Sugar (14 page)

She focused back on Patrick, who was saying, “We’d just decided on dessert—the apple crumble for Pol, the poached pear for me—when in walks this tall, distinguished man with his wife on his arm. He made a big deal about this being their anniversary, their thirtieth, and asked for the best table left. He looked familiar, more familiar than someone I’d only met in passing. French cuffs, custom-cut suit, a scarlet silk handkerchief folded into the breast pocket. It was the handkerchief that placed him for me.”

“He was a former client, wasn’t he?” Liz asked, her voice gentle.

Face crumpling, he admitted, “My Friday afternoon four o’clock for nearly four years.”

“Jesus!” Brian exclaimed, tilting forward from the sofa seat.

“Actually I knew him as Simon,” Patrick deadpanned, though his stressed-out expression diluted the humor. “Always punctual, always polite, always paid up front in cash. Every Christmastime he’d hand me a money envelope with an extra five hundred bucks in it. He was that kind of guy—low maintenance; no muss, no fuss; always a gentleman. Liked for me to go down on my knees and suck him off while he stuck his finger up his ass. Sometimes if he was feeling frisky, he’d have me pull down his pants and whack him a couple of good ones with the flogger, but that was as kinky as he got.”

Liz shook her hairless head. “I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine how awkward that must have been for you both.”

Exhaling heavily, he admitted, “It gets worse.”

Honey’s doe-like gaze looked suspiciously watery. “Worse?”

He nodded. “Wouldn’t you know it, the hostess sat them down at the table next to ours? Every time I reached for my water glass—and my mouth was so dry by then that I reached for it a lot—my arm brushed his. I was mortified. Dessert came. I couldn’t touch a bite, could barely breathe. Pol kept asking me what was wrong, which of course made it even worse. I finally told him I thought I might be coming down with something—a migraine, Avian Flu, a heart attack, I honestly can’t remember. My pits were perspiring rivers. I couldn’t stop my hands from shaking. I called for the check, had our desserts boxed to go, and got the hell out of there.”

“Jesus!” Brian repeated.

This time there was no possibility of Patrick’s turning the exclamation into any kind of joke. “New York can be one big, small town. I’ve always known it could happen. I just never thought it would.”

“Sometimes life throws us curveballs,” Liz put in gently. “We don’t always see them coming, but once they do, all we can do is pinch hit and try to make it to first. It sounds like you did exactly that. What happened, running into Simon at a restaurant, may never happen again.”

Patrick raked a manicured hand through his hair, making one side stick out. He looked so stressed Sarah wished she’d sat closer, if only so she could hug him. “I know, I know, I just can’t get it out of my head. I haven’t slept through the night in a week. The other day on my way home from work I caught myself backtracking to a liquor store. For the first time in almost two years, I seriously thought about screwing everything and buying a bottle. I guess you could say almost being outed as a former homo whore is one of my triggers.” A crack of mirthless laughter punctuated the caustic comment.

“Peter, no!” Honey cried, catching at his arm.

He covered the top of her hand with his tanned one. “Don’t worry, I didn’t, but it still scares me that I thought about it. Last week I was lucky, but what if the next former client I see doesn’t have his own deal to protect? Most of the guys were nice enough, but like in any business, there was the occasional rotten apple. What if one of them outs me—and what if I’m with Pol when it happens?”

His reference to being outed struck a sensitive nerve with Sarah. Thinking of her own situation, she asked, “You’ve never told him about your past?” If Cole hadn’t recognized her as Sugar, might they be dating now instead of only fucking?

He shook his head. “Pol is the sweetest, biggest hearted guy imaginable, but you have to understand he was raised real traditional. He emigrated from Ireland when he was thirteen. He didn’t come out until he was thirty and only then because the booze was going to kill him if he didn’t get help. His folks didn’t disown him exactly, but when he visits, they never talk about his dating life. I know he loves me, but if he found out I spent almost five years as a prostitute, I’m not sure he’d be able to get past it. Should I take a chance and tell him or keep quiet and hope he never finds out?”

They went around the circle. “I don’t know,” Honey said, nibbling her lip. “Either way, there’s a risk.”

Brian spoke up, not in two words but in a full sentence and a lengthy one, considering the source. “Tell him. He either loves you or he doesn’t, no if ’s, no conditions.”

“But I think all loves comes with some conditions,” Liz suggested. “In a way, it’s an exchange, a transaction, too.” She glanced over at Sarah. “What’s your opinion?”

Talk about being put on the proverbial hot seat! Feeling like a hypocrite, Sarah set down her cup and saucer. “For me the game changer is the life commitment. You’re not just . . . fuck buddies.” Weird, saying the phrase had never bothered her before, but thinking of her and Cole, she had to strain to get the two words out. “You’re in a relationship, and you don’t want to just date him anymore. You’re planning to ask him to move in. It seems to me that kind of commitment deserves, maybe even requires, honesty.”

“Maybe Sarah’s right,” Patrick said. “One thing’s for sure. Confessing to the man I love that I’m a former whore makes admitting to alcoholism seem like a walk in Central Park.”

Sarah could sympathize. That first night she and Cole had been together, he’d made love purely to her, not her legend. As hot as their reenactments of her movies were turning out to be, more than once lately she’d found herself wishing “Sugar” had never entered the picture.

Still mulling that over, she caught up with Liz after the session. “Hey, let me do that,” she said, frowning at the dirty plates Liz was stacking.

“Now that the others are gone, how are things going with
your
fuck buddy?” Liz asked, stepping away from the sink.

Measuring her words, Sarah took her place at the sink. Running the tap and squeezing a green glob of dish soap from the bottle, she said, “Funny you should ask, because we were talking the other night and your name came up.”

Every time she’d tried broaching the topic of money, Liz had clammed up. The oncology treatment program at Sloan Kettering enjoyed its worldwide reputation as cutting edge for good reason, but it couldn’t come cheap. Even with insurance, there were substantial out-of-pocket costs to cover. Whatever money she’d set aside from her porn days was likely blown through by now.

So far she’d refused any financial help from Sarah, never mind that she would never miss the money. But maybe having the money come from an organization rather than a friend would make accepting it easier? The more Sarah thought about the Canning Foundation, the more it seemed like it might be the answer for Liz and Jonathan—or at least
an
answer. To get through the next tough few months, they needed something fun to focus on, a proverbial light at the end of cancer’s tunnel. Instead of settling for a single wimpy light, why not have the elaborate pyrotechnics display at Disney’s Cinderella’s Castle to look forward to?

Liz’s face shuttered. “Talking, huh? That sounds like a waste.” She set the cookie tray on the counter.

Sarah shut off the tap and turned around. “We do talk sometimes.” She didn’t add that most of their conversations were recitations of her X-rated scripts. “Anyway,” she went on, picking up the coffeepot for rinsing, “he wants to take you and Jonathan and me out for pizza.”

Liz smiled slyly. “He wants to meet your friends, huh? That sounds like more than a fuck buddy to me.”

Sarah shrugged. Tempting as it was to get her hopes up, it was wiser not to. Cole wasn’t a relationship guy. He’d laid that out before he’d even kissed her. Their time together was “just for fun.” She might wish for more, she
did
sometimes wish for more, but she also had to respect his honesty—and his boundaries. She needed to enjoy their time together for what it was—great sex.

“The charity he runs is like a Make-a-Wish Foundation, only for kids whose parents are recovering from cancer.”

She’d made certain to emphasize “recovering,” but Liz still bristled. “I’m not looking for any handouts, not from you and not from any charity. I can take care of my son. Once I get back to work full-time, Jonathan and I’ll get to Disney World on our own steam.”

Taking in her fierce face, rather than upset her further, Sarah backed down. “No one’s saying otherwise. Look, sex aside, Cole’s really cool to hang out with. I thought it might be fun for Jonathan. But if you don’t think it’s a good idea, I’ll tell him so, and you can forget I even mentioned it.”

Her scowl softening, Liz leaned back against the pantry cabinet. “Jonathan’s been cooped up too much lately. We’ll do it, but be sure to tell your . . . buddy to keep his checkbook to himself.” Eyes flashing, she added, “And I’d better not see Jonathan or me in any brochure!”

“So I spoke to my friend, Liz, and she’s cool with us meeting up for pizza this week with her and her son,” Sarah said to Cole later that night, her tone the carefully modulated one she used for feeling him out. Moving about the kitchen wearing only his costume white shirt, she added, “Will Saturday at lunchtime work for you?”

Sitting on a high-backed stool at her counter, he answered, “Absolutely. Lombardi’s or John’s on Bleecker?”

Her relieved look confirmed his suspicion that she hadn’t expected him to follow through. Not for the first time, he wondered how many people—men—had let her down. The few times the subject of fathers had come up, she’d evaded all but his most casually framed questions. Apparently hers was a retired NYP detective living in one of the city’s outer boroughs, Brooklyn he thought. That was all he knew.

“John’s is closer to her place, and she tires fast.”

“Great, John’s it is. Noon, okay?”

Standing on tiptoe to take down salad plates from the cabinet, she answered, “Noon would be perfect.”

He really should get off his ass and offer to help her, but frankly the view was too goddamned good to give up. Big as his shirt was on her, the stretching posture brought the tail riding up, revealing the sweet curve of her perfect and perfectly bare ass.

“Only don’t say too much about the foundation,” she warned. Retrieving the dishes, she closed the cabinet door. “She’s pretty sensitive about what she sees as ‘handouts.’”

Distracted, it took him a few seconds to find his way back into their conversation. “Right, no problem, I’ll just talk about myself.”

“Well, it is your favorite subject.” Setting down the plates, she shot him a dimpled grin.

“Sometimes,” he admitted, “but not always.” The night they’d met, she’d made it pretty clear she viewed him as a trust-fund brat, but did she really still see him that way? Gaze snagging on her computer, lying open at the opposite end of the counter, he added, “Right now I’m pretty curious about what you’ve got going on your laptop?”

His earlier swooping in and carrying her upstairs to bed hadn’t exactly allowed time for tidying. That day’s reenactment had been of her only period piece, loosely based on
The Four Musketeers
. In the X-rated film adaptation, four male actors, the musketeers, had taken turns pleasuring and penetrating the delectably deceitful Milady de Winter—Sugar. Only in Cole’s version, there was only one Musketeer—him. A white pirate’s shirt repurposed from last Halloween, fitted riding pants, and boots he kept for his rare rides in Central Park, had brought him close enough to character. As for the plumed hat . . . well, there was no way that was happening.

Sarah had met him at the door. As always, she hadn’t disappointed. Corseted and dressed in tight-fitting, camel-colored pants, thigh-high boots, and boasting a black-velvet beauty patch on one cheek, she’d looked much as she had in the film.

A dungeon room would have been difficult to improvise on the fly, but Sarah’s stripped bare bed had made a decent enough “rack.” The props were prosaic but effective. Silk scarves, in this case his ties, had seemed to suit “Milady’s” pleasure for restraint. Dragging a rubber “play” knife, also repurposed from his pirate costume, along her creamy, quivering body had been more arousing than Cole would have thought. By the time he’d penetrated her with his “sword,” they were both breathless and perspiring.

And now they were hungry. The frenzied fucking and the shared shower afterward had worked up an appetite. The leftover lasagna in Sarah’s refrigerator promised to be a satisfying early supper. Other than Sarah herself, Cole couldn’t think of anything he’d rather be eating.

Using a spatula to lift a wedge of lasagna into a microwavable dish, she said, “It’s just some . . . stuff I’m writing.” The pasta slid off the spatula and landed splat on the counter. “Shit,” she cursed, grabbing a handful of paper towels.

“What is it?” Cole prompted, wondering why she suddenly seemed so jumpy.

Maneuvering the mangled lasagna back into the dish, she answered without looking up. “It’s nothing.”