the remaining moving boxes still stacked in the family room, and my Saturday night would be spent explaining my new, attractive roommate.
To top it all, I had had sexual relations with myself three times in the last Þ ve days and I still felt like I could hump the hell out of anything Þ rm and willing.
I didn’t have any warning that Ryan was done with her workout until the door swung open. I had found a box of biscotti hidden in the back of the cabinet and I was nibbling on one. Great thing about biscotti, you can never really tell if they’re stale.
“Morning, Mia.”
“Morning.” I didn’t hide the fact that I was grouchy. Why should I? I was grouchy and she looked good. I mean deliciously good, and she did that smile thing and my heart thumped so hard in my chest that I almost dropped my biscotti. But I didn’t; it was a good one and I was damned if I was going to waste it, so I just scowled at her.
She grinned at me and sat down with her legs wide open. My mother would have been horriÞ ed. Don’t look, Mia. Don’t you dare look.
“What do you have planned for the day? I expected you to sleep in,” she said.
Don’t look, don’t look. Aww, God damn it, I looked. I snatched my eyes away quickly, but I could have sworn she had an “aha, gotcha”
look on her face. That made me hate her so bad that I could have just thrown her ass on the ß oor and ravished her, which pissed me off even more.
“Poker. I got poker, remember?” I turned my back on that grin so I could Þ nish my biscotti over the sink. I deserved the biscotti, and she probably wanted to say something to me about it but wouldn’t. She got her revenge by looking sexy; I got mine by eating my cookie. Who’s having more fun? I stopped eating and turned around for a peek . Oh good Lord, she is.
“Uh-huh. I didn’t know you played, by the way.” She stood up, dragging a sweatshirt off the counter.
Thank God. Yes, please cover yourself. I kept waiting for the relief, but it never came. “The girls and I are playing poker. You can play if you want.”
“No, thank you. I’m not much for gambling.”
“It isn’t gambling, really. It’s a twenty-dollar buy-in…” I trailed off as I remembered that money was tight for Ryan.
• 147 •
GABRIELLE GOLDSBY
“Thanks for inviting me, but no.” Her words were Þ rm, much as they had been when she had told me there would be no further intimacy between us.
“Okay,” I said. I was about to leave the kitchen with my tail tucked when she did something really weird. She reached out and touched my arm.
“Hey,” she said. “Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“Look at me like that. You look like I just kicked you in the stomach.”
I laughed a little. “No, I think you did that yesterday, and it was a little lower down and to the back.”
She smiled but it didn’t go further than her lips.
“I know you said that you didn’t want…” I backed away from that particular topic. “I just thought we could at least be friends.”
She was shaking her head. “We are friends. You’re misunderstanding. My father was a gambler.”
“Shit, I’m sorry. He really did a number on you, didn’t he?”
Ryan shrugged. “He didn’t do as much of a job on me as you would think.”
“Did he lose a lot?”
“That’s just it. He was really good. Until he drank too much beer.
When he drank he lost and he did destructive things. Like gamble with money that should have been used to pay the rent.”
I don’t know why I did it, but I reached out and rubbed her arms through her sweatshirt. She was watching me carefully, as if she was trying to Þ gure out what I was playing at. Hell, even I didn’t know. What was I doing? Why couldn’t I keep my damn hands off her? “You’ve had a hard life, haven’t you?”
“No more than anybody else,” she said, but I instantly knew that that was a lie. “What time is your company due tonight?” Her voice was quiet, her words tight and controlled.
I dropped my hands. “Seven, and it’s just my college roommate and her partner, my sister, and a friend of a friend. Oh, and Goody, of course.”
“Thought you said it was girls’ poker night.”
“He squeals if he wins Þ fty cents. It’s amusing.”
“I’ll make sure to be out of the way by the time they get here. I’m going to go grab a shower.”
• 148 •
SUCH A PRETTY FACE
I stood in the middle of the kitchen just long enough to ensure that Ryan wasn’t going to come back, and then I tossed the rest of my half-eaten biscotti into the garbage disposal.
v
“Naomi, I hope you brought more than twenty bucks, because I am not loaning you any money this time.” Goody swept past me followed by Naomi, Christina, Dominique, and Amy. I somewhat reluctantly shut the front door behind them. Goody stopped in the living-room entryway, causing a logjam. “Ooh, did you clean up for us? The place looks great. No boxes. Where’s—”
“Goody.” I shook my head in warning.
“Wow, so this is it?” Naomi pushed past Goody and turned in a small circle, looking around with the air of someone trying to Þ nd fault at every turn, but she smiled and said, “Great house. Do we get a tour?”
“We don’t have time for that,” Goody answered for me. “I need to beat you bitches and get home for my beauty rest before midnight.”
I gave him a grateful look because a tour would mean I would have to explain why one of the rooms upstairs was off-limits. “The rest of the house is a mess. How about next time?”
“Next time will be six months from now, and who knows where you’ll be liv—”
Amy’s words were cut off when her partner Dominique socked her in the arm. “What?” she asked, then her eyes grew wide in realization and she immediately stuttered an apology. “Oh, my God, I’m so sorry.
You know I didn’t mean anything by that. It’s this pregnancy thing. My hormones are all messed up.”
“If you were the one with the huge belly, that might be a halfway plausible excuse,” Naomi said.
I waved my hand. “Girls, please. Do we play, or do we sit here trading sewing patterns?”
“Let’s play. But Þ rst, where’s the spread?”
“Where’s the spread?” was Dominique’s standard question since she had become pregnant. She had embraced her own round pregnant body with a passion that only a naturally skinny girl could appreciate.
“Right through here, sweetheart.” I was already holding my breath. Besides my biscotti debacle, I really was trying to eat better, so I had created a spread that consisted of fresh fruit, lower fat cheeses, and
• 149 •
GABRIELLE GOLDSBY
cold cuts. With the exception of Goody, who was notoriously healthy, all the other girls provided chips and dips. I needn’t have worried; my guests descended on the food like vultures.
“So how’s it going?” Goody asked me while everyone else was busy devouring food.
“We worked out together every day this week and I’m sore as hell.”
“You know that’s not what I mean.”
“I know. But honestly, things are Þ ne. Great, even.” Who am I kidding? “Great” is pushing it.
“There’s a ‘but’ in there,” Goody said.
“No but. I just wish I could stop wanting more. She’s obviously gotten over any attraction for me, so why can’t I?”
“You think Ryan’s not attracted to you anymore?”
“Well, she doesn’t seem all that perturbed by us just being friends.”
“And you are?”
“I don’t know, Goody. Do we have to talk about this now?”
“No, of course not.” Goody put his arm around my shoulder, something he only did outside of work. I let myself lean into him.
“Poker is just the thing to get your mind off your troubles. So where do we play?”
“Easy for you to say. In the family room.” I led the way, which was a good thing because no one saw the surprised look on my face. All of the boxes had been moved to the corners, the table had been pushed into the middle of the ß oor, and my poker set had been placed in the middle of the table and opened.
“This is what I’m talking about, right here,” Dominique said. “You see this, Naomi? This is a real poker setup. Not that itty-bitty card table with dinky-assed chairs you had us sitting at.”
“If you hadn’t eaten all those cream puffs, that chair wouldn’t have broken,” Naomi retorted and I would have laughed if the statement wasn’t somewhat true.
“She’s pregnant, you ass.” Amy was quick to come to Dominique’s defense.
“So, whose fault is that? You’re lesbians. Breeding isn’t required.”
I let the arguing go on around me. Ryan’s gesture had touched me, and I found myself wanting to talk to her, wanting to ask her why she
• 150 •
SUCH A PRETTY FACE
did these things for me and yet refused to even talk about how close we had come to falling into bed together weeks ago.
“Guys, where’s the cheat sheet? I can never remember what the color is for the twenty-Þ ve-cent chips,” Christina said.
Goody groaned and rolled his eyes. “It’s the blue ones. It’s always the blue.”
“It’s the ones he has the most of,” Naomi said.
“Hey, I may have had a lot of blues, but I left with more money than you did last game.”
“That’s because you did a re-buy. I was still playing with my original twenty bucks.”
“Don’t you mean the twenty bucks I loaned you in the Þ rst place?”
Goody said.
“Would you two stop? Are we going to play or what?” I snapped.
“Ooh, someone’s touchy. What’s the matter? Brenda forget to call or something?”
The room fell silent and I glared at Naomi. “Who in the hell keeps inviting you?” I looked at Goody and he shook his head. I went around the table to Christina, Amy, and Dominique.
Finally Amy said, “We let her come so that we can take her money.”
“Oh, okay.” I shufß ed the cards. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I talked to Brenda yesterday morning.”
“So that explains it,” Naomi said.
I wanted to ask her what exactly it explained, but I didn’t want to get into it with her. I dealt the cards with a ß ourish, then picked up my own hand. I found myself thinking of Ryan in her bedroom watching TV or whatever it was she did in there. Maybe working out, or worse, taking a shower.
“You going to play or fold?” Naomi’s annoying voice cut across my pleasant thoughts. “Don’t make me call the clock on your ass.”
“This isn’t Pictionary, fool,” Goody said.
“Don’t engage her, Goody,” I said and mucked the hand.
“I’m going to go get some water.” Dominique stood up and her stomach bumped against the table.
“Oh, sweetie, did you hurt yourself?” Amy asked with a hand on her belly.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Naomi said. “She’s got more padding than the Michelin Man.”
• 151 •
GABRIELLE GOLDSBY
“Naomi, if you say one more thing about my wife…”
“Hey, I’ll get the water, okay?” I stood up. My muscles groaned in protest and my head pounded with every step I took toward the kitchen.
All I wanted was for everyone to get the hell out of my house.
I poured a glass of cold water and stood with it pressed against my forehead. I could hear them intermittently cat-Þ ghting and laughing, a normal poker night. So why was I feeling so out of sorts and spiteful? It was because of Ryan, of course. She was driving me nuts.
I froze with the glass still pressed to my forehead as the door to the basement opened and Ryan stepped into the kitchen wearing black shorts and a gray sports bra, both of which left nothing to the imagination. Her skin glistened from her workout, and the sight of it made me moist somewhere else. She stood there with her towel at her neck and I must have wobbled or something, because she walked closer, as if to catch me, then stopped.
“Mia?”
“Hmm?” I seemed to be having both a hard time breathing and tearing my gaze away from hers. Her hand went to the countertop, and the door to the basement thumped closed.
“You have to stop looking at me like that.”
I blinked at the plaintive quality of her voice. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean…” I looked away.
“Don’t be embarrassed,” she said.
“Ha, easy for you to say.”
“Are you angry at me about something?”
“No, of course not.” It wasn’t a lie. I was angry at myself for wanting her so much and for the fact that it just felt inappropriate.
“What’s wrong, then?” Ryan’s eyes went to my mouth and I struggled not to chew on my bottom lip. I didn’t succeed.
“You’re what’s wrong. You’re still acting like we’re strangers or something and it’s driving me crazy.”
“I thought we’d discussed this.”
“We did. I suppose part of me was hoping that we would still get to know each other, I guess.” I dropped my gaze to the ß oor because I couldn’t stand seeing the obvious frustration on her face. Oh, my God.
Somebody please just drop-kick my ass off the side of a tall building.
“What do you want me to do?”
“I don’t know. Not pretend? Stop acting like you don’t…I don’t know…like me.”
• 152 •
SUCH A PRETTY FACE
When she Þ nally spoke she sounded dejected. “I do like you. I like you a lot. But you have someone else.”
“She left me.”
“Yes, she left you. It doesn’t mean you don’t have unÞ nished business.”
“She’s not here.”
“She’s not?” Ryan placed her hand in the space between my breasts. “Are you sure?”
I wanted to tell her that yes, damn it, I was sure. But what did that mean? Did that mean that four years of supposedly loving someone meant nothing? That someone—even a beautiful someone—could come along and my feelings would change?
“Do you know how you look right now?” she asked.
“No.”
“Your eyes are so big and brown and sad. Your lips are parted and moist because you keep licking them, and I can see a pulse right in the hollow of your neck beating so fast that I just want to touch it with my Þ ngertips.” I closed my eyes and waited. I knew she was close because her breath caressed my lips as she spoke. “My moving in was a bad idea, wasn’t it?”
She turned me around and the door thumped again, this time as my back was pressed against it. My chest heaved against Ryan’s and I felt a groan travel from her chest, out of her mouth and into mine. Based on the way she had been looking at me, I had expected a rough, hungry kiss like the one at the front door, but what I got was soft, gentle, almost pleading.
When she tore her mouth from mine I sucked in air like a diver in anticipation of another deep-sea dive without a tank. The hands that had been everywhere slowed and so did her breathing.
“Why do you have to feel so good?” Her voice sounded sad, almost angry, or maybe it was both. “Do you know how hard it is for me to even look at you?”
Something in her tone tore at me and my desire dampened slightly until her hand reached beneath my chin. I met her eyes and saw exactly what she couldn’t articulate.
“I need to touch you this time.” Her voice seemed thick, as if she had been drinking.
“It’s all right, sweetheart.” I reached for her hand and pressed it to the front of my shirt, just below my breasts, as if she didn’t know what
• 153 •
GABRIELLE GOLDSBY
to do. She continued to watch me as she eased my shirt from my jeans.
I expected her to make short work
of the buttons once it was free, but without a modicum of hesitation, she slipped warm Þ ngers beneath my shirt and rested them on my stomach. I inhaled and she closed her eyes.
I watched her face change again. The desire was there, but there was a look of discovery, of Þ nality, and of quiet longing that sent warmth rushing to my crotch.
“Ryan?” Most of her name came out silently and when she opened her eyes to look at me, I knew that my last thread of control was lost. If she wanted to, if she wanted me, I was hers.
The hand that had been at my back was now at my hips. Her leg was between mine and I whimpered as I found myself being supported by a muscled thigh at my crotch. The seam of the jeans pressed my clitoris roughly and I felt her body jerk. I cupped her face in my hands, deepening the kiss, in case she had any intention of moving. Then I dropped from her neck down to her shoulders and tore my mouth away again so that I could breathe. Her hands were creeping beneath my bra, raising it above my breasts until they tumbled out like two eager puppies, and she cupped them.
“Jesus, Mia. I’ve wanted to touch you like this from day one.”
I nodded my agreement. I was holding on to her sides, watching her face as she cupped and caressed my breasts reverently. The palms of her hands made chill bumps raise on my arms. I lifted my hands to her breasts; I grazed her nipples through the cloth and she whimpered. I met her eyes and lifted her sports bra until her small, Þ rm breasts came into view. I cupped them and leaned in to kiss them only to have her press me back against the door.
“I’m sweaty.”
“I don’t care,” I said and pressed harder against her until her arms weakened and my lips came in contact with one nipple. I kissed the Þ rm russet-colored nipple, then took it into my mouth and caressed it with my tongue. I could feel her breath passing across my ear in soft little puffs that turned to sharp gasps as my tongue began a slow caress. She was salty, but there was something sweet about her too. Her gasps had become like soft hiccups, and if not for the two hands pulling me close, I might have stopped to make sure she was okay.
I glanced up at her brieß y before tending to the other breast. The two strands of hair that never wanted to be tamed were hanging forward;
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