If the Shoe Fits (7 page)

Sarah looked down at the floor, then tried to be honest without sounding like an idiotic teenager spilling her guts. “I tend to compartmentalize. Let’s just leave it at that. I don’t really get the whole goo-goo ga-ga schmoopsie-pooh thing. Like Bronte is kind of freaking me out right now, but it’s her wedding day, so I am trying to make allowances.”

“Damn!” Devon made a low, barely audible whistle. “You are every man’s dream come true: all of the attraction with none of the fatality!”

She smiled again. And blushed.

“And the blushing! I thought so in the car last night, but it was so dark, I couldn’t be sure. You are to die for. Please, let’s get out of here.” He hauled her up and, with one of her hands firmly in his, headed toward the bride and groom. “Max! Enough is enough. Don’t you need to consummate this marriage?” Max and Bronte looked up from—what else—gazing at one another, and turned in unison toward Devon and Sarah.

“Somewhere you need to be, Dev?” Max grinned.

“It’s not just me. All these old, crusty windbags need to get home to their Viagra. Give old Bertrand a break.”

“Well, if it’s Bertrand we’re talking about, then…” Max’s eyes swung over to Sarah. “Hi, Sarah. Are you having a good time?”

Sarah had met Max several times and always thought he erred on the side of serious. Now, not so much.

“Why, yes, Max. I’m having quite a good time. Dunlear is very hospitable.”

“Dunlear, is it?” He raised one eyebrow and smiled again at Sarah, then let his face return to mock-seriousness when he met his younger brother’s look. “Devon, please go tell Mother that we will be leaving the reception now and would like to have a few words with her before we go.”

The final half hour of the wedding was a complete blur of hugs and more photographs and hip-hip-hoorays. And then a drowsy fifteen minutes, eyes closed and head on Devon’s shoulder, in the back of the hotel limo until, before she knew it, Sarah found herself collapsing in her hotel room’s enormous bed, the crinoline and velvet of her dress forming a vast cloud around her. She could hear—feel, really—Devon prowling around the room, adjusting the lights, checking the fire in the fireplace, taking off his cufflinks and studs, and dropping them with a little clink into a small decorative dish on the mantle.

Sarah was so tired, so physically exhausted, that she thought she might really just fall asleep. All of his seduction talk notwithstanding. She started to hum with the imminent pleasure of simple, sweet sleep.

“You don’t want to sleep in this gown, do you?” His voice was so close that she could feel his breath against her skin, maybe even his lips.

“Mmm-nnng…” She was drifting away.

He turned her onto her stomach, gently kissing her neck, and started working his way down her back. Forty-two buttons later, he was rewarded with the sight of the full length of the perfect alabaster skin of her back. She stretched like a cat, enjoying the final freedom from the garment that had been confining her for the past eight hours. She hadn’t worn a bra because the dress was completely structured from the inside out, with stiff stays, a built-in cantilevered brassiere, and attendant hardware. It was as though she had been encased in a formfitting cage the entire time she’d been wearing it.

Devon pulled the warm velvet fabric gently down over her shoulders and her arms. Then, turning her onto her back, he pulled it the rest of the way off her torso. The crinoline underskirt was a separate piece altogether. He unsnapped the tiny hook-and-eye closures at the side of the underskirt and pulled that slowly off as well.

And there she was. In all her splendor.

Her eyes were glazed when they fluttered open and she realized she was splayed out atop the bed in nothing but her transparent lace underwear and thigh-high brown suede boots. In some vague approximation of modesty, she murmured something that sounded like gratitude, let one tired arm drape across her breasts, then smiled and let her eyes close again.

Devon decided he was going to take his time with these Sarah James boots. What kind of mind even thought up such things? A very compartmentalized mind, apparently.

The boots had some sort of elastic in the suede, so the material was like a second skin against Sarah’s creamy thigh. He ran a pinkie between the high edge of the boot and her skin, testing the elasticity and letting it snap. Sarah gave a little moan of approval. He let his finger go deeper into the sheath, then pushed one whole, flat hand in, snug against her luscious skin. She started to squirm a little. He retrieved his hand and tried to think.

“I don’t even know where to begin.” He was sitting back on his haunches, naked, looking down at her incredible body. She was intoxicatingly beautiful, and sexy, but as he had told her earlier, there was something utterly pure and untouched about her. She wasn’t shameless, exactly; she was more like Eve before the fall… as if there was nothing to be ashamed of in the first place… the way her body moved and stretched to find the most comfortable position, her large breasts arching up. The whole movement was perfectly natural and then, suddenly, totally erotic.

He leaned down and began kissing and licking and taunting her body until she was whimpering in confusion.

“What is happening to me?” she murmured, distracted.

“I don’t know. Describe it to me,” he said between provocative kisses in the most inappropriate places.

He could see her hand beginning to stray toward her unattended breast. “Do you want to touch it?” he asked.

“Mm-hmm.”

“Why don’t you?”

He pulled his mouth away and blew cool air on the wet peak and watched her head roll back in bittersweet pleasure.

“Here, let me help you,” he said.

He released his hand from her waist and used it to guide her free hand toward her right breast.

She hesitated, as if she were unwilling to actually touch herself. Devon wondered momentarily if it was possible that she had never touched herself in front of a man, then dismissed it as an impossibility.

“Show me how you like it, Sarah.”

His other hand was massaging her left breast. “Do you like that?”

She was nodding, and then her head flew back again when he gave it a firm pinch. “I thought you might like that too. I want to see you do it.”

Her own hand fluttered over her other breast, then tentatively rested at its side. Devon began tweaking the left one again, almost absentmindedly letting all of his fingers touch the very tip, back and forth, back and forth, then he brought his mouth down to it again and she arched her back and cried out an inarticulate plea. He sucked and taunted and watched her hand on her right breast, inches from his eyes, then he sucked harder and guided her hand, taking her fingers under his until she was touching herself there.

Her head started to shift from right to left, disoriented. He moved her fingers in the same rhythm as his mouth, mimicking the pressure and cadence. His teeth grazed; her other hand pinched. His tongue circled; her flat palm circled across the other peak. It was a duet of her own pleasure.

He reached his hand down toward her waist, then lower, and she practically bucked to meet his palm. She was so ready for him. He wondered how close she might be; he reached just inside the edge of her panties, then farther until he felt how swollen she was, and all the while, he kept sucking mercilessly on the same breast.

He gave her a nearly cruel bite on that hard, taut nipple just as his hand gripped her warm center and he felt wave after wave after wave course through her. Her other hand clenched and unclenched protectively, provocatively, over her breast.

He finally pulled his mouth away from her chest, ripped her underwear off, tore a condom packet open, and had himself sheathed in a matter of seconds. He had never wanted to be inside a woman with the intensity he felt at that moment. He moved between her legs, pushed the brown suede boots akimbo, and lifted her perfect, generous hips up to meet him. He looked at her face—flushed, far away, a dream—and thrust into her with such complete abandon, he wasn’t quite sure where he was, or who he was; all he could think was “Sarah.”

She was still in the throes of her own release when she felt the fulfilling, all-encompassing joy of his body joining hers. It felt even better than it had yesterday, if that was possible. Her eyes were floating open and closed of their own accord, and she kept hearing her name on his lips. It was a soft breeze of desire when he said it, a small poem.

He leaned down and whispered hoarsely into her ear, “Sarah… come again.”

“I couldn’t possibly,” she croaked.

“I bet you can,” he taunted.

“You would know better than I would,” she murmured.

He looked at her with a quizzical tilt of his head, shook his hair aside, then pulled her arms above her head, lacing each of her hands into each of his, then firming his grip.

“I would, would I?” He began a slow, easy rhythm.

She was happy to go along for the ride. Let him have his turn.

He was watching with a small, amused grin when he began to go deeper, to take her from the passive, spent woman of a few minutes ago to see bewilderment cross her face as the deep pull of desire began to build inside her again. The undeniable craving welled up. For a split second, he wondered again how she could be so unaccustomed to the joys of her own body. And then he was so close to his own release, and she to hers, that the thought—and the subsequent memory of it—splintered into an infinite fractal cascade of shared ecstasy. She was half breathing, half moaning when he finally pulled away from her satiated body. He lay there for a few minutes, lost in a place of bliss… thoughtless yet meaningful bliss.

She had curled up next to him and was already dozing off.

Out.

He slipped off the bed and went into the bathroom for a few minutes. When he returned to her, he tenderly removed the mile-high suede boots and set them on the floor. Then he pulled the sheets back and tucked Sarah and then himself into the huge hotel bed. Sarah, already asleep, turned away from the warmth of Devon’s body, then shimmied back to rub the length of her back and derriere against his stomach and pelvis in a slinky, selfish, catlike gesture.

For the second time that day, Devon realized he had stopped breathing. He made the requisite effort to get oxygen into and out of his malfunctioning lungs, overly conscious of the basic act of inhaling. As he drifted off to sleep, he pondered whether or not oxygen was, in fact, necessary when you had to choose between that or sex with Sarah James as the alternative.

Sarah woke the next morning surprisingly rested. She turned to look over her shoulder and saw Devon asleep in a position of sheer abandon: one arm thrown over his head, the other flung across her hip; his hair a tousled, sexy mess of light honey-brown strands falling across one eye; his lips, almost smiling even in sleep, full and slightly parted. She wallowed for a moment in the surreal fantasy that waking up next to him was a totally common, natural turn of events. He would make the coffee, pick up the newspaper off the front porch; she would make breakfast and set the table; they would spend the day on the couch swapping sections of the
New
York
Times
.

Then Sarah shook her head and laughed quietly at the absurdity. She didn’t even know how to boil water… and where exactly was this breakfast table one spoke of… and an actual newspaper, made of paper? She had never had a newspaper delivered anywhere, much less a paper one on a porch. Her iPad was a streaming newsreel 24/7… why would she need more news on Sunday? What was the point?

Well, now she was starting to imagine what the point was… kind of a sweet, romantic point. She almost reached out to touch the strong line of Devon’s cheekbone, then thought better of it. This train was leaving the station and there was no point dragging out the inevitable departure. She slid out of the bed as gently as possible, so as not to disturb him, and quietly closed the door behind her as she went into the bathroom.

Twenty minutes later, she was showered and dressed.

Twenty minutes after that, she was totally packed, sitting on top of one of her grandmother’s vintage Louis Vuitton steamer trunks and ready to dry her hair. She hesitated, worrying that the high-pitched squeal of the blow-dryer would wake him.

Oh well, he had to wake up at some point. And she had to skedaddle. She gave her hair the full treatment, making it razor straight, and put on a light foundation, a few quick strokes of mascara, and lip gloss.

She needn’t have worried overmuch about the noise, since apparently Devon slept through earthquakes. According to Heyworth family lore, on a trip to San Francisco, he had, quite literally, slept through seismic activity. She called the bellman from the phone in the bathroom and asked for assistance with her luggage, shoving it out into the hall so he wouldn’t have to come in and see her
lover
(ugh!) sprawled out on her bed. She was starting to feel like a harlot.

Peeking out into the hallway, she saw the bellman making his way down the hall. She smiled and put her finger to her lips with a little “shhh.” The formal man gave a small smile of understanding and started hauling away the first of three enormous pieces of luggage.

That taken care of, Sarah made another pass around the room, peeking under the bed and the couch, and back into the closet, and through the bathroom drawers and under the sink, and then went to stand by the side of the bed, looking down at Devon. She rested her hands on her hips and tried to commit every line of his face to memory. She was particularly fond of that corded muscle that ran the length of his neck. And that jawbone. She finally worked up the courage to touch him, giving him a gentle prod on his strong, bare shoulder.

He grunted.

Sarah smiled and gave him another jab on the upper arm.

Nothing.

She looked down at the bedside table and saw the enormous, flopping peony sitting there, picked it up, dried off the dripping wet stem with the edge of the sheet, then proceeded to trail it provocatively along that muscle on his neck, then along the firm line of his jaw, then across his brow. He was starting to smile, a very happy grin indeed. She was going to be traveling all day and she didn’t want to mess up her hair and makeup, but she couldn’t resist one final kiss. She put the flower back down on the table and turned back to see Devon just coming awake.

“What are you doing?” He looked disoriented and a little concerned, worried even.

“I am… I was about to kiss you good-bye.”

“Where are you going?” His hand was reaching up to pet her cheek, and his voice had an alluring roughness.

“I’m flying back to Chicago. I split my time between there and New York, usually two to three weeks in each place, then back again. I have meetings at my headquarters in Chicago the rest of this week. I’ve already been here a week, looking at properties in London, and I have a board meeting the week after next—”

“I mean, when am I going to see you again?”

Sarah’s eyes held his. “Don’t do that.” She started to turn away from the bed, but he grabbed her wrist.

“I mean it.” He was starting to come fully awake now and his grip was rather strong against her skin.

“So do I,” said Sarah, pulling her hand away impatiently as she turned toward the window. “Please don’t pretend this was anything more than a fling…” She turned back to face him, her arms crossed over her chest, and gave a small smile. “An utterly delightful, fabulously sexy, wonderful fling.”

Sarah girded herself. She was in full battle regalia: long, blond hair no-nonsense straight; pristine ivory Akris jacket with high collar; perfectly tailored wool trousers; big gold hoop earrings paired with her mother’s chunky gold charm bracelet; and her favorite Sarah James caramel suede ankle boots. She was armed.

“Let’s just let it stay that way. Okay?”

Devon tried to entertain the very unfamiliar notion that he was not getting his own way. He was speechless.

“All right then,” she said, taking his silence for tacit agreement and letting her hands drop to her sides. Her palms began to pat the sides of her legs in an impatient gesture. He thought for a split second that she might reach out to shake his hand, then he started laughing so hard, he couldn’t stop.

She looked at him, then toward the door.

“Were you about to shake my hand?” he wheezed, then rolled back onto the bed, facedown, and let his laughter be absorbed by the deep, down pillow. He came up for air and she was all business again, arms crossed, toe tapping. “Priceless!” His face fell into the pillow again, his laughter vibrating through the mattress.

He finally composed himself and turned back to face her, mirth still sparkling in his eyes, resting on his elbows. Sarah tried to look away; it wasn’t really fair of him to flex his back muscles like that, with all that turning and stretching.

“You are stupendous,” he said, shaking his head in amazement. Then his voice switched to a fairly good imitation of an American drawl. “All righty then! I’ll see ya when I see ya!” He gave her a little wave, like you would give a small child who had come down from the nursery and disturbed a grown-up dinner party. “Off you go!” He was about to burst out laughing again but was somehow able to hold it in.

She came toward the bed, leaned down, and kissed him on the cheek, then pulled away slowly, trying to get one more inhale of the delicious sleepy smell of him. “You are really something, Lord Devon Heyworth. Take care,” she added with a curious smile, then left the room still shaking her head in tiny left-right motions.

Devon flipped onto his back and spread out in the big warm bed with a huge smile across his face. “If that was just a fling, then I’m off my chump,” he muttered and then fell promptly back to sleep.

***

A few minutes later, Sarah spotted Jane and Nelson in the conservatory downstairs having their breakfast. She made her way over to their table and sat down at one of the two empty seats.

“Did you all have a pleasant evening?” she asked.

Jane put down her coffee cup and widened her eyes in anticipation. “We did. We had a delightful dinner here at the hotel. But how was the wedding? Any star sightings?”

“There were a few royal types, of course, but I didn’t really get too close. James Mowbray was there, so I got to talk to him about his business plan for their store opening in the States, and other—”

“But were there any handsome
rakes
? Any dashing viscounts or
earls
?” Jane smiled. Nelson frowned and went back to reading his paper. Clearly, he had not shared with Jane his unintended intrusion into Sarah’s love life yesterday morning. The only silver lining of that debacle would have been Jane’s relief that, perhaps, Sarah was not destined to be a shriveled old maid after all.

“Um, yes, there were quite a few. I danced the night away.” Sarah smiled at the waiter as he finished pouring her coffee; she added cream, then continued talking to her stepmother. “But, alas, back to my labors for this Cinderella.”

“Oh, dear. You have so much ambition. You are so
committed
.” Jane meant well, or at least she did her best to appear to mean well, but Sarah couldn’t help feeling that her stepmother would have preferred a different sort of stepdaughter. Maybe one who spent long days at the spa. And even more hours than that at the gym. Neither of those things were ever going to happen.

The one time that Sarah had attempted a “spa” vacation with Jane, it turned out to be a starvation and military boot camp falsely advertised as a wholesome, serene retreat in the mountains of central California. Instead of massages and mojitos, the menu included hot yoga and high colonics. Sarah ended up sneaking off the property for wine and chocolate to supplement the sprouts and leaves that were supposed to pass for food. She also brazenly slept through two of the “recommended” morning hikes, which Sarah referred to as forced marches. Not surprisingly, Jane did not find Sarah’s attempt at exercise humor in the least amusing. Exercise was not a laughing matter.

“I do love my job.” Sarah smiled back, choosing to ignore the implied double meaning of
committed
. Obviously, Jane James would consider it psychotic to work sixteen hours a day when the proverbial coffers were already full to bursting. In that way (only), she was quite like Sarah’s grandmother, Letitia.

Unfortunately, Jane was feeling particularly generous with her opinions this morning. “I know you love it, Sarah, but maybe you should take a little break. You are such a lovely girl, and with just a tiny bit of exercise and—”

Nelson shook his newspaper; it could have been to straighten a page, or it could have been a precursor to saying something.

Jane hesitated before continuing. “Well, maybe, I just thought if you ever want to meet with my trainer in Chicago or let me introduce you to some of the handsome young men—”

Nelson cleared his throat: again, could have been food, could have been a warning salvo.

Jane paused again, then patted Sarah’s hand for good measure. “You are a lovely girl.”

And what was she supposed to say to that? Yes, you’re right, I am lovely!? What she wanted to say was:
There
is
a
smoking
hot, totally satisfied, blindingly handsome young man up there in my hotel room, you emaciated Second Wife, you! My extra inches didn’t seem to bother him in the slightest!

But.

That would have been petty.

“Thank you, Jane. And I’d love to meet any handsome young men you might have in mind in Chicago. I think I might stay for a couple of weeks this time, so just let me know and I’ll give them a call—”

“Oh, dear, of course you wouldn’t have to initiate such a thing. I will call Tina Ballard and Monica Schuller and you will have a string of dates lined up before we land.”

“Well, I don’t need a string, Jane. One or two would be nice while I’m in town. Just the cream of the crop.” Sarah tried to give that last a hint of conspiratorial fervor, some approximation of a colluding mother-daughter grin. Maybe if she got Jane on the man hunt, she’d get off the Sarah-makeover bandwagon.

Nelson James folded his newspaper with precise finality and looked across the table at his wife and his daughter. And all he could think was: night and day.

“All righty then!”

Sarah almost spit her coffee out of her mouth—her father’s American accent sounded identical to Devon’s parody of a few minutes before.

“What’s so funny?”

“Oh, nothing. Something about that expression just reminds me of a funny story. Someone at the party last night… never mind. The Brits have such a dry sense of humor, don’t you think?”

Nelson looked at Sarah and narrowed his gaze as if to say: I do not want to know. “Shall we get going?” Nelson was up and out of his chair before he finished the sentence, not expecting a response.

Their luggage had been sent ahead in one of the hotel Range Rovers, and the unlikely trio left the country house hotel amid a flurry of good-byes and thank-yous to the very kind staff. Sarah surreptitiously palmed an overgenerous tip into the hand of the bellman who had been saddled with moving her steamer trunks, his returning glance confirming her unspoken implication that it was really hush money about the guest who remained in her room.

Sarah tried to see her odd little family through the bellman’s eyes, the three of them as different from one another as possible. Nelson James had gone totally gray after the death of his first wife. It had aged him considerably at the time, but now that he was in his late sixties, he looked remarkably young. He had always adhered to a well-tailored, if nondescript, fashion sense: blue blazers, khakis, and Belgian loafers on weekends; single vent suits (navy or gray, no stripe), white Oxford shirt, and wingtips during the week.

Jane was a very tidy fifty-five. She kept her hair in a jet-black Coco Chanel cut (she traveled with a pair of professional haircutting scissors to trim the rare, unruly wisp) and always wore clothes that were one shade too bright. She had once commented to Sarah that having such dark hair allowed her to wear such a wonderful array of colors. Sarah wanted to let her know that just because she was allowed to did not mean she should.

Today she had on a blinding, lemon-yellow leather jacket that was, not pleasantly, reminiscent of Claude Montana circa 1985. It was probably vintage and fabulously expensive, but it looked a bit too young on Jane. She paired it with a black leather miniskirt, opaque black tights, and black suede pumps. She looked like a tiny, well-kept bumblebee.