“Actually, it was really violent and scary,” Abby snapped.
“I’m sure it was,” Elaine soothed. “I didn’t mean to be flip. You haven’t sounded excited about a guy since you made up the List.”
“Let’s not get into my List tonight.”
“OK. One last thing, though. Was the locksmith cute?”
Abby hesitated. “It doesn’t matter if he’s cute,” she said heavily. “He’s everything I’ve sworn at all costs to avoid.”
“Ah,” Elaine murmured. “The plot thickens.”
Abby winced. “No, it doesn’t. Please. I’ve suffered enough tonight.”
“Tomorrow, then,” Elaine said. “Oh, another thing. Would you bring my house keys to work tomorrow? I want to give a set to Mark.”
Abby was startled. “Really? How long have you known this guy?”
“He asked for them.” Elaine’s voice was defensive. “I figured I’d just give him the ones I gave you and make new ones for you. OK? Don’t worry. Really. It seems too good to be true, Abby. He’s just so—”
The murmur of a masculine voice cut off whatever Elaine was about to say. She came back on the line a moment later. “Gotta go.”
“OK. Thanks for calling. Have fun with Mysterious Mark.”
Elaine let out an anxious, tittering laugh. “Sweet dreams of the yummy locksmith. Don’t forget my keys. See you tomorrow.”
“Right.” Abby hung up, kicked off her heels and sank into the sofa. Sheba leaped onto her lap, covering her skirt with fluff.
This was not jealousy. She would be thrilled if Elaine found true love, or even just hot sex. Her coworker was a lovely girl, talented at her job as exhibit designer, but painfully shy when it came to men.
Abby had worked for years to get Elaine to believe in her own attractiveness. Now Elaine was giving keys to Mark, while Abby, with all her extensive dating experience, was home alone with her remote control, her cat, and a pint of Fudge Ripple for company. How pathetic.
She turned on the tube, surfed until she hit an old black-and-white film. A hardboiled detective, a fragile blonde in an evening gown. She stroked Sheba. Heavy purrs vibrated through her hands. It made her think of Zan’s hands. The bold, expert way he touched her cat.
Back in her crazy period, she would’ve given that guy her number without hesitation. And waited breathless by the phone until he called.
Oh, get real. Probably she wouldn’t have let him leave at all.
Not now. Her weakness for tattooed, leather-clad bad-boy wolf types had gotten her into no end of trouble. They’d crashed in her place without paying rent, run up her phone bill, used her car and wrecked it. After the third wreck, her insurance agent had begun to make insulting comments about her taste in men. She could scarcely blame him.
The blonde was getting agitated with the handsome detective, and Abby upped the volume to see what was bugging her.
“…hired you to find my brother, not to listen to your disgusting insults!” the actress declared. “I demand to be treated with respect!”
Amen, sister, Abby thought, remembering the time she’d come home to find a pack of travel-stained bikers chugalugging tequila in her kitchen. Greg’s buddies. And the time Jimmy had accused her of sleeping with her boss, followed her to work and attacked the poor guy. Skinny, timid Bob, with his glasses and his bald spot.
The final straw had been the night she was dragged out of bed in her panties by the police at 3:00 AM, only to discover that her then-boyfriend Shep had been hiding controlled substances in her attic.
She’d been so mortified, she’d left the state.
That was the ultimate wake-up call. The guys she went for when she followed her natural inclinations were one-way tickets to disaster, if not prison. The solution was obvious. No more yielding to impulse. She would run her love life strategically. The way a general ran a war.
She didn’t want to live on the edge of disaster, as her mother had. Paycheck to paycheck, forever late on the rent for the cheap dives she lived in. Crawling into a bottle when things got too tough to bear.
Which had been pretty much all the time, toward the end.
She wanted better for herself. Beauty, security, respect. Nice things. Social standing. All that good, dull, respectable stuff. She’d worked hard to transform her life, moonlighting as a paralegal for years while slogging away on arts-administration internships.
Now she was the development manager at the Silver Fork Museum, and she was good at raising money. The museum had doubled its operating budget since she’d started working there.
She felt a glow of accomplishment when she thought about the Pirates’ Hoard. It was the springboard for their new exhibit program, a trove of treasure from a Spanish galleon sunk off the coast of Barbados by pirates three hundred years ago and just recently rediscovered.
The Pirates’ Hoard was a huge feather in her cap, if they made their crowd. It was a stretch, with that stiff quarter-million-dollar fee. A big, nail-biting gamble. She’d pulled the proposal together herself over a year ago, landing a competitive $1.2 million grant from the NEA to support the exhibition program, including funding for catalogs, wall text, mountings, a high-tech security system, etc., etc. It was an amazing coup. She was proud of herself. And this was just the beginning.
Abby had personally pulled in a lot of the money that had made the construction of the museum’s new wing possible, though her boss, Bridget, the development director, would rather die than admit it.
Her career was on the rise—and she was going to make her love life conform to the same high standard or die trying, damn it.
To that end, drumroll please, she’d compiled the List.
The List was strict. No backsliding, no freewheeling. She dated clean-shaven, well-dressed men. No lost souls, rap sheets, or addictions. No martial arts freaks, guns, or motorcycles. Above all, no tattoos.
She only considered men with good jobs, nice cars, retirement plans, college degrees. Men who were conversant in politics, economics, art, men who had well-formed opinions about the relative merits of French and Italian cheeses; men who knew how to order wine.
On TV, violins swelled, and the detective seized the blonde and kissed her. Abby sighed. Three years of dating, and she had yet to find a man who fit the List who turned her on. Her coffee cup said that if you wanted to meet Prince Charming, you had to kiss a lot of frogs.
She was sick of kissing frogs. She wanted to kiss Zan Duncan. She shut her eyes, leaned back and unleashed her very lively imagination. Supposing that the hot buzz of attraction between them had gone further. If she’d resisted a little less, if he’d pushed a bit more.
Suppose he’d looked at her with those hot golden eyes until her flustered stammering petered off into breathless silence.
She jerked her chin at him, inviting him into the living room. He hesitated in the doorway, savoring the sweet agony of anticipation.
Like kissing the feet of a beautiful goddess. His remembered words made her chest ache with longing. He approached her, stroked her cheek, slid his hand under her hair. Exploring, marveling.
He caressed her jaw and cheek with his lips before fitting them to hers. A couch materialized behind her as he sank down in front of her. He slid his hands under her skirt, tugged her panties off, and bent his head, warm lips kissing and nuzzling, circling in a tightening spiral, closer and closer to her clit, taking his time. Making her wait—and wait.
Patient, thorough…tireless. She was a knot of tension, thighs clenched, as her dream Zan finally opened her, sliding his tongue into her slick, furled folds. First the pressure of his lips was