by Lauren Dane
Trying not to cry, she bit into a tortilla chip, stringy with melted cheese and heaped with a double scoop of guac. The salty-sweet grease didn’t have its usual tranquilizing effect.
“What happened, Gia? You got your fantasy weekend, right? And your secret identity is still intact. So why do you look like you were having the best sex of your life, then his penis fell off?”
Even misery couldn’t stop Gia from snickering at that image. She shook her head at Sara. “You have such a way with words.”
“Well, unless you want me to offer up more appetizing suggestions, you need to spill the deets. Why are you home early and why do you look like your sex life just died?”
“Seriously. You need to tell us so we can help,” Caryn insisted. Then, sharing a look with the other two women, she added, “Because we can’t nag you for the sex details until you’re happy.”
“Or drunk,” Jessa chimed in, lifting the empty margarita pitcher and waving at their waiter. “So chugalug.”
Gia contemplated her half-finished drink, then decided she’d rather have crunchy grease right now. She pulled over the bowl of sour cream. To hell with the calories. It wasn’t as if she ever wanted to get naked again.
“It was incredible,” she finally said again, staring at her chip. As if talking to it would make it easier to justify how unhappy she was. Because of amazing sex, no less. Gia wouldn’t have been surprised if the chip laughed at her. “The sex was great, he has no idea who I really am, the fantasy was even more amazing than I’d thought sex could be.”
She waited, but her friends were silent.
So she ate the chip.
Then, before she could give in and take another one, she glanced around the table. Sara was chewing on her thumbnail. Jessa’s eyes were locked on her own drink, where she was making designs in the slush froth with her straw.
And Caryn looked as if she couldn’t decide between offering a sympathetic hug or dumping the nachos over Gia’s head.
“I’m sorry you had such a perfect weekend,” she finally said with an exaggerated grimace. “I’m sure it would have been better if it’d all sucked. I know I always hope for lousy sex and total letdown when I set off on a fantasy quest.”
Jessa tried to hide her laughter by taking a drink. Sara didn’t bother to disguise her amused snort.
“It’s not funny,” Gia snapped.
“Why not?”
“Because I’m miserable. That’s why not.”
“You’re miserable? Over fabulous sex?” Sara made a show of rubbing two fingers together in the classic tiny-violin signal.
Even Caryn grimaced then. Jessa’s entire face was now buried in her glass.
“You’re supposed to be supportive,” Gia said through clenched teeth.
“We’re here, aren’t we?” Meeting Gia’s glare, Sara shrugged. “What? You thought living out the fantasy wouldn’t carry a price? Nothing is free.”
Gia’s mind tallied the cost of a plane ticket, a hotel room—at the Bellagio, for crying out loud—hair extensions and a double dye job, a suitcase full of sex clothes, and a painful waxing session. Her credit card was still whimpering.
But she knew that cost was negligible. She’d be paying off the emotional cost long after the financial debt was cleared.
As suddenly as it came, her anger faded.
“I thought payment would be more along the lines of spending the next handful of years bemoaning the fact that no lover can live up to Luke Monroe. You know, until I met Mr. Perfect and fell in love, I figured in-love sex had to trump fantasy sex on some level.”
Three sets of eyes turned to Jessa. The blonde, her streaks platinum today, stopped sipping her margarita and stared at them all over the glass.
“What?” Her eyes blurred for a second as she mentally replayed the conversation. Then she flashed a smile almost as bright as her diamond wedding ring. “Oh, in-love sex definitely trumps fantasy sex.”
Gia wrapped the comfort of that around her like a cozy blanket. There. Something to hold on to while she got through whatever it was she was feeling.
“The sex is better. The connection is so real. And the talking.” Jessa paused to give a dramatic sigh that sent the table candle’s flame bouncing. “The talking is almost as good as the sex.”
“Nuh-uh,” Caryn protested, shaking her head.
“Seriously?” Sara asked, leaning forward so the candlelight glinted off her glasses. “Talking?”
“Seriously,” Gia said automatically, thinking of the long discussions she and Luke had shared between orgasms. The intensity of those talks had been greater than anything she’d experienced before. She’d felt as though she could tell him anything. Well, anything except the truth about who she was.
“…Seriously?”
“Gia?”
“Uh-oh.”
Gia froze. Everything except her eyes, which rounded in horror as they shifted from face to face.
“I didn’t mean anything,” she protested. She had to swallow a couple of times to get past the lump in her throat. Her stomach was knotted so tight it threatened to toss up the nachos she’d just eaten. “Just that, you know, sometimes the talking is good, too. Between the sex. It cuts down on friction burns and muscle cramps. Sort of like stretching between events in a triathlon.”
By the looks of things, nobody was buying it.
Jessa was damn near bouncing in her seat, delight clear on her face.
Sara looked as if she wanted to haul Gia in for a psych evaluation.
And Caryn looked as if she wanted to cry.
Gia reached across the table to offer a reassuring pat on her friend’s hand. Poor thing. She looked as if she’d aided and abetted a potentially miserable heartbreak and was horrified over it. Gia wanted to assure her it’d be okay. That she’d be fine. Eventually.
Before she could spout the lie, Jessa put her bouncing into words.
“But maybe that’s it? Maybe that’s why you freaked out and ran away and are eating nachos like you’re trying to win a trip to fat camp. Maybe you’re in love with him.”
“I’m not in love.” Gia’s words were loud enough to garner questioning looks from the neighboring diners. She didn’t care. She had a point to make here.
“Of course you’re not. That’d be stupid,” Sara agreed, with a dismissive wave of her hand. “You don’t fall in love over sex. Lust, yes. Love, no.”
“That’s pretty adamant,” Caryn said, sounding surprised. “You’ve never been in love, so how do you know?”
“I have too been in love,” Sara retorted, her frown vicious behind the bright frames of her glasses.
“No. You just think you have.”
Knowing they were about to launch into an oft-repeated argument over what love really was, Gia let out a loud dramatic sigh.
Sara and Caryn gave their own sighs, then both shrugged.
“Okay. So I’ve been searching for love for most of my life,” Sara corrected herself with a defiant tilt of her chin. “But I still know it’s more than just getting naked and rolling around together until you come.”
“Not if it’s the right guy,” Jessa insisted. “You can roll around naked with a million guys. Nice ones, sexy ones. Cute ones and rotten ones. But if they’re not the right guy, it won’t matter.”
“Well, a million guys means a lot of orgasms, so at least it wouldn’t be a waste of time,” Gia joked, hoping to lighten the mood. And, maybe, change the subject. Because talking about love made her stomach ache and her head hurt.
“What scared you off?” Caryn asked quietly.
Gia looked down at the table.
“It was too much. He was too perfect. It was like finding my other half, the part I didn’t even know was missing. He was more than just fantasy sexy. He was, well, he was perfect,” she repeated quietly. Then, her words setting off the same alarm bells she’d heard in Vegas, she sniffed and gave a bright smile. “But that’s just the sex talking, right? I’m sure it’s all afterglow a
nd lack of sleep and orgasm overload or something.”
Nobody said a word.
They just stared.
Gia shifted in her chair, trying one cheek and then the other. But it was still like sitting on fire.
“Look, it’s not love. It’s probably more like separation anxiety. You know, bumming hard because I know I’m heading back to my average, mediocre life—I mean sex life—again,” she said, quickly correcting herself. Gia gave her friends a reassuring look and added, “It was really fabulous sex.”
Thankfully, their waiter chose that moment to deliver another tray of drinks, so the other women kept their responses to themselves.
Giving him a trembling smile of thanks, Gia took the fresh margarita and chugged it down in one gulp.
And took no comfort from the sight of her three companions chugging, too.
How freaking great was this?
She’d kicked off the weekend excited about living out a sexual fantasy.
And ended it terrified she’d fallen in love.
It was enough to make a woman cry, dammit.
“Dude, way to score.”
Halfway down the hall toward his office, Luke froze. Tension tight in his shoulders, he wiped off the frown he’d been sporting for three days and turned to face Matt.
“Score?” he asked, his tone chilly. He had no interest in discussing his sex life.
Luke wasn’t into bragging, but he had never been the shy, humble type who hid behind false modesty or denied his prowess with women either.
Then again, he’d never had a woman leave him naked and wanting before.
Just thinking about waking up and finding Vanna gone made him want to pound on something. He rapped his clenched fist against his thigh.
“I heard the news. So what do you do? Roll in glitter every morning to make sure you’re always dubbed the golden boy?”
“What?” He’d rolled in whipped cream, but he blamed that on the blindfold. Glitter? Where did Matt come up with this shit?
“The job offer?” Matt prompted.
What job offer? Clueless, Luke shook his head.
“You mean Kettlemens?” He’d been dodging their calls since he’d come back from Vegas. He knew they wanted an answer, but until he got his head straightened out, he wasn’t green-lighting any life decisions. Not even ones he’d been so sure he was ready to move on.
Yet another thing to thank Vanna for.
“No. Here. Tri-Solutions. I heard from Lacy, the secretary I’ve been, um, seeing.” Or in Matt speak, doing in the supply closet during breaks. “She said the powers that be are so hot to keep you on here, they’re offering you anything. You can name your terms. Set the pay, choose the position.”
Quite a change from a weekend of being told what position to take. Not that there had been any bad ones. Vanna had a knack for directing sex. As if she were reaching into his mind, pulling out his hottest dreams and telling him how to act them out. In great, graphic detail.
“So what’d you tell them?” Matt prompted.
“Tell who?”
“The powers that be,” his friend said with a baffled look. “Are you okay?”
The powers…Oh, yeah.
Luke shrugged.
“Fine, I guess. And no,” he said before Matt could repeat his question, “I haven’t talked to them. I’ve got a dinner meeting, though.”
“And I blew the surprise.” The other man grimaced. “Sorry, dude.”
Dismissing that with a shake of his head, Luke continued to his office. Matt followed.
“Better to be prepared,” he said, dropping into one of two purple club chairs and gesturing for Matt to take the other. “So…anything?”
“That’s what I heard. You interested?”
Luke stared blankly at the plate glass that served as his office wall.
Was he?
A week ago he’d have said no. He’d needed a change. Something new.
Then it’d been a simple decision. Kettlemens was offering him a pile more money and a whole lot of traveling down easy street.
He’d do what he was good at. No muss, no fuss. No stress.
Yeah. It’d been simple.
Now, thanks to Vanna, things were a hell of a lot more complicated.
“Do you think I’ve had it too easy?” he asked. He didn’t have to look at him to know Matt was baffled.
“Too easy? Is there any such thing?”
“Seriously. Do you think this—” he waved a hand around his office, then pointed a finger toward the ceiling to indicate the higher-ups “—that. Do you think it’s all been too easy?”
“You’re good at what you do,” Matt said, his words slow and measured, as if he realized this was a major deal to Luke, so he was carefully weighing each one. “You bring in business. You’ve garnered more client satisfaction than anyone else at Tri-Solutions. You’ve earned your ride, dude.”
“But do you think it’s easy?”
Matt shook his head as if he didn’t understand the question.
“Like, easy for you to do what you do?” At Luke’s nod, he shrugged. “Hell, I don’t know. You make it look easy. But you know how that goes. For all I know, you go home and pop antacids, listen to Enya to unwind and study sales material until you cry yourself to sleep.”
Luke snickered at the image. But a second later his frown was back.
“What’re you worrying about? There’s no rule that says you have to bust your ass in life. Why shouldn’t you do what comes easy?”
Because he was bored.
Because Vanna had shown him the reward for taking on a challenge.
And because while he might still be viciously pissed at waking up alone with no way to track down the woman who’d blown his mind, she’d been right.
If he wanted to be happy, he needed to get the hell out of his comfort zone.
Chapter Seven
Girlz Guide Words of Wisdom…
Real Girlz aren’t perfect and perfect Girlz aren’t real.
So get over it….
It was silly, but Gia had hoped sliding back into her real self would put her brain back on the right track. But after six hours at the hairdresser’s, a return to cotton undies and two days without makeup, still all she could see was Luke’s naked ass, in Technicolor perfection, every time she closed her eyes.
She was going crazy trying to forget. But forget she would, she promised herself as she strode down the hall to her supervisor’s office.
She’d given Jessa all the makeup, hidden the lingerie away in the back of her dresser drawer and had even watched all four Pirates of the Caribbean movies back to back, hoping her favorite sexy pirate would erase the weekend from her mind.
The only things she hadn’t been able to let go of were her shoes. She might have to go back to being Average Gia, but she was doing it in fab shoes, even if her killer Giuseppe Zanotti heels were now paired with jeans. Kinda like a pep talk to herself. Assurance that if she just kept the faith—and wore hot shoes—she’d find a way to turn the whole Luke Monroe fantasy into a lesson in going for the big dream. Instead of a miserable memory.
“You wanted to see me, Pete?” she said as she stepped into what’d once been a stylish boardroom before Tech got hold of it. Now the long space was wall-to-wall computers of varying types, the better to test their latest programs and codes.
“Yeah. Sit.”
A man of few words, Pete didn’t look up from the laptop he was focused on. His fingers flew over the keyboard in time to the punk beat coming out of the stereo speakers. Used to his need to finish one thing before he bothered with another, Gia sat.
She amused herself for the next three minutes by staring at her lucky shoes. They’d given her the confidence to go after Luke in the bar. Now they’d give her the confidence to get over him. She turned her ankle this way and that, watching the light glint off the red leather. The gorgeous peep toes proved that she wasn’t avoiding any reminders of her weekend. If she were that heartbroken, s
he’d have tossed the shoes in the garbage.
Shuddering at the thought, she quickly amended that to hiding them in the very back of her closet, behind her prom dresses and the hideous bridesmaid gown she’d worn in her cousin’s wedding.
“You have a good weekend?” Pete asked, finally looking up from the computer.
“Great. Just great,” she said a little more exuberantly than the question warranted.
After a couple of confused blinks, Pete shrugged. Nothing derailed the guy for long.
“Good. You need to be in top shape,” he told her before turning to dig around on the table, shuffling through files.
“You’re promoted. New tech team, second in command. You report in—” he looked at his watch while handing her a folder “—fifteen minutes.”
Gia’s grin was so wide it hurt her ears.
“Promotion? Seriously? I got the Sci-Lab promotion?” She almost clapped her hands together like a little girl who’d been given a rainbow pony covered in glitter. She wanted this promotion. She’d been working her ass off for the past six months trying to prove she could handle it. Trying to prove she was good enough, special enough, to take on a big job.
She resisted clapping, but Gia couldn’t hold back her huge grin.
“This isn’t Sci-Lab,” Pete said.
Gia’s smile froze.
“Huh?”
“It’s another project. Brand-new. You were handpicked. You make this one work, you’ll be out of the cubicle and into an office. It’s your chance to prove yourself, maybe even snag a spot as development coordinator.”
Seriously?
Gia managed to keep the question to herself, but her grin was wide enough to light up the room. Handpicked for a promotion and a shot at development coordinator? That was like getting a pair of Frye boots, a spa day and a shot at wild sex all at the same time.