Every Breath You Take (3 page)

He twisted his palm around his penis and began to thrust and buck on the mattress, which slid across the floor. “Natalie, Natalie, Natalie, Natalie,” he whispered as his body tightened up and his mind went blank for a few seconds. He gasped and wheezed before finally shooting his load, crying out as he did so. He collapsed, sweat streaming across his face and body. He laid there, winded, unwilling and unable to move. He took the white-streaked-with-grey top sheet and wiped down his penis and his hands before rolling over onto his side and clutching the lumpy pillow to his chest. He stroked her picture for a few moments before dotting it with sloppy, sweaty kisses.

“I love making love to you, Natalie,” he whispered to her smiling face. “I could make love to you all day long,” he murmured before drifting off to sleep.

N
atalie fingered the edge of Jason Hudson’s card, debating yet again whether he was worth the phone call. He’d been hovering around the edges of her mind for the last week as she kept glancing at his card propped up on her computer keyboard, alternately disturbed and intrigued by his name peering back at her. About a half dozen times she was moved by the urge to psych herself up into dialing the numbers, but every time let the card drop through her fingers to rest across the letters of her keyboard for a while before returning it to its previous position between the number and function rows.

She’d finally set an arbitrary deadline of today to put her fingers on the keypad and punch in the seven numbers. It had tugged at her brain all throughout her run along the lake that morning, through her daily cup of green tea and seven-minute walk to work. She thought about waiting until the afternoon, but she knew how she was; if she didn’t do it now, today would seep into tomorrow, tomorrow into the next day, and then she’d be sitting here a week later going through this lunacy all over again. She also didn’t want to face the Brandy and Christine firing squad. Sometimes she thought a pen through her eye would hurt less than dealing with those two.

Natalie took a deep breath, picked up her office phone, and dialed his number.

Voicemail, voicemail, voicemail, voicemail

“Jason Hudson.”

Her heart lurched and pounded against her ears. No such luck on voicemail taking over. She was on her own.

“Um, Jason, hi, this is Natalie. Natalie Scott? I met you at that reception at The Spencer last week.”

“Natalie, hey, it’s good to hear from you. I was beginning to think you wouldn’t call. Afraid I’d scared you off or something.”

She gulped and turned to look out her office window at the shops along Michigan Avenue. “Oh, you know how it is. Work and everything.”

“Yeah, no, I got you, I got you. So you having a good week?”

“It’s going okay. Like I said, just busy.”

“How were your big plans last Friday?”

“What?”

He chuckled. “When I met you, you said you had big plans for the night.”

“Oh. That. I was just meeting my girlfriends for drinks and dinner. Actually, the big plans were the next night. It was my girlfriend Brandy’s thirtieth birthday, so a big group of us took her out.”

“Uh oh,” he laughed. “Sounds like trouble.”

“No, no, it was good. We just hung out on Rush Street, hit up some of those clubs over there. Nothing too crazy.”

“Well, that’s good. Can’t go wrong with Rush Street.”

“Sometimes.”

“Good point,” he laughed. “Listen . . . okay, wow. I know this is last minute and everything, but you’re not free for lunch today, are you? If you’re not, I totally understand.”

Natalie bit her lip and looked over at her Outlook calendar. Her one day not jammed with meetings and conference calls. She’d planned on grabbing a salad and eating at her desk. “As a matter of fact, I am. Free, I mean.”

“Great. It’s a date. So, where are you? I mean, what part of town are you in?”

“Michigan and Chicago.”

“Oh, okay, I’m in the Loop, 333 Wacker, so maybe we could meet in the middle?”

She nodded, even though he couldn’t see her. “How about Tavern at the Park on Randolph?”

“Yeah, that’s a good spot, good spot. So . . . would twelve-thirty work?”

“Twelve-thirty sounds good. I’ll see you then.”

“Good, good. Looking forward to it. Oh, and if for some reason you can’t make it, my cell’s on my card, so. . .”

“Oh, yeah, of course,” she said. “I’ll call if I’m running late or can’t make it. It should be fine though.”

“Good. Okay, well, I’ll let you get back to work,” he said. “See you at twelve-thirty.”

“See you.”

“Bye,” he said, finally hanging up.

Natalie followed suit, feeling a bit better. He didn’t seem nearly so trite and ridiculous on the phone as he had when they met last week.

Maybe this would be all right after all.

• • •

Natalie fluffed out the ends of her hair and adjusted her sunglasses against the glare of the summer sun as she turned the corner onto Randolph and headed toward Tavern at the Park.

He was waiting by the host stand, his hands in the pockets of yet another expensive suit, this one charcoal-grey with a purple pocket square and multicolored tie, his eyes peeled for her arrival. As he smiled and walked over to her, she was astounded to discover flutters racing up and down her stomach. She remembered him being cute, but the guy standing in front of her was gorgeous. Movie-star gorgeous. Soft toffee skin, twinkling dark brown eyes, and teeth so white they might have actually sparkled like some stupid toothpaste commercial with a hunky man wielding a magic toothbrush. And he smelled amazing. Just the right amount of cologne. Some men had a bad habit of slathering themselves with their scent of choice as though assaulting your nose would somehow make you fall in love with them. Or into bed anyway.

“Natalie, hey. How are you?” he asked.

She gulped, trying to keep her composure, already proving to be a losing battle. “I’m all right, thank you. You haven’t been waiting long, I hope.”

“I probably walked in the door about two seconds before you did.” He smiled. “It’s good to see you again.”

“Thank you,” she said, not sure if she was supposed to say it was good to see him again, too. Instead, she tucked a chunk of hair behind her ear and cast a quick, nervous smile his way. “I guess we should sit.”

He nodded at the hostess and held up two fingers as he gestured toward the dining room. “After you.”

Natalie tugged a bit at the collar of her silk green print blouse and smoothed down the front of her black pencil skirt, aware of him behind her and hoping she was having a good ass day, as she followed the hostess to a table in the back.

“Enjoy your lunch,” the hostess said, handing them menus.

He held out her chair and made sure she was seated before sitting across from her. “I haven’t been here in a while. What’s good here these days?”

“I like the grouper.”

He flipped the top of his menu down to look at her and smiled again. “I think the grouper’ll work.”

She bit her bottom lip and nodded as she looked over the menu, even though she pretty much knew what she was going to have. “Good choice.”

He took a sip of water. “What about you? What looks good?”

“Chicken Caesar salad,” she said, closing her menu and taking a sip of her own water. She vacillated between not being able to take her eyes off him and being too afraid to stare at him, lest he think she was the freak. How had the tables turned while she wasn’t looking? She cleared her throat and took another sip of water, relieved when the waitress came over to take their order, because now she really was nervous.

“So . . . where’d you go for your birthday party? I mean, not your birthday party, but when you were out with your girlfriends,” he said, chuckling. “You know what I mean.”

“Oh, gosh, let’s see. Well, we started at Hugo’s for some apps and cocktails, popped into the bar at Gibson’s for a few minutes, then the Hunt Club and, uh . . . this is so embarrassing. We ended the night at the Hangey Uppey.”

He laughed. “Hangey Uppey. I like that. Everyone I know calls it the
‘
Hangge Uppe.’ You know,
hang up
the phone.”

“Well, they should spell it that way,” she giggled.

“Good point.” He grinned. “Sounds like you did the Viagra Triangle proud.”

She giggled over his invoking the nickname for the stretch of the Gold Coast where State and Rush converge in a whirl of high-end bars and restaurants crowded with wealthy older men squiring around barely dressed, barely twenty-something tits on a stick. “Well, we tried. Anyway, we had a great time and Brandy, my girlfriend, said it was a good send-off to her twenties.”

“And what about this past weekend? Do anything good?”

“Ah, no. I worked all weekend. What about you? How was yours?”

“Yeah, it was all right,” he said as he took the sweetener packets out of the white porcelain holder and rearranged them by color before placing them carefully back inside. “I had to work on Saturday, but a buddy of mine had a bunch of us over to watch the game on Sunday, so pretty chill.”

“I would ask what game, but there’s always a game, isn’t there?”

“You know it,” he grinned as he leaned closer and folded his hands on the table in front of him. “So, you from Chicago?”

“No, I’m from a little town in Arkansas, but Chicago’s home.”

“Arkansas, huh? So is your family still there?”

“Ah, yes and no. My, um . . . my parents were killed when I was a baby, and for a little while I was raised by my grandparents until they got too sick. Then my uncle and his wife took me in, but . . . we’re not close.”

“Oh. Sorry to hear that.”

“It’s okay. So, what about you?” she said to shift attention away from yet another subject she hated talking about. “Are you close with your family?”

“Real tight. My parents live over in Lincolnwood and my youngest sister lives in Minneapolis and the other younger sister is out in Oak Park, got a couple of kids. We all talk all the time, see each other all the time. Like I said, real close.” He started playing with the box of sugar packets again. “So, tell me, what do you do?”

“I’m in PR. I do the public relations for the Channing Hotels.”

“Ah, okay, and The Spencer is a Channing Hotel, which is why you were there the other night.”

“Right. My boss was supposed to go but couldn’t, so I had to go and. . .” she waved her hand around. “Anyway. That kind of thing happens all the time. What about you? What were you doing there?”

He took a sip of his water before lining up the salt and pepper shakers alongside the sweetener a few times. “My firm represents the investors for Springboard and it was our reception.”

“Okay. I have to ask. Who decided to have a reception on a Friday night?”

He laughed. Deep. Hearty. Full. “Aw, man. That was my boss. He’s always trying to do stuff on Friday nights so he doesn’t have to go home to the suburbs. I guess it beats a mistress.”

“I guess.”

“All right, enough about my boring boss,” he said. “Tell me, what does a public relations manager do?”

“Well, I promote the hotels, so I plan events, write press releases and speeches, work with the media, that kind of thing.”

“You like it?”

“I love it. I worked for one of those big PR agencies before that. Offices around the world, hundreds of people, that whole thing. All I did was pitch all day long, and after a while I got bored. When this job with Channing opened up, I jumped at it. A lot more hands-on, a lot more creative. Like I said, I absolutely love it.”

“Well, you don’t hear too many people say they love their job, so that’s a change. So that’s what you went to school for then?”

“No, actually, I was an English major. I was trying to find a way to stay here for the summer, and one of the big agencies was looking for English majors for internships, you know, because of the writing. Anyway, on a total lark, I went out for it and got it and wound up really liking it. The funny thing is, I didn’t even know what PR was before that. It just sounded interesting. Plus, I didn’t know what else I was supposed to do with that English degree.”

He snorted. “My sister found that out the hard way. She was also an English major and . . . I dunno what she thought she was gonna do. Write or teach or who knows.
She
didn’t even know. Anyway, she’s managing some clothing store or makeup store, I can’t remember which, till she figures it out. Maybe I’ll mention public relations to her.”

“You should. And hey, look at it this way, she’s working.”

“Yeah, you’re right. I mean, at least she’s not living in my parents’ basement.”

She giggled. “That’s something.”

“All right, so, I’m guessing you’re not living in somebody’s basement.”

“No. Definitely not,” she said. “I’m over in, I guess you’d call it River North—those high rises right around Dearborn, Chicago, that area.”

“Whew, yeah, I did the high-rise thing for years, but I didn’t like it.”

“Really? Why not?”

“I’m scared of heights.”

Natalie laughed, and he joined in. “Seriously?”

“Hand to God. Was over in Hyde Park for a couple of years. I had this great balcony overlooking the lake and couldn’t go out there. Floor-to-ceiling windows and couldn’t look out of them. I just always had this vision of falling out the window.”

“Yikes. Scary.”

“Yeah. Anyway, I bought a loft over in the West Loop a few years ago and couldn’t be happier.”

“That’s a great neighborhood. You’ve got so many awesome restaurants over there.” She paused and took another sip of water. Were things really going this well? “So I saw on your card you’re a financial analyst?”

“That I am. I was always really good with numbers, but I didn’t want to be a trader, because, you know, I wanted to live past thirty, and I wasn’t all that interested in doing the entrepreneurial thing. I don’t know. Being an analyst just spoke to my anal tendencies.”

“Like a calling.”

“You could say that. I work for a French bank, been there about ten years and they’ve been really good to me. I even get to go to Paris every couple of months.”