Hot Under Pressure

“I was?”

And what did “nuts” mean? He sounded happy, beyond happy even, but nuts? What sort of word was that? No, she was getting all paranoid again. She would not get paranoid. This had been awesome, and she had been an active part of that awesomeness.

He cleared his throat. “I’ve never done something like this before, and it’s…I don’t know, it’s just…great.”

Now, see, “great” is so much better than “nuts.”

“It was, wasn’t it?” she said, sounding like she did this all the time.

He nodded, and she grinned, completely ruining the confident, sophisticated image.

“Why isn’t it always like that?” she asked, studying her past sexual behavior pattern to figure out why this was different. Why here, why him, why now? She hadn’t had sex in a year…two? Maybe it was the long dry spell that made things so…stimulating?

“It isn’t always like that because not every man is me,” he answered, sounding exactly like every man. He started to laugh. “Whatever it is, it’s not ambience, that’s for sure.” He cast a long look around the all-American airport hotel decor.

She followed his gaze. He was right. A single torchère light stood in the corner, the bedcovers were orange—orange!—but the drapes were a nice touch. A garden green with large tropical flowers. Cheery.

Ashley pulled up the sheet and blanket to cover her chest discreetly. David McLean, on the other hand, was certainly not shy. His legs, half in half out of bed, exposed lean thighs. The legs were tan, with an indentation where his ass joined the thighs. It was a fine ass, smooth, firm…exactly like his…No, Ashley focus on the conversation.

What were they talking about? Oh, yeah. “That…bam,” she began, searching for a better word, failing, and no, it wasn’t because of his fine ass. “I mean, what’s that about? If I knew you better, would it disappear?” Her eyes kept stealing lower. Conversation with a naked hot man was harder than it looked.

“The zing? That never lasts. I’ve had some great first dates before, and then, you get to the third date, and you’re thinking, who is this person?”

“Exactly,” she said, curling up next to hot man with the fine ass, because miracles did not happen often. “Familiarity. And then it all goes down the drain.”

“Too bad they can’t market that. That bam, that zing. Advertisers would go crazy.”

“I know absolutely nothing about advertising, but you’re right.”

“Thank you,” he told her.

“For what?” she asked, because honestly it was no big deal to agree with him. He was right. She knew he was right.

He cocked his head toward the bed. “For doing this. For staying with me tonight. I feel good. Normal. Better than normal. Like I could run a marathon. Alive. Not so dead.”

Don’t look, Ash.

Not looking, not looking, not…looking. Nope, she looked. Not dead yet. Getting livelier by the second.

He turned, studying her. “I didn’t know I could have sex with a stranger in a hotel without guilt. Without trying to analyze everything.”

“You’re analyzing everything.”

“Occupational hazard.” He leaned back into the pillows and sighed. Not a restful man, David McLean. “It shouldn’t be so hard to start over. Just a date. That’s the Holy Grail for me. I want to find a woman to go out with, and have a nice evening. A good conversation, a little fun.”

“There would be tons of women wanting to go out with you,” Ashley told him.

Good God, what was wrong with the women in New York?

Nothing wrong with him. He’s a serial killer.

Right, Val.

“It seems like all the women I meet are weird, neurotic, or needy. Or eighteen. I have standards.”

Speaking as a weird, neurotic woman, neither needy, nor eighteen, Ashley knew he was doomed and felt it her duty to speak the truth. “Sorry, you’re out of luck. All that comes with the estrogen…except the eighteen part.” His eyes looked nervous and she laughed. “Have you tried online services? A friend of mine met her husband online.”

“Normal people don’t do that, do they? It doesn’t seem like, I don’t know, there’s something wrong with me?”

Ashley waved a hand. “Not anymore. Everybody’s too busy to go and hang out somewhere on the off chance they’ll meet—” she held up quote fingers “—the One.”

David still didn’t look convinced. “A dating service. It sounds painful.” For women, yes, for men, ha. “Go for it. Women would jump all over you.”

Like you did, Ash.

“You really think it’d be okay?”

Ashley nodded.

“And you swear that normal people sign up?”

“On my honor as a fashion professional.”

“I don’t know.”

“Try it,” she urged, because he needed to find that perfect petite blond, black-dressed New Yorker who would appreciate a man who was simply…nice. That, and a pile driver in bed, which made for a nifty combination.

After a moment of consideration, he sighed, but then nodded. “I’ll do it. Just a test. You’ve given me courage.”

That out of the way, his eyes skimmed over her, and she felt the tingles again. That wasn’t courage. No siree, that was lust. She gave him courage. He gave her lust. There was something wrong with that equation. “You should do it, too,” he added.

“Oh, no. It’s not for me.”

Ashley didn’t want to date. She didn’t need the hassles, the aggravation, or the neurosis. Nope. Everything she longed for was right there. Long, lean, stranger man, naked in her bed. She hadn’t known she could do this. “I don’t want a date. I want an affair. An exotic, femme-fatalish affair. Doesn’t that sound perfect?”

“You should live in New York,” he said, possibly reading her mind. “If you lived in New York, I’d give you an affair.”

“No, thank you, Yankee man. I’m staying right here in the Windy City. Well, actually, I’m leaving in the morning for L.A., but I’m coming home here. To Chicago.”

There was a momentary silence as she contemplated that statement. They were complete strangers, didn’t even share the same state. One more plane ride to L.A., and then she’d never see him again. It made the night seem…alluring, adventurous. The lady and the tiger, and tonight she wasn’t the lady.

Become the tiger, Ash.

David propped up on one elbow. “You want to get dinner in L.A.?”

“Aren’t you tempting fate?” she asked, tempted to tempt fate herself.

“By eating?”

“By having a date. What if that destroys the bam, the zing? What if the only way we can have this is by meeting in hotel rooms and losing our exterior selves in a moment of wild abandonment?”

David looked at her, slightly awed. “You came up with all this from one shot of tequila and sex?”

“No. I’ve been thinking.”

“You could think?” he asked, his eyes narrowed. “I couldn’t think. Why could you think?”

“Not then. Now.”

He rapped a hand against his heart. “Good.” Then he looked at her in that way she was learning to recognize. “Do you honestly believe all that?” he asked seriously. There were two David McLeans. One, resident goofball, but the other was hardcore analyst. He was probably excellent at his job.

“I think it deserves some consideration,” she replied, but honestly, she did believe it. It explained everything.

And he didn’t look at her like a crazy person, which made her like him more. “Okay, meet me in L.A. In a hotel room. Chateau Marmont. We can be Mr. and Mrs. Jones. We’ll test your theory.”

“We’d just…exchange a room number and then I knock three times on the door, and…?”

“Yeah, or we could just meet up in the lobby,” he explained in a practical voice.

Ashley sighed. “It’s easy to tell you’re Mr. Bottom Line. No sense of adventure at all.”

“This from a woman in bunny slippers?”

She held up a naked foot. “Not a pink floppy ear in sight.”

His eyes crinkled. “Bare flesh. Seductress.”

“You think?” She held up her foot again, watching one of his long, lean thighs dig itself into the covers until it was buried completely. She was going to miss that naked thigh, that firm flank, that stellar ass.

“You have very sexy feet. I was watching them on the plane.”

Feet? No. It would have been better if he were a serial killer.

“You think my feet are sexy? You’re not gonna get weird and suck toes, are you?”

He must have some flaw. This one would explain it.

Thankfully, he looked horrified. “No. But I could, you know, start at the arch, work my way up, see where I land…” And she could see the gears turning in his head…all because of a foot. Her foot.

Ashley stared at the appendage of interest, considering the possibilities. “That sounds…decadent.”

“Bam?” he asked, raising a brow.

“Definitely.”

“Good. I didn’t push any buttons before, and I’m sorry about that, but you felt so good. I got carried away, and I feel like I have shirked my manly duties.”

She wiggled her toes. “Go forth, and unshirk, my devoted slave of pleasure.”

He pushed down her body, and his mouth pressed against her arch, and the first time it tickled, causing her to giggle. But then he moved up her calf, and it still tickled, but a different tickle. A warm tickle, a tickle between her thighs.

“Oh,” murmured Ashley, then she shot upright, horrified by a new thought. “You have more condoms?”

“A whole box. Now let me get back to my unshirking.”

Ashley fell back against the pillows, and his mouth touched the inside of her thigh, and there were no more giggles. Only the sighs and ragged breathing of a woman having her buttons pushed. Every single one of them. Sometimes twice.

“I’m very glad you went for the box, rather than the travel size,” she told him.

“Bam?” he whispered, his mouth unshirking behind her knee, and moving north at a steady, yet wholly orgasm-inducing speed.

Ash, you’re way too easy.

Shut up, Val.

4

THEY HAD GONE through four more condoms, and the 5:00 a.m. wake-up call hadn’t even been necessary.

Ashley was dog tired. She hadn’t been this tired in years. Thirty-two-year-old women did not stay up all night having sex with strange men in airport hotel rooms.

Or at least not every day of the year.

“We can’t do this again,” she told him, her face buried in the pillow.

He chuckled, an exhausted chuckle, but a chuckle nonetheless. “Eighteen was a long time ago. You can sleep on the plane. I can sleep on the plane. I need to sleep on the plane.”

She lifted her head from the pillow. “We shouldn’t do this again.”

Comprehension dawned. “Oh.” He waited for more of an explanation. Ashley gathered her meager, yet dog-tired courage.

“Tonight was fun. Like being somebody whose life I’ve secretly always envied. But if we go out to dinner, or meet in a hotel, I’m afraid I’ll lose this fantasy, get embroiled in the completely weary minutia of my life, and I’d rather end on the high note.”

“That’s a very defeatist attitude.”

“No, sometimes things are just too good to take a chance and possibly ruin,” she told him bluntly.

“Do you ever get to New York?” he asked, a totally unfair question, because fashion, New York? Hello? Did he honestly think she was that bad at what she did?

“Sometimes. A bit. You ever come to Chicago?”

“Not if I can help it,” he answered, a defeatist attitude if she ever heard one.

“This was fun,” she repeated, rising from the ashes of the bed. Outside, the windows started to rattle again. The airport was waking up. She walked to the shower, femme fatale of the friendly skies, and she felt muscles that she didn’t know she had.

He watched her closely, and she gave her hips an extra wiggle.

“I could help you,” he offered gallantly.

“In the shower?”

He lay there naked, on his back, head pillowed on his hands. Long, lean, and ready to go. Dog tired? Who said she was dog tired?

You did.

“Come on, Yankee-man,” she ordered in a husky voice she didn’t even know she possessed.

And she didn’t have to ask twice.

LATER ON, they didn’t talk to each other on the plane. The 6:00 a.m. flight to L.A. was crowded, but thankfully, Junior and the doting parents from hell were absent. Ashley was stuffed next to a plumbing salesman from Portland who wanted to chat. She pulled out her magazines and pretended to be interested in the latest fall forecast, but instead, her sandpaper eyes kept tracking to the front of the plane. Seat 16A to be exact, where she could see the back of his head. A perfect bed-head, neatly combed into place.

It had taken her two hours to dare to stroke his hair, smooth it the way it longed to be smoothed, and she could still feel it, the fine strands tickling her fingers, still smell the shampoo and soap. Still smell the sex.

Don’t get there, Ash. Not with you-know-who sitting next to you.

Ashley stopped gawking at Seat 16A and instead focused on the magazine spreads in front of her, but her eyelids drifted shut.

She woke up three hours later, having slept through the flight. In her lap was a small white piece of paper. A business card.

David McLean.

Brooks Capital.

Analyst.

On the back, in firm, decisive, indelible black ink was scrawled a cell number and one word.

Anytime.

It was enough to make her not-quite-jaded-enough divorcée’s heart sigh.

Carefully she put the card in her wallet, hidden right behind her driver’s license. It was her memento, a souvenir she would never forget. Some moments were best not to be repeated…except while dreaming.

CHICAGO WAS WARM, windy, and loud. Ashley took a cab back to the Larsen house in Naperville, which was equally warm, not so windy and not nearly so loud. Their street was lined with towering elm trees, hand-painted mailboxes and well-used bicycles. It wasn’t New York, certainly not Los Angeles, but it was home.

Already Ashley began to feel revived.

After the divorce, she’d moved in with Val, their mother, Joyce, and Val’s daughter, Brianna. Three generations of Larsen women sharing one roof. A scary thought, all those hormonal fluctuations duking it out with the inherent uncertainty of the family genes. Frank Larsen, the ne’er-do-well who had sired Ashley and Valerie, was now on his fourth marriage, electing to spend his golden years with his twentysomething secretary in Malibu.

Ashley threw her carry-on in the general direction of the couch, and walked into the kitchen. Val was talking on the phone, stirring dinner over the stove and watching the news. Multitasking, thy name is Valerie.

Val punched a button on the phone, and waved a wet spoon as a way of greeting. “How was the trip?”

“Productive. Very productive,” Ashley answered, focusing on the business aspects of the trip rather than the pleasure aspects, because Val might be her sister, but there were secrets that would never be divulged. Doing David McLean in the O’Hare airport hotel was one.

“Can you watch the monster while I go to a meeting?”

“Mom not home from work yet?”

“No. Inventory.”

“I can watch her. You don’t need to ask.” Val was thirty, a single mom with a fondness for things that weren’t good for her and a hard line in her eyes that Ashley didn’t think would ever disappear. Ashley liked to blame it on Marcus, the drummer who’d dropped into Val’s life, left her pregnant and alone, and then moved on to a bigger gig in St. Paul, never to be heard from again.

Sensing her guilt, Val gave her a long, searching look. “Why are you so jumpy?”

“I’m always jumpy. Flying. Slays me every time.” To further illustrate her point, she held up a suitably unsteady hand.

“Ash, you are one weird sis, but you’re the only one I’ve got.”

A small tornado ran into the room before skidding to a halt. “Ashley, Washly, Bo Bashley, Me Mi Mo Mashly. Ashley.” At eight, Brianna Larsen possessed the trademark Larsen nose, which all plastic surgeons yearned to compress, and more energy than Val and Ash combined.

Brianna shook back her hair in a completely eight-year-old diva manner. “I learned a new word from South Park. Douche bag. As in, Kenny is a world-class douche bag.”

Ashley looked at Val, fascinated yet delighted by the sparkle of humanity in her sister’s too-hard, too-black eyes. “And did your mommy tell you what douche bag meant?”

Brianna nodded. “It’s a soap bottle filled with water and it gets you springtime fresh.”

Ashley knocked fists with her sis. “Creative and honest. Excellent, my friend. Her vocabulary is improving by leaps and bounds. Her teacher will love you.”

At that simple yet comforting discourse, Val’s eyes narrowed, and Ashley realized her mistake. Ashley was acting too relaxed, too confident, too pleased for a woman with a deathly fear of flying and a business that wasn’t getting off the ground. Immediately she wiped the satisfied smile off her face.

“You sure you’re okay?” Val asked, because she was the blustering bull. Ashley was the worrier. After living together for four years, everyone had their assigned roles. Ashley knew hers, Val knew hers, their mother knew hers, and even Brianna was very aware.

“I’m fine,” replied Ashley, giving her voice an extra quiver. “Go on. I’ll take over the supper. What’s on the menu tonight?”

All doubts appeased, the world back in order, Val continued to stir, her eyes focused on the stove, rather than her sister. “My specialty.”

“Mac and cheese it is.”

Val glared. “With spinach, darling child, because we all love green food.”

Brianna, being one-hundred-percent Larsen and knowing a con job when she heard it, promptly rolled her eyes. “Douche bag.”

Val ruffled her daughter’s hair. “Brat. Listen to Aunt Ash. I’ll be back in a couple of hours, and Ash, do not forget the green food.”

Brianna fought with every inch of her small being, but in the end, responsible parenting prevailed, and Ashley shamed her niece into eating an extra helping of green food. Val came home from her meeting, Mom came home from work and four Larsen women sat on the couch watching Pride and Prejudice—the Colin Firth version.

Truly, there was no place like home.

Every time there was a crisis, home was always there. Every time she felt alone, home was always there. No, they weren’t the typical American family, but in a lot of ways, the typical American family had nothing on the Larsen women of Chicago.

Ashley had never imagined herself divorced. She thought her marriage to Jacob would be forever. He was comfortable. They were comfortable. Why would anyone want to leave that? But Jacob had, and Ashley had no place to go but home. Home was good.

By the time the grandfather clock struck eleven, Mom was sacked out in the recliner and Brianna was curled up with her head in Ashley’s lap, fast asleep.

Val picked up her daughter in her arms, sagging a little from the weight. “I think you’re overdoing the mac and cheese.”

“She’s only eight once. It’s too early for her to start dieting,” Ashley replied, as would any overindulgent aunt who thought her niece was perfect.

“You’re not her mother, only the auntie.” Val looked down at her daughter and shook her head. “How did I get this kid?”

“The old-fashioned way.”

Val’s laugh was harsh and self-directed. “What if you screw her up with all your spoilage and worrying?”

“I won’t,” assured Ashley automatically, not insulted at all. It was a conversation they’d had many times, and usually late at night, when doubts were prone to wander in on creeping shadows. They weren’t talking about Ashley. Deep down, Val had the same paranoid Larsen heart they all did, certain that when anything good happened in her life, it was going to disappear, just like the mac and cheese. Golden and gooey and warm, and then poof, you look down and the pot is empty, and your stomach curdles with an angry hunger.

“Swear you won’t screw her up?” Val asked.

“Swear.”

Val looked at Ashley, still doubting, but hopefully not quite so much. “Okay, but I only believe you because secretly we know you’re the smart one. And because you’re here.”

“You’re smarter than you think, Val,” said Ash softly.

Accustomed to performing feats of unimaginable flexibility, Val used one knee to power off the television remote. “A ‘searching and fearless moral inventory’ Ash. That means you don’t lie to yourself. You don’t tell yourself you’re smart when you’re on your third job in five months. You don’t tell yourself you’re smart when your bank account is DOA.”

As it always did when the doubts grew larger, Val’s voice also got louder, a little bit brassier. Brianna stirred in her mother’s arms. “Hey, loud people, I’m trying to sleep here.”

Val swore, completely unacceptable to eight-year-old ears. Nobody minded. “Wake Mom, will you?” she asked Ashley.

Ashley fought back a yawn, uncurled from the couch and rubbed her mother on her shoulder. “Mom. You need to get to bed. You have to work in the morning.”

Joyce Larsen blinked her eyes and came awake abruptly. “Did I miss the news?”

“Yes, Mom, you slept through the news.”

“Darn. I wanted to hear the weather. I bet it rains tomorrow. You should have woke me up.”

“I’m waking you up now. Go to bed, Mom.”

“I’m glad you’re back, Ashley. I always worry about you flying. You’re going to crash someday and die.”

“I know, Mom. Get some sleep.”

And people wondered where she got it from.

Thirty minutes later, Val dragged herself into the kitchen, obviously knowing where Ashley would be. When faced with the complications of life, some people turned to the church, others turned to sports. Ashley turned to the kitchen. To be more precise—cheese. “What should I do?” she asked, slicing up a wedge of swiss into small bite-sized nibbles.

“About what?” Val asked. “Your pathetic excuse for a love life?”

At that, Ashley almost told her. The words nearly slipped from her lips, but even with Val, she couldn’t share. How could she talk about something she didn’t even understand, and still didn’t quite believe? “I’m talking about the stores.”

“You’re going to figure out what’s wrong and fix it.”

Fix it. Yeah, just fix it, Ash.

It sounded so easy, so completely staring-her-in-the-face easy. So why couldn’t she figure it out? Forcefully Ashley hacked off another square before handing the cheese to her sister. “Why don’t the women of Chicago realize that not only am I providing non-cookie-cutter clothes at a decent price, but by shopping at Ashley’s Closet, they are contributing to the livelihood of struggling fashion designers everywhere?”

Val shrugged. “You could have a sale. A big sample sale thing.”

“Sales, schmales,” mocked Ashley, sawing furiously again.

“Tell me how you really feel.”

“I need something pizzazzy, jazzy.”

“You’ll find it. You’ve got jazz.”

I need jazz.

Ashley watched as Val popped a cube of swiss into her mouth, glad to see her sister’s confidence level back to normal.

Val was a fast-spinning top that could fall off with only a word, a look, or a doubt. Unlike most people, when Val tipped over, it wasn’t minutes or hours before she got up, it was weeks and months. It was Ashley’s job to make sure she didn’t tip.

“What’s your schedule tomorrow?” Ashley asked.

“Seven to three. Why?”

“I’ve got a lot of catch-up to do at the stores. The Lakeview manager isn’t returning messages, so God only knows what disaster will befall when I walk in the door. You won’t see much of me. You and Mom have Brianna covered?”