by M. Q. Barber
Monday morning. Eleanora’s favorite point in the week, the point farthest from the struggle to fill up the long, lonely weekend hours.
I can’t believe you.
Her ex-husband seemed determined to ruin her mood with annoying texts.
What the hell were you thinking?
She shoved her phone beyond the mess of paperwork cluttering her desk.
Answer me, Eleanora. Eight blocks away, in his holier-than-thou office, he probably bent the nearest ear with a martyr’s tirade.
Her phone buzzed a fourth time.
With her coffee mug emptied and a two-finger forehead massage doing jack-all for the growing pressure behind her eyes, she snatched her phone off her desk.
Shirtless Gentleman here. I’m having this crazy problem where my stomach growls and I can’t seem to stop it. Any chance you know a cure?
Mr. Friday Night. The thrill zipped down to her toes, a high stronger than caffeine. Shit, and she’d almost ignored him. He deserved a personalized chime.
Have you tried lunch? It’s nearly noon.
Damn. Too standoffish. She should’ve wandered over to the teller counter and asked Chelsea what to say. No customers in line except at the ATM. Idiots, waiting outside in the heat for a machine to spit money when they could walk inside and get air-conditioned teller service in under a minute. Two tellers, no waiting.
What’s this thing you call “lunch”? I need a personal guide. Are you available?
The divorce papers and the ring she’d yanked off her finger months ago declared her on the market. But the girls swore by the whole playing hard-to-get thing. She’d forgotten how many times they insisted she had to say no before she could say yes. Unless their standards didn’t apply until after the first date.
Ugh. She’d been married too long. Singlehood came with an exhausting, bizarre web of rules. So much confusing nonsense required a spreadsheet to track.
Time to ask Chelsea and Sharilyn for advice. She pushed back her chair, stood, and stretched. Hunched over projections for a consignment shop expansion loan for the last hour, she’d spawned a kink in her back. Her stomach growled.
Yes.
Oh God. Impulsive fingers. Why didn’t phones include an un-send button? Lunch with a sexy stranger outstripped her dating readiness level.
New text chime. Too late. He’d suggested an upscale place far from the bank. No clue how he made his living, but her job didn’t accommodate whole afternoons off. She countered with the café down the street. Jackpot.
She locked out her desktop and dropped her phone in her purse. “Hey, Chelsea, I’m heading out to grab lunch.” The loan department would be closed while she stepped out. Department. Ha. A one-woman team. “Back in a few.”
“Can you bring me a salad and a diet orange iced tea?” Chelsea bridged her hands beneath her chin and pouted. “I’m trying to limit my sun exposure.”
Trying to…okay, whatever. No time to get trapped in a beauty regimen discussion. “Sure, but I’m not sure how long the wait’ll be. I’m meeting someone.”
“Ooooh, another client lunch? I wish I could expense my meals the way you can.”
“No, it’s not—I’m paying—” Well, maybe not. Lunch date. Rob might be buying. Another one of those dating uncertainties impossible to calculate in advance. “There’s no client. He’s—”
“Ohmigod, are you going on a date?” Chelsea’s squeal bounced off the glass.
Ow, ow, ow. She resisted the desire to slap her hands over her ears—or her coworker’s mouth.
“Is it a nooner? I love nooners.” Sharilyn sighed and stretched her arms across the counter, fingers interlaced. “They’re all fast and rough, and you don’t have to waste time tossing the guy after because you’re not at home.” She tapped her nails. “You should hike up your skirt and undo a button on your blouse. You gotta get the guy all worked up before the main event. The sex’ll be hotter.”
Exactly the advice she didn’t need. Fabulous moment for a bank robbery. She shot mental pleas toward the ATM line. Bonus bills for anyone who popped inside and redirected the conversation.
“Please. Ellie doesn’t have enough skank in her tank for your style, Shar.” Chelsea giggled. “I can’t believe she even met a—waaait a minute. Is this the guy from the bar? Did he give you more than his shirt?”
Yes, if more encompassed half a dozen orgasms from frantic fingering while wearing his shirt at home in bed alone. If her vivid, uncomfortable dreams starring his bare chest and muscled forearms counted.
“Ohmigod, it is, look how red her face is.” Baby-pink lips pulled back in a grin, Chelsea drummed her palms on the counter. “Holy shit, Ellie’s got a man on the hook.”
“So, umm, going to lunch now.” She edged toward the door. “Not having sex. Just lunch.”
“Wuss,” Sharilyn shouted. “Undo the button.”
Escape. The wall of heat slammed into her face with soothing relief. Sweaty, sticky, late-July-humid relief. So much better than the atmosphere inside.
* * * *
Rob planted himself facing the door at the cozy cross between “hey we make mochaccinos” and “I know, those people, right? Get the Reuben with the heaping side of fries.” She’d rejected his suggestion of a more frou-frou place. No telling what her choice meant yet. If she didn’t go in for showy shit, fantastic. If she didn’t want to waste her time and his money because she wasn’t interested, fuck-all.
She’d taken an awful long minute to say yes.
The door opened, and he snapped to his feet.
Eleanora shimmered like a heat-wave mirage. A serious woman pulled away from her desk, not a hair out of place. Her sedate blouse promised no nonsense, and her narrow skirt hugged a line above her knees.
His cock twitched. Half thrill for those gorgeous hidden curves. Half disappointment she hadn’t kept his shirt on three days straight. Stepping around the table, he pulled back a chair. “May I offer the lady a seat?”
“Thank you, that’s—” A phone buzzed from her purse, and she jerked. “Thank you.”
“Short drive, I hope?” He retook his seat and canted his menu as if he cared about the contents. No sense scaring her off with a heavy stare.
“Oh, no, I walked.” Waving over her shoulder with one hand, she snatched up her own menu in the other. “I work at the bank up the street.”
“You like what you do?” Proximity made a good reason for the change in lunch venue, but her answer offered no clue about her interest in him.
“I love my job.” Her smile lightened her face and lifted her neck. She chatted some while she scanned the choices, serving him a sampler platter of the eager entrepreneurs she helped. More she talked about other folks, more the slope of her shoulders relaxed and her voice warmed.
The server came by with brisk pleasantries and a hard-set gaze. “What can I put in for you?”
With the waitress hovering beside her and her phone going off again, Eleanora tightened up. The menu wobbled in her hand. She glanced across at him, her brows raised and her blue-gray eyes wide. “Um.”
“You want more time?” Tricky, if her lunch break had strict limits, but he’d sit all afternoon and listen to her talk. Intelligence gathering never hurt a man. “Tough decision, plenty to think about.”
“Well—I don’t usually—” She split her focus, shifting from him to the menu and back. “You could pick.”
Worried about his wallet, maybe. He tapped the back of her menu. “No can do. Get whatever you like. My treat for not making me face these hunger pangs alone.”
She rattled off her order in a heartbeat, her grin broad and beautiful—and unexpected. No trouble deciding. She must’ve been waiting on permission.
He added his selection, and the server went on her way. His date’s phone buzzed twice more while they talked, but she ignored the insistent pest.
When the food came, she tucked into her turkey club with a side of chips and plain black coffee. Not too fancy, not too expensive, and not one of tho
se tee-hee-I’m-always-on-a-diet salad monstrosities. Her bland, inoffensive choice matched her surface, a woman coated with a protective, shiny sealant.
She wiped mayo off her finger and cleared her throat. “I’m sorry I don’t have your shirt with me. I didn’t think to bring it to work.” Dropping her gaze, she resettled her napkin.
Meant to say more but wouldn’t? His shirt hardly seemed a cache for secrets. The code-cracker in him begged for a shot at getting under her smooth shield. “Consider it on extended loan.” To use however she liked. Practicality suggested his shirt lay atop her washing machine, gathering enough partners to take a spin. Fantasy had her sprawled across her bed waiting for him to come along and nose up the hem.
“I didn’t think you’d be texting me today.” Her shy little smile said she didn’t mind, though. “Or inviting me to lunch.”
Her phone buzzed.
“You’re in high demand.” Business clients or her nosy girlfriends from Friday night, maybe. A practical woman like her might’ve set up a mayday system. “Sure you don’t wanna get that?”
She flashed the face of a kid offered liver and broccoli for supper. “I’d rather pretend I didn’t hear it. If I don’t answer, I can’t get trapped in an argument.”
Well, that was blunt. Good. A woman bent on honesty and chucking foolish games suited him. He couldn’t abide secrets in relationships anyhow. Work had enough of them. “Nuisance caller?”
Laughter brightened her cheeks and relaxed the slopes of her shoulders. “That’s probably the most accurate description. This morning, at least. I don’t know what’s gotten into him.”
Him. Shit. “Unhappy boss?”
“He seems to think so,” she muttered.
Boyfriend rolled ’round in his head, a ball bearing popped loose from its cradle. He didn’t poach. If she said boyfriend, the connection he felt for her didn’t mean squat. “You tell him different?”
“I—” Her eyes went distant, tracking a line as if she followed a heads-up display. “I should.” She dug into her purse. “My ex.”
Ex-not-current. Hallelujah.
“You don’t mind?”
“Not a bit.” Mind if she told off the guy trying to take back the woman he wanted? Hell no. Tell him off a thousand ways to Sunday. He raised the check on a dented plastic tray. “It’ll give me a minute to do some math.”
She paused her digging and sighed. “I love math.”
Beautiful and brilliant. Sure as hell wasn’t gonna lean over the table and pin her to her chair with a kiss to bring down the roof. Foolhardy move. Didn’t stop him from wanting to, though. Or his dick from reminding him it and his brain converged on the same page. “Who doesn’t?”
* * * *
She scrolled through three cryptic messages from David. More of his nagging nonsense.
Why are you having lunch with him?
Her blood surged, his fourth message the starter’s pistol and her pulse a sprinter off the mark. His law office resided less than a mile from the café. More than enough time had elapsed to allow David to cruise past if he wanted to spy on her.
Rob laid a crisp twenty on the check tray. Was he an ATM-in-the-heat man or a come-inside-and-chat man?
The big front window revealed no David lurking outside. Ridiculous speculation aside, he wouldn’t know where to find her. Except he shouldn’t know she’d stepped out for lunch, either. No one in the café paid the least attention to her paranoia.
Multimedia arrived attached to his next text.
Her.
In the bar.
Her breasts, anyway, her bra straps peeking out from under Rob’s shirt as the camera shot widened. The jerky image swung wild, unfocused, and re-centered with her face in view.
“I told you someone was doing it in the bathroom. She had a totally different shirt on five minutes ago. What a slut.” Snorting laughter accompanied an unfamiliar woman’s voice. “Guess the whore couldn’t wait to get him home.”
Oh God. Who—why—shame stung hotter than a sunburn.
Answer your phone, Eleanora.
Alanis Morissette blared. Did you forget about me, Mr. Duplicity? David’s ringtone, her post-separation rebellion. The song cut short as she clutched her phone to her ear.
“Finally. My time is valuable, Eleanora, and so is my reputation.”
Not hers, though. Never hers.
“Don’t ignore me again. I had to call your office and speak to those girls you work with. They fell all over themselves to tell me about your lunchtime dalliance.”
Not watching her. Relief took at least a nickel off the armored-truck-sized weight stifling her breath.
“Do you know where I got this video, Eleanora? The Internet.” He seethed, his voice the rapid staccato of every time he’d pulled her aside in front of his business partners and potential clients and delivered a devastating reprimand through a brilliant, unfaltering smile. “A bar association contact sent me the link through his son’s Facebook page.”
Five chips remained on her plate. Four good. One soggy. Soaking up the juice from the pickle spear had converted bold strength into a bitter, mushy mess.
“People know we were married, Els. You can’t behave like a slut in this town.”
As if he hadn’t. Was she supposed to pretend he’d been better, fucking his paralegal in the same sheets where he’d slept beside her night after night for years?
“Nothing to say? You’re doing this deliberately. I won’t let your public indiscretions taint my practice.”
Sure, because keeping affairs at home made everything fine. With a woman who’d sat at their table and made small talk with her during business dinners dozens of times. How many of those times had that woman’s smile been a giddy I’m fucking your husband grin?
“Did you take this stranger home and fuck him in our bed or was the bar—”
She stabbed the screen and silenced him. Her stomach rolled in uneasy waves. People making accusations and assumptions about things she’d never done. Never would do. “When I take him home and fuck him in my bed, I’ll at least have the courtesy to change the goddamned sheets.” The right words to fling at David never appeared until the moment for them had passed.
Talking to her gynecologist about disease testing had been unbearably embarrassing. She handled the woman’s loan account, for chrissake.
Silence. The clatter of plastic cups and the clinking of soupspoons and salad forks no longer added their voices to the diner’s lunchtime symphony.
A furious blush crossed her cheeks and heated her neck as she raised her head. Stares and sidelong glances galore, and an intensity in Rob’s eyes she couldn’t read at all.
Oh shit.
* * * *
When.
She’d said so plain as day, the sun in a cloudless sky. The words had flowed from her mouth as sweetly as he hoped honey flowed from her sex.
She’d given thought to taking him home with her. If he focused hard enough, maybe he could peek inside her head and reveal her fantasies. The minute she showed him her dreams, he’d devote himself to bringing them to life.
Her red-cheeked face and tight lips didn’t bode well for his chances. Best fix the unwanted drama, or she’d resist seeing him again. Bad things came in threes, and now he’d played witness to two of her uncomfortable moments. “Bravo, darlin’.” Standing, he clapped with zeal. Eyes intent on her turned to him. “How about a hand, folks? If she puts that much passion into the audition, she’ll get the part for sure.”
The two white-haired women in the corner booth actually applauded. The other seven patrons put their attention back on their own meals where it belonged. He dropped into his seat.
Eleanora snorted. “You didn’t have to do that, but thank you.”
“I didn’t figure offering my shirt would help this time.”
Her receding blush gave way to a half-smile and soft, dream-spiced eyes. “Might’ve.”
She kept her thought train on that track, and he and h
is honey girl’d arrive at the station together. He grabbed the back of his collar and started hauling. “Working yet?”
“Joking! I was joking.” She thrust her hands up in a sure command to stop. “You’ll get yourself banned from every beverage-serving place in town.”
A quick shake resettled his shirt. “Guess we’ll start going to the next town over.” Discretion might not be a bad idea in any case. A ninety-minute drive would be worth the trouble if the distance upped her comfort. Kept her ex from hearing about their date and hassling her. “We don’t have to wait until the places here ban me. I’ll take you to Ames for dinner. All the way to Des Moines if you want.”
She glanced away, smiling, and sipped her coffee. “So I passed your audition, huh? What’s the role?”
Leading lady, by his side, hands down. Or under him. Or over him. He’d spread those legs, bury his face between her thighs, and savor her satisfaction with all his senses. And then he’d take her hand and offer her a—“Ring.” Fuck. Too fast. He best ease up, else he’d scare her off. “Ringer. Can you shoot pool?”
“Not well.”
“Bowl?”
She shook her head. “Also not well.”
“Then I suppose it’ll take a slew of nights out before you can be the ringer.” He shrugged and leaned back in his seat. Women liked confidence on a man. He’d put his desires on the table no matter how his heart quailed. “Good thing my schedule’s clear.”
“What if mine’s not?”
He caught and held her gaze, his voice low and steady. “I’ll keep asking until it is.”
Her eyes widened. Her nostrils flared. The sharp intake of her breath sent blood rushing to his cock. He pined for her just so, naked and squirming and pouring sounds in his ears.
“I—” She broke their stare and released a bitter-edged laugh. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how to do this. I’m not—I’m sure you date women who know what they want and say all the right things and flirt intelligently, for god’s sake. But I…”
He waited in stillness, but she didn’t seem inclined to finish her thought. Sliding his hand across the table, he risked brushing her fingers. “But you what, Eleanora?”
She grimaced. “I was barely old enough to drink when I started dating David. We married young, and…” She sagged like a windsock on a calm day, listless and empty. Way her husband had made her feel, maybe.