Ladies' Man

by Suzanne Brockmann

He kept an entire box of them in the glove compartment of his car. But his car was all the way across town, in the precinct parking lot, where he’d left it all those hours ago, before he’d gone out to the airport to do a favor for T.S.

  It seemed like a lifetime ago. It was before he’d known he would sit in traffic for two hours, trapped in a small space with the most attractive woman he’d met in a good long time.

  It was before Ellen.

  “Aren’t you going to eat?” she asked.

  Sam unwrapped his sandwich. It smelled good. As he took a bite he realized he was ravenous. He’d never tasted anything so delicious in his entire life, and he’d eaten at Carnegie Deli plenty of times before.

  It was odd—as if all of his senses were heightened.

  “So you and T.S. stayed close even after grade school?” Ellen asked in between bites of her sandwich.

  Sam nodded. “We both played on the basketball team in high school.”

  “I think I read somewhere that T.S. went to NYU. Did you go there too?”

  “No, I, uh, didn’t.” What was the big deal? So what if she was a professor at an Ivy League university. So what if he had nothing more than a high school diploma. “I didn’t go to college.”

  Ellen was surprised. “But you seem so…I don’t know, so well read, I guess.”

  “I love to read—I always have. But when I was a kid, I loved baseball more than homework, and when it came time to apply for scholarships, my grades weren’t worthy of any financial aid. And my old man only had enough money saved to send two of us three kids to college. It would’ve been me and my brother because we were the oldest, but I knew how badly Joni, my sister, wanted to go….” He shrugged. “The rest is history.”

  Sam took another bite of his sandwich, aware that she was watching him, her brown eyes searchingly intense, as if she were trying to read his mind.

  “What about how badly you wanted to go?” she asked quietly.

  She could read his mind. He shook his head, talking with his mouth full. “I really didn’t want to go.” He swallowed. “At least not as much as Joni did.”

  “But what if someone had insisted? Would you have gone if you were given a scholarship?”

  He smiled. “Yeah, okay, you’re right. I did want to go. I just…wanted Joni to go more. It was no big deal.”

  Her eyes were soft and so warm. “You know perfectly well it was a very big deal.”

  “Yeah, right, I’m a real hero. Let’s talk about something else, shall we?” He reached for the open champagne bottle, filled both of their glasses, and handed Ellen’s to her.

  “Thanks.” She took a sip. “You know you could go to night school. It would take you more than four years to get a degree, but—”

  “Nah, I never know when I’m going to have to work nights.” He took another bite of his sandwich. “Hey, these things are good, aren’t they?”

  She put her sandwich down, leaning toward him, gesturing with her champagne flute. “You said yourself that you’re considering leaving your job. You could go to school full-time. I think you’d really like it—even the homework.”

  He sighed. “I don’t want to, okay? Can we change the subject—”

  “How could you not want to—”

  “I just don’t.” He drained his glass.

  “Sam, if you don’t have the money saved, you could probably—”

  “I’ve got plenty of money saved, I just don’t want to—”

  “You wanted to ten years ago.”

  “That’s right. Ten years ago. Ten years.” He refilled his glass. “I’m too old, all right? I’d feel silly—I’d be ten years older than everyone else in my class.”

  “You are so wrong about that. I sometimes have people in my freshman English class who are older than me.” She was leaning forward so far, she was in danger of falling off the seat. Her brown eyes were blazing, her face aglow with her need to prove him wrong.

  Sam met her gaze, wondering if she could see the fire that had just ignited inside of him, wondering if she could feel the air almost crackle around them with electric expectation and desire. “Why don’t you come over here and convince me?” he said softly.

  To his surprise, she didn’t back away. Instead she smiled. She had an incredible smile—a smile that lit her entire face. Sam found himself smiling back at her.

  “You really don’t like to talk about yourself, do you?” she asked. “You can probably get away with just that smile, am I right? That smile and a couple of distracting kisses, and you don’t need to say a single word about the things you really care about or the way you really feel.”

  Sam couldn’t deny it. “So what do you want to know about me? I’m not sure I can put into words what I’m feeling right now, but I could probably manage to show you—”

  “Don’t get cute. Just…tell me about yourself. Talk. Where have you been? What have you done? Did you join the police force right out of high school?”

  That was an easy one to answer. “No, I spent two years in the Marines first. A recruiter came to our high school and made it sound as if we’d immediately be sent overseas, you know, stationed in Europe—cheese, wine, French girls, ooh la la…. My father was pushing for me to go right into the police academy. I think I figured it was my last chance to do something for myself. I wanted to see Paris and Rome. The Greek Isles.” He laughed. “I spent the first year in Kansas, the second in South Dakota. I hated every minute of it, but I was damned if I was going to let the old man know I’d made a mistake.” He smiled at her. “How was that? Personal enough for you?”

  Ellen smiled back, taking another sip of her wine. “It’s a start. Keep going.”

  “Are you sure it’s not time for a few of those distracting kisses?”

  She laughed. “Definitely not. Keep going.”

  “All right. Let’s see. I guess I can tell you that in retrospect, my two years as a Marine were a good thing. I made it through basic training—in fact, I got really strong, and that was good. Also, spending a few years away from home was very cool. It may not have been Paris, but the Badlands were incomparable. I made some good friends, learned a lot of Native American history, lived through a tornado or two, and totally pissed off my father in the process, which is every eighteen-year-old’s fondest desire. Yeah, it wasn’t as bad as I thought.”

  “Then you came back to New York and joined the police force?”

  “Correct for ten points. I went in, passed all the tests, and became a uniformed cop. I made detective five years ago, and…here I am.”

  “Thinking about quitting.”

  Sam winced. “We already talked about that. Are you sure you don’t want to discuss something easier, like old girlfriends?”

  “I think there’s probably too many of them to talk about—we’d be here all night.”

  Again, Sam couldn’t deny it. “When do I get to grill you about your old boyfriends?”

  Ellen shrugged. “Ask away. I only had one. Adam Webster. He moved away in the middle of senior year. High school. We were in love, I really think we were, but his father got a job in Ohio. We wrote for a while, but…” She took a delicate sip of her champagne. “And then there was Richard, whom I married. Foolishly.”

  Two men. There had only been two other men in Ellen Layne’s life. Sam couldn’t help but hope he’d be number three.

  “Your divorce,” he said. “It’s pretty recent, huh?”

  “In the scheme of things, yeah,” she said. “We were married for twelve years. Lord, I blush to think about how stupidly naive I was.”

  “Sometimes the hardest things to see are the things that are right in front of your face.”

  “Ain’t that the truth.”

  “What’d he do? Have an affair?”

  “I think maybe it’s time for one of those distracting kisses,” Ellen said.

  Sam didn’t hesitate. He moved across the car and sat down next to her. She set down her glass and turned toward him.

  �
�You’re good at this, aren’t you?” she asked.

  He just smiled. And kissed her.

  She seemed to melt into his arms. Her lips were heartbreakingly soft, her mouth as sweet as wine, and he felt a sharp hunger that made him want to kiss her deeper, harder. He wanted to inhale her, to drink her in. He couldn’t hold back.

  Each time he’d kissed her, he’d meant to kiss her gently, sweetly. But each time, he’d felt this hungry need that he hadn’t been able to ignore. And that need was further fueled by the passion of Ellen’s response. It was all he could do not to sink down onto the seat with her soft body underneath his. He knew with a certainty that it wouldn’t take much for him to seduce her. A little more wine, a few more kisses, and that condom he’d bought would be put to good use.

  He lifted his head. “Richard’s a fool. How could anyone cheat on you?”

  She touched his face, tracing the scar alongside his right eyebrow. “Richard didn’t seem to be able not to cheat,” she told him. “He was so good at it, I probably never would have found out—if he hadn’t had to go into the hospital with a burst appendix. You have gorgeous hair.”

  Sam refused to be distracted by her fingers running through his hair. “Please don’t tell me you ran into his mistress at the hospital.”

  She stopped touching him, pulling back, out of his arms. Sam caught her hand before she moved too far away.

  “It was nothing that dramatic,” she told him. “Richard was in the hospital for nearly three weeks—there were complications from his surgery, nothing too serious, a slight infection, but they wouldn’t release him until it cleared up. While he was there, I realized that all of our bills were really piling up. He had been in charge of writing the checks to pay our bills ever since we were first married, but I figured that would be the last thing he’d want to do after he got out of the hospital, so I thought I’d surprise him and take care of it for him. I was the one who got the surprise—from his credit card bills.”

  She took a deep breath and let it out in a rush. “There were weekly charges made to a hotel that wasn’t more than thirty minutes from our house.”

  Sam knew exactly what was coming. He wanted to kill the bastard, but all he could do was hold Ellen’s hand. So he held it. And he listened.

  “I knew right away that I was looking at something Richard wouldn’t want me to see—so of course, I looked further. He kept meticulous files, and I was able to go back nearly seven years through his records, and I could see…” Her voice wavered, but she cleared her throat and started again, her voice stronger this time. “I could see through his credit card purchases exactly when he’d started each new affair. He would buy her—whoever she was—something from a lingerie catalog. He would buy her a pricey piece of jewelry. There’d be a flood of charges to expensive restaurants for lunches and dinners. And of course, there were those hotel room charges—sometimes two, three, or even four times a week. He wouldn’t stay overnight. He’d just use the room at lunchtime or whenever. Maybe right after work.” She laughed, but it was a dry, humorless sound. “Then he’d come home to me.” She imitated herself: “Hi, honey. You’re so late tonight. Tough day at work? Poor baby, let me rub your back for you….” She closed her eyes. “God! What a bastard!”

  “Finding out must’ve hurt so badly,” Sam murmured. “It must still hurt.”

  “I feel really stupid,” Ellen told him. “How could I not have known? I seriously didn’t have a clue. And he’d been doing this for at least seven years. I had the proof in those credit card bills. That pattern of purchases was repeated, over and over, nearly eight times in the past seven years. And I have no reason to believe that if I had access to the years before that, I wouldn’t find a similar pattern.”

  “What did you do?” Sam asked softly.

  “First I threw up,” she told him with a crooked smile. “And then I packed up his clothes and kicked the son of a bitch out. I got a lot of crap for that—after all, the man was in the hospital at the time. Needless to say, I felt more than a little bit betrayed and didn’t give a damn what anyone thought. I filed for divorce that same day.” Ellen reached for her champagne glass and took a sip. “You know, I do have something to celebrate. Day after tomorrow is the third anniversary of my divorce.”

  Three years. Sam was surprised it had been that long. Her wounds seemed much more recent.

  “I think we should have a toast,” Ellen said, filling her glass. “To a summer in New York City. Richard hated New York City. He hated Bob. And you know what? When he sees it, he’s going to hate that commercial I made. He’s gonna hate that I dyed my hair blond. He would have hated your hair too—and you can take that as a compliment.”

  Sam ran one hand self-consciously through his hair, still holding her close with the other. “Too long for old Richard?” he asked.

  “Too long, too blond, too sexy, too still-on-your-head.” Ellen ran her fingers through the hair in question. “Richard is…hair challenged. Before the end of the decade, he’s going to be nearly entirely bald.”

  Sam laughed, kissing her, his own hands exploring the softness of her curves, the smooth firmness of her bare thigh. “You sound just a little too happy about that.”

  “He lied to me for twelve years. If God sees fit to make him lose all of his hair, who am I to complain?”

  Sam covered her mouth with his again, but she pulled away before he could deepen the kiss. “Richard would hate the way I’ve been kissing you. Such a typical double standard.”

  “Richard’s not here,” Sam said, kissing her eyes, her face, her neck.

  “Do you know what Richard would really hate?” she asked.

  This time Sam pulled back. He gazed into the midnight darkness of her eyes, well aware of what she’d intended to imply. Richard would really hate it if they made love. He knew he shouldn’t say anything. He knew he should simply kiss her, and keep kissing her until their clothes were pushed aside and he was buried deep inside of her. She wanted him to make love to her—to get back at the man who had hurt her so badly.

  What the hell did he care why she wanted him? She wanted him—that should’ve been enough.

  But it wasn’t, and he couldn’t believe the words that came out of his mouth. “That’s not a very good reason for us to be together,” he said softly.

  She took another fortifying sip of her champagne and closed her eyes. “I know,” she murmured. “But it’s not the only reason.”

  Ellen opened her eyes and looked at Sam. His hair was a mess, his tie loosened and askew, the top button of his shirt undone. He looked incredibly handsome with those blue eyes and that perfectly sculpted face, those adorable dimples. He wanted her—she could see it in his eyes—and knowing that gave her the strength to tell him the truth.

  “I haven’t been with anyone since I left Richard,” she said softly. “It’s been more than four years, but I haven’t wanted to. I haven’t wanted any kind of intimacy—not until now.”

  His eyes sparked at her words. “And how many years has it been since you’ve helped to kill two bottles of champagne?” he asked, his voice husky.

  “I’m not drunk,” she told him. Yes, the wine had lowered her inhibitions, but she wasn’t drunk. She reached out to touch his face. “You’re so sweet—you’re trying to protect me from myself, aren’t you?”

  “I just want to make sure you know what you’re doing.” He closed his eyes as he pressed his cheek into her palm.

  “I know exactly what I’m doing. I’ve spent my entire life doing things other people expect of me,” she countered. “I came to New York this summer to do something for myself, to do the things that I want to do.” She lowered her voice. “And I think you know what I want to do right now.”

  It was all that Sam needed to hear.

  Once again Ellen let him take the glass from her hand and set it down. Then he kissed her again.

  It was one hell of a dizzying kiss, and somehow, in the course of it, he managed to pull her gently down onto
the seat with him.

  He stopped for a moment to shrug out of his jacket and to pull off his tie, and then he kissed her again—long, slow, deep kisses that nearly made her unable to think.

  Nearly.

  As Ellen closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around this man she barely knew, she vacillated wildly between wondering what the hell she was doing and being thoroughly convinced that she was one hundred percent right.

  She was right. She was exorcising the ghosts of her past with this young, handsome, willing stranger. She was the self-proclaimed queen of sex-only-with-commitment-and-love—God knows she’d preached about it enough times to her kids. But in an attempt to regain control of her life, she was in the process of having a one-night stand.

  In the back of a moving limousine.

  With a man ten years her junior.

  Who happened to look like a movie star.

  And kiss like an angel from heaven.

  Sam shifted slightly, so that he was lying next to her on the soft leather of the seat, one arm around her, one leg pressed between hers, hiking her skirt up. He kissed her again, his tongue taking lazy possession of her mouth, as his free hand gently tugged her blouse from the waist of her skirt. He took his time caressing the softness of her breasts through the silk, took his time unfastening the tiny mother-of-pearl buttons, took his time sliding his mouth down to her chin, her jaw, her throat, her collarbone.

  His mouth moved even lower as his fingers unhooked the last button of her blouse, and he kissed her through the soft lace of her bra, touching her with his tongue, pulling, gently at first, then harder.

  He unfastened the front clasp of her bra, and Ellen stopped thinking. She could only feel, only shiver, only respond to his hands and his mouth, to his deep inhale of pleasure, to the exquisitely seductive sensation of his skin against hers, to the unmistakable length of his arousal held tightly against her thigh.

  She reached between them to unbutton his shirt, needing to feel his skin beneath her hands as well.

  Sam pulled back slightly, giving her room, reaching up to help her with the last of the buttons. He would have pulled his shirt off his shoulders and shaken it off his arms, but she stopped him.