Going to Extremes

They rode the elevator to their floor and headed down the hall, managing small talk about the signing and the tour and laughing companionably. Anyone seeing them would assume they were long-time lovers headed for bed. But it was all an act, as Kathleen had observed.

A moment later, they stood before the doors to their adjoining rooms. “So this is good night then,” he said.

“Yep. I’ve got new bedside reading.” She raised his book, back cover facing him, but upside down, so that he appeared to be standing on his head. How appropriate.

“Thanks for buying that. I should have bought one of yours, but I was…I already had one, so I didn’t—”

“Really? You have one of my books?”

“Of course. I have it with me. In fact, will you sign it?”

“That’s not necessary.”

“No. I insist. I’ll bring it right over.”

She started to object, but he cut her off. “Kathleen, I want to.”

“Okay, then. Suit yourself.” She slid her key card into the slot and breezed inside, but not before he caught the wisp of a smile that told him she was delighted.

Which made him far too happy.

He would breeze into her room, sign the book, say good night and be back in his room in an easy ten minutes.

SHE COULD have signed the book tomorrow, for heaven’s sake, but the delight that Dan had read it had overridden Kathleen’s good sense. Now she was stuck. One more minute of acting witty and cool when she felt shaky and confused and her over-wound nerves would snap through her skin.

She needed a long, hot bath to soothe herself. Her reaction to Dan alarmed her. The animal in her had nosed out the positive changes in his physique. He was stronger, broader, more physically confident than he’d been in college. He used to envelop her so tightly that she felt wrapped up in a big Dan blanket. How would he feel now? Even more secure, no doubt. More masterful and carnal.

Cut it out. She didn’t want the man anymore. How tiresome his life must be, with all the rules and repression he swore by. Her reaction was pure biology. An example of the female’s genetic drive to connect with a virile male to propagate the species with sturdy offspring. That was how she would explain the importance of male physical prowess to female arousal in the sexuality chapter in Roots and Rhetoric. When she wrote it, that is.

But she was uneasily sure that genetic drives didn’t completely account for her reaction to Dan. Physical stuff had gotten weird on her lately. Take what had happened with Troy just three weeks ago.

She’d met him at a wine tasting and he was exactly her type: classy, sensual, funny, smart, sexually confident and not the least intimidated by her reputation.

They’d returned to her place after an exquisite dinner. Soon they were in her bedroom, where the air was aromatic with cinnamon candles and a hint of the lusty Bordeaux she’d opened, the light golden and dim. There was Troy in her bed, covered to the waist in her black satin sheets, his bare chest promising, his look predatory…everything just the way she liked it.

She’d stepped toward him, but was swept by a wave of exhaustion so overwhelming she’d stopped moving. Her whole being felt the way skin feels when it’s been stroked too long on the same spot—chafed, burned and aching.

She’d forced herself to sit on the bed beside Troy and put her hands on his chest, hoping the contact would banish the peculiar sensation.

But it hadn’t. Troy moved to kiss her, but she stopped him. Her lips had gone numb and rubbery—the way they’d felt after the accident. She’d pulled away, apologizing like mad.

Troy had been disappointed, of course. And puzzled.

She was, too. Especially by how happy she was to have sent him away. The minute he left, she’d cheerfully wrapped herself in a microfiber throw and gotten absorbed in a black-and-white historical movie, where the brush of a man’s lips on the back of a woman’s hand practically produced a climax. She’d felt like a guilty child allowed to stay up past her bedtime.

Now she slid off her shoes, undid her garters and peeled off her stockings, digging her toes into the lush sponge of the dense carpet.

She didn’t feel numb now. She felt fully alive, zings and pings firing joyously all up and down her body—a stalled engine finally coming to life.

Not good. Not good at all. She was done with Dan. Except while she waited for him, she tugged at her ear and breathed in hungry little pants—signs of sexual anticipation. She hadn’t felt like this in a long time.

Dan knocked at her door with crisp, evenly spaced raps as rational and matter-of-fact as the man. He was so different from her that she wondered what she’d seen in him.

She opened the door and remembered. His kind eyes, sensuous mouth, the intelligence in his face and that smile—knowing and mysterious—that promised more. Much more.

He held her book in his hand and tilted it at her.

“Come in.” She led him to the couch and he sat beside her, placing her book on her lap.

It was her first. Many times she’d wondered if he’d read her magazine column or any of her books. It was childish vanity, but she wanted him to see what she’d gone on to accomplish…and what he’d given up.

She looked into his blue eyes. They held an emotion that she, as usual, couldn’t read. Curiosity? Sadness? Regret? Desire?

Did you miss me? Did you suffer without me? Those were the mucky, wounded-ego questions she wanted to ask. If their time together had been important to him, if the breakup had been difficult for him, too, then she wouldn’t feel like such a weak fool. Maybe if she asked, she’d stop feeling so strange.

“Can I ask you something?”

He nodded.

She opened her mouth, but the words wouldn’t come. What if his answer made her feel worse? “Do you have a pen?”

He looked at her quizzically.

“Because if you don’t, I do. I have a special signing pen that I love. It has a tip so smooth it makes the words come out like liquid thought,” she babbled. “You’ll want something like that…a special pen, I mean…”

Dan ended her torment by whipping a pen from his suit-coat pocket and handing it to her, still warm from his body.

“Great.” She clicked it on, then set to her task. When she lifted the pristine cover of her book, the binding crackled and the first few sheets were attached at the edges. “Have you even read a page?” she asked, trying to sound amused, not hurt.

He reddened. “I bought it to support you, Kathleen. It wasn’t my thing.”

“How do you know if you haven’t looked past the cover?”

He shrugged. “I just know.”

“You used to at least try things,” she said. He used to say that she was a bad influence on him, but she’d assumed he was joking, been certain he enjoyed the pleasures she exposed him to. “Remember karaoke night?”

He groaned and shook his head. “Lord. What a mistake.”

“Come on. You had fun. And ‘Born to be Wild’ was the perfect song for you to sing.”

“I sounded like an idiot—an off-key idiot. I don’t know how you talked me into that.”

“I had legendary persuasive powers,” she teased.

“True.” He shot her a smile. “And I’d never met anyone like you.”

“You lived like a monk in that sad little apartment. And your roommate. Religious studies, right? Such a somber dude. He always looked like he was writing a funeral sermon.”