Pleasure for Pleasure (20 page)

“So you accepted the job?”

Her smile disappeared, and her shoulders sagged. “That's the problem. I don't know what's come over me, but when they called, I just couldn't force myself to say yes. I kept thinking about the center, about all the clients there and how I've grown to like so many of them, about how long the place has been in business…”

“It's a San Francisco landmark.”

She frowned. “I know. And I just can't imagine it not existing anymore.”

Trent puzzled over the facts as he stared at Josie's delicate fingers laced around the coffee mug. Rafaela was no longer interested in running the Lovers for Life Center, but she was the heart and soul of the place.

Since Josie had taken over, though, she'd begun to leave her own mark on the school. He was almost certain the place had taken on a slightly more respectable air in the last couple of months. There were fewer classes with words such as “orgasm” in the title, and more with titles like “Exploring the Sensuality of the Mind” and other such Josie-esque psycho-babble.

He finally said, “She wants to pass the torch on to you.”

“I suppose that's it. She's basically said as much.”

“You think she was hoping you'd fall in love with running the place while she was in Prague?”

“Probably.” The line between her eyebrows appeared again.

“But?”

“But that still doesn't explain why she took all the money in the business account and left me indebted to you.”

“Maybe she really was trying to get us together,” he said, joking. “Or more likely, it's like you said before, to finance her boyfriend's literary efforts.”

“That doesn't make sense, though, the more I think about it. Mom has always been smart about money where her male bimbos are concerned. She doesn't just let them bamboozle her.”

She was right, it didn't add up. Had he and Josie fallen right into Rafaela's trap? Were they so predictable that she'd known exactly what would happen if she left Josie with the center and left Trent without his rent payments?

He shook his head. “This is crazy. She couldn't have done all this as some elaborate matchmaking scheme.”

Josie shrugged. “I wouldn't put it past her.” She turned her gaze to a stack of magazines on the table and began to thumb through the top one.

Trent dug into his now-cold oatmeal, reading the paper as he ate. He became so engrossed in an article about environmental legislation that the sound of Josie's voice again startled him.

“What is this?” she demanded.

Trent glanced up from the paper. His insides twisted into a knot. She was holding up the proposal from MegaBooks. He'd stuck it at the bottom of the stack on the table a few days ago and forgotten about it.

“That's private,” he said a little too sharply.

“Did you…
are
you going to sell the two buildings?”

What could he say? That he was considering betraying Rafaela, the neighborhood association that opposed
the chain bookstore, Josie herself? Trent stared into his coffee cup, formulating what he hoped would be a benign answer.

“That's just a proposal, not a contract.”

“You are going to sell, aren't you?”

He hesitated, and he had no idea why. He wasn't going to sell. Was he? Okay, he'd given it serious thought. But that was only because Josie was showing no sign that she'd changed in the past three years.

She was still the same emotionally distant girl who'd ditched him at the beach. Emotional entanglements sent her running like a scared rabbit. Trent wasn't sure he wanted to stick around, working right next door to her, feeling that stabbing pain in his gut every time they bumped into one another and he was reminded of what might have been.

“I've been thinking for a while now that I might like to run adventure tours full-time.”

“You're going to sell Extreme Sports?”

“I could relocate it to Tahoe, or someplace else where tourists go, make it an easier base for the tours.”

“What about the Lovers for Life Center?”

“Your lease is coming up for renewal, and Rafaela told me before she went to Prague that she was considering not renewing.”

Josie blinked. Whatever she'd been prepared to say got caught in her throat.

“I guess she didn't tell you that?”

“I've been struggling to keep that place afloat all this time…”

“She didn't say if she was closing it. Maybe she just wants to relocate,” Trent offered lamely.

Josie glared at the sheet of paper again. “Mega
Books? You'd really sell to a big chain like that and ruin the individuality of the whole neighborhood?”

Trent had gone over all the negative aspects of the deal in his head a hundred times, and he'd weighed them against the benefits. No matter how he looked at the offer from MegaBooks, it was a lot of money.

“I might, for the right price.” It sounded even sleazier spoken out loud than it felt when the idea only occupied his thoughts.

This was free enterprise, right? If the world wanted super-bookstores, who was Trent to stand in the way?

He'd expected Josie to find his comment repulsive, but instead she said, “I guess the kind of money they're offering would be hard to turn down.”

“You got it.”

“You really want to leave the city?”

“I don't know.”
It all depends on you,
he wanted to say but didn't.

That kind of talk was pointless with Josie.

As if to prove his point, she stood up from the table, her expression blank. “I think I should go. I've got a lot of work to do today.”

Trent opened his mouth to ask her to stay, but she'd already turned and gone into the bedroom for her clothes. As he listened to the sound of her dressing, running away once again, he knew the best decision would be to sell.

J
OSIE SWIPED AT THE TEARS
that clouded her vision. Damn him, once and for all. She'd had enough of Trent O'Reilly for one lifetime, and she wasn't going to waste another moment believing he was meant to be a part of her life.

She hurried out of the apartment building and down the sidewalk. If he wanted to sell off her dreams, fine. She'd go back to working as a counselor. He could go off to the woods alone and let his money keep him company.

She climbed into her Saab and turned the key in the ignition, but the car's only response was a sickly sputtering, and then silence. Josie tried again. More sputtering, a grinding sound, and then nothing. She tried again. And again. Her poor old car had chosen the worst day possible to kick the bucket.

It had traveled some one hundred and fifty-eight thousand miles for Josie and, judging by the sounds of it, it had decided it wasn't going to go an inch farther—at least not today.

Josie pounded the steering wheel a few times, then leaned her forehead on it and said a silent prayer for what might have been the final passing of the dear old machine.

The day couldn't get much worse. She glared out the window, and her gaze settled on the pristine new
bumper of Trent's Porsche. Now there was a car that had plenty of get-up-and-go left in it.

And it was also a car to which she possessed the keys.

An evil idea formed in Josie's head, and the moment it appeared, she knew she would do it.

Digging around in her pocket, she withdrew the keys Trent had given her to move the car for the street cleaner. She'd forgotten to give them back to him, and the right thing to do would be to march back into his apartment that very moment and hand the keys over to the traitorous jerk.

Josie climbed out of her car and locked it. She glanced over at Trent's front window as she went to his car. It only took a moment to unlock it and slip into the driver's seat. The plush leather sports seat alone probably cost what her entire car was worth.

With her hands shaking, she fumbled to get the key into the ignition as she pressed in the clutch. The car started with a low rumble that she prayed Trent wouldn't recognize and come running out to investigate.

Not that he'd have time to catch her. She smiled and pulled out into traffic, her heart pounding. She only intended to drive the car home and park it, then let Trent come and pick it up at his leisure. He would eventually realize she had the keys, after all, so it couldn't be called theft. Not exactly, anyway.

Yet the more she thought about his deception, the more she wanted to do something more than park the car. If only she could inflict a little pain on him, hit him where it hurt the most—in his car. His stupid, male-ego-inflating, overpowered, overpriced piece of German machismo.

But, in her marriage counseling days that was exactly the kind of emotional response she'd counseled angry
couples not to have. Stopping with a screech at a red light, she felt the depth of her own naiveté. Back then those couples had always seemed so melodramatic. Now she understood their anger.

Josie took the winding roads through Golden Gate Park, minding the speed limit as best she could with so much horsepower at her disposal. That was when she spotted the tree—a giant live oak they'd once sat beneath in junior high school. It had been on a field trip of some sort; Rafaela had forgotten to pack Josie a lunch and Trent had shared his with her.

A little pang of guilt wedged itself under her rib cage.

Whatever Trent had done to hurt her, she shouldn't be playing so dirty. There was no justification for taking his car. Maybe he hadn't even noticed that it was gone yet. If she took it back now, she might be able to sneak it into its spot unnoticed, then slip away again without a nasty confrontation. Perhaps she could even drop off the keys in the mailbox.

At the next light, Josie turned and headed back toward Trent's apartment. She sped most of the way, hurrying to avoid Trent's wrath. In a couple of minutes she'd made it back to his street.

No police cars, no Trent foaming at the mouth running up and down the street. All looked promising. There was even a spot a few down from where she had originally parked the Porsche.

As Josie slowed, a streak of black fur appeared a few feet in front of the car. She swerved to the left, the opposite direction the cat was heading, her heart pounding in her ears as the animal disappeared from her sight.

Then came the crash, the angry screech of metal against metal, the jarring sensation of being brought to a stop by an immovable object.

Her
immovable object.

Beyond the half-crushed hood of the Porsche was the rear left side of her broken-down Saab. She'd crashed right into it. Josie winced at the stress the impact had inflicted on her neck and shoulders but, moving tentatively, she seemed to be fine.

Unlike the cars.

Her fear immediately returned to the cat, though. She looked out at the street. No animal lay there. If she hadn't been mistaken, the streak of black fur had looked a whole lot like Eros.

But that was impossible. He was at the center, over ten blocks away. Whatever animal had run in front of her car was nowhere to be seen. Her stomach lurched at the thought that it might be
under
the car.

She didn't see Trent coming toward her until he was almost at the car. His expression was somewhere between disbelief and outrage. She was done-for.

With shaking hands she opened the car door and stepped out. An apology hovered on her lips, but he didn't give her a chance.

“Are you okay?” he demanded.

“I'm fine.” She bent to peer under the Porsche, and her heart started beating again when she knew for sure she hadn't run over the cat.

“Are you
crazy?
” He stopped at his crumpled hood, staring at it as if he'd believed it to be indestructible until now.

“Trent, I'm—”

“You are crazy! That's what this is all about. I should have known to stay the hell away from you. I should have known…”

He shook his head, raked his hands through his hair.

“I'm sorry.”

“Should I even ask why you were driving my car?”

“It was stupid. I just wanted to take it for a joyride, and then a cat ran out in front of me and—”

“Oh, now that takes character. Blame your insanity on a defenseless animal.”

Josie wasn't sure whether to be more upset about her own car or Trent's. They both looked pretty bad, crunched together in that unnatural position.

Trent pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and dialed a number. A moment later he was reporting the accident to his insurance company, and there was little for Josie to do but to slink back home with her tail between her legs.

She turned and started walking toward home, but she hadn't made it a full block when she heard Trent jogging after her, calling for her to stop.

“Is this about the sale of the building? Does it really make you that angry?”

Fire shot through her belly. She spun around. “Of course it does. You're selling my dream right out from under me.”

He stopped short. “I thought you hated that school.”

“Maybe I did at one time. But I spent this entire summer putting my heart into it. Do you really think I would have agreed to your stupid lessons if I hadn't been desperate to save the place?” It struck her then just how real her desperation to save the center had been.

Maybe she'd loved the place all along more than she wanted to admit, and maybe it had just been a fear of turning into her mother that kept her from realizing it until now.

“So sleeping with me was an act of desperation.”

“Absolutely,” she said, then turned and started walking again.

She didn't look back at all, and she prayed he wouldn't follow. She'd made it five blocks before she allowed herself a few tears of self-pity.

It dawned on her halfway home that she was more upset about Trent than she was about closing the center. She'd allowed herself to fall in love with him, when he was clearly still the playboy he'd always been. For him, their lessons had been nothing more than a game. For Josie, they'd been a revelation and an adventure.

How could she call herself an expert on sex when she knew so little about the emotions that inevitably came along with it? How could she have fooled herself into thinking she was worldly enough to keep control of her time with Trent?

It was best that the center close down, because Josie wasn't qualified to run it.

She'd been a fool. Even worse, a romantic fool. Rafaela had always warned her about the dangers of attaching love to sex. She'd preached the importance of self-control, of sensual exploration on a woman's own terms—in spite of her own checkered love life.

Josie wasn't cut out for such coldhearted exploits. She understood now that she didn't want just a great sex life. She wanted love first. She wanted a true, strong love, and she wouldn't settle for the kind of shallow relationships her mother had engaged in so casually for so many years.

She was safely inside her apartment before she broke down into a full-blown crying jag. She headed straight for the kitchen and to the cabinet where she kept her
emergency stash of Belgian chocolates, specifically for occasions such as these. The way she felt right now, she'd need the entire stash.

 

T
HE INCESSANT RINGING
of the telephone woke Josie from a dead sleep. She rolled over and groped across on the nightstand until her hand curled around the phone receiver. Blinking at the glaring red 3:05 on the clock radio, she croaked hello. At this time of night, it could only be her mother calling.

“Josephine? It's Mother. I'm sorry to be calling so late…”

Josie sat bolt upright in bed. Rafaela offering an apology? Something had to be wrong.

“What? What is it?”

“Tony and I have gotten into a bit of a bind. We're at the police station.”

“Are you okay?” Josie demanded, her heart waking up and pounding as images of a late-night mugging—or worse—flashed in her head.

“We've been booked, and now they're letting us go. But they want a family member to come get us.”

“You've been what?” But she'd heard just fine. Her brain needed to hear again what her mother had just said to believe it.

“Booked, dear. We've been arrested and charged with committing indecent exposure, or some such nonsense, and…performing a lewd act in a public place, I believe is what they said.”

Oh. God. Why couldn't her mother be like other middle-aged moms? Maybe join a book club or a quilting circle instead of spending her free time performing lewd acts in public.

“But…I thought you two were no longer on speaking terms.”

“Oh, we made up tonight. Boy did we ever make up.”

“Say no more. I'd like to be spared the details.”

“Fine, just come get me.”

“Which police station?” Josie asked as she turned on a lamp.

“We're downtown.”

She muttered a reassurance that she'd be there as soon as she could and hung up the phone. She hopped out of bed and shuffled to the closet to pull out a pair of jeans and a shirt, appropriate attire, she guessed, for bailing one's mother out of jail in the middle of the night.

She slid her feet into shoes and headed for the door, smiling as she thought of how she would tell this story to Trent later. But the smile faded from her lips as she remembered that she and Trent were no longer speaking. And then, even worse, her groggy brain finally realized that Trent had probably just received a similar call from his father and would also be headed for the police station.

She might even see him there. Grabbing her keys and purse next to the door, she couldn't resist the urge to glance into the hallway mirror to straighten her bed-head hairdo a bit. But no more than that. She wasn't out to impress Trent, after all. She couldn't care less what he thought.

She hadn't seen him in the week since she'd wrecked his car. He'd dropped off a letter at the center stating the extent of the damages and the cost for repairs, but he'd left it with Erika. Josie was still waiting for official notice that the center would be losing its lease, but in the meantime, she'd alerted Erika to the fact that she ought to start looking for a new job. Josie had arranged
to start work at the counseling center as soon as her work at Lovers for Life was finished.

Her own car had mysteriously started just fine the next time she tried it. The rear right corner was still crunched from her wreck, but she'd managed to pry the metal back away from the wheel enough with a crow bar that the car could be driven. As soon as she saved up enough money, she'd have the poor old girl repaired.

Josie navigated the near-empty streets of the city, her stomach in knots over thoughts of Trent. She simply had to get over him. There was no other choice.

Twenty minutes later she found a parking spot in front of the downtown police precinct and then hurried into the building.

It was easy to spot Trent, since he was ten feet ahead of her entering the building, the only other person present besides a police officer at the counter, a scantily clad woman of dubious employment and a scruffy man in a filthy orange raincoat. Trent turned and caught her watching him.

His expression darkened momentarily. He forced a smile and shrugged. “Parents—what're you gonna do?”

Josie smiled in spite of herself. “Murder them?”

The police officer at the counter gave her an odd look, and she blushed.

“I'm joking,” she assured him.

He grunted and turned his attention back to his paperwork.

“I'm here to pick up Rafaela Marcus,” she said, and he nodded without looking up.

“And I'm here for Anthony O'Reilly.”

Josie looked at Trent and shrugged. “Guess we'd bet
ter have a seat, huh? I wonder why they aren't out here.”