“No. I—” she stopped, but it didn’t sound as if she was gathering her things either. They were both exhausted and both too considerate. Well, she was. His body’s reaction would prove him to be a complete and total cad if she turned on a light before he could find his jeans.
At an impasse—he knew that she’d leave if he insisted on going and neither of them would sleep soon.
“Melanie, how about this? You climb in here and I’ll behave. I will promise that you will remain completely safe. We’ll just sleep.”
“You’re being ridiculous.”
“No. Completely and unbelievably stupid considering how much you’ve been occupying my thoughts today, but a promise has been made and a promise will be kept. C’mon.”
She hesitated for several long moments, then he saw the faint outline moving toward him, followed by a soft Merde! as she stumbled on the clothes he’d dumped on the floor before crawling into bed.
“Get in this side; it’s already warm.” He held up the covers and slid over to the far side as she took the covers.
He lay there having no idea what he’d been thinking. The woman of his fantasies now lay possibly naked a mere foot away. Everything he’d promised himself to not think about—insane pedestal and all. Each motion of the mattress and the sheets as she settled sent bolts of electricity rocketing through him.
And his fantasies were becoming an issue. The pin-up fantasy of the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen was fast being replaced by the flesh-and-blood one who had kissed him with such abandon on the ferry; the one who had kept him chastely entertained and intrigued through a long date to Bainbridge and back; the one he really wanted to get his hands on.
He had to get up.
Go to the couch.
Sleep on the floor.
Something.
Before he could force himself to go, she rolled toward him. In moments her head rested on his shoulder. Her body, thankfully clothed, lay along his or he would have lost all control—promise or not. One of her legs, not the least little bit clothed, draped over one of his.
“You’re a good man, Josshhua.” Now he heard the slur in her voice, not the least trace of French in her speech. Maybe not drunk, but he’d guess pretty damn loose or she wouldn’t have crawled in. That made her completely and totally out of bounds, whether or not she offered. No way was he taking advantage of her.
She settled in, draped an arm across him, and fell asleep with a soft sigh.
Now what in hell was he supposed to do?
Chapter 8
Melanie woke the way she normally did; one moment asleep, the next wide awake.
Wide awake and nestled in a man’s arms.
Joshua. She didn’t need the soft morning’s light edging in around the closed curtains to know instantly it was him. If felt as if they’d always slept together.
By the rise and fall of his chest, she knew he was asleep. One hand wrapped around her back, the other one resting on her hand which in turn rested on his chest. She had crawled in and curled up against him—what a total Jersey Shore hussy.
Except she didn’t feel like one. Instead she felt like a woman who had her best night’s sleep in recent memory while nestled safely in her lover’s arms. Though he wasn’t her lover.
She’d certainly never slept with a man without having sex before. Was something wrong with him? With her?
His chest slowly rose and fell several times before she remembered what he’d said. She’d been drunk and half-passed out on her feet, and Joshua had promised she’d be safe. Those were not words that any man had ever offered to her. Especially not offered and meant. Actually, no one had ever offered her safety, including her own mother.
And then he’d given her the warm side of the bed when she’d been chilled from the cool wind off the Sound and utterly exhausted.
She’d not only been safe, but felt safe. Exactly as he’d promised.
She considered making him break that promise right now. But they were guests in someone else’s apartment. In Russell’s! If someone had told her before last night that she’d ever sleep in Russell’s home again, she’d have laughed in their face. She absolutely wasn’t going to have sex here, no matter how incredible Joshua felt.
She managed to slip from his arms, gather her things, and make it to the guest bathroom with no one the wiser. Dressed, hair brushed, and face fresh scrubbed—she never wore makeup except on a shoot—ten minutes later she entered the kitchen.
Cassidy was sitting at the kitchen counter with a big mug of coffee and her computer tablet, though she didn’t appear to be focusing well.
“Hi.”
“Uh, hi,” Cassidy looked up at her. “How in the hell can you look so together when my head feels like mush?”
“No hangover. Whatever wine you slipped me, it must have been the best quality.”
“Actually,” Cassidy wrapped her hands around her coffee mug like gripping a lifeline. “I think that was Jo. She appears all demure, but in truth she’s very sneaky. You’ve got to watch that woman like a hawk. My mistake was letting Perrin switch me over to Cosmos. Help yourself to coffee.”
“You really don’t look like you slept much.” Melanie took her time about making a cup of tea instead, moving softly in sympathy for Cassidy’s condition. Espresso from French roast was among the French habits she’d never learned to enjoy.
“Russell greeted me very nicely—” Then Cassidy blushed hard and looked aside. “Sorry. Too much information. I know. I just—”
Melanie rested a hand on Cassidy’s arm to stop her. “Russell and I were lovers. It didn’t take, for many and valid reasons. He married you and loves you. Let us simply leave it at that. N’est-ce pas?”
Cassidy did her head nod thing again, nodding a couple too many times.
“You know. I think that’s the first French you’ve spoken since last night,” she squinted her eyes as if concentrating. “Maybe not even then. It fits you. You sound uptown New York.”
Melanie blinked in surprise. How had she been so relaxed to let down her shields? Last night, too? She thought back, but couldn’t be sure. What she did remember was immensely enjoying her inclusion in The Fabulous Five. And she couldn’t feel the slightest sense of an entry on her internal tally sheet. She’d simply been welcome, just for herself. That too was a new experience.
“Joshua said the same thing, but he is a man, I’m not about to trust a man on such things.”
“Like I think I said last night, Josh is a good guy. I’ve known him forever, since before he met his wife back when we were both upstart restaurant reviewers. Just friends, no spark there, then he met Constance. Who wasn’t so constant. God I’m rambling. If this coffee cup were bigger, I’d just put my face in it.”
“Maybe I should start trusting Joshua,” Melanie topped up Cassidy’s coffee. Then she decided that if her instincts were relaxed enough to drop her accent around Cassidy that just maybe she should trust that feeling all the more. “Besides, he also greeted me very nicely last night, if a little bit differently.”
“Joshua?”
“He’s asleep in your guest bedroom.”
“Joshua?” Cassidy was blinking hard trying to get her brain going. “Josh!? I sent you to bed with Josh? Oh my god! I’m so sorry! It wasn’t planned. I swear it wasn’t. I—”
Melanie had to laugh. It really was too funny. Joshua had been absolutely right. Russell and Cassidy were sincere friends, but not conniving ones.
Melanie sat down across the counter and told her new friend about how her evening had ended.
Joshua slept late into the morning and woke to the smell of frying bacon and coffee. He dragged on jeans and a t-shirt before padding out into the kitchen to find Russell battling the stove like a ship’s cook on a stormy sea.
“Shit, Russell. You look worse than I feel.”
“Yeah. You sleep okay?” Russell tossed in some more bacon and nodded toward the coffeemaker.
That’s when Josh remembered.
He spun to look around but there were only the two of them. None of Melanie’s things had been in the bedroom. He doubled back to check. Nothing. Gone as if it had never happened.
But it had. The other pillow was dented, the covers were mussed on both sides of the bed. Her pink bag from the dress shop was gone.
The memories were slowly returning through his foggy brain. He’d held her for hours, imagining what it might be like to do so every night. He’d buried his nose in her hair for a long time—long enough to actually sober up—just in case he never had a chance like that again. His idea of heaven had been wholly redefined by simply holding a sleeping woman.
“Huh,” he looked around the condo again as he returned to join Russell in the kitchen. She was definitely gone. Without waking him. Now what did that mean? “I slept great.”
Josh made eggs and toast while Russell brought the bacon in for a landing. They took their plates to the balcony high above the bustle of a Pike Place Market morning.
Chapter 9
Melanie was determined. For the first time in days, maybe weeks, she felt as if she had Things to Do. Much more her natural state; she first went back to the Pioneer Square condo to change into her exercise clothes and do a virtuous workout.
Melanie padded into the great room, cool and dim with the indirect morning light through the western windows. She liked that Maria and Angelo had left much of the main space open. Clearly, they’d only really cared about the kitchen. Even the dining table wasn’t much. They probably planned to only test recipes here; any entertaining would be at the restaurant. A couch and a couple of big chairs were all that defined the living room. A television sat off to the side, not at a comfortable angle to any of the furniture, so that too was unused.
It left her a large open area of gleaming bare wood. From her point of view it was perfect. It gave a six-foot tall woman room to do her yoga stretches without fear of running into furniture or inopportune sections of wall. She’d become lax since the loss of the swimsuit photo shoot. In just one week she could feel the loss of flexibility and tone.
That would never do. She did a double session until a sheen of sweat made it hazardous to continue until she had the chance to purchase a mat. Carlo’s hotel room had a large oriental carpet that worked well, but this expanse of shining oak was a slipping risk.
She almost didn’t want to shower. When she did, she’d lose that scent of Joshua that…wasn’t clinging to her so much as following her around. A pleasant companion.
But she had things to do, so into the shower she went. She grabbed the last bowl of Joshua’s minestrone soup for lunch, thanking him with each luscious spoonful. She considered feeling guilty about eating it without asking first. But if she wasn’t going to feel guilty for sleeping with the man, she wasn’t going to feel guilty for finishing his soup.
And she certainly didn’t. Cassidy had sighed romantically when Melanie recounted how Josh had declared she’d be safe, then delivered on that promise.
“I wouldn’t tempt him again though. You’d risk ruining a perfect story.” Cassidy had looked serious, as if the story was the most important part. Well, maybe it was. Josh was a writer, he would understand the importance of careful beginnings.
Melanie had walked halfway up the First Avenue hill, opening an effortless path through the Seattle crowd with just a small dose of New York attitude, when she stumbled to a halt. If she’d stopped on a sidewalk in New York she’d have been trampled—you broke the Big Apple’s pedestrian flow at your own risk. In Seattle, one person bumped her lightly and immediately apologized.
What had ground her to a halt was that word “beginnings.” She’d selected lovers, knowing that’s all they were. She’d fallen in love with only one of them. Dear Russell had also thought they were simply two people who enjoyed each other and the sensation they created on the New York scene. She was the one who’d broken that bargain and fallen for him. But their “beginning” had been like any other.
A party. Did she remember whose?
A passing brush on her shoulder got her moving again, though more slowly than before.
It was the meet-and-greet party for her second season on the swimsuit photo shoot. He’d been handsome, charming, and acting very single. Melanie had googled him to make sure, leaving the other girls to fawn on one of the handsomest men she’d ever seen. He was indeed single. It was buried fairly deep, but she also found that he was a billionaire’s son as well as owning his own photo studio.
That had caught her attention, but with a second shoot under her belt—and she hadn’t known it yet, but her first cover as well—she wasn’t doing badly herself. He’d hooked up with another of the models who knew nothing about him, and that had been fine.
Whatever else Russell did or however he acted at parties, behind the camera he was both professional and masterful. He drew the very best out of his models. He had done the simplest things, which evoked emotions inside her that she didn’t know were there—buried or otherwise. After a session with Russell Morgan, a girl needed a cold shower simply to think clearly. He made it easy to lose herself in the role of sexual goddess; he made her believe it of herself.
But their eventual “beginning” had been like any other of her affairs. More intriguing, more artfully played, more fun, but not so very different. He’d dragged it out over a year: a chance meeting here, hiring her for a small ad shoot there, finding out that he’d referred her to a shoot with an up-and-coming designer that no one had heard of but had then burst on the scene.
Then he’d taken her to lunch, and to bed. Or perhaps she’d done the taking. It had been as mutual as it had been expected.
But with Joshua she already had stories and promises and steamy kisses. Merde! They’d slept together and held each other through the night, not like lovers, but like she imagined people in love did.
She’d never had a real beginning even as a teen. At the time she’d discovered boys, or rather boys had discovered her, she’d been foolish and naïve, giving up her first kiss before her first handholding, her virginity for empty words. She’d wised up fast and remained that way ever since.
Melanie didn’t feel wise around Joshua; she felt…
Again she stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, blinking in surprise to find herself outside of Perrin’s Glorious Garb with no memory of the last half dozen blocks. It was a wonder she hadn’t been killed in traffic crossing the street.
Around Joshua she felt… Still the word eluded her.
Melanie smiled to herself as she entered the shop, the doorbell jingling brightly.
Maybe tonight she’d find out just how Joshua made her feel. She’d wager it would be incroyable and was a little surprised at how eager she was to win that bet.
“You want me to what?” Joshua shook his head. “No way.”
“C’mon man,” Angelo leaned forward over the plate of Baci—hazelnut and chocolate “kisses” Maria had made this morning—that they’d been pillaging since lunch. “I’ll even… I’ll even—”
“He’ll even pay you,” Russell nursed an ice tea, looking a little less gray and bleary-eyed than he had this morning.
Now it was Angelo’s turn to turn a bit gray, but he nodded.
“No,” Joshua shook his head. “First, you can’t go on feeding me gratis no matter how damn much I’m enjoying it. Second, I don’t want to write any more food articles.”
Russell slapped the table, and then winced showing his hangover was not wholly cleared.
“That’s it,” he continued in a softer voice. “You don’t do this and Angelo cuts you off. You write for him, he goes on feeding you guilt free.”
“But I don’t want to write any more of that—”
“Don’t say it,” Russell stopped him suddenly clear-eyed.
Joshua glared at him.
“I did that for a while, called my photography crap because it wasn’t what I thought it should be. I’d look at a Bourke-White print, and then my latest spread
for Prada and feel like a total sell-out. But I’ve learned that I’m damn good at what I do. Don’t call your art crap. You really don’t want to do it? Fine. You’re an idiot, but fine. But just from one artist to another, don’t put it down.”
“Why the hell am I an idiot?”
“You’re staying in the same condo as Melanie. Have you at least kissed her yet?”
“I have.” But no way was he going to tell Russell that there’d been more than that. Especially not that they’d slept together in his own condo.
“Okay,” Russell sighed a bit sadly. “At least you’re not a complete idiot.”
Joshua would keep his thoughts on that point to himself.
“Write Angelo’s press release,” Russell made it a suggestion. “Give it the pizzazz that I can’t seem to find on this one. You get to keep eating Angelo’s fucking awesome food.”
“Damn straight you call it that,” Angelo pitched in.
“And the words might prime the pump a bit. Maybe it gets your novel moving because it sure isn’t doing squat now, is it?”
“How did you know?” It wasn’t—not even a little—but he hadn’t been advertising that.
Russell simply looked at him steadily.
“Crap! I didn’t think it showed that badly.”
“It shows, buddy. So say you’ll write the damn thing. Then you can tell us about when you kissed Melanie and why you didn’t mention a breath of it last night.”
“Perrin,” Melanie traded a surprisingly warm hug with Perrin back in the workroom of her shop. “I actually wanted to talk to you about something different last night, but never got around to it.”
“About you making it with Josh?”
“No,” Melanie sighed. She doubted that Cassidy would have called Perrin to spread the news of last night’s adventure, but somehow the story of last night had traveled. Perhaps these three women were telepathic with each other.
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