Anna Marie Sorenson's Secret Affair (12 page)

Bea became even more suspicious. “Why are you so happy this morning? You’re

practically walking on air.”

Secret Affair 72

“Can’t a girl come into work every once in awhile in a good mood without people

thinking there’s something wrong…”

Bea snapped her fingers. “That’s it. You got laid last night.”

Anna Marie flushed. “Now why would you think that…”

“And you got laid good, didn’t you? You must have been to be sporting such a silly grin and talking in such an addlepated manner. Who was he?”

Anna Marie was uncomfortable revealing anything about last night, because, in truth, she was unused to engaging in gossip about sexual escapades. But then, she never really had anything in her personal life that was in serious want of recounting to other women until now.

And last night definitely qualified for bragging rights.

Bea settled back in her chair, watching the other woman’s face. “Well, it’s about time. I was starting to wonder if you knew what sex was.”

“I’ve had sex before,” Anna Marie said tartly.

“I won’t ask if it was any good by the look on your face. Who was he? Where did you

meet him?’

She hesitated. “He’s my brother-in-law’s brother.”

Bea frowned. “Cameron’s brother? The one you never met because he was always

somewhere on some strange mission? Oh, you mean the Navy SEAL.” Her dark eyes widened.

“You went to bed with a Navy SEAL?”

Anna Marie blew out a breath, then laughed. Actually, it was more of a giggle, making her sound very young. “Yes. Can you believe that? Me, being taken to bed by the Navy.” She shook her head, that sense of dazed wonderment coming back to her.

“If I heard right, the SEALs are one of the best trained in the world. Would you, uh, agree?” Bea inquired with a tongue-in-cheek smile.

Anna Marie rolled her eyes. “Believe me, from what I had to go on last night, they are very well trained. He could do the most amazing things to my body, touch me in places I never knew I had. And he went all night. Talk about stamina. I don’t know how I survived it all, especially when he was so big and long…” Ann Marie stopped when she saw the older woman watching her with amusement, and realized she was being quite indiscreet, especially when it was in a place of work, although the door to her office was shut. “Anyway, I guess if I’m going Secret Affair 73

to have sex once every century, it might as well be with a Navy SEAL, right? Who would have thought, huh?”

Bea smiled as she watched the gray eyes heat with remembered passion. “Yes, who

would have thought? How does your sister feel about this, and your brother-in-law?”

Anna Marie shook her head. “Uh, uh. I have no plans to tell them anything about last night. As far as they’re concerned, I drove Cam’s brother to his hotel after dinner and left him there to get a good night sleep and in the morning he caught an early flight back to Washington.

As far as they’re concerned, I was untouched, unmolested by the SEAL.”

“Do you think you’ll see him again?”

Some of the light dimmed on Anna Marie’s face, but she tried to shrug off the regret and disappointment. “Most likely not. It took him ten years to come into town and stay for more than ten minutes. Besides, I’m not his type.”

Bea gave her an arched look. “Oh, right. A man screws a woman all night because he

doesn’t in the least bit feel that she’s his type.”

“You know what I mean. I’m not exactly a woman who inspires men to mad passion.

That’s my sister. Anyway, I’ve a feeling that he went all night because he had just come in from being out in the cold for several months. It was all that pent up sexual energy.”

“So, like a caveman, due to enforced long abstinence, he grabbed the nearest unattached female, that’s you, and shut both of you in the cave for the next several hours. If it had been Miss Piggy, he would have done the same thing to her, is that it?”

Anna Marie sighed. “You’re deliberately misunderstanding me, Beatrice.”

“No, maybe it’s you who is deliberately misunderstanding the situation. Obviously, this wild and woolly Navy SEAL found you very attractive last night. Believe it or not, that’s not such a big stretch. Now, it might have been a while since I’ve been on the market, but I do remember enough to know that when there is good sex, no, fantastic sex, it’s because there is good deal of physical attraction between the two people.”

Anna Marie shook her head and said briskly, “Well, whatever it was between us, it’s

probably a moot point, because it will never happen again.”

Suddenly, the door flung open, and Broders entered and closed the door behind him. “Ah, I thought I would find you here.” Then he looked at the two women. “I hope I haven’t interrupted something.”

Secret Affair 74

Beatrice stood up and smoothed down her skirt. “No, actually, you didn’t, Mr. Broders.

Ms. Sorenson and I were just sitting in the office with the door closed, because we knew you would eventually walk in here without knocking and bothering to call first to see if she could see you at this hour.”

She walked out, closing the door behind her. Broders for a moment stared at the closed door, wondering if he had just been insulted. Anna Marie put her hand over her mouth and struggled not to laugh.

Broders squeezed his great bulk in a chair that was recently vacated by Beatrice with difficulty. “You shouldn’t encourage such insubordination from your employees, especially to a tax payer. They should remember just who pays their inflated salaries.”

Anna Marie wanted to point out to the councilman that courtesy was an obligation that applied to everyone. Instead, she said with cool politeness, “Good afternoon, Mr. Broders. I guess you’re here about the proposal.” She sat down and opened the file. She figured she might as well not put off dealing with the councilman over the gift and coffee shop proposal any longer. He would just hound her until he got his way. “As I have said before, it is an interesting suggestion, and does have the potential to bring in more of the public and bring in some money through capitalism…”

As Anna Marie expected, after that night, she did not see Dallas again, nor did she hear about him from her sister and brother-in-law. Although at times she was tempted to ask about him, she kept quiet. She knew if she did ask and as long as she kept it as a normal conversation topic, she would not have drawn any suspicion. But she decided that it was best that she not talk of Dallas even if it were in neutral terms. She was afraid that it might bring up memories and longing for him. And she wasn’t used to pining for a man and there was no reason to start now, even if the man gave a woman every reason to pine for him.

As it was , it was Pepper who brought up the subject of her brother-in-law.

“What did you think about Cameron’s brother?” Pepper suddenly asked when Anna

Marie was visiting her at her restaurant. They were in the kitchen while Pepper was testing out a new recipe

The question caught Anna Marie by surprise and for a moment all she could do was stare at her sister. “Uh, he seems okay.”

Secret Affair 75

“He’s a bit much, though, wasn’t he?”

“What do you mean?” Anna Marie asked cautiously.

“All that machismo that he exudes, silent, watchful, as if he were some alpha male just barely controlling himself from going on a rampage. Doesn’t seem all that civilized, either.” Anna Marie lowered her face to hide a flush, because she knew from first hand just how limited his boundaries of civility was.

“I wonder what he’s like in bed,” Pepper said.

Anna Marie jerked and knocked her untouched glass of wine, catching it barely in time from spilling.

“Careful,” Pepper snapped. “Don’t you dare waste that good wine on the floor.”

“Sorry,” Anna Marie murmured. “What a thing for you to wonder about your husband’s

brother.”

“Oh, I’m not saying that I want to do anything about it, or even that I’m attracted to him.

It’s just that with a guy like that, a girl can’t help wondering about him in bed.” Then Pepper lowered her voice and leaned her head closer to her sister. “I will tell you, though, that I think Cam’s brother might have been a little attracted to me that night.”

Now Anna Marie stared at her sister as if she had just told her that aliens had landed in her backyard. “You think that your brother-in-law was…”

“Was attracted to me that night. Yes, I think he was. Oh, he wasn’t obvious about it.

After all, he couldn’t be, with my husband right there.”

“Then, how…how do know that he was attracted to you?”

Her sister’s expression was smug, confident, and knowing. “Women know these things. I certainly do. After all, I’ve had to suffer so many men falling right and left for me all my life. I can instantly spot when a man is attracted to me.”

“So, what are some of the things that indicated Cameron’s brother might be interested in you,” Anna Marie asked casually.

“He gave me a look a few times.”

“He looked at you?”

“You know how guys look at you.” Pepper stopped her chopping of carrots and gazed at her sister, remembering who she was talking to. “Well, I guess you wouldn’t have much experience in that. Anyway, it was the way Dallas looked at me, all intense with hooded eyes as Secret Affair 76

if he wanted do to all these dark and nasty things to me. You know, I usually don’t go for guys like him, so silent and secretive. But the way he just looks and listens all the time and never talks, it makes a girl wonder just what’s underneath all that still water.”

As Pepper proceeded with her beef stock for the soup, Anna Marie remained where she

stood at the counter, desultorily sipping her wine, pondering over her sister’s words. For the first time in all her years as the sister of Pepper, she found herself in an unusual position of pitying her. She knew very well that Dallas had not looked at Pepper at any time during his visit, at least not in any way that would connote special interest. If he did look at Pepper it was to politely respond to a question that she may have asked, or to ask her to pass the salt.

For once, Anna Marie remembered every minute of the dinner at her sister’s house. The moment Dallas had entered the house, every one of her senses had been on heightened alert, so that she had been extra sensitive to sight, sound, taste, sensations, words, emotions that she had experienced. And she had been attuned to every look in Dallas’s eyes, to every twitch of his face, to every curve of his lips, whether it was meant to be a smile or not, to every timber of his voice the rare times that he said anything. In everything she remembered about him that night, she could not at all remember seeing him give any look to her sister that could be construed one way or another as interest. In fact, if she remembered anything of Dallas’s behavior towards Pepper, it was the complete lack of interest that he had shown to her other than as his brother’s wife.

At the time, Anna Marie had thought nothing of this absence of attraction on his part to her sister. But now that she thought about it, she had to admit that it was unusual that a man, any man, was not be affected by Pepper’s beauty and dynamic personality. Instead, it seemed, Dallas has been pre-occupied by someone else, namely herself. If he had been giving anybody looks that night, it had been Anna Marie. Often when she looked up, she would find his eyes on her.

Downing her wine, she smiled to herself. Stranger things have happened, she supposed.

But this definitely took the cake. Imagine, a wolfhound like Dallas going after mousy librarian like her instead of her beautiful, vibrant sister. It was too bad she couldn’t share it with Pepper.

But, then, Anna Marie knew her sister wouldn’t have appreciated the irony of it all. Besides, it was rather delicious to keep the secret all to herself, just like keeping close to her heart all the delicious, nasty things Dallas had done to her that night.

Secret Affair 77

Two months after her torrid night with Dallas, Anna Marie thought little of him, or that night, relegating him and memories of their sex to the past that had little to do with the present.

For the next several months, life continued as it always had for Anna Marie, working at the library, struggling to prep for the GRE exams, battling with the county supervisors over budget cuts and their enthusiasm to bring to the library some form of capitalism, living her single life with little excitement or progress, and ignoring Pepper’s continued admonition about finding a man to marry and start a family, which she never failed to do when Anna Marie was over for dinner. She knew that her sister would never understand that she found some measure of contentment in her life as a single woman pursing her dreams.

One night, she knocked on her sister’s door, having been ordered that morning to make an appearance for dinner. The most beautiful woman Anna Marie had ever seen opened the door.

She was quite tall with burnished red hair, clear creamy skin, blue eyes, and a long, slender build with small breasts and narrow hips. She was dressed in a figure-hugging, blood red silk knit dress that stopped several inches from her knees and splayed out opulently her long magnificent thighs, the blood red matching the matte color on her full, pouty lips. Normally, the red color of the silk would have clashed with the flame-colored hair. But on the woman, the red only increased her vibrancy, heightening her incredible beauty, giving her a dangerous allure.

When Anna Marie continued to stare, the woman’s expression turned impatient.

“Yes?” the woman said with irritable superiority.

Anna Marie looked at the number on the house. “Have I got the right house? Is this the Trenton’s residence?

“Yes it is. Look, if you’re trying to sell something, this is the wrong time. Come back tomorrow.” She was about to shut the door on Anna Marie’s face.

“No, I’m her sister, Anna Marie.”

The woman’s beautiful face cleared. “Oh, that’s right. Anna. I remember Pepper saying that you didn’t look a bit like her. She was right about that, wasn’t she?” She stepped back to let Anna Marie enter.