What did one wear to a planned and mutual seduction?
Clearly nothing Chessie had thus far tried on and discarded as being too dull, too plain, too boring…or too hard to get out of, which definitely was something to be considered when dressing to be undressed. You never saw a seduction scene in a movie where the seductee was wearing a turtleneck sweater, for crying out loud… She lowered her head into her hands and wondered when it was that she’d lost what was left of her mind.
She’d probably gathered it up by mistake when she’d been busily tossing all of her common sense into some mental trash bin.
She’d never been promiscuous. She wasn’t sure she even knew anyone who had ever been promiscuous.
Well, okay, there was Marylou. Except that wasn’t true, either. Marylou had married the men she’d slept with. At least three of them, anyway.
“Stay on point, stay focused, get dressed,” Chessie told herself, looking around her bedroom and most of her wardrobe, which was scattered all over the place. She went into cleanup mode, still dressed in her bathrobe, still with nothing to wear.
“I’m hopeless,” she said at last, plopping down on her now cleaned-off bed and lying back to stare at the ceiling. Were those dead bugs in the glass light shade of the hideously old and out-of-date overhead light? Well, of course they were. There were always a couple of kamikaze bugs that managed to work their way through the window screens and dive bomb the lightbulbs.
Was this the sort of thing femme fatales thought about when they knew there soon would be a man in their bedroom? Probably not.
But since she wasn’t a femme fatale, Chessie got up, stood on the mattress and unscrewed the light shade.
The light shade slipped from her hands, fell onto the mattress, where it bounced and turned over, and a half-dozen bugs—toes up and deader than doornails— scattered all over her freshly changed sheets.
Chessie wanted to cry.
She wasn’t cut out for this, none of it. She didn’t have what it took to arrange a night of mad monkey sex with a stranger and then pull it off as if it was nothing out of the ordinary.
She wasn’t that kind of girl.
“No,” she told herself as she stripped the top sheet and headed for the linen closet. “You’re the kind of girl who wishes you could be that kind of girl. Just once. One time. A fling. A…a moment in time. Every girl should have one, shouldn’t she?”
Knowing the answer to that would depend on who she asked, Chessie erased the question from her mind, remade the bed and headed back to her closet.
“You want him,” she said softly, giving in at last to the inevitable. “It isn’t right, it isn’t wrong. It just is. You looked at him and you wanted him. Bang. Instant. Pure unbridled lust. He turned you on. You turned him on. You’re a good girl who wants to be a bad girl just this one time. One itty-bitty time, and then you can go back to dull and boring. And you’re damn well not going to back down now, so just knock it off, Burton, dig into this closet and find yourself some sleaze.”
The second-floor windows were dark, but as he walked up the cement pathway to the side door he thought he could make out some sort of flickering light behind the glass, as if she’d set out candles everywhere. Setting the scene, he decided, and then decided that was all right with him.
There’d be time for lights later, once she’d lost any lingering inhibitions. Then he’d look his fill, touch her in all her most intimate places, watch her response. Hear her soft moans. Drink from her as he spread her, teased her, as she raised her hips to him…
He’d never thought like this. Had never felt like this. Sex. For the sake of sex. For the glory of it, the white-hot heat of it, the insatiable need of it.
He’d pick her up, lie on his back on her bed and watch as she slowly settled herself over him, as she slipped her own hands between them and pleasured herself even as she pleasured him…
He’d married the first woman he’d ever slept with, because that was the right thing to do. He’d had encounters since the divorce. But they’d been forgettable; just necessary release, and they hadn’t been all that frequent. He hadn’t been a monk, but he’d poured all his energies, all his desire, into his business, and that hadn’t left much time for anything else. Or anyone else.
On her bed…in her shower…on the kitchen table where they’d shared cookies and milk and conversation. He’d dribble milk between her breasts, watch it flow slowly down, into her navel, and then he’d lick it off….
It was sex. That’s what he wanted. That’s what she wanted. Two people. Two busy people with businesses to build, futures to work toward. Definite plans.
Two lonely people who’d been on the outside of life for so long….
He climbed the stairs and knocked on the door to her apartment, the bouquet of summer flowers feeling inadequate, maybe a stupid gesture. Then again, a package of condoms wasn’t exactly a great hostess gift.
He was smiling at his own ridiculous thought as the door opened.
She smiled back at him, and then turned to walk a few steps back into the candlelit living room.
She was wearing a halter top that tied behind her neck and at her waist. A pair of shorts whose length probably inspired the name. Her feet were bare. Her coppery hair still damp and curling around her head.
She was fresh from her shower, and he could smell the mix of soap and some light scent that reminded him of summer nights at his parents’ lake cottage.
Her back still to him, she ran her hands down the sides of her body, down to her thighs and then back up again, skimming over her buttocks before they disappeared in front of her and her shoulders hunched slightly.
He knew what she was doing; she was cupping her own breasts in her hands.
She half turned, smiling at him over her shoulder.
He briefly wondered where she’d locked up her inhibitions, and then just hoped she’d lost the key.
“More,” he said tightly. “Turn all the way around. Look at me.”
She did as he asked, her hands still cupping herself. Her thumbs moving as she gently squeezed her breasts together.
Jace knew he’d been put on notice.
He dropped the bouquet somewhere in the general vicinity of a table he was pretty sure was beside the door, and then kicked that door shut.
He was already unbuttoning his shirt as he walked to where she was standing in the middle of the room.
She reached behind her and undid the top closing of her halter top, letting it fall to her waist.
The candlelight flickered warmly against her bare skin. She wore no bra.
His shirt hit the floor and she stepped forward, placing both her palms against his rib cage.
His muscles flinched involuntarily beneath her touch, and she smiled. It was a secret smile; he couldn’t read her thoughts.
He reached behind her and undid the second tie, and then went to work on the row of buttons that made up the front closure of her shorts. She wore no underwear.
Even as she undid his belt, she had nearly rid him of his slacks before he could grab one of the foil packets from his pocket. If she had waited another moment, until she’d closed her hand over him, he wouldn’t have remembered safety precautions at all.
They had all night. They hadn’t discussed any time limit, but he was sure they both knew it. And they’d use every minute of that night.
But now wasn’t all night. Now was the moment they’d both ached for. Now was the explosion that couldn’t wait. She’d signaled as much to him, and he hadn’t missed the sign.
He picked her up and she straddled his waist even as she clamped her arms close around his neck. He backed up toward the door, turning at the last moment and putting her against it, holding her there as he fumbled with the damn protection, his hands shaking as desire nearly overcame him.
Finally…finally…
“Aahhh, yes…”
Her hold on him tightened as he moved inside her. She bit at his neck as he pressed her against the door, driving into her without mercy, and she took everything he had and still wordlessly begged for more, her fingernails digging into his skin, her low moans spurring him on and on and on.
And then, suddenly, her entire body seemed to go quiet, and she simply clung to him, not breathing but just holding on, as if something momentous was about to occur, something she had been seeking getting close, closer, and if she moved, if she breathed, it might not come.
He wouldn’t let that happen.
He slipped his hands down to cup her buttocks, careful to hold her in place as he gave her all he had to give; deeper, faster, harder, until she cried out in near triumph as she found what she’d been seeking…. “Yes, yes, yes.”
He felt his own climax then, an explosion and a release that nearly buckled his knees as, together, they sank to the floor, still locked together.
There was nothing but the sounds of two people attempting to catch their breath, and then no sound at all.
Until he heard her giggle.
Jace rolled onto his back, pulling her along with him, and saw her smiling face looking down into his. “What?” he asked her, cupping her buttocks and pressing her against him.
“Nothing,” she said, and then giggled again. “Okay, something. I feel…I feel like something out of a bad movie. Did we really just do that?”
“Some of my memories are a little hazy, but I think I’ll always remember all of this one. Yes, we really just did do that.”
She laid her cheek against his chest. “Amazing.”
“Why, thank you, ma’am,” he said, and planted a kiss on the top of her head. Their first kiss of the night, actually, which was pretty amazing all by itself. He had some catching up to do.
“Not you. Us. It. If you hadn’t taken your shirt off by yourself, I probably would have ripped it off. With my teeth. I—I just jumped you, with no provocation. I should be so ashamed.”
Jace thought about this for a moment. “Don’t forget the foreplay.”
She lifted her head once more, her curls falling into her eyes. “I don’t remember any foreplay.”
“Sure you do. Tell me you haven’t been thinking about what would happen here every second of every minute since we had that little discussion outside earlier. Foreplay.”
“You mean while I was mixing up the mother of the bride with the mother of the groom, and then put the wrong gown on the bride?”
“I went through a red light,” Jace admitted. “You’re lucky I’m here at all, and not lying in a ditch somewhere.”
Chessie began nibbling at the side of his chin. “Thank heaven for small favors. Do you want to get up now?”
She wiggled herself against him as she pushed up on her hands.
“Not if you keep that up, no,” he told her, but then he managed to reach down and grab her behind the knees, lifting her as he got to his feet. “I’d ask you to point me toward the bedroom, but I already know where it is.”
She snuggled in close. “I guess I should have asked this question earlier. Are you insatiable?”
“I didn’t think so until yesterday. Maybe.”
She laughed again, that free, easy laugh he’d never heard before, the one that did something more to his heart than it did to his libido. “Oh, that’s good….”
Chessie awoke hungry, but not for food. Food was unnecessary to life at the moment. But something else was.
She lifted her head from the pillow—how did the pillow get to the bottom of the bed? How did she end up at the bottom of the bed? Oh. Right. She remembered now. Jace had turned her around, and then slowly pulled her up the length of his torso, belly to belly, as he laid back against the brass headboard, spreading her legs as he did so, and then sliding her legs up and over his shoulders as he…and then she…
That had been interesting. But, then, he’d been running out of condoms. Good thing she had bought some herself. Even better that she hadn’t told him immediately, or else things might not have gotten so…interesting.
The green digital glow of the bedside clock told her it was a little after three in the morning. A sweep of her bare legs across the mattress told her that she was alone in the bed. The immediate sense of loss was eased when she at last realized what had awakened her.
Jace was in the shower.
Alone.
Poor boy.
Chessie had inhibitions. Everyone did. She was by nature modest, shy about her body and not very adventure some.
But Chessie wasn’t here, thank God. Chessie the good girl, the “I would never do that!” girl was on a long trip somewhere, and the just-born Wishful Chessie, the Wild Chessie, the “Oh, why the hell not!” Chessie was in residence for the night.
And she was going to make every minute of that night count!
She might have wrapped herself in the top sheet, if she could have found it, but since she was pretty sure one end of it was still tied to the bedpost, she just rolled off the mattress and headed for the bathroom.
Her breath caught as she saw Jace standing in the clear-glass shower stall that hid little from her view, his back turned to her. She’d had his body, every inch of it, touched and tasted and savored, but there was something about seeing him when he thought himself unobserved that hit her like a punch to the stomach.
And lower.
His muscles weren’t immense, overdeveloped. He didn’t look like a weight lifter. He was simply fit and healthy, a hard worker whose body reflected that.
She thought his sun-avoiding tush looked pretty cute, though, where the rest of him was so beautifully, evenly tanned.
Chessie looked down at her own body, wondering if maybe she wasn’t pushing things, daring to be naked with him in the light of the bathroom. His perfection up against her ho-hum body. Not that he’d seemed disappointed that she wasn’t especially…lush.
He poured some shampoo into his hand and raised both hands to his head, rubbing in the shampoo as he turned slightly in the shower. She could see his chest now, watch his muscles move as he worked in the shampoo, as streams of bubbles began running down his neck, over his chest, skimming that damned six-pack that had gotten her into all of this in the first place.
“Okay, that does it, I’m ready,” she said out loud, heading for the shower stall.
She stepped inside, lifting the soft net ball from its resting place, and quickly loaded it with liquid soap as he watched her, his hands still on his head, his smile of welcome curling her toes.
“Okay, whose fantasy is this—yours or mine?” he asked her, blinking soap out of his eyes. He even blinked sexily.
“I don’t have fantasies,” she told him, knowing that was a fib. She hadn’t had fantasies until she’d met him. Now all she did was fantasize; she should be washing out her mind with the scrubbie. When you got right down to it, the man was a menace. “What’s yours?”
“Nope. If you won’t share, neither will I. A man has his pride.”
“Yeah, right. And you say that with shampoo all over your head. But never fear, I think I have some idea. Stop me if I’m wrong…”
Dropping to her knees, she proceeded to wash him, paying very careful attention to…detail. Until he did actually stop her by taking the net ball from her and returning the favor as she hung on to his shoulders, because otherwise her rubbery knees would have betrayed her and she would have slipped to the floor. He slid the net over her chest, rubbed it in circles around her straining nipples…insinuated it between her legs and gently stroked, stroked, stroked. Until she whimpered and let go. Let it all just…go.
Jace woke at six and crept out of the bedroom, heading downstairs for the duffel bag he’d brought with him, the one with his work clothes in it. He hadn’t taken it upstairs because that would make it seem as if he’d planned to stay the night. Which he hadn’t planned. He’d just hoped.
He was pouring his first cup of coffee when Chessie appeared in the kitchen doorway, sleep rumpled and wearing a T-shirt three sizes too big for her. On the front were the words Keep Back. I Don’t Just Hate Mornings. I Kill Morning People.
She pointed to his cup and he handed it over to her, then watched her slide onto the same chair she’d sat on the night they’d shared milk and cookies. She held the mug in both hands and sipped from it, blew on the surface of the coffee, doggedly sipped again.
He poured himself another cup and sat down across from her. “So. When is it safe to talk to you?”
Still with her hands on the mug, she straightened her index finger.
“One more sip? One more minute? One more hour? I should come back next month?”
She finally put down the cup, closing her eyes and letting out a long sigh. “I feel like I’ve been shipwrecked, and then the waves tossed me around on the rocks for a couple of hours before spitting me out on the beach.”
He tried not to smile. “This is why we also work, eat and sleep. Constant sex, great as it is, could kill us in a couple of days.”
She nodded her agreement. “You look good, though. I checked myself in the bathroom mirror before I came out here. I look like something you might find stuck to the bottom of one of those work boots of yours. That’s not fair.”
“I think you look beautiful. You are beautiful. Everywhere,” Jace said before he could edit his thoughts.
Suddenly, inexplicably, she looked shy. Her eyelids lowering, her head turning a little away from him, that damnably adorable blush creeping into her cheeks.
“I’m not allowed to say that I think you’re beautiful? Maybe we should have gone over the rules a little more.”
She bit her lips together, shook her head. “No, it’s all right. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Jace said, his voice sounding a little hard, even to himself. But he could take a hint. She wanted him gone. He got to his feet. “So…?”
“So…” Chessie repeated, putting down her own cup and getting to her feet. “I guess that’s—” her hands fluttered as she seemed to hunt for the right words “—I guess that’s…it?”
“Yeah.” Jace wanted to kick something. Starting with his own backside. “I guess that’s it. We were right. It was good. We were good.”
Chessie reached for her coffee cup and held it up in front of her, like some sort of shield. “I think so. Yes.”
He couldn’t tell what she was thinking. And she wasn’t helping him, damn it.
“And now you’re having second thoughts and you just wish I’d get the hell out of here, right?”
She blinked rapidly, obviously trying to hold back tears. And then she nodded.
“Fine. That was the agreement. We both agreed. I blew out your damn candles for you, but the flowers are dead. Now I’ll get out of your way.”
Jace slammed out of the apartment, taking out some of his anger and frustration by slamming her front door and then the side door leading outside. Neither slam helped.
What the hell was the matter with him? He’d just had the kind of night most men dream of, for crying out loud. And with no strings attached, no promises, no recriminations, no worries about letting the woman down easy.
And he’d gone into the thing with both eyes open, had even laid down conditions of his own.
She’d gotten out of her system whatever she’d needed out of her system, and he’d had the best sex of his life, the most willing partner, his every fantasy played out and more. He should be whistling, eager to tell his buddies about his great night. His big score.
He turned and looked up at the blank windows.
That was it. Done. Over. He couldn’t say she hadn’t been true to her word.
She hadn’t even suggested they kiss each other goodbye….
Chessie walked around the apartment with a plastic clothes basket, dumping burned-down candles into it as she went. They mashed down the sad, wilted flowers she hadn’t even noticed last night, hadn’t thanked him for and couldn’t possibly revive.
Every once in a while she lifted the hem of her sleep shirt and wiped at her tear-wet cheeks. Once, just once, she’d used it to blow her nose.
Why was she crying? She’d gotten what she’d wanted, hadn’t she?
And Jace had more than lived up to expectations. He’d been in turn forceful, leisurely, attentive, demanding. He’d been playful and even a little tender. He’d satisfied her every need, even needs she hadn’t known she had.
He’d made her feel playful, sensual, exciting, wantonly, sinfully sexy and, yes, beautiful. Desirable. He’d made her purr, and moan and cry out in ecstasy so overpowering she thought she might die of it.
He’d kissed her. Oh, how he’d kissed her. She could taste his hunger.
She’d given as good as she got, or at least she hoped so. He’d seemed to think so.
Two relative strangers, sharing intimacies that brought a fiery blush to not just her cheeks but to her entire body now, as she relived that first, frantic coupling, the silliness in the kitchen that had turned grittily serious and intense. The way she had only half jokingly loosely looped his wrists together and then tied the sheet to the headboard, and then told him just what she wanted to do with him…and he’d laughingly let her.
She could still taste him. Smell him. Feel the heat of him.
She wished she’d never done it, any of it. It had been wonderful. It had been body over mind.
Now the pleasure was a memory, and she felt strangely bereft, empty. Even as she’d been insatiable all of the night, feeling everything she had always wanted to feel…there had been something, some elusive something, always remaining just beyond her reach. Incomplete.
For everything they’d done, everything they’d shared, she felt somehow cheated. Did he feel the same way? Was that why he’d looked at her so strangely just before he left, as if he was angry with her?
She’d never know.
Because she’d never be able to look at him again.
Chessie bent down to pick up the crinoline that had slipped out of her hand as she’d attempted to suspend it from the clips on the hanger.
She moved like a woman twice her age, maybe three times her age. Every muscle in her body ached, nearly screamed out to her to for God’s sake sit down on something soft and leave us alone for a while. And it would have to be something soft, because she was still swollen between her legs, and almost exquisitely tender.
“How do rabbits stand it?” she muttered under her breath.
Her arms felt leaden, she kept getting small, painful cramps in her right hand she didn’t want to imagine the source of, and her bottom lip was sort of tingly. It would be nice if she could get some blood to flow to her head, because it all seemed to be settled lower, half in anticipation, half because it was probably too tired to pump that high.
“Are you planning to spend the rest of the day down there?”
Chessie closed her eyes. Wasn’t this Marylou’s day off? Hadn’t Ted come home from Vegas yet? Hadn’t they celebrated his homecoming in bed? Marylou was nearly twice Chessie’s age, and yet she seemed fresh, her usual bouncy self. Maybe she took special vitamins. She’d have to ask her for the brand name.
“I was looking for stray straight pins. You know how they can hide in the carpet in here,” Chessie lied, and then willed herself to her feet, biting back a groan. “Why are you here?”
“Jace called me. He wants to discuss adding a staircase or something. And a security system.”
“Well, good-good-goody for Jace.” Good old Jace. Mr. Professional, already back on the job, and with no ill effects. No jet lag for Jace Edwards. No self-recrimination or second thoughts, either, Chessie decided.
Men were just wired differently, that’s all. Where did she think the saying “Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am” had come from, if it wasn’t so typical of men to take what they could get and then walk away without a qualm? Women didn’t have that luxury. Women always got stuck with feelings of guilt.
And maybe some regret, sadness and a wish that things could have worked out differently…even if they didn’t plan on or even want things to work out differently. Maybe if, on top of all the great sex, they didn’t actually like the guy, damn it.
“Goody-goody for Jace? You sound like you’re thinking of roasting the man on a spit. What’s the problem? You don’t like him?”
Chessie took refuge in partial fib, partial truth. “I don’t even think about him. I just don’t want a security system. They don’t work. We’ve got great locks. But if someone wants to get in here, they’ll get in here. And at least I won’t be setting off the alarm by mistake when I open a window or decide to get a glass of water in the middle of the night. And what happens if I buy a cat?”
“You’re thinking about buying a cat? How many cats? Old maids surround themselves with cats.”
“I’m not buying a cat. I was just saying, giving a for-instance.”
“Good. But as for the security system, Jace already ordered it, probably knowing I’d agree with him, which I do. The wiring goes in tomorrow.”
“Damn.” Chessie didn’t want a security system, didn’t want to give up without a fight, but to fight it she’d have to see Jace, talk to Jace. And that wasn’t happening! “All right, all right, you just do what you want. But you’ll have to meet with him by yourself. I’m really too busy.”
Then she tried to stifle a yawn, but it got away from her.
Marylou looked at her, tilting her head to one side as if examining her for flaws. “You had sex last night, didn’t you?”
Pushing a hand against the small of her back, Chessie stretched, or at least tried to stretch. “What gave me away? The soft glow in my eyes, my secret smile?”
“There are bags under your eyes and you’re not smiling, probably because your bottom lip is puffy and there’s what looks like some badly camouflaged beard-stubble rash on your chin. What were you trying to do, make up for a year of abstinence in one night?”
It had been two years since she’d been with a man, but Chessie wasn’t about to share that piece of information. Her friends pitied her enough as it was. They’d all thought the same thing—Chessie would be much better, happier, if she only had a man in her life.
Was that sexist? Antifeminist? Or just honest? Besides, as far as Marylou had seemed to be concerned, it wasn’t a man in her life that Chessie needed, it was just a man.
And until this morning, when Jace had looked at her with that odd, unreadable expression in his eyes, and then had slammed out of her apartment, Chessie had pretty much agreed with Marylou’s assertion.
Except now it was even worse than it had been before Jace. Now she felt twice as empty inside. Not because she wouldn’t have sex with Jace again. Because she wouldn’t be able to talk with him again in that same easy way, smile with him, look forward to seeing him. Sex was great, no doubts there. But companionship, caring, sharing—in the long run they were all better.
“I can’t win with you, can I, Marylou?” Chessie asked as she walked across the hall and into her office, taking refuge by sitting down—gingerly—behind her desk. “First I’m not getting enough, as you have at least once so delicately called it, and now I’m getting too much.”
Marylou sat down on the chair on the far side of the desk, crossing her long legs at the knee, her right foot moving in a slow kick, her backless heeled sandal dangling. “Moderation in all things, Chess. Living hard and dying young is about as bad as living forever and never really being alive. One’s too short, the other’s too long. You want to concentrate on the just right.”
“Now I feel like you’re handing me the X-rated version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.”
Marylou kept her expression solemn. “We could learn a lot from fairy tales, you know. Especially about wolves. Wolves in sheeps’ clothing, wolves that huff and puff and are really mostly filled with hot air. Wolves that pretend they’re something they’re not. The Boy Who Cried Wolf. I could go on. Please, stop me.”
“Happily. In fact, let’s just drop the subject completely, okay?”
“Really? I’d thought you’d want to tell me just a little about Toby. I’m not asking for the juicy details—although I wouldn’t mind, if you feel like sharing. But you two have obviously hit it off, at least in one area. So, when am I going to meet him? Ted and I thought maybe a nice dinner party next week? Elizabeth and Will, Claire and Nick, Ted and me, you and Toby. Elizabeth is going to be having that baby in a few months, and Lord only knows when we’d be able to do it again.”
Chessie’s early-warning system started clanging. Marylou was pushing her into a corner, pushing her to produce Toby, knowing damn well that Toby hadn’t been the one she’d been with last night. Chessie knew it; Marylou knew it. How did Marylou know? What had given her away? Why did she have to hang around with such smart friends?
Still, Chessie tried to hedge, play for time. “Don’t try to put this one on Elizabeth. You just want to check him out.”
Marylou shrugged in her elegant way. “And that’s so wrong? We’re friends, Chess, but I’m old enough to be your mother—not that anyone else has to know that, and start counting on their fingers. You’re on the rebound, and I don’t want to see you rush into anything.”
“Rebound?” Chessie laughed. “On the rebound from what? Who, I mean.”
“Rick Peters, of course. Now that he’s back in town.”
Chessie sat back in her chair, stunned. Marylou wasn’t giving up on this one, was she? “Rick dumped me six years ago, Marylou. That would have to be a record-long rebound.”
“Okay, then look me in the eye and tell me you were with this Toby guy last night.”
Chessie lowered her gaze to the desktop.
“Uh-huh. I knew it. I can be wrong once in a while, but not that often. Now tell me who it really was, not that I don’t already know, unfortunately. It was Rick, wasn’t it?”
Chessie tried to blink back her tears, but one escaped onto her cheek, and she rubbed at it angrily. “Marylou, don’t. It doesn’t matter who it was. It’s what I did. It was a mistake, a stupid, impulsive, crazy mistake, I feel horribly embarrassed, and I really, really don’t want to talk about it.”
Her friend got up and quickly came around the desk to wrap Chessie in a fierce hug. “Shh, it’s all right, sweetheart. Water under the bridge, that’s all he was, right, and it’s over now, he’s finally out of your system. Everyone makes mistakes, but they’re not the end of the world. Nobody knows but us two, and we won’t talk about it. Not ever again. It’s over. Now why don’t you go upstairs and take a nap. I can hold down the fort here.”
Sniffling, nodding, Chessie disentangled herself from Marylou’s embrace and headed for the stairs. She got as far as the bedroom, as far as the rumpled bed, before she began to cry in earnest.