Lovers and Other Strangers Box Set: The Boston Stories

by L. C. Giroux

  "Hey! I just gave you a compliment. The appropriate response is thank you, period, no but, no qualifiers of any kind. So here is how we are going to do this. I am going to catalog each and every part of you I like and why and you are going to say thank you each and every time I do. Now, I love your forehead..."

  "But..."

  "Oh, you're right I forgot how much I love that little cowlick at your widow's peak. You see, you want this to be over with and I could go on and on. Would you like me to talk about each hair individually." She made a face of horror. "I didn't think so. Now what do you say?"

  "Thank you."

  "Good girl. See that wasn't so hard. Now, your forehead..." A full ten minutes later he had worked his way down to just her shoulders. At that point the compliments started coming along with caresses. She was getting more and more distracted by his touching her and she was forgetting to say thank you. Which made the whole process take even longer. By the time he reached her toenails, her toenails!, which, according to him, he wanted to paint while she was in the tub or tied to her bed, she could barely breathe she was so turned on.

  "Evie, I know you spent way too long thinking of yourself as unremarkable but I don't see you that way. I didn't even when we were back in high school. You are a gorgeous woman and you will have to get used to accepting my compliments."

  She smiled at him and he smiled back. "Thank you for all of it. Do you do this with all the women you date?" She was trying to feel like this was somehow normal when she felt this was so outside of her normal she could barely comprehend most of it.

  "No, only the ones I fall in love with." He couldn't have said that! She must have heard him wrong. No man alive would admit to falling in love with a woman after knowing her less than a couple of days. She obviously had heard what she secretly wanted him to say, that had to be it. "You better get dressed and ready to go back to your place. We're gonna be late. I'll make you some breakfast while you get set. Eggs okay?"

  "Oh, sorry, eggs are fine." She turned to leave to go back upstairs when he called her.

  "Evie, I want you to know I have never lied to you about anything. Everything I just told you is true, every last word of it. Oh and sweetheart, you might want these?" Her panties dangled from his finger.

  "You had them all along? You..."

  "I didn't make you come downstairs bare-assed, I just increased the likelihood. You made that choice all on your own. I like the way you think, shows real possibilities." Ooh, she wanted to smack that smirk off his face. No she didn't, she wanted to kiss him senseless, leave him panting, and rock his world the way he'd done to hers and then gloat just like what he was doing now.

  She ran upstairs when she got to her room she collapsed on the bed and screamed into the pillow then she put her hands over her face to try to cool the burning of her cheeks. This man made her crazy! That was the only explanation she had clearly lost her mind. She had spent the last 20 years dreaming about him and any minute she was going to wake up and find out all this was just a dream.

  Except, in all the time she had been dreaming about him she'd never dreamed of him saying all the things about her he did this morning. He had looked at her like she was a beautiful work of art and she actually felt it all the way to her toenails. And then, had he really meant to say that he loved her? She'd thought she loved him years ago but her dream version of him was nothing compared to how the real flesh and blood man made her feel. Enough! She needed to get back to reality they had to meet the locksmith and they still had a forty-five minute ride across town. She was showered and dressed 15 minutes later. He had made her heuvos rancheros, which she devoured, she couldn't remember the last time she was so hungry.

  With as late as they were now they were smack into the heart of rush hour so there were no seats on the T. People cleared a space where the wheel chair wouldn't trip anyone but there weren't any seats for Evie.

  "You wanna sit on my lap?"

  She leaned down to whisper in his ear. "Promise to be good?"

  "I haven't heard you complain yet?" She looked cold. Why, when the woman had lived her whole life in Boston did she not know it could get cold as hell without warning. He opened his coat up.

  "Come here you look like you're shivering." She was, even if she tried to hide it. She curled up on his lap as he wrapped his coat around her. Within minutes she had snuck her hands under his sweater and shirt. He tried to tell himself that the trouble he was having breathing was because her hands were like ice but he suspected the truth was he would had shivered when she touched him even if they were in the tropics. He'd assumed she was just trying to get warm but when she started stroking his stomach he growled a soft warning in her ear. She looked up at him, smiled and then stuck her now warm fingers in the waist band of his jeans. His chest heaved. Damn! What the hell was she doing. When she popped the button, his cock woke up quick. She pulled one hand out from under his shirt and worked it down between them, running her fingers up and down the length of him over his jeans. His stomach clenched to have her touch him.

  "You are playing with fire, sweetheart." He whispered, his voice hoarse from trying to not moan. She was rocking her hips in time to the motion of the car. Every turn and sway of the train added new sensations. No one around them could see what was going on between them but that didn't keep it from feeling damn public. When he whispered his warning she just smiled at him and kissed his jaw. Now she had pulled her other hand out of his sweater and was playing with the hair at the back of his neck. Her kisses turned into her nibbling his earlobe sending jolts of electricity straight to his groin. Fuck, he ached bad. If he survived this ride, she was going to get him off as soon as they got to her place. Shit, the locksmith was supposed to be meeting them there. Great! He'd be a drooling idiot by then.

  When they got to Downtown Crossing she hopped off him and just about got away, she would have if he hadn't managed to grab her hand. When they finally caught the Redline to her place. There were less people headed toward Cambridge so she could sit next to him. He pinned her in with his chair. The cold air of the station had cooled him down some but he still couldn't think about anything but peeling her clothes off, maybe they should try out that giant mirror of hers. That would be a nice reinforcement of this morning's lesson. If anyone needed to be taught a lesson right now it was her.

  "So now that you've lit the fire, what are you gonna do to put it out."

  "Who says I want to put it out." She dared to give him a teasing smile.

  "Maybe I should bury it someplace warm and wet, so no one gets hurt." She actually licked her lips. Oh. Hell. No. The goddamned locksmith could charge him double time he was taking her upstairs and teach her what happened to good girls that wanted to play bad before he did another fucking thing.

  He raced from the T station to her loft with her nearly running along beside him. He couldn't even look at her for fear of losing it before he got her naked. Damn, he hadn't felt like this since he'd been a teenager. When he got closer to the door, he noticed a guy was standing in front of it. Dammit! He was going to have to deal with the locksmith after all, shit, this should be interesting with a raging hard on and the cause of it standing there laughing at him. He slowed down since his lungs were about to burst anyway. When he got closer to the door he heard the locksmith muttering. The guy turned around when he heard Cam pull up.

  "So obviously you needed me, but I think you underestimated the damage. Also if you were going to be leaving you should have secured this somehow."

  "What the hell are you talking about?"

  "You the guy that called me about fixing the lock on the door?"

  "Yeah, but what the hell do you mean I underestimated the damage? It just needs a new mechanism put in."

  "Not by a long shot." The guy moved to his right and Cam saw what he was talking about."

  "Tell me you didn't touch anything."

  "Nah, I just got here. Why, this not what it looked like when you left it?"

  "No, I'm gon
na need you to stick around or maybe come back later after the cops get through."

  "Ooh, not good, I'll go get some coffee and stop back, if the cops are done I'll get to work if not, they'll have a better idea of when they'll be done by then."

  "Sounds good." The locksmith walked away as Evie walked up and looked at her door.

  "What the hell?"

  "I think we can assume the bricks were not random." She went to reach for the door. "Don't touch anything! We need the cops to check things out." He pulled out his phone and called the Somerville guys to come over.

  "Shit, shit, shit! Joseph I need to see if they took anything. Shit! All my chisels! The hell with the cops my prints will be all over everything anyway, I'm going in."

  "Evie, Don't you move! Dammit, someone is pissed at you enough they went at your door with a hatchet from the looks of it. God only knows what the hell is in there."

  "You go then! Those chisels cost a fortune I've been putting together my collection over the last 20 years. They're my life's work." He couldn't stand to see her so upset. He could go in and the cops would understand.

  "Okay, fine. But I need you to stay here. No matter what. Promise me."

  "Fine, just go check. Please! Everything was laid out on the worktable." Cam opened the door with his gloved hand. Evie looked around him and started to cry. Her studio was trashed. If it was just a bunch of hooligans it would have been bad enough but the marble piece she had been working on had had a hammer taken to it. Somehow it looked personal. Cam didn't touch anything but it looked like there were a lot fewer tools on the worktable. He didn't want to touch the light switch in case there were prints they could lift and the glazier hadn't replaced the glass yet so some of the windows were still boarded up so it was tough to see in some spots. If he looked close he could see where there were ghost images of the missing tools from the marble dust that had settled. Shit, this was not going to be good. He really needed Delia to come up with something so he could talk to Evie sooner rather than later.

  When he came out of the studio the devil was standing next to Evie.

  "This is your idea of helping her? I thought you were going to be here protecting her tough guy."

  "Bernard, I..." Evie started to speak and then stopped. Cam tried to will her to tell Bernie boy she had stayed at his place last night, if she wanted to add he'd given her two mind numbing orgasms too he wouldn't complain. Shit, thinking about her laid out on the table like she'd been this morning brought his erection back full force. Thank God for the pea coat.

  "Evie, you obviously can't handle the situation. Someone like Rayna would bat her eyes at the cops and show a little cleavage and have them knocking on every door in the neighborhood. The guys would be fighting each other trying to catch the bad guy for her so they could fuck her. They'll never do that for you. You just don't inspire that kind of... devotion. Let me ask around. We can handle this our way, there really isn't any need to call the police."

  Cam wanted to ram his fist down the guy's throat. What the hell did he know about just how sexy Evie could be. Cam cut him off before he could say anymore. "Evie, I hate to tell you this..." she looked up then and all the daring and mischief that had been in her eyes on the train coming here was gone. She was right back to square one thinking she was somehow less than what anybody needed. Right back to being the scared high school girl. His heart broke for her. Why the hell was she letting the things Bernie was saying get to her? He was an ass, couldn't she see that? "It looks like some of the chisels are missing. She tried to push past him but he grabbed her and held her, whispering in her ear till she finally settled down.

  Luckily the Somerville cops showed up and Bernie didn't bother to stick around. The cops figured out whoever did it had gloves on because there weren't any prints which meant it would be harder to find out who did it but Evie could get in there and assess the damage faster. It wasn't a regular B&E though, her living space was untouched. It was like whoever fucked everything up knew the worst way to get to her was to go after her artwork and tools and not her flatscreen.

  They hung around long enough to deal with the locksmith and the glaziers. Evie talked to her insurance agent about the extent of her policy. She'd had a rider to cover at least part of the value of the chisels. When she got off the phone she just sat there dazed. He felt so helpless. When he couldn't take it anymore he told her to pack a bag.

  "What?"

  "I want you to pack a bag, enough clothes for a week or two, you can do laundry when you need to. Are there some smaller pieces you could bring with you to work on? How do you start a new piece? Do you do sketches, do you need a model? You can take over my living room. We'll put down tarps to protect the floor or if you want we can clear out the garage. It has electricity and we could put a few heaters in so you don't freeze."

  "Joseph, I appreciate what you're trying to do but... I'll just stay here."

  "The hell you will! First, I won't be able to think, from worrying about you all the time. Second, I want you in my bed. I'm not going to lie to you, part of me wants to be chivalrous but most of me wants, no, needs to have you close, as in skin to skin close. I wasn't lying to you this morning." He was right up in her face now. "Remember this morning? Not about any of it. Come on little bird, just till I can get this place alarmed and a few cameras put in. Unless you decide you can't get enough of me in which case you can stay as long as you'd like. Evie, go pack."

  She stood up but hadn't moved away from the kitchen area. He moved in front of her, she was still dazed. He pulled her hand down and she just about fell on top of him. He held her against him and gave her a tender kiss. She barely kissed him back. He took her chin in his hand and tilted her head so she had to look directly into his eyes.

  "Evie, I'm not leaving here without you. So you are either coming with me or I'm gonna be sharing that playground of a bedroom with you upstairs but I've gotta warn you if that is what you choose, I am going to have you so often and in so many different ways our bodies may just fuse together, like when they pull glass out of a volcano." She dragged air into her lungs. Finally that seemed to get her attention. She stood there another minute, not quite herself still. He remembered about Saturday with Michael and Violet.

  "We are going to go out with Violet and Michael next Saturday, you may want to bring something nice. They have much deeper pockets than I do so they'll pick someplace a little more chichi than I would left on my own. You'll like them, you'll see." She gave him a weak smile and walked to the elevator to go pack.

  While she was upstairs Cam called the Somerville cops and gave them his address to send the police reports to. When that was done he called Michael and left a message about getting together on Sat. Sooner than he'd expected Evie came downstairs with her bag.

  "What did you want to bring as far as your supplies?"

  "For now I won't bring much, just some clay, I don't usually work with it but right now the fact that it is so fluid seems like a plus. I can't work on any of my real pieces so I will just be killing time as it is." They grabbed the box of clay and some plastic tarps and old towels she said she needed. Everything got loaded into an old Subaru and they started back to Jamaica Plains. She was driving and they made it in pretty good time. For now Cam dumped all the art stuff in the kitchen while she brought her clothes and stuff up to the bedroom. When he joined her upstairs he was surprised to find she had put everything in Sal's room. After earlier today he figure she dump everything in his. He didn't want it to bother him but it did. She noticed that he'd noticed where she put her stuff.

  "If you don't mind I'll sleep here tonight, actually, I'd like to be by myself for a while if you don't mind." She gave him a peck on the forehead like they were old friends, except they weren't, not really. She did look worn out, maybe a nap was what she needed.

  "That's fine, why don't you try to get some rest. I've got some work to do anyway. She closed the door behind him. He sat there for a little while till he heard her crying. Living with
two women had taught him if she wanted him to comfort her she'd ask but for now she needed to cry herself out.

  Delia showed up around four o'clock, mad a a wet hen.

  "Uncle Cam, I swear that man..."

  "Look you can't think of Jonah as a man, he's more like a boy in man's clothing. He doesn't mean to hurt people he just is an idiot when it come to people's feelings."

  "Yeah but..."

  "Look, I know it doesn't help but under all that bullshit is a really decent guy. I know he is a love 'em and leave 'em type but he'll find some girl that will set his world on fire and... He's kind of like the bad boy types in your mother's novels, The badder the boy the harder he falls."

  Delia grinned at him. "So does that mean I'm gonna need a bridesmaid's dress then?"

  "Yeah well, I don't think she feels the same way about me that I do about her."

  "But she's upstairs right? She must want to be here on some level. It doesn't sound like money is desperate for her. She could have just gone to a hotel or called another friend but she didn't, she came here with you."

  "Whatever, did you find anything to confirm my hunch."

  "Cam, she wants to be here, even if she doesn't understand why herself yet. As far as your hunch goes, yeah I found some interesting stuff. He had a run in with the law when he was in college. Was accused of date rape. They couldn't get it to stick. Not an ideal case for the prosecution though. The girl didn't come forward for almost a month so it became a 'he said she said' If it was just that I could almost overlook it. Almost. But there was a classmate of his when he was getting his MFA that had a restraining order put out against him. Said he was stalking her, destroying her stuff, evidently the cops found photos he'd taken of her. Creepy long lens shit. That was back in New York. He's been in the Boston area for about seven years now and stayed out of trouble."

  "Who stayed out of trouble?" Neither of them had seen Evie come in the kitchen. She walked over to Cam and curled up in his lap tucking her head under his chin. Delia looked at him and shook her head. He just rubbed his lips against her hair. Delia seemed to understand if Cam had wanted Evie to know what was going on he'd have said something so she covered for him.