Open Invitation? Read online

  Dan accepted it with a scowl and picked up his duffel. “It’s been real nice meeting you. I can’t wait to be transformed into a gentleman with a capital G. And I am sorry about destroying your china and your chair.”

  “That’s all right. I’ll survive.” She smiled at him. “This won’t be so bad, you know.”

  He scrubbed a hand over his bristly jaw and moved toward the door of her office. Then he turned and winked. “If I come in here tomorrow claiming whiplash, will it get me another kiss?”

  She stared at him, an odd expression on her face. “No, Mr. Granger, it will not.”

  AFTER WALKING HIM out to the front door, Lil stared after the man, watched his jaunty, confident stride and the way he swung the duffel by a couple of fingers on the way out to his rental car. She shouldn’t be ogling him, but she enjoyed the view of his broad shoulders and the quite magnificent male bottom under that dreadful belt.

  His stance was cocky and casual. Nothing elegant or cosmopolitan about him. He had two inch-wide strips of hair growing shaggily down his neck in the back, evidence of how long it had been since he’d had a haircut.

  He didn’t have a clue how to conduct himself outside of a barn. And she loathed the instant presumption of familiarity that he’d assumed with her.

  Yet she found his sheer unselfconsciousness sexy. He was more than comfortable in his own skin, unfettered by convention. A normal man, after wreaking havoc in his etiquette consultant’s office and springing an erection (she even whispered that word mentally) should have run from there, mortified.

  This man just took it all in stride and capped it all off by kissing her! He simply refused to accept the fact that he was a…buffoon. An extraordinarily handsome one, but a buffoon nevertheless.

  He couldn’t possibly be serious about the matching bride and groom belts, could he?

  Granger tossed his carry-on into the passenger side of the rented red Mustang he was driving. His biceps bulged, straining against the short sleeves of his T-shirt. He got into the car himself.

  Good Lord. She couldn’t deny that she wanted to see him without his shirt again. She touched her lips, which were still sensitive after being scrubbed by that golden bristle of his.

  From behind the windshield, he followed the gesture with his eyes and grinned, his white teeth flashing in the fading sunlight.

  Lil dropped her hand as if burned, swung around on one of her kitten-heels and walked back to her office.

  Shannon was on the phone and Jane appeared to be gone for the day, so Lil had a few moments to get herself together and think about how to proceed.

  Why on earth had she allowed the man to kiss her? She hadn’t kissed anyone since Li Wong, and he’d been out of her life for months now. Kissing Li had been unexciting. He had cold, squishy lips that were always too moist. She’d imagined, toward the end of things between them, that her damp kitchen sponge would provide more of a thrill.

  She got more of a charge out of just looking at Dan’s mouth than she’d gotten from touching Li anywhere. Li was smooth, hairless…flaccid. The man did have perfect manners—when one wasn’t rejecting his munificent marriage proposals—and lovely suits, however. He even wrote thank-you notes.

  Dan’s bottom lip had a tiny indentation in the middle, a cleft just like the one in his chin. It was wildly sensual-looking, that split. His mouth looked uninhibited, casually wicked, and not squeamish about its destinations. Dan was a man who knew the secret of how to have fun.

  Lil was starved for fun. That’s why I let him kiss me.

  She scolded herself for it. You are a thirty-year-old business owner who specializes in decorum, Lilia! The age to have had fun was in high school, college—when everyone else your age was having it. This is neither the time nor the place to discover your inner hedonist…

  But in high school and college she’d been taking care of a frail, exceedingly proper grandmother in her seventies. Nana Lisbeth had raised Lil apart from her own generation; teaching her embroidery and watercoloring and French while most girls her age played school sports, went to rock concerts and snuck out to bars with fake ID’s.

  Nana had been Lil’s entire world except for Jane and Shannon…but now Lisbeth London had been laid to rest beside Sir Henry. Even so, Lil went home to her empty house each night expecting to find her sipping lemon tea sweetened by a half-teaspoon of honey and letting a fresh crumpet go stale on a Royal Doulton plate.

  She simply could not believe that she’d never see Nana Lisbeth again, never drop another kiss on her powdery cheek or smell rose-water mixed with the scent of old wool. How had a simple knee-replacement surgery led to a life-threatening infection?

  With all that modern medicine could do, when it was someone’s time, it was her time.

  Shannon said goodbye to whomever she’d been talking to and Lil heard the click as she replaced the cordless phone in its cradle. Her modern rolling chair squeaked as she stood up. Seconds later she popped her head into Lil’s office.

  “So how did things go…” her voice trailed off as she saw the fragments of Lil’s visitor’s chair. “Oh. Not well, I see. My God, what else did he break?”

  Lil brushed a bit of dark thread from the sleeve of her white suit jacket. “Just every conversational rule in the book, most of the boundaries of good taste and almost his neck.”

  Shannon laughed. “Got your hands full, huh?”

  “You might say so.”

  “Juicy details?” Shan begged.

  “If we can go for a drink and you’ll take off that obnoxious, electric-blue jacket before I go blind.”

  “My goodness, Lil, but that was downright rude.” Shannon chuckled and twisted her long, curly hair up into a knot on her head. She snagged a pen from Lil’s desk to secure it.

  Lil opened her drawer, pulled out a green plastic ballpoint and handed it to her friend. “Give the Waterman back, please.”

  “Oh, all right.” Shan pulled the high-dollar pen out of her hair and shoved in the el cheapo. She dropped the expensive one back on Lilia’s desk.

  Lil picked it up, pulled two long curly blond hairs out of the pocket clip and grimaced. “You and Jane are rude to me all the time, anyway. So I have to return the favor. It’s part of the beauty of our friendship.” She dropped the hair into her wastebasket.

  “Come on, I’ll buy the cosmos,” Shannon said, tossing her car keys in the air and catching them again.

  “Is your car clean?” Lil asked. “Or does it still smell worse than the canals in Venice?”

  “Hal had it detailed from top to bottom and it’s daisy-fresh now.”

  “That man is a saint.” Speaking of which, why were her thoughts turning back to the mouth of a sinner? Lil had a feeling she’d see that mouth swooping down on her all night, in her dreams.

  5

  THEY DROVE to Max a Mia, one of their favorite local places in nearby Avon, and Shannon ordered them two cosmos over Lil’s protests.

  “You know I can’t drink those things. I’ll lose my mind after one.”

  “So what? The mind should be lost every once in a while. It always finds its way home. Now drink up and tell me about the mad, naked Texan in your office.”

  Lil pulled the maraschino cherry out of her drink and bit into it. Full of red dye number-whatever and chockful of nasty chemicals, maraschino cherries were her weakness and the main reason why she didn’t turn down the cosmo.

  “I’ll ask the waitress for a dish of them,” Shannon said. “Remember that time at Jane’s house? We were about ten. When you put so many of them on your sundae that it turned pink and looked bloody?”

  Lil wrinkled her nose. “Yuck. Thanks for reminding me. But I loved them, and Nana wouldn’t buy them. She called them ‘radioactive abominations.’”

  “Yeah. Nana had some really funny names for things.”

  “All the Bing cherries I could eat,” sighed Lil, “but no delicious chemicals or preservatives.”

  “The cruelty,” Shannon said. “
Excuse me, Annie? Can we have a dish of cherries and another one of Spanish olives? Thanks, you’re a doll.”

  Lil took a cool, burning sip of her drink and dropped another cherry into it when Annie came by with two little bowls. “I’m marinating it for later,” she told Shannon.

  “Yeah, whatever.” Shan sucked the pimento out of one of the large olives.

  “That’s disgusting.”

  “I know. So tell me all about that golden moment when you were down on your knees in front of Cowboy, and he was shoving money at you?”

  “You would bring that up. He had just broken one of Nana’s cups and saucers. He wanted to buy a whole new set, since he knows how much ‘us womenfolk’ like matching sets of things.”

  “Ah. And he thought that a couple hundred bucks would spring for an antique, hand-painted set of Royal Doulton? He’s a royal dolt.”

  “He’s not that bad.” Lil found herself defending the man. “And it was more like a couple thousand dollars he had in his hand. There were at least twenty one-hundred dollar bills. It was a fat wad.”

  “Tacky.” Shannon popped another olive into her mouth and sucked on the entire thing.

  “That’s disgusting, too. And the sound effects are… salacious.”

  Shan just grinned. “You should see me with a stalk of celery, or a nice, long carrot.”

  “No, I shouldn’t. You grew up in a nice home, with a mother who’s a lady. Where did she go wrong?”

  “You ever given a blow job, Lil?”

  Her jaw dropped open. “That’s none of your business! I can’t believe you just asked me that.”

  “You haven’t, have you.”

  “I—I—I’m leaving.”

  Shan put a hand on her arm. “I’m sorry. Don’t go. I’ll behave. I promise.”

  Lil exhaled a breath and reached for her drink, tipping more into her mouth than she meant to. She sputtered, partially choked and swallowed the liquid.

  Shannon’s wicked green eyes evaluated her to make sure she wasn’t really in trouble. When she decided that Lil was okay, she lifted her glass in a toast. “To good manners.”

  Lil squinted at her, trying to decide what she was up to. She didn’t really feel like drinking to good manners, all of a sudden. There was gentle mockery in her friend’s tone—mockery that Lil was all too familiar with, and had been for years.

  “I’m not Martha Stewart with a gun!” she declared.

  “I never said you were, sweetie.”

  “I’m not the Princess of Purity.” Lil picked up her glass and tossed the rest of the liquid back. Maybe it would douse her strange, unexplained lust for the cowpoke.

  Shannon ordered another round. Then she said, “I’ve never called you that.”

  “Everyone else did at school. I don’t mean to make anyone uncomfortable or on-edge around me,” Lil said. “But they always are. Why? I may be an etiquette consultant, but I’m not a nun! And I don’t mean to judge other people’s behavior.”

  “I know that. You certainly don’t repress me.” Shan grinned. “Not that it’s possible.”

  “And furthermore—” Lil took a big, angry gulp of her second cosmo “—I’m not as pure and uptight as you might think! Li and I once—” She felt her cheeks catch fire. “We once—well, you know. In the living room, with all the lights on.”

  Across the table, Shannon’s mouth worked.

  Lil wondered if she’d gotten a bad olive.

  And then her friend put her elbows on the table, folded her arms and let her head drop onto them. Her shoulders began to shake.

  “Are you…? Are you laughing at me?” Indignantly Lil gulped even more of her drink.

  Shannon shook her curly head, gave an audible gasp and kept shaking.

  “Crying for me?”

  She shook her head again.

  “Then what?”

  Finally she raised her head. “Oh, Lil,” she said unsteadily. “You’ve just been so protected from the world. Look, I know you don’t like to share these kinds of things, and Jane and I never dared ask you, but is Li the only guy? That you’ve ever…?”

  Lil compressed her lips. She wanted very badly to lie. Very, very badly. How do I explain to my former Great Slut childhood friend, who’s been an actress out in L.A., that yes, I am a virtual virgin? That I was going to wait until marriage, and finally got so curious that I couldn’t? That it didn’t seem to matter so much because I was positive I’d marry Li?

  How do I explain that I’ve heard her talk about vibrators a million times, but never actually seen one? I’m pathetic. I belong in another century. But I’m stuck in this one.

  Lil drained her second cosmo in a very unladylike couple of gulps. Then she nodded.

  “That’s what I thought. And it’s a crime.”

  “A crime?”

  “What if you had married that creep?” Shannon signaled for yet another round of drinks.

  “Oh, no—I couldn’t.” Lil’s head was swimmy already, and more alcohol was a very bad idea. Besides, a lady never, ever had more than two drinks in public.

  “Have another cherry, sweetie. Or two.”

  “Okay.” Lil looked at the cute, happy little cherries in the shallow dish. “Which one of you wants to be next? You, the little plump one, or you, with only half a stem? Aha. I feel sure that it’s you, my little vixen! With the dent in your side…” She popped it into her mouth and looked up to find Shannon grinning. “What?”

  “Nothing. My olives are getting pushy, too.”

  “You’ve got to keep them in line,” Lil said solemnly.

  “Very true. Oh, thank you, Annie!”

  The waitress set two more long-stemmed glasses in front of each of them. “You celebrating something, girls?”

  Lil smiled, fascinated by how Annie’s chandelier earrings caught the light. “Pretty,” she murmured.

  “Yes, we’re celebrating.” Shannon nodded. She raised her glass. “To the end of the innocence!”

  Lil lifted her own glass very slowly, focused on keeping the pink liquid within the rim. “To lend of inner sense,” she exclaimed, pleased that she hadn’t spilled any.

  She laughed along with Shannon, wrapped in a warm, happy glow.

  “LIKE THIS?” Lil asked, an hour later. She wobbled a little on Shannon’s red velvet couch. Normally she thought the thing was beyond vulgar, since it was squishy and shaped like a pair of huge lips. Tonight it didn’t seem bad.

  “Yes, just like that. Now watch.” Shannon looked like a beautiful, kinky Bugs Bunny wielding that carrot.

  Lil collapsed into a fit of giggles and managed to shove the tip of her own carrot up one of her nostrils. “Ick!”

  Shannon took it away from her and handed her another one. Then she put hers between her lips and took it into her mouth. She settled her lips around it into an O. Then she gripped it firmly in one fist and moved it in and out of her mouth, in and out. She raised her brows in an indication that Lil should do the same.

  Lil inserted her own carrot.

  “Push it back farther,” commanded Shan.

  “Gaahh.”

  “Now, tight with your lips.”

  “Ooooog.”

  “Pull. Push. Pull. Push.”

  It was an absolutely ludicrous sight. Lil disintegrated into giggles again. Her head fell between her knees and the carrot dropped onto the floor.

  Shannon sighed. “How many bags are we going to go through? Jeez!”

  “Your face…it’s so shilly-looking! How can a man kleep a straight face?” Lil gasped for air.

  “I can promise you, they’re not focused on your face. They are slobbering with gratitude and their eyes are shut.”

  “Good thing!”

  “Okay. I can tell that your motor skills are toast. But you get the general idea.”

  “Hee hee hee hee!”

  “Yeah. Now, remember what I told you about the underside and the root. And the balls.”

  “Root-balls!” Lil chortled.

&nbs
p; Shannon bit the end off her carrot and shook her head, crunching away.

  “Wanna root-ball float?”

  “Definitely not. But you go ahead and help yourself.”

  “Hookay…”

  “You probably won’t remember any of this in the morning, but maybe some of it will sink into your subconscious. I think maybe the cowpoke is a good candidate—but only if he’s very generous himself. Got that?”

  “Cowpoked! Hee hee hee.”

  “Exactly. You go get yourself cowpoked.”

  THE SUN was an evil squirt of vitriolic mustard in her eyes. Lil moaned and tried to blink it out, but it only spread. Her stomach felt as if someone had poured gasoline into it and set it on fire. And she wanted to be sick on top of that. Oh, Heaven help her. She rolled to her side and discovered that was a mistake, since it was a long way down to the floor from her four-poster bed and looking at the floor from this angle made her queasy. The patterns in the oriental rug down there spun into a kaleidoscope of nausea.

  When she opened her eyes again, she saw that she’d slept in her suit skirt, stockings and blouse—disgusting.

  How had she gotten home last night? Lil didn’t remember. She’d gone out to Max a Mia with Shannon, she’d eaten a bowl full of maraschino cherries. She’d spoken to the cherries and Shan had laughed at her.

  Then something about carrots?

  Lil bolted upright. Oh, no. No!

  Her memory was surely playing tricks on her. But there in her mind’s eye was Diabolical Bugs, playing with her carrot.

  Push. Pull. Push. Pull.

  You’ve never given a blow job, have you, Lil?

  “I’m going to kill her with my bare hands,” she whispered. She slid, inch by painful inch, off her bed until she was standing upright. She clung to a bedpost for support. “I’m going to knock her out with a single blow to the head from Emily Post!”

  Lil staggered into the bathroom and slumped to the floor near the toilet. So this is what everyone meant by worshipping the porcelain god.

  “I’ll never drink again,” she moaned.