  “I’ll put me thinking cap on, laddie.”

  He fished a fistful of nuts as we both slid out of the booth and took turns heading to the men’s room so he could watch over my laptop and notes. When he was ready to leave he wrapped a scarf around his grizzled features and waved goodbye, disappearing into a swath of tourists intent on having an real Irish Pub experience.

  Grimacing at the thought of having to sit alone, courtside, I made my way to the bar, paid my tab and gave Sally a generous tip. She blew a kiss, but it wasn’t the same. Not anymore.

  I’d had the real deal. Imitations weren’t going to cut it, not from here on out.

  At the Garden, I stowed my gear in a locker and kibitzed my way onto the floor, making the rounds, networking, gossiping. I had offers to sit here, sit there, but for some perverse reason I now wanted to be alone, to wallow in my loneliness, to appreciate it to its fullest.