Bending the Rules

by Susan Andersen

  He didn’t budge and she really, really wished she hadn’t touched him, but she was committed now. She wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of whipping her hands back like he was some too-hot-to-handle stud and she a big-eyed, inexperienced kid too rattled to be in his presence.

  Like he was the Sheik and she was the Virgin. Uh-uh, no, ma’am. That was so two decades ago.

  It didn’t help, though, that his chest was suddenly the only thing she could think about. It was warm and solid beneath his white dress shirt and narrow suspenders. Beneath her abruptly tingling palms.

  To keep her thoughts off the way it made her feel, she deliberately concentrated on his retro-hip clothing. He was a sharp dresser, which was just one more thing pushing her buttons at the moment. “And another thing,” she snapped, standing on her toes to get in his face, “wear painting-appropriate clothes, for God’s sake! You’re gonna wreck your cool threads.”

  She abruptly became aware of the stillness in the body beneath her hands.

  But he merely said coolly, “Not if I don’t paint.”

  So she figured it had nothing to do with her touch. “You don’t know much about kids, do you? They see you standing around in your sharp clothes, they’re going to end up accidentally-on-purpose flinging a little paint your way. Especially since you watch them like a hawk.”

  He hitched his shoulders, renewing her awareness of the play of muscles beneath her hands. “That’s my job,” he said.

  “Is it your job to act like Boss Godfrey while you’re about it?” she demanded in exasperation, giving him an even harder shove to back him up.

  To no avail once again. He merely gazed down at her with his usual lack of expression. “Who’s Boss Godfrey?”

  “You know, in Cool Hand Luke?” she said, fully expecting to see a what-the-hell-are-you-talking-about expression on his face.

  But he surprised her when he said, “Hey, I liked that movie.” And darned if he didn’t almost display pleasure for a moment. “Which one was he?” Clearly running the cast of characters through his mind, he furrowed his brow but almost immediately it cleared. “The road crew boss, right? The sharpshooter?”

  “All you’re missing,” she said dryly, “is the rifle and a pair of mirror shades.”

  The slightest of smiles curved his lips and his long fingers came up to shackle her wrists. “Maybe I oughtta bring that up tomorrow—that the minithugs should refer to me from now on as Boss de Sanges.” He shot her a full-fledged grin. “It’s got a certain ring to it.”

  She sagged in his grip, her knees going weak at the flash of white teeth, the crinkling at the corners of his dark eyes. She hadn’t thought the man was capable of smiling, never mind possessing an honest-to-goodness sense of humor that came complete with a killer grin.

  The latter faded as he stared down at her and his fingers tightened around her wrists. Whispering a blasphemy beneath his breath, he slowly pulled her hands up around his neck, a movement that caused her inner arms to slide up his chest and their bodies to brush. Lowering his head, he kissed her.

  And Poppy’s thinking processes short-circuited. Feeling his mouth simultaneously firm and soft against her lips, her head reeling with his scent, a frisson of undiluted lust rushed to her brain, filling it with heat that immediately suffused her entire body. She rose onto her toes to get closer, closer to the source, tightening her arms around his neck until she darn near had him in a choke hold, reveling in the press of that long, hard body the entire length of her own. Her lips parted beneath his, her tongue slicked over the silky inner membrane of his lower lip.

  Then he was gone, his hands unwinding her arms as he stepped back, dropping them as if they’d smeared his palms with slug slime. Gone, gone, gone—his lips, his scent, his body—if not that far in actual feet and inches, still an immeasurable gulf in emotional distance, judging by the remote look in his eyes.

  Red tinged his high cheekbones, but his face was otherwise expressionless. “My apologies, Ms. Calloway,” he said coolly.

  She jerked her head back. What, kissing her was some big mistake? Well, it was, of course, but there wasn’t a woman alive who wanted to be told she was a mistake. Nor was she overjoyed to learn that what had completely rocked her boat hadn’t affected him at all.

  She’d walk naked down Pike Street in a rainstorm before she’d let him know, however, so she merely nodded. But screw his apology. If he wasn’t affected, she wasn’t affected. She didn’t know what that brain-function meltdown had been all about, but she would’ve pulled back if Detective Hot Lips hadn’t beat her to the punch.

  She was almost completely, utterly, one-hundred-percent certain about that. “Not a problem,” she said with a carelessness she didn’t quite feel, forcing a wry tilt of her lips. “As kisses go, that one was hardly worth apologizing over.”

  If you discount the nuclear effect. But steel entered her spine at the covert thought. Because she did. She discounted it with every atom of her being.

  She got the satisfaction of seeing his eyes narrow, which for the king of the BOTOX expression she interpreted as wild displeasure. Good. Let him be unhappy. She wasn’t feeling all that peppy herself.

  Stepping around him, she gathered up her personal odds and ends and stuffed them in her tote as she said over her shoulder with studied casualness, “See you tomorrow.” Seeing as how I can’t legitimately avoid it.

  Not that she would if she could. Hey, she could be every bit as professional as Robocop.

  Really.

  He didn’t reply and she turned her attention back to her packing, but she could feel him still standing there. Then he said brusquely, “Yeah. Tomorrow.” And walked away.

  The instant he disappeared from sight Poppy stopped all her busywork and released a sharp exhalation. Glancing around, she was relieved to see that none of the merchants she worked for had witnessed her moment of idiocy—a possible consequence she would have been a lot wiser to consider earlier. “Stupid, stupid, stupid!” she spat, thunking the side of her fist against her forehead with each repetition. Then she rose to her feet, brushed off her clothing and headed for the car.

  As soon as she’d climbed in and closed the door, she hauled her cell phone from her tote and hit speed dial.

  “Hey,” she said as soon as her ring was answered. “I could really use a little Sisterhood solidarity about now.”

  THEY ENDED UP meeting at the mansion. Jane was already in the parlor when Poppy arrived and just seeing her friend back by the fireplace, her dark hair shining under the lights as she focused on a table full of antique vases, melted some of the tension she’d been holding in her shoulders.

  “Hey,” she said softly as she wove through the remaining collections that still crowded the room. “I’m glad you suggested meeting here. I’ve been so busy lately I haven’t been able to stop by.”

  “Tell me about it, stranger.” Jane smiled at her. “I haven’t seen you in, like, forever.”

  “I know. It’s been a good week or two since we’ve had any decent girl-time.” Out of all the vases on the table, a tall green one grabbed her attention. She picked it up, turning it in her hands to admire the beautiful long-trunked rose tree etched and enameled on it. Something—its beauty, its lines—spoke to her. “This is gorgeous. I don’t remember seeing it before.”

  “It’s a Lamartine.”

  “It really is lovely. Don’t you think it would look great on my sideboard?”

  Jane studied it a moment and nodded. “It would—it’d look perfect there.”

  “Maybe I can buy it from my share of the estate. What would something like this cost?”

  “Somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty-five hundred to three thousand dollars.”

  Poppy bobbled it, her heart pounding as she caught the vase against her stomach before it could hit the floor. Returning it to the table, she carefully placed it well back from the edge.

  “Ho-ly Mary, mother of—” Blowing out a breath, she turned to discover
her friend grinning at her. She pressed both hands over her still madly tripping heart. “Janie, you gotta tell me to step away from stuff that valuable. Don’t let me pick it up, for God’s sake—I damn near dropped the thing!”

  Ava breezed into the room, a small white baker’s box in her hands. “Hello, my sister hoods,” she said, shedding jacket, flowing scarf and her Kate Spade handbag onto the settee. “I come bearing gifts.” She opened the lid on the box to show them a golden-crusted wheel with a cranberry chutney nestled in the center of its top. “A brie was left over from a new client’s party last night.”

  “Wow, you’ve got honest employees,” Poppy said, pinching a small hunk of what looked like pineapple off the golden top. “I would’ve eaten it so fast you’d never even have known there was a leftover.”

  Ava grinned. “Somehow my assistant double-booked me so I couldn’t be there myself, and the party was just large enough that I had to hire extra waitstaff instead of making do with my usual extras. I’m pretty sure the newbies were all set to dive into it themselves until I spoiled the fun by dropping by to check on how the party had gone.”

  “Where was this one?” Jane asked, then grinned. “Not that I really care. The important thing is you’ve got food and I’m starving. Let’s take it to the dining room. The guys hooked up the appliances in there while they’re working on the kitchen, and there’s some pop and sparkling water in the fridge.”

  “Is there anything stronger?” Poppy demanded. “It’s been a day—I could stand a glass of wine.”

  “I’ll check.”

  Poppy hooked an arm through Ava’s as they trooped down the hall. “I’m not as hungry as Janie, so I’d be interested in hearing where the new client’s party was.”

  “In a fabulous house near Volunteer Park.”

  “And you were just passing by that neighborhood at what I’m assuming was a fairly late hour why?”

  “It was the first function I put on for them and I’d told the client I’d check in when it was over to make sure she was satisfied with how smoothly it had been handled. Besides I was on my way home from the other event. One where I was an actual guest instead of the concierge making it happen.”

  Jane shot Ava a glance over her shoulder. “You attended a party in a strictly social capacity? That’s kinda unusual for you these days.”

  Ava shrugged a cashmere-clad shoulder. “They’re never strictly social anymore—and it was at one of my biggest clients’ house, which is why I felt compelled to go. Plus, I network whether I want to or not, since someone invariably brings up what I do. People in the set I grew up in are fascinated by my profession for some reason. A few, like my parents, find it embarrassing that I work in a service industry, while others seem to think it’s pretty cool.” She flashed her dimpled shark’s smile. “But all of them like the idea of ‘one of their own’ handling their affairs…which is what keeps my business building.

  “But enough about me.” Ava handed off the pastry box to Jane as they entered the dining room and headed straight for the sideboard. Squatting, she stuck her head in its cupboard and emerged a moment later with a bottle of wine in her hands. Rising to her feet, she displayed it to Poppy like a four-star sommelier, then ruined the impression by wagging her eyebrows. “Eh? Eh?”

  “Oh, bless you, my child!”

  Jane lifted the wheel of brie from the box. “What do I do with this? Throw it in the micro?”

  “Good God, no!” Ava regarded her with horror. “Put it in the oven at three-fifty for about seven minutes. It’s already been baked, so we’re just reheating it.”

  “So I ask again—why not simply microwave it? It’s faster and we don’t really have an oven oven—just the toaster variety while the kitchen’s out of commission.”

  “How did I come to be bosom buds with such a philistine? You’ve obviously been hanging out with construction guys too long. Microwaving turns the pastry to rubber.”

  “Well, eee-ow,” Jane said in a bad Cockney accent, tipping her nose ceilingward with a fingertip. “I ain’t a foine lydee such as yerself, Duchess.” But she cranked on the toaster oven, placed the wheel on its little pan and slid it in.

  Poppy smiled as she extracted the cork from the wine bottle and poured a glass each for herself and Ava. Having grown up in a household with chronic drinkers, Janie rarely touched alcohol, so Poppy fetched her a diet cola from the fridge, poured it in a glass and added ice. She transported everything to the long dining-room table. This was exactly what the doctor’d ordered—a dose of friendship, the Rx of champions.

  As if reading her mind, Jane leaned against the sideboard and looked at her. “So what’s up? On the phone you sounded a tad desperate. Your new kiddies giving you grief?”

  “More than I expected, which is my own fault for not giving the dynamics of this group more thought. I didn’t take into consideration that the kids in my other groups are in my program because they want to be. This is a first, having teens who have to be there. So, it is a little different. But sooner or later I’ll win them over. I don’t mind doing the tough-love thing until I do.”

  “So if it’s not your new group,” Ava said, propping her chin in her palm and her elbow on the gleaming tabletop, fixing Poppy with her undivided attention, “then wha—Oh. Detective Shei—Uh, Bastard Rat.” Her eyes went cool and narrow. “Is he giving you a hard time?”

  “Not precisely.” She hesitated, not sure if she really wanted to get into this. But the wine she’d sipped had dissipated the defenses she’d slapped in place in an attempt to convince herself Jason’s kiss had left her unaffected. Plus these were her two closest friends in the world and if she couldn’t talk to them, she was in more trouble than she already feared. “Would you consider me a pretty confident woman when it comes to men?”

  “Absolutely,” Janie said.

  “Hell, yeah,” Ava agreed.

  “I always thought I was, too,” she said glumly. “But with de Sanges…” Making a face, she gave an impatient wave of her hand. “Don’t get me wrong, I can hold my own with the man. But he drives me crazy. He doesn’t interact with the kids at all unless it’s to say something intimidating.”

  “Uh-oh. That’s iron-clad guaranteed to put him on your bad side,” Jane said.

  “Damn tootin’.” And if part of her insisted on drifting to the fact that he’d got it when she’d accused him of being like Boss Godfrey with the kids, she firmly brought it back on track. Because, please. Big deal.

  “I’ve never met anyone so rigid and serious. I doubt he has the first clue how to have fun.” Okay, so he’d displayed a hint of a sense of humor. Clearly it was an aberration and she hardly felt compelled to throw that into the mix. It would only confuse her friends the way it had her.

  “I only met him that one time,” Ava agreed, “but I remember that he never once smiled.”

  Oh, but when he does unbend he’s got a seriously killer smile.

  “That’s the thing, though,” Poppy said, disgusted with her thoughts. “I find myself suddenly making all kinds of excuses for him. All because I lost it when he kissed me.” Boy, had she lost it!

  “He kissed you?” both friends exclaimed in unison.

  They leaned forward, all alert eyes and bristling curiosity, but Ava beat Jane to the punch when she demanded, “And you didn’t lead off with that the minute the three of us were in one room? Why the hell did you let me go on and on about the stupid brie?”

  “Hey, it wasn’t as if it was much of a kiss,” she said defensively. “The thing was so brief I’m not even sure it qualifies.”

  “If you lost it, then I’m guessing it qualified,” Jane said.

  Ava nodded. “Yes, tell us about that. I need a definition, because my idea of ‘lost it’ and yours could be two different things. Or I can just go out on a limb here and speculate it means he made you feel—”

  “Like he was lightning and I was the tallest tree on the prairie? Oh, yeah.”

  Both her friends grinned a
nd Ava wiggled in her chair. “Ooh. Tell us more and don’t stint on the details. It’s been a long dry spell for me, so I have to live vicariously.”

  “It’s embarrassing.”

  “Even better,” Jane said, giving her a lopsided smile. “You’re the girl who always skated when it came to those embarrassing man/woman situations that knock the rest of us on our butts. You were due.”

  “Oh, nice, Janie. I may have been dumped less often than some—but the pain when I am is still my pain. You’re dreaming if you think anyone skates entirely when it comes to this kind of crap.”

  “Oh, kiddo, I know.” Jane reached across the table to rub the back of her hand. “That didn’t come out right. I didn’t mean you’ve never been hurt, just that you never seem to be embarrassed by anything. You’re usually so at ease with men and I used to be so awkward that I just had one of those mean it-was-bound-to-catch-up-withyou-sooner-or-later moments.”

  “Bitch,” she said without heat, then added morosely, “I would’ve voted for later. But I have a feeling hanging around de Sanges for any length of time—which I can hardly avoid, given the terms of the kids’ deal with the city and the merchants—is going to end up being one big kick in the head for me.”

  “By your own account, Poppy, it was merely a brief kiss,” Ava pointed out gently.

  “Yeah, but that’s the thing, Av. It was so short it obviously meant nothing to him. Yet to me there was nothing merely about it. He barely grazed my lips and I was all over him like hot fudge on ice cream. I went from a reasonably intelligent woman to a crazed sex machine in one-point-two seconds. I’ve never experienced anything quite like it.”

  “Yowsa. And this is bad why?”

  “Because he shoved me back like I was pumping nuclear waste all over his jazzy shoes and said—” she deepened her voice in an attempt to approximate his “‘—My apologies, Ms. Calloway.’”

  All amusement fled her friends’ faces. Ava gaped at her. “He told you kissing you was a mistake?”