Liberating Lacey (17 page)

Lacey ducked her head against the gust of chilly October air, then brushed the layers of her hair back from her face. Expecting a high in the sixties, she wore only her lightweight black belted trench coat over a cream long-sleeved silk sheath, but the unpredictable Midwestern weather tricked her and sent a cold front scurrying through.

Eager for the warmth of the restaurant, she hurried from her car to the front door of Caffe Grazie, an intimate little Italian bistro situated in a stand-alone brick building on a busy neighborhood shopping street.

White linen cloths covered small tables and votive candles flickered next to bud vases holding a single white rose, the restaurant’s signature decoration. She saw Hunter immediately, waiting for her in a booth at the back. His closely cropped brown hair gleamed in the flickering candlelight as he studied the menu. He wore dark khakis, a blue Oxford shirt and a dark green sweater. The pleasure of catching him in this rare unguarded moment, his angular face relaxed, almost anticipatory, made Lacey smile as she wended her way to the back of the restaurant.

“Hey, beautiful,” he said, sliding out of the booth to stand as she approached. “I didn’t see you come in.”

“I slipped in as another couple left,” she said. She took off her coat but kept her pashmina wrap, drawing it around her shoulders as Hunter hung her coat on the hook next to the booth.

“Cold?” he asked but without waiting for an answer he leaned down and kissed her. It wasn’t a swift peck of greeting but rather a lingering welcome, with just a hint of his tongue along the lower edge of her lip.

Heat flared low in her belly. “Not anymore,” she said.

His lips quirked into his familiar almost-smile as they slid into opposite sides of the booth. He reached across the table and brushed his thumb over her mouth. “A little wet,” he explained, the rough velvet of his voice contrasting with the smooth heat in his eyes.

She tucked her purse into the seat next to her and spoke through lips tingling from his touch. “Have a good day?”

“I got some stuff done,” he said with a lazy satisfaction that signaled a busy, productive day. “You?”

“Eh,” she said. “I’ve had better. Two no shows for meetings, plus a potential client went with other financing.”

He reached across the table again and gave her hand a warm squeeze. “Sorry, beautiful.”

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Liberating Lacey

“It happens,” she said with a shrug, but she appreciated how seriously he took her business. Davis used to say she had so much money that losing a deal shouldn’t matter, but the fierce competitor in her hated to lose even once.

Their waitress approached from the booth behind Hunter, her face brightening with recognition when she saw Lacey’s face. “Hi, stranger!” she exclaimed as she came to a stop by the edge of the table and began flipping through her order pad. “We haven’t seen you in ages! How are you, Davis? Oh!”

Her gaffe made the bubbly girl flush right to the roots of her Tinkerbell haircut but she covered it well. “Welcome to Caffe Grazie,” she said, the words coming automatically as she glanced at Lacey, wide-eyed.

“Davis and I divorced, Jen,” she said kindly. “This is Hunter.”

“Nice to meet you,” she said, then moved smoothly into the matter at hand.

“Something to drink? Wine? Beer?”

Hunter stuck with Coke. Lacey ordered a glass of the house white and Jen bolted to get their drinks, her face flaming.

He sat back and stretched his arm along the top of the leather booth. “I take it you and Davis came here often?”

“Once a week, usually. More often if we were swamped at work,” she admitted.

He just looked at her, something she couldn’t identify dancing in his eyes.

“What? The divorce decree didn’t split up restaurants. He must not have been in either, or she would have known.”

More silence. She folded her hands on the table and gave him her sweetest smile.

“Unless your mother gave you that sweater for Christmas, let’s just agree we’re past jealousy and move on.”

The mild teasing garnered a reaction she hadn’t expected, because his eyes darkened and his body went still. “What makes you think I didn’t pick it out? I buy clothes.”

She happily took the excuse to look him over, the forest green fabric clinging to his broad shoulders and wide chest. “You’re not nearly vain enough to match a sweater to your eyes so exactly. I’ve seen you look in the mirror perhaps twice the whole time we’ve been together and both times we were…well, you weren’t looking at your face.

Hence, someone else bought it for you.”

“An ex. She worked at Macy’s and got a really nice discount.” That explained the expensive charcoal suit ever so slightly too tight over his shoulders. Department store tailors might not have the skill to handle the tapering line to Hunter’s narrow hips. “She has lovely taste. That’s cashmere,” she said, stroking the smooth wool over his forearm, braced against the white linen covering the table. “Very soft and warm.”

“Like you,” he said, the edge fading from his gaze.

121

Anne Calhoun

Linking her fingers with his because his hands were hot and hers weren’t, she said,

“I’m surprised you can flirt with me so shamelessly after meeting my mother in such exposed circumstances.”

To her relief he laughed. “She scared the crap out of me. I can’t remember the last time someone caught me—”

“—naked and lounging around after some astonishingly hot sex?” He sent her a sizzling look at her bold words. “I was going to say unaware, but yeah, that works.”

“Ever been caught before?” she asked, looking for another first.

“Twice. Both times by the fathers of girls I had in the back seat of my car. After the ass-chewing I got the second time I realized I didn’t like being yelled at any more than I liked being interrupted, so I took things indoors.”

“Until you met me?” Lacey said with a laugh intended to cover the thrill skittering through her at the mental image of a teenage Hunter seducing a girl in the back seat of a muscle car.

“Until I met you.”

“And now you’ve met my mother. I shudder to think of what she said to you.” She was telling the truth. Her mother wouldn’t hesitate to quiz Hunter about his

“intentions” in her charming Southern mama way.

“She was very polite,” he said, declining her unspoken invitation to share details, or even complain, as any man caught naked by his lover’s mother might do. “The accent surprised me.”

“Mama is a Greenwood of the Memphis Greenwoods,” Lacey said, affecting a drawl as she matched his casual demeanor. “Memphis, as nearly as I can tell, is a place where women learn to deliver knock-out blows so sweetly you don’t even know you’re in the ring until you’re on your back, getting smelling salts and a cold compress. At least that’s what Davis used to say. He went toe-to-toe with my mother often enough.” The look of amused chagrin in his eyes told Lacey that for the first time, Hunter sympathized with her ex-husband. “The Memphis Greenwoods raise tough women.” She didn’t deny it. “The trick with my mother is to listen very attentively, then do exactly what you think is right. Davis never figured that out. He had to
be
right. Maybe it was the lawyer in him. But if I do what I want, she always wins. If she’s wrong she can tell herself how she raised such a smart girl to go against her mother’s advice. If she’s right, she gets the satisfaction of being right.”

“Where did you learn to handle people so well?” he asked, rubbing his thumb over the thin skin covering her knuckles.

“Health class,” she said with bright smile. “Day one was managing men by withholding sex. Day two was managing mothers.”

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His face was a study in control, except for the slight quirks of eyebrow and mouth, but she had learned to read the subtle signs of displeasure or amusement. Humor danced in his eyes, around the corners of his full lips. “You failed day one, beautiful.”

“No I didn’t. I just can’t see that working on you.”

“Really,” he said. Jen set a fizzing glass of Coke in front of him.

“Besides, why would I cut off my nose to spite my face?” she added obliquely as the waitress placed her glass of wine on the table.

He shook his head, the grin that had been threatening both corners of his mouth through their exchange finally breaking free. The rarely-seen, easy smile made her heart do slow flip-flops in her chest. She smiled in response.

Jen looked uncertainly between the two of them, clearly mystified by the conversation. “Are you ready to order? Lacey, do you still want the angel hair with Bolognese…”

“Yes, please,” she said.

Jen turned to Hunter with an expectant look.

“I’ll try the lasagna,” he said.

After Jen collected the menus and left, he reached forward and encircled her wrists with his warm fingers. “What makes you think withholding sex wouldn’t work on me?”

She shrugged, the blood heated by his stroking thumbs inching through her veins with each pulse of her heart. “You just don’t seem like you’d take no for an answer.” His eyes widened ever so slightly. “Hey. No means no. Period. Being manipulated that way pisses me off, but I wouldn’t—”

She cut him off. “Of course! That’s not what I meant. I meant you’re very, very persuasive and I doubt I’d resist for long if you set your mind to convincing me.”

“Say no sometime. Let me persuade you.”

His fingers were strong, warm fetters around her wrists. Her heart stopped beating for a long, aware moment, then she shied away like a spooked horse in search of safer ground. “What exactly were you dreaming about this morning?” He used his thumb to stroke the sensitive base of her wrist. “Sex. What else?”

“Just sex?”

“Why do you want to know?” he asked, an uncharacteristic flush in his cheeks.

“Because waking up to you pushing my nightgown up and my wrists over my head was another spontaneous first for me. I want to know what inspired that.”

“Remember the movie
300
, about the Spartan battle at Thermoplyae?” he asked, still focused on her hands, limp in his strong grip.

“I didn’t see it, but I’m familiar with the historical events,” she said.

“The story interested me after I saw the movie, so I got some books about the battle and the Spartan army. Every so often I have these dreams…” 123

Anne Calhoun

He trailed off, the flush dark in his cheeks, his eyes simmering. Lacey made the connection between his intense, visceral behavior as he came out of sleep and the gendered consequences of war. “About victorious warriors and captive slave girls?”

“Exactly.” His roughened fingers continuing to caress her inner wrists, every so often sliding under the cuffs of her sleeves. Given the conversation she had the feeling that, if the table weren’t between them, he’d have his hand at the top of her stockings by now.

“Fascinating,” she said. The clatter of silverware against china and the low murmur of conversation faded into the background as she constructed her own mental image of the dim interior of a white tent, a dark-haired combatant clad in tunic and gauntlets, inspecting a girl waiting on bed of blankets. “What did she look like? Was she blonde and young and beautiful?”

“She was you,” he said. “Red hair, brown eyes, calm under pressure. Named Laetitia.”

“Me?” She gave a startled laugh. He dreamed about her?

“You.”

“Fascinating,” she said again, unable to hide the huskiness that crept into her voice.

The candle between them guttered and a faint gritty scent evocative of a campfire rose into the air. “What else? What did we do?”

“For a captured slave girl, you were no pushover. You bargained with me before I could have my way with you.”

Reality returned and she laughed, but the heavy-lidded look in his eyes made her cross her legs and squeeze her thighs together. “That sounds like me. What did I ask for?”

“You wouldn’t tell me. You said you’d make a request later.”

“And you accepted that?” she asked with a teasing smile.

“Beautiful, you were naked, restrained and willing if I agreed. It seemed like a good idea.”

“For future reference, it’s not a good idea to negotiate without knowing the details.”

“I didn’t have to agree to your request, just give you permission to ask. I got the better end of that bargain,” he said with a wicked smile. “What about you?”

“I never negotiate without knowing all terms of a deal,” she said.

“Sassy tonight,” he said, with a hot, knowing look that told her if he had his way, she’d be too limp to talk back by the end of the evening. “Answer the question.” She relented. “I don’t dream about sex.” This was true. She rarely remembered her dreams at all.

“Fine. Tell me a fantasy.”

He was back in cop-asking-questions mode, flustering her very effectively. “I don’t really…I mean, it’s not like I have many…”

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“Ever masturbate?”

She inhaled sharply. “Hunter!” she gasped, glancing at the nearby tables.

“No one’s listening,” he said, his voice low and rough along her nerves. “Come on, everyone does, even cool-as-a-cucumber society babes. What do you think about?” The half-full restaurant faded into the background again. Dreams were often inexplicable mental gymnastics of a mind but his honesty about his own private thoughts creating a cocoon of safety for her to share hers. “Until recently, I had my share of conquering warrior compelling a captive into his bed fantasies,” she admitted.

“And now?”

The waitress approached with their plates in hand, saving Lacey from replying immediately. Steam rose from the white bowl containing a mound of angel hair pasta topped with a sauce positively chunky with ground sausage and beef. Hunter appreciatively eyed the platter holding his slab of lasagna while Jen placed fresh bread on the table and left.

Lacey twirled pasta around her fork, using her spoon to lift the heaping bite to her lips. “It’s as good as I remember,” she said when she finished.

He didn’t respond, but she took the enthusiasm with which he dug into the layers of pasta, meat, sauce and cheese as a good sign. For a few minutes they took the edge off. Hunter kept quiet, his big, solid presence giving her the space she needed to voice her fantasies.