A Taste Of Fantasy

“We were thinking.” Yvette sidled up to him on one side and took his arm.

“Oh?” He looked down at her lovely face turned up impishly toward him and couldn’t help grinning. A promising sign.

“Yes.” Vanessa slid around to his other side and took his other arm. “We were thinking.”

“Thinking, huh?” Jack turned to the lovely impish face on his other side and couldn’t help grinning wider. “Is this unusual activity for you?”

Two sweet giggles, high and breathy, one in one ear, one in the other. Okay, so he’d been in worse situations.

“We were thinking maybe…” Vanessa tipped her head to one side and looked at him through half-closed eyes.

“Yes…?” He couldn’t help feeling cocky. They were going to accept. Instead of going to his empty apartment, or going out to eat on his own, he’d have some company, maybe get some flirt. It had been a while; he’d been so intent on his work. Just some harmless fun.

“That maybe…” Yvette took up the sentence. “You’d like to do both of us.”

A burst of incredulous air exited his mouth. What? The girls were barely out of diapers, and they were suggesting a threesome? “Do you?”

“Yeah.” Yvonne wiggled seductively closer. “Both of us.”

“Uh…” Jack swallowed. This was supposed to be every man’s dream. Ten years ago—maybe even five—he’d have instantly gotten so hard his cock would have ripped through his pants.

It wasn’t happening now. Instead of a hard-on, he was suffering from a sudden surge of panic. No question his attitudes about women had changed. His attitudes about a lot of things had changed.

“I’m not sure that would be such a good idea.”

“Awwww.” Yvette stood on tiptoes and trapped his left earlobe between her teeth.

“C’mon.” Vanessa wrapped one leg around his and pressed her pelvis to his right thigh, hands clamped onto his chest. “It’d be fun.”

“I’m sure it would be.” Jack extracted himself from trapping teeth, clamping hands and pressing pelvis, feeling like he was stripping off too-tight clothes. “But I can’t.”

“Why?” Yvette backed off and crossed her arms over her chest.

“Because I don’t need a reputation for hiring models and screwing them.”

“Ha!” Vanessa pouted and shot him the look of a snake to its mousy prey. “You already have one.”

Jack held himself still. Made long, icy eye contact first with one girl, then the other. “I think you should leave.”

They glanced at each other, then grimaced and filed sulkily past him through the reception area to the old freight elevator used when the building was a warehouse.

He waited until he heard the slide and groan of the doors shutting behind them.

Crap.

Youth was like a savage wonderful drug. You thought the world could be yours. You thought you could get away with anything. You thought you could indulge your passions and whims in this glorious free-for-all called adulthood and suffer nothing. No consequences. No guilt. Out of your parents’ house and into the candy store for dinner.

Jack took a quick glance around for anything out of place, turned off the studio lights and took the elevator up to his apartment. Miraculous that he hadn’t made a mistake sooner. Three years ago he’d spent the night with a type of woman he usually avoided. A particularly determined woman, who wouldn’t take no for an answer. Something about her aggressiveness, something about her confidence and primal no-nonsense, bad-girl sexuality had gotten to him, and he gave in to an explosive encounter.

He was still paying for it. The next morning he’d woken up, disoriented and edgy. Sleeping with models was dangerous; he knew that. Until that night he’d felt untouchable, chosen wisely, parted on good terms. But this woman had psycho written all over her and he’d gone ahead anyway, mind blunted by booze, ignoring the fact that someone like her could cause major problems for his blossoming career.

She had. For some screwed-up reason she’d decided that one night entitled her to complete ownership. When he’d rejected her next advance, politely but firmly, she’d turned on him so fast, with such violent and ugly determination, he barely had time to react.

Apparently no one rejected Krista Crotter and lived happily ever after. She made sure as many business associates of his she could get her hands on knew about what had happened. Or at least knew her version of what had happened.

He went into his living room, crossed the Oriental rug over plank flooring and put Annie Lennox’s Diva CD on the ridiculously overpriced sound system he’d splurged on a few years before on some testosterone-laden buying spree. He hit “skip” until he found his favorite tune, about how life felt like walking on broken glass.

It had taken months and months of damage control, of walking the fine line between keeping Krista down and pissing her off more, to extricate himself from the nightmare with his reputation intact.

Fairly intact.

Jack passed his hands over his face and blew out a long breath. No question now, but he needed a drink. He opened his refrigerator, which yawned spotless and practically empty except for the orange box of baking soda. No beer. And he should probably change the baking soda, not that there were any odors in there to absorb at the moment.

The total lack of beer decided him. Even without company, he’d go out, something he rarely did anymore, especially by himself. Booze and available women were easier to avoid if he stayed home.

But tonight he felt restless here in the perfectly organized apartment that usually soothed him. What harm could it do? One beer, maybe two. And if he met a woman, he could prove to himself that he could talk to her without getting his anatomy involved.

He went into his bedroom, frowned at a piece of paper that must have blown off his desk, replaced it and closed the window to the offending night air. Humming along to Annie Lennox, he changed into tan linen pants and a white cotton shirt with a beige stripe and descended to the underground parking area he had built for his staff, clients, and other tenants in the converted industrial building he’d bought five years previous with a loan from Dad. A loan he was well on his way to repaying, even after the damage Krista tried to inflict on his career.

He climbed into his Camry and headed east on Division toward State Street, enjoying the soft air through his rolled-down windows, sweet and summery in spite of the city noise and bustle. Weird sexual invitation aside, he was glad now that Tweedle-gorgeous and Tweedle-more-gorgeous hadn’t accepted his invitation to come out tonight.

It felt good to be alone.

2

From: Erin Thatcher

Sent: Thursday

To: Samantha Tyler; Tess Norton

Subject: re: Love

How do you know when love is real? Is that the question of our generation or what? A year ago I’m not sure I could’ve given you an answer, Sam. I’m still not sure I can tell you anything you don’t already know. As amazing as things are with Sebastian, I’m still no expert on love and relationships.

For what it’s worth, though, here goes.

The thing with Brendan wasn’t all right and perfect or you would still be with the bastard. I guess all I can say is that it takes two people to make it real and maybe, from this distance now of several months, you can look back over the last few years and see where Brendan may not have been on board for the long haul. Or where he may have taken a different fork in the road halfway through the journey. I never knew him. I only know what you’ve told us about him.

Just don’t let this one failure turn you off men or relationships. Because it was not your failure. It was his.

Love you! Erin

From: Tess Norton

Sent: Friday

To: Samantha Tyler; Erin Thatcher

Subject: re: Love

Sex is good. Sex is fun. In fact, I think instead of an apple a day, doctors should prescribe a lay a day. However, sex is not love. Now that I think about it, I think there should be two different words for sex…one when you’re in love, and one where you’re not. Both of which would be positive, affirming, with no derogatory elements.

Sex (the one without love) and perhaps Slovex (the one with). Hmm. I gotta work on that.

As for the whole question of how you know love is real…um, gosh. That’s tough. Because it’s totally experiential, and not at all objective. (Am I helpful or what?) I think I fell in love with Dash that first night out. Something shifted inside, and it had nothing to do with sex, and everything to do with sex. I was hit by Cupid’s arrow, I guess, which makes as much sense as any other theory. The thing is, there’s no way to know if it’s everlasting love unless you go through everlasting. Or read the Cosmo love horoscopes. I’m not sure which.

Trust your heart. Trust your instincts. Give yourself permission to love freely, and accept love in return. In the meantime, go get laid.

Love, Tess

SAMANTHA HUNG UP the phone and frowned, swiveling back and forth in her office chair, tapping a pen to the side of her cheek. Another sexual harassment case. On the one hand, the accuser, Tanya Banyon, admittedly a rather…obvious sort of female. On the other hand, Rick Grindle, the accused. Samantha had only gotten a glimpse when she visited Eisemann, Inc. but by all accounts, including the one she’d just gotten from a female colleague of his, he was charming, intelligent and thoroughly professional.

Usually in these cases it was only a matter of a few interviews before Samantha could tell either of two things. One, that there had simply been misunderstood personal boundaries and communications, or two, one party was lying. Rick Grindle had been unavailable for a personal interview so far. She’d go that route next.

“What’s doing?” Her assistant, Lyssa, poked her head into Samantha’s office.

Samantha shrugged. “Just wrapping up before I go home.”

Lyssa pushed the door open with her shoulder and marched in, carrying an armful of files which she dumped onto Samantha’s desk. “I come bearing gifts.”

“Oh, joy.” Samantha gave her a wry grin. Lyssa was tall, blond and curvaceous. She exuded a fresh sweet sexual quality that had men hurling themselves after her as she walked down the street. The kind of woman who made any other woman near her feel old and stale, like recycled airplane air. If Lyssa wasn’t a genuinely grounded, warm person, Samantha would hate her.

“Anything exciting on the agenda tonight?”

Samantha lifted an eyebrow. “Is there ever?”

Lyssa smiled, showing, of course, perfect white teeth—a smile Samantha had seen reduce cold, cocky vice presidents to blushing beings from Planet Idiot. “You could change that, you know.”

“I know, I know. But I’m not—” The word “ready” got as far as the inside of her teeth before her brain stopped it. Hadn’t she just decided last night that she was ready?

“Bill and I are going out to Excalibur tonight. Want to come along?”

Samantha hid her wince. If she was going to play third wheel, at least she’d like to play it to someone other than Bill. Lyssa had this amazing, unerring ability to fall for unattractive, selfish, annoying boy-men. “Thanks, I’m pretty tired. Long week. I think I’ll finish here and go home. Maybe another time.”

“Suit yourself. But I think it’s high time you started bestowing that gorgeous bod on deserving men again.”

Samantha rolled her eyes. “I’ll take that under advisement.”

Lyssa laughed. “Okay, so I’m intruding. You need anything else before I go?”

“No, no.” Samantha waved her off. “Go have fun, eat chicken wings, drink, go deaf. Enjoy it.”

She watched Lyssa leave the room, ready to go out and have a ball on a Friday night, even if it was with a selfish, annoying boy—man. While Samantha would go home, dump her briefcase on the already cluttered dining room table, feed the cats, eat bad food and end the evening cuddled up with a book about someone else having sex.

A sudden restless rebellion swelled in her chest. She couldn’t face that tonight. Closed in with her loneliness and her confusion and her cats and her work and those damn frozen dinners.

Enough. Tonight she was going out.

She turned impulsively to her computer, logged into her home account and hit “Create Mail.”

From: Samantha Tyler

Sent: Friday

To: Erin Thatcher; Tess Norton

Subject: Readiness

Newsflash. I know I’ve been a wimp. I know I’ve been hanging back. I’m not even sure what changed my mind, except maybe that I had a totally hot dream last night.

But as of this date, Friday, August ninth, my Man To Do hunt has begun in earnest. Chances are I will go sit in a bar tonight and look available and pathetic, but there is always the hope that someone and something will happen that will involve nudity and sweaty writhing and many many orgasms. It’s been too damn long.

I have spoken.

Samantha

P.S. I’ll let you know details tomorrow.

She clicked the send button, shoved her chair back and stood, grabbing her briefcase. She wasn’t usually this spontaneous, but then her life hadn’t been usual in a while. It would be great to be out, surrounded by her fellow Chicagoans, noise, energy and life.

Chances she’d find someone and then actually go for it tonight were slim, but the fantasy of being with someone deliberately unsuitable was delicious. Men to Do Before Saying I Do. After a bad marriage, divorce, and all the angst that went with them, a fun-only fling was exactly what she needed. To indulge attractions for types of men she could no more get serious about than enjoy shopping for feminine protection.

And speaking of protection, she still had the condoms she’d bought on a particularly rebellious day last spring after the divorce, when she thought she was ready for a wild night.

Not.

She’d met a guy, a sweet, overly earnest type, well over six foot and solid. At the time she’d been so angry and grieving that she’d practically thrown herself at him. After two hours of beer and innuendo they’d gone outside together, ostensibly to drive to his apartment. She’d kissed him twice, burst into tears, sobbed violently for half an hour and completely freaked the poor guy out.

Okay, so divorce did not leave her at her most rational.

But that wouldn’t happen this time. She was ready now. She felt peaceful and stable, rather than manic and confused. She was acting out of genuine need this time, making a strong deliberate choice, not reacting to pain and fear.

She closed her office door and strode through the building to the underground garage, calling good night to a few fellow employees. The Blazer started up; she backed it out of her reserved space and headed into the still-blazing day. She was in the mood for a fun place with a bar, but also decent food, not the packed-to-the-gills meat-market type places. P.J. Clarke’s in the Gold Coast would do it.

She found a parking place in an adjacent lot and walked toward the restaurant entrance, wishing she’d gone home to change out of her business suit and into something more casual, maybe a little funky. Maybe even a little sexy. Except if nothing happened when she was in her suit, it was easier to look like she was out for a nice lone-woman dinner and to heck with everyone else. There was something sad about sitting at a bar decked out in hot-to-trot finery and striking out. A situation that would have her imagining all the other bar patrons whispering and shaking their heads.

Poor thing. Out to get some and no one biting.

She swung open the door, letting cool confidence take over her body, though she was shaky inside, half nerves, half excitement. No problem. Move forward and chant the mantra: Samantha Tyler does this kind of thing all the time. Take me or leave me. I’m here.

She squared her shoulders and walked with deliberate indifference toward the bar, avoiding eye contact. Her senses registered the buzz of conversation and the stink of cigarettes, the measuring eyes of guys turning to see who had walked in. The row of round-topped wooden stools mostly, but thank God not all occupied, beckoned. Her mind raced as she calculated which seat would be best. Not next to the creepy middle-aged guy. Not next to the ponytailed artsy-looking guy. Not next to the twenty-something sexpot girls. That comparison she could do without.

There. Three people leaving. She could sit in the middle seat and avoid choosing someone to be next to.

She ordered a draft ale and concentrated on gazing at the bottles behind the counter, keeping her expression neutral. Someone was watching her. She could feel it. A shiver of excitement went through her for no apparent reason. What was that? For some equally unapparent reason, a vision of tall, dark and hunky rose in her mind, when the eyes on her could just as easily belong to a transvestite admiring her outfit.

Who? She turned her head slightly; no one on that side. She scanned with peripheral vision behind her. Nope. But the feeling was increasing, a shivery dangerous sexual sensation. Someone was coming up to her, about to speak. She’d never sensed anyone’s presence as powerfully as she did this person’s.

Who?

She turned the other way.

Oh. My. God.

He was sitting two seats from her on her left; she hadn’t noticed him arriving. She certainly would have noticed if he’d been there when she walked in. Talk dark and hunky, uh huh. And with this sort of bad-boy Jimmy Dean quality about him, as if he’d been orphaned as a young boy and fought his way through to adulthood on grit, determination and muscle.

Okay, so maybe that was a bit much to deduce after one glance. But oh, my, he was someone she’d be happy to talk to. The only strange thing was that after meeting his eyes, that strong sense of being approached by something exciting and dangerous had faded. She felt safe again. Still excited and…very excited. But safe.

“Hi.” One side of his mouth twisted up in a crooked smile, while the other side stayed emotionally neutral and seriously sexy.

She studied him, her head tilted to look as if she was deciding whether he was worth responding to, while her heartbeat was telling her in rapid and certain terms that he was.

“Hi.”

He kept that sly smile on, leaned toward her and extended his hand. “I’m Jack.”

She looked down at his hand, then up into his eyes before she took it. “Samantha.”

His grin widened to include the other side of his mouth and he chuckled.

She raised an eyebrow. “That’s funny?”

He shook his head, still smiling.

She tightened her lips, not really annoyed. The same old joke had gone beyond annoying. “I know, I know, Samantha on Bewitched, and am I a witch, and if I wiggle my nose can I make you disappear?”

“Nope.”

“No?” She smiled, curious, and frankly unable to keep from smiling back at him. Something about the way he looked at her made her feel strangely happy. Maybe it was just that he seemed interested, but plenty of men had been interested, and she didn’t recall it necessarily involved this kind of…uplift, for lack of a better term.

His eyes were brown, lighter than dark deep endless brown, but full of life, full of male confidence and messages that he knew that she knew and that if they both wanted it to, something could happen.

This could be a really, really outstanding evening.

“I was thinking of another Samantha.”

“Okay, let me guess. The character on Sex and the City who falls into bed with every man she meets.”

He laughed and gestured forward to the seat next to her. “Is this taken?”

Samantha swung her legs back under the bar and shrugged. “Nope.”

He slid off the stool and moved closer. She hadn’t realized how tall he was—well over six feet—nor how imposing. And boy, did he smell good. Male and sophisticated—what was that scent? She hadn’t a clue but she wanted to roll in it like a dog and smell it on her own body later.

He settled himself onto the stool next to her and smiled. “That’s better.”

Close up he was even more magnificent. His hair was thick and slightly wavy, cut short so the muscles in his neck were visible when he bent his head forward. The back of men’s necks and their shoulders, that powerful broad expanse, was a turn-on to her.

“Samantha.”

He said her name as if he was contemplating the taste of it, sliding it around his tongue and mouth before he swallowed it and made it part of him. The sound did shivery schoolgirl things to her insides, so she kept her face rigid, since it was silly at her age to be feeling this light-headed over the sound of her name.

“Samantha was the name of a very, very special…female.” He took a sip of his beer and turned to look full into her eyes, his softening as if the memory was taking him over.

Samantha narrowed hers. Something lurked in the back of those eyes. Something extremely mischievous. A very, very special…female?

She shook her head and turned back to her beer. “Your dog.”

He burst out laughing and slapped his hand on the bar. “Damn, you’re good.”

She bit off the obvious line. A bit too soon to be agreeing, even playfully. She knew where that would lead. And even if she ended up wanting it to lead there, now was too soon to start in with the serious flirting.

He angled his body toward her and leaned one elbow on the bar. “So what do you do, Samantha?”

“I’m a lawyer.”

“Corporate.”

“How did you know?”

He tapped the side of his head. “I’m brilliant.”

She snorted. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

He took a sip of beer, straight out of the bottle— Leinenkugel’s Red, brewed up north in Wisconsin. Drinking out of the bottle was sexy on men. Samantha approved.

“What kind of law?”

“I’m corporate counsel for ManForce temporary agency. I handle discrimination cases mostly, racism, sexism and sexual harassment.”

“Uh-oh.” He held up his hands. “I better watch what I say.”

She lifted her brows acknowledging his statement, but not responding. Never hurt to get that information on the table. Men were usually pretty wary after they found out what she did. Nice little weapon, one she wasn’t afraid to use, not that she got herself in situations like this often. But by the way his eyes warmed at the sight of her, she was starting to be damn glad she’d gotten herself into this one.

“And what do you do for fun, Samantha?”

He spoke softly, suggestively. Samantha started to roll her eyes, but then it occurred to her that if he kept up this kind of macho pickup-line crap, he might qualify as the Swaggering Butthead and then she’d get to see him naked. “Define fun.”

“Nonwork activities.” He winked. “You don’t strike me as the type that sits in bars for excitement.”

“Oh?” For some reason that stung. As if she had Desperate Divorcée written all over her instead of Confident Woman On the Prowl. “What type do I strike you as?”

“Beautiful, classy, elegant.” He looked her over as if he was thinking about having her for dessert. “More at home at the opera, or the symphony or in a five-bedroom split level with hubby and lovely children.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Are you trying to charm or insult me?”

“I’m trying to be honest. How you take it is up to you.”

Samantha gritted her teeth at the same time she was starting to get seriously excited. Mind games. Just what a true Swaggering Butthead was into. Keep his prey off-balance, subjugated. “I’m not into opera, I go to the symphony maybe twice a year, no kids and…” She gave a nonchalant shrug, though it was still hard to say. “I’m not married.”

“Divorced.”

She shot him a look. Yup. He had her pegged. One deep to-hell-with-you breath and Samantha regained her composure. “It happens.”

“You didn’t think it would?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Of course not.” He tipped the beer back into his mouth and put it down on the bar with an emphatic thud. “If you ask my opinion, which you didn’t, marriage is a fairy tale force-fed to us from birth.”