My Sexiest Mistake

“Do I need to remind you what’s at stake, here?” Ryan could picture the redhead sitting at her speakerphone, the cigarette in her hand sending a thin ribbon of smoke to the ceiling. “A legal contract. The other three books in the series. Your early retirement from corporate training. Your reputation. My reputation, and—not to be overlooked—my commission. You know I’ve had my eye on that hot tub.”

“Helene, I’m trying.”

“For heaven’s sake, Ryan, the hard part is done. You’ve got most of the book written. All you have to do is get them between the sheets for a little nooky.”

“A lot of nooky, Helene.” Ten to fifteen pages, last time she’d checked. Ryan tried to stem the rising tide of anxiety. “The scene doesn’t want to come out. I keep trying, but I just can’t write it. Oh, why didn’t you let me stay in sweets?” Her voice rose in a wail of frustration.

“Let you stay in sweets? I should be beaten for letting you stay in sweets as long as I did,” Helene rasped, as a crack in the background signaled she was opening one of her ever-present Diet Cokes. “Eight of them, two awards. You’re the best thing out there. You should be writing single-title books, but I can’t get you there because everybody wants to see how you’ll handle the sex. It was a miracle I managed to get them to consider a multibook deal,” she grumbled.

For the past four years Ryan had been happily writing sweets in her spare time, short, snappy romances with nothing more provocative than a lip lock or two. Each time she sold a book she thought that this time, finally, she might be able to quit the day job she loathed and write full-time, but it never quite happened that way. She felt a distinct pang of longing for each of her eight books, lovely little tales that required nothing explicit, just some impure thoughts and a few kisses. Kissing she could do. Kissing she had done, with her own lips. At least, oh, well, half a dozen times, anyway. Sex was largely a black hole to her, enlivened by one memorably unfortunate outing.

Write what you know, she’d learned in her courses at Brown. Unfortunately, sex was something she didn’t know. One fact was indisputable, though—the hook of the book she had sold was supposed to be hot sex between the hero and the heroine. All she had to do was finish the book, get the contract, and write full-time. If she screwed it up, though, there was no telling how long she’d be condemned to teach corporate management classes.

Helene heaved a long-suffering sigh down the phone. “Ryan, you have to do this. Now is not the time to get writer’s block. Do you at least have a draft?”

Ryan thought of the miserable paragraph that she’d wrung out the night before. Normally, her prose galloped onto the screen. Okay, well, there were times it trotted and times it downright dragged its feet, but it at least came.

If only her characters could.

Helene decoded her noncommittal humph for the negative that it was. “Come on, kid, just pour yourself a glass of wine and think about the last time you had really hot, sweaty sex. You do remember sex, right?”

Ryan made a vague noise and Helene’s voice sharpened. “How long has it been since you’ve slept with someone, anyway?”

“Oh, a while,” she answered evasively, nervously straightening a stack of files on her desk.

“How long?”

“Um, eight years. Or so.” Ryan’s voice sounded thin even to her own ears.

“Eight years?” Helene’s voice rose incredulously. “Since you were twenty-one? Eight years?”

“A little less,” Ryan said defensively. “I’ve been busy…” her voice trailed off.

“Ryan. Honey. You’re gorgeous. You’re in the prime of your life. What are you waiting for?”

“I just haven’t had too much luck in the dating department.”

“You’ve been hiding away teaching Quark classes. No wonder you can’t write about sex. You probably don’t even remember what it’s like. Sweetheart, we need to find you a man,” Helene said decisively.

Ryan’s eyes narrowed. “Helene, you are not going to set me up with a sex partner.”

“Ryan, you’re writing a Private Moments romance. You don’t just need some Joe to have sex with, you need a sex god.”

“Helene, give me a break. It will be fine, really. I’m a novelist. Stephen King didn’t need to have a demonically possessed car to write Christine. I don’t need a sex god. I can handle it.”

“You need inspiration.”

“Helene!” Ryan’s voice vibrated with frustration. She took a deep breath. “I have to go. I’m late for my class.”

“What are you teaching?”

“Conflict resolution for managers.”

“That won’t help you with hot, sweaty—”

“Helene.” The line went silent. “Thank you. Now, I have to go to class,” Ryan continued, enunciating carefully. “I’ll work on the scene this weekend and I’ll call you next week.”

“I’ve already picked out the hot tub,” Helene threw in. “Just in case you’re worried about me.”

“Goodbye, Helene.”

WRAPPING HER CHENILLE bathrobe around her, Ryan stared at the mercilessly blank screen of her computer in the fading light of evening. Candles winked around the room and Frank Sinatra crooned quietly in the background. Her silk camisole slid over her skin. A half finished glass of wine sat at her elbow, forgotten, and incense perfumed the air. “Set the mood,” she muttered, pushing her tumble of dark hair back over her shoulders. “Fat lot of good that does me.”

Six years before, the plan had been clear—get a master’s degree and teach English at some tony upstate prep school. Unfortunately, several hundred other Ivy Leaguers had had the same idea, she discovered on graduating. Her temporary—she thought—sojourn at Beckman Markham had rescued her from being an overqualified copy-shop clerk, but three years later it was clear that bigger and better things weren’t going to materialize for her in academia. By now, though, she hardly cared. Since she’d discovered romance writing via a Sunday supplement article one day in grad school, she’d been writing sweets. Now her only goal was to turn writing into a full-time job and leave the purgatory that was Beckman Markham.

Finishing the first novel of the new series would open that door for her.

Finishing the book currently seemed like the last thing that was ever going to happen.

Heaving a sigh, she got up from the computer chair and wandered over to her silent TV to watch Dennis Quaid trap Ellen Barkin in a kiss in The Big Easy. Helene was right. That was what she needed, she thought, stretching out on the couch to sink into the film. Passion. True romance. A man who would sweep her off her feet.

Unfortunately, her life to date had been notably absent of feet-sweepers. Except for Ross, who had mostly swept the floor with her. Ryan sighed as the characters on the screen kissed. Sometimes she could almost feel a movie kiss, almost remember what it was like.

She untied her robe to feel the silk beneath. It wasn’t her fault she never got involved with anyone. Guys just always seemed to look right through her. It wasn’t that she didn’t want someone to touch her the way Quaid was touching Barkin, she thought, absently stroking her fingers along her collarbone and sliding down the curve of her shoulder. She wanted to make love, she wanted to feel a man’s hands on her. It just never seemed to happen.

She ran her fingertips down over her silk camisole and tap pants to stroke her thighs, then back up, softly, rhythmically. The feel of silk rubbing against her nipples made her shift restlessly. Just a man who could see her for what she was, instead of walking right past like she was invisible. So maybe she wasn’t on the cover of Cosmo, but she’d inherited her mother’s high cheekbones and her father’s full mouth. Nobody quite knew where she got her green eyes, but they were her favorite feature. When she got dressed up, she thought she looked nice. Okay, to be honest she thought she looked hot, but somehow when she was around men she just seemed to disappear.

She could be sexy with the right guy, Ryan thought, slipping her fingers under the edge of her tap pants to tease the top of her thighs, stroking her breast with the other hand. It was just that somehow they never seemed to notice her.

She watched the characters on screen as her fingers slid up to feel the curls of hair between her legs. Maybe what she’d experienced sex-wise had been forgettable, but she knew just how good it could be from the way she could make herself feel. Her fingers slipped into wetness and she felt the surge of arousal as she stroked herself where she was most sensitive. On-screen, Barkin gasped in desire as Quaid slipped his hand up between her legs. Ryan closed her eyes and imagined the fingers of a lover driving her to the brink and beyond. What would it be like to have a man touching her there, to feel his naked flesh against hers? Would he know how to stroke, how to circle around in the way that made her hips jerk the way they were now?

She was on fire everywhere from her hips to her knees. She ached with tension. The rhythmic stroking took her higher and higher. She brought herself to the edge, caressing her breasts with her other hand, brushing and squeezing the nipples. She paused, letting the arousal ease off, knowing it would be even better at the end if she made herself wait.

She stroked her body, feeling her curves, then returned to the moist heat, finding herself again with a touch that made her catch her breath. She teased, circled, then she could feel it rushing in. Suddenly it was like a freight train, barreling along, no stopping now. Slick, hot, wet, her folds enveloped her stroking fingers. The flush of heat flowed over her like molten pleasure, then the orgasm slammed into her. Her body jolted as the glory of it surged from her center out to her fingers and toes in a flush of heat that flared, pulsed, and left a glow behind. Sighing, she lay back and closed her eyes.

She didn’t go back to the computer.

“MA, YOU RUINED MY CAREER.” Ryan clattered through her parents’ back door and into her mother’s kitchen.

Sonia Donnelly turned to smile at her dark-haired, leggy daughter, marveling as always at how she’d grown from the tiny, pink baby she remembered. “Morning, Glory. What brings you here?”

“I’m meeting Becka to go antiquing. She’s up the street at her parents’ house, helping make paper flowers or something for Nellie’s wedding.”

“Nellie’s getting married?” Sonia blinked in shock. “I just bought Girl Scout cookies from her last week. She can’t be more than fourteen.”

“Ma, she just turned twenty-two.” Ryan said gently. “I think you bought the cookies from Colleen’s oldest.”

“Colleen has a daughter old enough to be in Girl Scouts? Good god, where does the time go?” Sonia muttered, bending to pull a pan of cinnamon rolls out of the oven. “Anyway, what’s all this about ruined careers? Are you in trouble at work?”