“No ties, no responsibilities and no guilt,” he reminded her. “This evening we’re all about…pleasure.” His pause left no doubt as to what that pleasure entailed. Tangled sheets and tangled bodies.
“I’ll get your drinks,” the waitress murmured.
“Was that wise?” Kayla said, when she’d left. “Your face has been everywhere the past couple of months.”
“I could tell she didn’t recognize me. You look gorgeous,” he added. “I got the size perfectly.”
And wasn’t that like a man. Tight is good, tighter is better. God bless their sexual myopia. “So, Bob.” Channeling a throaty-voiced temptress, Kayla sat back. “Is this the part where you tell me your wife doesn’t understand you?”
“And you tell me your husband takes you for granted.” His tone was wry, as their eyes met in rueful acknowledgment of his earlier slip.
She took pity on him. “Or we can skip that part,” she suggested.
“Let’s skip that part.”
“You’re going to have your work cut out for you, persuading me into an affair, Bob.” She crossed one smooth leg over the other, watching him watch. The light caught the sparkle on her red stilettos—the shoes he’d bought for her when he’d been accepted into Rage. “I’m a happily married woman.”
“Yeah?” He caught the stiletto as it slipped off her dangling foot. “How’s the sex been lately?”
Chapter Two
Jared saw his wife stiffen. “Isn’t that too personal a question for a first date?”
He was going too fast, spooking her. “You’re right.” Jared slid the shoe on, concentrating on tightening the tiny strap. “We should get to know each other better first.”
The waitress returned with their drinks and the complimentary hors d’oeuvres. Releasing Kayla’s foot, Jared sat back and responded politely, his mind elsewhere.
It had taken him a while to realize Kayla was faking orgasms even though the clues were all there—her encouragement to go harder and faster where once she’d liked to take her time, the careful removing of his hand from between her legs at the crucial moment, always closing her eyes at peak.
Until then, he’d honestly thought that her “sleeping dogs” strategy was the right one. “Let’s not rehash why I left the tour early. We both made mistakes. I’d rather focus on the future.”
He’d been relieved to pass on the autopsy, because it would mean dissecting cause—and his culpability. Now he knew he was hanging onto the love of his life by a thread. Meeting as strangers let them step outside their lives, maybe find a way to talk about their problems that wouldn’t make things worse. As Bob, Jared wasn’t the son of a bitch who’d lost his wife’s trust.
The waitress fussed around, placing napkins and coasters just so, unloading tiny bowls of olives and nuts, their drinks. Obscuring his view of Kayla, who looked like an old-school movie star in that figure-hugging red dress. She’d loosed her hair from the ponytail of her day job—wrangling their two kids—and it fell over her shoulders in dark waves.
Looking at her, Jared saw grace. It was the way she picked up her glass and the way she sat, her straight back a counterpoint to her lush curves. He loved all the contradictions in her appearance—the heart-shaped face balanced by a strong nose, the finely-boned hands with the clipped square nails, unpolished. Glitter sparkled in her hair, probably one of Maddie’s projects.
His wife, his love. Who was looking at him with a cool wariness that killed him.
She jerked her head toward the waitress, making him conscious that he was being rude.
“I’m sorry, I missed that.” I don’t give a goddamn what the olives are stuffed with or how often you flick your hair. Go away, I need to seduce my wife.
He’d grown into his looks in his early twenties, and the band’s stylist had enhanced them with a great haircut, a great wardrobe. Suddenly, women wanted him. But it was his wife he had to impress. The one who had fallen in love with him when he was a skinny nerd.
“So, Betty,” he said, when the waitress finally got the hint. “Tell me about yourself.”
“Not a lot to tell.” She stirred her mulled wine with the cinnamon stick and paused to breathe in the fragrance.
Cinnamon and spice and all things sensual, that’s what his girl was made of.
“I’ve lived most of my life in a small town. I met my husband young and we have two kids. Until last year I worked as the office manager at my old high school and my husband was a stay-at-home dad by day and a musician by night. He won a place in a famous rock band, we moved to L.A. and now I’m a mom full-time.” Removing the cinnamon stick, she placed it on the napkin. “His job is glamorous and exciting, mine is unglamorous and exciting.”
She was sticking to the facts, revealing nothing.