Chapter Two

Master In Disguise

I took my sore behind and wounded ass home to an empty apartment, grateful that for once my ne’er-do-well brother Riley was not stuffing his face with junk food on my living room couch. He was nowhere to be found and it took all the decency I could muster not to lock him out by setting the deadbolt. I knew if I did that, he’d only find some way around the complicated locking system that I’d installed to keep the worst of Chicago’s riffraff from getting in. Picking locks was one of my brother’s few claims to fame; I didn’t even want to venture into the murky territory of how he learned his special talents and when he used them—other than to gain access to my apartment when I wasn’t there to let him in.

I made myself a stiff drink, pulled some Chinese takeout from the fridge and popped it in the toaster oven to heat while I puttered around the apartment, mostly picking up after my lazy brother. Quite honestly, I had no desire to sit myself down until the food was ready to eat, even then, I thought I might just lie on the couch and avoid putting too much weight on my hurting ass while I surfed the TV for something to watch.

Just as I was about to arrange myself on the couch, I thought to check my email—as if I actually expected an apology from Tate. None there. I sat back and sighed, feeling defeated. I went on to browse through the rest of my email, and when an email from masterindisguise@writersguild.com appeared in my inbox, I couldn’t stop myself from peeking at the message.

Hey there, naughty baby, I hope you’re still on for dinner tomorrow evening. I’ve booked a table at that little Spanish Bistro I told you about last week. I’m taking you at your word. Answer when you get this. Patrick

Patrick. My most devoted fan.

When I’m not an advertising account exec, I spend my free hours penning kinky erotic stories that I post to a website I began five years ago. It wasn’t much but a simple blog when it started, then two years ago, a good friend of mine who’s a whiz kid at web design took my antiquated site and turned it into a smooth functioning story site where I could invite my fans and fellow writers to post their naughtiest fantasies in story form and comment back and forth. The new site took off faster than I expected, and in its second year, it began paying for itself, as well as giving me a tidy sum to pad my income. Little did I know that it would become my only source of income.

Master In Disguise, Patrick, was one of the first to post his stories to the new site and we’d been regularly corresponding for over a year. Our communications over the previous three months had been strictly off the website and through our private email. From his first story, I could see that Patrick had a real flair for writing, characterization, good plots and blistering hot erotic scenes, which tended toward the kinky side of sexual relationships. My favorite. Every word he wrote I came to savor. Every time I opened one of his stories, I was practically drooling. Over time, my fantasies about this mystery man took some dark but delightful turns. My imagination went wild with the thought of actually meeting him in person, and discovering the ‘Dream Dom’ from my fantasies there to save me from my messed up life.

After a week or so of these silly imaginings, I’d abruptly come to my senses and remind myself that Patrick, if that was really his name, was most likely just a mild mannered college professor with a keen wit and a brilliant pen, capable of sending my crotch into paroxysms of delight with his racy prose. Interesting enough for email, but a face to face relationship with a man I’d likely overlook in a bar or on the street? I doubted a meeting would be a good idea, and I’d been putting off his sporadic invitations for nearly two months. However, it seemed that we’d finally reached the point of no return. The week before, thinking solely about his sizzling story of female surrender to a grim, but sexy mercenary, I sat with my hand between my legs and agreed to our first meeting. One evening, one measly dinner out. What could it hurt? I kept telling myself, once my hand was out of my crotch and I was thinking rationally. If he had any expectations of something more than one casual dinner then I’d lay them to rest right then and there.

Given the miserable state of my life when I received this latest email from Master In Disguise, I was about to make up some excuse, create an emergency—certainly the current state of my life could be called an emergency. No job. My backup funds nearly depleted trying to support myself and Riley. I might manage for a few weeks, but not much longer than that. I had sound reasons for turning the man down this time and I nearly launched in the sordid truth about my lousy day—minus the graphic details of my punishment from LuAnn. But I was simply too tired to spell it out for him in an email. Besides my desk chair was too damn hard to even sit on.

After reading his email for the 7th time, I finally dashed off my reply, I’ll be there…Clarisse, and hit ‘Send’.

To Patrick I was still Clarisse Laurent my on-line penname. Though he’d said he was sharing his given name with me, I was still unable to disclose the fact that I was just plain old Claire Lawrence. Until the following night when we finally met, I nurtured the belief that Patrick was exactly the man I pictured him being, nice but a little nerdy, certainly not my Dream Dom. He’d be as common and easy to know off-line as he was on-line. And that would be perfect. I’d have a sympathetic ear for my sordid tale, a shoulder to cry on. I couldn’t imagine telling any of my friends what happened with Tate and LuAnn, but Patrick who understands my kink? I hardly regretted that rash email after it so swiftly left my outbox.

Resigned that I would be meeting him the following night, I downed my stiff drink, pulled dinner from the toaster oven and settled myself as comfortably on the couch as I could. That’s exactly where I remained until it was time to go to bed.

***

The little Spanish bistro seemed quaint and unassuming at first glance. The storefront restaurant was one of a half dozen small businesses along the busy downtown thoroughfare. It shared a doorway with an old jewelry store that looked as though it should have gone out of business in the 50s and had somehow managed to linger on, its aging proprietor hunched over his gems like a nearsighted miser. Glancing at the grimy window I wondered if anyone ever walked through that door.

Patrick’s bistro created an entirely different impression, especially once I stepped through the front door and the fragrant aromas of spicy food practically knocked me off my feet. As I breathed in, the rich perfumes seem to move through my body in a pleasurable wave—my first happy breath since the day before and the sudden demise of my career. I stood in the entry waiting for the host to seat me and gazed around the room seeing not more than a dozen tables scattered through the dining area. The air glowed with a warm light. The linens were white. The goblets fine crystal. And while the glassware tickled musically and china plates clattered above the common noises of the restaurant, the strains of Spanish guitar music could be heard filtering into the air with a melody that seemed to open my senses as much as the smell of the food. I’d given little thought to romance or sex prior to this meeting—I suppose I was still too stunned from the events of the day before. For just an instant as I stood waiting to be seated, an intensely erotic feeling swept through me. That was quickly followed by a moment of utter panic, which I immediately squashed. Just one measly dinner, Claire!

Peering more closely into the dining room, I could see that most of the tables were occupied, but there was none with just a single man. My heart lurched anxiously. I was at least twenty minutes late. Had he already left?

“Are you dining alone tonight, miss, or meeting someone?” a pleasant, dark-haired gentleman greeted me with a warm smile.

Flustered, I stumbled over the, “I-uh, am meeting someone,” and followed it with an unnecessarily bashful grin. He looked as though he needed more information. “I’m Clarisse Laurent…looking for Patrick?” How silly, I didn’t even know his last name.

The host’s eyes sparked as if he knew exactly who I wanted, then he led me between the tables to one near the back of the restaurant where, as I approached, I could see a man seated with his back to me. The high-back chair had nearly hidden him from view when I made my first perusal of the dining room.

“Mr. Helms,” the host addressed the man, then gave me a perfunctory nod as he motioned me toward the table and then backed away.

With a youthful spring to his movements, the seated gentleman pulled out of his chair, turned toward me and held out his hand. He was dressed in a finely tailored suit, in fact, everything from the shoes to the cufflinks to the tie reeked of money.

“Patrick Helms,” he announced—as if it weren’t perfectly obvious who he was the instant I saw him.

Caught staring into his deep blue eyes, I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. I could barely think beyond my moment of panic. Not once in nearly two years had we even broached the subject of exchanging pictures, so I had only a vague impression of what Patrick might look like. Nothing had been mentioned about his wavy blond hair, the high cheekbones, the square-cut jaw, or the magnetic charisma he exuded in his flashy smile. Not once had he suggested to me that I might recognize him.

“Cat got your tongue?” Damn if that gorgeous smile just didn’t quit.

“You—you could have told me…”

Figuring that I wasn’t up to the perfunctory handshake greeting, he lowered his hand and escorted me to the seat opposite his. Too weak to protest, I sat, still in shock, still trying to wrap my mind around the truth about Mr. Master In Disguise.

“Told you…what exactly?” he asked as he settled back into his chair.

“I’ve been corresponding with you for almost two years, and you never thought to mention that you’re a celebrity as popular as the fiction you write?” My surging anger surprised me, although the feeling seemed completely justified.

“You weren’t ready to know until now,” he said, ignoring my obvious distress.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I blurted out. I didn’t mean to be ungracious, but the Patrick Helms was the last person I thought I’d be meeting in that Spanish bistro. If I’d known I certainly would have done more than toss on a pair of slacks and an old sweater I rarely wore out.

“You look terrific, by the way, as pretty as I expected.”

“Thank you.” The blush was burning my cheeks before I finished saying thank you. “But do you think a compliment is going to get me beyond my shock?”

“Would it have been better if you’d known who I was ahead of time? I doubt it.” He peered at me, his expression almost whimsical. I wanted to be infuriated by his nonchalance but for some reason, maybe all that infectious charm, my anger was quickly lost in the sea of my wildly divergent emotions.

“You’re surprised, that’s obvious. Nervous…” he checked the gold watch around his wrist, “probably why you were twenty-five minutes late, and just guessing here, I’d say you look as though you’ve had a rough week. It stands to reason that you might be a little annoyed to have me showing up here as your date…”

“You hit the nail on the head there, buddy.” My sardonic reply earned me a gentle laugh.

Then he leaned in earnestly, capturing my left hand in his as it rested on the table. He held on tightly, refusing to let me pull it away.

“Look at me, Clarisse.”

“It’s Claire, not Clarisse. Claire Lawrence, not Clarisse Laurent,” I flipped off, sounding as if I resented the fact that I was not the mysterious femme fatale of my on-line profile. Just a career girl trying to make it in the big city was all the man better expect.

“Look at me, Claire,” he went on undeterred. His focus on me had not wavered but the degree of empathy he displayed made me so anxious that I think every nerve in my body had seized up. “How about you let go the fact of who I am. Let’s just concentrate on you and me, on our first date, on taking our friendship beyond emails and the anecdotes. You think you can do that?” He raised his brows questioningly.

“Maybe if I forget about who you are, or that your picture was on the cover of People a few months back, or that I’m so completely bowled over by your writing. Sometimes I read your stories and I want to throw mine in the trash, computer and all.” I tittered self-consciously. “Of course, if I did that, I’d be throwing away a very good computer that I can’t afford to replace.”

When he laughed something in me seemed to lighten. And when his warm hand disappeared from mine, I desperately wanted it back. Instead, my hand retreated to my lap where it would uselessly remain. Although I could still feel where he touched it and a flutter of desire swelled in me.

Ignoring my disparaging comment and, keeping things light, he launched into a conversation that covered a dozen topics that I think we may have already touched on over the past year. So much about our exchanges seemed familiar, as if taken from the pages of a book we’d both read. For minutes at a time I almost forgot who he was and centered on the friend he had become. When Patrick abruptly announced that he was famished and it was time to eat, small plates of tapas began arriving at the table in a steady stream, and our concentration became centered on marvelous tastes that were as erotic as the aromas that had earlier tickled my senses. Half the time Patrick fed me the first bite from the newest arrival and waited for my response—I found this very sexy even though it wasn’t intended to be. We each had our favorites and he chided me playfully if I disagreed with his. Wine flowed, further easing my nerves and turning me giddy after the third glass. I worried that I was getting drunk, though I didn’t let the worry linger long.

“You know I do have to drive home,” I finally reminded him.

“Or I’ll give you a lift and have your car brought around in the morning.”

My face must have soured.

“Just trying to be gallant,” he defended himself.

I didn’t mind the gesture, but the fact that he could ‘have my car brought around in the morning’ instantly reminded me of the great disparity in our lives. Why exactly was I having dinner with a rich and famous author?

“Sorry, I’m not used to that. I’ll grab a cab if I need to.”

He shrugged, then moved on to dessert, which the waiter had just placed in front of us.

“No, I can’t eat another bite.”

“You’re sure?”

“Absolutely.”

He was momentarily perturbed. “Okay, then you’ll take it home. It’s too good to miss and if you warm it just lightly in the microwave, the sauce will come back to life. I think.”

Regardless of the easy repartee that continued during those two hours, every time my eyes met the chilling intensity of his gaze, I was reminded that Patrick Helms was never going to be the ‘comfortable old shoe’ kind of relationship that I initially expected, especially when the raging lions of my sexual desire were pawing and leaping at my crotch in wild anticipation of pouncing on this sexy man. Just thinking of the intimate sexual subjects we’d discussed in our email conversations made me cringe with fear and an excitement I’d not felt, well, since long before the punishment sessions with Tate began.

While Patrick knew me far beyond any casual first date—he knew me more intimately than Tate ever did—almost nothing was mentioned about those emails, or my kinky website, or anything to do with sex at all. Was that by design? He had carefully led the conversation all night long. So to the question of what purpose he had in mind for me—for us—I was left to obsess on that until I saw him again, a matter that was handled just minutes prior to his escorting me to my car.

“I need a date for Wednesday afternoon, cocktail hour—if you can get away from work that soon. There’s this little gallery with an exhibit I’d like to see. Hopefully you’ll find it as interesting as I will.”

“Any artists I’d know?”

“Maybe. You’ll see when you get there. Pick you up at six?”

“Or I could meet you there.”

“I’d rather pick you up. Wednesday, six o’clock.” The tone of his voice left no room to quarrel. “Besides, you have to let me be chivalrous.” Another of those killer smiles and I was won over, completely wanting to be won over, in fact. I couldn’t remember when I was last with someone who, for the moments we were together, was absolutely focused on me and little else. This was something to get used to, but something I could grow to enjoy.

By the end of the evening I was smiling as happily as Patrick was, but by Wednesday, my fear of the relationship had driven me into a stew from which I was certain I could not recover in time to make a presentable appearance with Patrick in a public place. I should have asked him if this was a dressy affair. I didn’t know whether to dress up or dress down. Unable to make up my mind, I wrangled over what to wear for nearly an hour, tossing clothes from my closet to the bed, the floor, the chair, anywhere they landed. At six o’clock, I still hadn’t a stitch on, and the intercom buzzer suddenly startled me back to life. I dashed to the console at the front door.

“I’ll be right down,” I said, then I flew to the bedroom and tossed on some clothes, barely caring what it was. When I looked in the mirror, I liked what I saw.

Twenty minutes later after he first buzzed the apartment, I was finally getting into Patrick’s Mercedes. Although he raised an eyebrow at my tardy arrival, he didn’t say a word. I’d seen him drive off behind the wheel the previous night. This time he had a driver and I was forced to climb into the back seat and sit directly next to him. My heart was beating so fast that I could barely catch my breath.

“You look terrific.” He took my hand, then gave me a chaste peck on the cheek and settled back into his seat.

“So do you.” T-shirt, jeans, sport coat, and looking very sexy. My black slacks, layered sweaters and scarves fit his style. I guessed well, or was just plain lucky. I took a nervous breath. “So the exhibit? You didn’t give me much to go on. This isn’t pornographic, is it?” I leaned in, speaking in hushed tones so the driver wouldn’t hear.

Patrick chuckled. “I’m afraid not, strictly mainstream, but I was promised an absorbing look at the dramatic forces of light and dark.”

“That sounds deep.”

He shrugged, as if it seemed odd to him. He continued on about his friend who owned the gallery, and how he’d labored to put the exhibition together. He’d consulted with Patrick several times as he was working out the details. The more Patrick talked the more intrigued I became. Despite the self-effacing attitude toward art, he seemed to know his way around that world, either that or he talked a good line. His lengthy explanation took up nearly the entire trip to the gallery, which meant that I hardly needed to say a word, which was fine with me. I had to get my bearings with this man, find some firm and comfortable footing, otherwise who he was and his startling looks would continue to unnerve me.

From the moment we stepped into the gallery I felt as though I was walking through a surreal dream. Little gallery, he’d said. From the street maybe it gave the appearance of being small, a quaint artifact of an older era. There was just the single door and one small window that looked out on the street. But as I walked through the entrance, I suddenly stood stock still, too stunned to move. Instead of a tiny hole-in-the-wall storefront, my eyes beheld the most beautiful light filtering through the back end of the gallery where the tiny space opened into a much larger one. The ceiling rose at least two stories high and huge canvases hung against the bare white partitions—reminding me that this, like all exhibitions in this building, was just temporary staging. Other paintings hung freely in the open spaces, dangling from chains, swaying slightly, a bit like the subject matter they portrayed. Most were oil paintings from various artists, though there were a few watercolors scattered among them. The subject in each was the same. Rocky, turbulent, stormy and dead calm—the sea gave up no secrets in these paintings. Its angst was rendered in brush strokes, in sweeping lines and curling waves, in dozens of colors, blue, green, brown, black, orange, hues strange and familiar at once. Each painting shed a different light on those tumultuous seas, which pitched and tossed before my dizzy eyes, or lay flat as a pancake, inert, immovable, hiding the kinetic energy beneath the surface of waves not yet formed.

Patrick had led me around the gallery while I followed one step behind him in a perpetual state of awe. “What do you think?” he finally turned to me.

“I think I’m seasick,” I answered. Although we’d finished with the last painting, I would have loved to start over at the beginning, viewing the entire exhibit again with a better pair of eyes and more focus. I was sure I’d missed half of what the exhibition was intended to portray. But by then my mind was a sea of confusing thoughts, although I knew the confusion had nothing to do with the paintings of restless seas. All through our meandering journey through the gallery, I was fully aware of Patrick’s touch; the feel of his fingers when they grazed bare skin; the smell of his breath when he was close. All this was enough to stimulate a jittery feeling inside my bones. The sound of his humming stirred feelings in me that I desperately wanted to experience. The tune was something he made up, at least I didn’t recognize it. I was a basket case of conflicting emotions. Fear mostly. Why I was there with him at all was the biggest mystery of the night.

I admired his attention to detail, the small things about each painting he took time to point out. Things I hadn’t notice. Though he remained intently focused on the exhibit, he was just as attentive to me.

“Seasick?” he laughed.

“You’re not? Feels a little like my life.” I nodded to one particularly brutal scene of crashing waves. I should never had blurted out anything so deliberately leading without checking the implications first. As I feared, Patrick didn’t let the comment slide.

“Your life. Stormy? Or just a lot of rolling waves and rough surf?”

“Humm…stormy I suppose, but not so much now,” I dodged the question. He didn’t know about me losing my job and what a nosedive I’d been on for the last week—and he wasn’t going to know. I expected to be employed by the end of the month if the job with Halsey Lewis came through, and I had every reason to believe it would. Unemployment wasn’t a stormy sea, just a little turbulent water that would resolve itself in a short time. With no assurance that this face-to-face relationship with Patrick Helms would last that long, I was not about to delve into the archives of my life and dig up the worst of my crimes and misdemeanors to share with him civilly over a glass of wine. After all, I knew very little about Patrick’s life. Despite months of on-line correspondence, I wasn’t sure we knew each other well at all. Our email exchanges had been primarily about writing, kinky sex and safe subjects, like favorite movies, books, food, sports teams.

“So, tell me about your interest in TV poker?” I abruptly changed the subject.

He seemed a bit taken aback, then he thought a moment. “I study people. It’s good practice for writers.”

“And professional poker provides you with material?”

“In a way. Plus it keeps me sharp. I like to guess ahead and figure out how the game’s going to be played.”

“And you’re good at this?”

“Pretty good.”

Something told me that he was better than ‘pretty good’, even though, to that point, I’d only had a small glimpse of his powers of observation.

After leaving the gallery we walked down to the lakeshore, then alongside the lake in the direction of Navy Pier. The lake was choppy on the early evening, while trying to shed the winter as the earth yielded itself to the approaching spring. Despite the rough water, there was no mistaking that our close proximity to the lake had a soothing effect on me.

It was dark, with the lights of the city growing more spectacular as daylight faded. The last rays of the setting sun sent a mellow glow over the cityscape—all freshly imprinted in my mind. We sat on a bench, where for the first time, I asked questions, feeling suddenly willing to spit out anything that popped into my head.

“Did you always know that you could write?” I asked.

“Sort of. But I didn’t start the first book in earnest until about six years ago.”

“And before that? Before you started writing in earnest?”

“Med school.”

“Med school? You’re kidding!” I couldn’t believe that he’d never mentioned this before.

“Nope. Three years in college, four years of med school, then my residency for two at a VA hospital where I counseled returning soldiers.”

“That’s impressive.”

His face dimmed. “Not really. I never felt so out of place in my life.” A darkness crept into his mood, and I wasn’t sure how to reply.

“Psychiatry?” I finally ventured again.

He nodded and smiled, but not the kind of broad Patrick Helms’ smile I’d grown fond of in the last few days. Rather there was something wry and knowing behind his expression. Something painful, as well.

“Way out of my league with returning soldiers. I had nothing to say to them, nothing to offer, no pithy comments, no soothing words, not a thing to address their need. I might do better now, but at the time, I was the green behind the ears kid, way over my head in trauma I’d never witnessed firsthand. The only way I might have related to their suffering would have been to join the Army and take a tour or two in the Middle East, which I had no intention of doing.” He shrugged in a self-depreciating way I’d seen a couple of times before. “I’m not that brave, not that good a man.”

“Maybe you are that good, just in a different way.”

“No, I’m not.” He was firm about this.

“So you gave up psychiatry altogether?”

“I tried private practice once my residency was up. But my time at the VA ruined that too. It was a little hard caring about spoiled trust fund babies who were acting out, or neurotically wealthy females with too much time and money on their hands to find happiness. I got tired of being a weekly pacifier.”

“So you made the leap from there to bestselling psychological thrillers?”

“Pretty much. I’ve been writing since college, spare time stuff, all that kinky porn you have on your website.” A glimmer of mischief returned to his eyes.

“Ah! Now I can see the origins of your writing.” I thought back to some of his most intriguing sexual tales that layered substance with S&M in a way I’d seen from no other author.

The sudden mention of kinky porn—a subject I’d avoided up to that point—and the furnace between my thighs rapidly heated. Porn was the very thing that brought us together in the first place, and for the first time in our two meetings I allowed the familiar warmth of sexual arousal to spread throughout my body. For several seconds I felt as if I were burning up.

Patrick abruptly turned to me. “Talking about porn is difficult for you, isn’t it?”

I was unprepared for the question. “Why would you say that?”

“I thought I should let you lead when it came to that.” He snickered, then without waiting for a response from me, he immediately rose to his feet, and taking my hand in his, we walked on. In the distance, I could see his Mercedes waiting for us, as if it had arrived exactly on cue.

“How did your driver know to be here?”

“I told him where to be.”

“I’m not used to this ‘driver’ thing.”

“It comes with the fame,” he shrugged it off and we continued walking.

We ate in another small bistro, this one specializing in Cuban food. Though the spicy flavors were quite an aphrodisiac to a lust-struck female like me, I hardly needed more stimulation. Just being in Patrick’s company was enough. I did feel better once I allowed myself to enjoy the sexual infatuation. At least I was getting more comfortable with the dashing looks, the smile and all that cocky confidence. I was not, however, ready to broach sexual subjects in any kind of personal way. Just the thought and my tongue seemed to grow thick and fuzzy in my mouth. I squirmed in my seat more than I probably should have during that meal—especially if I wanted to keep my arousal a secret. It had been a week since my run-in with LuAnn, but I could still feel the soreness in my ass where the cane had left the deepest welts. That soreness made me horny. A yummy Jerk-chicken sandwich, Patrick Helms across the table; I needed nothing more to keep me aroused.

It took some honest introspection to admit that the ordeal with LuAnn had aroused me.

The incident just wouldn’t leave my mind. For days, I’d refused to acknowledge how much that horrific scene turned me on. But I was tired of putting up defenses, tired of fending off the truth. I knew my arousal betrayed me then. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t. Suddenly, I couldn’t stop my imagination from picturing Patrick as the one with the cane. This was particularly distressing when he asked, pointblank, “Are you feeling okay?”

I laughed easily in reply, saying: “Just sore muscles—worked out this morning, probably more than I should have.”

He nodded, but I doubt he believed me.

Later, as we stood at the door of my condo, he brushed the hair from my face and ran his thumb tenderly against my cheek. No kiss, and yet the affection was so obvious to me that I remained nearly breathless until I was safely inside my apartment. I gasped and my lungs filled with air as I sank back against the door trying to calm myself. I could hear Patrick whistling as he retreated to the stairs. The image of that jaunty retreat put a smile on my face, but for just a moment, before a new crowd of disturbing thoughts replaced that brief euphoria. The dizzying moments returned to darken my mood.

“You free Saturday night?” he’d asked.

“I think so,” my reply.

“Then you’re coming for dinner, I’m cooking. Six-thirty, that work?”

“Sure.”

“You’re sure it’s not too early?”

“No, no. I promise, I’ll be on time.”

“Great. I’ll email you the address. Take a cab. And you won’t find a place to park at that hour.”

A cab sounded fine. As long as he didn’t mention the ‘driver’ thing. Made me feel like a kept woman, and I wasn’t anywhere near ready to make that kind of commitment to the man, no matter how attractive he was. My instinct for self preservation required that I keep one foot on the brake, and ease into this relationship slowly.

I had already learned that Patrick was a master of the impromptu moment. The invite for dinner, which sounded like a command performance, had taken me off guard. In fact, he’d reached in and snatched my answer before I could think. I wasn’t quick enough to refuse. And why would I refuse? A matter of principle I suppose; I had the uneasy feeling that he was making too many assumptions about me too fast. Was it simple manipulation? A matter of control, perhaps? My Master In Diguise seemed to have emerged if only briefly, from wherever the dashing Patrick Helms kept him hidden, carefully cloaked behind mirrors and shadows, glib speech and beaming smiles. I could feel the dominant side of his personality waiting in the wings, enough to make me shiver with lust.

I wanted him in the worst way, but I didn’t want him without my explicit consent. A small inner voice urged me to slam the door on the relationship, but my resistance to his charms was rapidly waning. He seemed to ride right past my objections. I didn’t know what to think of him, but this intrigued me as much as it scared me.