Dirty Read online

  “Where’s he taking you, might I ask? Dressed like that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Marcy laughed. “Hope it’s not a funeral. You’d make a dead man rise in that getup, Elle.”

  She left me to ponder that possibility. I was sure he did not plan to take me to a funeral. So where, then, did he want to go?

  Princess Pennywhistle wouldn’t have been afraid. She’d have put on the dress and gone to meet the Handsome Prince. I looked again at the shoes, the wrap, the lingerie. He’d spent a lot of money. Bought black. My size. The Prince Who Paid Attention.

  I smiled at the thought and put the dress and all its accessories away. Dan had been right. I wanted to go with him. It didn’t really matter where.

  I met him in the lobby of a swanky downtown hotel with real trees growing from its marble-tiled floor. A fountain made water-tinkle music in the hush. Chandeliers glittered overhead. I searched but didn’t see him.“Elle.”

  Dan’s voice turned my head. He looked good. Damn good. His tux fit as though it had been tailored for him, like he owned it instead of renting. He took my hand and pulled me close to him, aligned my body with his. His hands went to my waist.

  “Nice dress.”

  “This old thing?” I looked down at it before meeting his gaze again.

  “It looks perfect on you.” He kissed my cheek, a soft brush of his lips on my skin that became a nuzzling of my neck. “And you smell delicious.”

  I shivered at the movement of his lips on my skin, my nipples perking. The display of affection made me uncomfortable, but I didn’t pull away. He kissed the curve of my shoulder and then took my hand.

  “Shall we?”

  “Where are we going?” I asked as he led me across the lobby toward one of the ballrooms at the end.

  “My class reunion.”

  I stopped short so fast he kept going for a couple of steps. Our arms stretched out. “You’re taking me to your class reunion?”

  He nodded toward another couple dressed in formal wear heading for the same set of doors. “Yes.”

  I wasn’t sure what I had expected of the evening, but not that. “Why?”

  He gave another man a small wave and a smile of recognition, then pulled me aside into a small conversational grouping of chairs around a gas fireplace, lit even though it was the middle of May. He looked over my shoulder, smiling for the benefit of others, not me, as he explained.

  “I wasn’t going to come tonight, but then Jerry—my friend Jerry Melville, he’s in arbitration—told me Ceci Gold was going to be here tonight.”

  I studied his face. “And Ceci Gold would be…?”

  “Head cheerleader. Prom queen. Class president. Harlot who broke my heart.”

  “Ah.” I glanced around. “You were high school sweethearts?”

  “No. I jerked off to her picture in the yearbook like every other guy in the class, but she never looked at me twice. Three years ago we met up at The Hardware Bar on ladies’ night. She was celebrating her divorce with Blue Maui shooters.”

  “I see.” I did, much better.

  Dan’s eyes were fixed over my shoulder, watching the other couples heading through the doors. He smiled, nodded, waved, his pleasant expression belying the content of his conversation.

  “She took me home that night and tried getting in my pants but was so drunk I felt too guilty to fuck her. I spent the night on her couch. She was so grateful for my behaving like ‘such a gentleman,’—her words, not mine—that she asked me out for dinner. We dated for three months before she dumped me unceremoniously for a guy she met at the same bar on a night she wasn’t too drunk to fuck.”

  “I’m…sorry?”

  “Don’t be.” Dan focused on me, his grin losing some of its hard edge for a moment. “She was as conceited, high-maintenance and frigid a bitch as she was in high school. She gave me nothing but a headache and blue balls the entire three months I wasted on her.”

  “Ah.” I tilted my head to look at him. “I thought she broke your heart.”

  He gave me a shark’s grin. All teeth. “She fucked with me, is what she did.”

  “She made you angry.”

  “Yeah. She wasted my time. And she lied to me. She didn’t have to do that. We weren’t serious. Not in love. She didn’t have to play me.”

  “Nobody likes being lied to.” I found it interesting that three years later he still sounded so bitter.

  “Jerry said she’s going to be here tonight.”

  The dress made more sense now. “And you want to make her jealous?”

  He put his hands on my hips and pulled me closer. “Yes.”

  “With me?” I had to consider that for a moment.

  I hold no false ideas about my looks. The mirror shows me features many would call pleasing. I have long dark hair, greenish-blue eyes, skin that could be described as porcelain. I work at keeping in shape but have been blessed with a natural hourglass shape men seem to enjoy. I know, as my mother accuses, that if I ‘took care of’ myself I could garner much more male attention. I wear the clothes I do and keep to myself because I want attention on my terms, only. So yes, I know I’m pretty, but mostly I prefer being plain.

  Dan kissed my cheek again, lingering over it. “Definitely.”

  “I’m not so sure I’m a match for a former prom queen,” I told him with a small frown.

  He ran a hand across my hair, which I’d pulled into a loose chignon. He tugged a strand to curl next to my face. “You will blow her out of the water.”

  We looked into each other’s eyes for a moment.

  “What makes you think she’ll be jealous of you being with me?” I asked at last, ever pragmatic. “It doesn’t sound like she cared that much.”

  “She’ll care. Because she’ll see you with me and even though she doesn’t care about me, she’s the sort who likes to imagine no man who’s had her could ever move on. Besides, you’ll drive her crazy.”

  The first part, at least, made sense. “How do you figure that?”

  “You look gorgeous, Elle, and you don’t act like a gorgeous woman does.”

  “I don’t?” I sounded cynical. Because I was. “How do I act?”

  “You act like an angel,” he whispered in my ear and sent a shiver down my spine. “But you fuck like a demon. Don’t you.”

  Angel. Demon. I was neither, or maybe both in his eyes.

  “You want me to do this.”

  “I do, yes.” He smiled. “C’mon, it’ll be fun. Dinner. Drinks. Dancing.”

  “It’s a date,” I whispered, like we shared a secret.

  Dan leaned in close, put his forehead to mine and whispered a reply. “Humor me.”

  Should I have been angry with him for what he asked me to do? For his assumption I would agree? Maybe. Yet there was something appealing in the way he presented the issue to me, as a done deal rather than something to negotiate. He acted as though I would do what he wished for the simple reason he asked it of me, but that’s not why I agreed. I did it because he believed I could.

  Chapter 07

  I didn’t need Dan to point out which one was Ceci. I knew her already, if not her, at least her type. She was tall, blond and built like…well, like a prom queen. She wore a red dress with lipstick to match, and my lip curled a little before I managed to smooth it.

  It wasn’t luck that put us at her table, but swift maneuvering of the place cards by Dan, who gave a chuckle so evil as he switched them that I had to step back and look him over.“What?” He asked, catching my stare.

  “I didn’t think you could be so…mean.”

  “No?” He looked at me. “Does it surprise you?”

  “No. Most people can be mean.”

  “But you thought I was a nice guy, and now you don’t?”

  He took my arm to lead me toward our table.

  “No,” I told him. “I know you’re not a nice guy.”

  “Hey.” He frowned. “Yes, I am.”

  I raised an eyeb