Page 45 of Take Me Tender

“Look around you.” Her gaze drifted to the crowded deck and the guests chatting, drinking, eating. “Or think about a restaurant. Chefs know food creates connections. By combining colors and flavors you bring people together, Nikki.”

And wasn’t that a revelation, Jay thought. Self-proclaimed independent Nikki, making meals and making bonds.

Making him have hope that she wanted that for herself.

He held onto the idea for the rest of the afternoon. Through the party, the toasts, the cleanup. Finally, he walked his parents to their car, and waved at Fern as she went home in the backseat of her parents’ sedan.

Leaving him with his chef, who he hoped wanted him as much as he wanted her in his life.

But she’d disappeared.

His heart plummeted. Damn it! He couldn’t take his eyes off her for a second!

He ran to the back door, scanned the deck, the beach, and then craned his neck to search the alley between his place and Shanna’s. But the lights were out next door and he couldn’t detect any movement in the shadows. He sped toward his room to grab his keys, intent on tracking Nikki down. They were going to have this out tonight. He was going to make clear he wanted more…that he wanted—

His feet skidded to a halt in the doorway.

His chef with benefits was emerging from the attached bathroom, wrapped only in a dark green bath towel that skimmed the top of her thighs and turned one of her eyes emerald. Her shoulders and throat glowed pink and damp. When she stepped closer, the edge of the terry cloth lifted and he glimpsed the sweet, seductive cleft between her legs.

He jerked his gaze away. It wasn’t smart to be sidetracked by that. Feelings came first this time, and he had to get his out before anything else.

“Jay,” she said, her husky voice beguiling. Bewitching.

He swallowed. “What?”

From the top of his dresser, she lifted a coil of fabric and ran it through her fingers. He stared at that long blue ribbon of knitted yarn she’d been working on for days. The thing had to be eight feet long now. “I finished it,” she said, bringing it to her cheek. She caressed her rosy skin with sensuous strokes.

He followed the movement with his gaze, unable to look away. “What…what is it?”

“I think I finally decided,” she said, drifting closer. In a blink, the item was looped around his neck and she pulled on the two ends to draw him closer.

“Nikki—”

“Shh,” she said, her mouth getting nearer.

But he had a plan. An agenda. Something to do before they slipped between the sheets. Something that had to do with feelings, with wanting her to want him. But all that was being left behind as his mono-tasking male brain jumped the rails and took off on an entirely different track.

The sex train set off at full speed.

Ah, well, he thought as her tongue touched his. At least he could be certain she wanted his body.

Shanna had left the party next door before sunset, but as the day darkened, she didn’t bother turning on the lights. Artificial incandescence wouldn’t change the gloominess of her mood.

Jorge had grown tired of her.

Like every other man who’d been in her life.

Opposite the white leather couch where she was slumped was a white wall. A huge mirror was hung there, one with a heavy, ornate frame. But her position on the cushions was so low, she wasn’t reflected in the glass.

Or she’d lost her reflection, just as she’d lost Jorge.

She remembered that day she’d seen herself in his eyes, finding herself there. Then that other day, when he’d found her in the pool and she’d found herself imprinted in his very flesh. He had given her substance.

Something to hold on to.

Someone to hold on to.

But now she was alone again. By herself. A former party girl who’d only been famous for her notoriety, and now younger women had eclipsed her once-infamous reputation.

Leaving Shanna behind the bars of this cold house, jailed with herself—the worst of all possible cell mates.

The thought made her stomach churn, and it hurt enough to get her off the couch, though she couldn’t find the energy to make the stairs to her bathroom. Remembering the acid reliever she’d found in the medicine chest in the downstairs powder room, she headed in that direction. At the bar, she paused to pour herself a vodka tonic—long on vodka, light on tonic. A girl needed something with which to wash down the pill.

She didn’t bother trying to meet her own eyes in the mirror over the sink. There’d be no one there.

The contents of the medicine chest were as she remembered them. Except the convenient condoms were gone, now stashed in her bedside table, which left a box-shaped hole between the Pepcid and that prescription bottle of oxycodone.

Shanna swallowed the whole of her vodka-plus-little tonic, studying that empty space that was so like the emptiness in her chest that was so like the emptiness of her life.

The vodka buzzed like a lone summer bee in her system, so she wandered back to the bar and poured another tumblerful, hoping a whole hive would join in. With the glass half-empty, she topped it off again, then drifted back to the medicine cabinet for the acid controller.

Her fingers reached for the plastic bottle. Oops, she realized, as she lifted it from the shelf. She’d grabbed the oxycodone instead. But hey, she told herself, it could stop her stomach pain, too, right?

At the bar again, she lifted the crystal decanter. Instead of filling her tumbler, she tucked it in the crook of her arm and wandered with it and the prescription bottle to the window. From here she could see the little house next door that she’d been working on. The porch light was on. She stared at it, and could see moths circling.

She was drawn to it as they were.

Outside, she paused beside the pool for another swallow of vodka. Juggling the decanter, its top, and the prescription bottle proved to be too much and the oxycodone tumbled to the ground. Her mother’s arthritic hands made her request lids without tamper-proofing. The pharmacist must have left this one loose, because as the bottle fell so did the pills.

Shanna kneeled to gather them up, which also required setting down the decanter. With the medication cradled in her two palms, she couldn’t lift the vodka from the pool deck. Damn.

She looked at the dark water, remembering that feeling of sinking into it, of giving herself over to its warmth and weight. Nice. Giving over sounded so, so nice.

Without more thought than that, she tossed one handful of oxycodone pills into her mouth, then washed them down with a swallow of vodka. The second mouthful was as easy as the first.

Tucking the pill bottle into the pocket of her jeans, she took herself and the decanter next door.

Twenty

During What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?, I knitted a scarf from Hollywood to Malibu.

—JOAN CRAWFORD, ACTRESS

It was Nikki’s last chance.

This afternoon, watching the interplay between Jay and his family, between Jay and his family’s friends, between Jay and they-were-one-hundred-percent-real cover bimbo, she’d been brought up short by how very different they were. How what they had together couldn’t last—or last much longer.

He was the supreme insider. Mr. Well-Connected, Mr. Most Popular. She was outside all loops, unfamiliar with family ties, un—Well, not exactly unlovable maybe, but unable to open a path to her heart. That was okay, though. As a Weasel Number Two, she didn’t do the love thing. And loving Jay, Mr. Most Likely to Seduce the Female Masses, would be disastrous.

He deepened the kiss and she tightened her grip on the long scarf, pulling him even closer. His hands brushed her shoulders and then pushed the towel to the floor. As her belly met the hardening erection behind his pants, his palms slid to the small of her back.

Nikki moaned against his mouth. He’d provided her a job transition and sexual satisfaction. Now she wanted to use him for just one more thing.

Leaving the knitted material looped around his neck, she went to work on the buttons of his silky shirt. When she brushed bare skin, one of his hands wandered between her legs, but she hastily reached behind and returned it to her waist, even as the flesh between her thighs heated and went wet. When Jay touched her like that, he owned her response.

But nobody, nobody owned Nikki.

It was time to prove that. It was time to prove that just as she was able to receive sex now, that she could give it, too.

She was going to make it so good for Jay that she’d be able to walk away from him, smiles on both their faces. Then the balance of power between them would be equalized forever—and she’d be whole like she hadn’t been since she was fifteen years old.

His shirt slipped off as she pushed him toward the end of the bed. The backs of his legs hit the edge of the mattress and he went down, his fingers creating a trail along the backs of her thighs that her goose bumps finished for him at her ankles.

Eyes at half-mast, he let her go to work on his pants and soon he was naked, too, except for that Jay-blue length of yarn she’d knitted. It was nearly long enough to bind him like a mummy, but she wanted more access to his skin than that.

She clambered onto the bed to press against his side. He brushed her hair off her forehead with his hand. “How’s your knee, cookie?”

His concern gave her a sweet little shiver. “This is not about my knee.” She pressed a kiss against his raspy chin, then another on the side of his neck.

He groaned, his fingers sliding along her scalp. “Come up here and let me give you a proper kiss.”

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