The Ex Factor

Then the moment passed and the back-and-forth exploration of her thigh continued. He tugged her skirt up a full half inch, torturing her again with a slow track back, his finger pad tracing a line of heat across her skin.

“All the while we talked, I did this. Played at your hem, and you pretended you didn’t notice, like now.”

“I think your memory’s playing tricks.”

“And then, suddenly, you parted your legs and turned toward me.” He swallowed. So did she. Heat flooded her body as she remembered what came next.

“I thought I was so in control, touching you, turning us both on, but you were the one in control, weren’t you? You were the one with the secret.”

“No,” she whispered, but she wasn’t telling him she hadn’t had a secret, she was trying to stop the flood of memory that was as warm and thick as desire.

“When I got up to touch your panties, you weren’t wearing any.”

Oh, how she remembered. The feel of the air wafting up her skirt, the wanton knowledge that she’d stood by while he’d finalized paperwork at a car dealership, while they’d driven public highways, and all the time, underneath her cotton sundress, she’d been bare-assed.

“We were in the backseat so fast I ended up with bruised elbows and knees. We never did take off our clothes, did we? I ended up flipping that skirt up, pulling down the top of your dress to reach your breasts. You were always so sensitive there.” He laughed softly. “We were like a pair of kids going at it.” He sighed, obviously realizing that this little trip down memory lane wasn’t working. Her thighs didn’t ease open, though he couldn’t possibly know what torture it was to hold them closed against him. “God, I loved you.”

“But not enough,” she said, her voice so soft she wasn’t sure if he’d heard her.

“Do you think we rushed into marriage too fast?”

She turned her head, wondering where he was going with this train of thought. “We knew each other a year. I guess I wish we’d waited. Long enough for me to realize you weren’t the kind of guy to stick with one woman.”

He pulled his hand back into his own lap and she fought the urge to grab it and put it where she needed, so urgently, to be touched.

“I wish I’d waited long enough to get a handle on those demons you carry around with you.”

“What demons?” she snapped. How like a man to cheat on her and then try and pretend she was the one with the problem.

“The demons that stopped you being able to trust.”

She was not going to have this conversation again. She’d moved on. “If I’m so full of demons, what are you doing still trying to get into my pants?”

A sigh of pure frustration rolled through him. “Hell if I know.”

6

THE READING TERMINAL MARKET was crazy. Naturally. It was a Sunday afternoon and every yuppie with a craving for organic arugula or some fresh monkfish had made tracks down here. Karen had a love/hate relationship with the market. While she loved this place simply for the fun of people-watching, she also suffered as only a woman who loves food and tries to live on fifteen hundred calories a day can suffer.

Since she’d barely slept thanks to Dex and his antics in her car last night, she felt weaker than usual. The worst part had been driving him to his hotel, with all the steamy atmosphere between them churning around with a lot of emotions. Anger, frustration, and a bitter kind of longing that hurt more than all the other feelings put together. How could she still want the man so much?

Dex was her ex. He had to remain that way if she had any chance of hanging on to her hard-won self-esteem.

She’d half thought he’d invite her up to his room and was ready to let him have it when he did. Somehow, the fact that he didn’t say any more than, “Thanks for the ride. Night,” was an added insult. He didn’t even ask her up to his room so she could annihilate the guy with a few well-chosen words that she’d been practicing for blocks.

How unfair was that?

The bakery smells were so good. There were blocks of cheese bigger than house steps and she wanted to buy one and gobble every succulent morsel. She loved cheese, every fat-saturated ounce. Hard cheese, soft cheese, runny cheese, blue cheese. Oh, stop it. She averted her eyes. She really shouldn’t be here.

But Ron had suggested the locale for their first coffee date and, under instruction from Dee, she’d agreed without quibbling. Now she was here she wished she’d quibbled big-time. She wanted to turn tail and head home. Apart from being exhausted, cranky and cheese-obsessed, she’d probably dressed all wrong for a first date with a stranger. Her jeans were casual, but she’d pushed her feet into high heels instead of giving them a well-deserved Sunday rest, and she was worried that the green sweater was too low-necked. The last thing she wanted to do was stick her boobs in some poor man’s face, so she’d added a scarf at the last moment, and now wished she could go home and start over.

Dee had made her promise to let her hair down, which she’d first assumed was some kind of veiled allusion to being open for sex with a stranger until Dee had clarified that she actually meant she should leave her hair unpinned and unconfined. “You have such great hair, that gorgeous red color and the natural curls.” And since Dee seemed to know what she was doing in the online dating world, Karen had been persuaded.

Now she suddenly felt like a country-and-western singer with too much of everything. Big hair, big heels, big breasts, big butt.

She was a few minutes early, because it was her way, and stopped to stare unseeing at a booth selling nothing but spices. She never should have agreed to this date with Ron the CPA.

Somehow, this was all Dexter’s fault. If he hadn’t got her so riled up she never would have agreed to a date with some guy she met over the Internet.

However, she realized that whatever her reasons for being here, she wasn’t about to stand this man up. It wasn’t his fault she was an idiot. So, they’d have coffee. An hour of her life would be wasted, and then she could get back to attempting to make something of the years left to her.

On that optimistic thought, she made her way to the busy coffee shop and immediately spotted Ron, who was standing near the entrance, obviously as punctual as she was.

He looked exactly like his photo. Exactly like a CPA. And suddenly she relaxed. He was reassuringly unassuming, no other women were covertly studying him or overtly drooling. He was the kind of man who wouldn’t forever be tempted to stray, which had to be a good thing.

She forced a smile to her face and walked up to him. “Hello, you must be Ron. I’m Karen.”

They shook hands. He seemed pleased by her punctuality, insisted on buying her a coffee and they settled at a table.

For a moment, neither spoke. Finally he said, “You’re very punctual. It’s a quality I admire.”

Oh, how old-fashioned he sounded. What was she even doing here? Her mind flashed back to the night before, when she’d been humiliatingly close to parting her thighs and doing her ex-husband in the parking lot. Something had to change, and fast. She smiled at him. “I feel the same way.”

Now that she looked at him, she saw that behind his glasses he had warm gray eyes. He was fairly forgettable until you took note of those eyes. He was dressed neatly, in jeans that bore such sharp creases she suspected he ironed them, a polo shirt he’d probably bought at Costco or Sam’s Club and a well-worn leather jacket.

Another pause ensued, while they both took refuge in sipping coffee, and finally she blurted, “I have no idea how to do this. I’m so sorry, it’s my first time.” She sighed, sensing the genuine niceness of this man, and opened up even more. “In fact, it’s been a long time since I had any kind of a date. I’m so out of practice I have no idea where to begin.”

It was as though her confession took all the awkwardness out of their date. Ron nodded with sweet understanding. “It sucks. Really.”

She was surprised into a spurt of laughter by his sad admission.

Then realizing how that must sound, he added, “I don’t mean meeting you, but online dating is a new skill you have to learn.” He shrugged. “I’ve been doing this for a few months now and I find the hardest part is that people often, when they write their profiles, put a description of what they wish they were like rather than something that’s actually true.”