Sweet Cravings (6 page)

“Violet….”

Groan
. “Hi, Mom.”

“Vi, it’s ten a.m., are you not out of bed yet? What’s wrong with you? Are you sick?”

I rubbed my forehead and grimaced. “I’m fine. Really. Just slept a little late is all. What’s up?” God how I dreaded to know.

“I wanted to know what you’re doing next Saturday night. We were thinking of having you over for dinner.” She paused for a moment, as if considering her words. “There’s something we want to talk to you about.”

Eyes rolled to the back of my head and I pondered the many unhappy paths this could go down. Funeral arrangements for instance. Not that I hadn’t wanted to send her to an early grave at least once or twice. “What? Do I have a long lost stepsister or something?”

“No…it’s…well, you’ll hear about it when you get here.”

“Just tell her, for God’s sake,” my dad yelled from the background. He was probably watching the game, beer in hand, wondering why his wife didn’t get to the point. That was dad. Always a straight shooter. Mom…well, she meant well. Sometimes.

Mom must have put her hand over the mouthpiece, because the next part came out muffled. “I will not tell her. How else can I get her to visit?”

She had a point there. I cleared my throat. Loudly. The line crackled back to life.

“Vi? Your father and I were just discussing the time. Is four too early?”

Never
was too early, in my book. I twirled the phone cord between my fingers and pondered my excuse. Yep, modern times at my place. “Um…actually I think I’m busy.”

“What? With what?”

“I’m sorta seeing this new guy.” There. A little lie. Technically, I’d actually seen him. Three times to be exact. Didn’t that count for something? I closed my eyes and prayed it somehow did. I needed something to prove to my mom I wasn’t a total loser in the men department.

“What are you saying? You have a date? With a
man
?”

The shock in mom’s voice takes me down another peg. As if I could sink much lower. “Yes, Mom, a man. A real,
live
one.”

She snorted on the other end of the line. “Well, who is he?”

“He’s a chef, a pastry chef.”

During the silent pause that followed I could almost see the no-wonder-my-daughter’s-so-fat gears turning in her head. “Mmm-hmmm. And
you’re
dating him?”

Well, technically, no. I mean, we had sex in a kitchen twice and then never left the apartment. Last night was more of an “in” date, if you could call it that.
Oh hell
. To be honest with myself, it was more of a booty call. I suppose that’s what I deserved after practically doing the same thing to him at the hotel. “Not really. I mean, not ‘dating’ dating.”

Mother sighed. “Look, Vi, whoever he is, just bring your little man along on Saturday, all right? We’ll expect you both at four.”

Oh dear. This hadn’t gone quite as planned. “But, Mom, he’s…he’s not really—”

“’Bye, dear.” Click.

I stared into the phone hoping it might electrocute me by accident and save me the embarrassment of begging the disappearing chef for a fake date. Sadly, it didn’t. Now I had to come up with an excuse for why Max couldn’t make it. Besides the fact he’d changed his mind and didn’t want to hang out with a dessert-crazed sex maniac after all. With renewed vigor, I slunk into the living room, collapsed on the couch, and hit the remote. Maybe some
Red Dwarf
would cheer me up….

***

The rest of Saturday passed in a funk. By the time I got out of bed on Sunday to do laundry, the churchgoers had gone, been fed, and arrived back home. The only thing on TV was sports. My place was so damn quiet I could hear the dust bunnies whispering. I half feared they were talking about me.

With a sigh I gave up trying to figure men out and opened the lone box of desserts left over from Friday night. The very last piece of the chocolate torte sat in front of me, staring at me smugly from its cream-colored dish. I knew how to play this game. I stared back. It didn’t move. I’d won.

My finger traced along the whip-cream layer, picking up yummy goodness along the way. I stuck it in my mouth and sucked. Mmmm. There was more to life than dessert, but damned if it didn’t cheer me up right then.

***

On Monday I sat at my desk listening to the chatter around me. Everybody asked everybody else “How was your weekend?” “What did you do?” “Did you see the Mariners game?” Blah. Blah. Blah. I glared at my phone, which still showed no calls from Max. It didn’t move. I won again. Hurray….

Suzy passed my desk and slid an expense report in my inbox. Out of the corner of my eye, I noted the title and winced. My hand reached out to grab the blasted thing and stopped mid-path. Instead I drew my hand back and slapped my forehead. I really didn’t need another reminder of my could-have-been-wonderful-but-I-fucked-it-up weekend.

I let it stay there all morning untouched and then left for lunch. When I got back, I found a white box sitting in the middle of my desk. A bakery box. Intrigued, I set down my purse and peeked over the top of my cubicle. Nobody seemed to be paying attention. I held my breath as I lifted the lid to find…a single raspberry cream puff. I sucked in a breath and smiled. Someone hadn’t forgotten me after all.

Later that afternoon, I queried my coworkers. Nobody recalled seeing anyone at my desk. Nobody remembered a heavily built man in a solid white jacket and possibly a tall white hat, carrying a white box. But in my mind, I did. In fact, he’s all I thought about as I devoured the puff. Licking the cream off the cap was like licking the cream off his succulent nipples; dragging the filling out with my index finger reminded me of being bent over the table crying out his name as he drove me to orgasmic bliss; and eating the last bit of the
pâte
à
choux
reminded me of the first time we’d met, eye to eye, across the Olympian dining room.

Sigh. I finished the dessert and fondled the box, wanting still more. More of what, I didn’t quite know how to name. But something kept niggling at me all the same. Oh well. Back to work.

On Tuesday, still no phone call, but another cream puff found its way to my desk. My eyebrows raised repeatedly in disbelief as coworker after coworker looked at me wide-eyed and swore they hadn’t seen a thing. I had half a mind to install a desk camera to check the situation out myself. Not that I’m paranoid or anything….

By Wednesday morning I’d hatched a plan to catch this cream-puff sneak. Basically it involved hiding in the next cubicle during my lunch hour and waiting for the masked puffer to appear. My back-up plan was gestapo-style interrogation of the company’s entire work force, complete with leather pants and riding crop, which I’d have to purchase at my own expense since there are some things Catalog doesn’t carry. Either way, I’d get to the bottom of this today.

Then, at exactly eleven fifty-five, the fucking fire alarm rang.

Everybody groaned except for the types who loved the power only a fire drill could bring them…. I tried slipping around the back of my cubicle and ran right into one of them: Smedley, from Accounting.

“Fire drill!” he yelled, as though I might be deaf. I glared and backed away, but he moved faster than a telephone and a chocolate torte put together. He grabbed my arm and evicted me from the building with force. For. My. Own. Safety, he told me. Uh-huh.

Since it was nearly lunchtime, the parking lot emptied quickly with workers eager for an early start. I hung around until twelve o-five and then gave up. I didn’t see anybody enter the building nor any strange cars. My shoulders hunched, I ducked into my Ford Escape and headed for Arby’s for much-needed curly fries.

When I got back to my desk, it was there waiting for me.

I slammed down my purse and sat heavily in the chair, ready to spit fire. No, I wasn’t going to lose it, but at this point I felt…well…a little frustrated. What was with this guy? First he let me assault him sexually like some kind of nut—I nodded to myself as though the word nut explains me to a T—then he demanded a dinner date, then he pulled a disappearing act and became some fucked up Zorro who left behind desserts instead of a big Z slash and dead outlaws.

I shuddered. Not that I wanted dead outlaws hanging out at my desk. Nope. No way. But I did want some kind of actual communication with the man. Some kind of real contact. Face-to-face even. In person. I wanted to see and talk to
him
. Not this cream puff.

In my agitation, I reached out, snatched up the box, and dropped it in the trash can. Shocked at my own rashness—how could any sane person feel they had the right to treat such a fine and defenseless dessert with violence? I blinked and stared at the empty space on my desk until the lightbulb went on in my head.

No, I didn’t have a severe case of dessert rage. It wasn’t that I didn’t desire its sweet essence—I just wanted the man more, and not for his baking talents. I sucked in a huge breath, not daring to even think this out loud. What the hell was wrong with me? Practically an old maid, a confirmed dessert addict, and life-long member of the sugar-eater’s anonymous club, reeling over…a man?

I closed my eyes and pictured him. Well, he wasn’t just
any
man.

His thighs could have doubled as tree trunks, and his chest—don’t get me started. Just the image of his naked body made my tongue ache to lick it. But my desire for him wasn’t based solely on his sexy bod. It was the way his beautiful brown eyes had stared at me as though what I wanted mattered—a lot—to him while we’d done the number on my kitchen floor. His gaze haunted me, made me want to beg for more.

To double-check this theory, I leaned over and sniffed the garbage. Took a big whiff. Nope, it wasn’t the sugar after all. But I took another inhale—just to be sure. About the same time, Ben sauntered past my desk.

“Hey, if you’re gonna be sick, go puke in the bathroom. It really stinks up the office if you do it right here.”

Gee, thanks
.

By Thursday I was so shell-shocked by my own change of heart—pastry didn’t even sound good anymore—that I sat slumped at my desk most of the morning. I ran the expense report on automatic pilot, signed the stupid thing, and put the finished report in my outbox. Anything to get pastry as far away from me as possible. As I stood to leave for lunch, I taped a note to the spot on my desk where the pastry bandito usually laid his ill-conceived lucre.

“Pastry Free Zone.” Drew a red circle around the words and added a line through the circle for good measure.

Amazingly, when I arrived back from lunch, my desk was as clean as new-fallen snow. No pastry anywhere. I poked my head over the top of the cubicle walls and scrutinized my coworkers. Some met my gaze, but quickly retreated back to their work.
Uh-huh. Okay then. Case closed
.

I frowned and sat down with a huff. I refused to cry.

The next day, no pastry.

On Friday night, I drove home from work in a daze, my gaze not seeing the road in front of me. It’s a wonder I made it to my parking lot unscathed. When I got there, a Chrysler 300 was parked in the parking spot next to mine.  Max the aloof chef stood, arms crossed, back leaned against the passenger door.

Every muscle in my body tensed with excitement, and a few even shouted “hurray!” My heart did a backflip at the sight of him, unsure whether to be happy or cry in pent-up frustration. At the same time, my face flushed hot at the plethora of indecent ideas bursting to the surface of my mind. But I gathered myself, stepped out of the car, and walked around the back. I, too, paused and settled my butt against my passenger door, waiting for him to make the first move.

“I got your message. But I brought this just in case you changed your mind.” He pivoted on his heel, drew a white box from behind him, and offered what had to be another dessert to me.

Ah. The pastry bandit unmasked
. I didn’t want the cream puff, but manners imprinted long ago made me stick out my hand and accept the peace offering. I shoved the box behind me on the trunk, not bothering to lift the lid. I could smell the sugar though. The powerful scent gave me strength. Arms crossed over my chest, I stood my ground.
Nope. Pastry alone would no longer do
.

In a flash, he was on me, inches from my body, his full frame pressed close to mine and emitting oven-hot heat I wanted to wrap my arms around and snuggle into. “So it’s true. You don’t want my pastry anymore. What’s the matter, Violet? Not hungry?” he coaxed, his hot breath searing my ear.

I could barely breathe with him crowding my space, much less talk. Words and emotions tumbled inside me, spinning like a Maytag commercial dryer. I swallowed and shook my rapidly clouding head, all my bravado gone. The woman who’d attacked the pastry chef had vanished, leaving old fears behind.

His finger gently lifted my chin so our gazes met. “Or are you hungry for something else? Hmmm?”

The gruffness of his voice rumbled through me, laced with a promise of satisfaction that made my toes tingle and my heart race.
Take a chance
, my brain told me.
Cream puffs are safer
, my heart argued. To mess it all up, my mouth engaged. “S-something…else?”

His lips curled up in a sly smile. “I think I can arrange that. I think I’d like to do so very much.”

For how long
, was on the tip of my tongue, but I didn’t want to spoil the moment. Sure, I was still the same mousy girl I was last Friday night, but as his fingers landed on my shoulders and gently urged me toward the apartment stairway, I felt excited in a way I hadn’t ever been before. As though mom might be totally wrong and something terrific might happen to me if I let it. The door to my apartment clicked shut behind me and it wasn’t two seconds before I’d attacked him. I threw my keys in the dish and then—wham!—I wrapped my arms around him, propelling him down the hallway and into the bedroom. Hello, unmade bed! Hello, clothes everywhere! Hello, unladylike cleaning abilities!

Really, he didn’t seem as though he cared. He sat on the bed and waited as I flung my clothes off, tossing them on top of the piles already littering the floor. I should say he waited and watched—like a cat studying a fish—until I was one hundred percent naked, then stood and let me tear off his clothes and push his back onto the mattress.