Behind The Red Doors (Santori Stories #1)(44)
Author: Vicki Lewis Thompson

“You should have seduced him slowly, not jumped on him like a needy virgin.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to tell the nosy old lady she wasn’t a virgin. Not wanting such a juicy bit of news floating over the phone lines to her mother, however, she swallowed the comment. Mrs. Mahoney looked disappointed because her fishing lure had gone unnibbled.

“So,” the woman said. “Do you know about seduction?”

“Seduction?”

The woman stepped into the hall, leaving her door open. “Look at you. You’ve got a beautiful shape under all that wool. Loosen up your hair.” Mrs. Mahoney pulled her own blue robe tightly around her ample waist. “Wear some tighter clothes, and lower necklines.” She tugged the edges of the robe apart until Meg could see a large expanse of flowered nightdress beneath. “Get a little sleazy and he won’t be able to resist you.”

Sleazy? Like the Meg she’d seen on the screen at The Red Doors? “I don’t think so.”

“Honey, men don’t make moves on women who look like their maiden aunt Bertha. Believe me, I know something about sex. Haven’t I buried three husbands?”

It made Meg wonder just how they’d died.

“I really need to go to bed now,” she said softly.

“All right,” the woman replied. “And, don’t worry, I won’t pass this on to your mother. If she thinks you can’t even get the sex part right, she’ll convince herself you’ll never catch a man. I don’t want to be responsible for her heart palpitations.”

It took some serious self-control not to slam the door.

JOE SAT IN HIS TRUCK for a few minutes after leaving Meg’s place. He watched her window, waiting for her light to flip on inside. When it finally did, he leaned forward in his seat, resting his crossed arms on the padded steering wheel. Then he saw her silhouette in front of the window, and sucked in a breath.

As the curtains separated, her face appeared. She spotted him instantly. Her eyes widened and her lips parted as they stared at each other.

He remained in the truck through sheer force of will.

After she mouthed, “Good night,” and dropped the curtains, he started the ignition and slowly drove out of the parking lot.

Walking away from her, leaving her standing in the doorway after that kiss, had been one of the toughest things he’d ever done. It had been a pure case of mind over body, intellect over instinct. He’d been dying to stay, but he knew he had to leave.

Joe had only been partially honest with her. No, he truly couldn’t take advantage of a woman he’d just met, who’d had such a bad day. There was more to it, though.

First, Meg was nothing like the more experienced women he usually dated. She wasn’t an easygoing, free-spirited, single twenty-something who liked to play around as much as any guy. As a matter of fact, she was an awful lot like the kind of woman his mother had been trying to foist on him for the past year or two. A warmhearted, natural, delightful female. A woman with a genuine smile, a ready laugh, an open, honest personality.

Hell, that realization should have sent him running in the opposite direction.

It hadn’t, of course. Because he’d been half gone on Meg O’Rourke before he’d ever met her, when she was an image on a computer screen. Now he knew she was so much more. As hokey as it seemed, he had a feeling she might be “the one.”

Joe had never been a believer in love at first sight, nor did he fool himself into thinking that was what had happened here. Sure, he’d fallen madly in lust with her on Christmas Eve. Today, though, during the hours they’d spent together, the lust had smoothly transformed into desire, by way of genuine liking.

The minute she’d raised her head and walked through The Red Doors on his arm, he’d started to fall. He’d slid farther down the slippery slope of emotion with every shared laugh, every flash of her dimple or glimpse of her temper.

It was for that reason he couldn’t allow himself any more than one heated kiss in her doorway. He still hadn’t figured out a way to admit he’d been one of the lousy creeps ogling her on-screen for weeks. If he got sexually involved with her, and then she somehow found out, she’d never forgive him. He’d lose his shot at anything more permanent.

Yeah, he wanted to go to bed with her…now. But he had the strangest feeling he was going to want to wake up with her…forever.

“You’re losing it,” he told himself in the dark confines of the truck as he drove home.

Actually, he thought, he might already have lost it—his head, and a little chunk of his heart. How crazy was that?

Maybe crazy, but true. So he had to come clean before things went much further. Judging by how quickly things were progressing between them, it would have to be soon.

She’ll slam the door in your face.

She just might, which was why he had to make sure she knew he had a lot more at stake than his libido. He had to take time to reinforce the emotions already building between them.

Most of all, he had to figure out a way to make her believe what had started out as an infatuation with a computer image had evolved into much more than a case of lust at first byte.

SEDUCTION was still very much on Meg’s mind the next afternoon. Not that she’d actually decided to try it…but she couldn’t deny she was thinking about it. Mainly because of her dreams. Her entire night had been fitful and restless, with erotic dreams about Joe, interspersed with nightmares of her cousin Georgie hanging her underwear from the balcony of the mezzanine inside The Red Doors.

“Georgie,” she whispered as she sat in her apartment Tuesday after school, “you’d better watch your back.”

She hadn’t confronted Georgie yet, not wanting to tip him off before she was ready with some pay-back. She hadn’t figured out a way to even the score with her cousin, but she would.

Maybe she’d out him to his mother about why Georgie had really missed Christmas with the family. He’d lied and said he had a big out-of-town job to do. Her aunt Lulu had been heartbroken because her baby boy had missed the holiday. Meg had found out later it was because he’d wanted to go to a Star Trek convention in Miami. “Knowing you, I bet there’s a photo of you in a Ferengi costume on some Trekker’s Web site,” she muttered out loud, determined to do a Web search the next time she was online.

Not adequate revenge, but it was a start, anyway.

Though she still hadn’t completely decided how to handle the Georgie situation, she had, at least, made a first step toward resolving the problem with The Red Doors. A phone call to one of the owners, Jamie Ruskin, had proven very productive. The woman had sounded truly horrified when Meg told her the situation, and had asked her to come in and meet with her and the other owner, a woman she called Faith, the following day.

Getting back to work on her lesson plans, Meg kept shifting her gaze between the clock and the phone. Despite his promise, Joe hadn’t yet called. She told herself he’d just been busy today. But, deep down, she feared he’d merely been playing Mr. Nice Guy the night before, and she’d never see him again.

When the phone rang, she snatched it up so quickly she knocked the base off the coffee table. “Hello?”

“Hey, how about a picnic?” Warm relief flowed through her at the sound of his voice.

She chuckled. “It’s thirty-five degrees outside. I think you’re about four months early for a picnic.”

“I might surprise you,” he said. “I’ll pick you up at six.”

CHAPTER FIVE

MEG DEBATED over what to wear for their second date for more than an hour. “Sleazy?” No. Meg didn’t own anything remotely sleazy. From her long sweaters and loose skirts to her pretty but plain underwear, her closet contained absolutely nothing that screamed seduction. Nothing that even whispered it.

Finally, figuring if Joe really did mean they were going on a picnic she ought to dress warmly, she settled on a pair of black cords and a sweater. The slacks were tighter than she usually wore—she’d bought them back in college—and she almost changed. “This is not a seduction, Meg,” she told herself as she studied her reflection in her bedroom mirror. “These pants have nothing to do with what Mrs. Mahoney said. They’re just warm.”

Yeah. Sure. Right. It didn’t matter a bit that they did really nice things for her legs, making them look longer and shapelier than anything she usually wore. Not to mention the way they accentuated her waist and the curve of her hips. And it certainly wasn’t by design that she chose a cropped sweater to go with them, rather than one of her hip-length ones.

When Joe arrived to pick her up, his eyes widened in appreciation. She lowered her lashes to disguise the sudden rush of feminine pleasure. Maybe he was a nice guy, and he wasn’t going to try anything. That didn’t mean she didn’t want him to want to try something!

He looked even better tonight than he had the night before. He’d obviously shaved before picking her up, and when he leaned close to help her don her jacket, she couldn’t stop a tiny sigh of appreciation at the clean, masculine scent of his skin. His hair was still damp from a shower, and nearly touched the collar of his leather jacket. She wanted to run her fingers through it, wanted to open his jacket and to slide her arms around his lean body, to feel him against her the way she had the night before.