by Olivia Dade
She needed more time. He could give it to her.
Maybe more time would coax her to share what exactly had happened in her marriage and what sort of scars its collapse had left behind. Maybe more time would allow him to share his particular iteration of that story too.
Now was not the moment to become impatient.
Now was the moment to become clever.
Bea clutched a black washed-silk dress close and petted it, her blue eyes—so like Martin’s—alight with wonder and lust. “I have enough money for this. And it fits perfectly.”
Annette drifted to the young woman’s side and began a lecture Rose had heard before. Had received before, from the very same source, approximately two decades ago.
“My dear, the fit and the price tag alone don’t tell you everything you need to know about whether you should buy an item of clothing, especially when you’re on a budget. Which, unfortunately”—Annette directed a glare at Martin, who pretended not to see it—“it appears you are. Since your father deprived an infirm old woman very close to death the pleasure of buying a wardrobe for such a lovely girl.”
Rose snorted, while Bea giggled.
Martin bit his lip and eyed the nearby café longingly.
Annette’s nimble fingers located the care label sewn into the inside seam of the skirt. “There are other factors to consider. The care instructions, for example. I imagine your dorm won’t offer dry cleaning services?”
Not unless dorms at public universities had been taken over by the Rockefellers since Rose graduated. Although she probably shouldn’t mention that, since Annette and Alfred might be tempted to sponsor Bea’s housing in some roundabout way.
Next thing they all knew, Bea would have a private loft with an espresso bar.
Bea’s face scrunched. “Uh, I don’t think so?”
“Then you’ll want something easy to wash and dry. This dress doesn’t fulfill that requirement.” When the younger woman drooped, Annette continued soothingly, “But that’s not the only other factor. We also need to consider cost-per-wear, a calculation that takes into account not only how many times you’re likely to wear a garment, but also how many wears that garment will withstand before becoming unusable. Better-quality clothing lasts longer, and so do sturdier fabrics.”
“I…don’t know how often I’d wear this.” Bea’s hand lingered over the jet detailing at the neck. “How sturdy is silk? It doesn’t snag or anything, right?”
Annette pursed her lips, then decided to move on. “And finally, there are the intangibles.”
Rose stopped idly flipping through a rack to watch her favorite bit of the familiar lecture.
“When you’re wearing the garment, do you feel confident? Do you feel powerful? If looking beautiful is important to you, do you feel beautiful in it? Does it bring you joy? Will there always be some niggling doubt in your mind about its fit or color, or does it seem made for you? You don’t want to buy something you’re always readjusting.” Annette glanced at Rose. “As Rosie and I know, a good tailor can fix many sins, but not everything.”
That was the end of Annette’s very informative lecture, except for one small detail.
“I feel amazing in this.” Bea slowly put the dress back on the rack. “But it’s almost half the money my grandma gave me. I probably wouldn’t wear it often, and it needs dry cleaning.” The girl forced a strained smile. “Let’s look at other stuff.”
Rose waited for it.
“There’s one last factor I forgot to mention,” Annette announced. “Whether an elderly woman who’s barely able to walk some days might wish to give a graduation gift to a wonderful young lady.”
And there it was. The part where Annette ignored all the sensible advice she’d just given and bought the damn clothing anyway.
But when Annette’s hand reached for the dress, Martin’s hand got there first. For a fraught minute, the winner of their silent tug-of-war remained in doubt, but he emerged victorious. Brandishing the hanger well over Annette’s reach, he took a moment to catch his breath.
Annette eyed him balefully, nursing her hand as if he’d broken it, when Rose knew for a fact Martin hadn’t hurt her. Wouldn’t hurt her. Not in the slightest, not ever.
He shook the dress, his spoils of battle. “Sweet Bea?”
“Yeah, Dad?” His daughter’s disappointment had shifted into muffled hilarity at the sight of her father and Annette fighting over a hanger in the middle of a classy department store. “Congratulations on your victory, by the way.”
He gave a little bow. “Thank you. I had a worthy opponent.”
“Fierce. Committed.” Bea kept a straight face. “One might even say vicious.”
Annette appeared mollified, although she kept eyeing the stack of discarded clothing in Bea’s dressing room in a way Rose recognized all too well.
“I haven’t chosen your graduation gift yet. If you really want this, I’ll get it for you. Save your grandmother’s money for a more”—he read the price tag with a sigh—“practical college wardrobe.”
Bea had ceased breathing. “Really?”
“Really.” He leaned over to kiss her forehead, and she didn’t even try to stop him. “If this dress makes you feel confident and powerful and beautiful, then you need to have it. And then we need to leave this store. Immediately.”
After he’d paid for the dress, handed the hanger to Bea, and headed for the door—minus one member of their group, although Martin apparently hadn’t noticed that yet—Rose leaned over to whisper in his ear. “I told you to stay at the other end of the mall, no matter what Annette said.”
He threw up his hands. “When we arrived, she told me she only felt comfortable using the facilities in this store. That they had stalls equipped for women who needed extra support to stand. What kind of monster would refuse her?”
Annette was a marvel.
“Do you remember her using the bathroom?” Rose asked. “At any point while we were here?”
He stopped dead. “Hold on. Maybe she…no. No, she never left Bea.”
“She really didn’t.”
His mouth had dropped open. “Oh, God, she played me. She totally played me.”
She really shouldn’t smile. Martin had been so patient all morning as Annette and Bea dragged him to makeup counters and jewelry displays and racks upon racks of gorgeous, expensive, midnight-black clothing. To Bea’s credit, though, she’d been thrifty with her maternal grandparents’ birthday money to this point.
And shortly, if Annette had her way, Bea was going to discover she had very few items left to buy.
“She definitely played you,” Rose agreed. “You don’t know the half of it yet.”
When Rose had asked Martin about the origin of this little expedition, he’d lifted a shoulder in a casual shrug and said Bea and Annette must have exchanged numbers at some point over dinner.
“My daughter admires Annette’s style,” he’d said. “Yours too. When she got the money for a new wardrobe, she wanted guidance from both of you, and she called Annette to plan a group shopping trip.”
Then he’d changed the subject very quickly. Too quickly.
Hmmm.
Maybe Martin wasn’t the only one who’d been played. Rose had the distinct impression that he—and maybe even Bea and Annette—had been trying to make a point today. Trying to demonstrate how well the four of them meshed as a group.
As a kind of family, even.
She swallowed, hard.
Clever. Very clever.
When it came to subtle maneuvers, however, he’d just been outclassed.
His head suddenly jerked in a frantic scan of the store. “Where is Annette?”
“If I know my former mother-in-law, she’s back in the dressing room, deciding what to do.” Rose nodded in that direction. “She’ll want to buy all the items Bea admired but discarded for being too frivolous. But she won’t want to upset you or hurt your pride, so she’ll be considering her options. Maybe calling Alfred for
advice.”
“Really?” Bea’s brow furrowed. “I…I don’t know if I can accept that sort of gift. Dad?”
“We’re not letting Annette purchase an entire wardrobe for you. Sorry, sweet Bea.” He turned to Rose. “If I don’t let Annette buy something, though, what will she do?”
“Look pitiful.” She considered. “Acquire a decided hunch. Discuss her nonexistent rheumatism.”
His groan was low but heartfelt.
“I know how you feel. For the first few years of my marriage, I told Annette not to buy me anything.” She shook her head. “Pride, you know.”
His mouth quirked. “I know.”
“Yet somehow I ended up wearing cashmere capelets and sleeping on silk bedding. Because if I didn’t, she’d shoot me this look, like I’d selfishly snatched away her only source of pleasure in life, and the trauma of it all might very well kill her on the spot.”
He snickered a little at that.
“It’s her way of taking care of the people she cares about. It brings her genuine joy.” She laid a hand on his arm. “That said, only you get to choose what she can and can’t buy for your daughter. Whatever you decide, I’ll support you.”
His lips pursed in thought. Then, finally, he came to a decision. “Bea, if you pick one more item, I’ll let Annette buy it for you as a graduation gift. Everything else, she’ll need to return to the dressing room. If she argues, send her to me, and I’ll deal with it.” He caught his daughter’s eye. “Later today, you’ll send her a handwritten note of appreciation. And you’ll also be calling her on the phone to chat and find out if there anything, anything, we can do for her in return.”
Bea’s uncertainty transformed into a beam. “No problem!”
When she caught sight of Annette in the distance, staggering under a mountain of garments on hangers, she sprinted in that direction.
Martin watched the two of them, his forehead creased. “Was that the right decision?”
“Remember the context here. Annette and Alfred have more money than they can possibly spend, even with all the charities they support. And they like both of you.” A quick glance established that Bea and Annette were occupied looking through the clothing options, so Rose dared a soft kiss on his cheek. “You made two good women happy, and you also maintained your boundaries. I think you handled the situation just right.”
His fingertips pressed lightly at the small of her back, where Bea and Annette couldn’t see. Traced up her spine in a slow, lingering caress.
“I’d like to make another good woman happy,” he murmured. “Soon.”
They hadn’t been alone in almost two weeks. State tests had followed hard on the heels of the AP exams, and during that stretch, they’d been too exhausted to do anything more intimate than exchange the occasional heated glance. Bea’s week at his house had begun the day after the Honors World History state test, so they’d continued to wait.
But that night, Bea was heading back to her mother’s, and Rose fully intended to take advantage of Martin’s wide-open schedule.
Martin, it seemed, had been thinking along the same lines.
“This good woman plans to make you happy too.” She flicked him a glance through her lashes. “Several times. At least once with her mouth.”
High color glazed his cheekbones, and those fingers on her back tightened. “Funny. I was thinking the same thing.”
Another glance. Still no one within hearing distance. “That you wanted a blowjob?”
“That I wanted my mouth on you.”
The bolt of pleasure between her legs nearly staggered her.
Before she could respond with anything more than a small, shaky gasp, the sound of Bea’s chattering drew nearer, and Martin’s touch disappeared.
“Tonight?” he whispered, his voice low and raspy.
She smiled in anticipation. “Tonight. My house.”
Fifteen
After Martin pulled into Rose’s driveway that night, he double-checked the number above the garage, then the text she’d sent earlier that day.
Yup. He’d found the right place.
But it didn’t look like the right place.
He’d pictured her in an impeccably maintained, black-painted Victorian mansion. Or some sleek, uber-modern, urban loft, never mind the fact that Marysburg didn’t actually contain any uber-modern urban lofts. At the very least, he’d counted on turrets and a moat.
Instead, she appeared to inhabit a one-story bungalow with dove-gray siding and dark green shutters. All neat and well-painted, but also so…normal. Middle-class.
No moat. No arrow slits. No chrome or black paint to be found.
When she answered her doorbell, her feet delectably bare, he tapped the trim around her entrance. “Green instead of black? This seems so unlike you.”
“HOAs are a bitch.” Her hair swayed around her shoulders as she turned. “Sorry for any disappointment. My next home will be enormous and dark enough to blot out the sun, if that’s any consolation.”
“Some.” He stepped inside and removed his shoes. “I’ll look forward to purchasing a tasteful plant and several evil henchmen as your housewarming presents.”
She snorted. “Don’t bother with the plant. It’ll just die without sunlight, like the rest of you mere mortals.”
“Black and bitter.” He shook his head. “Black and bitter.”
Her laughter trailed after her as she headed toward the kitchen, and he looked around her home for a moment before following her.
Ah. He recognized her here.
Other than a hallway off to the right, the house boasted open sightlines, her kitchen flowing into the living room and dining area. The furniture was surprisingly sparse but unsurprisingly elegant. Mahogany bookshelves along the deep blue walls, lined with paperbacks. A couch and chaise in pewter velvet, separated by a sculptural glass table. A thick, subtly patterned rug underfoot. Heavy curtains—metal-shot silk, he’d guess—framing her windows. A gleaming metallic dining room set, and veined marble countertops. All the other necessary pieces for daily life, also stylish and of unmistakable quality, but nothing extra.
In a hammered silver vase on the glass table, calla lilies provided a splash of contrasting ivory, severe and spare in their beauty. Perfect for this home.
Only the enormous television in the far corner seemed out of place. At least until he remembered the story of her mother and their ever-disappearing TV fund.
His heart twisted at the reminder, and he hurried after Rose.
“Does everything pass inspection?” She donned oven mitts to remove a tray of little pancake-like things from the oven, using her foot to close the door. “Or do I need to start over?”
Irony freighted her voice, but she wasn’t looking at him as she deposited the tray on the stovetop and removed her mitts. Her bare toes began tapping against the dark hardwood planks underfoot.
She cared what he thought of her home.
“It’s you,” he told her. “Which means it’s gorgeous and impeccable.”
With a gentle hand on her arm, he steered her a few safe inches away from the hot pan. Then he wrapped her up tight and simply held her as the weeks-long tension in his body released. After a few seconds, she relaxed into his embrace, leaning into him enough that he gladly bore some of her weight.
She was here, in his arms, bare-faced and dressed in slouchy black clothing, with her hair down, no heels anywhere in sight. In short, wearing no armor.
He loved her, and she cared about him.
They were going to spend the night together.
His life had definitely taken an upswing in recent months.
“Did you fix silver dollar pancakes for me?” He spoke in her ear, remembering how she’d reacted last time. And sure enough, her arms tightened around him in an entirely satisfying manner. “How domestic of you.”
She lifted her head from his shoulder, amber eyes heavy-lidded. “Blinis. I have crème fraîche and caviar to put on top.”
Dear Lord. Either she’d gone all out preparing for his visit, or she must spend twice her salary on food alone.
He could only imagine she’d gotten one hell of a divorce settlement. Although if she was so wealthy, why was she staying in such a decidedly middle-income neighborhood?
“Ah. Caviar-and-crème-fraîche blinis.” He kissed an especially adorable freckle on her cheek. “Like the kind Little Debbie makes.”
When she pinched him lightly in the ribs, he groaned piteously.
“I needed a snack.” She sniffed, lifting that narrow-tipped nose high in the air. “But I suppose I can share with a philistine.”
She’d made the blinis for him. They both knew it.
And he couldn’t wait any longer. “Thank you, ma’am. Let me properly express my gratitude.”
Her mouth was salty and sweet, open and eager under his. Without hesitation, her hands slid down his back to his ass, taking a firm, possessive grip, and he moaned as her tongue glided along his lips. His own hands stroked her upper arms, the silky length of her hair, the curve of her waist. Then she bit his lower lip, her teeth a bee sting, and his pulse echoed in his ears as blood turned to flame.
He backed her into the counter, hard enough that he was poised to apologize. But she gasped into his mouth in response, parting her thighs, her fingernails sunk deep into his ass, and he discarded the apology in favor of mouthing down the length of her neck, nipping and sucking her tender flesh along the way.
His hands slid beneath her thighs, prepared to help boost her to the countertop, but she spread her hands on his chest and gave a breathless laugh.
“First of all, you’d give yourself a hernia. Second, I’d rather do this somewhere we can spread out. Like a bed.”
She was so fucking clever, his Rose. “What about the blinis?”
The skin of her shoulder slid beneath his tongue, so smooth and hot, and he wanted to take that silky tee and tear it into two. But it had probably cost more than his month’s salary, so instead he nudged the neckline aside with his teeth, traced her bra strap with his nose.