Flat-Out Sexy (2 page)

She needed to be kicked in the head.

Or maybe she just needed more wine.

But the truth was, you couldn’t force chemistry between two people, and she had been pretending that she could. Since she wrestled everything else in her life into submission, she had figured this would work the same way. Unfortunately, her libido wasn’t listening and refused to ignite.

“
Manpanion
in the goofiest word I’ve ever heard,” Tamara said, turning and exchanging her empty glass for a full one, not even able to bring herself to feel guilty about it. She was starting to feel a little desperate.

“It fits him. Goofy.”

“Don’t hold back. Tell me how you really feel about him.” Bad enough that she knew he was basically a nerd, did Suzanne have to point it out, too?

That brought a contrite expression to Suzanne’s face. Her friend, the one who had stood there in the hospital with her and held her hand when the doctors told her that Pete was dead, squeezed her hand now. “I’m sorry, sweetie, I’m being rude, aren’t I? I just want you to be happy, and you really don’t look happy. He’s not your type at all. You’re a driver’s wife, Tammy.”

Tamara felt her chest tighten. “Was. I was a driver’s wife. I said I wouldn’t go there again, Suz, you know that. I’d rather have boring than live with that fear again. I don’t want a life where racing consumes every minute of every day anymore.” She had loved the sport, still did, but this time around she needed a man with a regular nine-to-five job, who came home for dinner, and who cut the grass on the weekend. A man who didn’t drive around the track at one hundred and eighty-five miles an hour every weekend, tempting fate. She meant that.

Suzanne squeezed her hand again, then dropped it. “I understand. But there has to be a happy medium, sugar. Because unless that man over there is hiding a penis the size of an anaconda in his shit brown pants, you are too young, too pretty, too successful, and too much fun to settle for that.”

That made Tamara laugh, though she wasn’t sure she deserved the label
fun
anymore. Truth be told, she was as unadventurous as Geoffrey these days, and that had come about partly as a result of the demands of single parenthood and partly from conscious choice. She had aspired to a predictable lifestyle, and Geoffrey would fit perfectly into that equation.

So why couldn’t she bring herself to like him?

Because maybe somewhere deep inside her she still felt the need for speed. For excitement. For the thrill of the race. Which was ridiculous given that she was a thirty-two-year-old widow with two kids and a career. There was no place for wild, not when she was her kids’ whole world, their only parent, their security. But maybe there was room for a little plain old fun. Maybe she had swung too far the other way and did need to loosen up. “Thanks, Suz. You know I love you.”

“I love you, too.” Suzanne glanced over at her, eyebrow raised. “
Is
there an anaconda?” she asked, like it had suddenly occurred to her she could be totally wrong.

Tamara should only be so lucky. “No, there’s no anaconda, I can promise you that.” Not even a garden snake.

“Damn, I’m sorry.”

“Me, too.”

There was a pause when Tamara imagined they were both trying not to picture Geoffrey naked, then Suzanne smoothed her hands down the front of her red dress and tucked her hair back.

“Just do me a favor and think about what you really want. Don’t settle, sweetie, okay?”

Tamara wanted to fluff Suzanne’s words off, but she knew her friend was worried about her, and frankly, she was worried about herself. Forcing herself to date a man she felt no attraction to, and as a result finding herself slinging back wine to fight off a panic attack, wasn’t exactly taking a positive turn.

Suz was right—there had to be something in between deadly dull and wild girl. “Thanks, hon, I do have some thinking to do.” Like how to break things off with Geoffrey before he whipped it out for the night.

“Good girl. Now I have to go network and earn my keep as a board member. You okay by yourself?”

“Yeah. You go ahead. I know half the people here.” It was time to mingle. To move on.

Suzanne had managed to voice all of Tamara’s niggling concerns out loud, and she knew what she needed to do. She needed to quit standing in the corner feeling sorry for herself and acknowledge that the weekend was her doing, and now she needed to undo it. She was the one who had invited Geoffrey. If she truly didn’t like him as anything more than a friend and coworker, she needed to cut bait when they got home. She’d rather be alone than miserable, and he deserved someone who fully appreciated him. There was also no way she could have sex with him that night, not given that just entertaining the idea had her body feeling like she’d jumped into the Arctic for an extended swim.

It wasn’t fair to Geoffrey to lead him on, and it wasn’t fair to her to have to fake an orgasm. Again.

Maybe she could say she had a headache or claim the shrimp hadn’t agreed with her to avoid the whole sex thing altogether. Of course, she could just break up with him, but it seemed downright awful to dump the man in the middle of the weekend. The nicer thing to do would be to wait until they were home, but then she was stuck wiggling out of whatever amorous plans he had for the evening. She’d put herself into a hell of a pickle.

Tamara glanced around the room, resolutely looking away from where Geoffrey was standing. It was a well-planned party, with lovely hors d’oeuvres and a quality quartet playing softly at the opposite end of the room. She would probably be enjoying herself if she weren’t hiding from her date. Determined to stop being a stick and make the most of the disastrous weekend she had created, Tamara turned resolutely to follow Suzanne out into the crowd.

And walked straight into someone. Tamara jumped back, but it was too late. Her wine had splashed all down the front of the guy she’d slammed into.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry!” Tamara winced as she accessed the damage. The red wine had turned his pale gray shirt rust from collar to waistband. It wasn’t just a few droplets, it was the whole glass, and it was everywhere.

She looked up and immediately felt her cheeks start to burn. One, because she had never seen this man in her life, and therefore couldn’t joke it off with a long-standing acquaintance. And two, because he was damn cute, with caramel-colored hair that was getting a little long on his forehead, shoulders that were broad and begging to be tested for firmness with a squeeze, and compelling, deep, brown eyes that had widened in shock from the impact.

“It’s not a problem,” he said, a Southern drawl to his voice.

Well, that was obviously a total lie, given that he looked like he’d taken a bullet to the chest and bled out, but she appreciated the effort to make her feel better. “I am really sorry. I’ve totally ruined your shirt. Let me replace it, pay for dry cleaning, do something,” she babbled, reaching out with the napkin in her hand and brushing at the stain. Which was a complete and total mistake since he had a rock-solid chest under that wine-splattered shirt and she was suddenly very aware of the fact. She paused with her hand on him and felt her blush deepen.

Great, now she was groping the poor man. Tamara dropped her hand and winced.

“That’s really not necessary,” he said. “And honestly, you did me a favor.” He nodded toward the room at large. “Perfect excuse to ditch this thing early, since I only know about four people and they’re sick of me dogging their footsteps.” His mouth turned up in a small smile. “If I’d been thinking, I would’ve spilled wine on myself an hour ago. Course, I have to be drinking wine.” He lifted his Bud bottle and shrugged. “I’m no more a wine guy than a tie guy.”

Tamara relaxed a little. He was already tugging at his neck to loosen the tie, and he did look like he’d be more comfortable in the garage than at a corporate party. Maybe she hadn’t exactly ruined the man’s night, given that he kept glancing back at the room at large like it was going to pursue him, and he’d clearly been inching his way toward the door. She smiled back, and surprised herself by flicking her hair off her shoulder in a coy gesture she couldn’t remember the last time she had used. “Are you telling me that you’re not enjoying standing around making small talk with strangers and eating appetizers the size of your fingernail, when even after swallowing three of them, you still can’t figure out what they are?” She could certainly sympathize with that. It had been a few years since she’d attended this kind of event, and she didn’t miss it one bit.

He whipped his tie completely off his neck with a brutal tug and stuffed it into his pocket, looking relieved to be free of it. “That’s exactly what I’m telling you. So I owe you a big thank-you … what’s your name?”

“Tamara,” she said, surprised to hear that her voice sounded a little breathy. God, she was flirting, wasn’t she? He was too young for her. He was probably a pit crew member. And she was technically still with Geoffrey, yet she was flirting with this man, because he flipped her switch. Plain and simple. That chemistry that had been so elusive with Geoffrey had been there with this guy from the very second she had turned and laid eyes on him, and there was nothing wrong with a little flirtation, was there?

“Tamara … that’s a beautiful name.” He leaned a little closer to her and those deep, brown eyes swept over her. “Perfect for a beautiful woman.”

Uh-oh. He felt it, too. Tamara swallowed. “Thank you. And you are … ?”

“Elec.”

Damn it, even his name was sexy. She struggled against the urge to run her hand down his chest again. “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Elec, despite the circumstances. And I really am sorry. I should have been paying closer attention.”

“No harm done. And a wet shirt was worth the opportunity to meet you. It’s been a pleasure.”

It was just good Southern manners. That’s all. He was trying to put her at ease, but Tamara felt warm in previously dormant places, and she was fairly certain it had nothing to do with the slightly excessive amounts of wine she’d tossed back. She wasn’t drunk and she wasn’t imagining the look he was giving her. Good manners didn’t dictate he stare at her like he was picturing her naked, and she was not imagining the way his eyes kept darting down to her mouth then back up again. Elec was as attracted to her as she was attracted to him, and it felt … bewildering. She had no clue how to deal with it, given that she’d married Pete at twenty-one after a two-year courtship and had only recently ventured back into dating, with the dubious choice of Geoffrey.

This intrigue, this interest on both their parts, this sort of anticipation hanging in the air between them, was something she had zero experience with. So she stared at him, totally flustered, for a long, drawn-out second, then said, “Yeah. You, too.” Which made no sense at all, which embarrassed her and confused her even more. Feeling like she’d suddenly regressed to the shy sixteen-year-old she’d been, she gave him a quick smile, turned, and tried to walk, not run, away from him, with her heart pounding and her palms sweating.

“What the hell was that?” she muttered to herself in complete disgust.

That was her libido leaping back to life without warning for the first cute guy who looked her way.

She suddenly knew that there was no putting off dealing with Geoffrey. Given that in two minutes standing next to Elec, a man she didn’t know from Adam, she’d had more sexual stirrings than she had in a solid month with Geoffrey, including the times he’d been pulling out all the stops à la oral sex, she couldn’t even wait until tomorrow to break up with him.

Geoffrey had been a colossal mistake and she needed to rectify it, immediately. Then get her own hotel room so that she could stare at the ceiling and picture what it would be like to have Elec over her, naked, his dark eyes flickering over her body, his fingers trailing across her …

Lord. Tamara fanned herself. What the hell had she been doing?

Right. Finding Geoffrey.

TAMARA waited for Geoffrey to say something to the careful words she’d just delivered to him, explaining how she wasn’t ready to date after all, that she respected him as a friend, and felt she’d made a mistake in rushing their relationship. It had sounded good to her. Believable. It was the truth, if not the whole truth.

But Geoffrey was staring at her like she’d just said something in pig Latin, and she stared back, itching to take tweezers to those gray eyebrow hairs that poked out at random intervals from the rest of his brown brow. One, two, three, four … Tamara lost her place and started counting again. Dang, that was a lot of hairs that needed yanking.

“It’s the money, isn’t it?” he asked. “I should have expected that, but I confess, I’m still disappointed.”

“What?” She dragged her eyes from his runaway eyebrow hairs and met his disappointed gaze, wondering what he was talking about.

“I know I can’t keep you in the lifestyle you’re accustomed to.”

Was he joking? She could give a rat’s ass about his money. She had her own income, had Pete’s estate, and yet she still lived modestly, because labels and a fancy lifestyle weren’t important to her. Never had been. Her handbag cost fifteen bucks at Target. When had she ever given off a vibe that she was high maintenance?

“It’s not about money, Geoffrey. I just don’t think we’re well suited to each other as more than friends. I like you as a person, but I just don’t think we’re more than that.”