He had been “just friends” with many girls in his time, and some of those friends had come with benefits. But he hadn’t felt like this about any of them, benefits or not, and Richard was beginning to suspect that was because Lindy hadn’t really been “just” a friend for a long time now. It had taken sleeping with her to make him realize that. His problem now was that he couldn’t seem to un-realize it. And he wasn’t sure he wanted to.
The one thing he was sure of was that he wanted her again. Leaving Lindy with only that chaste peck on the cheek had taxed Richard’s restraint sorely. He was so distracted he missed a turn on the short drive home from the gallery and he dropped his key twice before finally managing to unlock his door.
Once safely inside, he closed his eyes and just let the imagery hit him, the graphic daydream of taking Lindy on the floor of the gallery, takeout boxes and chopsticks flung recklessly aside to make room for their frantic coupling on the paint-spattered tarp. Lindy crying out his name as he buried his face in her newly waxed pussy. It was so pink and perfect, as pouty and full as the lips on her face.
Those lips he’d imagined before, of course, even before they’d slept together. He was male, she was cute and close at hand, and he had to think about something in the shower. She had always looked great in his imagination, kneeling in front of him with that shy little smile disappearing as she slid those luscious lips around his cock. Of course he’d thought about it. But that early, unfounded fantasy could not remotely compare to the memory of Lindy actually taking him into her mouth. Or the way it had felt to finally, finally push his way into her agonizingly sweet, tight pussy, knowing that he was the first and only one to do so.
He tried again to convince himself that Lindy was his buddy, his old college friend, his ideal neighbor. Too nice a girl for him to mess around with. She was all Mona Lisa smiles and homemade soup, and he knew he shouldn’t be thinking about her smooth, velvety pussy lips and how soft her inner thighs had felt against his cheeks. And he should definitely not be dwelling on what she had sounded like when he licked her into a frenzy, sucking and tonguing her hard until she came.
By the time he got to the part where he shouldn’t be thinking about Lindy on all fours, her naked pink cunt slick with readiness and his handprints all over her sweetly rounded ass, Richard was in the shower. He fisted his cock hard and cursed at himself as he spent his frustration down the drain.
He was stiff again by the time he finished washing his hair.
Chapter Seven
Richard left his door open in the morning, knowing the smell of brewing coffee was usually enough to lure Lindy from her loft. He invited her in at her knock on the doorjamb. “You want breakfast with the coffee you’re here to steal? I only have bagels,” he added apologetically. “No bacon, sorry.”
“A bagel sounds great, actually. Onion?” She perched on a bar stool and started braiding her hair. He suspected she was doing it to give herself something to do with her hands, because she seemed a little edgy. He also thought she looked like something Renoir would have stopped whatever else he was doing to paint.
“Of course. And I even have lox.”
“Perfect.”
“So what are your plans for the day? Doing anything to keep your mind off this evening?”
“I hadn’t really given it much thought. I got everything done last night, so there’s nothing left to do at the gallery. I guess I should be doing more marketing stuff, putting fliers out and all that.”
“Nah. You hate that part.”
“So do you.”
“Everybody hates that part,” Richard said. “You should do something fun. Go to a movie, go shopping, something like that. But don’t go with your sister, she’ll just stress you out more.” He applauded his own will power for not making the first several suggestions he’d thought of for how to take her mind off things.
“True. She’s back home anyway, for Mikey’s game.”
“Oh that’s right. Your football-hero brother. Matching set with the cheerleader sister, right?”
“I know. How could that same family have spawned someone like me?”
He pushed a mug of steaming coffee across the bar. “Family finally decided it was time they got a little beauty, culture and intelligence, I guess.”
Lindy snorted, trying unsuccessfully to hide a grin. “Smooth, Richard. Very smooth.”
“Just practicin’ for the ladies,” he mugged, relieved that his compliment had fallen acceptably within the “friends” guidelines.
“Was the rose on my car just practice too?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
Richard cursed himself silently as he smeared cream cheese on his bagel with more force than necessary. He wanted to suggest they spend the day together but he couldn’t think of any sufficiently tempting activity that didn’t involve copious amounts of sex. And since he was trying to woo on the down-low while he maintained the illusion of mere friendship, he knew he had probably exhausted the “let’s do it just this one last time” reserves.
“Richard? You okay?”
She was looking at him over the rim of her cup, a bemused expression on her face. He thought about his shower fantasy of the night before and swallowed hard. And he noticed that her hair glowed a perfect carnelian red wherever the morning light struck it.
“I’m fine,” he said. “Just thinking about paint colors.”
* * * * *
That evening, standing in the middle of the gallery, Lindy was astonished at the transformation. She had been to many openings, of course, but she was always astonished. The lights in their final arrangement, brilliantly highlighting the works on display. The people milling around with that murmuring chatter unique to gallery openings and upscale cocktail parties. The dissipated critics looking to be proven wrong about their own cynicism. The eager young hopefuls wearing black and looking anything but eager or hopeful because everybody knows that art is suffering. She herself had chosen a teal silk blouse in order to stand out in the crowd. But she was wearing it over a black pencil skirt and a black lace camisole.
Lindy smiled and responded to yet another well-wisher, shaking off a compliment with a shy shrug. She sipped from her champagne flute, trying to drown the panicky fluttering of the butterflies in her stomach.
“You should just say ‘thank you’ when they compliment you,” Tess recommended as the woman moved on to the next knot of people. “You need to stop running yourself down. Your stuff is great. You can afford to be a little smug now.”
“Was I?” Lindy asked. “Running myself down?”
“You were probably just being charmingly modest,” her cousin Allison chimed in, approaching with a freshly secured plate of assorted hors d’oeuvres. “Tess, cut her some slack, she’s nervous.”
“I’m right, though,” Tess said with assurance. “Is that prosciutto?”
“Mm-hmm. And you can get your own. I fought hard for this.”
With a long-suffering sigh, Tess took off in search of food, leaving Lindy with Allison for moral support.
“That guy looks familiar,” Allison was saying, and Lindy looked in the direction she indicated.
And then looked harder and longer at the striking figure of Paul Maddox.
She’d paid only modest attention to his looks during their meeting the previous day, but spotting him unexpectedly from across the room, it was hard not to pay serious attention. He was fairly tall, imposing, and he wore his suit like he didn’t care that it was expensive. Lindy looked at it with trained eyes, backed up by years of experience in sewing and working with different fabrics. The suit was very expensive indeed, she decided, and beautifully tailored. He had the right build to show it off too. Obviously fit, but not so muscular as to throw off the lines of the suit. Thick blond hair cut with razor precision, intense eyes in a smoothly sculpted face.
“Does he?” Lindy wasn’t quite sure why she wasn’t just telling Ally who Paul was. Maybe not trusting the evidence of her own eyes t
hat he really had come to her show, maybe not wanting to jinx her business deal by telling people about it before it was final.
“I’m sure I’ve seen his picture in the news or something, but I can’t think of the context.”
Allison flagged down Eva, who was roaming the gallery in a seemingly effortless but ruthlessly efficient circuit, making sure the event went as planned. She frowned and clutched her clipboard tighter as she saw Allison’s gesture and veered their way, clearly put off by having to deviate from her intended course.
“Is everything all right? People seem very enthusiastic about your work.” She surprised Lindy by adding, “You did a truly outstanding job with your installation.”
“Oh, well. I mean…thank you.”
“We were actually just wondering who one of the guests was, if you happened to know?” Allison ventured. She pointed discreetly in the direction of the familiar-looking man, and was rewarded with an instant reaction from Eva, who actually looked surprised for a moment.
“Oh! Wow. We weren’t expecting him, it was supposed to be somebody else coming from Red House. That’s Paul Maddox.”
“Remind me…?” Allison prompted, while Lindy remained studiously silent.
“Paul Maddox,” Eva said briskly, recovered from the surprise and ready to return to her duties. “He’s the CEO of the Red House store chain. Well, since his father has officially retired now, I suppose he is the Red House chain. If you’ll excuse me, I really have to—” She was off in mid-sentence, back to her compulsive rounds.
Allison didn’t notice Lindy’s blush because she was too busy looking with new awe at the famous heir to a century-old chain of upscale clothing stores. He was tilting his head as he circled the brilliant scarf Lindy had tossed so carelessly on its display stand. It was a mélange of techniques and textures, quilting and embroidery and crochet, forming a visual fantasy in a hundred subtly different shades of warm pink.
For the first time, Lindy noticed that from certain angles the folds of rosy fabric draping over the black stand created a distinctly labial impression. The scarf itself owed nothing to Georgia O’Keeffe, but the presentation might almost be an homage. Paul Maddox seemed to be studying the display intently, and Lindy was startled when he glanced her way and met her gaze with the same keen interest. She shivered, and a dollop of heat slid down her stomach to nestle between her thighs.
Then the moment had passed, leaving Lindy to wonder if she had only imagined it.
“Holy crap,” Allison said, clearly still intrigued by the appearance of the eligible bachelor himself. “He’s not all that much older than we are. I had no idea he was that young. Or that good-looking.”
“I know,” Lindy said, still feeling a little shaky. “You really think he’s good-looking?”
“You mean you don’t?” Allison seemed unable to believe it. “Is there something wrong with your eyes?”
“I’m just picky.” Lindy shrugged as though she had lost interest in the topic. But her eyes were still trained on the spot where Paul Maddox had been standing, scrutinizing her as though she were part of the display.
“Hey,” Tess asked, looking more closely at the pink scarf as she returned to them, holding a canapé-laden plate. “Is that thing supposed to look like a vagina, or is that just me?”
Lindy looked around the room, trying to look nonchalant. Where had Maddox gone? One minute he was staring at her over the vagina scarf—oh no, the description was obviously going to stick—and the next he had disappeared. She wasn’t sure whether to feel hurt or relieved.
* * * * *
Richard had started flirting casually with Allison at the wine bar, only to receive a five-minute glowing description of her new boyfriend. He knew better than to try Tess, who had eyed him up and down upon their first meeting in college and treated him like another goofy little brother ever since. She was just tomboy enough to pull it off, and he’d seen her do it with any number of guys over the years. It was pretty effective, he had to admit. The guys still found her hot, she stayed friends with all of them, and she could change her mind and reel one in pretty much any time she wanted. Richard knew he would’ve gone for that in a heartbeat.
Although maybe not so much anymore, he thought. Lately he had started to think of Tess more like a sister, in direct contrast to the way he had stopped thinking of Lindy as one. Tess was beautiful, undeniably. And formidable. She was the homecoming queen who could also spike a volleyball into your face. But tonight it was Lindy who outshone every other woman in the room, whose eyes sparkled and enchanted fans and critics alike. And her hair—why had he never noticed her hair before her spa visit? The new cut wasn’t that big a change, and she said she hadn’t had it colored. But it was like a banked fire now, hidden embers glowing against the backdrop of artistic black clothing and stark white gallery walls.
Even without the knowledge of the deliciously naughty secret nestled between her thighs, Richard thought he would have been looking at Lindy differently tonight.
He knew it was stupid to get worked up this way. They’d agreed that they were just friends. That the sex was just sex, and was also over now. But it didn’t seem to matter. He couldn’t stop thinking about it. And he couldn’t take his eyes off her.
And neither, he’d noticed, could the suit with the blond hair. Richard watched with mounting irritation as the corporate poster boy circled the room, prowling around Lindy like a predator sizing up prey. Just waiting for his moment to strike. And then, when Ally was trying to catch the bartender’s eye and Tess had gone to chide her little brother Mikey for nearly knocking down a sculpture, that was when the suit made his move. Tapping on Lindy’s shoulder from behind, smirking out some fake apology for startling her, it looked like.
Richard was circling the room himself without realizing it, stopping to watch the unfolding scene from behind the dubious cover of one of Lindy’s exhibits. One of her scarves, he noticed in passing. Then he stopped and took another look at the rich draped fabric. Huh…looks like a pussy, he noted, before resuming his stalker glare at the gray-suited Lothario chatting up his favorite neighbor.
Fuck. Lindy was smiling back at the guy, and it looked like she might be blushing. The guy had taken her hand to shake it but hadn’t let go. Lindy was nodding and laughing, and the guy still hadn’t let go.
“Mr. D’Arco?” The voice at his shoulder distracted Richard, and he looked reluctantly down at the cool, slender blonde who ran the gallery.
“Yeah, hi. It’s Eva, right?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
She was obviously flattered he’d remembered her name and Richard’s automatic reaction was to push this advantage. She was truly lovely under those glasses, on closer inspection. But she also reminded him far too much of Natasha. He was through with skinny blondes.
“When you stopped by last night, I didn’t know who you were. I knew you were Lindy’s neighbor, she’d mentioned that, but I didn’t recognize you. And I didn’t know you were actually close friends. You even seem to know her family?”
Richard nodded, acknowledging the connection. “I went to college with Lindy. And her sister Tess was there part of that time too. She was two years ahead of us, I think. This is a great place you’ve got here, by the way.”
Eva smiled, a tight, hesitant smile. “I’m flattered you think so. Actually, I saw one of your shows in Indianapolis a few years ago and I’d love to talk to you about exhibiting some work here, if you’re interested? I don’t know what you’re doing these days, of course, and if it’s something thirty feet tall then obviously that’s out of the question, but—”
“Twelve by twenty-something, actually,” he hedged. True, he wasn’t actually working on it at the moment, he was just staring at it for long stretches of time, but he certainly had good intentions. “Canvas, not sculpture, so I think you’re safe there. But I also have a number of smaller oils that I could show you.” Earlier stuff, stuff from just after college, but a show was a show.
&
nbsp; “I’d love that.” As she handed him her card, writing some additional phone numbers on the back, Richard noticed a guy glaring at him in much the same way Richard had been glaring at Gray Suit a few minutes earlier. So shy little Eva had a secret admirer, it looked like.
Deciding to help her out, he made the guy glare even harder by touching Eva’s hand deliberately when she handed him the card, leaning in closer and smiling. All unsuspecting, Eva thanked him and resumed her circuit of the room. Just as he’d thought, the guy with the gimlet stare followed her like a puppy as soon as she was out of Richard’s zone of influence.
Richard turned back toward Lindy, only to see her disappearing out the fire exit on the arm of Gray Suit.
* * * * *
Lindy was almost dizzy with relief when she looked at her watch and realized it was 10:45. In another fifteen minutes the gallery would close, the show would be over and she’d be able to sit down and massage her cheeks back to life after three hours of forced smiling. Her hand actually ached from being shaken. She wondered how politicians ever managed to make it through campaigns.
As tense as she was, she told herself later, it was little wonder that she trembled all over when she heard the unexpectedly soft voice near her ear.
“Is everything all right, Melinda? You look a little fraught.”
Lindy whirled around, trying to ignore the shiver that had just coursed through her. “Mr. Maddox! You startled me.”
“Paul, remember?”
“Paul.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to sneak up on you.” He was holding out a hand, and Lindy stared at it blankly a moment before realizing he intended her to shake it. She waited just long enough for the pause to become noticeably awkward then thrust her own hand forward.
He took it and held it without shaking. Held it a little too firmly for her to pull away gracefully. His hand felt twice the size of hers, and Lindy closed her eyes briefly and swallowed hard, trying to gather the thoughts that seemed to have danced merrily away at the moment her hand landed in Paul Maddox’s.
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