Learning Curves (15 page)

“Is that a fact?”

“It is. And now that I know you’re really a stripper and not Leanne’s boyfriend like she’s trying to claim, I want to know how much she’s paying you.”

“She’s not paying me anything.”

“You expect me to believe that? So what, then? You saw her last weekend at my hen party and were so overcome with lust you jumped her then and there?” She laughed. “And of course, since then, you’ve been inseparable, enjoying the wildest sex of your life?”

“That’s about the size of it.” Gillian would never believe that she’d stumbled upon the real sequence of events. The best he could do was string her along and wait for her to reveal her true purpose.

Gillian guffawed and shook her head. “Good-looking, a good dancer
and
funny? Well, I have to give her credit. She may be a total loser but at least she has good taste in store-bought manflesh. I never thought that goody two-shoes would ever have the nerve to try passing off some himbo dancer as her ‘boyfriend.’” She giggled maliciously. “Of course, she should have thought things through a little better. I mean, anyone taking one look at you would know someone as beautiful as you wouldn’t sleep with a never-run like her. Not in this universe, anyway.”

Brandon’s face hardened into an implacable mask. Behind the pretty veneer, Gillian Saunders was an evil, manipulative bitch. Leanne was down-to-earth and authentic. He felt a surge of pity for Jeremy Fields but ruthlessly tamped it down. If the guy was so stupid as to be deceived by Gillian’s act, he deserved what he got.

But Leanne.

Leanne didn’t deserve to be slagged by this one-dimensional schemer for another minute. He opened his mouth to defend her when a small movement caught his eye. Only with tremendous effort did he contain a start of surprise at the sight of Larry Galloway standing in the doorway. The older man caught his eye and shook his head imperceptibly, signaling that he wanted Gillian’s tirade to continue unabated.

“You don’t know how wrong you are about Leanne,” Brandon said instead.

Her face distorted in a mewl of disbelief. “Leanne? That bitch is a useless waste of space and I’m sick and tired of everyone going on and on about how she’s all that. Even Jeremy couldn’t shut up about her tonight. She’s got it coming to her, believe you me.”

“What did she do to you that was so terrible anyway?”

“She stuck her nose in where it didn’t belong. ‘Oh, Gillian, it’s dishonest,’” She mimicked Leanne’s voice in a shrill tone that would cut glass. “Fuck her. She nearly got me expelled. Me! And all I did was get a few wanna-be pledges to write a couple of stupid papers for me. Big deal. It’s not like it was stuff I actually needed to know.”

Suddenly Gillian’s animosity made perfect sense to Brandon.

“She turned you in? At Wellington?”

“She tried to.”

“What happened? You weren’t expelled, obviously.”

“What the hell do you think happened? I cried, told mommy and daddy and the dean it was the stress that made me do it and they sent me to Italy for the summer to ‘recuperate.’ But it cost me the presidency of Delta Delta Phi. It was mine and Leanne made sure I didn’t get it. Hell, she probably planned the whole thing.”

“That doesn’t sound like Leanne.”

“She’s always trying to ruin things for me. Because she’s jealous of everything I have.”

Brandon wanted to laugh. All this woman had were her looks and the morals of an alley cat. But her jealousy and need for revenge made her dangerous and he knew he had to handle her carefully or risk watching her blow up in his face.

Gillian recovered some of her composure. Her face was calm again and she smiled, although it never reached her eyes. “So what I want to know, Brandon,
sweetie
, are you a full-service male escort, fucking pathetic women for money, or just an enterprising stripper, doing one sad little job on the side?”

“And what if I am?” he bluffed, pretending to go along with her and keeping a handle on his own explosive anger only by the thinnest of threads. He wanted to throttle her, to show the world the sick, twisted individual she was. But until he knew what she planned for, he needed to play along. He couldn’t bring himself to look toward the doorway, knowing the disgust he would see on Larry’s face now that he’d been revealed. But even if the man would never be able to respect him again, at least he would know that Brandon hadn’t betrayed his daughter.

A cold comfort, but there was little else to be gained as he watched all the goodwill he’d earned with the elder Galloway escape through his fingers like sand.

“Then here’s the deal. Whatever she’s paying you to pretend you’re her boyfriend, I’ll double. No, I’ll triple it!” she promised rashly. “You and I can hook up if you want. But what I really want is for you to dump Leanne Galloway. Tonight. I want you to walk that tight tush of yours back into my party and drop that pathetic excuse of a bookworm right on her fat—”

“Ass?” Larry finally spoke and stepped into the room. Gillian turned on one stiletto heel, her face a comic mask of shock and horror, her blush two scarlet slashes against her colorless cheeks.

“Uncle Larry!” she croaked. “How—how long…I mean, Brandon and I were just…”

“Talking?”

“Yes, about Leanne,” she lied brazenly. “She’s doing so well at university now, isn’t she? I’m sure she’s got you thank for it.”

Leanne’s father brushed aside the flattery without regard. “You’re a nasty piece of work, Gillian. I’ve always known you to be vain, self-centered and shallow. But until tonight, I never knew what a disgusting excuse for a human being your mother and father raised. I’m glad my daughter is nothing like you.”

Gillian’s face twisted at his damning litany. “You think so, do you? Well, do you know your daughter hired a stripper to come with her tonight? That her ‘boyfriend’ is just some man-whore who fucks women for money?” she said, sailing to the door. At the threshold, she paused. “But don’t worry,
Uncle
Larry. I won’t tell everyone what a loser you or your daughter are—I’ll let them discover it for themselves.”

And with that, she stalked from the room, leaving the two men standing in silence. Larry stepped to one of the windows, his hands deep in his pockets, and looked out at the clear night sky. Still not looking at Brandon, he spoke.

“Are you?”

Brandon didn’t even try to pretend he didn’t understand the question. “No,” he said, “I’m not. And I never was. But before I hurt my knee, I used to strip for a living. Five nights a week, onstage at the Foxe’s Den.”

“The place on Hunter?”

“Yeah, that’s the one.”

“Probably pretty good money.”

Brandon was surprised by how calm Larry was. He’d just heard his daughter called every name in the book and learned their relationship was built on nothing but lies but he’d yet to raise his voice or even swear. Something else had to be going on. No one could be this calm, this accepting. What the hell was this guy playing at anyway?

“I took off my clothes for money. I sold myself so I could pay for my degrees,” he goaded, his voice full of self-hatred. “I’m a stripper sleeping with your daughter. What do you think about that,
Larry
?”

He turned and looked at him thoughtfully, waving aside the challenge and answering with a simple question of his own. “Did you really sell yourself?” His voice was so steady some of Brandon’s rage began to ebb.

“No. I really did love it. It wasn’t something I boasted about but I’m not ashamed of what I did.”

“Good,” Leanne’s dad agreed quietly. “Because I don’t think you should be either.”

“You don’t?” Brandon was staggered. He couldn’t actually be having this conversation, could he? He must be dreaming or suffering a brain seizure. Anything but reality.

“Does Leanne know? About your career?”

“Yeah,” he admitted. Oh hell, the guy knew everything else. Why not tell him everything and be done with it. Larry couldn’t make him feel any lower about himself than he did now. “That’s how we met. I was dancing, filling in by doing a last-minute shift when Leanne saw me at the club. We—we hooked up and found out later we both went to Wellington.”

Brandon wheeled around and forced Larry to meet his eyes. What he saw there nearly brought him to tears. And he hadn’t cried since the day his grandmother died and he’d been forced to wait on the porch, hoping against hope the EMTs could rescue the only family he’d ever truly loved.

Larry smiled. A thin smile, the fatigue and strain of the past half hour clear. But his eyes were still kind as they gazed at Brandon steadily. “It’s simple, really. I trust my daughter and I trust her judgment in people. I don’t care what you used to do—or even what you do now—as long as you’re honest with my daughter. If she says you’re someone worth knowing, that you’re someone I should consider a friend, then I will.”

The unadorned statement took Brandon’s breath away. There was so much love, trust and acceptance in that straightforward explanation that his throat tightened with envy. He wanted to cringe at his reaction. How could he possibly be jealous of Leanne, of the wonderful relationship she had with her father? She deserved nothing less. But it didn’t change the fact that the sucking void in his chest throbbed with long dead sensation.

How different would his own life have been if he’d had someone who’d offered him the same unconditional love?

“Come on,” Larry said, seeming to understand the struggle Brandon waged within himself. He glanced at his watch and grimaced. “They’re probably done with the speeches. I don’t think I’m in the mood to hear them toast the happy couple and I doubt you are either. Sandra won’t want to leave but I’m sure you and Leanne can sneak out early. At least one of us will be able to salvage the evening.”

The ride back to Leanne’s had been difficult. The combination of frustration and emotional upheaval formed a potent cocktail that left him drained and uncertain. Raw and vulnerable.

Gillian had ignored him when he’d finally reappeared in the dining room but Leanne had accepted his excuse of fatigue without argument and made their escape.

He’d caught her glancing at him from time to time during the drive home, her face a picture of concern, but he’d pretended not to see it, preferring to look out the window at the passing scenery.

The photographs that hung on her living room walls caught Brandon’s attention. Typical tourist landscapes and landmarks, snapshots of holidays and friends. And in them all, Leanne, her face open and smiling, eyes alight with the enthusiasm he had come to realize was as natural to her state of being as breathing.

His attention was snared by one photograph taken, by the looks of the setting, in London’s Piccadilly Square. Standing with a large group of traveling companions, she’d been captured on film, laughing, as she tried to reclaim a flyaway strand of hair. It had been taken several years ago. Her hair was longer and she looked younger. But her eyes were unchanged, gazing out from the frame with a frank interest that simultaneously called to and unsettled him.

An unfamiliar sensation flooded through him. He couldn’t account for the sense of rightness he felt waiting for a woman who’d already made it abundantly that she was only interested in a temporary affair.

Her position should have set his mind at ease. After all, he’d never sought out a long-term relationship and he certainly didn’t want one now. But the newly felt and as-of-yet-unidentified feelings churning inside him didn’t elicit that familiar feeling of distance and cynicism that he usually experienced whenever he entertained the notion of letting someone get close.

He didn’t know how to classify exactly how he felt—even to himself—but he knew he didn’t want something temporary.

He wanted permanence.

He wanted tomorrows.

He wanted…

Brandon didn’t know what he wanted and he certainly was in no mood to figure it out. The panic rising ever higher in his throat, he nearly jumped out of skin at Leanne’s gentle touch. Her hand rested on the small of his back and he could barely contain the jittery awareness her proximity evoked in him.

“Did you want a cup of coffee?” she asked, stepping out of her heels to stand beside him in her stocking feet. He stared at her blankly, his mind still furiously processing what he wanted.

“Coffee?”

“Yes. Hot, caffeinated beverage,” she elaborated. “Generally brewed?”

He chuckled at her quip but still couldn’t shake off his dark mood.

“I’m good, thanks.”

Her soft brow creased once more. “Are you sure you’re all right? Did anything happen tonight to, I don’t know, upset you? You seem—distant.”

Distant? His inner cynic laughed. Between what happened with Gillian and Leanne’s father and his own lust, which had been threatening his sanity all night, the last thing he was interested in right now was distance.

Right now, his cock wanted nothing more than to be as close as possible. Buried up to the hilt, thrusting and pumping inside her, until they both shattered into an oblivion that would sweep away his doubts, his fears, his seething emotional insecurities. That was what he wanted. All he could think about right now.

“Brandon?” Leanne’s voice broke into his jumbled and chaotic thoughts. “Are you really okay? You seemed on edge when you and Dad came back to the table for the toasts.”

His eyes met hers and he saw the insecurity lurking there, behind the intelligence and the kindness and the dry, clever wit. That someone like her felt insecure around a plastic piranha like Gillian filled him an overwhelming fury. And sadness.

“Nothing happened,” he growled, stalking toward the French doors that, in warmer weather, would open onto her small balcony.

“Oh.” Her voice was small, and he couldn’t see her expression. “I just thought you might want to talk about it, but if you don’t…”

Outside, the streetlights cast pools of yellowish light, marching in a regular pattern along one side of the street. A few small flakes drifted down, momentarily illuminated, before they swirled away, lost to the night once again. He touched the smooth glass, the cold seeping into his palm.

He didn’t want to talk. He wouldn’t know where to begin. So the words, when he spoke them, came from deep within, from a place he’d long forgotten about.

“Dance for me.” Brandon turned away from the vista and caught sight of Leanne’s surprised face, mystified by the abrupt change in the conversation. There was enough darkness in his life already. Enough cold. For now, in this suspended instant, he wanted to bask in Leanne’s heat, if only for tonight.

He wanted to ensure that even when they went their separate ways, she would always remember him.

“Dance for me,” he said again.

She laughed nervously. Pointing at herself in her best Jane of the Jungle imitation, she tried to dissuade him. “Me, English. You, dance.”

But he wasn’t deterred. He’d wanted to distract her, to avoid a talk that he knew would be painful. But as spontaneously as the idea had come to him, the rightness of his suggestion only grew. He stepped closer and rested his hands on the tempting curves of her hips. Bending to touch his lips to her neck, relishing the sensation of her soft skin, he traced a whisper-soft path along the quivering tendons of her neck. Her pulse quickened as his mouth followed the ivory column and his senses cheered when he felt her body soften under his loving assault, her hands sliding up to tangle themselves around his shoulders, her pelvis pressing against his erection.

Moving his hips to increase the persuasive pressure against her mound, he whispered, “Dance for me, Leanne. Please.”

Her eyes fluttered open and met his. She licked her lips, wetting them and ratcheting his need even tighter. “Why do you want me to?” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and averted her eyes. “Because I can’t dance. At all. You know that, right? I am the dictionary definition of uncoordinated.”

Putting his hand beneath her chin, he forced her to look at him. In her face, he could read every slight, every sneer, every cruel name, every broken date and lonely Friday night she’d ever suffered. His heart clenched and the emotion he could not name roared.

He hurried into speech before the words he could not control, could not even acknowledge, escaped him.

“I want to see you. All of you. That’s why I want you to dance. I—I want you to show me what you like. How you touch yourself. How you please yourself. I want to watch you move to the music and have you show me…”

Your soul
.

He gulped. Where had that come from? A place he didn’t know existed. A place he’d thought too scarred to ever be rejuvenated. Another tremor of fear shot through him. This, whatever
this
was
,
wasn’t supposed to be possible for someone like him. He’d been through too much, suffered too much, to ever believe in something as tenuous, as false, as love ever again.

Leanne was looking at him now, her eyes bright with unshed tears. “Show you?”

“Everything,” he said, choosing the safer word. Everything could mean sex, right? It didn’t have to mean more than that. He didn’t really want to see her soul, or her fears, or her dreams, or her heart.

Except that he did. Desperately.

But he knew he couldn’t. No matter how much his heart pleaded with him to give it one more chance. It was too risky.

But the reality was, no matter the arguments and facts against it, he couldn’t help wishing that he could draw out his time with Leanne even longer. To find out if what had blossomed between them so unexpectedly might actually be a harbinger of something more permanent. Even entertaining the idea of permanence was a rare experience for him, and for that he was overwhelmed with gratitude.

Leanne had done that for him. She’d never realize, of course, just what she’d given him, by letting her share a small corner of her life for a few days. He couldn’t tell her. But he wanted to express his gratitude. As a dancer, he knew that he could do that best without words. He watched her as uncertainty, doubt and reluctant interest flitted across her transparent face in rapid succession. He waited with barely contained anticipation.

Would she dance for him?

God, he hoped so.

It seemed such an unlikely proposition. He was the graceful one, the musical one, the one with the almost impossibly gorgeous face and body. The one people wanted to watch perform. He drew everyone’s eyes to him like some magnetic force with an effortless ability that left her breathless and wanting.

Her? Not so much so.

“Why don’t you dance with me?” she hedged. After all, if he was dancing, he wouldn’t be able to look too closely at her body. And she could distract him with kissing and touching until he forgot the crazy suggestion entirely.

But he shook his head. “No, I want to be the spectator tonight. I want to watch you come apart. I want to learn what pleases you.” His face was resolved as he settled onto the sofa and leaned back, his arms stretching across the seat back.

His steady gaze unnerved her. She was the one who always knew the answer, the one who could be relied on to go above and beyond for the readings, the assignments, the essays. But when it came to the question of her own sexual satisfaction, she never put her hand up. She sat in the back of the class, so to speak, watching everyone else take the lessons to heart.

And she’d had enough.

She’d tried to tell herself what happened between them last Saturday night at the club had been an aberration. That despite her unprecedented behavior, she was still the same person, working inexorably toward her final destination.

But what if it wasn’t true?

What if…?

What if the old Leanne was the aberration? Maybe she’d repressed her true self because it didn’t fit in with the image she’d constructed for her future so many years ago. A future that, on first glance, looked concrete and sensible but which was as fictional as any novel she’d ever studied. Because in writing it, she left out the most important chapter, the one where she came to accept and relish her own desires.

What if she could write a new future? One that included her own sexuality, not at war with her life of the mind but as an integral component?

And Brandon
.

Ruthlessly, she quashed the tiny voice that whispered pointlessly in her mind.

Because even as she saw the chance of rewriting her own self-image and reclaiming her own sense of sexual well-being, she knew it wouldn’t be with Brandon.

Because he wasn’t that man. He’d told her so himself.

She wished with all her heart it could be different but their lives weren’t meant to intersect forever.

But until then, he was here.

Only a few feet away, watching her, his warmth and vitality a drug, making sensible thoughts an impossibility. Here, where she could touch him and savor him and begin, if only for tonight, the process of reclaiming the pieces of herself. And that would be enough.

It has to be.

Her lips curved and she swayed toward him, running her hand up his strong, tanned arm before wrapping it seductively around his neck.

“So, you want me to dance for you?” she purred, swinging her sexy heels from her fingertips. She saw his eyes take in their rhythmic movement and felt the quick inhalation of his breath at the sight. He had a thing for her footwear and she was more than willing to exploit that fact if it heightened the already fevered pitch of their mutual arousal.

He nodded wordlessly. She bent, sliding the shoes back on her feet, making sure she faced away from him so he could get a good look at her ass. As she straightened, she saw him push up from the sofa and take a step toward her.

“Stop,” she commanded.

He froze.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized, confusion at her mixed signals clearly uppermost in his mind. “I just want to touch you so much right now. You turn me on until I can’t think straight. If you don’t want to dance, you don’t have to. We’ll go to the bedroom and…”

Leanne laughed. She felt powerful, sexy and definitely in charge of their swiftly escalating encounter. “I’ve changed my mind. Woman’s prerogative. But if you want me to strip for you, you need to remember two simple rules.” His eyes widened at her use of the word
strip.
He’d asked her to dance; she wanted to give him more. Realizing this was all part of their role-playing, his eyes flared at her tone but he obediently backed away—but not too far.

“First,” she said, guiding him back toward the sofa, “no touching the performer. You can look but touching isn’t allowed in this establishment. If you disobey, I’ll have to ask the bouncers to escort you from the premises.”

“Well, how will you know what I want, then?” he teased, his voice a husky murmur that sent another spasm of wet anticipation rushing to Leanne’s sex. “After all, aren’t I the customer? What if I’m not satisfied?”

She pushed him down firmly and he sank back into the wide cushions, his legs spread wide, his erection visible through his wool trousers. She ran a taunting fingertip around the rigid shape before sashaying across the tiny room toward her stereo. When she reached it, she looked back over her shoulder and winked saucily.

“As a
valued
client, you can make suggestions while I dance,” she said. “But I make no promises. When I’m performing, I’m afraid my pleasure comes first. Occupational hazard.”

He laughed out loud but waited obediently as Leanne flicked through her playlist, looking for just the right song. Too fast. Too sappy. Too slow. But then she found the perfect one and her lips curled in anticipation. Clicking the icon, she set the tiny player in the docking port and turned the volume up as the opening notes of Edith’s Piaf’s “La Vie En Rose” filled the small space.

She began to sway tentatively to the music. She raised her hands to the thin straps lying across her shoulders. Trying her best to move in time to the music, she worked the straps down, inch by slow inch.