Frisky Business

by Tawna Fenske

  “That’s enough.” He smiled and shook his head. “What am I going to do with you?”

  “You’re going to promise not to harass my date when he shows up Friday night.”

  “Date? It’s not with that delivery guy who brought the rabbit, is it?”

  Marley sighed. “Not that it’s any of your business, but no. I’m going out with a guy who runs a brothel.”

  “A brothel?”

  “It’s actually a bike shop. But I thought if I started a little lower on the spectrum, your disdain wouldn’t be so pronounced.”

  Walter folded his arms over his chest. “Marley, I don’t know what you’re trying to prove with this quest to date low-class men.”

  “Low-class? What is it with the men in my life suddenly sounding like Southern gentleman from 1850? You and Curtis could do a historical reenactment.”

  “Just be careful, Marley. Take things slowly, okay?”

  “I will, I promise. Can you throw me that dress over there?”

  “If it will prevent you from greeting the plumber naked, then yes.”

  Her dad turned and grabbed the purple sweater dress off the corner of the dresser. Marley reached for the garment just as she noticed what lurked beneath it. Her father spotted the wallet at the same time she did and picked it up. He looked at Marley and raised one eyebrow.

  “Carrying a man’s wallet now?”

  Marley grimaced. It was definitely a man’s wallet, and she was pretty sure she knew whose. The duct tape was a dead giveaway.

  “Yes,” Marley said, stretching to grab it from him. “Men’s wallets are the hot new female accessory of the season.”

  Her dad nodded at a spot behind the door. “Men’s underwear, too?”

  Marley started to grimace again, then stopped herself. “Nice try, Dad. He didn’t take his underwear off last night.”

  Her father folded his arms over his chest. “He? I thought the wallet was yours. So much for taking things slowly.”

  “Good-bye, Dad. I have to get ready for work.”

  He shook his head. “You’re the worst liar in the world, Marley.”

  Marley bit her lip. Maybe not the worst liar…

  “See you later, Dad.”

  “Have a good day at work,” her dad said, turning away. “Will I see you afterward?”

  She shook her head. “I’m heading out with the realtor to see a few more properties. With any luck, I’ll have a new place lined up by the end of the week.”

  “You know you can stay here as long as you want.”

  “I know,” she said. “But what I want is to move on.”

  “Fair enough,” he said, and closed the door behind him.

  ***

  Will was in the middle of prying the William Barclay V plaque off the bench in the lobby at Cheez Whiz when his sister came flouncing by.

  “Destroying furniture again?” she asked, picking up his screwdriver off the end of the bench.

  “You say destroying, I say improving,” he said.

  “Potato, po-tah-toe,” she parroted. “Nice hickey on the side of your neck, by the way.”

  Will reached up and touched the side of his throat, conscious of Bethany’s eyes on him. “Where?”

  “Nowhere. I just wanted to know if there’s the possibility you could have a hickey so I have some idea where things stand with you and Marley.”

  Will dropped his hand and grabbed the screwdriver from his sister. “We’re friends,” he said, pleased with the certainty in his own voice.

  “Sure, whatever you say.” Bethany plopped down on the bench and reached out to catch the first screw as Will dropped it. Will caught sight of the small hourglass tattoo on her wrist and felt a sharp twist in his chest. He and Bethany had gotten the matching design years ago to honor their mom, whose favorite soap opera was Days of Our Lives. They’d watched it together when Will was small, curled on his mother’s lap with Bethany snuggled beside them in her favorite green afghan and a bowl of fresh blueberries tucked between them in a chipped orange bowl.

  Like sands through the hourglass…

  They’d gotten the ink long after their mother died, but before April had come into their lives. Before everything went to hell and—

  “Nice screw.” Bethany held it up, turning it from side to side as though admiring the threads. “Speaking of screws, is Marley going to be ordering anything from the Pure Romance catalog?”

  “We weren’t speaking of screws,” he said, grabbing it back from her and tucking it in his pocket. “On the list of conversation topics brothers and sisters should discuss, screws don’t even make the top one hundred.”

  “Party pooper.”

  “Based on the parties you host, I’m okay with that.”

  Bethany grinned, the smugness in her expression an indication she knew damn well he wasn’t really annoyed. That was the problem with siblings, Will mused. They know you better than anyone has a right to.

  “Right,” Bethany said. “So which stuff did Marley seem to like best in the catalog?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Of course you would. I know you, Will. There’s no way you could resist the urge to use full-color glossy photos of sex toys as a seduction tool. Let me guess—you made your move somewhere between the g-spot vibrators and the anal beads?”

  “I’m going to pretend my sister didn’t just say the words anal beads to me.”

  “G-spot it is,” Bethany said, reaching out to catch the next screw as it fell. “Aunt Nancy spent thirty minutes last night trying to lecture the partygoers on the history of Native American phallic devices. She’s seriously obsessed with those stupid figurines.”

  “How is that new?”

  “Don’t you think she’s gotten worse since she donated them?”

  Will shrugged. “Maybe.” He hesitated, thinking about the text he’d seen last night on Marley’s phone. What if the figurines weren’t real? Aunt Nancy had pinned all her hopes on leaving them as her legacy. If something went wrong—

  Bethany nudged him with her toe. “For the record, the sexual tension between you and Marley last night was so thick I could use it to bludgeon someone to death.”

  “This from a woman who was too intoxicated to stand upright.”

  “Please. I could have been deaf, blind, drunk, and standing on my head with my knee in my armpit and I still would have picked up on the vibes. Speaking of vibes, if Marley wants to order anything—”

  “If Marley wants anything, she’ll call you herself.”

  “If Marley wants what?”

  Will jumped at the sound of her voice, dropping the last screw from the plaque. He watched it bounce across the slate floor, then spin in a lazy circle near the toe of Marley’s high-heeled shoe. He stared for a moment—not at the screw, but at the glorious expanse of leg stretching from the curve of her ankle all the way to the bottom of her toned thigh where it disappeared under her skirt and—

  “Need this screw?” she asked.

  “What?”

  Marley rolled her eyes and bent down to pick it up. Will caught a glimpse down the front of her blouse and looked away, only to catch sight of Bethany laughing behind her hand. He frowned at his sister and she straightened up, making a visible effort to be an adult.

  Bethany drew her hand back and cleared her throat. “We were just talking about last night’s party,” she said to Marley. “If you want anything from the Pure Romance catalog, give me a shout. The consultant asked me to have all the orders in by tomorrow evening, but we can always submit orders late if you need more time.”

  “Thank you,” Marley said, glancing at Will with a bemused expression. “I did see a few things that caught my interest. Do you know if most of the products come with batteries?”

  “Everything comes with batteries,” she said, grinnin
g at Will. “So to speak.”

  Will didn’t want to meet Marley’s eyes, so he looked down at the bench and began to smooth the wood around the edges of the screw holes. Then he stopped, thinking wood and screw holes weren’t the words he wanted pulsing around in his brain at the moment.

  “I’ll take a look at the order form on my lunch break and fill it in,” Marley said. “So to speak.”

  “Christ, you two,” Will said, shoving the screwdriver in his back pocket so he wouldn’t be tempted to gouge out his own eyes. “You’ve known each other four days and you’re already sharing tasteless innuendos and sex toy orders?”

  Bethany pretended to look thoughtful. “You think that’s better for day five?”

  “Day two always seems like the right time for me,” Marley said. “That way you know right off the bat if you’re going to spend the duration of the friendship apologizing for offending someone.”

  “I like how you think,” Bethany said, then turned to Will. “You know, if we were men, you wouldn’t think twice about the fact that we’re bonding over crude humor.”

  “If you were men, you wouldn’t be my sister, and this wouldn’t be quite so weird,” he said.

  “So does Pure Romance take credit cards?” Marley asked, and Will looked back at her, pleased to be distracted from the conversation with his sister. “Because I’ve got this great new wallet, and I’m betting there’s a card or two I could use.”

  She reached into her purse and pulled out an oblong leather wallet marked with two grungy strips of duct tape. Will tried not to let the surprise show on his face as she smiled at him.

  “I believe this belongs to you?” she said.

  He reached out to take it, deliberately letting his fingers linger an extra moment so he could savor the electric tingle he felt when he touched her. “Thanks. I didn’t even notice I’d lost it.”

  “Spoken like a man who never has to think twice about money,” Bethany said, and Will shot her a dirty look.

  “Weren’t you leaving?” he asked.

  “Actually, no. I kinda want to hear how Marley ended up with your wallet.”

  Marley laughed. “Nothing terribly illicit, I’m afraid,” she said, lying so effortlessly it made Will’s gut ache. “You must have taken it out of your pocket in the garage when you were working on my bike rack?”

  “I’m going to have to remember that,” Bethany said. “‘Working-on-my-bike-rack’ is an excellent euphemism.”

  Will gave her another look, and Bethany laughed. “Okay, okay… that’s my cue to leave. Marley, shoot me a message anytime about the order. Will, call me later about dinner at Aunt Nancy’s?”

  “Sure.”

  Bethany wandered off, leaving Will alone with Marley. Well, alone in the Cheez Whiz lobby with several dozen visitors and several birds of prey within a hundred-foot radius.

  “Thanks for bringing the wallet by,” he said.

  “Actually, I didn’t realize I’d see you here today. I just put it in my purse so my father wouldn’t be tempted to go through it in an effort to assess your net worth.”

  “If he’s judging my net worth by the contents of my wallet, I’m valued at two dollars, a Blockbuster card, and a coupon for a free Egg McMuffin.”

  “And no condom,” she said. “I think we got off easy there.”

  “We didn’t get off at all, if I remember right.” Will grinned. “Then again, things got fuzzy after your fiancé showed up.”

  “Ex-fiancé,” Marley pointed out. She frowned. “Have you noticed how frequently you and I end up being defined by our exes?”

  “How do you mean?”

  Marley shrugged. “Everyone wants to refer to Curtis as my fiancé instead of my ex-fiancé—including him, I guess. And my father. And the nature of your divorce means you’re pretty much resigned to spending the rest of your life attending family gatherings with your ex-wife.”

  “There’s a pleasant thought.”

  Marley shrugged. “Doesn’t make it easy for either of us to break free from past relationships and patterns.”

  “Is this conversation going to get less depressing at some point?”

  Marley smiled. “How about if I tell you my father was the one who found your wallet?”

  “Wonderful.”

  “Incidentally, he’s not a fan of me dating the delivery guy.”

  “We’re not dating, and I’m not a delivery guy. You’ve pleased your father already.”

  “All in a day’s work.” Marley rubbed her lips together. It was probably just an effort to evenly distribute her lipstick, but Will couldn’t stop thinking about the way her lips had felt pressed against his. About the feel of them trailing across his neck when she—

  “So I have a date on Friday with the guy from the bike shop,” she blurted.

  Will frowned. “The Plaid Neanderthal?”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” He cleared his throat, not sure why he was surprised. He knew the second the bike guy had asked for her phone number and address that he was plotting to do more than paperwork. Will didn’t like to think about that.

  “I also have a date with a plumber,” Marley said. “Wednesday after work.”

  Will nodded, trying to keep his expression impassive. “Don’t let him sell you any faulty ballcocks.”

  “What?”

  “The ballcock is the mechanism in your toilet tank that keeps water levels normal. If you’d like, I can also make jokes about hardness leakage, discharge heads, and cockhole covers. All plumbing terms that sound filthy but aren’t.”

  “Maybe I should write these down so I have something to talk about on my date.”

  “Maybe you should stick with discussing sports teams and favorite restaurants,” Will said. “Just be sure you check his wallet first to be sure he doesn’t have more than twenty bucks to his name.”

  Marley sighed. “I’m not the first woman to take money into account when dating someone, Will.”

  “Of course not,” he said. “Shallow hang-ups about money are a universal issue.”

  She nodded at the screwdriver in his hand. “Says the guy who just pried his own name off a bench so he can keep up the pretense of not having much.”

  “Touché,” Will said, flipping it into the air and catching it before tucking it into his back pocket. “For the record, this is no one’s business but mine. It has nothing to do with getting dates or choosing someone to knock boots with.”

  “And that makes it better?”

  “It makes it different,” Will said, not entirely sure what point he was trying to make. He only knew he didn’t want Marley to leave. Not yet. “When it comes to relationships, though, money is always the hang-up.”

  “You think?”

  Will shrugged. “Why did your fiancé—ex-fiancé—stay behind in Portland instead of moving here with you?”

  “His job.”

  “Money. A bigger paycheck and a real estate transaction. It all comes down to that.”

  “Okay, wise guy,” Marley said, folding her arms over her chest. “How do we attribute your divorce to money? And don’t make a crude lesbian joke using a coin purse euphemism.”

  He laughed, surprising himself with the sudden burst of it. “Why Marley, I had no idea you had such hidden depths of depraved humor.”

  “There’s plenty more you don’t know about me,” she said, turning away.

  He waited until she was out of earshot to mutter the words under his breath.

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  Chapter 12

  Marley took two steps into her office and instantly fought the urge to take four steps back out the door.

  “Marley!”

  Susan’s voice was urgent, probably because she recognized Marley’s urge to flee. The CHSWS director stood and beamed stiff
ly at Marley, catching her by the arm in what was either a familiar greeting or a means of escape prevention.

  “Just the woman we’ve been waiting for,” Susan gushed. “You’ve met Nancy Thomas-Smith?”

  “We just met last night,” Marley said, pasting her own donor relations smile in place and taking a step toward the older woman. “So wonderful to see you again, Ms. Thomas-Smith.”

  Aunt Nancy nodded from her seat in the corner of Marley’s office. “I trust you enjoyed the penis party?”

  Marley didn’t let her smile falter, despite Susan’s grimace. “I only regret I couldn’t stay more than three minutes,” Marley said. “I hope you had a lovely time though.”

  “Hmph,” the old woman grunted. “Let’s cut to the chase. I’m a renowned sex therapist with three bestselling books. The fact that these figurines are from my personal collection makes them particularly valuable and highly sought-after by museums around the country. I can’t wait around forever for the appraisal, and we need to start moving forward with plans for the traveling exhibit.”

  “Of course,” Marley said. “We’re eager as well.”

  “We’ve already had a number of inquiries from other museums expressing interest in the figurines if they’re part of a large traveling exhibit,” Susan said. “If we opt for one-month installments, we should be able to book at least eleven shows a year at different locations. If we go with the forty-thousand-dollar fee we discussed, that’s quite a revenue source for the Cascade Historical Society and Wildlife Sanctuary.”

  “Cheez Whiz,” Marley murmured.

  “What’s that, dear?” Susan asked.

  “Nothing.” Marley cleared her throat. “We’re as excited as you are about the exhibit, Ms. Thomas-Smith. And I know you’d like to see things move forward. But we can’t proceed without the formal appraisal.”

  “And that’s scheduled for next Thursday, Marley?” Susan looked hopeful.

  “Yes, with one of the foremost experts in the country.”

  “Hmph,” Nancy said. “I’m traveling to New York next Tuesday to meet with my accountant and my attorney. Getting my affairs in order, you understand. Isn’t there some way we can hurry this along?”