Silent Confessions

Donovan snorted out a laugh. “Too bad. I’ve got great taste.” Donovan stopped alongside his beat-up Jeep, parked in front of a fire hydrant. “Come on. Cindy’s sister might be the woman for you. You could be missing out on the lay of a lifetime.”

It was Jack’s turn to laugh. “I’ll risk it,” he said. “Right now I just want to go home and get some sleep.”

“Sleep?” Donovan asked, doubt lacing his voice.

“That’s what I said.” And that’s exactly what he intended to do. Right after he swung by the precinct and took another look at the file.

* * *

The summer heat taunted her, denying her sleep. In front of her, photocopied pages from The Pearl and The Boudoir were strewn haphazardly across the sturdy oak door she’d converted into a desktop. Ronnie picked up a page at random, needing to work, but not in the mood. Instead of analyzing the words as a proper academic should, Ronnie lost herself in the prose, her pulse quickening as she skimmed the text.

There, on the page, the fictional Monsieur lifted his lover’s skirts, revealing her stockings...her garters...her sex. With reverence, he urged her thighs apart, then knelt in front of her, his tongue laving her intimately.

With a low moan, Ronnie closed her eyes, imagining it was her, and not the fictional Bertha, who was the subject of the Monsieur’s attentions. Arching her neck, she trailed her fingers down the front of her thin cotton nightshirt. Her body shuddered as she ran her hands over the swell of her breasts, letting her fingers linger on her nipples, which hardened under her touch.

Lord, she was frustrated.

And pitiful.

She pulled her hands away and sat straight in her chair, her elbows on her desk. Across the room, the window air conditioner spit out cool air at random, barely making a dent in the oppressive heat.

What kind of academic got all hot and bothered while trying to study? Well, that was easy. An academic who was stupid enough to pick a research topic related to erotic literature, and then dumb enough to go and read source material way past her bedtime. And The Boudoir, no less.

Not that the research wasn’t...fascinating. At the rate she was going, she’d need to invest in industrial-strength air-conditioning. As if on cue, the ancient window unit shuddered and gasped, finally belching out one last burst of tepid air before dying completely.

Considering the temperature for the rest of the week was supposed to hit record highs, she probably should have expected massive equipment failure. First the robbery, then two days without even a word from the cops, then the argument with her academic adviser, and now this. The final insult of an already rotten week.

A cold shower, that’s what she needed. Surely she’d sleep better if she could just cool down. Frustrated, she took off her glasses, tossing them onto her desk. She rubbed the bridge of her nose, then ran a hand through her sweat-dampened hair. Who was she kidding? Even if her apartment was climate controlled to a constant sixty-eight degrees, she’d still be awake.

Since the robbery, every creak and shudder of the old building made her jump. Especially since the police had been so closemouthed, not letting her know if they had any leads as to who might have broken into her bookstore downstairs.

And it had been such a creepy robbery, too. As if someone had just wanted to rifle through her stuff. The store was filled with expensive books and rare manuscripts, and yet none of that was touched. Not any of the near-priceless incunabula in the display case, not the clamshell set of Dickens’s serials displayed behind her work desk, not even the three hundred dollars in petty cash she’d left in the top drawer.

Instead, her burglar had left books strewn about on the floor and on top of bookshelves, and had tossed the papers from her desk all over the floor. It had taken Ronnie a full day to sort through and organize her lecture notes, personal correspondence and business bills.

Annoying and creepy. Definitely creepy. Combine the robbery with the looming deadline for her dissertation outline, and she doubted she could sleep even if the place were tomb silent, meat-locker cold and surrounded by armed guards.

A trickle of sweat ran down her temple and she brushed it away, trying to focus on work. Less than twenty-four hours ago, her faculty adviser had rejected her dissertation topic—the Influences of Erotic Literature on Contemporaneous Popular Culture—as too broad, and now she had to come up with a narrower focus, and fast. Since she was wide-awake at 4:00 a.m., the least she could do was spend the time productively. She’d worked hard to build up the store’s collection of erotic art and literature, and she’d hoped that combing through some of the volumes would inspire her.

She grimaced, thinking of her body’s reaction to the Monsieur’s story. She’d been inspired, all right, just not academically. Instead, she was feeling hot, bothered and sorry for herself, comparing her lack of anything remotely resembling a sex life to the baudy, exotic and most definitely erotic adventures of the women she spent evening after solitary evening reading about.

Leaning her head back, she sighed. A man. That’s what she needed.

No. She pressed her fingers to her lids and rubbed her closed eyes. Between her course work and trying to make the bookstore profitable, she was fully occupied one-hundred-and-twenty percent of the day. And even that wasn’t enough.

Besides, she’d had a man, and while the sex had been fabulous, Burt had been anything but. She shook her head, banishing the still-vivid images of her ex-husband and his receptionist, butt-naked, going at it on her two-hundred-and-fifty thread-count Ralph Lauren sheets. Not a pretty picture.

At least she was rid of him. She’d marched straight from their apartment to her attorney’s office. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Going on two years now. Hell, maybe she’d throw a party.

No, she didn’t need a man. But maybe a vibrator...

Nibbling on her lower lip, she toyed with the pages on her desk, papers that revealed passions and emotions that reached powerful heights. Heights she’d been sorely missing lately.

What irony. Veronica Archer—the owner of Archer’s Rare Books and Manuscripts, a specialist in rare erotica, author of more than twenty scholarly articles on erotic books and art—had the most pitiful sex life imaginable.

She shoved the thought away. She was happy with her life. Right now, her career came first. It wasn’t a sacrifice—it was liberating. While her friends were waiting by the phone wondering if Mr. Right was going to call, she was free to occupy her mind with more interesting pursuits. Unlike Joan, her twenty-four-year-old hot-and-heavily-into-dating assistant, Ronnie could gain a pound without having a panic attack, could rent all the sappy movies she wanted, and could care less about the fine art of small talk.

With a sigh, she gathered the pages and her notes. Since the air-conditioning had conked out, if she wanted to get any reading done tonight, she’d have to do it downstairs. At least the electrician was coming back to the store in the morning. Maybe he could coax the contraption into surviving one more summer.

Her door opened up onto the interior stairs that connected the five floors of the old family brownstone. Formerly for servants’ access, the stairs now ran from the bookstore on the first two floors, to the storage room on the third floor, to Ronnie’s apartment on the fourth and her brother Nat’s on the fifth.

She eased the door open and stepped onto the landing, avoiding the weak spot that always rang out like a shot. Since the burglary, Nat had been fussing over her safety. No sense letting him know she was having trouble sleeping.

On the ground floor she paused and looked back up the stairs, making sure no light appeared from above. Nothing. Good. She would down a gallon of coffee in the morning and Nat would never know just how lousy she’d been sleeping lately.

Slowly, carefully, she turned the knob, pushing the door at just the right speed to minimize the creak of the old hinge she never remembered to fix. When she’d maneuvered the door open enough to squeeze through, she slipped in, shut the door and flipped on the light.

Success.

“Careful, sis, you might wake me.”

Or not.

With a frown, she surveyed the room, finally locating Nat in one of the cushy armchairs she kept near the antique furnace. “What are you doing down here?” she asked.

“I figured you were still a little antsy after our uninvited guest. Thought I’d wait up and commiserate with you.”

“I’m not antsy,” she lied.

“Come on, Ronnie. I know you too well. Besides, it’s not quite morning and you’ve been awake for hours.”

“Hours?” She dropped her papers on the antique desk that served as the command center for the store, then hit the power switch on the coffeemaker she always kept filled and ready to brew. “How do you know how long I’ve been up?”

He waggled his eyebrows, the familiar gesture making her laugh. “I see all.”

“Uh-huh,” she said, dropping into the chair opposite him. “Give.”

“I got home about one. Your light was on. About an hour ago, I woke up, dead thirsty, and realized I was out of soda.” He leaned forward and gave her knee a quick squeeze. “When I came down here to grab one from the break room, what did I see but a light still shining from underneath my darling little sister’s front door?”

“Maybe I went to sleep with the lights on,” she said, then immediately regretted it. Staying awake or sleeping with the lights on—either way he’d assume she was nervous, scared of the dark, or otherwise put off by the robbery.

On cue, he shrugged and took a swallow of Mountain Dew. “I’m just looking out for you, Ron. I don’t like worrying about you. Knowing you’re scared.”

“Nat,” she crooned, trying out her reasonable-and-responsible-sister voice, “you’re supposed to be on a plane in just a few days. A Galápagos shoot for National Geographic is a really big deal. Worry about that. Not me.”

“I’ll always worry about you, McDonald.”

Ronnie rolled her eyes at the silly nickname. During eighth grade, she’d had a crush on Billy Hobbs, who happened to like redheads, not girls with uncooperative, mousy-brown ringlets. After a little mishap with a bottle of hair dye, Ronnie had ended up with curls more flaming orange than sultry red. Billy Hobbs had laughed and Nat had cheered her up. And after he was sure she’d survive, he’d pinned her with the rather annoying nickname of Ronald McDonald. Apparently the rule book for big brothers required an obnoxious-to-nice ratio of about three to one.