by Anne Calhoun
She was very nearly perfect, polite, generous, and brilliant. Simone found it much easier to admire all these qualities with Ryan sitting next to another woman at the back of the theater.
When intermission arrived, Simone stopped at the concession stand for a glass of white wine and a small picnic box of bread, cheese, and a handful of grapes. She took her simple meal around the corner of the theater and down the small plank jetty protruding a few feet into Turtle Pond. Cattails and reeds rose to shoulder height on either side of the jetty; fish, ducks, and even a couple small turtles gathered at the edge, clearly accustomed to getting morsels of picnic lunches and bread from small children. Simone set her plastic cup of wine on the railing and opened the box holding her dinner. High on the rock outcropping, the spotlight illuminated the flag flying over Belvedere Castle.
“Time to go, Zoe,” a mother said. A fat-faced little girl with sweaty ringlets tumbling around her shoulders flung the last of her bread into the water and then toddled back down the jetty, leaving Simone in the quiet. She tore off a section of the French bread, added a small hunk of cheese, saving the grapes for the dessert at the end of the meal.
“Hello, Simone.”
She’d purposefully not searched for Ryan during intermission. He’d just as purposefully sought her out. She looked back down the jetty, but they were alone. She relaxed slightly, and focused on him. Up close he looked worse than she’d thought. Lines bracketed either side of his mouth, and the shoulder seams of his shirt sagged a little lower than they should, whereas before they’d been perfectly tailored to his frame. The bone weariness visible on his face should have made him less attractive. Instead it added an entirely new layer of desirability to his already considerable charisma. She wanted to feed him, take him home with her, strip him out of the suit that looked like it weighed more than a medieval suit of armor, and make love to him with her hands and her mouth until the expression on his face relaxed into satisfaction.
Playboy Ryan was an amusing diversion. Wounded Ryan was dangerous.
“Where’s your date?” he not-quite-casually asked her.
“I came alone.”
His gaze sharpened. “The secret admirer strikes again?”
“It’s not as much of a secret as he’d like to think it is,” she said of Stéphane, with his on-again, off-again approach to relationships, his profligate generosity, and his complete inability to commit. “Perhaps he didn’t want to come with me.”
“Maybe he didn’t want you to go with anyone else.”
She contemplated him while she finished her mouthful. “Where’s your date?”
“She ran into a couple women she knew from her agency. I bought them all a glass of wine and left them talking about who had been booked for which show in the fall fashion weeks.”
“And then you came to say hello to the ducks?” she said lightly, giving him a chance to pretend they weren’t glowing like the moon on Turtle Pond.
“No, I came looking for you.”
“You shouldn’t say things like that,” she said.
One corner of his mouth lifted in a wry grin. He nodded down at the cluster of waterfowl waiting very patiently at her feet. “I think they’re waiting for your crumbs.”
“We’ll have to see if I have anything left for them,” she said. “When was the last time you ate?”
“Why don’t you mind going places by yourself?” he countered.
“No company is better than bad company.”
Air huffed from his nostrils. “Too true,” he said, then leaned back against the railing. “I can’t remember the last time I was alone. When I was a kid, I’d do all-day hikes on the Appalachian Trail, and when I was a teenager, I’d do weekend trips by myself. I’d pack up a sleeping bag, some food, a flashlight, and a book to read, and I’d just take off by myself. I never felt lonely.”
She rather liked this iteration of Ryan, the one who wore cheap running shoes and hiked remote trails by himself. “Do you miss it?” she asked, meaning Do you miss the boy you used to be?
“Yeah. But I didn’t know that until I met you.”
She offered him her bread and cheese. After a quick glance at her, he took it and bit off a tiny section, not even enough to feed a duck, let alone an adult human male, then chewed tentatively, almost as if he had a toothache. “I’ve spent the last decade surrounded by people. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more lonely in my life, and I didn’t know that until I met you.”
“I’m not sorry,” she said, and held up her hand when he tried to give it back. He needed it more than she did.
“Are you enjoying the show?” he said.
“Very much. Are you?”
“I should have thought more carefully about the company,” he said.
Her temper fired up again. “No one makes you date women like that,” she said. “Or fuck them, or whatever it is you’re doing with them. It’s your choice. If you don’t like it, stop.”
“They’re a good reason to come see you.”
“Because you need a reason?” she said, fully aware there was a very thin line between anger and passion.
His inhale halted briefly, like she’d cut him to the quick. “Other than missing you? Fuck. I’ve talked to you for maybe ten hours of my life, but when I don’t see you, I feel half alive. And the funny thing, the thing that really sucks, is that before I met you I didn’t even realize I was half alive. You’ve ruined me for the life I used to have.”
“That’s a little melodramatic,” she said. “I think that by the time you showed up in my showroom, you’d already been ruined. If I did anything, I just reminded you that there is a truth worth living for.”
“It was worth a shot,” he said, and finished the bread and cheese. “Most women like those kinds of dramatic declarations. I forgot who I was talking to.”
“Did you really?”
“No,” he said quietly, so quietly that the word was almost lost in the sound of turtles slipping into the water, and ducks settling their wings. “I remember every single word you’ve ever said to me. I remember that you don’t pull your punches. I feel like shit that I need you to not pull your punches, that you give me something good and precious, and I . . . I used to bring more than this to the table.”
“This would all be much more meaningful if I had the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”
“I can’t tell you.”
She looked at the remains of her box dinner. “Will you tell me for half the grapes?”
He laughed, a startled bark, then smiled at her, rakish and charming and simmering with longing. “I think you’ll give me half the grapes whether I tell you or not.”
She cupped the grapes in her palm and held them out between herself and Ryan. “I’ll give you all the grapes. I’ll take you back to my bed, let you choose something from Irresistible’s stock, and put it on for you. I’ll kneel beside you while I take off all your clothes, and I will feed them to you any way you like.”
He stopped breathing. She’d been watching the rise and fall of his chest, imagining the way his breath would taste and feel as it washed over her skin, so she knew when he was no longer inhaling and exhaling. “What happens after I eat all the grapes?”
“Whatever you want.”
“Weak,” he said immediately. “That’s the best you can do after the stories I’ve told you?”
It was her turn to give a startled laugh. “I can do better. You wouldn’t have to do a thing. Would you do that for me? Would you let me take what I wanted from you?”
“Yes.”
“It could take a while,” she said.
“Is that supposed to be a warning?”
She brought the grapes, still cupped in her palm, to her nose and breathed in the tart scent of juice barely contained by the straining skins, the faint sweat of arousal gathering in her palm.
<
br /> “How long would you tease me?” His voice was rough, like the down on the cattails sheltering them.
“As long as it takes to make up for the way you’ve teased me.”
“Forever?” he said, still temptation personified, but with an intent glint in his eyes.
“I’m deadly serious.” She extended her arm again, half challenge, half offer, all desperate arousal. “All you have to do is tell me the truth and come home with me.”
“I’ve never wanted a palm-size cluster of grapes so badly in my life. I don’t even fucking like grapes. But I can’t. Not now.”
“Too bad,” she said with a casualness she didn’t feel. She plucked a single grape from the stem, brought it into her mouth, and bit down slowly until the juice flooded over her tongue.
He looked like he was being ground between two large stones. Taking pity on him, she separated a small bunch of grapes from the larger stem and held them out to him.
He shook his head. “No. You’re not settling for half measures, and neither will I. I’ll either earn all of you, or have none of you.”
“That’s easy to say when you don’t actually like grapes,” she observed.
“Nothing about this is easy.”
A quiet chime dinged, signaling five minutes until the end of intermission. Simone finished her grapes, neatly stowed her trash inside the cardboard box, and finished off her wine. Ryan extended his arm to indicate she should precede him down the jetty.
“Enjoy the rest of the show,” she said and gave him a parting nod.
“You, too,” he said, and rejoined his date by the entrance.
When the show was over, she didn’t see him in the crush of people leaving the theater. She set off down the western drive, walking south toward the lights of Midtown, and home, disappointingly, infuriatingly alone.
***
Her first text of the day was from Lorrie and arrived before she’d finished her coffee.
I’m at the button shop. You really need to take a look at the social media buzz this morning.
She opened Instagram and Twitter to a flood of mentions, likes, and comments all based on a series of moonlit images taken of her and Ryan on the jetty, her cupped hand extending the grapes to him across the jetty. The cattails seemed to curve around them in the moonlight, giving the scene a romantic air set to crackling by the obvious chemistry between them. The photographer was a random Manhattan resident who had lurked in the bushes at the end of the jetty and watched the whole conversation play out, then capitalized on being in the right place at the right time.
“Merde,” she said. She didn’t want to be a part of Ryan’s scandalous ways, but a quick look at the replies and comments showed a fair bit of chatter about whether Ryan was dating Lily Graham, speculating about Simone’s role in the relationships.
Lorrie arrived, breathless. “She had sixty followers yesterday,” she said without preamble as she hurried past Simone into the workroom and set down a teetering stack of button boxes. “Now she’s nearing five thousand and climbing.”
The only thing to do was to wait it out until the next news cycle. “He’d better not set one foot in my showroom,” she muttered.
Chapter Seven
For five long days the city was at its worst, seething with heat and smells, trapped in a humid, hundred-degree blanket of air the forecasters promised would break on Saturday night. At the end of this heat wave, Ryan came back to the showroom, and he didn’t come alone.
He brought Lily Graham.
Simone noticed them immediately, as did everyone else in the showroom, gazes alternating between Simone, Ryan, and Lily in a way that told Simone that she was in danger of becoming not just well-known, but notorious. Her heart tripped when she saw Ryan in her peripheral vision, infuriating her even more. She kept her attention on Tilda Davies, owner of a couture stationery boutique in the West Village. Simone had hired Tilda’s team to design invitations for her grand opening the prior year, and Tilda had become a regular customer. Today she was shopping with her attentive law enforcement husband, gun and badge discreetly hidden by his suit jacket, who seemed to see everything and say nothing. Each time the door opened he glanced up, but he paid no more attention to Ryan and Lily than he did to anyone else in the shop. Instead he stayed close to Tilda, who held herself with a new strength and vulnerability since the last time Simone saw her, early in June. He remained a quiet presence at her shoulder, completely comfortable in this ultrafeminine setting, focused on luxuriously pampering items for Tilda than anything overtly sexy. At his request Simone gathered several items, including a nightgown and robe set in a shimmering shade of garnet red that was guaranteed to set off his wife’s pale skin, gray eyes, and tousled black curls to perfection. When she’d made Tilda and her husband comfortable in a dressing room, she looked for Ryan.
His appearance shocked her: grooves in the skin by his mouth, dark circles under his eyes, and he even looked thinner than he’d been at the Delacorte. He wore faded jeans that were white at the hip seams and the button fly, a loose Oxford, and boat shoes. The clothes were timeless, as men’s fashions often were, but something about the limp cotton and the basic Levi’s jeans suggested clothes he’d brought out of storage from an earlier period in his life. College maybe, when he was younger, thinner, someone else. Lily wore a white cotton dress with a boat neck, fine blue stripes, and brown buttons at the shoulder. Ryan returned Simone’s noncommittal greetings with a smile so fragile it would shatter if she breathed on it, and a look of quiet desperation in his eyes. Lily gave her a look that would curdle milk.
“Welcome to Irresistible,” she said, determined to be the grown-up in the room. “Are you looking for something for a particular function or event?”
“A house party in the Hamptons this weekend,” Ryan said, when it was clear Lily wouldn’t respond.
“Are there special events you’re planning to attend? A concert, or a dinner party?” Simone said.
“You know what? I’m fine on my own,” Lily said. Her voice dripped with the acid sweetness of someone with a poison-tipped knife waiting to slip into your back. “Keep him entertained for me, would you?”
She purposely turned her back on Ryan and Simone, and began browsing the racks.
Simone shot Ryan a look that should have sliced him to ribbons. How dare he? How dare he bring this woman who was spoiling for a fight to her showroom on a Friday afternoon? “You’re making a spectacle of me,” she said under her breath.
Ryan slipped the phone into the front pocket of his jeans. “She’d rather have jewelry. If I’m throwing money around, I might as well buy her jewelry.”
Lily plucked a chemise from the rack, pursed her lips as if the cut and construction could be found for less at a dollar store, and replaced it. “Why don’t you?” Simone said. “I doubt very much you’re going to have a story to tell me next week.”
He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. She’s served a purpose.”
“As have I?”
“Yes.” Blunt, telling the truth. For once.
At that, Simone gripped the loose fabric of Ryan’s button-down and all but dragged him into the workroom. When the door swung closed behind her, she whirled on Ryan. “Why are you doing this?”
He took one look at the seamstresses bent over machines, then wrapped his fingers around her upper arm and pulled her behind the screen shielding the three-way mirror at the end of the workroom. Sheltered by the tall panels, Ryan’s charisma closed them in a little bubble.
He didn’t let her go.
“Because in a few days you won’t want to have anything to do with me. I wanted . . .” His voice trailed off. “I wanted. That’s all.”
She made Ryan Hamilton want. The thought, the possessive touch thrilled her, his fingers pressed into her flesh, leaving a mark, before her temper swamped the illicit thrill. “You must stop, Ryan,” she sai
d, the words low, emphatic. “This isn’t good for you, and it’s not good for me, for my business. I foster independence in women, intimacy in couples, I don’t tear women down and break them apart. Lily doesn’t want to be here, and she could sabotage my reputation very effectively. Why are you doing this?”
He’d slowly backed her into the mirror as she threw angry words at him. Now there was nowhere to go. His body, tense with anger and frustration, stopped just short of pressing against her. With every sharp inhale her breasts brushed his chest.
“I need this. I have to do something this weekend—” He stopped, glanced at the wall between them and the showroom, visibly restrained himself and lifted his hands from her shoulders, then ducked his head and swore under his breath. “I’m using you, and God, all I want right now is to kiss you.”
“No.” Flat. Final. If she let him kiss her in the heat of the moment she would cross a line with herself that she could never recover from.
He bent his head but didn’t angle his mouth to take hers, as if he knew that if he crossed that line it was well and truly over between them. He didn’t even touch her again, just braced his forearms on either side of her head. A scant millimeter of air remained between his skin and hers as he drew his lips over her cheekbone, then the bridge of her nose, then over the other cheekbone. The only part of him to touch her was the breath that came from his lungs, and it suddenly seemed more intense than making love. Tiny, delicate hairs rose in the wake of each movement, and the sweetness of the near-touches, his parted lips, the soft warm breath, sent a shiver down her nape to pool hot and sweet between her thighs.
Her lips parted to whisper Don’t, don’t stop, but he stole the very breath from her lungs by tilting his head and ghosting his lips over the shell of her ear to the bolt of her jaw, where he paused. His arms were braced on either side of her head, and it was all she could do to stay on her feet from lack of oxygen. When he continued until his lips were not quite touching her chin, she tipped her head back slowly, exposing her throat to him as reluctantly as any prey exposed its throat to the wolf.