Falling for Sir (9 page)

He laughed, digging his hands into his pockets.
"Are you kidding me?" Didn't she know he had women lining up to catch
the eye of New York's most eligible widower? She couldn't be serious about
sticking to The Club rules of no contact in the outside world.
He
was the one who had something to
lose. She could only benefit from his attention.

"Why would I kid you?" she asked
gravely. "I have plans for my future career and right now I'm too busy for
a private life." After pondering his face for a moment, she gave a terse
sigh, flung her bag strap over her shoulder and picked up the little cardboard
tray with her bagel and coffee. "So we can stand here talking about the
possibility of a doomed, brief relationship that will end in betrayal, tears,
possibly broken furniture and definitely my career in a shambles. Or,
alternately, I could just get back to work and you can get back to...whatever
it is you do with your day. Mr. Marchetti. You see, rules are there for a
purpose. To keep order."

"Maybe I'll fire you." He was only
joking of course, but she didn't laugh.

"And your cause would be?"

"Being a smart mouth to your boss."

"Nothing to do with me turning the boss
down?"

"Oh, that? Good God, no." He grinned
and scratched his chin. "I'd forgotten about that already. Plenty more
fish in the sea."

"Mind you don't find one with poison
spines, Mr. Marchetti." She walked to the door of the shop, coffee and
tray tilting precariously.

Jack gave up his place in line to dodge around
her and open the door. She muttered her thanks and he watched her go. He was an
old-fashioned man at heart. Loved a woman in a pencil skirt. Especially if she
wore stockings and suspenders underneath, and he had the distinct impression
that Marianne Miller did.

Well, he ought to be relieved. He'd found out
what he needed to know and she definitely wasn't planning on running to any
tabloids. She'd made her feelings plain. Clearly she joined The Club because
she wasn't looking for a more meaningful relationship. She was all about the
sex. So was he.

But he caught his reflection in the glass door
and saw he was frowning. From her reaction anyone would think dating him might
ruin her reputation. Yeah, she was a brat alright. Despite the fact that they
had so little in common and she confused the hell out of him, Ms. Miller's
spunkiness was a pleasant surprise, no denying it. He hadn't felt this energized
in years.

"You want your usual, Mr. Marchetti?"
the store manager called out from behind the counter.

No. He didn't want his usual. He was ready for
something new, different and exciting.

And even if Marianne kept her distance, he knew
where to find "Claudia" again.

Or so he thought.

Chapter
Six

Mr.
Woody Gets a Set Down

That evening he went to The Club, but she wasn't
there and no other woman present caught his eye. No one else came close to what
he wanted, so he stopped in the restaurant and had his usual steak.

Where was she tonight?

On the way home he took a detour to check out
her apartment building. He'd gotten the address from Mrs. B, of course. Driving
slowly by the place he felt like a stalker again, but he had to know where she
was, if she was home, who she was with. It was worrying that she thought she
could handle herself. She seemed to think she had everything sewn up.

Of course he thought he knew everything too when
he was her age.

So what did the prim Ms. Miller do with her
evenings? Why she hadn't come back for more at The Club? Like he didn't make
her happy? Maybe he
was
out of
practice.

And just like that, questions about this
unsuitable, difficult young woman had begun to monopolize his thoughts.

* * * *

"You need to get out on a date," her
brother had exclaimed merrily over beer and pizza in his kitchenette one night.
"You ain't gettin' any younger, sis. The biological clock must be
tickin'."

"The biological clock? I'm twenty
three."

"Twenty four soon."

"Big deal."

"You still gotta find someone to get
serious with and marry first. These things take time...and effort... and you
just sit home waiting for James Bond to come knockin' at the door."

"James Bond?" She'd laughed. After
three beers her brother always had a tendency to pluck the weirdest things out
of the air and start getting all "concerned" about her future.
"I'll settle for Inspector Gadget."

But they both knew she wouldn't settle. She was
picky.

"Do you even know what sort of man you
want?" he'd said to her. "All I ever hear from you is what you don't
want."

It was true, she supposed. Marianne knew a lot
about what she didn't want. Not so much about what she wanted. She'd met too
many "metro-sexuals" in New York— men who were used to being trampled
by women in Jimmy Choos. On the other end of the spectrum there were
self-absorbed, Wall Street suits she wouldn't trust to water her plants while
she was away for the weekend. There were moronic, sweaty, middle-managers like
Bob Rawlings, grasping out for anything they could get to play around with
while the unsuspecting wife was out of town. Somewhere in all that there were a
few, normal guys like her brothers—good, steady, hard-working men who were
kind, honest and faithful. Problem was they always overlooked her because one
of two things happened: either she struggled to stay silent so as not to scare
them off with her opinions, and then faded away in the crowd; or she got
nervous, opened her mouth and said the wrong thing at the wrong time. Men were
funny about women with intelligence and she wasn't a natural flirt who could
work her way around that. Her brothers' friends saw her only as
"Mikey's" and "Benny's" little sister and therefore
considered her out of bounds. Around them she was more likely to get her nose
pinched than her ass.

With a sigh, she explained to her brother,
"I guess I want a man who likes the fact that I have a brain and isn't
afraid of it. A man that still finds me attractive at five in the morning and
doesn't spend our time together looking over my head at other women. A man
who'll still find me sexy when my ass spreads. A man I can be a woman
around—who makes me feel good, safe, loved." Afraid she was starting to
sound like a sap, she added hastily, "And, of course, he looks good in a
tux."

"See," Mike had laughed at her.
"You're waiting for James Bond."

Eventually Marianne laughed too.

Suddenly he pointed the neck of his beer bottle
at her and slurred, "I've got just the man for you."

Consequently, just a few weeks after that
conversation in Mike's kitchen, here she was on a blind date with a man
selected by her brother as "perfect".

 
Perfectly
awful, she thought.

He ordered for her from the menu, sent the first
bottle of wine back because he insisted it was "corked", and droned
on for an hour about himself. She tried not to let it bother her. Maybe, like
her, he was a nervous talker.

But her mind kept wandering. Directly into Jack
Marchetti's arms.

Her boss had followed her into a coffee shop and
tried to ask her out on a date. She was still reeling from that. Of course she
had to turn him down, because the situation was impossible. She wasn't the type
of woman to have her head turned by an expensive suit and she would prefer to
be noticed at work for reasons other than sleeping with the boss, thank you
very much.

So what if he was hot, funny, and had looked at
her in that coffee shop as if he didn't know anyone else was alive? Falling for
Mr. Marchetti would be deadly for her career. Besides she'd heard he never
stayed in one place for long and he would probably be off again in the New
Year. She wanted a man willing to set down roots and...ugh, what was she
saying? To even consider Jack Marchetti and her future in the same thought span
was ridiculous. What was he...forty? He traveled the globe in first class
comfort; she rode the subway every day and tried to avoid the seat with the
suspicious damp patch. He wore custom-made suits and shoes hand made in Italy.
She shopped for her clothes in places with Barn and Warehouse in the title.

Their only connection was work. And sex at The
Club.

Marianne dug her fork into her sea bass and
tried to concentrate on her date, but half way through the entree her companion
answered his cell phone and, despite the dirty looks of other diners and a few
passing waiters, he proceeded to shout loudly into it until the last bite of
pasta was shoveled between his lips. Since she'd been so distracted thinking
about her boss, she supposed it would be hypocritical to blame him for putting
present company on the back burner too, but by the time he blew his nose on the
edge of the white tablecloth Marianne was ready to leap, fully clothed, into
the East River. While he was quizzing the luckless waiter over every item on
the bill, she excused herself to the ladies' room and walked out of the
restaurant unnoticed.
 
The hostess didn't
even try to stop her, just shot her a sympathetic look.

Her brother, she concluded, had a sick sense of
humor. Or else he was still paying her back for the time she flushed his
baseball card collection down the toilet when they were kids.

She took a cab home to her apartment. After
paying the fare, she turned to hurry up the front stoop and suddenly felt a
chill rippling over her skin, reaching under her clothes. She shivered,
imagining her mother's voice telling her she should have buttoned up her coat
in this weather. But it was a different sort of cold that touched her. As the
cab pulled away, she looked over her shoulder and saw a sleek, black sedan
moving off slowly from the other curb. The windows were dark and it made no
more than a low, contented purr as it disappeared slowly down the street.

Frowning, she dashed up the steps into the
building. Weird. Rare to see a car like that one in this area.

Safely in her apartment, Marianne kicked off her
shoes, hung up her coat and made some hot chocolate. For a long time she sat on
her couch, watching the weather channel, patently aware of the fact that
weather forecasts didn't matter to most people her age because they were out on
the town Friday nights, enjoying themselves whether it rained, or snowed or was
90 degrees outside. Letting their hair down, flirting and meeting people. But
life, for her, was like a photo album full of other people's pictures.

She wondered if her dinner date had even noticed
she was gone yet. He could still be complaining to the waiter.

When she went to bed she lay staring into the
dark and thought of The Club again.

That was what she needed—a place where control
was ostensibly taken out of her hands, a safe environment where she did not
have to be herself. Instead she was someone exotic. At The Club, with the
beautiful, strong, domineering Sir, she'd been completely free of all her usual
anxieties for the first time since she turned twelve and walked in on her
mother giving Uncle Stan a blow job in the woodshed.

Yeah, Mom, thanks for that. No way anything good
could be made out of
that
little
nugget of experience.

Except, maybe, at least it wasn't dad servicing
Uncle Stan. No, poor dad was in his study with his beloved books, lost in the
pages while he waited for his daughter to come back and finish playing chess.
Marianne always won, placing his vanquished pieces in a neat line beside the
board, claiming them one by one until he conceded defeat with a weary shake of
his head and a befuddled frown.

What she saw that day in the woodshed opened her
eyes, but shut down her curiosity about sex. When her mother belatedly tried to
tell her the facts of life, Marianne had stopped her with, "I've studied
biology, Veronica. I'm sure that will be sufficient to get me through the
ordeal." She'd called her mother by her first name from the moment she
knew what it was. Somehow "mother" never really suited Veronica
Shelton. Yes, she went by her maiden name, using the excuse that she was a
known artist before she married—heavily inferring that those were the best
years of her life. So the term "wife" didn't really suit Veronica
either.
 

No way could she explain all this to her
brothers. Wouldn't want to try. Mike and Ben knew nothing about their mother
and Uncle Stan in the woodshed. Good for them. Ben, the eldest, idolized their
mother and would never believe a bad word about her. Ben looked at their
childhood through glasses with a distinctly rosy tint and Marianne sometimes
wondered if they'd been raised in the same household. As for Mike, he danced
merrily through his life as if he had nothing to trouble him. He was the warm,
friendly guy who always fit in and everybody loved. Life and sex, for Mike, was
simple. He met a woman he liked, they dated, they had sex. Comfortable in his
skin, her brother never had too many questions demanding answers in his mind.
Things followed for him in a natural progression. One day he'd marry and have a
kid, but he was in no hurry because he had no fear that it might never happen
for him. Her brothers weren't teasing when they said Marianne got all the
brains in the family, and they were relieved about it. Why wouldn't they be?
They were never troubled with deep thoughts and even deeper anxieties. They
were men. Her brothers had it easy.