by Curry, Edna
She pulled back, trying to ease out of his grip. “No, I mean, I don’t care what people think....”
He smiled, and his lips nibbled hers, urging her cooperation in their efforts. “Good. Neither do I. I want to kiss you, more than anything, Lili. All the time we were dancing, I ached to kiss you like this.”
His words sent hot fingers of desire wending their way through her. The washcloth dropped from her fingers and splashed back into the sink. Her hand moved up to the soft brown curls on his neck and her fingers wrapped themselves around the curve of his head, mindlessly stroking.
His hand slid up her side, cupping her as a thumb eased along her breast, teasing a shudder of delight from her.
He eased her zipper down her back to give him better access, and stepped from the brightly lit bathroom into the carpeted bedroom, his arm still around her, moving her with him. She was beyond objecting, and made no sound as her feet followed his lead and his gaze stayed locked with hers, coaxing her permission for his actions. He was kissing her again. She couldn’t stop her fingers from following his lead and undoing the buttons on his shirt. Each one opened easily amid more torrid kisses.
Stopping beside the bed, he pulled back and began untying his tie, his eyes on hers. He slipped out of his shirt and dropped it onto the chair.
She swallowed as he came back to her and slipped the sleek blue dress from her shoulders, letting it drop to the floor. Trembling with desire, she stepped out of it and tossed it onto the chair on top of his shirt. Her slip followed.
She didn’t remember sitting down, but he was sitting on the side of her bed and she was on his lap. His kisses traveled down her neck to the soft skin of her breast. One long fingered hand slid the strap of her lacy bra off her shoulder, then unhooked it and pushed it aside. His warm lips eagerly tasted each spot of creamy skin as he uncovered it.
She gasped at the strong sensation he elicited as he drew her erect nipple into his mouth, a crinkle of satisfaction showing around his eyes as he watched her excited response.
He leaned back and pulled her with him, then turned to cover her body with his own, showing her clearly how much she affected him. The knowledge of his need for her sent an answering surge of heat coursing through her.
Reason flew out the window as her heart raced in response, and her fingers tried to finish their job of releasing him from his restricting clothes. Drawing a ragged breath, he sat up and quickly disposed of them, while she slipped out of the remainder of hers.
Pulling back the bedspread, he laid her back onto the smooth sheet and covered her once more. His hands moved slowly over her now, as though to give her time to refuse him if she wanted to. He sought her gaze. “I want you, Lili,” he whispered softly. “You’re so beautiful! Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure,” she returned, desire raging inside her. Disappointment surged as he turned away from her and sat up. Was he having second thoughts at this late stage?
No, he was only digging in his pants pocket for a foil packet of protection. In a moment, he turned back to her and eased full length beside her on the king-sized bed.
Soon kisses and touching were not nearly enough, and neither could wait any longer. Watching her face, he carefully entered her.
As she smiled and sighed in pleasure, the concern on his face disappeared and he began the ancient rhythm of lovers. Lips and tongues joined the fun, and all other thoughts receded as desire tossed them to glorious heights. He covered her final cry of pleasure with his lips, then gasped and arched in sweet reply.
At last, slick with sweat, he rolled them to their sides, refusing to separate from her. He took her lips with his again, then reached down to pull the blanket over them.
When she awoke hours later, she was still cuddled in his arms. That wayward curl was again down over his forehead. She gently brushed it aside and his eyes opened to meet hers.
She smiled sleepily and tried to pull away, but his arm tightened around her, molding her against his warm, solid flesh. The hairs on his chest tickled the tips of her bare breast, sending ripples of pleasure through her.
“You’d better go back to your room,” she murmured.
“Mm hm, in a minute. First things first.” His hand slid the sheet down to uncover one dark peak and his lips quickly followed to grasp it firmly in his mouth. Pleasure arched her against him and all thoughts of going back to sleep fled from her mind.
It was considerably more than a minute before he left her.
* * *
In the morning, she felt nervous about going downstairs. Ken was waiting for her in the lobby along with several other managers of their group. Except for a special smile and a familiar squeeze of her arm, Ken acted as usual.
Each of the managers was carrying a ‘deal book’, which they had received and read several days before to decide what deals they would choose to run for their upcoming weekly sales.
“Nervous?” Ken asked as they walked out to his car.
“A bit,” Lili admitted. “I’ve always ordered groceries as we needed them, not booked them months in advance, especially on a ‘no return’ basis.”
“Don’t worry,” Ken assured her. “You’re only expected to get your feet wet this time. Don’t let the salespeople pressure you. Most of them are pretty low key, so you shouldn’t have any problems.”
They drove to the auditorium where the show was to be held, and hunted for a parking place for ten minutes, then still had to walk for blocks.
A hum of voices greeted them from the entrance of the huge room. Several Allied reps in their distinctive jackets sat behind a long table covered with tote bags, name tags, and literature. Tom greeted them and dug their name tags from the pile in front of him.
“Help yourselves to coffee and fruit and rolls at the Allied table to your right just inside,” Tom told them.
Inside they made their way through the crowd to the table with the huge coffee urns and platters of rolls. Everyone stood around talking as they ate.
A few faces she remembered from dinner the night before, others were new, which wasn’t surprising since there were several hundred people there.
The huge auditorium was decorated with brightly colored banners and balloons. Paper streamers were strung from the rafters and the constant hum of voices from the people provided the music.
The room was divided into rows of booths, each booth manned by a representative of a different company. Some were from equipment companies selling such things as computers, cash-registers and refrigeration, others from drug companies touting everything from suntan lotions to toothpaste. Still others were showing general merchandise, such as kitchen utensils, nylons, school supplies, and books.
But of course, the majority were pushing one or another brand of food, each anxious to gain a larger share of shelf space by grabbing the attention of the store buyers with a better price or product than their competitors. The delicious aromas of coffee and bacon mingled in the room. In many of the booths, a representative was cooking and passing out samples of foods.
“Honestly, there must be a hundred booths,” Lili exclaimed in awe.
“A hundred and twelve this year, I believe,” Ken agreed.
Pausing at each booth to book various deals took time and paperwork, so Lili and the others were soon separated.
Everyone seemed to know Ken. Politely, he stopped to talk to each person, greeting most of them by name. Lili was amazed at how many names he could remember. She moved through the throngs of people going from booth to booth, carrying their order books and a large tote bag of samples and literature on new products. When she realized she’d lost sight of him, she felt a strange sense of loss.
Hours later, she was glad to hear someone announce that lunch was being served downstairs. She wasn’t really hungry because she had sampled everything from pizza and broasted chicken to new flavors of fruit drinks throughout the morning. But she badly needed to sit down for a while. As she made her way towards the stairs, Ken appeared besid
e her.
“Sorry I got lost like that,” he said, taking her arm as they joined the long line to the buffet dinner. “Did you have any problems?”
“Oh no, only that my feet are killing me,” she said, laughing ruefully. “This is harder than working at the store.”
“More nerve-wracking, too. Too many decisions in too short a time,” Ken agreed.
The buffet table groaned under huge pans of chicken, ribs, salads and vegetables. They filled their plates, went to the side table for beverages and found places at one of the long tables filling the huge room.
Tom joined them a few moments later and introduced several more of Allied’s representatives. Rudy and Harry joined them, accompanied by Harry’s wife and an attractive female department manager Rudy had brought with him. Lili enjoyed the way they all seemed to accept her, and included her in their conversation and jokes.
She wasn’t sure she was quite comfortable with the way they seemed to think of her and Ken as a couple. Was it so obvious to others that they were more than business partners?
No one mentioned the fight in the motel hallway the night before. Lili could see Hank sitting at the next table. He met her eyes and gave her a friendly wave, just as he usually did. She wondered if Ken had had the promised ‘talk’ with them and what he’d said. If so, all seemed to have been settled and back to normal, much to her relief.
Lili spent the afternoon much like the morning. She walked between the rows of booths in the huge auditorium until she felt she never wanted to see another company rep, or hear another pitch about how much she could save per case if she would only book this item today. By four o’clock, the crowd was thinning as people headed home.
Ken found her sitting on a chair near the fresh pineapple and strawberry display. “Ready to go?” he asked, picking up a toothpick and spearing a strawberry from the paper plate of samples on the long table behind her. He followed it with a juicy wedge of pineapple. She watched the luscious morsel disappear between his lips and shivered at the sensuous tremor it created in her insides. She remembered what those lips had done to her skin only last night.
“Anytime you are. Where are you putting that? I don’t think I could look at another food item.”
“What do you mean? It’s been four hours since we ate lunch.”
“Lunch? It was a full meal.”
“No wonder you stay so skinny. You don’t eat enough to keep a bird alive.”
“Ha. I used to believe that line, until I heard that birds eat several times their weight in food every day.”
“Do they really?” He stared at her, and speared another golden wedge of pineapple, chewing it thoughtfully as he considered that. “You just decked my favorite saying. Don’t tell that to Renee. I’m trying to get her off of her perpetual diet so that she’ll bake me some more of her luscious cinnamon rolls.”
“Renee knows how to bake bread?” Lili asked incredulously.
“Indeed she does. Very good bread. She makes it from scratch. It’s light as a feather.”
“Will wonders never cease. I can imagine her doing something sophisticated or arty, but I would have never guessed that she had a domestic streak under that sleek hairdo.”
He laughed, rising to his feet. “I always thought baking good bread was an art.”
They wove their way through the aisles, waving good-bye to a few people as they went. Some vendors were already starting to tear down their displays and pack up their merchandise.
She and Ken stepped back out into the late afternoon sunshine and strolled down the street.
“Renee is really rather nice when you get to know her,” he said, continuing their conversation as though they hadn’t spoken to a half dozen people in the interim. “There’s really no need for you to be jealous of her. She’s been with me for a long time, and considers it her prerogative to mother me on occasion.”
“I’m not jealous,” Lili protested.
Ken raised one eyebrow disbelievingly. He unlocked his car and opened the door for her. “You could have fooled me.”
Lili settled into the soft plush seat of the Mercedes with a sigh of relief. Was she jealous? After last night, her feelings were certainly in turmoil. However, jealousy suggested more than that. It suggested she was feeling possessive of him. In love. Was she in love? She was too tired to be sure of the answer right now. She’d think about it tomorrow.
“Tired?” Ken asked, casting a sympathetic smile at her as he swung smoothly out into traffic.
“Mmhm,” she murmured in reply, letting her head drop back against the high headrest.
The next thing she knew she was waking up to Ken’s swearing. His brakes squealed as he slowed to allow a passing car to get into the lane in front just in time to avoid an oncoming car.
With a start, she sat up. Embarrassed, she realized that she had been sleeping cuddled against him as he drove.
“Sorry about that. Some guy passed where he shouldn’t have. It’s okay, go back to sleep.”
“No, really, I’m fine.” She glanced at the surrounding countryside, looking without success for a familiar landmark. It was growing dark, and although she could see lights in the distance, she had no idea which town they might represent. “Where are we?”
“Almost home. That’s Kerelli’s restaurant and gas station coming up. Are you hungry yet?”
“Surprisingly, yes,” Lili admitted.
The chilly evening air revived her as they walked into the restaurant. The menu was limited, but the food was good.
“Mm, this hamburger is made from fresh ground beef, not a frozen patty,” Ken declared. “How’s your chef’s salad?”
“Perfect.”
The waitress refilled their coffee and they were back on the road in record time.
The question of her real feelings toward him nagged at her, so that she was quieter than usual, wondering if he felt any differently toward her. She almost fell asleep again on the remaining short drive home.
To her relief, he didn’t ask to come in when they arrived at her house, but merely kissed her lightly, saying, “Goodnight, sleepyhead. Pleasant dreams.”
* * *
The next week proved frustratingly busy for Ken. He went from one small crisis to the next, and seemed to have almost no time for himself. Each day was tightly scheduled from morning to night. Even his regular weekly visit to Lili’s store had had to be canceled because of a small fire in Hank’s store that had caused some smoke and water damage. By the time he had met with the insurance people and helped Hank with all the forms and decisions that entailed, Ken was exhausted.
By Friday he caught himself picking up the phone to call Lili at midnight. Only a glance at the alarm clock beside his bed stopped him in time. He groaned at himself. She would think him silly to call at this hour.
Instead he lay awake for hours, wishing she were here.
When he awoke late Saturday morning, he called her. First he tried her home, remembering that Saturday was her day off. When there was no answer, he tried the store.
Sally answered, and Ken was again frustrated to hear that Lili had gone shopping with a friend. He bit his tongue to keep from asking if the ‘friend’ was a man, and thanked Sally.
An hour later, as he sat in his favorite easy chair reading reports, he was glad he hadn’t reached Lili. He needed time to sort out this problem before he talked to her.
He paced down to stand at the window overlooking the lake, then walked back to the kitchen to get another cup of coffee. He read through Lili’s latest report for the third time.
Robert had been right. Something was wrong at Adams’ Foods. He had hoped that the differences in her reports between her store and his others could be explained away by the variances between wholesalers. He could no longer excuse the differences that way. Since Lili now bought from Allied, her profit margins should be comparable to his other stores. Instead, her margins were lower than on her first two reports. Much too low.
He went over and
over her reports, looking for unusual expenses, variances in labor costs, anything big enough to explain this. Nothing.
“Damn!” he said, slamming down his coffee cup. As if he hadn’t had enough problems this week, already. He’d been looking forward to a weekend with Lili, hoping to get closer to her.
But how could he, with this problem hanging between them? For he was sure she had to know—she had to realize that her store wasn’t making the profit margin it should.
Worse, she might even know why.
Chapter 11
Monday morning, Lili was startled when Ken walked into her office without even knocking. “Good morning,” she exclaimed, half-rising from her desk.
“Good morning,” he growled.
Frowning at the dark look on his face, she asked, “Or is it?”
“No, it isn’t,” he agreed. “I lay awake half the night trying to figure out the problem with this without success.” He snapped open his briefcase and tossed her profit and loss report onto her desk.
She stared at it, flushing in embarrassment. “You don’t like my work?”
“No.”
Her stomach lurched. She’d worked long hours on that report, getting every detail correct and double-checking every total. “What’s wrong with it?”
“Nothing. I mean, your form and presentation are very well done. The bottom line is what’s wrong with it.”
Lili gasped angrily. “You said Dad told you that the store was losing money. So that should be no surprise.”
His eyes narrowed. “Why is this store losing money, Lili?”
She stared at him in bewilderment. “How should I know?”
He watched her face. “If you don’t know what the problem is, or how to fix it, why do you want to buy this store back?”
Heat rose in her face. She stared helplessly at him, spreading her hands in frustration. How could she explain small town sentiment to a city person? “Because I love this town. It’s where I was born and raised. Adams’ Foods has been my family’s tradition. It’s a part of me.”