Anna Marie Sorenson's Secret Affair (25 page)

She looked aghast. “Oh, god, she didn’t?”

“I’m afraid she did. She really thinks that the only way you’ll start finding someone to marry is if she shoves you along.”

“God, why can’t your wife ever mind her own business? Do you know who it is?”

“No, I don’t.”

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“Well, thanks for the warning.”

“Okay, everyone,” Pepper called out from the grill. “It’s time to eat. Everyone, sit down; we’re going to be serving the first course. –No, Anna, don’t sit there,” she ordered when Anna Marie was about to sit next to Cameron. “Your place is on the other end, opposite side, third chair down.”

Reluctantly, she moved to where she was directed.

“Hi, I’m Josh,” said the man sitting left of her.

She turned and saw one of the most beautiful looking men she had ever seen. His hair was blond and straight, cut and styled perfectly around his well-shaped head. His eyes were very blue with long, long brown eyelashes, his nose thin and aristocratically straight. His lips looked bee-stung, thick and sensuous. He sat languidly in his chair, his long, long body draped in it.

Everything about him was long and elegant, from his long legs, his long arms, to his long fingers. He wore clothes that could only be bought in San Francisco, the silk shirt with its wild red and pink paisley print and thin wool pale olive dress pants looking ultra chic and quite metropolitan.

“Hi, I’m Anna Marie. Are you a friend of Pepper?”

“I’m a friend of a friend, really. I own an interior design store not far from here. She’s been a customer of mine a few times. Are you Pepper’s editor or photographer?”

“I’m her sister.”

Josh looked at her for a moment, at her face, which was lined with tiredness and at her clothes, and decided to be unimpressed. “Yes, I suppose you are.”

“Excuse me.” A waitress who had very blond hair and wore a very tight white blouse that stretched over her large bosom insinuated herself between Anna Marie and Josh to place bowls of soup in front of them. She leaned closer to Josh so that her breasts that threatened to pop the buttons from her blouse brushed up against his shoulders. She gave him a very warm smile.

Anna Marie had to hide a smile as she watched Josh give the waitress a blank look then examine critically his soup, completely missing the keen interest in the waitress’s eyes.

“What is it?” Josh said with little enthusiasm at the orange colored soup that was

sprinkled with paprika.

“I think it’s pumpkin soup.” Anna Marie picked up her spoon. “It’s quite good.”

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He gave a grimace and pushed his soup away. “I’ll pass. I don’t tend to like the more avant-garde menus that your sister likes. I go more for the traditional, simplistic fares, such as minestrone or chicken noodle soup. I could kill for a New York Steak tonight, but I don’t think your sister is serving it tonight.” Then he gave a heavy sigh.

“Is everything alright?” she asked.

Josh shook his head. “No, everything isn’t alright. Everything is fucked up. You see, my boyfriend who I had been going out with for five years just broke up with me.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. That’s always hard.”

“Tell me about it. He went for an older man with money. He said he loved me, but he

wanted security that I couldn’t give him. He was no good, anyway. He was always going out on me. But, god, I loved him. That’s why I’m here. My friend talked me into coming here, tonight, to try and meet people.” He leaned towards Anna Marie and said conspiratorially, “I wouldn’t have come myself but Pepper said that there was somebody here I just had to meet.”

“That’s funny. My brother-in-law warned me that Pepper has set me up with someone, as well, tonight.”

Then she and Josh looked at one another with wariness.

“Are you supposed to be my date?” she asked.

“You’re not supposed to be mine, are you?” Josh said, also aghast.

“I wouldn’t think so.”

“You don’t think that your sister expects us to…”

“I think she does. Does she realize you’re gay?”

“If she doesn’t then she’s about the stupidest person on the planet of the earth,” he said grimly. Then he looked down at Anna Marie’s gray skirt and simple sweater. “As if I would choose someone whose taste in clothes leaves me in despair.”

She thought for a moment. “I could use a fashion consultant.”

Josh shuddered as he took a large swallow of his wine. “You couldn’t pay me enough to go to bed with any woman.”

She put her hand on his arm. “Tell you what, I’ll take you shopping and I’ll let you choose my clothes and we’ll remain friends only.”

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He considered her offer, and then examined her clothes with a grimace. “Well, you are in a desperate need of 911 with your wardrobe. And you don’t have the look of someone who’ll jump on a guy, at least guys like me, unannounced.”

Just then, Dallas appeared through the doorway, wearing his Navy white. Anna Marie

caught her breath. Beside her Josh gasped in wonderment.

“Good god! Who’s he?”

“He’s Cameron’s brother.”

“Oh, my Lord! Look at that body. And he’s so tall. And built! Who’s he being given to?” he said, breathless with desire.

She leaned closer to him and murmured. “Whenever he’s in town, I’m afraid he ends up with me.”

Josh turned and looked at her, and he demanded with anguish, “No! Say it isn’t so!”

He looked so crushed that Anna Marie almost felt sorry that she was sleeping with

Dallas. Hoping to ease his pain, she said, “You know, he wouldn’t be right for you, because he’s not very good relationship material. He doesn’t stick around once he sleeps with you.”

“Then he’s exactly my type,” Josh said morosely. He watched Dallas as he greeted

Cameron with eyes that were filled with hopelessness. “And there’s no chance that he could ever…”

“No, I don’t think so.”

Josh ran his eyes over Dallas’s tall form with feverish estimation, lingering lasciviously over the broad, heavily muscled shoulders, the hard, bulging chest, large hands with long elegant fingers, the flat stomach, and the long, long legs. Then his eyes zeroed in speculatively on Dallas’s crotch. He turned to Anna Marie. “Is he hung? I bet he’s hung like a horse, isn’t he?” She hesitated, not wanting to break his heart more than it already was. But he saw the answer in her eyes, and burst into tears.

“Oh, Josh, I’m so sorry,” she said.

He pushed away her hands that were trying to comfort him and got out of his chair. “No, no. I’ll get over it. Excuse me, I need to use the bathroom.”

Anna Marie stared after him with some distress as he stumbled towards the restroom.

When she turned her eyes back to Dallas, she saw that her sister had commandeered him and was hustling him to an empty seat next to Serena.

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Chapter 13

For the next two hours, Anna Marie forced down the food, although it was quite good and incomparable to any food she could have ever prepared, and struggled with small talk with guests around her. Josh had not returned and she could only guess that he had left, the combination of a freshly broken heart and then having his hopes dashed when he sees an attractive man being too much for him. From across the table, Serena was, once again, doing her best to snag Dallas’s interest. But, this time, she had quite a competition, with so many other attractive women at the table. Several were doing their best, as well, to catch his eye, running their eyes hungrily as Serena was doing over his strikingly handsome face and tall, muscled physique. Serena kept shooting at the other women silent cold warnings, but which did not in the least deter them.

Dallas gave little indication that he had any interest in any of the women. He was polite but little else, remaining aloof and impassive. He did not seem to notice Anna Marie’s presence or even care that she was there. Not once did he look up and meet her eye. She tried not to be Secret Affair 160

bothered by it, reminding herself that she always knew that despite their few heated encounters, there was little else between them.

Right after desert, she decided she had stayed long enough to be courteous. But before she went home, she used the ladies’ room. When she opened the door, she saw Dallas with his shoulder leaning against the wall in the tiny alcove, his hands in his pocket.

“Oh, hello?” she said. “Were you looking for the bathroom?”

“No. Are you going home?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Good. You can take me home.”

But before she could answer, he pulled her to him and started to kiss her.

Anna Marie pulled back. “Uh, I don’t think we should be doing this, here.”

Dallas’s answer was to lift her and anchor her against the wall by pressing his lower torso against hers, and closed his mouth over hers again. She wrapped her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck and kissed him back as passionately as he was attacking her lips. As the kiss continued, distantly, she heard people passing by them, going to and from the bathrooms. But she didn’t care anymore. The sexiest man alive was back in town, and he was going to go home with her, despite the numerous other women, more beautiful, more

accomplished, trying to vie for his attention. It didn’t even occur to her that her sister or his brother might come across them.

It also didn’t occur to her to object when his hands gripped her white underpants and began to pull it down her legs. She could only think about the tightness that was heating up very quickly in her loins and how she was very much looking forward to assuaging that aching need soon, and then, afterwards, she knew, Dallas would rebuild that heat all over again, to ready her for another possession.

“Oh, excuse me,” said a man’s voice. There was a shocked gasp of horror. “It’s you!

With him!”

Anna Marie turned her head and struggled to focus her eyes through the heavy fog that misted over her eyes. Josh was standing a few feet from them, the look of anguish and envy on his face again. “Oh, hello, Josh, is it?” she said breathlessly. “I thought you had gone,” she added lamely. She struggled to lower her legs and push down her skirt that Dallas had bunched around Secret Affair 161

her waist, but he held her easily in place, trailing his lips down her cheek, not caring who it might be that was interrupting them.

Josh took one look at her legs wrapped around Dallas’s waist and tears came to his eyes again. He saw the white underwear that the sailor had pulled halfway down her legs. He shook his head, and said in a wounded voice as he walked away, “It’s just not fair. It’s just not fair.”

“What’s with him?” Dallas murmured.

“He wanted you to be his, tonight.”

He had already lost interest in the stranger, his body pressing into Anna Marie with growing need. “Is there a back exit out of this place?”

“Through the kitchen.”

He stepped back from her and took her hand. “Let’s get out of here.”

She almost stumbled when she took a step, and pulled up her panties. “This is so

embarrassing.”

Dallas put his arm around her waist and pulled her against him. “A lot of people neck in dark corners.”

“That wasn’t a dark corner but a hallway to the bathroom, where everyone saw us. And we got found out.” She stopped. “Wait. Don’t you think we should go out separately, in case Pepper or Cameron sees us?”

He pulled her back into his arm. “I don’t care,” and led her out to the kitchen.

Nevertheless, Anna Marie was relieved when they were able to slip out the back

undetected. She didn’t really know why they should keep their affair secret. They were both single and unattached. So they weren’t really hurting anyone. But, somehow, she knew that if Pepper found out, she wouldn’t understand it. Cameron would be okay with it, she knew, but her sister was another story. She didn’t know why, but she knew her sister at least that much.

This time, Dallas stayed for nearly four days, turning Anna Marie’s small condominium into a private love nest. On the first morning, she tried to go to work, but he kept tumbling her, even after she was dressed for work and keys in her hands, pulling her to the kitchen floor, pushing up her skirt and lowering her panties. She ended up calling in sick for all four days. And during that time, they did nothing but have sex, sleep, and eat.

The only person who was not convinced that Anna Marie was at home sick was Beatrice.

She knew her boss had close to one hundred sick days accumulated. That’s because in the all the Secret Affair 162

years she worked for Anna Marie, she could only count two times her boss had called in sick, and one of the times was when she had to go to the hospital for appendicitis. And her suspicions only increased when she left several messages on her answering machine but got no call back.

When Anna Marie called in sick for the third day, Beatrice knew something was up.

Thirty minutes later, she was knocking on Anna Marie’s home. “If you’re not really sick, Anna Marie, you better answer the door,” she warned loudly, knocking harder. “If you don’t answer, I’m going to call the police.” She rapped the door again.

A few seconds later, there was a sound of a bolt being turned and the door opened. Anna Marie looked harassed, quite sleepy, hastily covered by a short, thin robe.

“Bea, was all this necessary?”

Beatrice examined her with narrowed eyes and saw no traces of illness, although there was tiredness around her eyes and mouth. She looked like she had just woken up. “Are you ill?”

“No…I mean, sort of…” Anna Marie trailed off, distressed, her eyes flickering behind her.

“What’s going on? Is someone here…”

The door opened wider and Beatrice saw a very tall man with thick black hair, green

eyes, and a strikingly handsome face standing behind Anna Marie. He rose up above her like a giant. He put his arms around the small librarian and buried his face in her short, mussed up hair.

From the brief flashes of male flesh, it was obvious that he was naked behind Anna Marie.

Beatrice relaxed, immensely relieved. “Well, well. I see,” she said.