“Second, you do not have to replace my stuff. I have enough money to start over if I am careful, and I will be. I don’t need your money. I could use a nice-enough used car, but only if I can pay you back in payments while I find a job and sort myself out. Also I want those two behind bars so I will not have to look over my shoulder every time I step outside. If that big lummox hadn’t tagged me with a Taser, I would have cleaned Brenda’s clock.
“I would be grateful if you have someone to go to Wally’s World and buy me a pair of jeans and other things so I can get dressed in something besides your bathrobe. As attached as I am to this, it isn’t very practical to wear until it I can make a list, and then when I get something covering the important parts I will go to the bank and have my card reissued, then I can pay you back for the clothes.”
Vince didn’t tell her that tomorrow was Saturday, and he didn’t tell her that without some form of identification the bank would not issue anything to her in one day. She would be lucky if they replaced her cards by the end of next week.
Chapter 9
Vince tried Bea’s home number and her cell. No answer or return phone call came within an hour, so he called a colleague that was married to a pretty little redhead.
Grant Kelsey and his wife, Lydia, were a success as far as he was concerned. They had been married for ten years at least and had a couple of kids that they loved dearly. Grant never strayed, that Vince knew about anyway.
Grant answered his phone thankfully, and Vince exchanged niceties with him then came to the reason he called. “I know this is a strange question and believe me I would not ask it, but I have a bit of an emergency here. Do you still own that boutique for women’s clothing?”
After explaining the problem briefly, Lydia promised to meet him and Jillian in the morning before the store was scheduled to open, and she would meet them personally to help his friend.
His next call was to the local grocery store. They delivered anything for a small fee, and the order Vince placed was probably the largest one he ever placed before if the way the clerk kept repeating his order was any indication. The store was not open this early in the morning, but the stockers and night manager would gather everything ready for the morning delivery run.
Jillian was asleep in his bed, and Vince would have liked nothing better than to curl up behind her and sleep with her, but she might not like that, and he was not going to force the issue.
Morning sunlight woke Vince by blazing in the windows, and he sat up quickly, ready to move this day ahead. It was a good thing his couch was a deep, comfortable one that he had fallen asleep on before when he was too tired to drag himself to bed. The doorbell rang, and he opened it to let the delivery kid put the groceries on the counter and signed the receipt, writing in a generous tip.
He had coffee brewing and was frying eggs when Jillian walked into the kitchen dressed in one of his silk dress shirts. The light blue of the silk material made her eyes stand out in her pale face with wet strands of blonde hair hanging over her shoulders. When she reached up to get juice glasses from a high shelf, he noticed that she had taken carte blanche with his wardrobe and was wearing a pair of his dark-blue boxers under the shirt.
He could see her breasts jiggle under the silk and had to look away to stop his cock from filling completely to a very noticeable degree. He dished up the eggs, and she brought the coffee and juice to the table, then they sat and ate in companionable silence for a few minutes.
“I have been thinking about your predicament and remembered something Haney told me a few days ago. He told me that you had saved a little boy from a kidnapper during a tornado. Is that right?”
“Your friend Haney told me about that. Good god, I rescued a little boy, but it was not because I knew he was a kidnap victim. He was standing in the path of stampede of panicked grownups. He was standing next to a dead man, and he had no idea the man was gone. He stood there shaking and crying because the people were panicking all around him. It scared him. All I did was pick him up, and shared my shelter with him in the staircase. Then I gave him some water and a candy bar before we found the police. I really didn’t do anything.”
She smiled softly, remembering little Eli. The little man would always have a special place in her heart. He was actually the first small child she had been around for any time alone together, and he fascinated her. “He is a remarkable child. I kept wondering how his mother was staying sane knowing that he was out in the path of a storm like that. If he was mine, I would have been tearing up the town searching for him.”
He watched her face carefully and saw the tender look as she talked about Ben Darling’s heir. He had to ask her a question. If she answered correctly, he would be a very happy man. If she answered in the negative, then he would set her up wherever she wanted to go and forget her sexy smile and body.
“So, you like kids? From the way you talk about this little boy, he must have placed his little hand on your heart and squeezed pretty tightly.”
Jillian was startled that he asked the question and even summed up the way Eli had affected her so eloquently. She smiled, thinking of the little hands and giggling laugh.
“If I am ever lucky enough to find a man that would make a great father, and lucky enough to have a baby, I would love to have a little guy like Eli running me ragged like I am certain he does his own mother.”
They finished the meal, and Vince finished getting dressed while Jillian cleaned up their dishes and wiped the table. When he came out of his room ready to take Jillian to the boutique and told her where they were going, she looked down at herself and shook her head, flatly refusing to step a foot out of his condo until she had proper clothing. He finally solved the problem by scooping her up over his shoulder while she kicked and threatened his body with violence. She was going to unbalance them if she didn’t settle down, so he slapped her on the ass hard enough to get her attention.
They were outside before she knew it, and he was setting her on her feet by the car door.
“You can get in on your own without anyone seeing me toss your little ass in the car or you can make a big spectacle for the neighbors. It is your choice.” Vince opened the car door, and she glared at him but slid into the leather interior on her own.
Jillian decided to give him the silent treatment but gave that up since it didn’t seem to be bothering him at all. He needed to know that she was not the kind of woman to let some strange man buy her clothing. Even if his family caused the problem to begin with.
“Before you start in shouting your independence and bra-burning women’s rights, you need to think about this rationally. It is Saturday. No bank will just hand you a credit card or a debit card on your account without proper ID. You will be lucky if they don’t laugh you out of the place if you go in there like you are demanding money. Hell, Jill, they would laugh at me if I tried that, and I venture that my credit rating is probably way higher than most.
“I can afford to buy you an entire new wardrobe if I wish and not feel it. In fact, you allowing me to replace your clothing at least will assuage my guilt in knowing that I caused your misery.”
Jillian couldn’t see how he caused other people to act like they did. She shook her head. “We are not going to agree on this, Vince. They made choices just like I made. I didn’t have to try to help your nephew. I could have left him lying there and walked out, and no one would have known I had been there. I will accept the clothes because you have a good reason, and please accept my thanks. Just as long as you know that I will get back up myself. I have never had to use another person in my life and don’t plan to use you just because you happen to have more money than sense.”
Vince sat back and kept quiet. He had won this round. It was enough for now.
* * * *
Jillian sat on the couch looking at all the boxes and bags surrounding her. How could she have bought all this? Besides the designer jeans and pretty blue silky tank top, the underwear she was wearing and the tennis sho
es with the cute little swoosh on the side, there was Jimmy Choos and three other shoe boxes labeled with distinctive logos.
The beautiful flame-red dress that she had admired on the hanger in the store sat next to her encased in white plastic along with two more cocktail dresses and daytime dresses with blazers, sweaters, and slacks. It looked like she had unlimited shopping time and unlimited resources to pay for the privilege.
There was a bag full of new silky underwear and bras in every color that Jill could imagine. Thongs, G-strings, and hip-hugging low-rise panties mixed with boyshort panties, and Jill felt—she didn’t know what she felt.
Lydia had been wonderful and very helpful. She had a wicked sense of humor, and before long they were talking about fashion and children. Lydia was very proud of the two she had, and the woman even shared the good news that she was again pregnant. Jill felt a tinge of jealousy.
As soon as she was dressed in street clothes, Vince pulled her out of the building, laughing and teasing her about leaving him waiting when he wanted lunch and needed to make another stop before they could go home.
Ken dropped them off at Dino’s for lunch. It was a great place, very noisy and almost wall-to-wall people.
“This place has been my favorite lunch spot since I acquired the office building. The food is excellent, and they feed you all in-house cooking. Everything is fresh. Dino even smokes and ages his own meats in the back.”
Jillian ate the delicious roasted-off-the-bone turkey sandwich while Vince ate his sandwich and drank down a longneck beer before she was finished eating. How he managed to put all that food in his stomach was beyond her. Even if he was a giant, that sandwich had to weigh over a pound.
She still couldn’t believe that she was here with such a handsome man that was showing her his human side. He made dumb jokes and teased her about the way she chose to use a fork like a sissy instead of digging into her food.
Jillian laughed and forgot who she was talking to. “Yeah, well, you try to eat something sloppy and find half of your food on your chest. This shirt is too pretty to be breast-feeding through the material.” Then it occurred to her what she said and to whom she said it and she blushed, shutting her eyes. She had nothing to blush about because Vince was laughing so hard that people sitting next to them began laughing from watching his merriment.
It felt good when he pulled her close with his arm around her neck and shoulders as they exited the restaurant. She could have sworn she felt him place a light kiss on top of her head before holding the car door for her to enter.
The next stop surprised her, and by the time they left the building, she had slugged his shoulder and slapped his stomach. They walked into a furniture store where he immediately had a clerk give him the rundown on each and every mattress type they carried. Vince made her lie down beside him and move around on the mattress to test it for comfort when he had a companion.
“Come on, what kind of helper are you? All I am asking is for you to crawl around on the mattress so I can gauge if I will be able to enjoy this one no matter what is going on in my bed.” That got him the slap on his hard stomach.
When he played with the controls on a bed with dual mattress-firmness controls, he pressed a button and ended up rolled over on top of her, and he laughed. “All right, this is great. I wouldn’t even have to move that much. Come on, bounce with me. I want to make sure this is the one. Nice and cushy.”
Jillian was laughing so hard and pushing at his shoulders to move him off her, and it was like moving a house. She loosened one small hand and made a fist to slug his arm. That was not effectual at all. In fact, it seemed to egg him on. He bounced the mattress by planting his hands and doing a push up on top of her. Her body bounced just a little, and she squealed, giggling and laughing.
He was not budging. In fact, he stared down at her laughing face, then leaned down and kissed her on the lips before levering his body up and off of the display bed.
The clerk stood at the foot at the bed with his pimply face turning red and mouth open, looking from Vince to Jillian still lying there, trying to roll out of the depression in the mattress.
The kid was happy with the final selection, and Jillian saw Vince slip the young guy a fifty-dollar tip. They worked out the delivery for Monday morning, and again Vince put his arm over her shoulders, holding her close to his side.
When they exited the building the car was not there, but Vince didn’t seem concerned, so she didn’t ask about it. They walked together playing “guess what I do for a living” with the passing pedestrians when Vince tried to convince her that the middle-aged white woman that stood on the corner flipping off people that passed by her without giving her a dollar or two was actually a very wealthy woman that begged like this for a living.
Jillian refused to believe him. The woman wore ragged clothing and smoked incessantly, cursing and heckling people that walked past her until either they dug into their pockets and gave her some money or she yelled at them and made hand gestures their way as they walked by.
“She has a house in the suburbs and makes at least fifty grand a year,” Vince assured her. “Come on, I’ll introduce you.”
When they got close, the woman broke into a big grin and rushed Vince to give him a bear hug. “Hey, handsome, did you come to take me away from my life of poverty and tale of woe again?”
Vince introduced Jillian to Bailey Burns.
Bailey looked her up and down then looked at Vince and smiled, showing bright, white teeth. “It’s about damn time you found a decent woman. Now all you gotta do is convince her that you are worth all the trouble she will have to put up with being around you. Maybe she can convince you that you can’t save the world, especially when it don’t need savin’.”
The woman dismissed them and rushed back to her corner piece of concrete in time to catch a group of young well-dressed men. They could hear her yelling that that was okay, they were probably the kind of men that would let their own mothers starve rather than give her a cheese sandwich. One of the young men walked back to her and gave her a five-dollar bill, and she thanked him profusely, telling him that she would be able to eat tonight from his generosity. Then she yelled at the “cheap bastards” telling them that their mothers would be ashamed of them for letting an old lady starve on the street.”
When the men passed, Bailey winked at Vince and Jillian and waved them off, yelling at them to get off her corner.
They turned back the way they came, and Vince told her the story of his first meeting with Bailey. “I was not as well off as I am today, and when I came by the corner, she gave me her poor-old-lady speech. I gave her my last five dollars and offered to let her sleep at my apartment because it was cold and didn’t want the poor old woman to freeze out on the street. She showed me a picture of her house, and I didn’t believe her.
“Then she told me that if I didn’t leave her alone she would call a cop and yell rape. I stood over on the next block, sure that she was going to sleep in a doorway or worse, until it started to get dark and pedestrian traffic was slow. She walked around the corner, and I followed her to a parking garage. Five minutes later I see her drive away in a new Lexus.”
This had been the best day she had ever had in her life so far. She couldn’t believe the things they had done. Vince had been so lovable and funny. It would be so easy to weave her dreams around the man. There has to be a wart or two on this frog. He can’t be like this all of the time.
Chapter 10
They ate dinner at the condo, and when Jillian produced a perfectly cooked grilled-cheese sandwich in front of his place at the table with a big bowl of turkey vegetable soup that she made from the mountain of meat on her leftover sandwich, Vince was impressed and told her so.
After dinner was finished, Vince went into his spare bedroom while Jillian was cleaning up the dishes. She rinsed everything and washed the counters down before she went in search of her host. She heard something clank and cursing, so she eased the door open and f
ound him trying to muscle a metal contraption apart. It was a freestanding square with small pulleys on the corners and had braces on the bottom to prevent it from falling over. The hooks in the metal at the top bar were eyelets and looked pretty heavy duty to her, but she still had no idea what she was looking at.
When he stood back from the contraption and stared at it like it should fall into pieces because he said so, Jillian cleared her throat.
“I know that men have their toy rooms where they build trains and call the room their man cave, but this is a bit different. What are you doing?” She watched as he seemed to stand even taller and shook his head at her.
“Don’t ask. There is nothing in this room that you want to know about.”
Jillian burst out laughing. “Are you kidding me? I am a woman, curiosity is my middle name. Come on, it cannot be that bad, can it? Is this the room where the wicked witch got that whip thing and used it to stripe me like a tiger?”
From his stoic expression she knew that her teasing had actually been a direct hit. She looked around, seeing a wide, padded bench and a wide workbench with a sheet covering the items on top. She walked to the bench and pulled back the sheet.
Vince walked over to the spanking bench, sat down, and waited for her to express her distaste. She was inspecting each item she uncovered as if trying to understand what the use was for each instrument. She picked up a flogger and ran the fronds through her fingers as she continued down the bench. The top drawer contained a selection of dildos and vibrators. The drawer under that had a selection of anal plugs and tubes of personal lubricants.
She picked up a small, round jar of something pink called Nipple Nibblers, and she opened the top. Seeing that it had not been used made her feel better, and she skimmed a finger over the surface then put her finger to her lips and felt a tingle when she ran her tongue over it. “Hmm.”
The Elusive Jillian Wilson (Siren Publishing Allure) Page 7