Real Women Don't Wear Size 2 (27 page)

“It isn’t any of our business,” Jesilyn scolded. “Is it, Clarise?”

It wasn’t, Clarise agreed silently, but she refused to be rude to her friends. She also decided to attempt to keep their room number private. That’s all she needed was her friends knocking on their door in the middle of the two of them working on her list. She smiled; she couldn’t help it.

“See!” Rachel said, pointing to Clarise’s grin. “That has guilty written all over it.”

“Oh, hush,” Jesilyn said.

“The phone was off the hook, wasn’t it, Clarise?” Rachel asked.

Clarise distinctly remembered Ethan smiling as he unplugged it last night, and she nodded.

Rachel smiled triumphantly. “Told you, Jesi.”

“It’s still none of our business,” Jesilyn repeated. “Isn’t that right, Clarise?”

“Actually, I really would rather keep this private,” Clarise admitted.

Rachel slapped her hands against her thighs. “Well then, don’t ask me to give you the details about my past three days with Miles. He’s asleep now, by the way, and he should stay that way for a while, because he said he’s—”

“Thoroughly exhausted,” Jesilyn intervened. “Trust me. I know. She’s been giving me the details for the past hour, ever since she dragged me out of bed in the middle of the night to tell me everything.”

“Oh, shush, you wanted to know,” Rachel said.

“Not at four in the morning, I didn’t.”

Clarise was thankful the subject had turned away from her weekend with Ethan. She decided to help keep it that way. “What about your guy?” she asked Jesilyn.

“Didn’t work out,” Jesi said matter-of-factly.

“Oh, go on, tell her the rest,” Rachel instructed. Then, without giving Jesilyn time to actually do it, she barreled on, “He wanted her to Jell-O wrestle.”

“What?” Clarise asked, temporarily taken out of her own bout of misery to determine what in the world was involved with Jell-O wrestling. Though she had an idea.

“Evidently he owns a club in the Latin Quarter, and he wanted a new subject for his most popular form of entertainment Saturday night,” Rachel enlightened, grinning.

“I thought you were going to watch the parade at the inn,” Clarise said, turning toward Jesi.

“We did, and then we headed to his club,” Jesilyn answered. “Where he tried to get me to put on a bikini that wasn’t much more than dental floss and flounce around in a pit filled with red Jell-O.”

“With another floss-coated lady,” Rachel added, nodding so hard her blond spirals bounced.

Clarise didn’t know what to say, so she said the first thing that came to mind. “Ew!”

“Exactly. But I wasted no time getting out of the place.”

“You wasted enough time to get red Jell-O splattered all over your new blouse,” Rachel reminded.

Jesilyn looked at Clarise and shrugged. “There was a
competition
going on when we got there.” Then she laughed. “Hey, at least I found out what he was really like before we slept together.”

“That’s Jesi,” Rachel said. “Always looking for the positive.” She shimmied out of the chair and clapped her hands together. “And speaking of the positive, as in the positively scrumptious guy I’ve got waiting in my room, I think I’ll head on up. Maybe he slept enough to be ready for another go.”

“You’re terrible,” Jesilyn said.

“And you’re crazy for not going after Jake,” Rachel snapped back. “He was putting the moves on her last night at the parade, but she didn’t accept the challenge.”

“That’s the problem with him,” Jesilyn said. “He wants a challenge, and once he gets what he wants, he’s done. I think I can live without being uncomfortable at work every time I see him.”

Rachel smirked. “I say live for the moment, and I’m about to go live another moment with Miles. I’ll catch up with you two later.” She turned and started to walk away, then abruptly stopped her pace. “Wait a minute,” she said, quickly turning and heading back. “We nearly forgot to give Clarise her gift!”

“My gift?”

Jesilyn smiled. “You’re going to love it.” She opened her big leather purse, dug around inside, then withdrew a white cylinder, about the width of a sheet of paper, with a silver cap at each end.

“What is it?” Clarise asked.

“You’ll see,” Jesi said, removing one of the end caps, then carefully sliding a folded sheet of yellow, apparently aged paper, from the center. She handed the sheet to Rachel.

“We bought it at an antiques shop in town that specializes in notable documents,” Rachel said, then cleared her throat. “Ahem. This license entitles the bearer to be a lewd and abandoned woman for a period of one year.”

Jesilyn shook her head, but couldn’t hold back her grin. “It’s a genuine license to prostitute. Evidently, they were issued in the late 1800s. This one belonged to a woman named Bella LeDeaux.”

“But now it’s yours,” Rachel said, handing the paper to Clarise.

Clarise blinked at the extravagant penmanship. “You bought this?”

“Don’t worry. It’s actually a copy of the real deal, so we didn’t spend too much, but it suits your decision to take a walk on the wild side in Tampa, don’t you think? Now you actually have a license to do it,” Rachel said.

Clarise laughed. Rachel and Jesilyn never failed to lift her spirits. Now was no exception.

“Okay, so I’m off to practice my own lewdness on the man in my bed,” Rachel said, spinning on her heel and sashaying toward the elevator.

“Take it easy on him,” Jesilyn said. “Some people actually like to sleep later than 4:00
A
.
M
.”

“Hmph, we’ll see.” Rachel’s voice trailed after her as she entered the elevator, then winked at the two of them before the doors slid closed.

“I’m not believing you bought this,” Clarise said, eyeing the unique document.

“It was Rachel’s idea, of course,” Jesilyn said, propping her hip on the arm of Clarise’s chair. “And you can spill now, by the way.”

Clarise looked up at her friend. “Spill?”

“Whatever’s eating at you,” Jesi explained. “You can’t tell me you were sitting out here by your lonesome this early in the morning with Ethan Eubanks asleep in your bed unless something was wrong. So spill.”

“I didn’t think I was that obvious,” Clarise said. “Rachel didn’t notice.”

“Rachel is on a sex-induced high, so she’s oblivious to most everything that doesn’t involve her libido. So, what’s up? Did he do something stupid?”

“No. I did.”

“I’m listening,” Jesi said, tucking her hair behind her ear and tilting her head toward Clarise.

“I fell in love with him, but he’s just helping me do the things on my list.”

Jesilyn blinked, quirked her mouth to the side and squinted while she processed the heap of information in Clarise’s statement. “You’re in love with him,” she finally said.

“Definitely.”

“And you’re certain he doesn’t feel the same?”

“Commitment wasn’t on the list,” Clarise said, feeling miserable. Wanting something to do to keep from crying, she rolled up the license and slid it into the cylinder.

“The list,” Jesilyn repeated thoughtfully. “What list, exactly?”

“My list of sex fantasies,” Clarise said hesitantly, but Jesilyn didn’t miss the punch of the statement.

“Sex fantasies?” she asked loudly, then as Clarise sank farther into the overstuffed chair, she repeated softly, “Your sex fantasies? You have them listed?”

Clarise swallowed, nodded. “You know how much I like making goals,” she said, attempting to explain, since saying the words “sex fantasy list” out loud seem to make the whole scenario seem even more bizarre. What had she been thinking? Writing all of
that
down?

“Goals?” Jesilyn asked, her tone disbelieving. “Goals for what, exactly?”

“Things I’ve always wanted to try. Things I wanted to do during this trip.” With someone who looked like Ethan and acted like Ethan, and who, consequently, ended up
being
Ethan.

“So you made this list,” Jesilyn deduced. “And I won’t even ask you what was on it . . . ”

“It started with sex outside,” Clarise informed.

“O—kay,” Jesi said. “Anyway, you made this list, then Ethan found it?”

“Actually, I gave it to him Friday night after the parade, when I was smashed.”

“You were drunk,” Jesilyn asked, once again very loudly, and once again, Clarise squished her behind deeper into the chair’s cushion in an effort to hide from the stares of the other early risers in the lobby.

“Not that it makes any difference, but most people down here get drunk at least once during Gasparilla,” Clarise said defensively.

“I know, but most people aren’t I’d-rather-keep-my-brain-cells-intact Clarise Robinson either.”

Clarise grinned at that. She hadn’t even tasted the champagne at the Christmas party last year, but that was more because she was afraid it would make her belly puffy, and there was no room for extra puff in the red dress. Some clothing could be classified as “fat clothes,” or clothes that easily disguised bloating, or a few extra holiday pounds, or a couple of glasses of champagne; that dress definitely didn’t fall into the fat clothes category.

“Okay,” Jesi said, scooting off the arm of the chair to sit beside Clarise. “So, you made a sex list, got drunk, shared it with Ethan and then . . . ”

“Then he offered to help me accomplish everything on the list,” Clarise said matter-of-factly.

“Mighty generous of him.”

“He’s my friend, Jesi, and he wanted to protect me. He didn’t think I should go out and do all of ‘that’ with someone I didn’t trust. And he knows I trust him.”

“Like I said, mighty generous,” Jesilyn repeated, grinning. “And so the two of you have been checking the items off the list, right?”

“Multiple times.”

Jesilyn laughed heartily. “Holy cow. Man, if Rachel was here, she’d so want details, but I’m going to try to be big about this. So . . . you’re feeling more than sex, right?”

Clarise nodded.

“And he isn’t?”

“Like I said, commitment wasn’t on the list, and we both agreed it shouldn’t be.”

“You discussed it?” Jesi asked, obviously surprised by this added bit of insight.

“More or less,” Clarise answered, remembering their conversation that first morning.

“Well, I say you discuss it again,” Jesi reasoned. “I’m betting if you’re feeling something, then he probably is too. And what’s more, I think it’s way cool.”

Clarise swallowed. “I thought you said sex with friends wasn’t smart and that sex with the boss was a definite mistake.”

“I was talking more about Rachel than you. You remember how weird everything was between Rachel and Nick Summers at work last year after the Gasparilla trip. I didn’t want that happening again. He quit, remember?”

“I never knew the whole story,” Clarise admitted. Since she’d given her Gasparilla trip to Babette, she’d been fairly out of the loop on what went on during last year’s corporate bonding excursion, but she had heard the rumors about Rachel and Nick, even if Rachel had refused to divulge.

“Basically,” Jesi explained, “she couldn’t get enough of him during the trip. They were going at it like rabbits the whole time, a lot like what she’s got going now with Miles, then when they got back home, she’d had enough. Thought what happened in Tampa stayed in Tampa and didn’t want any reminders.”

Clarise vaguely remembered Nick trying to talk to Rachel in the employee lounge, and she even more clearly remembered her friend callously giving him the cold shoulder.

“He couldn’t stand to see her every day after what they’d had, or what he thought they’d had, so he quit. And he was amazing in Men’s Footwear. It’s a shame Eubanks lost a good employee over a Gasparilla sexcapade.”

Clarise frowned.

“Oh, shoot, I’m not talking about you,” Jesilyn quickly improvised. “You and Ethan have been friends for years. Rachel never gave Nick the time of day until she ended up wanting a bed buddy at Gasparilla. Seriously, this is nothing like what you’ve got going.” She moved her face closer to Clarise’s and smiled brightly. “Besides, Rachel didn’t have a sex list. You’ve got to get major points for originality there. That little list of yours could be the sole instigator for a very-long-lasting and uniquely inspired relationship.”

Clarise managed to grin. “It isn’t that little a list.”

“You go, girl.” Jesilyn stood, then held out her hand to pull Clarise out of her pity perch. “Seems like you should get back up to that room and keep checking off those items.”

Feeling a bit more at ease with her situation, Clarise stood, and the cylinder fell to the floor.

Jesilyn picked it up and placed it in Clarise’s palm. “Don’t want to forget your license,” she said, smiling. “Now you can do whatever you want.”

“Thanks. I think I will.” Minutes later, Clarise crept across the hardwood floor of their room and gently slid the cylinder into the outer pocket of her suitcase. Then she noticed her now famous folded paper on the dresser nearby. Taking a quick peek at Ethan, breathing deeply in his sleep, she reached for the folded sheet. Opening it, she read the list she’d jotted on a whim, yet the instigator that had sparked this entire magical interlude with Ethan.

Sex with the lights on.
Check.

Sex outside.
Check.

Standing up.
Double—no, triple—check.

Bleacher sex.
Oh yeah.

Shower sex.
Yes, multiple yes.

Elevator sex had been added at the bottom of the list in Ethan’s scrawling script and could now be checked. Thoroughly explored that one, they did. And then there was sugar sex, God help her, not even on the list, but worthy of being there for sure. Two items remained unaccounted for . . .

Sex on the grass and sex on a beach. Two items, and two days. Today and tomorrow were all she had left of her private heaven with Ethan. Then life would return to normal. A big, fat tear bubbled from one eye and dropped on the page, blurring “sex on the grass.” Another tear followed, plopping directly beside the first. As if they knew which of her fantasies would never come to fruition, at least not with Ethan.
And if not with Ethan, then not with anyone,
Clarise silently declared. Heck, if not with Ethan, Clarise didn’t want
anything
with anyone. But Ethan Eubanks was, whether he realized it or not, by all past indications, commitment-phobic. Sure, he usually had a drop-dead-gorgeous creature on his arm at company functions, but never the same one twice. Plus, he’d told Clarise firsthand that he simply hadn’t found a woman who made him feel the whole till-death-do-us-part thing. He was obviously looking for perfection, and if there was one thing Clarise knew for certain, she wasn’t perfection.