13
BACK AT HER APARTMENT, Macy felt as if someone had infused her with a superhuman sense of confidence. She’d tried not to put too much stock in Griffin’s comments about her effects on men, but somehow, the idea that she was a sexual being to be reckoned with had seeped into her consciousness in a big way.
She barely felt like herself tonight. Instead she felt like a sex goddess, a woman whose sexuality could bring men to their knees and who wasn’t afraid to go after exactly what she wanted.
Maybe the sex goddess had been lurking inside her all the time, just crying out to break free. That could certainly explain Macy’s willingness to go forward with her plan to seduce Griffin.
Seducing Griffin. How could she reconcile the way she felt right now, so sexy and confident, with the way she’d behaved in Las Vegas? She’d been a woman who’d used sexy and confident to manipulate and deceive. She’d been the kind of woman she’d never imagined herself being, but in a bad way. In a ruthless willing-to-do-anything-to-get-ahead kind of way.
She’d taken sexuality and confidence and used them for evil.
She stared into the bathroom mirror, not sure, all of a sudden, if she really liked what she saw. And the longer she stared, the more confused she became.
How could she have gotten herself into this? How could she be here now with a guy whose affection for her was based on lies?
It was stupid. It was nasty. It was unconscionable.
And she was becoming a worse person by the second by not putting a stop to this before it went any further.
There was a knock at the bathroom door. “Macy? Are you okay in there?”
She tried to speak, but nothing came out. Her throat tightened, and she expelled a strange little grunt.
“Macy? Are you okay?”
What to say? Oh, sorry, I just changed my mind. I know you’re naked with a full-on erection and I’m supposed to be retrieving birth control in here, but, um, I changed my mind. Let’s just be friends, okay?
Not only was that unfair, but there was no way she’d be willing to say it. She wanted him too much.
She heard the doorknob turn, and then the door opened. She looked over at Griffin, and he saw what must have been her forlorn expression as she stood there naked in front of the mirror.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
No way could she tell him now. Not while he was completely naked, his erection jutting out, his body a monument to male perfection. She wanted him at least as much as he wanted her, and she could only hope the fairest thing to do would be to just give herself over to him completely.
No more holding back. No more sex with a hidden agenda. No more faking it.
“Oh, nothing,” she said. “Nothing’s wrong. I was just feeling a little…I don’t know. A little worried that we’re in too deep, if that makes any sense.”
He crossed the granite-tile floor and pulled her against him. He felt so warm and so right. So just what she needed right now, from his hard cock against her belly to his capable hands sliding over her backside.
“I’m not in nearly deep enough,” he said with a little smile.
“I just mean, I wish I didn’t like this—like us—so much. It would make the whole promotion-and-working-together thing a lot easier, don’t you think?”
“Let’s work on hating each other tomorrow, okay? I’ve got a different project in mind tonight.”
He lifted her up onto the cold tile countertop and wedged himself between her thighs. She wrapped her legs around him, edging closer until their bodies were nearly joined. When she handed him a condom, he gave her a long, slow, toe-curling kiss that erased her doubts.
He put on the condom and pulled her closer, kissed her again, devoured her. His mouth on her mouth, her ears, her neck, her breasts, all in a frenzy. She bit into his shoulder gently, and when he plunged into her, she cried out, nearly delirious with the relief of it.
Like water on her fire.
He thrust all the way into her, backed off, then pushed deeper still. The sensation of her body opening up to him and joining with his created a delicious burning from deep within.
She matched his intensity, propelling them higher, her breath quick and her body tense. She heard herself crying out his name, lost in him, and she felt as if she was going to come before they’d even gotten started.
He felt so incredible as he stretched her body, invaded her. As their flesh slapped together, she could feel her orgasm coming on so fast, there was no way to stop it.
Her gaze locked on his, and he was in the same predicament as her, she could tell. His brow furrowed, his expression transformed by pleasure, he was lost in it, too.
First came the build-up, like a tornado racing toward where their bodies met. Then came the crash as it struck. And their bodies, so exquisitely joined, were the wreckage, bucking together and swirling in the storm of sensations.
Griffin pulled her closer as he spilled himself into her, as her own orgasm passed, and he kissed her, then breathed into her ear, “You’re amazing.”
“So are you,” she whispered back.
He lifted her from the bathroom counter and carried her out into the main room, to the sofa. There, he stretched out beside her, and she never wanted him to move.
Lauren’s words echoed in her head then. The wilder the sex, the more dramatic the results.
If that was true, she was in deep, deep trouble.
MACY DIDN’T normally spend Saturday mornings lazing around in bed. She liked to get up, clean her apartment, go to the park, have lunch out with friends. That is, when she wasn’t working overtime. She probably should have been working this morning, but when her new boss was lying in bed beside her, it was hard to muster any guilt that she wasn’t busting her ass over the Golden Gate account.
They’d slept late, gotten up to take a shower, made love in the shower, and then returned to bed with cups of coffee and toasted bagels that sat half-eaten on the nightstand, because halfway through breakfast they’d gotten a little carried away with a game of footsie.
It was almost eleven when the phone rang, and a glance at her caller ID made Macy’s stomach lurch. It was her mother calling. She remembered in a horrible rush all the messages her mom had left on her answering machine and her cell phone since last weekend, and how she’d forgotten to return any of the calls.
Well, she hadn’t exactly forgotten so much as she’d procrastinated for too long. Now she was in for the mother of all guilt trips, pun intended.
She hated being one of those women who had a dysfunctional relationship with her parents, but there it was. For as long as she could remember, she’d wanted to have one of those mothers she could confide in over coffee, one of those fathers she could have heartfelt conversations with after friendly tennis matches. Instead, she had the modern-day version of Fred and Wilma Flintstone for parents.
“Aren’t you going to answer that?” Griffin asked, glancing up from the newspaper he’d retrieved from her front door earlier.
“No, I don’t think so.” She watched the phone as it rang.
After five rings, the answering machine picked up, and Macy’s canned recording blared through a speaker instructing the caller to leave a message.
“Macy, it’s your mother, Joy Thomaston. I guess you’re too busy to call me back, so I’ll stop calling. You call if you ever have time for your own mother.” Then she hung up.
Eek.
“She has to tell you her full name?” Griffin asked.
“That’s her version of sarcasm. My mom’s not quite right in the head. Actually both my parents are kind of whacked.”
“Oh come on, they can’t be that bad.”
Macy looked out her bedroom window. The sky was a shocking, crisp blue, something that always gave her a surge of energy and a renewed sense of purpose. But at the moment, with Fred and Wilma on her mind, it just made her want to bury her head under the pillow and wait for nighttime, when it would be too late to call her parents.
“Yes, they can. They mean well, but they’re just not… I don’t know. They’re clueless.”
“You wouldn’t be normal if you didn’t hate your parents.”
“That’s not true. I have friends with wonderful parents, parents they can’t wait to spend time with.”
“Then your friends are the ones who’re screwed up.”
“So what’s so bad about your parents?”
Griffin stretched his arms over his head, and Macy couldn’t help but admire his perfectly sculpted chest and biceps.
“They’re just a little uptight. We get along fine, so long as I’m successful by their standards, which are pretty damn high.”
“Then they’ll be thrilled to hear you got the promotion.”
“They’ll want to know why I’m not a partner at the firm yet.”
“So they pushed you a lot?”
“Oh, yeah. I had to be the best at every sport, have the highest grade-point average, get scholarships to the best schools….”
“Sounds like loads of fun. You should have lived at my house. My mom would have just fed you a brownie and told you to go take a nap instead of worrying about your homework.”
He laughed. “At my house, there were no brownies. Only high-fiber bran muffins.”
“Yum.”
“Don’t you think you ought to just call your mom and get it over with? If you don’t, you’ll stress about it all day.”
“Will not.”
“You will. I can tell by the way you’ve been acting ever since the phone rang.”
Macy sighed and admitted defeat. He was right, of course. Best to get the dreaded task out of the way.
She grabbed the phone, dialed the number she knew by heart, and waited. A few hundred miles away in Fresno, her mother picked up the phone and said, “Hello.”
“Hi, Mom. You called a little while ago?”
“Are you screening calls again, Macy?”
“I was in the shower,” she lied.
“Where were you last weekend? I left six messages, I tried your cell phone and you never called back.”
“Sorry, Mom. I had a business trip, and I was just so busy, I didn’t think to check my messages.”
“You must have checked them when you got home.” Her mother’s voice had taken on the dreaded accusatory tone, the one that had succeeded in inducing major guilt for as long as Macy could remember.
“I did, but you didn’t sound like you were calling about anything urgent, and it’s been a crazy-busy week. I’d planned on calling you today.”
Silence. Her mother was a master at employing the silent treatment, especially over phone lines.
Luckily, Griffin was there to provide her entertainment during the intermission. He draped his leg over hers and traced his fingers along her hipbone, then across her belly, and up. When he reached the underside of her breast, she smiled and covered his hand with hers to stop any more dangerous exploration.
“Mom? Did you want to talk about something, because if not—”
Her mother heaved a noisy sigh, wrought with emotion. “I didn’t want to have to break the news to you this way, dear, but—”
“What news? Is there something wrong? Is Dad okay?”
“Dad’s fine. He’s out shopping for a new riding mower today. The problem is, I had a doctor visit, and they found some lumps in my breast.”
Her voice was quivery, on the verge of cracking, and Macy’s heart lurched.
“Mom!” She sat up, tugging the sheet over her chest.
“Now don’t get too upset. They did a biopsy, and they’re not cancerous. They’re just some kind of lumps. The doctor said I drink too much caffeine is all.”
“But it’s nothing to worry about, right? You’re going to be okay?”
“I imagine so, but that’s not the point. The point is, I had to have a biopsy and worry about having breast cancer all by myself, because you couldn’t be bothered to check your messages.”
“Mom, I’m sorry. I had no idea.”
“And you know how your father is about health issues. He wouldn’t talk about it at all. I had to suffer in silence all that time.”
Macy leaned against a pillow and tried not to sound annoyed. “I’m really sorry.”
This was such a typical episode of Thomaston family drama, Macy could have scripted it herself. If their life had been a commercial, this is where the product pitch would come in—the Thomaston Family, we’re neurotic so you can feel better about your own life.
On the other end of the line, her mother was making sniffling sounds, which was a total buzz kill. Not even the sight of Griffin beside her could cheer Macy up now. She was suddenly seven years old again, miserably fat, eating Ho Hos and watching Scooby Doo while her mother sat on the couch in her green terry-cloth housecoat pouting about one thing or another.
“I joined a breast cancer support group,” her mother said. “Those ladies have really helped me cope with my family’s emotional distance during this ordeal.”
“You joined a breast cancer support group? But I thought your lumps were benign.”
“Does it really matter? What matters is that I thought I had breast cancer, and there was no one to support me through that horrible process.”
Macy couldn’t think of any sensible response. Maybe a support group was exactly what her mother needed. That is, until they found out she was a fraud and just using them to get sympathy. Or something. She wasn’t quite sure what her mother needed, except perhaps some kind of mood-enhancing medication.
“Have you talked to the doctor about maybe getting a prescription for an antidepressant? Maybe that would help you feel better.”
Her mother sobbed loudly into the phone, and Macy winced. Not the intended consequence, but then, she’d once witnessed her mom sobbing loudly over a rotten head of lettuce, so this should not have come as a surprise.
“You think I’m crazy now? Because I have a medical condition and sought out a support network to help me through it?”
“No, I don’t think you’re crazy.” She cast a weary glance at Griffin, who offered a sympathetic wince in return. “I just think you might be feeling kind of down, and maybe some medication would help. That’s all. It has nothing to do with your mental health.”
“Don’t you condescend to me!” her mother said, then hung up the phone.
Macy turned the phone off, then stared dumbly at it. Would it do any good to call back? Had she just been the catalyst that would send her mother into a deep depression? Was there any point in worrying?
“What was that all about? Is your mom okay?”
She slid down in bed and covered her face with the pillow, just as she’d thought about doing before the phone call. It had been a much more sensible plan than actually dialing her parents’ phone number.
“She’s fine,” she said, her voice muffled by the pillow, which was cool and soft and smelled like dryer sheets.
“She’s having some kind of health issue.”
“More like some kind of craziness issue. She doesn’t have breast cancer, but she’s joined a breast cancer support group so she can be whiny and get lots of attention from people who actually need sympathy and attention.”
“Wow.”
“I’m pretty sure this is somehow my fault. Because I didn’t answer my phone or check my messages, and because I’m basically an evil and selfish daughter.”
“Doesn’t she have friends or family close by who could be there for her in her, um…time of need?”
“She has five goldfish, no friends and her sisters all live far, far away from her where they won’t have to listen to her whining. I think they didn’t even give her their phone numbers. Smart women.”
“I guess you get the crazy parent award,” he said, lifting the pillow from her face and pulling her against him.
“Am I a tribute to the endurance of the human spirit or what?”
“Absolutely.”
“I feel like I need to do something. If I don’t make amends, she won’t call me for six months, and then she’ll spend another six months making me feel guilty for not getting in touch with her for six months. It’s a no-win situation.”
“Maybe you could go visit her.”
“Oh, God. Shut your mouth.”
“They’re in Fresno, right? That’s only a few hours’ drive.”
“Three hours. I thought we were going to spend this weekend in bed celebrating your promotion.”
“You’re not looking like you’ll be much fun, anyway.”
“Sure I will. Just give me some hard liquor, and I’ll be a barrel of fun in fifteen minutes.”
“I’ve got a better idea. We’ll drive out to see your parents, and I can meet them.”
Macy’s heart lurched in her chest, and her stomach twisted into one of those complicated sailing knots.
“Um,” she said, desperately trying to think of a way out of this mess.
But part of her loved that Griffin wanted to meet her parents. And another part of her had the common sense to remember that she’d entered into this relationship with him under a really crappy, dishonest pretense, and any sort of emotional bonding that took place now was only going to end in misery.
“You don’t want me to meet your parents?”
“I’m a little surprised you’d want to meet them after what I’ve told you thus far.”
Propped up on one elbow, he smiled at her. She couldn’t get over how much she loved this side of him that wasn’t competitive or cutthroat or even remotely obnoxious. He was a dream guy outside the office.
Which, in a way, totally and completely sucked.
She was anything but a dream girl, considering.
“I want to know everything about you. And your parents are part of who you are, so I want to know them, too.”
“Please don’t say things like that,” she said, smiling. “If my parents are part of who I am, I’m in big trouble.”
“Sometimes our parents shape us by being the thing we bounce off. They’re like the mold we have to break out of, making us define ourselves by how we’re different from them.”
“Wow, that’s pretty profound. I think I like your theory.”
“So let’s go. It’ll make your mother happy.”
“Or she may just get really pissed off that I dropped in unannounced with a visitor, therefore not giving her a chance to clean the house or prepare a meal or make herself look suitably miserable for the meeting.”
“We’ll call when we’re twenty minutes out. How about that?”
Macy wanted to produce some logical reason not to do this, but then again, she didn’t have the heart to tell Griffin no, not when he was being so sweet and when the trip really would likely placate her mother.
“Have I ever told you that you’re a really cool guy?”
He smiled. “No, but this would be a good time to point it out.”
“You, Griffin Reed, are a really cool guy, and I’m not just saying that because we’re in bed together or because you’re my soon-to-be boss.”
“Thanks,” he said.
“How about this—we’ll go, but we won’t stay long, okay? We get in and out, quick and relatively painless.”
He leaned down and kissed her. It was a long, sweet kiss that felt more intimate than any other thing they’d done together. Intimate in a good way, and in a bad way. The kind of intimate that came with taking their relationship to the next level, even as Macy was dragging her feet and trying to keep them from going there.