How to Tell a Lie (16 page)

“Sorry.” She tried to take deep breaths, willing her heart to stop its sudden pounding.

“I was planning to seduce you with chocolate until you were lulled into a sense of security then sneak your clothes off while I distracted you with kisses.” He nudged her hair aside with his nose, seeking and finding the sensitive skin behind her ear. “Like this. Then once I had you naked and at my mercy, I was going to spend some serious quality time eating your pussy, which is also fucking delicious.” He sucked her earlobe between his lips and Allison felt his chuckle at her whimpering response. “So is there any chance you would have returned the favor right then?”

“Like a fat kid with an ice cream cone on a hot day,” she confirmed with a cheeky grin, and then winced away at his howl of laughter, too close to her ear for comfort.

“Oh my God. Okay, okay, now I’m all off track. Wow.” He pressed closer, letting her feel his arousal, pressing hard and hot against the small of her back. As if unable to resist, he slipped one hand from the counter and ran it from her stomach up to cup her breast, squeezing the tender flesh gently and then seeking out her nipple to pluck at it with his thumb and forefinger. “Okay. So after all that, I guess I’d have taken you upstairs to see the bedroom. So you could admire the decor, you know.”

“You have decor on your ceiling?”

He snorted and bit gently at her neck. “Mirrors and dirty pictures, of course. And you should see the bedspread.”

“More dirty pictures?”

“No, it’s sort of a brown plaid. But if you were looking at the bedspread, it would mean you were in my bedroom.”

“I see.”

“And that would be a good thing.” He had snuck his hand under her lightweight sweater and was fondling her now through the lace of her bra. “Although this kitchen island is looking pretty good right about now.”

“I’m good either way.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Oh, nice.” But she couldn’t really complain, not when his tongue was making sweet love to her ear and his fingers were busy teasing her nipples until she felt ready to scream for more.

“But have you had dinner yet?”

It took her a moment to adjust to the question. “Um, no?” She had taken only a few bites of her hamburger and eaten half a container of fries. That didn’t really constitute “dinner” in Allison’s mind.

“Let’s go out.”

“Are you kidding?”

“Nope.”

She felt ready to pounce on the man and rip his clothes off, and he wanted to go out for dinner? What was going on?

Allison’s first thought was that she had somehow screwed up again. But looking at Seth’s face as he pulled away from her and took her hand to lead her out to his car, she saw only happy anticipation.

* * * * *

“All just part of my nefarious plan,” Seth assured Allison.

They were seated at a table for two in the dimly lit restaurant, a small storefront about fifteen minutes from Seth’s house that featured cafe cuisine for lunch but a more refined menu at dinner. They had a decent wine list and were a little out of the price range of most students, so a lot of faculty members frequented the place.

This evening, for instance, they had already run into two of Seth’s colleagues and their wives, one couple just leaving and one just starting their meal as Seth and Allison sat down. As they ordered, Allison saw her department chairperson walk in with her husband.

“It’s like an annex,” she whispered, looking around while trying hard not to seem as though she was looking around. “I had no idea.”

“Neither did I. And we mostly just know our two departments. Well, I know some people from Math and Physics. I don’t know if they ever eat out. But just imagine how many more of us there might be in here. We should just stand up and ask for a show of hands.”

She giggled at the idea, earning a grin from Seth and an amused smile from her department chair, who had stopped at the table on the way to her own. There was a glint in her eyes as she looked at her young colleague occupied in what was so clearly a romantic dinner.

“Allison. Glad to see you off the computer. And with a real person.”

“Hi, Dr. Drayton. Dr. Margaret Drayton, Dr. Seth Brantley. Seth is in Economics, Dr. Drayton is the dean of my department.” They all shook hands cordially and Allison was ludicrously pleased that Seth didn’t seem daunted by the introduction. “And this is her husband, Robert. Hi, Bob. This is Seth.”

“Hi, Allison. Good to meet you, Seth. Place is getting pretty crowded huh? C’mon Maggie, the gal is waiting for us over there. Don’t want to keep her waiting too long, she’ll make us sit near the kitchen. You have a good night there, professors.”

“Thanks, we will. You too.”

Once the older couple was out of earshot, Seth murmured, “Interesting couple. What does he do?”

People often made the assumption, based on Robert’s folksy charm and casual attire, that he was some sort of blue-collar worker. They couldn’t have been more wrong.

“He’s probably the most expensive trial lawyer in the state.”

“Seriously?”

“That reaction you’re having? That would be why he’s so successful.”

“I see. I get it. The Matlock effect.”

She nodded and toyed with the stem of her wineglass, tipping the glass slightly to watch the way the golden liquid clung to the side, so unlike water in its behavior. As if it didn’t quite want to leave the glass and could never be completely coaxed out by the drinker. Some drops would always remain, until they were washed away or evaporated over time.

“I must need more of this. I’m getting all metaphorical about things. It can’t be a good sign,” Allison said.

Seth raised a hand instantly to flag the waiter down, ordering two more glasses of chardonnay.

“So are you going to tell me what your cold feet were all about? Or just let me figure it out from context clues?”

“I would tell you if I knew.”

“Just talk to me about it. Tell me what you do know.”

“Who’s the psychologist now? Okay, okay. I guess I just got scared of what was going on. I told you about the guy I last went out with. Was living with, actually. And it ended badly, not because we were nasty to each other or anything, but just because I realized after we broke up that I wasn’t all that beat up about it. I mean, I’d been living with this man. We were engaged. We would’ve gotten married once he was done with grad school. But then I realized I wasn’t in love with him, I was settling. I nearly made the biggest mistake of my life though. How could I have been that far off the mark?”

“Was the end really the first time you’d thought it wasn’t right?”

Allison thought about what Lindy had said, that her body language had always suggested she would never end up with James. That nobody who knew her had ever thought she would actually marry him. “I guess not. It just seemed like the right thing to be doing at the time. Like it was time to do the part of my life where I got married, had a family. That was what my parents had done; it seemed like a good thing to do. I’d always assumed I would do all that someday. And this guy came along who was nice enough and seemed to like me and wasn’t a nut case, so I figured that was what was supposed to happen.”

“What finally made you decide to end it? I’m assuming you were the one who ended it.”

She screwed up her mouth with displeasure at the memory, and started by giving Seth her stock answer. “It’s embarrassing, but really he made it very easy. When he finished his MBA, he was supposed to go take this internship at a consulting firm, something he’d had set up for months. It was in Indianapolis. Then one night right before the end of the semester, he gets all upset, and finally he says it’s because he didn’t see me making plans to move to Indianapolis with him.”

She took a swig of wine, trying to bolster her confidence. “I had just gotten settled here as a full-time staff member, and I wasn’t about to leave. I love it here. I love the department, the town, everything. We’d talked about how he wanted to move to the city. But I couldn’t quite believe he would
really
expect me to move, when it came down to it. That he really wasn’t willing to work out any sort of compromise. And then I realized I wasn’t even considering the possibility of moving. It didn’t matter to me if
he
moved. I was staying because my home just wasn’t with him. My home was still back in Cranston, and my job and all my friends were here in
Dinsdale
. My life wasn’t with James, and it was never going to be, because the two of us just weren’t a family. I moved out and got my own apartment within a week. And James moved to Indianapolis.”

Seth had reached across the table to arch his fingertips over hers on the wineglass, running the pads of his fingers over her knuckles, over the delicate skin of her inner wrists. Now he wrapped his hands over hers more firmly.

“So how does that scare you off from my house?”

“I think maybe because you own it. It wasn’t James I misjudged, Seth, it was me. What would I have gotten myself into if he hadn’t been planning to move away? I needed that to happen before I woke up and realized what I had almost done. I think I’ve always been so scared of getting hurt, I’ve never really let myself consider what my own dreams of a home and family look like. I didn’t want to set my heart on something and then lose it, so I always just put those thoughts out of my mind and told myself I didn’t really care one way or the other.

“You’re putting down roots here, Seth. You’re not going anywhere. You seem to know what you want out of life. I don’t. I’m still trying to figure out what my future is supposed to look like. Now I’m realizing I need to work through that, and I don’t want to avoid the issue by just latching on to somebody else’s dream like I did with James.”

She had been looking down at her hands, talking too fast, and now she had to force herself to look up to gauge Seth’s reaction. He wore the faintest smile, and Allison almost had the impression he was proud of her. Then he cracked a grin, letting the moment go.

“So if I were renting, you’d be all over it?”

She chuckled despite herself. He seemed to be taking her neurotic vagaries in stride, making her feel like she might not be as nuts as she sometimes felt.

“I don’t know. Maybe. Probably not.”

“And if I were just this anonymous guy online, you could always just unplug the computer or change your screen name if you had a change of heart.”

“You already foiled that ingenious plan though.”

“What if I told you it was just about the sex and the computer games?”

“Is it?”

“No,” he admitted. “But you could tell yourself that if it helped, and I could try not to act quite so hopelessly smitten.”

She shrugged, trying to look nonchalant, and took a fortifying sip of wine. “We’re both rotten liars. That would never work out.”

“Are you going to come home with me tonight?”

He was doing it again. The low, sexy voice. Looking at her over his glasses. How did that not make him look like a grandfather? But it didn’t. It made him look as though he were reducing his world to include only the two of them—as though he wanted to see her without even so much as a thin glass lens in the way.

“Can I get back to you over dessert?”

“But if you wait that long, you could miss out. Dessert could be me feeding you chocolates in front of the fire.”

“Oh, you’re good. Very sneaky. You set that up beautifully.” She wasn’t kidding. His words had conjured the exact imagery he had intended, because he had implanted it earlier.

“Thank you.”

She was relieved that he dropped it, at least for the moment, not pressing her for an answer until the middle of the main course.

“Wow. You really do like your steak rare, don’t you?”

Allison was carving off another rosy piece of the filet mignon she had ordered. It was cool, almost purple toward the center and seared to perfection. She was already almost halfway through and she thought she could easily eat the whole thing.

“Yes. How’s the lamb?”

“Great. So, are you coming home with me tonight?”

“
Oof
. Blindsided. You’re persistent, I’ll give you that.”

“I’d like you to give me a lot more than that.”

“They have this fantastic chocolate mousse here, is the thing. I always get it.”

“Chocolate mousse? Interesting. I’m sure they would give it to us to go though.”

She took the bite of steak into her mouth, savoring the flavor. She had been genuinely undecided about his offer at the start of the meal. Now she was feeling mellow and benevolent, soothed by the food and especially by the wine, and was mainly avoiding an answer because she wanted to see what he would do next to try to convince her. She thought of what he had whispered in her ear earlier, in his kitchen, and closed her eyes to recapture the sensation of his hand and voice working together to arouse her. Her thighs started to warm and she squirmed a little in her seat, feeling moisture begin to gather between her legs.

“I would kill to be that piece of steak right now.”

Allison’s eyes flew open to see Seth staring at her with slightly glassy eyes. She realized that, between the meat and the memory, she had inadvertently given off a vibe that was no doubt pre-orgasmic. In her defense, she thought, it was really good steak.

Curious to see his reaction, she lifted a foot to Seth’s lap under the screen of the long tablecloth and slid her toes forward until they nudged the bulge that had started to stiffen there. Satisfied for the moment, she kept her foot where it was and calmly cut another bite of steak. This time, she used her teeth and tongue to remove it from the fork very delicately, keenly aware of Seth’s intense gaze. Just as the meat touched her lips, she shifted her foot, pressing down lightly on his erection. She couldn’t resist a smirk when he bit his lip and his eyes fluttered closed for a moment while he took and released a deep breath.

He kept his cool admirably, though she could see the effort it cost him to keep his expression bland as he gestured to the waiter again.

“Can we get some chocolate mousse for two, to go? And the check, please.”

Chapter Eight