Page 66 of Guilty as Sin
“Even if she’s not perfect?”
“Trust me,” he said, “she’s looking good to him. If she’s the woman you love, and she grabs that bottle of wine and a couple of glasses, walks in front of you into the bedroom with a little sway in her step, lights the candles, pulls the tie of that pretty dressing gown she only wears when you’re going to get the good stuff, and gives you that look?” He sighed. “Oh, yeah. That’s going to work.”
It was already working for her. “Market research,” she tried to say lightly, forcing herself to envision it.Notthe look in Jace’s eyes when she pulled that tie. Instead, an antique table with a pretty white nightgown draped across it, spaghetti-strapped, and not a size small. Two creamy, chunky candles, a vase of red roses, a bottle of champagne, and two flutes. And a picture above it of a beautiful plus-sized model in a gorgeous nightgown. A sign, too.Thrill him tonight.“Hailey said this thing to me today, talking about when she used to come in as a customer. ‘You reallybelievedthat I got to wear sexy underwear too. It seemed like you believed that I could be sexy.’ I’ve been thinking about that all day, how she said it. Like it was amazing. Like it was… freeing.”
I want to do that for you,she didn’t say.I want to give you the good stuff. I want to make you sigh. I want to make you so glad it’s me.Reallyme. Paige. Wearing something I’m a little nervous to wear. Letting you see all of me, even the fear. I want to see the hunger in your eyes. I want to feel the tenderness in your hands.
“Freeing for a man,” he said. “I’ll tell you that.”
“Maybe we should advertise a husband shopping service, then. You think?”
He smiled. “Yeah, I think. I also haven’t forgotten that I didn’t get to see you last night. I can tell you that you could run through every bit of stock you’ve got in there before I got tired of looking at it. As long as you were wearing it.”
This wasn’t working. All she wanted was more of him. She needed todoit. To let him know, and to watch him go. She slid off the bike, taking care of her leg along the way this time, grabbed her towel and water bottle, and said, “I’m going on, because I need to stretch. Twenty minutes?”
“No worries,” he said, a tiny frown between his eyes. “Twenty minutes. Take your time.”
She undressed in one of the curtained-off private cubicles, as always. To hide the scars, and maybe just to hide. For a minute.
The gym was busy, but that wasn’t it. It wasn’t even her Enemies List. Jennifer the Gym Owner and her pal Raeleigh the Motel Queen were both in the locker room now, changing for the seven-thirty Restorative Yoga class. From the looks on their faces when Paige had walked in, they needed it.
That made three of them. She wrapped the towel around her waist, made sure her scars weren’t showing, picked up her shampoo and conditioner, and prepared to brave the room. And the rest of her evening.
The lights went out. The music stopped.
Silence. Blackness.
The silence lasted a split second. The blackness continued. There was some nervous laughter, some chatter, some banging around into lockers.
Her first thought was,But the storm’s over.Her second thought was,Find your phone.But the darkness was absolute. She literally couldn’t see her hand in front of her face. And her purse was still in her locker. Which was in the middle of a row, and was locked.
Wait. In a minute, somebody will pull out their phone and turn on the light, and then everybody else can find theirs and start finding their way out.She groped in front of her for the curtain to her cubicle. It was farther away than she’d thought, but she had her hand on it at last. It was pulling back too easily, with a rasp of rings, like it was motorized. And then she did see a light. Flashing straight into her eyes, blinding her.
“Hey,” she said, threw up a hand, and started to turn away.
Something hit her hard. Grazing her head, her face, falling full on her shoulder. The light went out, she thought, but she wasn’t sure, because she was stumbling back, catching the bench with her bad leg, and going down. Her back hit the bench hard, and somebody was standing over her. She could hear them breathing. She could hear the excitement in it, the satisfaction, and then the hard weight hit her on that same upflung arm and the pain blossomed like fireworks, hot and white.
She was crying out with it, but kicking with her good leg at the same time. Another heavy weight fell onto her thigh, but with no force behind it, and she grabbed for her assailant in the inky blackness, trying to pull them in, to pull them down. To catch them. To hold them. But there was nothing there, and she overbalanced, fell back, and hit the bench again.
If you hurt, you’re alive. Get out. Go.
She crawled toward voices. Toward a light.Get off the ground. Stand up and run.She staggered to her feet. The lights came on all at once, blinding her, and she ran, bounced off the door, and got it the second time.
Get out.
When the lights went out, Jace’s first thought was,No emergency lighting? Silly buggers.The bike stopped, too, the hum of equipment died around him, and he got carefully off the bike and waited, one hand on its seat, while the gym erupted with exclamations and the heavy clatter of weights hitting the stacks. He hoped nobody dropped a barbell on themselves in the excitement, but he didn’t have too many illusions.
He counted sixty seconds, at the start of which he saw a flash of light and then saw it go out again. Another few seconds, and some cursing as people ran into each other in the dark. A beam of light swept across the floor. Somebody had reached their phone. Conversation, then, more shuffling around. And a blast of light like a sunburst as the lights came back on and all the machinery hummed to life.
And a woman staggered out from the direction of the locker rooms. A naked woman who wasn’t covering her breasts and pubic area the way every other naked woman in the world did when she was forced out into public view. She had one hand over her thigh, the other arm hanging at her side.
A man laughed. “Hot damn.”
Jace was halfway there already. It was Lily. She was in major pain, and there was blood trickling from a corner of her mouth. Her breathing was harsh, sucked in through her teeth, and she didn’t seem to see him. She was headed toward the gym entrance.
He got hold of her arm, the one on her leg, because something was wrong with the other one, and she cried out and resisted his grasp.
“Lily,” he said, putting all his command into it. “Stop. It’s Jace. I’m here to help. Stop.”
