Handcuffed in Housewares: Tulle and Tulips, Book 3 (7 page)

Chapter Seven

Leigh sat at the large round table topped with a Lazy Susan. Surrounding her were the other planners from Tulle and Tulips—Lori, Misty, Tabatha, Shayna, Kayla, Gisella, Darci, Tess, Issabelle, Aleshia and Brittany. It wasn’t often all their schedules lined up for a night out, but when they did the conversation took a predictable path down Debauchery Lane.

“So tell us more about your sexy bowling partner,” Kayla said as she scooped a slice of cake on her plate.

“He’s a nice guy. We had a good time.”

“How much of a good time?” Tabatha winked.

“You were there.” Leigh traced the rim of her wine glass. She ignored the desserts on the Lazy Susan turning before her and hoped Tabatha would drop the subject.

“But you left with him.”

So much for hope.

“We talked business. I went home.” She shrugged as she lifted her glass for a drink.

“If you’re doing business with him, surely you’ve talked to him since.”

Tess may look like the clichéd blonde that jokes were modeled after, but she could always be counted on to insert logic into a situation. It came in handy when she worked with her clients to figure out what food to serve and how much. It was annoying when you wanted a subject dropped.

Her logic wasn’t something Leigh wanted to face, because when it came to thinking about Burton she didn’t feel particularly logical. She was trying not to feel anything, because while he had humored her unwillingness to be an exhibitionist, there would come a time when his preference for sex games would invade. She wanted to be brave enough to go there with him, but her mind’s programming said she’d be better off staying away.

“I gave him the contact information for the job. He’s dealing directly with the client.”

“So you really haven’t talked with him?” Aleshia, the youngest of the group at barely twenty-two, asked with a sweet naiveté.

“I really haven’t.”

“Why not?” Tabatha’s question, unsurprisingly, carried a clear as crystal you’re-out-of-your-damn-mind inflection. “It’s not every day a man like that comes your way.”

A man like that.
“A man like what, Tabatha?”

“A sexually adventurous one.”

Leigh shook her head. Burton had talked a good game when they’d gone bowling, but he hadn’t called. It was logical to think he’d allowed their differences—his thirst for sexual adventure and her need for quiet connections—to change his mind. “A man like that has nothing to offer me.”

“Except screaming orgasms.”

Darci, never able to fully hide her nervous energy, fiddled with the diamond, tie-shaped necklace she almost always wore. “I didn’t meet him, but it sounds to me like he’s a man who could bring a little sparkle into your life.”

“My life has enough sparkle.” She traced the rim of her glass again. “There’s no such thing as
enough
sparkle,” Darci declared.

“Or orgasms,” laughed Gisella.

Leigh had known when Tabatha asked her to join them for happy hour the conversation would eventually turn to Burton, just as she’d known her friends would try to talk her into indulging in sex games. What they didn’t seem to understand was that they were encouraging her to do something she wasn’t built for.

“Perhaps that’s true for you guys. It’s not for me.” At least not the way her friends meant.

“I saw the way he looked at you.” Shayna stuck her fork into a giant slice of four-layer chocolate cake. She closed her mouth around the cake and moaned in delight. Leigh wasn’t sure if the moan was over the cake or the idea of how Shayna thought Burton had looked at her. “Are you telling us nothing happened between you two? That you don’t want anything to happen?”

“Yes, I’m telling you I don’t want anything to happen.” It wasn’t the full truth. She didn’t regret what had happened, but neither did she want anything else to happen. Or, she didn’t want to want it when he clearly didn’t. She’d rub her temples in confusion if there were a chance Tabatha wouldn’t pounce on it as a weakness. Instead, she continued running her finger over the rim of her glass until the lowest of hums began.

“Wanting something even when your mind tells you not to want it…” Lori smiled. “Sounds a little like me not too long ago.”

“Which didn’t make any more sense then than it does now.” Misty stated around a mouthful of tiramisu. “When are you going to put Trevor out of his misery?”

“Yeah, Lori.” Eager to get her friends off her sex life, Leigh jumped on the new train. “How many times are you going to make that poor man propose?”

“You know he’s never asked the same way twice?” Lori propped her chin on her palm and smiled a dreamy smile that didn’t quite hide the doubt lingering in her eyes.

“You’re afraid the romance will end if you say yes. Or that he won’t really love you.” Kayla, who had a surprising knack of seeing things in the viewfinder of her cameras everyone else missed, spoke quietly. If the camera really was a window into the soul, Kayla was its master.

“Does that make me a bad person or a coward?” Lori’s voice didn’t come across as defensive, but rather as a woman concerned with the answer.

“No.” Isabella fluffed a ruffled sleeve of her peasant blouse. “But I don’t think you have to worry about either possibility when it comes to Trevor.”

“I’ve worked with a lot of men, but Trevor…” Brittany sighed. “He could teach classes in romance. As for loving you, he’s sunk.”

“Could you imagine what the dating scene would be like if men actually took those classes?” Shayna sighed around another bite of her cake.

“I imagine it would look a bit like bowling with Burton.”

Leave it to Tabatha to find a way to circle the conversation back around to Burton. The woman was a predator and gossip was her prey.

“You guys should have seen the way he gave Leigh pointers. She had to have felt every inch of him.”

And every inch of him had felt…delicious. In the bowling alley. In his office. In his bedroom. Delicious enough that a night hadn’t passed without him slipping into her mind or dreams.

She couldn’t stop thinking about him or the way he made her feel or how apparent it was that she hadn’t bothered him the same way, because wouldn’t he have called if she had? Wouldn’t he have called if she’d been fun enough for him to want more?

“He’ll call. Even the most resistant ones call.” Misty smiled the smile she always smiled when she thought of her fiancé, Jace. He’d wanted Misty even while he hadn’t wanted to want her, or anyone. And he hadn’t been able to stay away.

“Burton prefers a different kind of woman.”
A toilet tramp willing to play games.

“Then be his kind of woman.” Tabatha shrugged. “It’s not as hard as you think.”

“Maybe that’s the real problem,” Brittany suggested with a wicked wink. “Poor guy is embarrassed.”

“If he’s half of what you guys say…” Aleshia erupted into a fit of giggles so high-pitched and teenagerish it made sober women cringe. “No way that’s true.”

“True or not, he hasn’t called.” The admission was one that hurt even while she understood it.

“So call him.”

“Not happening.” Leigh narrowed her gaze on Tabatha, not that she thought for a second Tabatha would let the matter drop. They’d circled back around to a sexy man. The subject wouldn’t be changed.

“What’s so scary, Leigh?” Lori swirled the wine in her glass, but didn’t drink any. She seemed perfectly happy to interrogate Leigh like they’d tried to interrogate her about Trevor’s proposals. “Are you afraid you might enjoy whatever adventure he pulls you into?”

That and not being able to stop.
The idea of indulging that side of herself, the side she hadn’t let out to play since… It was too dangerous. Losing control was too dangerous. She couldn’t admit as much to her friends, though, without telling them about the past, and that was something she never talked to anyone about.

“Listen.” Tess spoke up, again offering her brand of reason. “Maybe you’re afraid, and we’re not saying you should go off and start having crazy sex in public.”

“Though that does sound fun.”

Leigh ignored Tabatha. She tried to tune everyone out, but they wouldn’t be silenced. They would push and push until they felt their voices had each been heard.

“There’s nothing wrong with allowing yourself to indulge in some pleasure once in a while,” Tess continued. “Have some fun.”

“If you don’t want to have it with Burton then give me his number so I can call him.”

“Tabatha!” Shayna smacked her friend and shook her head. “Stop trying to poach.”

“If nothing’s happened and she doesn’t want him it isn’t poaching.”

“That’s not how it works and you know it,” Kayla stated bluntly.

“All she has to do is say she wants him.” Tabatha shrugged and looked at Leigh. “Do you want him, Leigh?”

It was a look that dared her to deny what she wanted even while daring her to admit her deepest wants. Embrace an adventure or stay safe within predictability. It hadn’t been a dilemma, or even a question she’d asked herself, in years. That it was coming up when she was still within the first year of a new business venture where her success impacted the success of so many others and didn’t have the time for a distraction was problematic.

More problematic than how easily she’d given in to desire when she’d been with Burton was how quickly she would slip into a downward spiral if she spent more time with him.

Excitement.

Adventure.

Indulgence.

They were all normal experiences, unless the person having them was her. Looking around the table at her friends, weighing their suggestions with what she’d felt in Burton’s arms, Leigh forced herself to admit an uncomfortable truth.

She wasn’t ready to handle the consequences of being with Burton, but neither could she stomach the idea of Tabatha making a play for him any more than she could stop thinking of what it would be like to be with him again.

The only way to stop the circling advice and see how much she could handle would be to give their suggestions a shot. And keep Tabatha away from Burton.

“Yes, I want him. I don’t know what to do about it, but I do want him.”

Each of her friends smiled, but Tabatha’s smile was the broadest, brightest and most triumphant.

“The what-to-do part is easy.” Tabatha offered with a wink. “You call him, ask him out, and then you let him screw your brains out.”

So much easier said than done because saying the words didn’t have the power to hammer each nail into her obsessive nerve center with an addicting accuracy. Thinking about him, the admission, calling him, had heat slipping along her cheeks and the tops of her ears.

Chapter Eight

Metallica rocked the earbuds that did a passable job at blocking out the noise from the sander. The rock did nothing to stop the vibrations shaking Burton’s hands, arms and shoulders. Until he’d found the escape of loud music and earbuds they’d even reached his head, taking over until every hair tingled at the root. It wasn’t such a horrible sensation until he stopped working and a headache set in as the vibrations subsided.

His dad and brother argued that he wouldn’t get the headaches at all if he would take a few more breaks. Unlike his brother and father he didn’t have anything, anyone, around to serve as a worthwhile distraction.

For a few moments with Leigh he’d thought she might be the kind of woman he could settle down with. After the rush of office sex they’d moved to his room where they’d taken their time with each other. Hours of perfection had passed.

He’d planned on asking her to spend the night, something he never did, but her plans were different. She’d gotten dressed and made him take her home. When he’d dropped her off she thanked him for a fun night and made a hasty retreat—not giving him the chance to walk her to her door.

He’d never seen a woman retreat with regret as fast as Leigh had. It was his problem that he was still thinking of her a week later. He thought of her when he went to Jace’s to work on Misty’s office. He heard her laugh in the aisles of the hardware store. Her scent—soft sex—taunted him when he went into Hearth and Home to follow up on a few final touches. His body felt hers as vividly as if she were in touching distance when he went bowling.

The woman had been a brief light in his life, but every moment had stuck with him. They had him thinking about her and wanting to call her. Several times he’d reached for the phone. Each time he’d put it down, because why torment himself with a woman who wanted no part of being with him.

The softness of her scent mixed with the sharp odor of dust from the floor. The impression was so real a flash of Leigh spread naked on the newly sanded floor snapped into his mind. His gut knotted and his skin heated in a way that had nothing to do with manual labor and everything to do with desire.

Burton flicked off the sander and sat back on his heels. The driving wail of heavy metal blasted his ears. It had drowned out the sander, but it was worthless against the images of Leigh. Nothing he’d tried had been enough to drive her memory from his mind. She invaded his thoughts almost entirely, and each invasion increased the idea that he was missing out on something important. Something too important to miss.