Champagne Rules (3 page)

They nodded. “Okay then . . .” She closed her eyes, letting the scene form.

“It’s my last afternoon. I’m walking along a beach and this man comes toward me, and it’s like we’re both struck by lightning. Immediate chemistry.”

She opened her eyes, and saw she had their rapt attention. “Did I mention”—she paused deliberately—“that this is a nude beach?”

“Suzie!” Rina gasped, heedless of the salsa tumbling from her chip to the table.

“Our Suze on a nude beach?” Jenny said.

“We’ve established the man is nude,” Ann said. “So get to the good stuff. What does this guy look like?”

“Tall, muscled, handsome. Absolutely perfect in, how shall I say this? Every dimension.”

“In other words, he’s hung,” Jenny said, shoving up her sleeves and resting her pointy elbows on the table.

“You can say that again! I’ve never seen—” Suzanne broke off, then continued in a lower voice. “Yeah, definitely hung. Anyhow, then, somehow, we’re holding hands, walking together, not even talking. Me, not talking. How weird is that?”

She reached for her margarita glass and brought it to her lips, only to find it empty.

“Go on,” Ann prompted, shrugging out of her suit jacket and leaning forward.

“We follow a path that leads uphill, through scrubby bushes. There’s a zillion pretty little wildflowers dotting the ground.”

“Skip the travelogue,” Jenny demanded. “Like Ann said, cut to the good stuff.”

“I’m shooting him these sideways glances, checking him out. And he’s getting aroused.” She grinned. “What a turn-on.”

“Oh man!” Jenny said.

“We come across a cave. We step inside the mouth and suddenly we’re kissing. He lifts me up, I hook my legs around his waist and we make love right there, standing up.”

“Oh, my, God!” Rina fanned herself with the fringed end of her shawl.

“It’s fast, explosive.” And she’d had an orgasm for the first time in her life. Not just an orgasm but a mind-shattering one.

“Afterwards, we lie down on my beach towel and explore each other’s bodies with our hands, lips, tongues. He makes me come with his mouth and I, you know . . .”

“Give him a blow job,” Jenny finished, at the same moment Ann said, “Perform fellatio.”

Suzanne felt her cheeks grow hotter. “He stops me before he comes, then he’s inside me so hard and fast and deep, and it feels so amazing that I come again before he does.” She cleared her throat and fiddled with her margarita glass, almost wishing she’d broken her two-drink rule, even as she remembered the reason she never would.

“Jesus, girl, I didn’t know you had it in you,” Jenny marveled, reaching for another cheese-coated chip and shoving it into the guacamole.

Suzanne closed her eyes, remembering watching as their bodies joined, separated, joined again. “Did I mention he’s black?”

“You mean African-American,” Ann corrected.

“Or African-African,” Suzanne said. “Or from England. Lots of English people holiday in Greece. No accent, though. Yeah, probably American, you’re right.” Damn, doing this analysis had thrown her out of the moment, away from Crete and back to the restaurant.

“But definitely gorgeous, eh?” Jenny said. “And hung.”

Suzanne nodded. “Yup. He was this delicious shade of dark chocolate and he had short dreads. His face was so striking. A sexy little goatee. His eyes were chocolate too, and sparkly. Vibrant.”

“Wow,” Rina breathed. “A chocolate man. How yummy.”

“He was.” Even now, she could remember that taste.

“And of course he was a fantastic lover.” Rina sighed dreamily. 

“He was a stranger, yet sex with him felt like the most intimate act I’d ever committed. For a moment I even found myself wishing our lovemaking would create a child.” Suzanne gave a shiver. “Is that insane or what? Especially given my, uh, rather traditional feelings about marriage and kids.”

“Traditional!” Jenny hooted. “Try archaic. Any woman whose deepest aspiration is to marry Ward Cleaver from
Leave It to
Beaver
. . .”

“Well, he was awfully good to the Beaver,” Rina said softly, wickedly, and this time they all hooted.

Ann sobered quickly, though. “Suze, what you said about creating a child? You did use a condom, right?”

Suzanne swallowed hard. She hadn’t meant to reveal that particular bit of idiocy. “I was on the pill, but I know it was utterly stupid. I plead insanity. Plus too much wine, and I’d been out in the sun for hours and had sunstroke. That’s why I—” She broke off abruptly, realizing she hadn’t told them the rest of it. Rina said, “Is that why you have a two-drink limit?” just as Ann demanded, “Why what?” and Jenny said, “So what was this demon lover’s name anyhow?” The three of them burst out laughing, then turned challenging gazes on Suzanne. And now they’d know what a complete idiot she was. She sighed, beckoned to a waitress in a red T-shirt, and said, “Could I have some ice water, please?” It was time to leave her fantasy cave, and come down to cold, hard Vancouver earth. She waited until the waitress brought water for all of them, took a long, cold swallow, and spilled the truth. “Jen, I don’t know his name. And I’ll save all of you the trouble of asking the logical questions. The last thing I remember is falling asleep in his arms, in the cave. My memory picks up the next morning, in my hotel room, with the chambermaid and a doctor hovering. I had sunburn, heatstroke and felt like crap. I barely made my flight home. And . . .”

Another gulp of water, then she confessed the last bit in one long rush. “I’m not even surehewasreallyreal.”

“Huh?” Jenny said, and Suzanne realized the other women wore baffled expressions. She’d spoken so quickly her words had all slurred together.

“I’m not sure he was real,” she repeated flatly.

“But . . .” Ann frowned. “What are you talking about? You just told us what he looked like, everything you did together.”

“I still dream about it every month or so.” And, each time she did, she had an orgasm in her sleep. Way better orgasms than she’d ever had with any man other than her cave-sex lover. She heaved a sigh of frustration. “Maybe it was just a dream in the first place. I’d drunk about a liter of wine. And yes, Rina, I’ve never had more than two drinks since then.

“Anyhow, wandering around in my alcoholic haze, I found that nude beach and felt so risqué, taking my clothes off.” She thought of her own naïvety, and gave a snort. “Let’s face it, it’s more likely I fell asleep in the sun and fantasized the whole thing than that I had unprotected sex with a complete stranger.”

For once, she seemed to have rendered her friends speechless. Grimly she went on. “I’ve no idea how I got dressed again, or got back to the hotel.”

“You don’t remember saying good-bye to the nameless god?” Jenny asked.

Suzanne shook her head. “And if the whole thing really happened, we’d have had to say something, right? Like, good-bye, it’s been a blast, let’s leave it at that because we could never in a million years replicate the experience? That would make sense. I mean, he wouldn’t exactly fit into my life. He’s not the guy I want to marry and settle down with. I’m fine with everything”—especially those orgasmic dreams—“except not knowing if he was real.”

“A dream lover,” Rina breathed. “How romantic.”

“Yeah, but how could you be fine with letting him go?”

Jenny’s brow was wrinkled. “If he was real, I mean. Maybe you couldn’t—what was that amazingly literate phrase?—‘replicate the experience’? But maybe you could, Suze. Wouldn’t that be better than hot dreams?”

“Weren’t you listening?” Suzanne said impatiently. “Even if he was real, I never knew anything about him.”

“It’s hard to track down a person when you have no information,” Ann agreed.

“Hmm.” Jenny drummed her fingernails—hot-pink, decorated with rhinestones—against the table. “How about a personals ad?”

“Oh sure, Jen,” Rina said, “like there’s any chance the chocolate man lives in Vancouver.”

Jenny groaned. “Duh. Not the Vancouver paper, you twit, the internet.”

Suzanne’s breath caught. She used e-mail all the time, and the internet for veterinary research, but she’d never thought of using the worldwide web to try to track down her one-time, maybe lover.

Ann frowned. “That could be dangerous. Freaks and weirdos hang out on the internet.”

Jenny rolled her eyes. “Suze wouldn’t use her own internet address. We’ll get her a free account with Hotmail or Yahoo. Anonymous. So what if she gets some flaky replies to the ad?

She just ignores them.”

“The odds of him seeing the ad are incredibly slim, even if he does exist,” Ann pointed out. “This does
not
sound like the kind of man who needs the internet to find a date.” Frowning, she ran her fingers through her hair, then suddenly gave an impish grin. “Still, there’s nothing lost in trying.”

Jenny and Ann were talking like this had gone beyond the hypothetical. Suzanne’s heart thumped nervously. She turned to Rina, who was staring off into space. “What do you have to say about this?”

“Hmm?” Rina said dreamily. “You know, sometimes we let people go out of our lives too easily.”

Suzanne groaned. “This is
not
a good idea. I can’t imagine marrying this guy, so what’s the point?”

“Are you so sure he couldn’t be your Mr. Cleaver?” Ann asked.

“I . . . Oh, come on, he was sexy and . . . outrageous. Definitely not husband material. I want a steady, reliable guy like my dad and my brother-in-law. Besides, I’m still in vet school, I’m nowhere near ready to settle down.”

“Yeah,” Jenny said, “so it’s a perfect time to take a walk on the wild side. For once in your life.”

“For twice, you mean,” Ann, the stickler for accuracy, said.

“For twice,” Suzanne echoed. The idea was tempting. Or maybe that was the second margarita talking. “I’ll think about it. But if I do it, you guys have to help me.”

Jax was standing at his secretary’s desk discussing a file, when her phone rang. Caitlin answered, then put her hand over the receiver. She looked like a cheeky elf with her trendy orangetipped hair, freckles and wide grin. “Your wife.”

“Ex,” he corrected automatically. Caitlin always teased that, because he rarely dated, she forgot he was divorced. “I’ll take it in my office.”

He closed the door to his closet-sized office, slid into his chair and picked up the phone. His marriage to Tonya might have been a mistake, but their hard-won friendship was something he valued. “Hey, you. What’s up?”

“Just calling to say happy anniversary.”

“Ouch,” he said mildly. If they’d stayed married, it would have been three years on Sunday. “Sorry I didn’t send a card, but I figured Benjamin wouldn’t appreciate it.”

“He’s cool. Especially now our marriage has lasted a whole month longer than yours and mine did.”

They’d finally reached the point where the teasing was affectionate, even if occasionally barbed on her side.

“Double ouch,” he said. So she and Benjamin had made seven whole months.

“So, I’m curious. Did you even pause a moment in your work to remember it was our anniversary?”

He smiled into the phone. Yup, there was a work barb. But it was kind of cute that, while she was happily married to another man, she didn’t want her ex to forget her.

“Yeah,” he confessed. “Found myself thinking about our honeymoon. Sonoma, the wineries, the hot air balloon ride. It was a lot of fun.” It was also the last time he’d taken a week, much less a weekend, off work since he’d become an associate at Jefferson Sparks.

Actually, it had only been the second time he’d taken a holiday since he’d graduated from law school. The first time had been that trip to Crete with Chase, before he started articles. Crete. Just the word conjured up unforgettable images.

“Yeah, it was great,” Tonya said.

What? Oh right, he’d mentioned their honeymoon. Man, he was lucky she didn’t know where that train of thought had led him.

“That balloon ride was awesome,” she said.

“And our wedding night wasn’t? That sounds like another ouch sent in my direction.”

She chuckled.

And the truth was, while he remembered the balloon ride very well, he had only the vaguest recollection of making love on their wedding night, compared to that crazy afternoon in Crete. He remembered every single detail of that lovemaking. No. Sex. It was just sex.

Sex so hot it had him squirming in his chair.

“Jax? You pouting, babe? Honest, I didn’t mean to badmouth your skills in bed. The sex was always good with us, wasn’t it?”

“Good?” There was a damn-with-faint-praise word to deflate a guy’s dick. Sure, once they’d been married a few weeks they’d started squabbling, mostly over the long hours he worked, and the bedroom became more a place for making war than love. But in the beginning, the sex had been pretty damned great. He remembered when he’d finally given in and let his mom introduce him to her neighbor, the one who was taking cooking classes and was always looking for people to experiment on. The attraction had been immediate and mutual. There’d been lots of nights he and Tonya had planned dinner or a movie, taken one look at each other and ended up in bed instead. Funny thing was, he couldn’t call to mind any details of those nights either.

“Jax? You hang up on me?”

“I’m here. Seems to me, when we first got together, the sex was better than good.” Crap, could he sound any more huffy?

“Ooh, bad word choice. Yeah, I guess it was. It’s a while back, but I do remember some bells and whistles. But then we got married, and work came first for you.”

Another barb.

He shot back. “You were working too, with all those cooking courses, those sous-chef jobs.”

She paused, and when she spoke again, her tone wasn’t snippy, but sad. “Yeah, but my work wasn’t more important to me than our marriage.”

And to that, there was no answer, because she was right. She’d been able to juggle career and marriage. He’d learned he couldn’t handle both, and he’d had to choose. His career came first. Always had, always would.

“Oh shit, Jax, this really isn’t why I called. I didn’t mean to get into another rehash. You’re doing what you want to do, and I’ve got my bells and whistles with Benjamin, and thank God, this time they’ve actually survived marriage. So you ’n’ me are both happy, the past is behind us and I really do want us to be friends.”