At Last (21 page)

Another question came to her.
Is he still in love with me?

The thought that he might not be struck her in the chest, making it hard to breathe. He’d said he’d moved on, and that he was over her. Maybe that meant he was in love with someone else. Maybe there was someone besides Francesca Costa? Maybe they were planning on getting married and running off to the same Cancun beach, and to their own Virgin Drop!

No!
Susan’s hands were in tight, white knuckled fists on her knees. He had to still be in love with her. There couldn’t be anyone else, there just couldn’t...

“Miss...Miss, are you all right?”

Susan looked up into the prettiest golden eyes she’d ever seen. The woman who owned them looked to be in her late sixties, and her shiny gray hair was pulled back into a neat braid. She had two small children at her side and a large canvas satchel slung over her shoulder.

Susan nodded, but no words would come out.

The woman leaned down, looked hard into Susan’s eyes, and shook her head doubtingly. “You don’t look good to me. Maybe your sugar’s low.” She reached into the satchel and pulled out a juice box, wrenching the straw free and expertly stabbing it into the box. “Drink this,” she said, handing it to Susan. “It’ll make you feel better.

The old woman’s smile was not only sweet, but it gleamed white and girlishly youthful.

As the woman and what looked like her two grandchildren strolled away, Susan found herself knowing the answer to her own question.

Did she love Kevin? Yes. Most definitely, most positively, yes.

But was he still in love with her? If he wasn’t, then she was going to win him back...and tonight.

~*~

Susan waltzed through her workday. Meetings flew by. She demolished her workload during lunch--a turkey and Swiss on whole wheat--then called Kevin at Costa Consortium, insisting that he come to dinner with her. “I promise not to drink a single drop of alcohol.”

Reluctantly, Kevin agreed. He’d sounded put upon. As if having dinner with her again would be an imposition. Susan bit her lip in angst, yet cheerfully ignored his reluctance, telling him to meet her at her favorite Italian Mom and Pop restaurant.

Susan was already planning what she’d wear. A nice blouse, something silky, unbuttoned just so. A skirt of proper shortness that she would look sexy in, yet not like a street walker. And black leather sling-backs with the two-inch heels. They’d lengthen her legs without the pain or gracelessness as her fuck-me pumps from the night before.

She’d look sensational.

She was in the elevator, weighing having her hair up or down, heading to the lobby from the twenty-second floor, when two secretaries from the twentieth floor got on the elevator. They were chattering away, office gossip or some sort of foolishness. Susan had to really concentrate to get back to her inner hairdo debate. And she heard the words “opera house.”

This caught her attention.

The next few words whizzed by Susan without any comprehension, but she heard, “So the board already made their decision?”

Susan’s heart thumped hard against her chest. She shouldn’t be hearing this. It was unethical, possibly illegal. But she couldn’t bring herself to do anything but stand back and listen to the gossiping secretaries. She recognized one of them from the city council meeting. The blonde with the extremely long neck and even longer legs.

“Well, not officially. They can’t say that until the bids have all gone through accounting and logistical testing.” The blonde leaned in to the other secretary and said in a confidential voice, “But the Maestro is in love with the design from Costa Consortium.”

Susan’s heart stopped beating, and her blood turned cold.
But Maestro Rossi doesn’t have the final say!

“The old goat really has that much clout?”

The blonde smiled slyly. “You’d be surprised. The man gets whatever he wants, if you get my meaning.”

The other secretary blushed and both women started giggling. “You are a complete slut! And he’s sooo old.”

Wistfully the city council secretary fanned herself with her hand. “Yeah, but he’s Italian, and what he can do with just his fingers...”

“You’re disgusting.”

The elevator stopped. The two secretaries moved like feral cats out the sliding doors and through the lobby. Susan stood, still too stunned to move or to think, or to even breathe. The door closed, and she fell back against the chrome paneling of the elevator.

Might as well be a pine box. She closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around herself.

The elevator stayed perfectly still for over a minute. The whole time Susan kept telling herself,
No, no, no.

The doors slid open again and the setting sun was shining off the highly polished floor of the lobby. A woman in a tank top and shorts, with an iPod in her ears, wrestled a large potted fern into the elevator, instantly making the box feel like a claustrophobic jungle.

Susan slipped out through the flora and staggered into the light. The world had never looked so bright, or so cruel.

~*~

Kevin stood outside Leo and Kate’s Italian
Ristorante
a half an hour, pacing, waiting for Susan. It had just rained, and his shoes made strange scuffing sounds every time he had to turn around. He was pacing because he was nervous, not because he was waiting. He was nervous because Susan was going to try and seduce him again. That was a given, after the vamp getup the night before, and the lust he’d seen in her eyes before she’d gotten all wasted.

He wasn’t up for this. And if that was all she wanted from him, she could forget it.

Yet he was there, waiting exactly where she’d told him to wait, like an obedient dog. Or maybe an obedient sex slave.

No, no. He would not let that happen again. That part was over. Over. For good.

But the bulge in Kevin’s breast pocket--the ring in its little box--reminded him that part of him had hope. Had hope that Susan would look at him differently. He remembered the way she’d looked at him in Cancun. It hadn’t been just sex. It had been a whole lot more. It was almost...

He shook the thought out of his head. Thunder chorused in the distance. More rain...

Fifteen minutes later Kevin had called both Susan’s home phone and her cell, and had texted her. No answer to any of it. He caught a cab over to her place, part of him worried that he couldn’t get a hold of her, part of him pissed that she’d stood him up, but there was a part that thought it was all some game. Susan had never seemed like the game playing type, but who’s to say what effect having your groom stand you up on your wedding day can have.

If it was a game, a trick to get him alone in her apartment, to try to get him back in her bed--what would it be like to have her in her own bed?--he wouldn’t fall for it, he wouldn’t be her sex toy.

But again...

No. He would find Susan, make sure she was okay, and he’d head back to his hotel room, to a nice, long, cold shower.

When the cab pulled up to Susan’s apartment building the lights of her apartment were dark. Kevin jumped out of the cab and jogged up the outside steps to the building. He rang her buzzer, then a few seconds later rang it again. Still no answer. He rang that stupid buzzer over and over again.

He started to think bad thoughts.
What if she’s hurt or sick?
There could’ve been a break in, or a leaky gas valve, or she could’ve fallen trying to walk in another pair of those ridiculous high heels.

Kevin started ringing all the apartments, a trick he’d seen in a movie once. There were a dozen voices squawking at him, cutting in and out like a radio. Then he heard the click of the security door. He slid inside the entry hall and bolted up the stairs. His heart was beating hard, and his breathing was like he’d run a marathon. He was at Susan’s door, beating on it, calling out her name, before he even realized he was doing it. Still no answer.

He was just about to take his shoulder to the door and break it down when he heard the door across the hall open with some clicks, a whine, and some metallic scratching. A woman who looked to be in her forties stood there wearing a blood red silk robe, open wide to reveal a matching lace negligee. She held a twenty dollar bill between her red manicured fingers. When she saw Kevin, her ruby lips stiffened into a hard line and she hastily pulled the robe around her, suddenly modest.

“Jesus.” She tried to laugh, but she was obviously too stunned to play the scene off. “I thought you were the delivery man.”

Kevin shook his head. He could already picture the scene, especially the extra tip she would give the delivery guy.

“Pizza?” Kevin asked, not really knowing what else to say.

“Chinese.” The woman blushed as she looked down the hall and back to Kevin. “You looking for Susan?”

“Yes!” Kevin sounded too damn excited. The woman probably thought he was some demented stalker. “I mean, we were supposed to meet about an hour ago.”

“Well, I saw her lugging some suitcases down the stairs about two hours ago. Said she had to get away.”

Luggage? Had to get away? What the hell was happening?

Kevin thanked the woman in red and trudged down the hall. How could Susan want to see him one minute, then run away, with luggage, the next? It didn’t make any sense. Of course, she’d stopped making sense to Kevin six months ago.

But there was someone who understood Susan perfectly, better than anyone else. Kevin pulled out his cellphone and scrolled through his contacts until he found her name. He hadn’t called since Cancun, and he’d forgotten he’d put it under
Evil Bitch Monster of Death
instead of her name. Liz answered on the third ring.

~*~

Liz had just had energetic, if not downright mind bending, sex with a hot bartender she’d met a couple hours prior. He was twenty-three, Russian or something close, and his accent had been so thick she could hardly understand him. But his face had been handsome, not beautiful, the face of a man, and his hands had been the hands of a man. Strong and thick, and they’d know exactly what they were doing as he pulled her clothing off without ripping or popping one of her seams or buttons. And when he’d gotten naked, his body had been to die for. His manhood had not only taken Liz’s breath away, but had driven her to yelling out in orgasmic ecstasy for well over an hour.

He’d written his number on a McDonald’s receipt and handed it to her, with a deep, delicious kiss and a few dirty sounding words. Liz hadn’t the faintest idea what they meant. He stepped into his jeans and hopped as he pulled them up; his firm young body jiggled, as did his still huge, yet sated penis.

And that’s when Liz’s cellphone rang.
Loser
by Beck shrieked from the phone. She’d forgotten that she’d put that as Kevin’s personal ring tone.

She rolled her eyes and reached for the phone, watching the hot bartender walk out of her apartment with his t-shirt draped over his shoulder. She licked her lips, pushed away the warm, pulsing feeling the sight of him evoked in her, then answered the phone.

“So do you need to be talked down from a suicide attempt, or do you two need a priest?”

She heard Kevin take a few breaths. “What?”

“Because if you’re on top of a building or standing out on a ledge somewhere, I don’t do heights.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I called because Susan was supposed to meet me for dinner, she didn’t show, and now her neighbor told me she left a few hours ago with suitcases in her hands.”

“Boy, Kev, you should’ve been a homicide detective. You’re both fast and efficient.” She chuckled. “You drive the girl away, then find out the how, where and when before the night’s out.”

“Liz.”

“But do you know the why?”

“The why?”

“Yeah, Sherlock, the reason why she packed her bags and left.”

“No. I don’t know the why.”

“Well, Kevin, I was wrong. You’d make a lousy homicide detective. I’ll call around and try to find her. You just take a cold shower and try not to think about her naked too much, okay?”

Liz was sure Kevin was about to tell her to fuck off, but she disconnected before he could.

“A girl’s got a right to be alone with her thoughts,” Liz told herself. “Susan’s got exactly one week.”

TWO WEEKS ALONE
, out in the wilderness, back with nature, in a well-equipped if not posh cabin, should be conducive to sorting things out and making a decision. Should be. But for Susan, every day she spent alone in the woods, made her feel more alone. Instead of sorting out her thoughts, they started swirling out of control until by day fourteen she was considering cutting off all her hair and trekking into the forest to live the remainder of her days as a crazy hermit, ala
Gorillas in the Mist
. Or more appropriately,
Chipmunks in the Trees...in the bush, under the porch, in the walls, knocking on the windows demanding saltine crackers and the last of the unsalted cashews.