by Anne Calhoun
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I can’t. I can’t, and I can’t talk about why I can’t.”
“I’m not intrigued by mysterious, tortured men,” she said.
“Now who’s lying?” he said, but he tempered the words with a rueful smile. “You’re tempted. You’re just too smart to fall for it. And I’m too much of a jerk to make it easy on you.”
“I don’t want easy. The truth is anything but simple or easy or free of pain.”
“I can’t,” he said again.
“I won’t give in,” she said.
“I know,” he said. “That’s why I’ll be back.”
She didn’t have a response to that. Don’t come back wasn’t an option, but neither was come to bed with me. Frustrated, she got the last word. “The truth, Ryan. That’s all I ask.” Then she got to her feet in silence, and left him sitting on her stoop.
***
On the night of her dinner date with Stéphane, the host guided her through Bouley to a quiet table. Stéphane watched her the whole way. His heavy-lidded, amused gaze raised her hackles a little, but she let it go. While he wasn’t in the fashion industry, he spent enough time on its periphery and possessed a Frenchman’s love of fine things. Tonight she wore a design that combined elements of her brother’s work with her own: a teal silk pencil skirt that stopped just above her knees, and a fitted jacket in a teal brocade with a wide folded shawl collar that revealed her collarbone almost to her shoulders. The brocade pattern was inspired by Japanese design elements—koi, dragons, the symbol for fire. She and her brother had traveled to Japan together several years prior. Simone had gone on to design a line of Japanese–inspired loungewear and lingerie, while her brother worked elements into an extremely successful couture line. Underneath, a matching teal silk full-coverage corset laced her tight, transforming what could be stodgy into sheer seduction. The color glowed in the candlelit restaurant. Her hair was confined in a smooth French twist, the better to show off the jacket’s design and her own bone structure.
When she reached the table Stéphane rose and quietly shooed away the host to kiss Simone on either cheek and seat her himself. “Bonsoir, Stéphane,” she said, keeping her back straight as she eased into the chair.
“Bonsoir, Simone,” he replied. The hovering host placed her serviette across her lap, then handed her the wine list. “Have you chosen wine?” she said.
“I ordered a Francois Raveneau. Would you like to start with the oysters?”
The waiter appeared with a bottle of wine, which Stéphane sampled and approved while Simone studied the specials, and gave them a few minutes to look over the menu. When she’d chosen the chilled Wellfleet oysters and the lamb, she sipped her wine.
“First, a little business,” Stéphane said, and slid a folio of papers across the table to her. “You’re doing well, a little ahead of projections. You could easily repay your business loan early.”
“Good,” she said, scanning the balance sheets and summary statement before tucking them away in her bag. “Just as I anticipated.”
“And how is your family? Your father? Is he well?”
“They’re all very well, thank you for asking. Papa has had to give up some of his travel schedule, but Julian’s more than ready to step in. He’ll be back in the fall for Fashion Week, and I know he’d love to see you.”
“And I him.”
The waiter arrived and took their orders. “And how is your mother?” Simone asked when he’d left. “Still distraught over you leaving Paris?”
“Ah, Maman,” he said with a little smile. “She has not yet resigned herself to the reality of the situation. How is your second summer in New York shaping up? Have you found the time yet to wait in line for tickets to Shakespeare in the Park? Daria Russell is getting incredible reviews.”
Daria Russell was in the air, like an expensive perfume, or pollen. It was extremely awkward to have everyone focused on the circumstances surrounding the one person you really didn’t want to talk about. But Simone knew she wouldn’t be sitting in line under the big trees lining the walking paths by the Delacorte Theater, watching delivery boys come and go from delis on the Upper West Side, sharing the New York Times with neighbors to her right and her left, calculating the odds of whether or not she would get a ticket. She wouldn’t take her seat in the audience as the sun was setting, and watch Shakespeare played out against the backdrop of the Midtown skyline. She should be bigger than that, able to go and watch the performance without thinking of the story Ryan told her about Daria. But she couldn’t. She was jealous, pure and simple, and she wasn’t sure she could bear to watch Daria be brilliant.
“No,” she said ruefully, “I don’t have time. Perhaps next season.”
“You work too hard, cherie,” he said.
They shared the oysters, and chatted until their appetizers arrived. “I see you’re beginning to get a fair bit of social media chatter,” Stéphane said.
Thanks, in great part, to Ryan Hamilton’s presence in her showroom with a supermodel and an actress. “It’s the kind of publicity I can’t buy,” she said ruefully. “Oh, thank you for the sun catcher. It’s hanging in the showroom window.”
Stéphane’s brow wrinkled. He reached across the table to take her hand and lift it to his lips. “Cherie,” he said, his eyes twinkling in the candlelight, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Simone lifted one eyebrow, her thumb automatically caressing his. Stéphane did this, wooed her each time as if it were the first time. At some level, she supposed, it was romantic, sending her expensive gifts, denying his role. Normally she enjoyed it. She was woman enough, French enough, old-fashioned enough, to believe she should be wooed. But somehow there seemed to be more truth in Ryan’s stories than in Stéphane’s games. She frowned at him, intending to push the matter, when Stéphane’s gaze lifted from her face to focus behind her and above her head. Still holding Stéphane’s hand, she turned slowly, with her whole torso, feeling the wide collar of her jacket gap as she did.
Ryan stood behind her. His hair was tousled, the button at his collar undone and his tie loosened, his eyes glittering and cheeks flushed. He looked at her, either anger or anguish flashing in his eyes.
“Stéphane,” she said, disengaging their hands, “allow me to introduce Ryan Hamilton. Ryan, this is Stéphane, a very old and dear friend of mine.”
Stéphane pushed his chair back and rose to his feet, offering his hand to Ryan. After a pause that stopped just short of being insulting, Ryan took it and gave it one brisk shake.
“Always a pleasure to meet one of Simone’s admirers,” Stéphane said.
It should have been a safe topic of conversation. Stéphane followed her career and had no doubt seen the blog posts, tweets, and other social media chatter naming Ryan as the man who brought Daria and Jade to Irresistible. Clearly Ryan was a client who enjoyed her work, or he wouldn’t bring woman after woman to the boutique. But something about the innocuous conversational overture made Ryan’s mouth tighten.
“Is that what I am? One of your admirers?”
She wasn’t sure what he objected to: being lumped in with other admirers, the fact that she was out in public with another man, or something she knew nothing about. She suspected all of the above, but that the bulk of the blame went to the secrets he was keeping. Still.
“I beg your pardon,” she said, her tone sharp enough to freeze beer warmed by a summer night and a hot story.
He dropped to his heels beside her chair. He had one arm on the back, and the other elbow landed on the white linen tablecloth with a thump that rattled the silverware against the china, but his breath smelled of the sauce on the mahi mahi, and liquor. He was drunk, and angry. Furious enough to make a scene. “Is this tone more to your liking?”
It was the soft, intimate tone, a low rumble intended
for her ears alone, the tone he told stories in. It was, she could tell now, the voice he would use to seduce someone, the voice he would use if he had her face-first against a wall, or flat on her back on a mattress, murmuring in her ear as he unfastened the buttons running from between her breasts to the top of her skirt, and the rough cat’s-tongue tone stole her breath.
He slid Stéphane a look as the other man slowly seated himself, eyebrows lifted. “Come home with me,” he murmured. “Now. Come home with me and let me show you exactly how I want to admire you.”
The tone, the comment, the scene he was making flew in the face of the intimacy they shared on her stoop. Her temper erupted, as sudden and hot and violent as a solar flare, charged and radiating particles that reacted with the lust in Ryan’s eyes. He was looking for an excuse, any excuse, to escalate this. She breathed as deeply as the corset would allow, swallowed back the rich tangle of emotions; without taking her eyes from Ryan’s, she said, “Please excuse us for a moment, Stéphane.”
“Of course,” he said, his tone amused. Ryan wouldn’t like that, being dismissed as laughable.
Temper made her uncharacteristically clumsy. She thumped her chair away from the table, rocking Ryan back on his heels. With her head held high and her shoulders squared, she stalked between the tables to the hallway leading to the restrooms. A large potted fern gave them some measure of privacy.
She stopped in the center of the hallway and turned to face Ryan, refusing to begin this conversation backed into a wall. She opened her mouth, but he got in the first word.
“Jesus Christ,” he said. His gaze flickered over the details: her forehead, her cheekbones, her lips, her throat, lingering on the notch between her collarbone, the teal silk straining over her breasts, and her tightly compressed waist. He’d seen her in regular clothes, and he clearly knew the shape of her body well enough to tell that she had changed it. He’d spent enough time in Irresistible to know how.
“You look unreal,” he said almost inaudibly, his hand lifting to her waist.
The compliment caught her off guard, but not because she thought it was unusual. Ryan would praise women as a matter of course. No, what arrested her voice and her throat was the raw authenticity of the compliment. He didn’t say she looked pretty, or beautiful, or lovely. He said she looked unreal. She couldn’t breathe, and not just because of the corset. She couldn’t breathe because Ryan was telling her the truth.
“Why are you wearing that for him?”
“I’m not wearing it for him,” she snapped. “I’m wearing it for me. If you paid any attention at all to anything I’ve said about my work, you would know that. Go home and sober up.”
In one smooth movement he stepped into her, forcing her backward against the wall, then flattened his palms on either side of her head. “Don’t leave.”
“We both have to leave,” she snapped. “You probably have yet another woman waiting and I have—”
“Your former lover? Or current?”
“You are in no position to ask such a personal question,” she said flatly. She was having difficulty breathing, and not only from her tightly constricted waist. The elemental emotions flashing from Ryan—anger, possessiveness, sheer masculine desire—took up all the air in the restaurant, the block, and perhaps the city. “You know what you have to do to earn that, right?”
Tension twanged between them like a struck power line. His arm blocked her from leaving, although she could have easily ducked under it. She didn’t. Instead she stood and let his gaze slide over her like a searchlight. The teal brocade sleeves hugged her arms from shoulder to wrist, and the cowl neckline folded away from her throat, exposing her bare shoulders and, from Ryan’s angle, the tops of her breasts, supported by the corset’s cups. His breathing slowed, deepened, as he looked at her and quite deliberately put his hand on her waist.
“Jesus,” he whispered when he encountered the steel stays. “Simone.”
They were alone at the back of the corridor, sconces softly lighting the space in soft pools. They stood in the darkness between two of the pools. His head was bent, looking into her eyes, not down the front of her jacket, as his hand trailed around to the bottommost button and slipped it free.
“Show me,” he said. “Show me what you wore for him.”
“I wore it for me,” she repeated. “Not for him.”
His gaze searched hers for a long moment. “Even better,” he said finally. “Show me what makes you feel confident. Sexy.”
His hand followed hers as she unbuttoned the rest of the placket, sliding up from the bottom. The final button, set high on her collarbone under one of the cowl’s folds, felt like stepping into thin air.
She opened the button. He spread the drooping fabric, revealing a corset that matched the jacket, a brilliant shade of teal silk without any additional ornamentation that drew attention to her body, not to the corset itself.
“How did you get yourself into this?” he murmured.
“Lorrie laced me in before she left for the day.”
His hand slid to her back, fingers delicately touching the grommets, the lacing. When he encountered the recommended two-inch gap at the back of the corset, compressing her waist by two inches, he froze. “Jesus,” he breathed. “Let me see.”
She could feel heat radiating from his palm to the small of her back. “I’m not taking off my jacket and turning my back to you in Bouley’s corridor,” she said. If she sounded breathless, the corset was at fault, not the scent of Ryan’s skin, the heat staining his cheekbones, the heavy-lidded look in his eyes.
After a moment his hand followed the exaggerated curves of her hip, waist, and ribs to the swell of her breast above the cups, where his thumb came to rest.
“What’s your definition of irresistible? Too powerful to be resisted?” He laughed, but the sound was pained. “It worked. I want to give you everything you want.”
The image flashed in her mind, bright hot and searing, Ryan naked and on his knees in front of her. He would unbutton the jacket and spread the fabric to either side, ruck her skirt up to her hips, and put his mouth between her legs. He would lick and suck and please her until she told him to stop. The image made her breath come short, but she wasn’t thinking about her own sexual pleasure. She was thinking about Ryan, naked.
In the stories, he never took off his clothes. He never revealed himself. That’s what she wanted. She didn’t want him to please her. She wanted to strip him naked and make him tell her the truth of himself.
“You should go. Daria must be getting impatient.”
“I’m not here with Daria. I’m here with friends.”
Relief drenched her, leaving her slightly unsteady on her heels. “Not with Daria?”
He shook his head. “She got what she wanted.”
“Did she, or did you?”
“It was a mutually satisfying arrangement. Leave with me, Simone.”
The words were almost inaudible, the ghost of breath and voice against her collarbone, somewhere between a plea and a demand. She found it difficult to think with the heat of his skin radiating through silk. “You want me to leave my dinner date and walk out of here with you in front of your friends? A dozen people took your picture out there. Our picture. If I leave with you, I’m social media fodder tomorrow, and not in a good way,” she said, but the words were saturated with desire and anguished regret.
He pushed away from the wall, drew in a deep breath she rather envied at the moment, and shoved his hands over his hair. The movement lifted his jacket away from his torso enough for her to see how loose his trousers were around his waist, the worn mark on his belt where he would normally fasten it, two holes looser than the current spot.
“Ryan,” she whispered, and reached for him.
“No,” he said, and stepped back. “You’re right. It’s too public. I won’t do that to you. I just . . . los
t my head when I saw you holding his hand.”
“Make up your fucking mind,” she snapped, temper once again straining at her tightly leashed control. “I’m asking for nothing unreasonable. The truth. That’s all I want. If you can’t give me that, then stop this.”
He said nothing, his gaze flickering between the corset and her eyes. It wasn’t sexual. It was respect for the strength of her convictions. Watching him watch her, she buttoned her jacket. The first button she fastened was the one tucked away under the shawl collar. She closed the others slowly, making her way from between her breasts to between her hip bones, like putting on a suit of armor. Ryan watched. By now the flush on his cheekbones wasn’t just from whatever he had to drink, but from frustrated desire.
“Behave yourself,” she said, her hand palm out for emphasis, almost but not quite pressed to the crisp cotton of his shirt. “Do you hear me? What you do in my shop is one thing: flings with supermodels behind closed doors, bringing in actresses, putting them and yourself on display. I . . . appreciate . . . the buzz. When we sit on my steps, no one knows who we are. My reputation is everything to me. Don’t draw me into the drama of being one of the women in your life,” she said, tapping her breastbone with her fingers, trying to keep her voice even. “Another scene like this and you’ll be banned from my presence forever.”
It was a slip of the tongue. She meant to say premises, not presence, but English was her second language, not her first, and when she got worked up she made mistakes. But she couldn’t take it back. She knew better than to show weakness to a man like Ryan.
“This is all I have to give, and you don’t want it.”
He meant money, prestige, fame. She spun back, stepped into his body, at some level aware of the way her breasts heaved, the shift of fine wool against brocade. “I want something from you,” she said. “Is that what you think, that because I don’t want money or clothes or jewelry or a Fifth Avenue apartment that this isn’t deadly serious for me? I want the truth from you. Nothing more, and certainly nothing less.”