Anyone but You (9 page)

"Hey, wait a minute," Alex said to Nina, but she was already leading Fred through the gate into the backyard, and there was no way she was going to stop and continue the conversation.

The last thing she needed to do was discuss sex with Alex Moore.

* * *

What do you do when a woman you want shows no interest in you?" Alex asked Max the next day in the hospital cafeteria.

Max looked at him with contempt over his eggs and hash rowns. "That never happens."

Alex pushed his own plate away. "I don't think I'm... sophisticated enough for this woman. I think she's used to rich, older guys. I think she thinks I'm a kid."

Max shoved his fork into his breakfast. "You been wearing that beanie with the propeller again?"

Alex frowned at him. "I'm serious, Max."

Max raised an eyebrow, distracted from his food for a loment. "You? Serious about a woman?"

Alex thought about it. "I don't know. Probably not. I'm definitely serious about getting her into bed."

Max nodded and went back to his eggs. "That's more like it."

Alex shook his head. "But it's not going to happen."

Max shook his head and spoke around bites of egg and potato. "You don't know that. Spend some time with her. Charm her socks off. Be debonair."

"Oh, yeah." Alex leaned back. "Debonair. That's the real me."

Max shrugged. "Well, you're the one who said she thought the real you was a Boy Scout."

Alex stared blankly across the crowded cafeteria, thinking about Nina and how Nina had looked in the dark front seat of his car, how Nina's perfume had come to him faint and erotic in the dimness, how Nina's skin had gleamed then they'd passed a streetlight. She'd been so warm and so close...

"The thing about Nina," he told Max when he'd come ack to earth, "is that when I'm with her, I forget everything but her, so I can't pretend to be somebody else. The only person I can be with Nina is me."

Max froze, his fork poised over his plate. "Don't talk like that. It sounds serious."

"It's not serious," Alex said. "She's just my neighbor. It's no big deal."

"Right." Max pointed his fork at him. "You be careful, boy. Stay away from her."

"Right," Alex said, wondering if Nina liked videos and what excuse he could use to invite himself up to share her VCR.

* * *

In the next two weeks, Nina finished editing the twit's memoirs and two books of literary criticism, gave Charity a contract for a book described as "a feminist memoir" and spent six amazingly pleasant and comfortable nights watching old movies with Alex on her TV.

"You get better reception than I do," Alex had told her the first night. He'd knocked on her door and handed her a gallon of skim milk and a large package of Oreos. "You don't mind, do you?"

And she'd said no because she didn't mind at all. In fact, she was flat out delighted even though she'd warned herself not to be. There was something warm and right about Alex sitting on her floor, his back propped up against her couch, Fred draped over his lap thinking intense Oreo thoughts, while people screamed and laughed and cried on the screen in front of them. She'd taken to curling up on the couch behind them, watching the movies over Alex's shoulder, absentmindedly reaching for the cookies or pretzels in his lap while she rediscovered old movies she'd loved like Real Genius and Avanti and American Dreamer.

And sometimes when the movie was over, they just talked, first about the movie and then about other things.

Alex talked about the ER and his family, how much he loved his work and the good times he had with his brother, Max, and Nina told him about the troubles at her work, Jessica and the twit's memoirs and Charity and her book.

Alex had been incredulous when he'd first heard of the project. "She's writing a book about her dates?"

"Charity doesn't have dates," Nina told him, reaching over his shoulder for pretzels, trying not to inhale the scent of his soap on his skin. "She has disasters with cab fare. Like this guy Carlton, the grad student she dated when she was a sophomore. He was really anal retentive about relationships. Charity said even sex had to be by the book.''

"What book?" Alex straightened with interest. "There's a book?"

"She calls that chapter 'Sex: The Cliff Notes.'" Nina wanted to reach out and pull him back against the couch, closer to her. Dumb idea. "Jessica's going to go cardiac when she reads the chapter titles."

Alex collapsed back against the couch. "Don't say 'cardiac.'"

"Then there's chapter five," Nina went on, happy again now that he was close. "Wilson. He had an impotence problem."

Alex shook his head. "Don't say 'impotence.'"

Nina reached for another pretzel. "She called that chapter 'Try Hard and Try Harder.'"

"Ouch." Alex winced. "Your friend has a mean streak."

Nina frowned, the pretzel still in her hand. Charity's chapters were a little harsh. In fact, some of them were downright bitter, but they were funny and sexy, so she'd told Charity that it might be a good idea to lighten things up as the book went along so the reader got the feeling that Jane was making progress and that things were getting better for her. Charity had seemed doubtful, so Nina hadn't pressed the point. The last thing an author needed to hear while she was writing her first draft was criticism.

"I'm sure she'll lighten up in the rewrite," she told Alex. "And chapter six is pretty funny. It's about Ron, this traveling salesman she dated."

Alex closed his eyes. "Let me guess. He slept around."

Nina nodded. "Around forty-eight states. She's calling his chapter 'Mobile Dick.' We're going to have to change that one."

"I can't wait to meet Charity," Alex said. "She sounds like a real sweet woman."

Jessica was interested in Charity, too.

"So tell me about Charity's book," she said to Nina one day in June over lunch. Jessica, as always, looked beige and polished and upper-class. She was the only woman Nina had ever met who had naturally beige hair. They were in Jessica's equally beige office, eating yogurt and kiwi and discussing the changes that would have to be made to the twit's memoir, when Nina had remarked that at least the feminist memoir Charity was working on wouldn't be boring. Jessica had perked right up. One of the many good things about Jessica was that she wasn't elitist or prudish. It didn't bother her in the slightest that Charity ran a boutique instead of a college English department or that she was writing about her sex life.

"It's a history of the changing roles of women," Nina had told her when she'd gone to contract on the book. "An anecdotal, oral history of the sexual revolution."

"Wonderful," Jessica had said and okayed it without reading the proposal. "I trust you," she'd told Nina, and Nina had felt a stab of guilt even though what she was doing was best for Jessica and Howard Press.

"Charity's book?" Nina said now. "She's more than half finished. Seven chapters on the varying expectations of sexual roles in high school in the seventies and college and young adulthood in the eighties. It's fascinating. Chapter seven is on her first working experience."

Jessica raised a plucked beige eyebrow. "Harassment?"

Nina frowned. "Sort of. Her boss seduced her, and then she found out he was a sexual compulsive."

Jessica's eyes widened. "Fascinating. Horrible, but fascinating."

"Right," Nina said, omitting to tell her that Charity called this chapter "He Was On Fire When I Lay Down On Him."

"It wasn't really harassment," Charity had told Nina. "Presley just never thought about anything else.

He probably had sex with his desk drawer when I wasn't around. I finally had to get another job just so I could get some sleep."

"It's going to be an interesting book," she promised Jessica. "A real money-maker."

"That's not what Howard Press is about," Jessica said, but Nina could see the hope flare in her eyes.

Jessica needed a money-maker soon, which meant Nina did, too, if she wanted to keep her job.

"It's more than just a money-maker," she reassured Jessica. "It'll make women everywhere rethink their sex lives."

It was certainly making Nina rethink hers. Whatever other problems Charity's book had, her sex scenes were dynamite. As Nina worked her way through Charity's explicit, erotic chapters, the year she'd been celibate began to feel like ten. And Alex wasn't helping things any. She was dreaming about him now, lovely sexy dreams of his hands and his mouth and his wonderful, long body. She'd seen that body in action the night before, when he'd come by and coaxed her out to go jogging after work. Fred had trotted along between them, disgusted, while they'd laughed and she'd watched Alex move. She thought longingly of the days when she'd lusted after Matthew Perry, safe on the other side of the television screen. Alex was just one flight down, entirely too real, entirely too young.

Not dating was not working. She was going to have to do something.

Two weeks later, after a dozen more frustrating nights with Alex and Ted Turner's video library and at least that many frustrating jogs in the park, she did something.

"I have to start dating," Nina told Charity. She'd gone downtown on her lunch hour to the boutique that Charity managed, and there, in the middle of a lot of red suede, purple spandex and black lace, she came clean. "I'm interested in Alex," she said as they leaned against a display case full of silver chains. "Really interested. But it's just because he's the only man I see." Charity opened her mouth, and Nina hurried to cut her off. "And Alex isn't my only problem. Guy is calling again. He wants to have lunch and dinner and sex."

"He asked you on the phone to have sex?" Charity said, intrigued.

"No, but it was in his voice," Nina said. "And when I said I wasn't interested, he pointed out that he knew I wasn't dating because the only other man I ever talked about when he called was the kid downstairs. I need to get out more, rev up my image, see some other men. Help me."

Charity frowned at her. "You want me to fix you up on a date."

"No." Nina sat down on one of the little black-enameled chairs that dotted Charity's domain, depressed. "I have a date."

Charity dropped into the chair beside her. "You're kidding."

Nina gave her an exasperated glare. "No. Is it so impossible that I'd have a date?"

"Yes," Charity said. "I thought there for a while you were trying to grow your virginity back.

Who is this guy?"

"His name is Michael Thackery," Nina told her. "I edited his memoirs, which are the dullest thing I've ever read, and he came in to the office today to talk about the line edit and asked me to dinner. And I thought, well, it's a start. But now I need some help."

"Wait a minute." A grin spread across Charity's face. "This is the twit we're talking about, right?"

Nina glared at her. "Charity, this isn't funny. I need help."

"Right. Sure." Charity stood up. "Well, first of all, you have to stop wearing those blah colors. Gray and black do not suit you." She moved around the shop, gathering up red lace and redder cashmere before she came back to Nina. "Here, go try these on."

Nina looked doubtfully at the clothing in her hands. At least there was no red feather boa. "What is this stuff?"

"Red cashmere scoop-necked sweater," Charity said. "Red lace panties. Red lace Incredibra."

Nina fished the bra out of the pile draped over her arm. "This thing is an Incredibra?" The bra dangled from her hand, round and shapely without her. It practically had cleavage without her. "I've heard about them, but I've never seen one."

"Yeah. It sort of pushes everything together and then shoves it up." Charity shook her head. "I tried one on once, but since I'm a C-cup to begin with, it just made me look like I had a very large double chin with a cleft in it. My customers who are B-cups swear by it."

Nina glanced down at her own B-cups. "Okay, I'll take it."

Charity frowned at her. "Don't you want to try it on?"

Nina shook her head. "I'm on my lunch hour. I'll just trust you."

Charity shrugged. "Well, bring back what doesn't look right, and we'll try something else."

That afternoon after work, Nina tried on the clothes, while Fred sat bored at her feet, waiting for his walk. The Incredibra lived up to its name, incredibly bright red and incredibly structured so that her breasts moved up nearer her chin than she thought possible, creating cleavage that was clearly impossible. Combined with the red cashmere sweater, the outfit made Nina look like a very good time. I wonder what Alex would think of this, she thought, and then stamped on the thought. Alex was never going to see her red-cashmered cleavage.

On the other hand, Michael was.

She studied herself in the mirror, not sure she wanted red-cashmered cleavage with Michael. Michael looked as though he hadn't had a sexual thought in his life, but maybe he came alive at night. Maybe incredible breasts were not a good move in Michael's case. Maybe nondescript was better for a first date. No sense promising what she had no intention of delivering.

She stripped off the sweater and the Incredibra, dropping them both on the bed, and started for her dresser to get a regular underwire. Fred put his paws on the bed, grabbed the bra and trotted to the door, and Nina ran after him and grabbed it back.

"Just like a guy," Nina said to him and tossed the bra farther up on the bed as she went to change.

The regular underwire was much better, and the blue sweater she put over it was pretty without being a come-on, and her black skirt was knee-length, no slit. The outfit made her look attractive and responsible. It in no way said,

"Yo, come jump my bones," which was the message Charity said a good date outfit should send.

The last thing Nina needed was a good date outfit that sent messages. The Incredibra was definitely going back...

Nina looked at the bed. The Incredibra was gone.

"Fred!" She took a quick lap through the apartment— kitchen, bathroom, living room—and stopped in front of the open window. Fred had found his own way of paying her back for putting off his walk.

"You're in big trouble, Fred," she said and climbed out the window.