A Matter of Trust (11 page)

“Just one of those things.” Sloan shrugged and answered carefully, “We both worked in D.C. a few years back. I happened to see Jasmine one night in a bar. She was really hot—black leather pants and a skimpy little top. She was getting plenty of looks. I asked her to dance—God, can she dance. Well, you’ve seen her.”

“Yes.” Michael recalled the confidant way Jasmine moved, as if she knew that everyone enjoyed watching her.

“Well, one thing led to another...for me at least,” Sloan continued, still remembering in vivid detail how turned on she had been after only one dance. It was still a little embarrassing. Jasmine had turned her down flat when she suggested they go somewhere a little more private when the number ended.

Clearing her throat, she continued, “I thought it was odd that she didn’t seem to be interested in anything other than a dance, especially when plenty of women were clearly interested in
her
. She was friendly, but she didn’t go home with anyone—wasn’t even sending out those vibes—but I didn’t get it at first. I tried pretty hard, but all I got was a smile and a kind but definite
no.
A couple of days later, I passed this guy in the hall at work. He had the most beautiful eyes, and when he saw me, he blushed. And I knew.”

“What did you do?” Michael reached for one of the fortune cookies in the bottom of the paper bag. She was fascinated. The image of Sloan and Jasmine dancing was unexpectedly exciting. She wasn’t certain why—maybe because they would make a strikingly attractive couple. Sloan, handsome and debonair—Jasmine, beautiful and sultry—two women...
Two women.
She drew up short at that thought, then realized that Sloan was speaking. “What? I’m sorry.”

“My first reaction was to be pissed off,” Sloan repeated. “I actually wondered for a minute if he was some kind of undercover agent gathering dirt on government employees.”

Michael was about to laugh, but one look at Sloan’s face told her she was serious. “Does that sort of thing actually happen?”

“Not so much anymore, but it certainly did in the past.” Sloan shrugged, a bitter expression in her eyes. “And Washington is a very paranoid place. But I had danced with him, and I knew he was the real thing, not some kind of vice cop. He was the best transvestite I had ever seen. Everything—the way he moved, the way he spoke, hell, even the way he
felt.
Jasmine is as real as it gets. No agent would have been able to pull that off. So, when I saw him that day, I followed him down the hall and pushed him into the men’s room.”

She grinned a little ruefully at the memory. She could still hear herself demanding, “What the fuck is going on...Jasmine?”

Jason had turned pale and looked frantically around the restroom, as if searching for someone to help him.

“Fuck,” Sloan cursed, when she saw that he thought she was really going to hurt him.

With a sinking feeling in her gut, she realized that he expected it because someone probably had. She stepped back from him, put her hands in her pockets, and looked him up and down. He was wearing a Brooks Brothers suit, polished loafers, and a tie with a perfect Windsor knot. He looked like a cover model for
GQ
.

“I liked you a lot better in those leather pants,” she remarked, softening her tone.

“I liked you a lot better in yours, too,” he responded. “And that wasn’t me, actually, it was Jasmine.”

“Yeah. Jasmine...” This time when Sloan said the name her tone was not accusatory, but appreciative. “I suppose you know you...she...had me going the other night.”

“I know.” Jason blushed. “I didn’t mean to lead you on. I thought a dance would be okay. I’m sorry.”

“It should have been okay,” Sloan admitted. “It wasn’t Jasmine’s fault that I jumped to conclusions. A dance is a dance—not foreplay.”

“No,” he said. “I should have realized, but it was so good—just to be able to relax. I forgot how Jasmine would seem...”

Sloan remembered how quietly he had said that, a slightly wistful tone in his voice. She had no idea why he’d trusted her, but he had. She glanced at Michael, wondering if she would understand. Michael’s sympathetic smile encouraged her to continue.

“He explained to me that he was straight, which is why he didn’t go dressed to a men’s bar like most of the drag queens. He wasn’t interested in picking up men and was afraid there’d be trouble if he refused someone’s advances. At least in a mixed bar, where there were women, too, Jasmine would fit in, and she could always say no if a woman came on to her.”

“But Jasmine danced with you,” Michael observed, not critically, merely with interest.

“That was unusual, apparently.” Sloan grinned, recalling that she had had to ask three times before Jasmine finally agreed. “I was...persistent. As I recall, I did say to her it was only a dance.”

“My God, how difficult that must be for him,” Michael murmured. “It would be so much easier if he were gay.”

Sloan was surprised at how easily Michael grasped Jason’s dilemma. Jason could date straight women, but then how would he explain Jasmine? When dressed as Jasmine, expressing himself as Jasmine, he appeared physically female, but he did not want to attract men. He ran the risk that whoever might be attracted to him would be repulsed when they discovered his particular form of self-expression.

“He hasn’t had an easy time,” Sloan agreed. She didn’t think it was her place to tell Michael that Sarah and Jason were going to the AIDS benefit on their first date. She trusted Sarah to be able to handle the situation, but she wasn’t at all certain that Jason could. He was too used to hiding and too used to anticipating rejection. She wasn’t certain he would be able to recognize true affection when he found it. “So, Sarah, Jason...
and
Jasmine...and I will all be there.”

As Sloan spoke, Michael pulled the small slip of paper from her stale fortune cookie and read to herself, “‘You will find happiness in the most unexpected place.’”

“Please, join us,” Sloan insisted. “I’d like that very much.”

Michael nodded, realizing that she wanted to do that more than she had wanted anything in a very long time. Curling the tiny fortune into her palm, she said, “Yes, so would I.”

When Michael answered the knock on her hotel room door at exactly 7:00 Friday night, she was momentarily speechless. Sloan stood before her, dashingly turned out in a finely tailored charcoal pin-striped tuxedo, complete with a pleated white shirt, French cuffs, a navy cummerbund, and white bowtie.

“You look...magnificent,” Michael said, laughing as Sloan responded with a small bow.

“And you look...” Sloan searched for words, mesmerized by the vision of Michael in a black silk dress that hugged her sleek figure, thin straps at the shoulders accentuating the low sweep of a clinging bodice that exposed a tantalizing expanse of décolletage. The soft swell of her breasts was just a promise beneath the exquisite material, but it was enough to send the blood rushing from Sloan’s head to somewhere much more problematic. Her throat was suddenly dry. She knew that she was staring and couldn’t seem to stop as the silence between them lengthened. She was having trouble catching her breath. Finally, she brought her gaze to Michael’s, where blue and violet fused, and they smiled into one another’s eyes.

“You’re beautiful,” Sloan whispered, finding the words completely inadequate.

Michael colored slightly, inordinately pleased. Why did a compliment from Sloan make her heart beat faster?

“Thank you.” Reaching for Sloan’s hand, she pulled her inside. “I’ll just be a minute. I have to get my things.”

Sloan stopped just inside the door, watching Michael move about the room, graceful and sure as she seemed to be in everything she did. She reminded herself that she was a friendly escort only, and that she had best keep her eyes above shoulder level for the rest of the evening. Her inability to control her autonomic nervous system around Michael Lassiter was becoming embarrassing and more than a little physically uncomfortable. Unfortunately, avoiding Michael’s body wasn’t enough to place her beyond danger, because just looking at Michael’s face could devastate her. It went beyond the perfect features and flawless skin and her breathtakingly beautiful blue eyes; there was a tenderness in her gaze and a gentleness in her voice that soothed Sloan’s wounded places.

“Sloan?” Michael inquired lightly, surprised to see her still at the door and wondering at her hesitation to enter the room. It was so unusual for her to appear uncertain. “Do you need anything?”

Sloan shook her head, thinking,
if you only knew.
Quickly, to hide her agitation, she answered, “I’m sorry. No, nothing. I’m fine.”

Michael wasn’t sure she believed her, but she simply nodded, tossed a light jacket over her arm, and stepped through the door that Sloan held open for her. She was going out with friends, and she intended to have a wonderful time.

As they walked to the elevator, she glanced sideways at Sloan, struck suddenly by her bold, strong profile and pantherlike fluidity. She thought again how attractive Sloan was in that dangerous sort of way that wild animals were. She had always been tempted to put her hands through the bars of the leopard’s cage at the zoo, just to feel those sleek, stalking muscles ripple under her fingers. It had always made her just a little breathless.

Looking at Sloan was like that; being with her was a little like that, too. No one, male or female, had ever quite captivated her the way Sloan seemed able to. Being with her, talking with her, doing something as simple as sharing Chinese takeout in a deserted office building with her seemed to produce a slight shimmer of excitement. When Sloan looked at her with that piercingly intent stare, she made Michael feel as if she was the only thing that mattered at that moment.

Michael caught her breath at that thought and realized that she’d been thinking of the evening ahead almost as if it were a date. She laughed inwardly at her own foolishness. She had never been attracted to a woman before, and even if she were, Sloan had more than enough women to choose from without giving her a second thought.
Silly.

“Michael?” Sloan asked, faint concern in her voice. “Are you all right?”

Michael returned from her unconscious reverie to find Sloan standing by the curb, holding the passenger door of her Porsche open, a slightly bemused expression on her face.

“Yes, of course.” She smiled and slid into the sports car, ignoring the slight tingle in her arm where Sloan’s fingers brushed against her skin.

As they drove across town, Michael watched the city life through the window. Men and women in elegant evening wear hurried to the theater; teenagers bedecked in all manner of piercings, tattoos, and outrageous outfits crowded the sidewalks; and tourists watched the other passersby, plainly fascinated. Everywhere couples held hands, heads bent close, laughing and talking in that intimately exclusive manner that only lovers shared. Michael was suddenly envious of something she had never before been aware of missing—that unique connection to another human being that defies definition, but is so common to human understanding that poets and writers and composers have tried to capture it for centuries. She ached in some primal place that her rational mind, even with the reminder of all her accomplishments, could not assuage.

“Are Sarah and Jason dating?” she asked abruptly, searching for something to take her mind from the emptiness she had no inkling how to fill.

Sloan was silent for a second, recalling Sarah’s excitement when she’d announced that she had asked Jason to go with her to the benefit. Sloan replayed the conversation in her mind, deciding how much to reveal in answer to Michael’s question. Sarah had been standing next to her in the locker room before their workout, barely able to contain her enthusiasm.

“What did he say when you asked him?” Sloan had asked her.

“He tried to tell me he couldn’t go with me because Jasmine was performing, but I knew damn well there were two hours during dinner and the speeches before the cabaret routine. And then, there’s the gala afterward. I think he actually squirmed when I pointed that out to him.” Sarah’s eyes twinkled with laughter.

“That would explain his twitchiness at the office all day,” Sloan remarked. “Every time I spoke to him, he jumped. I think he might even have spilled his coffee once. For Mr. Perfection, that’s unusual.”

Sarah’s face clouded, and Sloan was instantly sorry she had said anything. “Why is he so nervous, Sloan? We get along so well, and he knows I know about Jasmine.”

Sloan had tried to ignore the question, hoping Sarah would let it go. She busied herself pulling on her sweats and workout gloves, pretending not to notice the shadow of Sarah’s figure standing motionless beside her. Damn. They were both her friends, and her loyalties were conflicted.

“I really like him, Sloan,” Sarah whispered softly. “It’s the first time I’ve felt that way in so long.”

Fuck. Sloan straightened with a sigh and looked her old friend in the eye. “I told you once that he never dated anyone who knew about Jasmine. That’s not exactly true. He dated a clerk in the Justice Department about the time I was...leaving. It was serious. They were even talking marriage. He eventually told her about Jasmine, and she totally decompensated. She actually filed a complaint against him in some kind of weird sexual harassment twist, claiming that he had used his position as her superior to unfairly involve her in an unhealthy relationship.”