“I appreciate that.” His voice goes low and suggestive. Flirty, even. I’m not imagining this.
“Open-mouthed kisses? I noticed.” I match his tone.
He blinks repeatedly, the smile impossible to suppress. Dimples. Dear God, he has the McCormick dimples. Of course he does. His family’s DNA has more dimples in it than Tom Brady’s.
“I was talking about silence,” he says, standing quite suddenly. The movement may be abrupt, but his animal grace is studied. He knows how his body affects mine. Andrew McCormick is a master at knowing how to read other people.
He has a problem, though.
So am I.
Andrew has tells. One eyebrow quirks up right now as he gives away the fact that he’s less self-assured than he was when I entered the room. The open discussion about kissing is intriguing him, but it’s not distracting him. This meeting has a purpose.
And he’s determined to stay focused.
“Silence. You mean the kind of silence that comes after being kissed by you? Or the kind of silence you assume you can kiss your way into?” I ask.
The eyebrow goes down. His face goes slack. Those smoldering eyes narrow.
Now I have his full attention.
“I kissed you because you were about to spill a family secret at a less-than-opportune time.”
I look pointedly at the door to the closet in his office. “Really? Which time? After your spin session right there?” I motion toward the door. “Or after Shannon swallowed your mother’s engagement ring?”
“You know perfectly well which time.” His voice is full of an amused smoothness. Instead of resuming his seat behind the desk, he walks around and sits on the edge, manspreading in front of me, a foot-and-a-half the only space between us.
There goes that cologne again.
“I do?” My words come out breathy, like Marilyn Monroe running after the ice cream truck. “It’s getting hard to keep track of all the kisses. I’m nearly ready to draw up a spreadsheet.”
“Would you like my assistant to create a database instead?”
“Do you plan to enter me that many times?”
He inhales sharply, then leans forward with the intention of a man who needs to confirm a fact. His hands are folded, forearms resting on his thighs. My mind races to process what I just said.
What I should have said is Do you plan to enter me into the database that many times? but I didn’t.
What I actually said is not what I meant to say, but that doesn’t matter now, does it?
Too late.
The skin around his eyes moves with amusement and a hint of something so dangerous I can’t breathe.
“That depends,” he says quietly.
“On what?” The less I say, the better.
“On whether you’ll slap me every time I,” he clears his throat suggestively, “enter you.” He smiles, the innuendo giving me permission to smile back. “In the database, I mean.”
“Well, now, that depends,” I reply, matching his voice, trying so hard to keep this light and fun. That’s all it is, right? We’re just sparring partners taking verbal jabs at each other, with kisses as the topic. I tell myself this because if our conversation means something less, then it won’t hurt when he ignores me again, and if it means more, then—
Then I can’t even bear to think that way.
I’m inhaling his scent, which changes as we continue, the heat in the air between us altering the space. Like alchemists, we’re taking words with specific meanings, fixed characteristics that do not change, and turning them into something wholly forged anew.
His heat is melting me, and I’m not certain what I’ll be like when I re-form and take on the new element I’m in the process of becoming.
“Depends on what?” he asks. The game is on, and while the rules aren’t defined, the outcome most assuredly is. We both know exactly how to score points. The only question that remains is how can we both win?
“On whether you enjoy being slapped. Some men do.” I lift one shoulder and bite my upper lip, the look meant to tease, to taunt. I inhale slowly and let him watch me. I’m not a woman you hide from the world in closets, or one you smother with kisses to keep her quiet.
Not anymore.
Bridging the distance between us, he extends a hand to me. I take it and he pulls me up, into the space between those toned thighs. Even though my hips don’t touch his legs, I can feel the hardness of those thick muscles, the coiled power in them calling out to be touched.
Without invitation, I reach down, palms on his knees, and watch my own hands ride up to his belt line. Slowly, with a maddening pace that makes seconds feel like lifetimes, I look up.
I never see his eyes, but oh, how I feel his mouth. Unlike all the other kisses we’ve shared, this one is planned. Seductive. Intentional. Andrew is in no rush, and we’re not taken off guard or hiding from anyone—especially ourselves.
His hands circle my waist and mine slide up the hard contours of his back, the soft cotton of his business shirt so smooth it’s like silk. My fingertips touch the base of his neck as he bites one of my lips, sucking with just enough intensity to make me wish I were the kind of woman who kept a spare pair of panties in her purse for occasions like this.
Funny how they never covered this topic in Girl Scouts.
He pulls back, then tightens his arms around me, holding on as if he were touching me for the first time, as if we’re discovering each other with a serendipitous joy that should be savored and that requires constant contact. The room disappears, the past two years fade, and all my worries and insecurities about this man who kisses me in closets and who is so mysterious and aloof dissolve like the boundary between our bodies as we just let go.
“Four,” he whispers against my ear as he pulls back, the soft rasp of his cheek against mine just ticklish enough to make me shiver.
“Four what?” I gasp as he nuzzles my neck, those warm arms staying wrapped around me. The longer he holds me, the more I can believe this is real.
“Four kisses. For our database.”
“Right. Four,” I say weakly. My knees tingle and the feeling travels up. This is real, all right.
“Let’s make it five.”
“Five is a good number.”
A telephone rings in the distance. I twist in his arms and look behind us. To my surprise, his office door is open. He is kissing me in public. That’s twice now.
And his arms are still around me.
“Six is even better.”
And with that, he adds so many entries to the database that I lose count.
9
The sound of a man clearing his throat is the next conscious event that pierces my psyche.
“Excuse me? Eleven-thirty meeting?” It’s Declan. I step out of Andrew’s arms and close my eyes in embarrassment, like a child who thinks if they can’t see the world the world can’t see them.
Andrew looks over my shoulder. I feel the movement rather than see it as his palm slides down from the base of my breast to my hip. “Give us a minute. We’re wrapping up our meeting.”
“You’d better wrap it,” Declan mutters. “Shannon and I are having the first grandchild. You don’t get to win that one, too—”
“Hey!” Andrew barks, moving swiftly across the room and shutting the door in Declan’s smirking face. I watch his body, my mouth buzzing with his taste, the lingering sense of his kisses making me giddy with the sheer nonsense of being in a different layer of life for a few minutes.
How can a kiss (or nine) do that?
Andrew stands at the door, his back to me. He squares his shoulders and begins nodding to himself. I imagine, if he faced me, he would be silently preparing himself for the moment he turns around and tells me this is nothing. We are making a mistake. A kiss (or nine) are enough, and let’s just part our separate ways and stay friends.
He turns around, looks at me, and says, “Lunch?”
Not what I expected to hear.
“Excu
se me?”
“We’ll have lunch. I’ll cancel my meeting with Declan and we can continue this database discussion over lunch.”
I really, really hope database discussion is code for kissing.
My stomach flip-flops. Lunch. Lunch. I look at the clock.
11:32.
“I...can’t.”
He looks utterly shocked. “You can’t? Why not?”
“Because I have a date.”
“A what?”
“A date.”
A fake date. I can’t say that part, though. First rule of mystery shopping: never, ever reveal your true identity. I can’t admit the DoggieDate dates I’m going on are fake. I can’t tell him the truth. Some part of me wants to break every professional rule right now, and my body is screaming at me to make an exception.
But I can’t.
I just...can’t.
He scowls. “A date. You’re dating? You have a boyfriend?”
“No boyfriend.”
He blinks, alternating between widening his eyes and a furrowed brow. “But you’re dating.”
“Yes.”
“Men?”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re dating men?”
“Who else would I date?”
“Shannon.”
“Excuse me?”
“You dated Shannon. For a while there. At least, you pretended to.” He looks very confused. “I never really got the whole story from Declan. Something about you and Shannon being married, and then you weren’t, and then you stormed into my office and kissed me and demanded that Dad, Terry and I all act in your hotel scheme—”
“Hold on there. I kissed you?”
“Of all the things I just said, that’s the detail you’re going to focus on? What about my question about men?”
“I did not kiss you! You kissed me!” As for whether I like men, if he can’t tell the answer to that one by now, then we need more kissing.
Er, database discussion.
“You barged into my office and started ranting about what an asshole Declan was, right after my spin session. Then you pulled me into my closet and started kissing me,” he recounts.
“You have a memory made of Swiss cheese. There are more holes in that story than in a J. Lo Oscars gown.”
“You didn’t barge in here?”
“I did,” I concede.
“And you didn’t pull me into my closet?”
“I did. To hide from Shannon, who magically appeared at the exact worst moment.”
“And you didn’t kiss me?”
“No, I did NOT. You kissed me. I remember it perfectly.”
“So do I.”
“Glad to hear it. Funny how nearly two years went by without a word from you. Good to know you weren’t suffering from a rare case of kissing amnesia.”
He crosses his arms over his chest and gives me a weird smile. “That’s what this is about?”
“What what’s about?”
“Your attitude.”
“I don’t have an attitude. You’re the one with the attitude. Two minutes ago you were kissing me, then you found out I have a date, and now you’re a Neanderthal.”
“I’m a Neanderthal? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you need to learn to use your words. Silence works for cavemen. Not modern men.”
Someone knocks on the door and it opens instantly. Declan is standing there, Shannon right behind him. He taps the doorjamb.
“Look, little bro, I don’t have all day. The resort in Maui needs me for a marketing kickoff meeting about a new merchandising deal we have for branded sunscreen, and—”
“We were just finishing up here. Amanda has to leave for something far more important,” Andrew says, his voice closed off and cold.
“More important than Anterdec?” Declan flashes me a dazzling smile, while Shannon’s eyes turn suspicious. “What could be more important than a meeting with us?”
Andrew grabs his suit jacket off the chair and shrugs into it, his neck thick with tension. If he tightens his jaw any more he’ll crack a tooth. He storms out of the room, calling back over his shoulder:
“A date.”
10
“The anti-depressants did wonders for little Muffin here.” Jordan is forty-two and a short Italian guy who I could never, ever wear heels with if we were dating for real, because I would look like Hagrid next to him. He picked me because I have a teacup Chihuahua, too.
He’s sweet and friendly, bald, with bushy eyebrows that have erratically long stray grays that extend out like uncoiled springs. Definitely not my type, but the kind of person who deserves to find a low-conflict partner to go to bingo night and chess tournaments and Mass.
Did I mention he goes to Mass seven days a week? His profile on DoggieDate didn’t note his Catholicism, but Jordan has managed to bring it up nine times. In fourteen minutes.
As we walk along the Esplanade, the Charles River filled with people rowing and sculling, I find myself hunching. I have to. He’s so soft spoken and so short that I can’t hear him if I don’t.
“That’s great,” I say with as much enthusiasm as I can. Muffin is a tiny little thing that makes my mom’s dog, Spritzy, look like the Incredible Hulk by comparison. If Muffin weighs two pounds, I’d be surprised, and she’s so nervous she vibrates.
She has also scratched or bitten off most of her hair, so she looks like a rat with a short circuit.
“When my mother died, Muffin just fell apart.” Jordan’s eyes fill with tears. I’m guessing Muffin wasn’t the only one.
“Mama would have loved you,” he adds, giving me a shy, sidelong glance that fills me with guilt and a simultaneous sense of relief that this is all pretend.
“Umm...”
“Would you like to meet her?”
I halt. If Mama is dead, what does he mean? Is she sitting in a rocking chair somewhere in his apartment on the North End? Jordan suddenly looks a little too much like Norman Bates for my tastes.
“How would I, uh—”
Muffin sneezes. She scares herself and shakes some more.
“Her grave is a few blocks away. Mama likes it when I bring Muffin to visit her.”
I am starting to think that Jordan’s favorite toy is a homemade skin suit made from online dating prospects.
“Okay.” It’s only pretend. It’s only pretend. It’s only pretend.
“Amanda!” We’re interrupted by the divine hand of God (or, perhaps, Jordan’s disapproving mama) as Marie screeches my name from across the way. She’s in the middle of a large patch of grass with about ten people, all on yoga mats, all in Child’s Pose.
It would be way too convenient for Marie to just happen to appear in this exact moment at this specific park, right? It’s not. We arranged it. You know how some people arrange “rescue calls”? Marie offered some “rescue yoga” for me. She moved her class outdoors for fun, and also to help give me an out when I described Jordan to her.
She’s so giving.
“Is that your mother?” Jordan asks a little too eagerly. “She’s angelic.” His voice goes dreamy and soft, and now...yep.
He’s crying.
We walk over to Marie and her outdoor yoga class. Well, I do. Jordan follows about three paces behind, sniffing with each step.
“What are you doing here?” Marie asks as she gives me a hug. The question is rhetorical, and she gives me a wink. She’s sweaty and radiant, and still manages to smell like lavender even when she’s in the middle of teaching a strenuous outdoor class. When I sweat, I smell like a teenage boy’s locker and tainted cinnamon.
“Hello,” Jordan says formally, extending his hand to shake hers. Marie gives me a questioning look but offers her hand, which Jordan rotates slightly so he can kiss the back of it.
How courtly.
And slightly creepy.
Marie gives me a look I can’t quite read. It’s somewhere between How sweet and Call the police.
“My name is Jorda
n Montelcini. This is Muffin.” He gestures toward the dog, who is either excited or having a seizure. It’s impossible to tell the difference.
Marie’s eyebrows go up. Her mouth twitches. Nineteen gears involving my sex life click into place in that scheming mind of hers, and one of them involves Andrew, because she tilts her head, blinks in Morse code, and if I could decipher it I’m sure she’d be saying, What about Andrew?
Yeah. I know, I blink back. What about him?
“I’m here with Amanda on our first date. Muffin approves so far. It’s so nice to meet Amanda’s mother.”
Muffin puts her jaw on his forearm and closes her eyes. Right. Seal of approval.
Marie looks at the dog. Looks at me. Frowns.
“I’m actually Amanda’s best friend’s mother,” Marie explains, correcting him. Her face explodes into an expression of sheer delight. “Did you say your last name is Montelcini?”
Jordan puffs up. He’s almost tall enough now to ride a roller coaster at Six Flags. “Yes.”
“Of Montelcini Flowers?”
The man’s face spreads with a joyous glow that makes me inhale sharply, for he becomes luminous. It’s like watching a caterpillar turn into a butterfly before my very eyes.
“Yes. You’ve heard of us? I mean,” he frowns, swallowing hard. “Me. It’s just me now.”
Marie looks like she’s been slapped. “Just you? But the Montelcini team is renowned for—”
Jordan wails as he drops to the ground with a sob that even his mama must surely hear in heaven. Or, um, wherever she resides.
I’m deeply confused. Who exactly are the Montelcinis, and why is Marie looking at Jordan like he invented salted caramel ice cream?
“Mama!” Jordan sobs. Muffin begins spazzing out and walks three feet away to tinkle on a stray dandelion. A dandelion that is bigger than the dog.
“Is your mother okay?” Marie asks, dropping to the ground and putting her arm around the poor man’s shoulders. I’m watching all of this with a strange sort of clinical detachment, as if Jordan isn’t my date.
That’s because he isn’t my date.
Vote Then Read: Volume III Page 176