by Fiona Zedde
Mayson was right. She needed to find her way out of this corporate mess and into something she could actually enjoy. Photography. The problem was she wasn’t sure she could financially survive doing it.
At her cubicle, she grabbed her still-hot cup of coffee and logged back on to her computer. The white mug with the company’s logo warmed her palms. After sending off the online ad last night, she’d been anxious to check her account. Simultaneously scared that no one would respond to her message and also that someone actually would respond, Renee hesitated before finally logging into her account.
Nine messages.
She stared at the number of responses, surprised. Most of them had come in late at night, within an hour or two after she’d posted her ad.
“I’m not sure about this one, Renee.”
She abruptly closed the browser window at the sound of Alonzo’s voice. He appeared at the entrance to her cubicle holding the thick rectangular card stock like it had a bad smell. “This might not be what Skarsgard and the group are looking for.”
She swiveled in her chair to face him. “Why don’t you let them decide that?”
Her boss looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. His hand stiffened at his side.
“What I mean is, why don’t we plan to present that to Skars-gard in the meeting? In the meantime, I’ll work on at least two alternative mock-ups so if he doesn’t like that, there are other directions that we can go.”
Before he could say anything, she spoke again. “That’s probably the most cost-effective way to go about it.” She quickly explained the cost benefit to him. Bringing it down to money always made Alonzo see the light.
He nodded. “Okay. I think that can work. I knew you’d see things my way.” With a grin, he gave her body the obligatory leer and walked away.
She rolled her eyes and turned back to the computer. The nine messages sat tantalizingly in her profile inbox. Nine responses. She should wait until she got home. That would be the sensible thing to do. Renee clicked on the first one.
HungCaliStud: You want sex, I want the same. Name the time and place and I’ll be there with my rubber on.
The attached photo showed a shirtless man in black leather pants. A pretty face with the muscled chest and belly of a gym regular. Or a soldier. Nice. If that was his real picture. Renee hit the “save” button. What was a man like that doing online looking for hookups? If he walked into any straight bar in San Diego, he’d have a swarm of girls hovering in no time. Maybe something was wrong with him.
Not that it matters. It’s not like you’re going to date or marry him. Her inner voice (which sounded distressingly like Mayson) dismissed her concerns.
“Jesus, get a grip, girl,” Renee muttered to herself and clicked on the next message.
The others were more of the same, pretty boys, pretty bodies. One scary GI Joe type with the crotch cut out of his fatigues and a cock ring tight around his balls and fully erect penis. Renee quickly looked away from the photo as soon as she saw it, just seconds before she clicked the “delete” button.
It was like shopping. Renee smiled to herself, the mouse clicking through the finite but interesting list of men, each offering himself up for her pleasure.
At the sight of number eight’s Village People mustache, her thighs twitched in remembered discomfort. Her first boyfriend grew a beard a few months into their relationship and had never learned how to give head without rubbing her skin raw.
Delete. She clicked on number nine. A picture opened up on the screen in front of her but she barely paid attention to it. She read his message.
You’re a stranger, so am I. Let’s keep it that way and only exchange what we both need.
She liked his words—no bull, no attempt at trying to lure her in. Just like her, he had something to offer. He put it out there and it was up to her to take it. She looked at the picture. It only confirmed what she had seen in his words. A strong face, all angles and darkness, not pretty but straightforward. He wore a simple gray T-shirt and jeans, peering at her, unsmiling, from a photograph that looked like it had been taken by someone who didn’t know him. The wall behind him was the same gray as his shirt.
Renee clicked on the link to his e-mail and, after making a couple of quick decisions, sent him a message.
Perfect. Come to me at the Hotel Continental in Old Town at 9 o’clock tonight. Ask for Lola Divine at the front desk.
As soon as she pressed “send” she called Mayson.
“I did it,” she said when her best friend answered the phone.
“Okay,” Mayson paused. “So now I’m waiting for the rest. Don’t make me ask that stupid question.”
Renee laughed. “Fine. I took your advice.”
“Oh shit.” In the background, she could hear rustling of cloth, like Mayson was still in bed. “What dumb advice of mine did you follow this time? I thought I already told you years ago not to listen to me.”
“You did, but I do it anyway. Sometimes you actually make sense.”
“Notice that you said ‘sometimes.’”
“Noted.” Renee took a breath. “I put an ad online and got some responses.”
The phone fell silent.
“Well, don’t you have anything to say?” Renee demanded.
“Are you going to meet up with any of these guys?”
“I just set it up with one of them.”
“Oh my God.” Cloth rustled again. “I’m not sure this is the best idea I ever had. This guy could be a killer or a rapist.”
Renee picked up a pencil from her desk, chewing at the rubber tip. “I don’t think he is.”
“But you don’t know for certain.”
“You’re right, I don’t know, but I’m going to meet him anyway.” She sighed, irritated by Mayson’s lack of support. “I’m tired of doing the safe thing, Mayson. I really am.”
“Fuck.” Her friend sighed too. Renee could almost see her sit up in the bed, scrub a hand over her face. “If anything happened to you, your parents would kill me.”
“You were the one who even gave me the idea. Why are you all of a sudden against it?”
“Because I never thought you would take me seriously. I just thought you would jack off to the idea and go to bed to wake up to another day.”
“God! That sounds so boring.” So like me, Renee thought.
“Not boring, sensible. Jesus, Renee!”
“Mayson, of anyone, I thought you’d support me in this.” Renee didn’t bother to keep the annoyance from her voice. “You would do something like this and not think twice. I doubt you’d even tell me about it.”
Mayson sighed. “Fuck. Okay, fine. I’ll stop being an over-protective asshole now.” The sound of glasses clinking, liquid being poured, trickled through the phone. “What time are you meeting this guy? Should I come with you?”
“And do what? Watch? No thanks!” Renee nearly laughed at the thought of Mayson lurking in the darkened hotel room with her rolled-up yoga mat ready to do damage while Renee’s stranger pounded into her from behind. “That definitely wouldn’t work.”
“Honey, you could get killed.” Mayson’s voice deepened. “I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself if that happened.”
“I absolve you. This is my decision to make and I’m making it.”
“Okay. Okay. Just—just tell me where you’ll be and when so I’ll have the information. Then call me when you’re done.” Renee heard the distaste in Mayson’s voice. “Shit. I can’t believe I’m letting you do this.”
“You’re not letting me do anything. The last time I checked I was still a grown woman.”
A rustle of papers from the adjoining cubicle reminded Renee just how little privacy she had. She lowered her voice and leaned close to the phone. “Look, if you’re not going to say anything useful, I’m going to hang up.”
“Renee, I don’t—”
“Nope. I have to get back to work anyway. Talk to you later.” She hung up the phone.
But
it wasn’t that easy to shut Mayson’s voice out of her head. The closer it grew to nine o’clock, the more nervous about the date she became. She sat at her desk and worked on the alternate drafts of the Skarsgard proposal. But the thought of her meeting with the stranger sat, uncomfortably, at the back of her mind.
At 5:48 she looked at her watch but made no move to get up and leave the office. She didn’t call the hotel to reserve the room. She didn’t do anything. At 7:22, with her work done, she put away the proofs, locked her desk drawers, and left the building, her car turned toward home. 9:13 found her stretched out in the tub, bubbles up to her throat.
The lavender scent from her bubble bath swirled in the bathroom with the steam and the mournful saxophone from her iPod. Renee closed her eyes and tried to forget there was someone out there waiting for her. But she couldn’t forget.
Chapter 6
“Mama? Daddy? You here?”
Renee pocketed the keys to her parents’ house and dropped her duffel bag. She closed the door behind her and called out again.
At the bottom of the stairs, she hesitated. There had been numerous unfortunate incidents during her childhood when she’d walked in on her parents’ very active sex life. Like too many times in the past few months since her divorce, she felt a dull throb of envy. Why couldn’t she have found something like what they had? All her life she had memories of them being affectionate, respectful, and passionate with each other. Twenty-nine years of beautiful, though sometimes cringe-worthy, memories. But she was their daughter; how come she hadn’t been able to make her marriage last more than four years?
Renee started up the stairs, but the sound of a car door made her turn back the way she came. She opened the front door.
“Hello, darling!” her mother called out from the passenger side of an unfamiliar SUV.
Renee’s father climbed out of the backseat and waved. “We didn’t expect you until later this evening,” he said, the words rolling music in his strong Jamaican accent.
The trunk of the SUV eased slowly shut to reveal a familiar face. Her father took a bag from Grant with a smile at the younger man, moving quickly despite his snowy hair and thin frame. Grant carried the two remaining cloth shopping bags from the trunk and laid them at Renee’s feet.
She frowned back at his smile. “Hey, Grant.”
“Renee.” He said her name once, nodded, and smiled again, a blinding flash of white teeth that softened the harsh planes of his face.
Somehow it confused her to see him here in her parents’ driveway after the last time she had run into him. The man who’d taken up so much space at Mayson’s side—then walked off with that stunning woman—was nothing like this tame creature playing bag boy for her parents. She turned to look at them. “I—uh…I decided to take the afternoon off from work and drive up a little early.”
“An hour earlier and you would’ve missed us.” Her mother, cool-looking in beige linen slacks and a pale blue tank top, slipped around the SUV to pull Renee into a hug. Her heavily powdered cheek brushed Renee’s.
When Renee was a child, her mother had never worn makeup. She was beautiful and natural, giving color-free kisses when she squeezed Renee against her soft mommy’s body. But as she’d grown older and the years began to tell, her mother began to wear makeup and lose weight, more and more so until her cushy size fourteen was barely a four and her kisses always left stains behind.
“Where were you?”
Her mother looked Renee over, plucking a stray hair from the collar of her sweater. “All over the place. Since Grant had the day off we asked him to go with us to the gem mines in Pala.”
Her father kissed her cheek with a loud smack.
“Daddy!” Renee giggled, unable to stop herself. He grinned back at her.
Her parents’ hard work and skilled investments had earned them a plush retirement six years before.
Her mother tugged her into her arms again. “You should come in and have some lemonade with us, Grant.”
“Thanks, but no, Mrs. Matthews. I have some work to catch up on at home.”
He flashed the older couple an apologetic version of his smile and started for his SUV. Both he and Renee knew he had nothing better to do, but as interested as he was in Renee, he also knew that she didn’t want him around. As a cop, Renee assumed, he’d learned to read people well.
“I’ll catch you later on,” he called out, climbing into the driver’s seat.
Maybe it was an illusion, but Renee swore that he winked at her as he drove off.
“I wish you’d stop giving poor Grant the evil eye, Renee.” Her mother picked a bag full of scarves from the doorstep and pushed open the front door.
“I did not!”
“Oh, darling, please.” Her father patted her lightly on the shoulder as he passed, picked up the other bag, and made his way into the house. “If I was him I’d run away too. Your body language was screaming at him to stay away.”
Renee shrugged dismissively, irritated at the resurrection of this old topic of conversation. “Mama, Daddy, I’m not interested in that man. How many times do I have to tell you?” She followed her parents into the house.
“We’re not asking you to be interested, but we’d like for you to be nice to him.” Renee’s mother frowned at her.
“What’s so bad about Grant?” her father demanded. “He’s a good man with a successful career. He’s single and, as far as I know, doesn’t beat his women.”
“Not to mention you’ve known him for years,” her mother added.
“Exactly!” She sank into the living room couch and pulled her legs up under her. “I don’t want a man I’ve known for years.”
“And we all know how fishing in unfamiliar waters worked out for you.” Her father’s remark whipped Renee’s head around.
“That’s not nice, Daddy.”
“But it’s true.” Her mother’s voice, threaded with only a slight Jamaican accent, floated behind her as she walked into the kitchen. “You barely knew Linc a month before you married him. Now according to you, you two are as much strangers now as you were when you met.” She pulled a bowl of frozen strawberries from the freezer. “Four years, darling.”
Even though all this was true, Renee didn’t want to hear it from her mother. Yes, Linc had been a stranger. A seductive stranger with his jazz radio station voice, lean body, and hands that promised her so much.
Her love of the unfamiliar had been what drew her to him, and although she and Linc were still alien to each other after four years of marriage and nearly six months of mutually agreed upon divorce, it was the things she knew intimately about him that repelled her. His clinginess, the way he wanted to turn her life into a mirror of his, how his feet were like hunks of jagged ice in the bed against hers.
“Mama, Daddy, we don’t have to talk about this any more.”
“You mean you don’t want to talk about this any more.” The blender growled from the kitchen, cutting off whatever else her mother had to say.
“Isn’t that what I said?” She eyed her parents firmly until her father laughed, chuckling merrily from his armchair.
“Fine, fine. Enough about Grant.” He grinned, throwing up his hands. “No matter how much we talk you’ll just end up doing what you want anyway.” With a push of a lever, his chair slowly reclined.
“So true.” Her mother came out of the kitchen balancing three strawberry daiquiris on a tray.
It was the same mahogany tray that had been there throughout Renee’s childhood. Through years of her father taking her mother breakfast in bed. Her mother bringing her chicken soup through almost thirty seasons of cold and flu.
“Thanks, Mama.” The cold glass bit into her palm.
“You’re welcome, love.” She passed her husband his daiquiri and he took it with a smile.
“The perfect end to a perfect day,” he said, lifting his glass in salute to his wife.
Renee’s mother settled down beside her on the sofa and took a long sip f
rom the straw curved over the edge of her frozen drink. She echoed her husband’s sigh of contentment.
“So tell us, darling, how are things going in San Diego?” Her mother’s heavily mascaraed eyes watched her over the rim of her glass. “Obviously Mayson hasn’t found Ms. Right yet. She’s not even looking.” Her mother laughed without making a sound. “How about you?”
Chapter 7
After the visit with her parents, Renee felt good. And bad. Without her telling them (it was probably Mayson who told), they had known about her renewed devastation over her failed marriage. During the visit, they plied her with drinks and food and jokes until she almost forgot her misery. But they couldn’t let go of the topic of Grant Chambers. Every opportunity her parents saw to insert their neighbor, they took it, repeatedly inviting him over until Renee wanted to scream. Their insistence on Grant only made it more obvious that they thought Renee needed a man and couldn’t get one on her own.
Although she had always been open with her parents, Renee didn’t think she could just come out and say what she really wanted to: “I don’t want another husband, Mama and Daddy. I just want sex.”
So she returned home from Dana Point with sex on her mind and the determination to do something about it.
On Sunday, four days after the aborted first date, Renee contacted the stranger again. He responded with the same words and so did she. This time, she didn’t tell Mayson about her date. She simply left work and went to the Hotel Continental, where she changed clothes in the lobby bathroom before heading upstairs to meet her stranger. Her heart banged painfully in her chest with each step. But she didn’t stop.
At the door, she hesitated. What could happen to her here tonight? Mayson’s words came to her again. A rapist. A killer. Renee took a deep breath. Or someone to give her exactly what she needed. Fulfillment. She slid the keycard in the door, opened it, and stepped inside.
The door clicked shut behind her.
“I’m glad you showed this time.” Amusement threaded through the deep, masculine voice. “I’m not sure my ego is strong enough to take another disappointment.”