He continued. “How could you agree to let me go off with Lexi? Now she tells me she and Sherry are accompanying us to Louisville, when I was hoping beyond hope it would just be you and I.”
She turned back, leaned on the stall door, and put her hand on her hip. He wanted to be alone with her? She couldn’t let herself go there, so this time she changed the subject. “If you can’t move, how did you get up there, then?”
“Sheer survival. I had to get away from her. I had to jump, and quick.”
She laughed again, knowing that if Lexi really wanted Julian, she would’ve landed him by now. Vanessa offered him her hand. “You’re going to really owe me for this one.”
He looked at her hand with genuine gratitude and perhaps even a little smugness at winning her over.
“I plan on thanking you profusely.” He took her hand, leaned on her shoulder with his other hand, and, with a wince, stepped off the toilet and onto the floor, which brought him face-to-face with her. He kept a hand on her shoulder, and with the other he interlocked his fingers with hers, pressed her up against the cold tile bathroom wall, whispered “thank you,” and shocked her with a kiss, better than any man in leather had ever kissed her, or ever could kiss her, for that matter.
She put her free hand on his leather butt and pulled him in closer. She could feel everything, and he grew harder as he pressed into her with a slow rhythmic movement that matched his expert kissing.
This had to be the hottest encounter she’d ever had in a men’s room—in fact, it was the only encounter she’d ever had in a men’s room. She opened her eyes, only to see his were intently closed. She worried about someone walking in on them and could hardly breathe.
He pulled his lips away for a moment, just far enough so she could feel them move when he spoke.
“I’ve been waiting a long time to do that,” he said.
He had been? Waiting? To kiss her? Why had he waited so long? “We really shouldn’t be—”
His lips brushed against hers. “I know. In some aspects you are extremely, exasperatingly old-fashioned.”
“Nobody has ever called me old-fashioned.”
“But you do have some very traditional values.”
Could he stop the talking about values and get back to the kissing? Before she changed her mind about this digression?
She looked at him askance, at his lips, and gave her lips a quick flick with her tongue. “This really shouldn’t be happening.”
“No, it most certainly should not. But I find myself very much attracted to you, Vanessa. And in such a short time, too.” With that he took her wrists and held them up over her head, against the wall, as he proceeded to slowly grind into her and kiss her neck, her collarbone, her cleavage—
But the door opened and Northstar, the first openly gay superhero, stepped in, wearing his signature black and silver suit. Someone in a Planet of the Apes costume filed in right behind him.
The toilet in the stall Julian had been in automatically flushed, causing them both to jump.
Northstar and the ape didn’t even look at Vanessa but headed straight for the urinals, and, just like that, the moment was gone and too much time had been wasted talking. Once she heard zippers unzipping she knew she had to get out, and fast—
Julian took her hand and led her toward the door, giving her a generous glance at the leather butt she’d just squeezed.
“Where are your clothes anyway?” Although she knew the answer.
“Lexi has them.”
Vanessa sent the three-breasted Lexi a text message.
“It would be most appreciated if you could get us the hell out of here,” Julian said. “Thank you.”
That was Julian. Always polite.
* * *
Lie down on my couch,” Vanessa said to him once they’d made it to her condo and she had peeled off his leather shirt.
He looked at her, mouth agape.
“Really, Julian. I’m only going to try and get you out of these things. We need to get you to your book signing in Indianapolis by seven P.M.”
He sprawled out on her zebra-striped couch, dwarfing it in an instant as he flattened himself and attempted to squirm out of the leather pants.
“Zipper’s broken,” he said through tightened lips. “Too much of a bulge, I assume.”
“Too much of an ego is more like it.” Vanessa put her hands on her hips and sighed. “It looks like we’re going to have to cut you out.”
“One more try. Just indulge me one more time.”
She leaned over him, propped one knee on the couch, and gripped the waistband of his pants along with him. He lifted his hips and sucked in his already well-carved abs, and, as the pants budged slightly, they both let out a growl.
That was when Aunt Ella and Paul walked in.
“Oh, dear Lord!” Aunt Ella squealed as she dropped her handbag.
The thud prompted Vanessa to spring up.
Paul scooped up the purse.
When Aunt Ella saw that the half-clad body belonged to Julian, she regained her composure.
“Oh, Julian. It’s you. I do hope we’re interrupting something.”
Vanessa sighed. “You’re not interrupting anything, Aunt Ella. I’m just trying to help him out of these leather—trousers Lexi somehow got him into.”
“I love it when you say ‘trousers.’” Julian smiled.
Vanessa returned the smile.
Aunt Ella came closer to survey the situation. “Lexi got him into these things? I told you not to leave him with her! Well, dear, you’ll have to cut him out. It’s the only solution. You told me he has a seven o’clock signing in Indianapolis. Shouldn’t you already be on your way?”
Vanessa dashed into the kitchen to get her shears. “Yes, we should.” She rifled through her knife drawer, pulling out three pairs of scissors.
She bolted back into the living room and slid one blade of the kitchen shears into the waistband along the side seam.
“Take it slowly, now,” Julian said. “Of course, I would trust nobody but you with this kind of an operation.”
“That might well be your downfall,” Vanessa said as she cut very carefully down the seam.
“I don’t think so,” Julian said. “You’re a lot sweeter than you let on. And there is something simmering just below the surface of your consummate professionalism.”
She almost nicked his pale skin with the scissors.
Aunt Ella and Paul sat down as if to enjoy the show. Just another event in the life of Vanessa and her men.
“What brings you two here, anyway? Is everything okay?” Vanessa asked as she concentrated on the seam.
“I was so worried, Vanessa.” Aunt Ella piped up. “You haven’t answered your phone for about an hour now, and I even had Paul type to you and tweet to you and God knows what other hocus-pocus he pulled, but you didn’t respond. And that’s not like you. So I wanted to come over here and make sure you weren’t collapsed on your laptop or something of the sort.”
Vanessa was at his thigh now, and she did her best not to look at anything but the seam. His thigh felt warm and muscular against her hand.
She must have inadvertently shut her phone off, and she couldn’t ever do that—not with Aunt Ella’s Alzheimer’s.
“Collapsed at my laptop?”
“Really, Vanessa, I do worry about you.”
“Worrying must run in the family, because I worry about you, too, Aunt Ella.” Although now she had Paul to help out with her aunt, right?
“I’m sorry to say all this in front of you, Julian, but my Vanessa means so much to me. And sometimes she just pushes me to my limit.”
“I can see why,” Julian said.
Vanessa shot him a look. “Who’s holding the scissors here? You’d better watch what you say. And, Auntie, you have an entire wedding to plan! Please don’t waste any time worrying about me.”
Just as Vanessa reached his knee, the doorman buzzed at the intercom.
Julian stood,
clasping his pants together and sidestepping toward Vanessa’s bathroom. “I think I’ve got it from here. Thank you, Vanessa, for releasing me. Now, I’ll get into my breeches and cravat, and pack not just the books I’m selling but also the books I’m reading for leisure. Then I’ll be all ready for Indianapolis.” He looked at his watch. “Although it is nearly teatime. I would fancy a tea.”
Him and his books—his tea—his—him! She buried her head in her hands. The sad thing was that tea sounded good to her, too. Tea!
“Miss Roberts? Are you in?” asked the doorman.
“Yes, I’m here, Chris.”
“You have two ladies down here to see you. They say they’re all ready to go with you to Louisville? A Sherry Pajowski and a Lexi Stone?”
Vanessa shot a glance at Aunt Ella. “Are you sure you’ll be okay while I’m gone?”
“Vanessa, if you don’t escort our Mr. Darcy to Louisville, I will.”
“Oh, no, you won’t,” Paul said.
“You see. This is what happens when you get a good, strong man in your life.” She looked at Paul and smiled. “And I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Vanessa laughed. “Well, then. Look out, Louisville, here comes Mr. Darcy and entourage.”
Chapter 9
Outside of Indianapolis, after a hugely successful book signing, both Lexi and Sherry had fallen asleep in the backseat.
Moths, drawn to the headlights, splattered on the windshield as Vanessa and Julian endured flatlands, cornfields, and an increasing awareness of their proximity to each other in the dark.
Julian tried to read his book, but there wasn’t enough light anymore. Only their path on the GPS system offered the faintest glimmer.
“You know there are these things called e-readers and tablets and phones, and they light up so you can read in the dark?” Vanessa smiled.
“It’s not the same. I prefer the heft of a book.” He lifted the book and set it down on his lap. “It’s the smell of it.” He opened the book and breathed it in with a satisfied sigh. “The turn of the pages.” He turned a few pages, running his fingers gently down the length of each page.
Out of the corner of her eye Vanessa watched him. Only he could make turning the pages of a book sexy.
“I like to know exactly where I’m at in a book. Am I halfway? Three-quarters? To me it’s not just the reading, but the tactile, sensory experience.” He rested the palms of his hands on the leather book cover.
Vanessa’s mind turned to other tactile, sensory experiences, and she wished she could shut those thoughts down as easily as turning off a reading gadget.
“There’s something on the horizon,” Julian said, breaking the silence.
It was the Midwest at night, and there was nothing on the horizon—ever. “Even I have to admit there’s nothing on the horizon, Julian. You’re hallucinating. Why don’t you take a nap?”
“No, look. Perhaps you see them? Colored lights?”
“Must be another alien abduction. Or maybe they’re making crop circles.”
It turned out to be a Ferris wheel all lit up and turning, signaling a county fair. She’d been to a county fair once, with her parents, before the divorce. “Hey, you’re right. There is something there. It’s a Ferris wheel.”
“Might we go for a ride?”
“Julian. We’re here on business. You have a big day tomorrow.”
He folded his arms, clenched his jaw, and stared straight ahead.
She laughed. “Are you brooding? I don’t go for brooding. Unlike all the women we’re about to meet at the Jane Austen Festival in Louisville, I’m not into the brooding-hero thing.”
“Mr. Darcy doesn’t brood.”
“Really,” she said.
The Ferris wheel came into clear sight now, along with pink, yellow, blue, and green lights highlighting the other carnival rides, and Vanessa could almost smell the cotton candy and kettle corn.
Julian sighed.
“Okay. Okay. We’ll go for a ride. And maybe eat a funnel cake. Have you ever been to a county fair?”
“Not since I was a child.”
She knew so little about his life, and it all seemed so vague to her. Did he have any siblings? What were his parents like? Did he grow up in London or a village? What did he study in college? Had he ever been engaged or—married?
Still, she didn’t dare say a word because now Sherry began to move around, and she didn’t want either one of them to wake up. So when she saw the sign and the turnoff for the fair, she just turned toward it and wasn’t even sure why. It would set them back at least an hour, and that would mean they’d pull into the hotel past midnight.
Without saying a word, she and Julian left Lexi and Sherry asleep in the backseat, she locked the car doors, and off they went past the sign that read MONSTER TRUCK RALLY 9:00 P.M.—try explaining that one to a foreigner—toward the admission booth, where more than one person stopped to look at Julian’s Regency coat, breeches, and boots.
“Deep-fried Pepsi? We’re trying it!” Vanessa said after she took a picture of him in front of the Butter Cow, a cow sculpted out of five hundred pounds of unsalted butter in the dairy barn. She posted the picture and:
500 pounds of butter and Mr. Darcy . . . Does it get any better? Soon to be #UndressingMrDarcy @ #JaneAustenFestivalLouisville
“Would you like deep-fried Pepsi or would you prefer a deep-fried candy bar, Oreo cookie, or Twinkie?” Vanessa asked him in front of the deep-fry stand.
“What’s a Twinkie?”
Well, since he didn’t know what a Twinkie was, there wasn’t much point in eating a deep-fried one, so she bought him a deep-fried candy bar and the deep-fried Pepsi for herself. “We’ll share.”
“Much obliged,” he said, not very convincingly.
“Come on, Julian, it’s America—on a stick.”
Children’s laughter surrounded them, as did twinkling fairground lights and fiddle music, and even with the distant sound of chain saws buzzing for the giant-pumpkin-carving contest, Vanessa thought this one moment was perhaps more romantic than anything she’d experienced in the past year, at least.
Julian fed her a bite of the candy bar and she fed him a piece of the deep-fried Pepsi.
He tried not to wince. “It must be . . . an acquired taste. And my boots seem to be stuck to the ground in some sort of—”
“Cotton candy,” Vanessa said. “Or is it pink kettle corn? Hard to tell in this light.”
She had to laugh at him checking out the bottoms of his boots, the poor guy!
She tossed the rest of their deep-fried candy bar and Pepsi in the trash can.
“It’s a shame,” Julian said.
“The food or throwing it away?” Vanessa smiled.
“Both, to be brutally honest.”
“You’d better watch out or I’ll sign you up for the cherry-pie-eating contest. There’s no better time to go on a ride, though, than after eating something deep-fried.” Vanessa led him toward the salt-and-pepper shaker.
“Must we?”
“Unless you’re afraid, of course.”
“I’m not afraid. ‘Bring it on,’ as you would say.”
Vanessa walked right past the giant-pumpkin-carving contest (with chain saws) until she realized Julian had stopped to watch. She tugged on his sleeve and led him toward the salt-and-pepper shaker.
He continued to look back at the pumpkin carving. Once they were out of earshot of the chain saws, Vanessa figured he’d never seen anything like it, so she filled him in. “Chain saw carvings are really an art form here in the States,” Vanessa said. “And the medium isn’t just limited to overgrown pumpkins. We Americans also carve ice blocks, wood, and huge chunks of cheese.”
“Such talent. Such—resourcefulness.” Julian smiled as he put his arm around her.
She stopped before getting in line for the ride. Her stomach really did feel a little fluttery—it was either the deep-fried stuff or . . . butterflies?
“On second thou
ght, let’s do the Ferris wheel.”
“Let’s,” Julian said. “After I win your heart at the shooting range over there. I’m quite a good shot.”
“So am I.”
Her phone had been vibrating with calls from Lexi for a while now, but she ignored it.
After three rounds of shooting at rubber duckies, Vanessa won an oversized stuffed pink puppy dog, and Julian lost miserably. Like a true gentleman, though, he offered to carry the thing for her.
At first he set the dog in between them on the Ferris wheel but then he moved it to the side and took her hand.
“It really is beautiful here,” he said as he looked up at the sprinkling of stars in the night sky. He looked into her eyes and stroked her cheek. “You’re beautiful. And you make it all—beautiful.”
She felt so much, there was so much she wanted to tell him, but he began kissing her, and he tasted so good, like salt and something delicious and new that must’ve been his Englishness, and by the time they got to the top of the Ferris wheel they were kissing and groping with a fierce hunger and curiosity that the seat could hardly contain. First the men’s room, now the top of the Ferris wheel? Why did he choose such inconvenient places? Their seat rocked with a rhythmic motion and she ached to be on top of him or under him or—she’d never wanted any man so much before. She couldn’t believe that the breeches, when pressed against her, felt even more revealing than the leather pants. They proved much more of a turn-on. And that cravat! How she wanted to untie it!
She had to admit: she wanted nothing more than to undress Mr. Darcy.
His hands, strong and confident, moved all over her while his boots rubbed against her bare legs. The barrage of sensations, from her tongue to her calves, overwhelmed her.
She slid her hand under his vest while the other ran up the length of his thigh—
“Vanessa! Vanessa!” someone down on the ground was yelling. Once she opened her eyes and unlocked from Julian’s lips, she saw Lexi with her hands on her hips.
Undressing Mr. Darcy Page 14