by Danielle Monsch, Cate Rowan, Jennifer Lewis, Jeannie Lin, Nadia Lee, Dee Carney
She shoved inside and took the stairs two at a time, bag banging against her back and her heels ringing on the metal staircase. She crashed through the door, ripped her time-card out of its slot and punched in.
12:03.
Another five dollars docked from her paycheck.
“That’s the third time this month, Miss Riley,” the shrill voice called from the open door of the manager’s office.
“I know, the train was delayed.”
“Excuses don’t pay the bills.” Her new manager was a hard-nosed shrew who’d probably never been a single minute late in her life. She certainly showed no mercy. But Sandy was good at what she did and they both knew it. And from now on she wouldn’t have any reason to be even one second late. She needed this job too much to make any more mistakes.
Marco waited patiently as the minutes ticked by. He topped up their champagne glasses. He requested a dessert menu and wondered whether Alexandra would prefer flan or chocolate mousse. He enjoyed the renewed music as the band started up their second set.
But as five minutes became ten, as ten became fifteen, he turned and stared in the direction of the restroom with increasing frequency.
After twenty minutes he became angry. What the heck was she doing in there? After thirty he was worried. Maybe something happened to her?
Apprehension clawed at his gut, souring the taste of the champagne. Where was she?
At midnight he strode across the floor. He rapped hard on the door of the ladies’ room, then flung it open.
“Alexandra?”
A startled middle-aged woman paused in the middle of reapplying her lipstick and gave him a dirty look.
“No one in here but me.”
“Sorry.” He let the door close and stood in the hallway, wondering what to do next. He was baffled. How could she just disappear like that?
He approached the coat check. “Did the young lady in a blue dress pick up her bag yet?”
“Oh yes. I’m glad you asked.” The boy with spiked hair and multiple piercings turned away and retrieved something from a bin on the floor. “She dropped this as she was leaving. It fell out of her bag.”
He handed Marco a single sneaker. Pale blue with white stripes. A little worn and scuffed.
“I figured she’d come back for it, but I guess you can give it to her now.”
The words sank in, leaving Marco stunned, dazed. She’d left him.
She’d slipped away without even a polite goodbye.
His fingers tightened around the single sneaker. Why would she do that? And why would she do it to him?
As far as he could tell they were having a great time together. Damn, more than great. A sudden flashback to their kiss illuminated his imagination. The spark of memory withered with the realization that she’d left him with no way to contact her.
She’d skipped out on him. Left him high and dry.
And he wasn’t going to let her get away with it.
He didn’t want revenge. He didn’t entirely know what he wanted. But he knew he had to see her again.
“I’ll be right back for it.” Back at the table, Marco paid the bill, tossed back the last of his champagne, and bid a wistful farewell to the evening he’d enjoyed so much.
If anyone wondered why a tall man in a black suit was striding along Fifth Avenue at midnight, carrying a single blue sneaker, Marco Danieli was totally unaware of their concern.
The following night Marco was twisting under his sheets, sleepless and irritable at 2:00 a.m. when his phone rang. He groped for it in the dark.
“Hello.” He usually only got calls this late if there was a major emergency: a shutdown at one of the factories, a power outage halting production, a massive system failure or data loss. He sat up in bed, bracing himself for bad news.
“Marco.” A woman’s voice. Low, so soft it was almost inaudible.
“Yes.”
There was a pause and he racked his mind for who his late night caller could be. He wasn’t seeing anyone right now and he was fairly sure none of his recent girlfriends would be delusional enough to try to reawaken his interest.
Then it hit him.
Her.
“Is it you?”
“Is it who?” The soft voice teased. He imagined a smile playing around the corners of her sweetly seductive mouth.
“Alexandra.”
A tinkling laugh danced along the phone wire and into his ear, taunting him. “Would that be your wish? You can call me by any name you choose. Or you don’t have to call me any name at all.”
“A mystery woman.”
“Your mystery woman.”
Marco shifted under the covers, aroused already. “Where are you?”
“Wherever you want me to be.”
“I want you to be right here, with me.”
“In your bed? It’s very late.” The husky voice was agonizingly seductive.
“Yes.” His affirmation was hoarse.
“Are you alone?”
“I am.”
“Are you wearing any clothes?”
Marco looked down at his rumpled undershirt and boxer shorts, which were barely visible in the green light from his clock radio. He considered the situation for a fraction of a second before replying. “No. I’m not wearing any clothes.”
“Good. Because they’d get in the way of what I’m going to do to you.”
Marco was intrigued and dangerously aroused. And not accustomed to being a liar. He pushed down his shorts and hiked his T-shirt up over his head. He maneuvered his shirt swiftly around the phone receiver, not wanting to miss a single word from his alluring caller.
He reached behind him and raised the window blind a little, looking out at the dark and uncharacteristically quiet city. Rays of moonlight fell into the room, pooling on the crumpled sheets of his bed, glazing his bare skin.
“Why did you leave me?” he asked, curiosity overcoming his anger at being abandoned at the club. “I need to see you again.”
“Needing, wanting is a risky game.” Her throaty voice tickled in his ear.
“Yes.”
“It can make you crazy. Make you do things you never thought you’d do.”
Like undress for a phone call? Marco wasn’t used to taking directions. He was more comfortable calling the shots.
But now his naked body ached with desire.
“What did you think you’d never do?” he asked.
“I’m not sure.” She paused. Silence hummed along the phone line. Then a whisper. “But I think I fell hard for a man.”
Her voice was so soft that the words seemed to slip into his ear and disappear before he had a chance to grasp their meaning. Then he wasn’t sure if he’d heard them at all or just imagined them. Dreamed them.
In the silence, Marco tried to picture the woman at the other end of the phone. He tried to see her dark hair falling softly over her shoulders, the smooth line of her chin, her high cheekbones. He tried to picture lashes lowering over her unusual slate-blue eyes. But the image proved elusive.
“What man?” The hesitation was audible in his low voice.
“A man who can never love me.”
Was she talking about him? Love was not a subject for casual conversation. For Marco, love wasn’t even a subject for consideration.
Unless you believed in love at first sight.
And over the past day, and half a sleepless night, he’d begun to wonder if such a thing was possible. Whenever he closed his eyes he saw visions of her shapely body. He imagined her soft lips slightly parted, begging for a kiss. Soft dark hair trailed over his face in waking dreams that kept him permanently on the brink of arousal.
But she was right. Marco Danieli had loved once, and he would never make that mistake again.
“Why can’t this man love you?”
“Because of who I am.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m a dream. A dark secret that can never see the light of day.”
Marco tried
to picture Alexandra Alma in daylight, the sun sparking highlights in her hair, but he couldn’t. Moonlight was her element.
“Have you ever been in love, Marco?”
“A long time ago.”
“And it didn’t last?”
“No.” His answer was curt. Anger always flared when he remembered he’d been duped, betrayed. Anger at himself.
“So you know love is just a temporary illusion. A delusion. A fever dream that will fade and leave you cold and alone when the sun rises.”
“That’s for damn sure.” He wasn’t proud of the bitterness he still harbored. But it protected him.
“Who was the woman you loved?” The voice was barely above a whisper.
“Why do you want to know?” Suddenly he was suspicious.
“Because I want to know you, Marco. And your secrets are safe with me. I’d never use them to hurt you.”
Marco rubbed a hand over his face and raked his fingers though his hair. Was she for real? A seductive lover-confessor daring him to open up to her?
He should slam the phone down. He should put his damn shorts back on and go to sleep.
But somehow that was impossible.
“Who was she, this woman you loved?”
“My wife.” A long silence. He listened hard, wanting to hear movement at the other end of the line, wanting to confirm that there was a person there. A real human with a beating heart and muscles that could move and ache.
He heard nothing. His phantom caller waited.
Waited for further confessions.
And he made one.
“My wife left me.”
His disgust still made bile rise in his throat. Even after all these years.
“Broke your heart?”
“Yup.” He scratched his head. He never talked about his marriage. Or his divorce.
Never.
Anyone who knew him knew better than to bring it up. The biggest disappointment of his life. The kind of disappointment that cast a long shadow over all the days that came after it. That sucked the color and joy from simple pleasures, mocking happiness as a temporary delusion.
“We were married young. She was my first love.” A hollow chuckle rose in his throat, choking him. “My only love.”
“Even a taste of love is a precious gift.”
“That kind of gift I can do without.”
“She hurt you badly.”
“You could say that. She ran off with my boss. The guy who owned the garage I worked at. Left me out of a wife and a job. She told me she left me because she knew I’d never amount to anything and she was tired of being poor.”
A harsh laugh shook him. He did enjoy the irony of it. “She picked the wrong sucker that time, didn’t she?”
“It looks that way.”
“Not a patient girl, Deanna. She didn’t think anyone other than me would care about improved acoustics in car stereos. She thought I was wasting my time fiddling around with wires and woofers and tweeters, trying to come up with a prototype.”
“History has proved her wrong.”
“Indeed it has. Did you know one of my acoustic setups was on the last probe to Mercury?”
“I didn’t. Your reach extends to the stars.”
He laughed. “I never thought of it that way. But hell yes, it does.”
He glanced out the window, looking for stars, but the hazy glow of streetlights and the illuminated windows made them too faint to see.
He wondered if his caller hid in one of those shadowy buildings out there.
“Where are you?”
“I’m right here.” Her whisper sounded so intimate he could almost feel her warm breath on his neck.
“Stop teasing me.”
“Oh, you don’t mean that.” He heard a smile in her voice.
“Don’t I?”
“I’d like to tease you a little. If you’ll let me.”
“Do I have a choice?”
She laughed. A soft, rich sound that caused a reverberation under his skin.
“Not really, Marco.” He liked the intimate way she whispered his name. “Not when I can put my tongue inside your ear, when I can lick around its delicate shell, when I can take your earlobe in my teeth and gently suck on it.”
Marco felt a sympathetic tingle in his ear, as if her tongue really were traveling through the airwaves to caress the tender flesh.
“I want you to roll over so you’re lying on your belly.” The cool voice commanded him softly and he obeyed.
He didn’t know what the hell he was doing, but it felt good.
“Good.”
Could she see him? It wasn’t possible.
“I’m behind you.”
He battled a strong urge to turn around.
She laughed.
“No, you can’t see me. I’m with you in spirit but not in body. But if you concentrate hard you’ll be able to feel my fingers as they trail along the hollow of your spine.”
The small hairs on the back of Marco’s neck prickled as he imagined soft, cool fingers sliding over his skin. He buried his face in the sheets and gave himself over to the imaginary sensation.
“I could climb over you, lie on you and press my body against yours.”
Marco imagined the warm pressure of a woman’s body on his back. Breasts, belly and thighs embraced him while a woman’s arms slid over his, covering him, claiming him.
He flipped onto his back and sat up. She was taunting him. Tormenting him. Adrenaline surged through Marco as he considered just hanging up.
But he didn’t.
“I need you,” the voice said softly. Hesitant. “And you need me.”
“Why exactly do I need you?”
“Because you’re lonely.”
“I’ve got people milling around me all day. And all night now that you’ve woken me up. A little peace and quiet is what I need.”
More silence, then the voice was quietly controlled.
“Your wish is my command. Good night, Marco.”
A little click and the line went dead.
Marco looked at his phone. He put it to his ear and listened.
Nothing.
She was gone.
Good.
He put the phone on the nightstand and eased onto his side, then pulled the sheet up over his nakedness. Suddenly a cloak of moonbeams didn’t seem adequate cover from the prying eyes of the city. He lowered the blinds, shutting out the constellation of electric lights that illuminated the night.
His T-shirt and shorts lay on the pillow next to him and he flung them onto the floor.
What kind of madness made him undress for a voice on the phone? Lord only knows what he’d do next. Maybe he did need a woman. It had been a long time since he’d given dating a serious try.
Alexandra had shown real potential. Beautiful, intelligent, and a businesswoman who’d be able to relate to his busy schedule. And he liked the strange questions she’d asked him.
Three wishes. But what use were three wishes if she couldn’t make them come true?
Marco rolled back onto his stomach and pressed himself into the mattress, willing away the erection that still taunted him.
It wasn’t easy being a man.
Sandy adjusted her headset and surreptitiously looked around her. The floor was almost deserted. There were only three callers on the graveyard shift, and her supervisor was in her office with the door closed.
She could hear the quiet murmur of her coworkers as they spoke into their headsets, communicating with people on the other side of the world. Their voices weren’t loud enough for her to even tell what language they spoke.
She couldn’t believe she’d really called him.
She’d found his phone number on a classified company list she shouldn’t have access to and written it down. Stored it in her wallet. A secret charm. A possibility too dangerous to act upon.
Until she’d acted upon it.
Had he truly been naked? Or had he lied? Had he undressed himself just
for her?
By the time she hung up he’d been angry. She’d intruded on his privacy.
He’d been with her for a few moments, though. He’d wanted to talk. Wanted to tell her his secrets.
No good came of being the confessor.
In the morning he’d regret telling her. He’d associate her with the shame of his divorce. He’d hate her for knowing.
But that didn’t stop her from wanting to know more.
Home in bed, Sandy woke up to a strange pulsing in her body. Muscles contracted without her will. The muscles that embrace a lover in the most intimate way possible.
Her obsession, her passion, was extending even into her dreams.
And she knew she had to see him again.
Chapter Three
‡
Sandy suppressed the urge to tiptoe as she walked across the unfamiliar marble lobby of the corporate offices. Each footfall echoed off the marble walls, a bold announcement of an arrival that filled her with trepidation.
When she’d phoned the club to ask if they’d found her missing sneaker, the attendant told her they’d given it to her male companion.
To Marco.
How humiliating that he should have her smelly old sneaker as a memento of their time together. A time she’d abruptly ended when she dashed rudely out the door without saying goodbye.
Her heart pounded like a jackhammer when she called his office to ask about her sneaker. She could have lived without it. She could have bought another pair.
Maybe he’d be too angry to give another minute to the woman who’d walked out on him. But just as she couldn’t resist calling him, she couldn’t resist trying to see Marco again.
Leaving him had crushed her spirit a little. Their kiss had stolen her breath and deprived her of good sense. She’d felt a connection with Marco that she couldn’t explain in words or thoughts.
She knew it was wrong to want someone so unattainable, someone she was so wrong for. But that didn’t stop the wanting. Curiosity and desire made her reckless.
And there was Conchita. Her cheeks had grown pink with delight as Sandy recounted the details of her magical evening. She gripped her wrist with a gnarled hand and begged her to find him and retrieve her sneaker. Was it right to disappoint a sweet old lady?