“Maybe one of those suits without any underwear? What do you say, Jane?”
“That you’re crazy.”
He dropped a little kiss on her cheek and then backed up and let her go.
Lainie stared at Jane when she walked into the office an uncharacteristic hour and fifteen minutes later than expected.
“What?” Jane asked. “Was I humming?”
Or grinning like a woman who’d nearly had sex with Wyatt in his office, or one who was contemplating all the sinful behavior she might partake with him the very next evening?
“Did you get mugged?” Lainie asked.
“Oh!” Jane touched the scratches on her face and grinned. “I forgot. I hid in a bush.”
Lainie looked skeptical. “Why?”
“Because there was no other place to hide,” Jane explained.
“Does this have something to do with that man? The amazingly reasonable one?”
“Oh, I don’t think he’s all that reasonable, really. He’s actually.”
Outrageous. Wicked. Gorgeous. Jane sighed happily, then remembered where she was. “I can’t talk about him now. I’m so far behind, and I need to get out of here early tomorrow. I have a date.”
“A date? With him?”
Jane nodded.
“Has he…done something to you?” Lainie prodded, looking worried.
“Done something?”
“Drugged you, maybe? You’re really not acting like yourself, Jane. You haven’t been since you met him. And there are all sorts of things men can put into drinks these days to get women to do anything they want. This is serious.”
“Wyatt Gray’s never had to drug a woman in his life. They probably line up for the chance to give him what he wants.”
“And that doesn’t…infuriate you?”
Jane thought about it. At one point, it would have. She knew that. But it seemed she’d discounted the whole bit about what the women might want in this situation. Women could be taken advantage of, certainly, and they often were. Jane knew from experience with the women who came to her seminars. But she didn’t think Wyatt took advantage of women. She thought he just enjoyed them, and they enjoyed him.
She wanted to enjoy him and very much wanted him to enjoy her.
“I think I may have been a little harsh in my judgments about men,” she admitted.
Lainie started dropping things, everything she was carrying, actually. A coffee mug, some papers, little pink message slips for Jane. Flustered, she hurried to pick them up, then looked at Jane as if she’d grown three heads in the last five seconds.
“What has that man done to you?” she asked.
“I know most men are jerks. Believe me, I do. It’s just that, not all of them are. There must be some decent men out there. Some who can be trusted in…certain…limited…situations.”
“You want to go to bed with him,” Lainie guessed.
Jane felt heat coming into her cheeks. “I’m allowed to have a sex life—”
“I know. You just never have before. Not in all the time I’ve known you, I bet.”
Jane clamped her mouth shut, thinking back to exactly when she’d hired Lainie. Had it been that long? She wasn’t going to answer that.
“Just be careful, okay? I don’t want to see you get hurt,” Lainie said.
“I won’t. I know exactly what I’m getting into. I certainly know that nothing lasting will ever come out of this, and that I’m not his usual type, which has made him more interested than he’d normally be. But I know that in the end, we’ll just go our separate ways, and that’ll be it.”
“And you’re fine with that?”
She sighed. “I wouldn’t say fine with that, but I’m an adult, and like you said, I get lonely at times. Wyatt’s here, and I’m here, and he’s…he’s…he’s the sexiest man I’ve ever met in my life, Lainie. I’m thinking about going to dinner with him in one of my power suits with no underwear. Does that sound…normal?”
“Not for you,” Lainie yelped.
“No, I mean for a woman not like me. A woman who likes men. Really likes them. And really likes sex. For that kind of woman. Would that kind of woman do that?”
Lainie sighed. “Jane, are you sure he didn’t drug you? Maybe I should come along on this date, just to make sure he doesn’t…that he isn’t…you know? A bad guy. Or we could run a background check on him. You have that friend on the police force. Just in case. How about that? A background check and a credit check. You can’t be too careful.”
“Yes, you can. I’ve been careful too long. And I’m done with it,” Jane declared.
She was going to dinner without her underwear, after all.
Chapter Nine
The next afternoon Jane skipped out on much of the work she’d hoped to accomplish. Her heart just wasn’t in it. She went home and took a bath instead. A nice, long, sexy soak, because she wanted to smell good all over.
The no-panties thing had been just a crazy idea at first, but Lainie had been so sure Jane had become demented or perhaps incapacitated by drugs someone had slipped her, that Jane had been insulted a bit. Granted, it wasn’t like her to ever do that, but surely it wasn’t completely out of the realm of possibility.
It was like the odds of her winning the lottery, maybe. Not probable, but not impossible.
She decided she was going to do it.
It’s not as if it would kill her, and no one would ever have to know. It wasn’t as if she’d promised to hop in bed with Wyatt tonight, even though she suspected he was fairly certain she would. And at this moment, she wanted to. But if later she got too nervous, too scared, or changed her mind, she didn’t have to, and if she did, her pantyless state could very well go undetected.
It could be her wicked little secret.
Jane was not as stuffy or prudish as anyone thought. She liked that idea. That it was more like a dare she’d given herself, something she wanted to prove to herself.
Opening up her closet door, she frowned at row after row of power suits, all virtually identical except for their color. Was she really that boring? That predictable? It was just so easy this way. Buy good-quality suits that didn’t go out of style, pick a color, pair it with a white blouse and she was ready to go, day after day.
Jane sighed. Wyatt had asked her to wear one.
She picked the brightest color she had—a hot, candy-pink—then got to all those white blouses. It was definitely not a buttoned-up, white-blouse kind of night, either.
In her underwear drawer, she picked up lace camisole after lace camisole. Jane wasn’t a busty woman, and she wasn’t going to endure a stuffed or even water-filled bra to try to make her look bustier every day, just to please some man who only wanted to look at her chest. But she did like camisoles with a little support that doubled as soft, comfortable bras. They were pretty, and some were even soft and pretty at the same time. Truth be told, she felt a bit sexy in those little camisoles. She just always wore her buttoned-up blouses over them.
Tonight…maybe she’d skip the blouse and wear one of her prettiest camisoles instead.
She found one in white satin, the neckline made of lace trim