9
DARREN HADN’T CHANGED a great deal, though his face was rounder and his hair thinner than it had been in high school. His belly was rounder, too. He wasn’t fat, just soft and mellow-looking. Like a salesman.
He nodded to Diane and Josie, barely glanced at Kate, then noticed Jack. His face paled and for a second Kate thought he was going to get back in his car and drive away. Then his shoulders straightened as he locked the car and walked around it to the sidewalk.
Okay, so the jerk wasn’t a complete wimp. He wasn’t going to try to avoid his ex’s brother.
“Hello, Jack, Josie. Diane.” Then he glanced toward Kate, as if waiting for an introduction. His eyes narrowed as he tilted his head. “You…my God, it’s Kate Jones.”
“Hello, Darren.”
“I had no idea you were back in town.”
“Well, you know what they say about bad pennies.”
“You look…wow, you look great,” he said, his eyes wide as he stared her up and down.
Next door, the door to the Tea Room opened. Darren glanced past Kate, his face growing red. She knew darn well who stood there. “It was so nice seeing you, Darren. Be sure to say hi to your mom for me, okay?”
She turned around. Mrs. McIntyre stood on the porch next door, all stiff-necked, righteous indignation. Another woman, one Kate didn’t recognize, stood with her. The two of them immediately started speaking in low voices. She couldn’t hear their words, but she got the message loud and clear.
Kate gave them a forced but saccharine-sweet smile as she strode inside her store, as if she hadn’t a care in the world.
Jack watched Kate leave, and made no attempt to stop her. He’d seen the silent exchange between Kate and Darren’s mother. The glassiness in her eyes and the quiver of her lush, beautiful bottom lip, said she was holding on by a thin thread.
He’d also read the tension between his ex-brother-in-law and the woman he now considered his. He didn’t stop to evaluate that, knowing Kate would resent the hell out of him thinking that way. Particularly since he’d wondered if it was best to stay away from her, for his own sanity and reproductive health. He’d come to the conclusion that walking around with a hard-on eighteen hours a day could really be bad for his future children.
Josie and Diane seemed to notice the tension in the air, as well. Telling Jack how nice it was to meet him, they both walked down the street, their heads close together as they talked.
Once they were gone, Jack eyed his sister’s former husband. “How’s it going, Darren?”
Darren was still looking at the door to the building that had once belonged to his father. “I can’t believe Kate came back. I haven’t seen her since graduation.”
“You knew her in high school?”
Darren nodded. “We dated for a while, during senior year. She was my prom date.”
Prom night. The night, if he wasn’t mistaken, when his kid sister had gotten pregnant by this little prick, who’d walked out on her as soon as she’d miscarried their baby. Jack’s teeth clenched. “I thought Angela was your prom date.”
“Oh, no, we just left together afterward…” Darren seemed to realize who he was speaking to, because his face went redder. “I mean, well, Angela and I had dated the year before. And we kind of got back together that night at prom.”
“What about Kate? You know, your date?”
Darren stood there looking hopeless, helpless and regretful. He finally shrugged. “High school, man. I was a kid.”
Jack shook his head. “Some people don’t have to wait till they grow up to become dickless a*sholes.” He prepared to walk away, but paused. “Darren?”
Darren finally looked him full in the face.
“If you like breathing, you’ll stay away from Kate.” Not waiting for an answer, he turned to follow Kate into her shop.
The doorknob didn’t jiggle in his hand, she’d obviously flicked the lock when she went inside. He knocked, figuring she wouldn’t answer. To his surprise, the door moved. Pushing at it, he watched as it swung open. The lock was apparently broken, lucky for him.
After he got inside, and closed the door firmly behind him, Jack noticed the smell of paint and new carpet. The overhead lights in the shop were off, but recessed ones above the shelves cast illumination throughout the shadowy store. A bit of late-afternoon sunlight peeked in through the sheers on the windows.
He didn’t see Kate. He did hear a voice, however. Following the sound of a radio, he walked through the sales area and back to the offices and storage rooms. He found Kate sitting in the center of a cement-floored room, surrounded by boxes, staring mindlessly into the air.
“Kate,” he said softly. “Are you okay?”
She slowly nodded. “How’d you get in? I locked the door.”
“Something’s obviously wrong with the lock. You should have someone look at that. Are you all right?”
A small smile widened her lips, and surprisingly, no tears marred her cheeks. “I’m fine, Jack. Just wondering…”
“Wondering what?”
She hesitated, and he thought for a moment she wouldn’t answer. Finally she admitted, “Wondering whether it’s right to go on resenting someone for doing only what you yourself have done for much of your life.”
He waited but she didn’t explain. He somehow suspected she had no intention of talking about whatever it was she was thinking. “So you’re really okay?”
She nodded. Rising, she brushed some dust from the floor off her butt, calling his attention to the miniscule white shorts she wore. He closed his eyes briefly. No wonder Darren had been unable to stop staring. Kate looked amazing. “I see you got all the paint washed off.”
She nodded. “For now. Though I promised to go back and help some more tomorrow at the Rialto.”
“Me, too,” he admitted. “Now, you want to tell me what grand opening you were talking about.” He glanced around the storage room at all the boxes. “Are you going into business here?”
“Yep,” she replied as she grabbed a box and moved past him, exiting the storage room.
He followed her through a short hallway, into the store area. She continued, through an arched doorway toward the dressing rooms and a mirrored alcove. She dropped the box near several others already lined up beneath rows of shelves.
“Your kind of business?” he asked, repeating his question from Saturday.
She tilted her head and gave him an arched glance out of the corner of her eye. “What do you think?”
When she bent and retrieved a filmy white bra from one box, then what appeared to be a black leather bustier from another, his eyes narrowed. “I think you’ve decided to play Clint Eastwood.”
He’d nailed it. He saw by the shock in her eyes, and the way she gasped as she dropped the two pieces of sexy lingerie, that he’d hit the truth dead-on.
“You’re out for a little revenge.”
“How could you possibly…”
“Come on, Kate, opening a new Bare Essentials right here in Pleasantville? Next door to the Tea Room?” He paused, letting the concept sink in, then reluctantly began to chuckle. “Damn, you really are something.”
“You…you’re not shocked?” she whispered.
Shocked? No. He’d already learned that Kate Jones was like no woman he’d ever known. He shook his head. “Not shocked. I think you’re crazy, and you’re going to lose your shirt.” He cast a heated glance at her body. “I mean figuratively speaking. Literally, I wouldn’t mind in the least.”
She rolled her eyes.
“If you ever open your doors, that is. I’m sure there’ll be a protest from certain quarters. You could lose everything you’ve already put into this place.”
“Which wasn’t much. It cost only some sweat equity—mostly Cassie’s—and shipping charges to ship stuff here.” She shrugged. “Besides, it’s not about money.”
“Of course not.”
She stepped closer and her smile faded. “It’s not some silly revenge plot, Jack. I had to be here…I needed to come back to town this summer.”
He couldn’t imagine what could possibly be important enough to bring Kate back to a place she quite obviously hated, and told her so.
“I can’t really talk about it,” she said. “A lot of things happened all at once.” She crossed her arms in front of her chest and rubbed her hands up and down, as if chilly.
“Kate, whatever is going on, whatever this is about…”
“Yes?”
“Just be careful. Sometimes things don’t work out the way you think they will.”
“I somehow think this will,” she said, “because I don’t have unrealistic expectations. I fully expect to fail here.”
He raised a brow.
“We’ll open, we’ll cause a lot of chest-clutching, a lot of scandalous whispering, and then, when Cassie’s safe…” She cleared her throat. “I mean, when Cassie’s ready to leave…we’ll close and go away. Cassie will sell this building and everything else she owns here and we’ll never come back. No ties, no bad memories, just a laugh when we think back on our one last hurrah.”
“Cassie’s in trouble?”
“No. Forget it, okay? Cassie’s fine.” She looked at her nails, obviously feigning nonchalance. “Did you like her?”
“Like her? I barely spoke to her.”
“Most men don’t have to speak to her to form an impression.”
Jack shrugged. “She’s beautiful, of course. Flamboyant and probably too sexy for her own good. She’ll drive any man who loves her to the verge of insanity.”
She waited. When he didn’t continue, she prompted, “That’s all? You weren’t…interested?”
He shook his head. “Do you think I’m a total scumbag? What kind of guy would lust after the cousin of the woman he’s involved with?”
“We are not involved.”
“Bullshit. We are very much involved,” he admitted, confirming that not only to her, but to himself.
He waited for her to deny it. She couldn’t. Who could deny the inevitable? They might not have done much about their relationship since they’d been back in town, except for a few hot kisses and that one close encounter yesterday. But there’s no question they would. Sooner or later.
Judging by the look in her eye, and the expectancy in the air, he suspected it was going to be sooner.
He waited for a mental voice to tell him no, waited for his feet to instinctively turn toward the door. Waited to hear from the nice-guy voice of reason who’d been whispering in his ear for weeks.
That voice had been growing weaker as each day passed. He’d been listening to her from the other side of the duplex, seeing her shining, dark hair as she left in the morning, hearing her off-key singing as she showered. Every day another chunk had disappeared out of the wall of willpower he’d tried to erect between them. And after yesterday, it had come down like the last remnants of the Berlin Wall.
Sure he’d had good intentions, but all the good intentions in the world couldn’t stop what was happening between them. No more than a surfer could stop a wave on which he was riding.
Sometimes he had to ride it out to see where it took him.
“So are you going to tell me what’s wrong? Is your cousin in some kind of trouble or not?”
“Jack, let it go, okay?”
He didn’t press her on the Cassie issue, sensing she wouldn’t tell him what was going on, anyway. “So, back to your shop and your revenge plan. Anything else on the agenda?”
“No, I think I’ve summed it up.”
“Not much revenge there. I mean, you’re not having the population paint every building red?”
She chuckled. “You rented High Plains Drifter.”
He nodded.
“Okay, so it’s not the greatest revenge.” Her smile was mischievous and it made her brown eyes sparkle. “Must be that rotten sweetness everybody says is somewhere inside me. I’m great at fantasizing, just not so great at execution.”
Hearing her laugh at herself, Jack found her as captivating as she’d been the day they’d met. As if here, in a shop like the one she owned in Chicago, she was free to be herself. She’d let the negative elements of Pleasantville—her hurts, her misgivings, her sarcasm—disappear.
He found himself doing the same. As if nothing outside the building mattered. They could have been meeting for the first time in Chicago, as far as he was concerned.
She sighed. “Our plan seemed a lot more dramatic and outrageous when we fantasized about it as teenagers.”
“You fantasized about opening a sex shop in Pleasantville?”
“Yep, we even wrote it down in our diaries on prom night.”
His smile faded. “I heard about your prom night.”
“It’s fine. Water under the bridge,” she insisted. But she wouldn’t meet his eye.
“Should I even ask who else was on that revenge list you made that night?”
She pursed her lips. “No, you probably shouldn’t.”
As he’d thought—his own sister had probably been a pretty large target. Not to mention Darren.
“So, can I assume this shop will satisfy your need for revenge? I mean, I don’t have to worry bodies are going to start flying out the upstairs windows over the Tea Room, right?”
She sidestepped the question. “Oh, look, the store’s not even revenge at all. It’s more…I don’t know…like the old song. They talked about us throughout our childhoods, well, now we’ll really give them something to talk about! And they’ll never forget the Tremaines.”
“What if you fail to fail?”
“Excuse me?”
“You know, what if the store’s a big fat success? What then?”
Her laughter echoed in the small alcove. “Not a chance. That’ll never happen.”
“You never know. Your store is a big hit in Chicago.”
“This is so not Chicago.” She bent, opening a box at her feet. “Can you see Mrs. McIntyre buying one of these?”
She pulled out what looked like a foot-long hot dog. Then he realized it was a dildo. “Now, there’s something you don’t see every day in Pleasantville,” he mused out loud, not at all shocked, as she’d obviously intended.
“Gee, ya think?” She giggled like a kid as she grabbed something else out of the box. “I’m thinking of these in the display case right by the cash register.”
He raised a brow. “Anal beads?”
Holding the strand of beads between her thumb and index finger, she swung them around, a wicked look in her eye. When he said nothing, she dropped them, reached back into the box and pulled out something else. He instantly knew what the black, rubbery circle was for.
The playful laughter faded as she caught the heat in his eyes. It was answered by her own aware expression.
His groin tightened as he imagined using the item during sex with Kate. The way she’d slide it down his dick, her cool hand holding his balls as she tightened the cock ring around him. Then climbing on top of him and riding him, letting the ring keep him engorged and rock-hard. Building the pressure until he’d have to grab her by the hips and thrust up into her until they both came together in one strong, fiery blast of sexual pleasure.
“Ever used one?” she finally asked.
He wondered if she’d be shocked by his reply, and decided to find out. “Yeah. Have you?”
Her lips parted as she sucked in a deep, shuddery breath. She obviously hadn’t expected that, hadn’t been prepared for him to answer with blatant honesty. Even from several feet away, he could see the goose bumps on her chest, and the sudden jut of her nipples against her tight blue T-shirt.
“No,” she finally answered. “I, uh…don’t try everything we sell in the store.”
His stare shifted to the huge dildo.
She shook her head slowly, as if dazed.
He reached over and picked up a pair of handcuffs from a pile on a nearby shelf. Remembering their conversation from yesterday, he asked, “What about these?”
She shook her head again.
“Just as well,” he murmured as he put them back. “They’ll chafe your pretty wrists when you thrash around on the bed.”
He wasn’t speaking in general terms. And felt sure she knew it. This wasn’t an if conversation—it was a when.
The inside of the store began to feel steamy hot.
“We do sell faux-fur-lined ones,” she admitted, her voice shaky and breathless.
Did she even know she’d issued him a blatant invitation? Of course she knew. This was Kate, after all.
“What have you tried?” he asked, unable to stop this sensual self-torture. “I know you’ve got your little finger vibrator. But what else can you personally recommend for your shoppers…based on your own experience?”
She hesitated.
“Come on, Kate,” he said as he stepped closer and dropped his voice to a whisper. “Show me your wares.”
He wondered if she’d leave, if she’d back away from the sultry atmosphere into which they’d once again fallen together.
He should have known better.
“There’s a nifty vibrating tongue…”
He groaned softly.
“It’s not wet enough, though,” she continued slowly, obviously knowing full well what she was doing to him. “Not like a real one. But powerful. It doesn’t get tired, doesn’t veer off at the last second and ruin everything just before climax.”
Neither had he. Not that he reminded her of that.
“What else do you like? Any other replicas of body parts?”
She shook her head. “Not really. My favorite thing we sell is probably the lingerie. My partner has real talent. Bare Essentials goes well beyond your average teddies, thongs and push-up bras.”
He managed not to come in his pants at the image of Kate in any or all of these seductive items. “Oh?”
Nodding, she pointed to a stack of folded cloth. She picked up something off the top and shook it out. It took him a moment to realize what it was. “Crotchless tights?”
“A big hit in Chicago in the winter. It’s too cold for thigh-highs, or even regular panty hose. And, for some reason, men seem to get off on women in tights.” She shrugged. “I think it’s the same reason men like blondes on trampolines.”
He understood. “Or cheerleaders. It reminds them of that whole teenage thing where boys are one six-foot-tall pile of testosterone and the girls know it.”
She laughed.
“So, do you wear them?”
She gave him a coy look out of the corner of her eye. “Maybe. Most women who do like the naughtiness of it. They like knowing that even if it’s twenty degrees outside, they can go for something outrageous in the back of a limo if the right man happens to be around.”
His smile tightened. “Speaking from experience?”
She didn’t try to lie. “No.” Raising her hands, palms up, she shrugged. “What can I say? I live a pretty boring life in Chicago, in spite of being the sex toy queen of Michigan Avenue.”
He was damn glad of that. He hated even thinking of Kate with another man. His own possessiveness surprised him. Jack had been involved in enough casual relationships to know women had as much sexual drive as men. Where they chose to fill that need had never been any of his business, once they’d left his bed.
Kate was a different story. He had a feeling he could get damn near violent thinking of her with anyone else.
Which completely floored him.
“There are some pieces of lingerie I’ve used.” She bent at the knee, almost kneeling at his feet. Looking down, seeing the top of her head about level with his groin, Jack had to fist his hands to try to gain control.
She hunted around in a box, then said, “Aha.” Standing, she showed him what she’d found. “My favorite.”
She held a pretty, lacy, pale blue bra. It had straps, underwire, a satiny strip of material to go beneath a woman’s breasts—but nothing to cover the rest. A front-less bra.
“You, uh, wear those things?”
“Sometimes. Especially when I’m wearing cotton or silk.”
They both glanced at her cotton T-shirt.
Though almost afraid to ask, he had to. “Why?”
“The different textures of fabric feel amazing against my nipples,” she admitted, something dark and erotic flashing in her eyes. “It’s empowering to give yourself a thrill throughout the day, without anyone ever being aware of it. Like the tights.”
He swallowed. Hard. Then he stepped closer, until their bodies nearly touched from neck to knee. Looking down at the sharp points of her breasts, he finally managed to ask, “Are you wearing one of those bras now?”
“Maybe.” She didn’t step back. Instead, she reached for his hand and pulled it toward her body. Dropping her voice to a purr, she said, “Why don’t you see if you can tell?”
Dangerous. Like reaching out to touch a blazing red burner on a stove…you know you’re going to get burned, but you just can’t shake yourself out of the spell.
Jack didn’t care.
He touched.