Bonita accepted two glasses of champagne from a passing waiter and handed one to Crystal. “You have to give me credit for staying quiet as long as humanly possible,” she said with a small smile. “I didn’t ask why you were sitting on the store counter and Ryan was wearing your lipstick. I didn’t make a peep on the drive over here, mostly because I was afraid you’d jump out of the car on the highway if I did.” She held up a hand as Crystal tried to interrupt. “No, believe it or not, I don’t care about what happened in the shop this afternoon. Well, I do, but that’s not what I want to hear first. I want the whole story.” Bonita’s clear, green eyes were solemn. “Don’t you think it’s time for you to tell me why you’ve been hiding at Come Again for all these years?”
“I’m not hiding,” Crystal protested.
Bonita took a sip of champagne and waited. Not once during their friendship had she pushed Crystal for information. Bonita was the most private person she knew, and she respected Crystal’s privacy as carefully as she guarded her own. After all of her support, Bonita deserved to know the truth.
Crystal forced herself to turn back the clock. “I met him at a frat party my freshman year of college. I think he and Mark grew up together, and he was visiting for homecoming weekend. When he kissed me, it felt like a religious experience. It was like…bang. Trumpets, flashing lights, a chorus of angels, the whole shebang. I thought it was love at first sight. In retrospect, I guess the tequila could have had something to do with it.” Crystal stared into her glass, watching the bubbles rise and pop on the surface. She took a long sip. “I was a virgin.”
Bonita groaned.
“I went upstairs with him and he was everything I could have hoped for in a first lover. Completely open, honest, he talked to me the whole time, made sure it was good for me, even the first time. Back then I didn’t realize how unusual that was—real communication during sex, the Holy Grail of lovemaking. We didn’t sleep, just made love all night. In the morning, he kissed me goodbye and got on a plane to California. I never heard from him again.”
“What?” Outrage darkened Bonita’s eyes to the exact shade of her elegant jade necklace. “You didn’t give him your number? Or get his?”
“He got mine and put it in his cell phone. I didn’t ask for his. I was trying to be cool.”
Bonita frowned. “Oh, that’s just painful.”
“It gets worse. That’s when the psychic stuff began. I walked out of the bedroom that morning and got flattened by depression. I didn’t know it, but I was channeling the combined hangover of the entire fraternity house. Then I staggered outside and found two people having a screaming breakup on the front porch. I knew what they were yelling at each other didn’t match what was in their hearts, so I started babbling, couldn’t stop myself. I should have kept my mouth shut, of course, but then they started being honest with each other. I guess they were my first pro bono clients.” She smiled, remembering. That incident had eventually given her the idea for Get In Touch. “After that, I learned how to keep my thoughts to myself, but I felt like I was standing in a hailstorm. I never knew when I was going to get hit by someone else’s emotions. Do you know how many kids are walking around broadcasting their feelings on a college campus?” She groaned. “I was a wreck. Thank God for Come Again. I would have gotten into more trouble than I did without that vibrator you sold me. Your pretty girlfriends were a big help too. Still are, in fact.”
“Yes, I have to agree there,” Bonita said with a small smile.
Crystal set her empty champagne glass on the table and snagged another one from a tray. “I don’t know what I would have done without you.”
Bonita chewed on her bottom lip. “So where’d Ryan go?” she asked.
“Stanford. Graduate School of Business. I waited all day for him to call and then I squashed my pride and went back to the frat house to ask around. Mark wasn’t there, thank God, but the house was having another party.” She swallowed hard. “You know what happens to an empath around a bunch of hot, horny guys who smell freshman meat?”
Bonita looked horrified.
“Yeah, it wasn’t pretty.” She had missed Ryan, but she’d filled her emptiness with every cock in the fraternity house that night. Dim lights, drawn curtains, the smell of incense and beer, salty sweat on heated flesh. Her lust had been endless, uncontrollable, fed by the frenzy around her. That night had taught her an awesome and horrifying lesson, and she was lucky she hadn’t ended up pregnant or worse. “I didn’t leave my dorm room for a week after that, not until I figured out how to shield. I’d walk outside and sidle up to someone and see if I was safe and then run back to my room. I also practiced on the pizza delivery guys because there was no way I could go to the cafeteria.”
“I guess that explains why I never see you Upstairs at Johnny’s on orgy night,” Bonita said, offering her a smile that held no pity.
Crystal smiled back at her. “No way in hell.”
Bonita nodded. “So what happened this afternoon? You guys looked ready to combust.”
Crystal didn’t spare a single detail.
“That’s almost impressive,” Bonita said, when she had finished. “You told him you liked girls and he stole third base?”
“Don’t remind me. My last faint hope is to prove that you and I are madly in love. Maybe then he’ll leave me alone.”
Bonita had a pensive expression on her face. “Let me get this straight. One night of hot sex with Ryan Anderson turned you into a nymphomaniac psychic?”
“Something like that.”
Her friend grinned. “Don’t you want to know what a second night would do to you?”
Crystal scowled. “Have you lost your mind? I would expect you, of all people, to tell me to stay the hell away from him!”
“Why? Because I’m a lesbian?”
“No, because you helped clean up the wreck he left behind!”
Bonita’s expression was reproving. “Crystal, you weren’t a wreck—you were a teenager discovering her sexuality. I will admit that the whole psychic thing was complicated, but you handled it. And you’ve been indispensable at Come Again for years now, and Get In Touch really helps people. Don’t you tell your clients not to deny their feelings? Why are you denying yours?”
“Whoa!” Crystal said, stung. “Hey, whose side are you on?”
“Yours,” Bonita said firmly. “But you’ve been running from this guy for ten years—”
“I haven’t been running anywhere!”
“Metaphorically speaking. He looks at you like he wants to take you apart and put you back together piece by piece. That guy’s focus is so tight, I can almost see laser beams coming out of his eyeballs. He makes you burn, sweetie. You were hot this afternoon. It turned me on just watching you two look at each other. And I haven’t looked at a man in…” Bonita paused. “Well, ever.” She nailed Crystal with a direct look. “Don’t you want to hear what he’s got to say for himself? Aren’t you curious?”
“I can’t believe I’m hearing this.” Crystal leaned back it her chair and stared at the sky. “It was scary in the shop today,” she finally admitted. “I can feel him. Even with my shield up, he gets in. I can’t think about anything but him, and when I do manage to get my brain under control, a stiff breeze rolls by and my body reminds me that it hasn’t forgotten him, either.”
“All the more reason to give it another shot. Maybe you can get him out of your system.” Bonita leaned forward in her chair. “Or maybe not. But at least you won’t be running anymore. If I had to make a guess from looking at him, the harder you run, the faster he’s going to chase you. He reminds me of a bull pawing the ground, getting ready to charge. Someone once told me that when a bull goes into a rage, they have to hit him in the nuts with a steel baseball bat to get him to snap out of it. No kidding. A baseball bat. Ryan Anderson may have disappeared for ten years, but he doesn’t look like the type to give up easily when he wants something.”
Crystal shook her head. “My whole day was shot after I saw him at the wedding. I couldn’t concentrate with my client. I opened up and got clobbered by my own damn emotions. If I can’t keep my feelings under control long enough to help my clients, then I can’t work. Ryan already ruined my life—I will not let him ruin my business.”
“He didn’t ruin your life, sweetie. He made it.”
“Yeah, well, now he’s screwing it up.” Crystal bit her lip as she exposed her underlying fear. “What if it all goes away?”
“That’s pretty damn ironic considering you’re pissed at him for making you psychic in the first place.”
“You’re not helping.”
“Just keeping you honest, sweetie. I know he hurt you, but what if spending some time with him now can help you? It’s been ten years, Crystal, and you’re still hiding, still healing. It isn’t going to go away. Accept the risk on your terms.” Bonita took her hands and gave them a squeeze. “Look on the bright side—if you have sex with him again, maybe you’ll be able to teleport.”
“Very funny.” Through the window, she saw Ryan enter the ballroom. A jolt of energy hit her body like a triple espresso shot.
He had exchanged his khakis for a dark blue pinstriped suit, and several female heads turned to admire him as he crossed the room. He looked like a marauding Viking with his wild blond curls and dark, piercing eyes. She smacked down a stab of jealously. This was so not the time to get in touch with her repressed feelings. “Bonita, please, I’m desperate. I’ll think about what you said, but I need to buy some time. I can’t do this tonight. Please, are you going to help me? You promised. I’m begging you!”
A mischievous smile lit Bonita’s green eyes. “It’s kind of a rush to be on the other side of the begging for once.”
Crystal pressed a hand to her head. “Are you going to help me or not?”
Bonita was silent. Crystal felt Ryan move toward the patio. Desire, hers and his, tightened her skin.
Bonita sighed. “I think you’re making a mistake, but, yes, I’ll help you. Think we’ll scandalize the library crowd?”
“God, I hope so.” They had to make it convincing or Ryan wouldn’t believe it.
“There goes my Monday night book club,” Bonita said with resignation.
“Really?” Crystal glanced at her anxiously.
“No, and I’d do it anyway. Is he coming this way?”
She nodded. Every hair on her body had zinged to life the minute he spotted them on the patio.
“Drink up,” Bonita ordered.
Crystal drank, clutching the glass. If Bonita hadn’t been holding onto her other hand, she might have jumped the stairs, high heels notwithstanding, and bolted from the patio. Escape, in one way or another, was imperative.
Bonita grasped her chin, forcing Crystal to meet her eyes. “Stay with me, sweetie. You can do this. Focus on me.” Bonita took the empty glass from her hand, set it on a table and pulled her to a secluded spot at the end of the patio. “Let’s make him come find us.”
She relaxed under Bonita’s confident touch, shutting her eyes to better enjoy the slide of her full lips, opening her mouth to allow Bonita’s tongue to sweep against her own. Her scent was clean and earthy, like lilies after rain, and her mouth tasted sweet from the wine. It was heaven to get some relief.
Crystal took control of the kiss, shaping Bonita’s jaw with her palm and reaching behind to cup her ass and pull her body closer. Softness met softness, and Bonita moaned as Crystal pressed her legs apart with her thigh. Bonita’s eyelids fluttered, opened, and for the second time that day Crystal was overwhelmed by emotion. This time, she was sure it wasn’t hers. She sensed Bonita’s emotions snap beyond her control, saw the naked passion, the anguish and denial, the hope.
Crystal was stricken, stunned. “Who is she?”
Bonita tried to push away from her, but Crystal caught her hands firmly and held on, maintaining their link.
“I’m sorry.” Bonita gave her pained look. “I guess I’m a little raw myself, and you remind me of her.”
“Holy shit,” Crystal whispered. “I had no idea. You spend so much time at Johnny’s club. Are you collared? How come I’ve never met her?”
Bonita’s sad smile tore at her heart. “It’s…complicated. I can’t have her, haven’t seen her in years.” An eloquent shrug shook Bonita’s lean shoulders. “To be honest, I think Ryan might be the one for you, and I can’t bear to see you throw that away. You might not get another chance.”
All these years her boss had been hiding a secret crush and an even more secret heartbreak? Crystal raised her eyebrows. “How about you heed some of that sage advice and go get her? What’s good for the goose—”
Bonita’s silvery laugh rang across the patio. “Is good for the other goose? I wish.” She expelled a forceful sigh and pulled her hands away.
Crystal felt shocked, bereft. The emotions throbbing in the air between them vanished like smoke. She could sense nothing except the playful mischief Bonita had been projecting earlier. It was as if the intense exchange had never taken place.
Her confusion must have shown on her face because Bonita said, “You’re surprised a formerly closeted homosexual can hide her emotions?”
“From me? Yes.”
“I’ve got skills, baby.” Bonita reached down to snap Crystal’s thong panties through her dress. A wicked grin curved her lips. “Here he comes.”
Crystal stepped closer to Bonita.
“This could backfire. Some guys
like
to watch,” Bonita warned, an instant before her lips settled firmly over Crystal’s mouth again. This time, although Bonita’s tongue was in her mouth and her hands were on her ass, Crystal felt no disturbing echo of emotion.