“If you’d like, we could go somewhere else, if this isn’t quite what you had in mind,” he offered.
“Oh, no, this is fine. It smells wonderful. I’m just waiting for my appetite.”
She hadn’t told him she helped herself to a glass of champagne while she changed for dinner. The hotel had mistakenly sent up a newlywed basket to her room. When she called down to the front desk, the clerk was so embarrassed, he insisted she keep and enjoy it, that they would send another to the intended couple. Well, she wouldn’t be able to enjoy all of it. The basket included massage oils and an assortment of condoms. She’d have to settle for the champagne and chocolates.
She watched Tully wrestle with his spaghetti, mutilating it into small pieces instead of wrapping it around his fork. It was painful to watch.
“Mind if I show you how to do that?” she asked.
He looked up, saw what she meant and immediately turned red. Before he could answer, she slid her chair over, so that she was sitting next to his right arm. Without making a big deal or fuss, she gently put her hand over his, barely getting her fingers around his large hand in order to show him how to hold his fork.
“The secret,” she said, while reaching across his lap and taking his other hand, “is in the spoon.” She nodded for him to pick up his spoon in his left hand. “You pull just a little spaghetti with your fork to release it from the pile, and then you wrap it, slowly in a smooth gentle motion, against the bowl of the spoon.”
She could feel his breath in her hair and could smell the subtle scent of his aftershave. His hands complied with her every command, and it surprised her how good they felt against her own palms. When the task was complete, she let go, sat back into her chair and scooted to her side of the table, all the while avoiding his eyes.
“Mission accomplished.” She pointed to the perfectly wound spaghetti still on his fork. “You’re a quick learner.”
He hesitated, then brought it to his mouth. He tried the process again while he chewed, lifting his fork to show her when he managed it on his own. This time their eyes met and neither of them looked away until one of the wait staff interrupted, offering to refill their wineglasses, which Gwen accepted. She was sure it was probably a good idea to also anesthetize the unfamiliar arousal she was suddenly feeling.
With this glass of wine, she did manage to eat some of her fettuccine and even clean up her half of a cannoli dessert. Through coffee and during a long cab ride back to the hotel, she found herself telling Tully about her practice and the old brownstone she was restoring, while he told her about Emma and the trials and tribulations of raising a fifteen-year-old girl. She hadn’t realized he had custody of his daughter. Somehow his being a devoted single father only completed the annoying image she already had of him as the perfect Boy Scout.
At her hotel door, she invited him in for a glass of her complimentary champagne, sure the Boy Scout wouldn’t accept and that she was safe. The Boy Scout accepted. Before she poured the champagne, she turned to him, needing to say what she had avoided saying all evening.
“I need to thank you,” she said, meeting his eyes and holding him there, so he couldn’t joke his way out of this. “You saved my life today, Tully.”
“I couldn’t have done it without your help. You have really good instincts, Doc.” He smiled at her, obviously still uncomfortable with taking any of the credit. Okay, so he was going to make this difficult.
“Could you just let me thank you?”
“Okay.”
She came to him, stood on tiptoe and still had to tug on his tie to bring him down to her height so she could kiss his cheek. As she did this, she noticed that his eyes were now serious. Before she pulled back, his mouth caught hers in a gentle but passionate kiss that was no longer about gratitude.
She rocked back on her feet, feeling a bit out of breath and staring up at him.
“That was unexpected,” she said, surprised that she was feeling light-headed. It had to be all the wine.
“I’m sorry,” he said, restoring her image of the Boy Scout. “I shouldn’t have-”
“No, you don’t need to apologize. Actually, it was…it was quite nice.”
“Nice?” He looked wounded, and she smiled though his eyes were still serious. “I think I can do better than nice.”
In two steps he was kissing her again, only this time it wasn’t long before his mouth refused to be confined to her lips. Gwen leaned against the back of the sofa and her fingers slid across its texture, looking for something to grab hold of while Tully continued to convince her that he could, indeed, do better than nice.
CHAPTER 55
Ben Garrison didn’t get back to the Ritz-Carlton until late. He found the employee door at the back alley and took the freight elevator up to the fourteenth floor. This morning he had argued with the desk clerk about getting moved to a different floor. No matter how anyone looked at it, the fourteenth floor was still the thirteenth floor. Surely there had to be another corner suite available. But now, it looked like it wouldn’t matter. His luck was back. Nothing could go wrong. After these photos hit the newsstands, he would be king of the fucking world again.
As soon as he got back to his room he threw his duffel bag on the bed and stripped out of his clothes, bagged them in one of the plastic hotel laundry bags and tossed the bag next to the other trash he’d dump in the morning. He set his boots in the whirlpool tub to clean later and slipped on the plush terry-cloth robe that the wonderful housekeeping staff had left fresh and clean on the back of the bathroom door.
He had packed his developing tank and enough chemicals to develop the film. He could make a contact sheet of the exposures he wanted to sell. That way he wouldn’t have to take them to a local twenty-four-hour photo shop and have some pimply faced kid freaking out by what he saw.
While he pulled out everything he’d need, he called down to room service. He ordered their roast duck with raspberry chocolate cheesecake and the most expensive bottle of Sangiovese on their wine list. Then he dialed his own number to retrieve his messages. After the National Enquirer had hit the stands, he expected some calls from news editors he hadn’t heard from in years, suddenly pretending to be his best buddies again.
He was right. There were fifteen messages. His damn machine could take only eighteen. He grabbed the notepad with the hotel’s embossed logo and began going through the list. He could hardly contain the smile and finally laughed out loud at the two messages from Curtis, the first wanting to know why he hadn’t brought the exclusive to him and the second telling him he’d beat anyone’s price for whatever else Ben had. Oh, yes, life was good again. It was very good.
One of the messages was from his old pal, Detective Julia Racine-he had been hoping to hear from her. Unlike the other messages, Racine didn’t waste her breath sweet-talking or befriending him. Instead, she threatened to arrest him and charge him with obstruction of a police investigation. Jesus! She could turn him on just with her voice, especially when she talked dirty. Hearing her call him a “fucker” gave him an incredible hard-on. He played the message again, just to enjoy the sensation. Then he decided to save it for future use, rather than erase it.
He flipped through his little black book, and it occurred to him that he might be able to make it up to Detective Racine. As much as he enjoyed her calling him a fucker, he wouldn’t mind cashing in on one of the quid pro quos she was so famous for. From the tone of her voice, the poor woman probably hadn’t been laid for some time, be it male or female. And he had to admit, tonight had sorta put him in the mood. He was quite certain he could come up with a proposition that might be as interesting to Racine as it was to him.