Hot Shot

by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

  Paige didn't understand why one of Elvis's guitars would remind Yank of herself, but the service was ready to begin, and she didn't have time to ask any questions.

  The wedding suites in the better hotels were already booked, and they had to settle for a smaller hotel. The bellhop showed them into a room that looked like a nightmare version of the inside of a Valentine candy box. The walls were covered in fuzzy zebra-striped wallpaper, and white fake fur rugs as thick as dust mops stretched from wall to wall. Festoons of shiny red and white satin draped the heart-shaped bed and were reflected in the gold-flecked mirror that served as a headboard.

  "This is nice," Yank said in admiration.

  Normally Paige would have laughed, but she was too nervous. What if Yank was disappointed in her? She had faked lovemaking with some of the best, but Yank was a lot more perceptive than most men. Still, she didn't envision lovemaking as being the most important part of their life together. Anybody who was as cerebral as Yank probably wasn't going to be the world's most competent lover, which was fine with her. She'd already gone to bed with the greatest, and it hadn't been all that wonderful.

  Cuddling with him appealed to her the most-so warm and cozy. The cuddling and the cooking. She wanted to fill his thin body with her rich, wonderful food. Nurse his babies from her bountiful breasts. Unaccountably, her eyes filled with tears.

  She had her back to him, but somehow he seemed to know she was crying. He gathered her in his arms and held her. "It's going to be all right," he said. "You mustn't worry."

  She stood on her tiptoes and buried her face in his neck. "I love you so much. I don't deserve you. I'm not a nice person. I lose my temper. I swear too much. You're so much better than I am."

  He tilted up her chin and stroked her blond hair back from her face with his fingers. His eyes were filled with wonder. "You're the most wonderful woman in the world. I still can't believe you're mine."

  As he gazed at her, all the goodness in his soul infused her. And then he dropped his head and kissed her. Oh, so slowly. She had never been kissed like that. His lips touched hers so lightly that at first she could barely feel them. She was the one who deepened the pressure. She was the one who opened her mouth.

  The kiss went on and on. He was a man of infinite patience, and he believed in doing a job well. He kissed her cheeks and her eyelids, laid her back on the bed and tilted her chin to the side so he could kiss her throat. He found the pulse that fluttered there and counted the beats with the touch of his lips.

  She felt so languid, so warm. His lips trailed down the open vee of her blouse and lingered there. Her breasts began to throb, anticipating his touch. She wanted more of him. Her fingers worked beneath his shirt. He pulled her hands away and clasped them gently between his own.

  "Would you like some champagne?"

  She shook her head. She didn't want any champagne. She didn't want him to stop.

  But he got up anyway. He went to the ice bucket and fiddled with the bottle. It took him forever to get it open. First he had to dry it with a towel, then he made a big deal out of removing the foil neatly. He unscrewed the wire cage as if he were working with a delicate piece of machinery. She wanted to scream at him to just open it, for Pete's sake, and get back to her.

  While he poured a glass for himself, she propped herself up against the pillows. He asked her again if she wanted some.

  "All right," she replied grouchily. "As long as you've got it open."

  He brought the glasses over and stood by the bed looking down at her. The narrow gold wedding band looked beautiful on his long thin fingers. Her body once again began to grow warm and her irritation faded. The mattress sagged as he settled on the side of the bed and put the glasses on the nightstand.

  "Don't drink yet," he said. "I want to think of a toast."

  And he sat there.

  She couldn't believe it. She wanted him to kiss her again and touch her breasts, but he was sitting there thinking up a dumb toast. And while he was thinking, he began doing this thing with the palm of her hand. Just lightly stroking it with his thumb. She had never had her palm stroked in that particular way. It was so unbelievably exciting. Before long, she began to squirm.

  "Did you think of it yet?" she finally gasped.

  "A couple more minutes," he said, transferring his touch from her hand to the sensitive skin of her inner arm.

  She closed her eyes. Her lips parted. What was he doing to her? The stroking on her arm continued forever, and then his mouth brushed over hers again in another of his delicious kisses. This was good, she thought. Now they were getting back to business.

  She moaned as he kissed the base of her throat. His fingers played with the top button of her blouse. After another few years had passed, he opened it. He kissed the spot of skin revealed there and then unfastened the next button. A button and then a kiss. A button and then a kiss.

  Her breasts where they rose above the scalloped lace of her bra were covered in a rosy flush. When would he get to her bra? To her slacks?

  He stopped. "I think I have the toast now."

  She gritted her teeth. If he didn't get his mind back on what he was doing, she was going to toast him.

  He handed her back her champagne glass. "To my wife, the most beautiful woman in the world. I love you."

  It was sweet-really sweet-but hardly original enough to be worth the wait. She clinked her glass with his, downed her champagne, dropped her glass to the carpet and threw herself back in his arms.

  He gently disengaged himself and slipped off her blouse.

  She wanted to give a whoop of triumph. Yes! He finally had the idea. He'd finally remembered what he was supposed to be doing. Now the bra. Don't forget the bra.

  He didn't forget. His agile fingers unfastened the clasp so smoothly it seemed as if it had dissolved in his hands. He slipped the lacy garment off her and laid her down on the bed.

  And then he just looked at her. She lay back and he inspected her with his eyes. Her nipples grew hard and beaded under his scrutiny. He bent forward. She closed her eyes, waiting for the heat of his mouth on her breasts, and felt his lips settle…

  … over the curve of her shoulder.

  She gave a little sob of frustration. Her hands knotted into fists at her side while he played with her shoulder for another ten years. My breasts! she wanted to cry. Taste my breasts, my bubbles, my pretty pretty boobies.

  But the booby she had married had discovered a patch of incredibly sensitive skin at the inside of her elbow and he was sucking on it.

  "Your slacks are getting mussed," he said finally.

  "Yes," she agreed. "Oh, yes." She began to unfasten them, but again he pushed her away. He slipped them down over her legs and started to fold them.

  "It doesn't matter," she said. "Just throw them across a chair."

  "They'll get wrinkled," he replied, as if a pair of wrinkled slacks were some sort of monumental crime against nature. Standing, he held them by the cuffs, snapped the creases, and began matching up the inseams with a geometric precision that would have made Euclid weep with joy.

  Paige wanted to weep, but not with joy. Why couldn't he understand how difficult it was for her to get aroused? Her excitement could vanish any second. It always did. He needed to take advantage of her arousal before it slipped away. Didn't he understand that?

  Apparently he didn't. He had to carry the slacks over to the closet and hang them up. And not just any hanger would do. It had to be a trouser hanger.

  She whipped off her underpants while his back was turned and lifted one knee just a bit so that the sole of her right foot was pressed against the curve of her left calf.

  When he turned around and saw that, his eyes opened wider. Determined to gain the upper hand, she let one arm fall languidly to the side of the bed and began rubbing the sole of her right foot up and down her calf. Yank walked back toward the bed. She caught her bottom lip between her teeth. He abruptly took a detour.

  She shot up on her el
bow. "Where are you going?"

  He walked over to one of the tables and flipped on another lamp. "It's hard to see in here," he said. "I like to see what I'm doing." And then he returned to the foot of the bed. Sliding his hands up and down her calves, he gently pressed her knees farther open.

  Her mouth went dry. She looked up at him.

  His hands rose to his shirt. But instead of taking it off, he began slowly rolling up the cuffs.

  Her eyes flew to his face. For the first time, she saw the amusement lurking at the corner of his mouth.

  "You're doing this on purpose," she gasped.

  "I think," he said, "that no one has ever taken enough time with you."

  Paige lived through a thousand glorious lives that night. Yank had been trained in the lessons of patience, and he believed in careful craftsmanship. He liked to form hypotheses and then test them. For example, if he used his tongue here and his hand there…

  He was an engineer, an absolute genius when it came to working with small parts. And every one of her small parts surrendered to his intricate inspection and exploded under his skillful manipulation.

  Who could have imagined he would actually have to smother her cries of fulfillment with his mouth? Who could have imagined that this absent-minded genius could bring her the satisfaction that had been eluding her all her life?

  When he finally came to her, his eyes were glazed and his breathing as heavy as her own. She was hardly capable of rational thought, but she dimly realized what his patience was costing him and loved him all the more for it.

  Even as he poised himself to enter her, he took care. He was her husband, her lover. But above all, he was an engineer. And good engineers never forced parts together that were of unequal size.

  "All right?" he murmured.

  "Oh, yes. Oh, yes," she gasped.

  "My wife. My love."

  She cried out with joy and passion as he entered her. He caught her cries in his mouth and they began to move together, rushing in harmony toward a place of perfect fulfillment.

  As dawn streaked the sky, they lay satiated in each other's arms. "Why did you act like it would be okay if I went to bed with Mitch?" she whispered.

  "Because I knew Mitch wouldn't go to bed with you."

  "He would, too," she said indignantly. And then she smiled. "No, I guess he wouldn't have." Her fingers played with the textures of his chest. "I thought you loved Susannah."

  He stroked her cheek. "I do. The same way you love her." He didn't see any need to tell her it hadn't always been that way, that there had been a time when he had been very much attracted to Susannah. She had been so different from the women he knew.

  "Susannah's happiness is important to me," he went on.

  "That's why I had to make Sam understand that he couldn't have her back. But in terms of physical attraction…"

  When he didn't go on, Paige probed. "What? Tell me."

  He looked troubled. "Please don't take offense at this, Paige. I love Susannah and I admire her. But don't you think she's a bit-plain?"

  Paige gazed around her at the tacky wedding suite that Yank thought was so attractive. She giggled with delight and hugged him to her breasts. "Absolutely, Yank. Susannah is definitely too plain for you."

  Everything about Mitch had begun to irritate Susannah. His clothes, for example. How many perfectly tailored navy-blue suits could a man own? How many navy and red rep ties? Couldn't he take a walk on the wild side just once and wear paisley?

  And she hated the way he tapped his pen when he was annoyed, the way he leaned back in his chair and tugged on his necktie knot when he wanted to make a point. He took notes on absolutely everything-she hated that, too. What did he do with all those yellow legal pads once he filled them up? Did he rent a warehouse somewhere?

  She fumed as she watched his gold pen scratch across the paper. He probably had one of those yellow legal pads on his bedside table so he could take notes on a woman's performance after they'd made love.

  But she couldn't let herself think about that, and so she thought about how crazy he made her in meetings. They would be sitting around a conference table and he would be reading from his ten zillionth computer printout and talking about shipments and quotas and sales forecasts. Then, right in the middle of a sentence, he'd slip off those stupid horn-rimmed glasses and look over at her. Just a look. Just this macho-stud look like she was some sort of marked woman. God, it was irritating. It was so irritating, she would lose track of where she was and stumble around and then everyone would start looking at her.

  "Susannah?"

  She blinked her eyes. Jack Vaughan, their vice-president of Research and Development, was staring at her. Everyone was staring at her. She'd done it again. Mitch smiled and leaned back in his chair, making this stupid church steeple with his fingers.

  "Susannah?" Vaughan repeated. "Do you have any questions about our figures?"

  "No, no. They're fine." She suspected that everyone at the table knew she didn't have the slightest idea what figures they were talking about. A giant clock seemed to be ticking away in her head, marking this last week until her divorce was final. Why did Mitch have to be so stubborn? Why did he have to drive her crazy like this? She wasn't sleeping well at night. All of this waiting had worn her nerves to the breaking point.

  The loudspeaker snapped on. "Attention unmarried females. Free gynecological exams are now being given in Building C. Ask for Ralph."

  Susannah jumped out of her chair. "That does it! I'm going to have somebody's ass!"

  Mitch looked pained.

  Jack Vaughan closed his folder. "I think our meeting is adjourned," he said quietly.

  She stomped toward the door. Mitch intercepted her before she could reach it with another one of his new tricks. He simply stepped in front of her and blocked her path with his body. It was nothing more than a macho power play, a completely juvenile way of reminding her that he was bigger and stronger than she was. Real tough-guy stuff.

  "What do you want?" she growled, ignoring the fluttering in her stomach and the wonderful scent of his starched shirt.

  He leaned down and whispered in her ear. "One more week, Hot Shot. Then I take what's mine."

  She swallowed hard. He was getting to her. He was really getting to her.

  Her divorce became final on a completely ordinary Wednesday. She sat through a session with her East Coast marketing people, and met with the management team that headed up their Singapore plant. Paige had called and asked if she could drop by in the afternoon, and Susannah had rescheduled a conference call to accommodate her.

  She finished drafting a memo and looked at her watch. It was nearly time for Paige to arrive. She hadn't seen Mitch all day. Which was perfectly fine with her. He'd put her through hell this past month, and she planned to make him suffer for it. If he thought he could just jump in bed with her now that she was officially a free woman, she would very quickly set him straight. She might be free, but she had no intention of being easy.

  Paige stuck her head in the door. "Hi."

  It was so good to see her sister that some of Susannah's tension faded. Since her marriage, Paige's skin actually seemed to glow with contentment. And whenever Susannah saw Yank, he had this goofy smile on his face.

  The honeymooners had settled in at Falcon Hill. The idea of Yank Yankowski serving as lord and master of Joel Faulconer's home made her smile. You might actually have liked him, Daddy, she thought. Once you got over the initial shock, of course. He's the best there is, and he's made Paige so happy.

  Susannah took in her sister's pale raspberry suit, the pearls at her throat, the chignon, and the gray lizardskin pumps. "My, my. I'm impressed. Did you get all dressed up for me?"

  "No. I did it for Paul. He gets nervous when board members wear blue jeans."

  "Paul?"

  Paige stepped aside, and Susannah saw that she wasn't alone. Paul Clemens, Cal's predecessor as FBT chairman, was with her. Susannah got up to greet him. They chatted a
wkwardly for a few minutes.

  Realizing that this was to be more than a sisterly chat, Susannah directed them to the small conference table in the corner of her office. No sooner were they all seated than Mitch arrived.

  Susannah's heart did one of those peculiar somersaults. He took the seat next to Paige.

  "I didn't know this was going to be a formal meeting," she said coolly.

  Paige fiddled with her pearls. "I'm the one who asked Mitch to be here. Look, Susannah, I'm sorry about this, but-"

  "It's my fault," Paul Clemens interrupted. "Paige and I had a long talk yesterday and I asked her to set this up."

  Susannah clasped her hands on the table. "Paul, you've been a friend for a long time, but if you're here in any sort of official capacity for FBT, I'm going to need one of our attorneys present."

  "I'm retired, Susannah, although I still sit on the board. Let's just say I'm here in an unofficially official capacity."

  "Hear him out, Suze," Paige said. "This is pretty important."

  Susannah reluctantly agreed, and Paul began to outline the crisis FBT had been thrust into since the public revelations about Cal Theroux. The fact that a man who had been the chairman of FBT would soon have a prison term hanging over his head had made everything incredibly difficult. The more Susannah listened, the more alarmed she became. She had known that FBT was in trouble, but she had no idea their problems ran so deep. The giant corporation was, quite literally, on the verge of collapse.

  Paul finished speaking, and she gazed at him with dismay. "I hope both of you understand that none of us at SysVal wanted to damage FBT. Our problem was with Cal, not the company."

  "You've made that very clear in your public statements, and we all appreciate it," Paul replied. "But the fact is, the public perceives us as the bad guys in black hats, while you're Snow White. Companies don't want to do business with us anymore. It's as if we're tainted, and they're moving toward our competitors in droves. We've discontinued the Falcon 101, but that's had little effect. The price of our stock has become a sick joke. Every division of the corporation is in jeopardy."