Bombshell (8 page)

I guess I was grateful for the change in subject, as Angie had just been badgering me about contacting Katerina and my half sister. After resolutely defending my decision not to get involved, I was happy enough to turn my attention to Justin's friend, who stood over at the bar with Justin.

Pete Jordan was, admittedly, a good-looking guy. Lean, well-muscled, with sandy-brown hair that had that tousled, just-got-out-of-bed look. The goatee, combined with the
somewhat obscure tattoo that graced his forearm, gave him the edgy look of an East Village slacker. Except Pete wasn't a slacker. In fact, he directed most of the commercials and corporate videos he and Justin worked on at Justin's “day job” as a grip at a production studio in Long Island City. I knew from Angie that, like Justin, Pete had ambitions to direct a feature-length film. Although Pete had yet to make a move toward that goal, he seemed to feel no resentment that Justin was just about to realize that dream this spring, judging by the way he and Justin were yucking it up together at the bar.

“Not my type,” I said finally. Not anymore. There was a time, just after college, when I adored artistic men. Even imagined I would fuck one such man into superstardom once, when I found myself in a tangle with a particularly ambitious—and deliciously well-endowed—example of the breed just after graduation from college. But now the thought of even getting involved, of lying in bed with him, late in the night, listening while he hatched yet another great idea that likely would never come to fruition, left me, frankly, exhausted.

“Colin seems to be pretty happy with Mark,” I said, moving on to the other man Angie and Justin had invited to this little celebration. Colin, Angie's former co-host from her days when her acting career consisted of guiding a bunch of six-year-olds through an exercise program on
Rise and Shine,
was happily engaged in a conversation with his lover, Mark, at a nearby table. They looked adorable together—and happy. Colin, who once pined endlessly for a child to love, had gotten it all, I realized now, remembering that Mark was a single parent and that the two spent most of their weekends playing “My Two Dads” to Mark's son.

“Yeah,” Angie said, her gaze softening as it fell on Colin. “Do you know, they're even talking about getting married?”

“Married?”

“Uh-huh. In Toronto.” She smiled. “Now that it's legal in Canada. So all I have to do is find someone for you….” she said wistfully, her eyes cruising the room as if she were going to pluck my future husband out of the crowd.

“Marriage isn't for everyone,” I said, suddenly defensive.

As if on cue, Angie's friend, Michelle Delgrosso popped out of the bathroom, her lips freshly glossed and her hair sprayed to new and frightening heights. Michelle was from the old neighborhood in Brooklyn. I had never cared for her myself, but somehow she had cleaved to Angie like an old piece of gum stuck to the bottom of Angie's scuffed yet fashionably urban shoes. I think Michelle, who subscribed to the theory that any man could be brought to the altar with a little arm twisting, even took credit for Angie's engagement to Justin.

I watched Michelle stalk past the couch where we lingered without sparing us a glance and head to the bar where Pete and Justin stood. Except for the official engagement toast we'd made once everyone had gathered together, Michelle had spent the evening hanging all over Justin's friend, which, I noticed, seemed to get Angie a bit miffed.

Not only was Michelle married—for over eight years now—she had, according to Angie, been to a marriage counselor and had even recently gone on a second honeymoon to Hawaii, all in the name of preserving whatever bond had driven her to marry Frankie Delgrosso at the ripe old age of twenty-four.

I studied her as she slinked by us—or should I say slithered, judging by how reptilian she managed to look in the black leather pants she'd donned for her big night out in Manhattan—heading straight for Pete once more, her mon
strous wedding set winking at me even in the dim light of the bar.

Maybe that was why she stayed married to Frankie, I thought, noting the glitter that also twinkled from her wrists and ears. He was the heir apparent to Kings County Cadillac, his father's business, and was able to indulge Michelle's apparently insatiable passion for diamonds.

And speaking of glitter, I thought, my gaze falling once more upon the rock that now graced my best friend's hand…

Seeing where my attention had been drawn, Angie held her hand up, smiling somewhat dizzily at her rock for about the tenth time that evening.

I couldn't blame her. The ring was pretty magnificent. A one and a half carat Tiffany cut diamond set in platinum and flanked by baguettes.

Not that I was the type of woman to pine for jewelry. Angie hadn't been either, until she had gone engagement-ring shopping. No, not with Justin—with Kirk, her last boyfriend. The grand irony was that once she found the ring she wanted, she realized she didn't have the man she wanted. Now she had the ring, I thought, gazing over to where her gorgeous future husband stood by the bar,
and
the man.

But judging by the frown that I saw threatening her features, she still wasn't satisfied.

“What's wrong
now?
” I found myself asking.

“Nothing,” Angie said, glancing over at Justin, who was now, along with Pete, leaning over Michelle as she demonstrated how to turn the new navel ring she had just gotten. This lurid little display was temporarily stalled when the bartender plunked down the freshly ordered drinks on the bar, which Justin proceeded to pass to Michelle and Pete.

I heard Angie sigh as Justin forked over the contents of
his wallet to the female bartender, who gazed up at him rapturously, either because Justin's golden-boy good looks inspired such worship or because he likely had included his usual fat tip. “Look at him—will we even have cab fare to get home tonight?” she said, incredulous.

Now I was frowning. “Angie, you live a few blocks away.”

“That's not the point,” she said, glancing down at the ring once more, then dropping her hand quickly, as if she was afraid to stare too long at that scintillating promise.

“So tell me what the point is, exactly?” I replied, starting to feel a bit exasperated with her. How had she managed to find a flaw in what appeared to be an utterly flawless man?

“He's too…generous,” she said, with another quick glance down at her ring.

“You're kidding me, right?” I said. We should all have such problems.

She bit her lip, as if she were having trouble articulating what was clearly eating away at her, despite all the happiness that had recently been heaped on her plate. “Don't you think it's…it's
wrong
for a man who's about to take a chunk of his life savings and invest it in his next film project to be picking up the bar tab…or buying $9,000 engagement rings? At least we got a break there—the jeweler knocked a grand off the original price.”

“Angie, as I recall, you were the one who wanted that ring.”

“I know,” she said, looking down at it once more as if the sight of it brought her pain. “It just doesn't seem…right.”

“Right?” I asked, exasperated.
“Right?”
I shook my head. “Angie, the man just bought you a beautiful ring. Asked you to spend your life with him. And if that weren't good enough, he's even cast you as the star in his next movie!”

She frowned, and though she wasn't a nail biter, began to gnaw on the edge of that prettily clad finger.

I smacked her hand away. “Angie!”

“I know! I know I should be happy! And I
am
happy. It's just…” She blew out a sigh. “It's just that if they decide not to do a second season of
New York Beat,
I'm gonna be out of a job. And my health insurance is going to run out the minute I run out of money to pay for it. Justin is about to sink half his capital into this film… It's not that I don't believe in him, I do. But you can't trust that the industry is going to…to reward him for his talent. And if this movie fails, then where will we be? I'll be another out-of-work actor, and Justin—” She bit her lip. “This movie is everything to him. What if he doesn't recover from failure? What if—”

“Angie, need I remind you that no one has failed at anything here? Stop thinking about things that are out of your control. Life is going to happen no matter how much you angst over it. Just be glad you found someone you love to brave it with.”

She looked at me then, and I saw that my lecture had caused her to transfer her worry to a new subject: me.

“What about you, Grace? Don't you want to find someone to brave it with?”

I shrugged noncommittally.

“Well, you're not going to if you never give a guy a chance,” she said. “I mean, Pete's a nice guy,” she continued, her gaze seeking him out in the crowd. Her eyes widened and my gaze followed hers, only to discover that Mr. Nice Guy was now doing a body shot of tequila, using Michelle's midriff as a salt lick.

Angie looked at me apologetically. “Well, he was. Until Michelle got her hands on him.” She frowned. “What is
with
her?”

Or with him, I thought, but didn't say. I no longer felt a need to explain away the whimsies of men and women. It was clear to me that Pete and Michelle were just two more examples of the myriad commitment-phobic people I knew. Married or single, it seemed to me that, for some people at least, the longing for what you can't have never really goes away.

A warmth curled inside me at the memory of my own most recent longing for a child, but the feeling quickly died, leaving an emptiness as I also remembered that child was not to be. Not in the next nine months anyway.

Maybe not ever.

Somehow that thought made the longing come back.

And I wondered if I would ever be cured of this ache I felt inside.

What did I want? What would it take to make me truly happy?

W
hat I wanted, I discovered when I came home later that night, my mind blurry with drink and my body thrumming with new anticipation, was a man. And fortunately, being a woman of means, I did still have a phone number at my disposal. After all, a woman didn't live in Manhattan for all these years without filling her arsenal with at least one good specimen of that breed of male who could be had as easily as she could access the address book on her cell phone.

Yes, I was no stranger to the booty call, though I hadn't had to resort to it in a while. Not since pre-Ethan days. To think I had given up Bad Billy Caldwell for Ethan Lederman the Third. Bad Billy was my prime booty call. Had been since we had hooked up for the first time in a bar on the Lower East Side six years ago, back in the days when I fre
quented places where the music was loud, the decor grungy and men even dirtier. Foolishly, I had tried to turn Billy into a boyfriend at first, and had nearly let my heart get into the mix before I discovered picking up women in bars on the Lower East Side was a habit Billy didn't want to break for anyone. But once I accepted the limitations of a relationship with Billy, I reveled in them. Because the cold, hard truth of it was that Billy was the best fuck I had ever had. It could have been his lean, well-muscled body, or that perfect, perfect penis of his—length, girth and a delightful little left hook designed, it seemed, to hit the G spot every time. Or it could have been that beautiful face—blue eyes, sooty lashes and a mouth so lush nothing short of nature could have created it.

It was the thought of that mouth that had me making the first move once I found myself alone in my apartment, which was dark save for the glitter of light pouring in through the windows.

Slipping my cell out of my purse, I quickly located his number and hit Talk.

And held my breath. Uncertain whether, after this time, Billy had moved on, as Ethan had likely done, or Michael clearly had….

“Ah, Gracie,” that rich mellow voice purred into the phone and I felt relief, along with a rush of warmth a sudden memory of that hard body conjured up. “You're back, huh?”

“I'm back,” I said, knowing that on some level, this was an admission of failure. Another relationship down the tubes. Not that Billy saw things that way.

“I've been thinking of you lately,” he said.

“Yeah?” His words practically sounded like an admission of love, in my current state of longing.

“Thinking about those long, long legs. Those pretty eyes…”

I smiled. Love—what had I been thinking? This was better. Because if you couldn't count on love, you could certainly count on male libido.

“Come over,” I said, and before I could even let out my breath, he had hung up and was, in all likelihood, already slipping on his boots, his leather jacket, and heading for the subway.

There is nothing like being with a man who worships women the way Billy does. From the moment he stepped through my door, his eyes raking over me as if he might devour me, I felt alive again. Powerful. Beautiful.

I
was
beautiful, I reminded myself, once he had tugged my dress down my shoulders and began kissing the tops of my breasts where they spilled from my lacy bra. He moved lower, pulling the dress down to reveal more flesh as he did, his hands and mouth moving over my rounded abdomen, over my buttocks, between my legs.

I cried out when his mouth made contact and he looked up at me from where he kneeled on the floor before me, still in his jacket, his face dusty with stubble and his eyes drunk, apparently with the sight of me.

“Ah, Gracie, you are so fucking gorgeous.”

I let out a throaty chuckle. Billy always did have a way with words.

 

And with his hands and mouth, I remembered, once we were finally horizontal, his body naked and just as hard and lean as I remembered it to be. We fell into a rhythm the moment we hit the bed, as if we had been lovers uninterrupted these past six years, and not just strangers who liked to fuck when the mood, or desperation, drove us to it.

My hands roamed over his cock, grabbing hard, then tugging gently, the way I knew he liked.

His fingers massaged my breasts, trailed down my inner thighs, following old paths with the patience and the relish of a pioneer exploring them for the first time.

After he had secured himself in the latex he always seemed to have at the ready, he began that teasing dance of thrusts that would, within the space of a few hungry kisses, escalate to the kind of clawing, pounding heat a woman could only truly experience with a man as boundless, and as experienced, as Bad Billy was.

Afterward, as we lay breathing hard, side by side, I felt pure satisfaction, and it wasn't just the sex. It was the sight of this beautiful man in my bed, his eyes drifted shut. He and I were probably more alike than I had ever realized. Both of us fearless in the face of pleasure, yet running whenever the emotional heat got too high. I smiled then, at his gentle snoring, enjoying the comfortable companionship that had been between us since the day we'd met. And I wondered, if this could indeed be enough.

 

Claudia, on the hand, clearly needed a little more than what
she
was currently getting.

“Have we heard from the Sterling Agency today?” she asked, standing in my doorway, dressed in a deep fuchsia dress a tad on the sexy side for office wear. Come to think of it, I hadn't seen Claudia in anything other than her trademark black since the day she hired me.

I wondered at this now. “Were we supposed to hear from them this week?”

She frowned, running a hand over the front of the dress,
which was so bright my eyes were starting to ache from looking at her. “Larry did mention he would call me today….”

“Oh?”

Her dark eyes glittered, and I saw what might have been the shred of a smile touch her lips. “Yes, well, we did meet up for drinks last night.”

“Oh, right,” I said, remembering the drinks date she had set up with Larry in the hopes of securing her own booty, and with which Larry, I assumed, hoped to secure the Dubrow account. “So how'd that go?”

She stepped into my office, slamming the door shut behind her, and then, with what looked like a definite
glow
on her face, sidled into my guest chair, leaning forward confidingly.

“It was
fantastic,
” she said in the kind of hush that suggested she wasn't talking about the drinks.

“Claudia, you didn't
sleep
with him, did you?” I asked, suddenly horrified that my boss was about to blow this campaign because she felt a desire to leave behind all battery-operated modes of pleasure.

“No, no,” she said, shaking her head. “But I wanted to…”

That, in itself, was something. I had begun to think Claudia was asexual, judging by the number of dates she had ventured on in the few years I had known her. There had been precisely two. And one of them had been with her ex-husband to settle some lingering financial issues after their divorce.

I began to feel a flutter of hope for my termagant boss as she described the lovely lounge that Larry had taken her to down in SoHo, where he stared into her eyes and waxed poetic about how he had always wanted to work for a company like Roxanne Dubrow. And, he suggested, with a woman like Claudia. As I studied her new demeanor—a bit rosy but this may have had to do with the sudden injection
of color into her wardrobe—I wondered if perhaps Claudia was going to get what she wanted from Laurence Bennett. Or at least, I thought, studying the tightly reined energy that radiated off her, what she clearly needed….

 

“I'm going to London,” Lori said, stepping into my office after lunch.

“London?” I asked, looking up at her with alarm.

“With Dennis,” she explained, placing a memo on the desk before me.

Relief sheeted through me as I saw the piece of paper before me was not a resignation, but a request for the two weeks surrounding Thanksgiving off. For a moment, I had thought Lori had resolved the Dennis dilemma by deciding to follow him across the pond.

And as she cheerfully explained how he had received an acceptance letter and an invitation to visit the campus, I wondered at how positive she suddenly seemed over the fact that her boyfriend might not be a boyfriend by next fall. “We're gonna check out the real estate situation, too,” she continued. Then she blushed. “I mean, Dennis is…”

I realized then that maybe my first instinct
had
been right. Maybe she was going with him in the fall. But since I was her boss and not privy to the kind of details that might reveal whether she did have a resignation in her future, I simply signed off, listening while she babbled on about the sights she planned to see. I felt a burning need to offer her some sort of counsel, but what would I advise her? That she shouldn't follow the man she loved around the world? Maybe she was right to follow her heart, I reflected, thinking of how I was, at least, being led around by my libido these days. I'd even spent my session with Shelley the night before waxing
poetic about the therapeutic value of a good orgasm. But whether I had shocked her with the subject matter, or with the way I used it to avoid the topic of Kristina she tried to prod me toward, I couldn't tell.

I handed back the memo, smiling a little sadly at the idea that there would come a day when Lori wouldn't greet me with her usual cheerful demeanor. But what had I expected? That my assistant would stay forever my assistant? She was young. She needed to explore. I just hoped her exploration of what she wanted didn't stop with her boyfriend's dreams.

“Well, I suggest you put that vacation memo on Claudia's desk ASAP. Claudia is floating on a cloud of something at the moment,” I said. “She'll sign off on anything.”

“Good point,” Lori said. “Thanks, Grace,” she said merrily, bounding out of my office to do just that.

 

As it turned out, I was right about Claudia's mood. In fact, she was so buoyed when Larry called to ask her out for dinner that very night, she might have signed off on a year-long sabbatical, had Lori asked. And when she bounced in the next day after her big date dressed in a winter-white frock (yes, I would declare it a frock, complete with ruffles at the neck) I began to wonder what exactly had transpired between her and Larry. White was something for Claudia. But ruffles?

“Lori,” I heard her say, “did you courier that contract to the Sterling Agency like I asked?”

Contract to the Sterling Agency?

“Claudia,” I called.

She turned to face me in my doorway, eyebrows raised expectantly and what looked like a genuine smile on her face. “Yes?”

“What's this about the contract?”

She looked at me. “I'm sending it over to the Sterling Agency.”

Alarm shot through me. Was Claudia about to compromise this campaign because she'd finally found someone she was comfortable enough to drop her ice princess act—and likely those pretty little frocks she was now sporting—for? “But I thought we were going to review the Chase Agency's ideas, too. I think their proposal even came in with a lower bid.”

“Cost isn't our only consideration, Grace. Besides, I really thought Larry's ideas were well put together.”

Hmmph. Likely what she thought was well put together was Larry himself. “You slept with him, didn't you?”

“No,” she protested immediately, and from the pensive look that came into her eyes, I believed her. “We just talked about the campaign…among other things.” Then stepping further into my office and pushing the door half-closed, as if she were about to reveal a confidence, she continued, “But I did feel a…a
connection
with him, Grace. Working with Larry is going to be pure
pleasure.
”

Dear God. What was wrong with her? She could at least get laid before
she
laid that contract on his desk. Because despite the flutter of hope I felt for her as she told me about her evening at La Caravelle, I had not put to rest my suspicions that Larry was motivated by something other than desire for the well-pampered but utterly charmless Claudia.

My eyes narrowed at her. “Is Dianne on board with this?”

I saw that familiar angry gleam return to her eyes. “Dianne trusts me to choose an advertising firm, Grace. I am, after all, the Vice President of Marketing.”

My eyes dropped to the hint of cleavage pouring out of that frilly little dress of hers. “So are you like, gonna date this
guy?”
Date
was the polite term for what I sensed she hoped to do with him.

As if my suspicions had suddenly cast doubt in her own mind about what, exactly she was hoping to get out of Larry Bennett, she dropped her eyes. “He did say something about getting together next weekend.” When she looked up again, I saw that hopeful look had returned to her gaze, though this time it was muted by a vulnerability I had never seen in Claudia before.

“Just be careful,” I warned softly, suddenly realizing how fragile she truly was.

“I'm a grown woman,” she said angrily, standing up as if to call this little female-bonding moment to a close. “I know what I'm doing!”

 

I knew exactly what I was doing when I found myself lying, breathless, beside Billy, later that night.

“That is some rib cage,” he said, running his hands over my frame after we lay back against the cool sheets, our bodies spent from yet another session of invigorating sex.

I glanced down at where his big hand roamed over my ribs, then down over the smooth, pale skin of my stomach, with a kind of reverence. “My rib cage?” I said, wondering, as I had before with Billy, what new revelations he had had about my body.

“That's right,” he said, sliding his hand down my ribs, across my hips. “You are a work of art, Grace.”

 

I started to believe it. Believe that I was a woman so worthy of such worship from a man. After all, it appeared love—or something like it anyway—was in the air. Claudia practically bounced about the office every time the phone
rang and it was Larry on the other end, even though from what I could gather from my exuberant boss, it was usually to iron out the details of the contract. Even aspects Claudia normally left to our legal department were suddenly worthy of her attention. Lori was even more chipper than usual, probably because in between fielding calls, filing and doing the numerous tasks that came her way from Claudia, she was on the Internet, securing her flight, searching for bed and breakfasts and ordering up new clothes for her big trip overseas with Dennis. I was starting to believe that I had been too quick to judge the men in our lives. Maybe we could count on them to be there for us in some way. In fact, I was so caught up in this idea, that when my phone rang Friday afternoon and I discovered Ethan on the other end, I could not help the sharp intake of breath. Could not deny the sudden curl of satisfaction I felt at the sound of his deep, mellow and I have to say—concerned—voice.