Page 3 of Bedroom Therapy

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Zachary Grant, pulled his car onto a side road hemmed in by cattails on one side and a lazy looking river on the other. After cutting the engine, he put away the computer directions that he’d been following. He was always very methodical about his work. And now that he was right around the corner from Amanda O’Neal’s house, he wanted to check his notes before ringing her doorbell.

He’d driven down from New Jersey early that morning; his mission was to talk to the woman who was now writing the sexual advice column in Vanessa.

She was a far cry from Esther Knight, a woman he’d never heard of until a few days ago. She’d been an old bat in her sixties. But she’d written some sexual stuff that would curl your hair. Her career of telling people what to do with their private lives had been cut short by a hit and run accident—an accident that the family thought was murder.

He blew out a breath, pushed back the seat, and stretched out his long legs. Then he flipped open the folder with his notes and the material he’d collected. First he reviewed what he knew about Esther Knight. Then he got out his notes from Beth Cantro, Vanessa’s editor.

One thing he’d picked up on was that Cantro seemed pretty protective of Amanda O’Neal. When he’d talked to her on the phone, she’d been reluctant to give him the new advice columnist’s address. She’d insisted that he come to her office, where she’d grilled him as though she were the woman’s marriage broker, not her editor.

Really, what did it matter that he was thirty two, single, and well-established in his chosen profession?

But he’d dutifully given her the information—then run a background check on Dr. O’Neal. She’d gotten herself in a bit of trouble at Harmons College. In fact, from what he could gather, it looked like they weren’t going to give her tenure. Which meant that she’d needed this job.

He shuffled through the folder and found her photograph. According to her bio, she was thirty-one. Although she was blond and blue-eyed, with a heart-shaped face and nicely curved lips, nobody would ever mistake her for a dumb blond. The way she looked out at the camera conveyed a kind of no-nonsense approach to life.

He picked up a copy of Vanessa that Beth Cantro had given him and opened to the sexual advice column. Because Amanda O’Neal’s work hadn’t appeared yet, he assumed these letters and answers were from the Esther Knight era.

My boyfriend and I get along pretty well. We’ve been together for six months, and he’s asked me to move in with him. I’m thinking seriously about it. But one thing worries me. His penis is small. Does that make a difference in our sexual relationship?

He grimaced, wondering how the chick who had voiced the complaint would rate his cock. He’d always thought he was pretty average in that department. Well, maybe a bit above average. But were there women who only wanted guys who looked like stallions?

Esther Knight’s answer began with a sentence he didn’t much like. “A big penis is a turn-on to a lot of women.” He skimmed the rest, put off by the tone of Dr. Knight’s answer. Really, he was more comfortable with the man-to-man advice in the Playboy Advisor.

Was Amanda O’Neal as flip with her responses as the dead woman? Again, he looked at her publicity photo. It was easy to imagine her as a prude. But would the magazine hire someone who would seriously alter the tone of the column? If they did, wouldn’t readers notice?

He opened another magazine. And another letter caught his eye.

Dear Esther, My boyfriend and I keep having the same argument about what we do when we’re making love. He wants me to do oral sex on him. But he hates doing it to me. So I feel like I’m getting—um—the short end of the stick.

Selfish bastard, he thought, without checking out Esther’s words of wisdom. Really, reading this right now was a mistake. He wanted to be calm, cool and collected when he met Ms. O’Neal. And the sexually explicit material was making him anything but. How did O’Neal deal with this stuff on a daily basis?

Either she had to be a cold fish. Or she must be in a constant state of arousal. It would be amusing to find out which.

And maybe she’d like to help him with the little problem he’d been having since his divorce.

Yeah sure! No way was he going to talk to her about anything intimate.

He sighed. Too bad he couldn’t step into a cold shower before the interview. Or take a quick dip in the river.

Unbuckling his seat belt, he heaved himself out of the car and turned toward the shoreline. A little breeze was blowing—enough to cool him off a couple of degrees. He walked across the street, staring out at the water. A white van was parked not far away. Apparently the people inside wanted their privacy, because as he walked toward the vehicle, the engine started and the van pulled off the shoulder of the road, the tires throwing up a shower of gravel as it sped away.

He looked after it, his nose for trouble twitching. He’d walked casually across the street, and the vehicle’s driver had immediately left. Either that was a big coincidence, or—

Or what?

Had he disturbed a drug deal—or something else?

He glanced toward the corner. From where he was standing, he could see the O’Neal house. Was somebody staking her out? He’d like to know.

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Amanda stared at the phone, wondering when Beth was going to call again. She went back to the stack of letters, hoping to have something to report besides one letter answered.

Maybe she couldn’t make self-pleasuring the whole theme. Maybe she should go with a good mix of questions.

There were so many.

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