Bodywork (2 page)

Bodyworks, Shelby’s massage therapy clinic, was her pride and joy.
Thanks to her business, she’d not only found a source o
f income, but her best friend.
Bumping into Maggie
Doran
on her first day of work had been
fate
.
They had immediately clicked and been thick as thieves ever since.

Shelby linked her arm through M
aggie’s.
“Tell me about the la
test masterpiece you’ve been designing.”

While Maggie explained her work in detail, Shelby thought about how much she enjoyed Tuesday walk
s
with her BFF.
T
hey had similar attitudes about men and life, though in appearance they were quite different.
Whereas Maggie was a pretty blonde with a petite yet curvy body, Shelby felt like the queen of average.
Neither fat nor skinny, with brown hair and brown eyes, she had even features and a nice complexion
.
Her
olive skin tanned quite well whenever she
had
a chance to see the sun.

“
Okay, I can tell when you’re zoning out on me.”

Busted.

“
So, back to Mr. Rud
e,
”
Maggie’s
continued
.
“Did you happen to notice that thick black ha
ir and his frosty green eyes?”

“No, but obviously you did
. Al
l I noticed was that he stood several inches taller than me and had a nice set of abs.”
At Maggie’s
raised brow, she
explained.
“When the coffee scalded him
,
the liquid made his white shirt transparent.”

“Thank God for wet, white shirts.”
Maggie sighed
,
and they laughed
together.

They picked up the pace after tossing their empty cups in the trash, completing a quarter of the three-mile course around the lake.
As they walked, Shelby considered Green Lake and
thought again about moving out here. Only her proximity to work
, in her current house in
Queen Anne, stopped her.

Though the lake had several signs warning about the algae and the danger of swimming, it rippled calmly under the cool breeze, giving the ducks a safe place to gather. Fresh clumps of flowers decorated rock formations that dotted the trail, and
when the wind blew, she
inhal
ed
the sweet smell
s
of lavender and magnolia.

“Could you pick up the pace a little, Methuselah?” Maggie
glanced at her watch again. “I have to be at work before Wednesday arrives.”

“Sorry.”
Shelby lengthened her stride.
“I was just taking in the sweet smells around us in an attempt to forget that idiot from this morning.”
She barely avoided a pair of sweaty men running by like their hair was on fire. Joggers. Ech.
Who the hell ran without a reason?

Maggie
poked her in the side
.

“Ow.”

“You know what your problem is?
”

“No, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

“
You confuse every good-looking guy with Rick.
Just because Rick was a complete ass, who not only used you but cheated on you, doesn’t mean every hot guy will do the same.
Dumping him was totally the right thing to do.”

“Thanks, Maggie.
I feel so much better now.”
Shelby didn’t want to
discuss Rick the
Prick
on such a nice day,
but Maggie was like a dog with a bone
;
she never let go.

“No.
I think you need to be honest about this.
It’s been six months since you caught him sleeping with that trashy blond bimbo.
Don’t go there,” Maggie warned, her blue eyes flashing.
“I can call her a bimbo. You, of the dark-haired variety,
cannot.”

Maggie’s self-esteem should have been higher than a kite considering the number of dates
she
had.
But being seen as a blond plaything
bothered
her.

Shelby, on the other hand, would have paid to be considered a hottie, brainless or not
.
Apparently she
wasn’t the only one with issues. “Okay.
I won’t say how humiliating it was to walk in on Rick sitting in his chair with that slutty woman’s lips around his
—
”

“
Exactly.
No need to rehash all that unpleasantness,” Maggie interrupted
.
“The point you seem to ignore every time we have this discussion
is that Rick
really was a d
ick for the way he acted.
Most guys aren’t that bad.
What about the guy you dated before
the prick
?” she asked, grinning.
“Bobby something or other.
He wasn’t bad looking and seemed pretty nice.”

Shelby flinched.
“Bobby Wiener w
as his name, and there you go grinning
again.
Do you know how hard it
is to go out with a guy named Wiener
?”
She frowned when
Maggie burst into laughter.
“Every ti
me we reserved a table for the Wiener party
,
I got looks.
And I couldn’t call him at work and ask for his name without cracking up.
Even he seemed embarrassed by it.”
Feeling guilty about making fun of such a nice guy, Shelby defended him.
“Wiener’s really not a bad name.”

“You’re right, Shelby.” Maggie bit her lip
, but the giggles continued all the same.
“Wiener isn’t a bad name.
Bobby Schlong, that’s a bad name.”

They both burst into laughter
.
And like magic, Maggie had lightened her mood.

“Now, Shelby, be honest about Mr. Rude.”

“Okay, okay
.
” Shelby
curbed her mirth
.
“I might have noticed he looked pretty solid under that jacket.
I might even have noticed tha
t his
b
lack
hair nicely
went with
his
dark green eyes that stared at me wide with shock.”

“And?” Maggie prodded.

“And he was tall,” she muttered.
The
number
one
standard
she and Maggie
agreed about their dream man
was height.
At five-
foot
nine
, Shelby
looked down on the average female
.
But Maggie barely reached her chin.
“What’s your deal with height, anyway?
You’re not that tall yourself.
What would it matter to you if a guy stood
six-
foot
or
five-five
?”

Maggie huffed.
“We go over this every time you bring up the subject.
I don’t have to be tall to like tall men.
Granted, I’m kind of small
,
but that just means I’d like somebody larger than myself for protection.
Besides, don’t all the men in your books stand
a head taller than the women?”

“Yeah, they do.”
Shelby recall
ed
her latest steamy read
.
Now that hero had been one tall order of hot sex and
enduring
desire.
If only she could find her own hero and shack up for a few days, months, years…
“But you’ll notice in my books the man always has a tender side around the woman, a touch of chivalry that makes her feel loved and protected.”

“I don’t know about that.”
Maggie
frowned.
“The last book of yours I read had this really hunky cowboy in it that treated the woman
like dirt, a real macho type.”

“Really?
And you liked that?”

“No.
I liked the part where the heroine shot at him and roped him.
Then she tied him to the bed and screwed him six ways from Sunday.
Now
that
, I liked.”
Maggie
grinned
and then
groaned.
“And speaking of restraints,
I think it’s time I told you what really happened with M
ichael
.
”

“
I knew you were holding out. Tell me.
”

Maggie had more dates than she knew what to do with
,
and God bless her, she kept going out, disappointment after disappointment.
Shelby sometimes wondered why Maggie bothered
,
but her friend would tell her that you couldn’t win if you never played the game.

“You’re not going to believe this.
” Maggie lower
ed
her voice to a whisper.
“I almost don’t believe it
myself
.
I have to say he was my worst one yet.”

“Boring Dr. Yeats?”

Maggie snorted.
“
Boring is the last thing I’d use to describe him. So you know it
was our fourth or fifth date
.
I’d decided to maybe let
things progress
a little further.”

“Further?”
Shelby’s eyes widened.
“He’d already hit second.
Was he rounding to third or stealing home?”

“Shh, keep your voice down
.
” Maggie
glanced around her then said,
“I liked the guy, and he seemed so normal.”

“What happened?”

“Well, we ate at a really nice restaurant, right on the waterfront.
We were having a great time
,
and then we headed back to his place.”

“His place
.
”

“Yeah.
H
e lives on the Hill in a really nice house.
Truth is, I was impressed.”

“He’s a
doctor
, what did you expect?”

“I expected to play doctor, not participate in some weird S&M games!”

Shelby’s jaw dropped.

“I mean, not that I’m averse to that type of thing, I don’t think, but I
’d
just met the guy a
few weeks ago. I
t was really embarrassing.”

Shelby pulled Maggie
down
to a nearby bench and squeezed her arm.
“Tell me
.
”

“We
’d
just gotten back to his place, right?
Well, he told me to wait for him, that he had a surprise for me in the bedroom.
I knew what he was getting at, or at least I thought I did.
I expected some candles, maybe a little mood music, sati
n sheets, that type of thing.”

“And?”

“So I go into his bedroom and find him dressed in a black mask with a zipper where his mouth should be and two slits for eye holes.
He’s also wearing a studded dog collar around his neck.”
Maggie’s voice lowered.
“But this is the real kicker.
He was wearing a pair of women’s black lace panties
and
a garter holding up fishnet stockings!”

“
I’m getting flashbacks of the
Rocky Horror Picture Show
.
”

“
Oh yeah.
The whole look, but add the ski mask and you have my bizarro evening.”

Shelby could only stare
when
she realized Maggie wasn’t lying.
Talk about
strange
.
She
’d actually
met Dr. Michael Yeats and been impressed by his
looks, profession, and pleasant
demeanor.
Maggie typically dated a lot of liberal types that had trouble making ends meet. Yeats had seemed normal, if a little staid.

She tried but couldn’t get the image of Yeats in heels from her mind.
“I can’t see him
wearing panties and
garter
s
.”

“Neither could I until that night,” Maggie said dryly.
“The worst part about it was that he acted so normal, as if dressing in women’s underwear was supposed to turn me on.
And then I realized all those questions he’d asked me about
my views on sexuality
had been leading to th
at
.
When I just turned around to leave
,
he ripped off the mask and wanted to know what was wrong.
As if I saw that every day
.
”

“So did you tell him?”

“I didn’t stick around long enough to say anything.
I hustled out of there and called a cab from my cell.
Who knows what might have happened if I’d stayed?”

“Yeah.
He might have demanded you wear a jock while you whipped him for being a naughty little girl.”

“Laugh it up.
But this just goes to show you that not all guys are the same
.”
Trust Maggie to bring a moral lesson into it
.
“The last
hippie
guy I dated was nice, but nowhere near as weird as Michael.
They’re all a little different.”

“Just a little,” Shelby joked but gave her friend a sly look.
“I notice it’s been a few
weeks
since you’ve gone out though.
Taking a break?”

“Well, a little one.” Maggie studied her nails.
“I think maybe I’m attracting the wrong type of guys.
”

“You think?”

Maggie talked over her. “
Most of them think if you’re an artist
,
you’re easy
.
”

“Speaking of art, have you even started on the present for my birthday yet?”
Shelby reminded Maggie
at least twice a day
about the paper sculpture she’d been promised
.

“Your birthday isn’t until November.
Give it a rest
.
” Maggie stood
up
from the bench and stretched.

Shelby stood with her and they moved to their cars.
“Your sculptures are the bes
t.
I want one before you’re too famous for me to afford.
I just don’t want you to forget you promised me one
for free
.”

Maggie mumbled something under h
er breath as they said good
bye
then drove away leaving Shelby with her thoughts.
Chuckling at the image of Dr. Yeats in garters, she
drove home to clean up before her morning appointment.