Dark Surrender (35 page)

But it is the first you’ve tried to seduce, “myself” says back.

Great, so now I’m talking to myself.

I put my hand out and push on the door. It opens and I start to walk in ... but then I stop, frozen in my tracks halfway in. There’s Todd, standing beside the coffee machine. But Max from the art department is pressed up against him, one of his hands planted on Todd’s ass, the other draped around the back of Todd’s neck -- his tongue vigorously working its way down Todd’s throat.

Silently I back out the door and turn myself around. I see Margie at her desk, the phone in one hand, the other gesturing an emphatic “What?” I wave her off and bolt back to my office, keeping my eyes down, not believing how shitty I‘m feeling, how horrible my intuition -- or my sexual instinct -- is. But then, at least I hadn’t gotten to make a pass at him yet. At least I don’t have that shame to live with.

I deposit my coffee mug on my Kenny’s -- my secretary -- desk as I lurch into my office.

“
Miss Clark, would you like a refill?” Kenny asks.

“
Let’s give them a few minutes to finish, okay?”

Kenny looks after me bewildered as I slam the door to my office behind me.

*****

“
You’re fucking kidding me!” Margie howls over the phone.

“
Don’t I wish.”

“
Gay?”

“
Apparently.”

“
And Max, from art?” She clucks her tongue and I hear her crack her knuckles. “Now I know why he and the misses got divorced.”

“
Can we just not talk about this?” I’m suddenly feeling cranky again. And I know that once Margie gets done mauling this business with Todd over, she’ll get right back to trying to set me up again. “I think this idea for the Morgan’s campaign is starting to come together.”

“
That’s why I pay you the big bucks, babe,” I suddenly see her at the door to my office, her coat and purse on her arm, her cell phone lowering from her ear. “Just don’t work too late. You’ll never bag a guy like this.”

“
Kenny’s helping me ... we’ll be done in no time.”

Margie waves as she slinks out of sight. I look out my window to see the sun already starting to set. The clock reads six o’clock. I hit the intercom button. “You hungry?” I ask Kenny.

“
Indian or Chinese?” he says.

“
Chinese.”

“
I’ll make the call.”

*****

I end up not eating even half of my sesame chicken. And no matter how much I stare at the computer screen I still can’t get my mind in gear enough to get the Morgan’s campaign up and running. My head’s hurting, my eyes are blurry, and my shoulders and neck are in knots. I drop my head down into the palms of my hands and groan.

I hear Kenny walk up behind me, and I smell the fresh coffee he’s brought me.

“
It’s late. Maybe you should go home, get some sleep, work this thing with fresh eyes tomorrow.”

I feel Kenny’s hands press down gently on my shoulders, and then his fingers start to knead my tense muscles. He’s the best. I can’t count how many times he’s pulled me through these late night work attacks. Never complains, never fails to contribute, and he’s always there.

“
What would I do without you?” I say, leaning back in my chair as his fingers work out the rest of my kinks.

“
You’d probably have to see a chiropractor.”

And he’s funny. And good looking! Shoulders like a linebacker, flat stomach and lean hips. And somewhere in his angular face there’s a few freckles and bright green eyes.

Too bad he’s gay too.

At least with Kenny I’d known the moment I laid eyes on him. And that had been the plan ... at the time ... to not be tempted, to not even contemplate men. And for almost a year my plan had been working. At least until I watched Brokeback Mountain. Then I started reading Alice Hoffman books, and watching cheesy LifeTime TV Movies. Now I’m getting aroused just looking at the office eye candy, and I’m seriously considering ordering something very large -- that requires batteries -- off the internet.

It’s not fair! The one guy I finally get excited over turns out to be gay. And the only man who touches me -- and what a fabulous job he’s doing of it right now! -- even he’s gay. I know it isn’t politically correct or anything, but it would be so much simpler if gay men would wear a tag of some sort. Maybe one of those rubber bracelets, or maybe a special tattoo only women can see. Something in ultraviolet ink. Maybe a nametag that says, “I’m Todd, and I’m a homosexual.”

Maybe Kenny’s right. Some sleep could turn this around for me. Or at least stop the crazy thoughts form bouncing around in my head! Do I have any Xanax at home?

Kenny hits
the
spot, causing me to lean into him and moan.

“
Why are all you good guys unavailable or gay?” I say absently.

Kenny’s hands stop what they’re doing and he stands stalk still behind me, not saying a word. I suddenly wish I’d kept my big mouth shut. I’ve offended him.

I take a breath, trying to think up an apology, when suddenly Kenny starts rubbing my shoulders again.

“
Actually,” he says. “I’m not gay.”

It takes a moment before his words register in my head, and my eyes snap wide open with a shock.

Kenny leans down until his lips brush against the flesh under my ear. His breath is hot and it sends a shiver through my body.

“
And I’m available, too,” I can smell his aftershave, I can feel the heat his body’s giving off. “Completely at your disposal.”

I gulp. I feel my body shudder, and my loins quiver.

I feel his hands slide from their places on my shoulders and I suddenly feel a stabbing sense of abandonment. I hear his steps as he turns to leave.

“
You should get some rest. Could be a real late night tomorrow.”

When I turn around he’s gone.

*****

An excerpt of my romantic comedy novel,
Rebound
.

Rebound

By

Mercy Walker

Copyright 2012, Mercy Walker

Chapter 1

It couldn’t be happening. Standing there in her pearl-white strapless satin gown, her blond hair painstakingly straightened and pulled back in a perfect twist, the veil already in place, she just couldn’t believe it. With her bridal bouquet of pink miniature roses in her left hand, Susan Rhodes couldn’t get over how heavy the generic white cocktail napkin seemed to be as it drooped in the palm of her right hand.

How could it be burning her flesh? How could the message scrawled across it be English one moment and gibberish the next? And how could that short, inadequate message have so much power over her?

She had been so happy: in love and engaged to a handsome, successful attorney--on the cusp herself of becoming partner at the architectural firm that practically worshipped her like a Greek goddess. She’d always known she would be a great architect, just as she knew she would make a wonderful wife. She had it all planned out, could call up the image of herself, her career, her husband and two tiny children, with such perfect clarity.

And now the shitty little cocktail napkin had destroyed it all, with eight near illegible words:

Suzie-Q,

Can’t get married. Marry someone else.

Mark

Tim, Mark’s best man and best friend since college, stood there in his tuxedo jacket and slacks, clashing ridiculously with a garish pair of green hiking boots and a faded orange t-shirt with
Orgasm Donor
emblazoned across his chest. He slouched, staring at Susan, obviously waiting for some scathing reply to the message he’d just pressed into her hand. Susan was known for her temper and for always having the best comebacks anyone had ever heard--sometimes polite yet viscous, sometimes so expletive-laced sailors would blush. But as he waited for Susan to lay into him, his drunken, apologetic smile slowly turned to stunned horror.

Susan just stood there with the napkin in her hand, her face falling from a bewildered smile to a completely blank stare. Her body slumped the tiniest bit, the arm holding the bouquet dropping to her side, the flowers absently dropping from her freshly manicured fingertips. Her flesh turned cold as if snow and ice had replaced the blood in her veins. Tim started backing away from her when he saw the first tears trickle from her eyes, sliding down her cheeks.

“
Suze, what’s with dropping the flowers?” Liz, Susan’s best friend and maid of honor, bent to retrieve the bouquet from the floor of Saint Anne’s vestibule. “It’s like dropping the ball...” That’s when Liz spotted Tim, a guilty expression on his face, right before he turned and slunk out the door he’d entered.

She shook her head and smiled, her mouth opened as if she were about to say something, then her eyes got wide as she took a step closer to Susan. “You’re whiter than your dress! What’s going on?”

Susan said nothing, not moving. She wondered if she was even breathing. Her heart had definitely stopped beating. Liz looked down at the cocktail napkin and read the message upside down, her warm hand closing around Susan’s now trembling wrist.

Without looking away, Liz started to speak in the way she always spoke at her art gallery when she wanted everyone’s attention--her tone bright and sweet, yet steeped in authority.

“
Ladies,” she said to the bridesmaids. “May the bride and I have the room for a moment?”

Thirty seconds later, the two women stood alone in the room, surrounded by wedding gifts and flowers, standing facing each other, Liz’s hand still gripping Susan’s wrist. “Suze?” she said, her clear blue eyes beseeching.

Susan gazed at Liz, startled, just comprehending her best friend was speaking to her. Her face crumpled, the tears spilling chaotic down her face in rivulets, a gasping sob escaping her lips. “Oh, Liz...”

Liz crushed Susan’s shaking body against hers, holding her up, protecting her too late from what had already harmed her.

*****

Kevin Jacobs didn’t want to be in Chicago, he didn’t want to be going to his best friend’s wedding, and he certainly wasn’t masochistic enough to want to watch his best friend march down the aisle to marry another man--he was in love, not stupid.

And he wasn’t really “in love.” Not really. He’d let that go years ago, when, after trying to woo Susan their entire junior year at Dartmouth, she’d simply blurted out--in typical Susan fashion--she didn’t see him as a “romantic possibility.” But after two weeks of licking his wounds, he’d decided he couldn’t live without her being his friend. So he swallowed those lustful, romanticized feelings, burying them deep in him.

The rest of their college experience was a rose tinted haze of pizza and music and frozen margaritas--and all night cram sessions when they invariably partied too hard too often.

Graduation came, followed by jobs in separate cities, in separate states, on separate sides of the continental United States. Yet somehow they’d become even closer over the years, the distance acting as a magical truth serum, letting each share things they would never tell someone they actually had to look at in the morning. For five years, texting two to three times a day, and calling each other at least twice a week to share good news or to just sound off about what pissed them off.

Kevin could’ve done this long distance thing for the rest of his life, never having to meet any of his best friend’s boyfriends and bed partners. He had stopped dating after the second year after college, recognizing he unfairly compared these women he dated to Susan and always found them lacking no matter how wonderful they were. Instead he’d thrown himself into his work, and when not designing buildings or whole cities, he would spend his leisure time working out compulsively at the twenty-four-hour gym down the street from his apartment.

But no, that easy routine of listening and being able to be detached--because, after all, she was just a voice on the phone--was blown to hell. Susan was getting married, and she needed her best friend--well, her second best friend--to be there for support.

Swallowing the regret and long buried feelings he’d had for her--and had thought he’d forgotten--Kevin hopped on a plane for Chicago, and once there, froze his ass off as he flagged down a cab and made his way to Saint Anne’s Cathedral to do what he hadn’t been able to do all those years ago when college had ended. Say goodbye.

The church was packed with familiar and unfamiliar faces. Amber and rose-colored light filtered through the stained glass windows. The sharp, sweet smell of flowers filled the air, their bright colors popping against the dim interior of the church. As if by instinct, Kevin found his way back to the corridor leading him straight to Susan. The mahogany-lined hallway was cluttered with half a dozen bridesmaids, their lilac dresses clustered like living bouquets against the walls, the plethora of their flowery perfumes overwhelming him. There was also one rather disturbed-looking groomsman named Tim. Kevin recognized him from pictures Susan had emailed over the last year of her engagement with Mark, aka, “the shit-head.”