Loving Mr. July (15 page)

Seeming to sense her shyness, he unzipped her
skirt, and skimmed it off her body with expert fingers, all the
while, kissing each new area of skin as he exposed it, leaving her
with little thought except for the desire to join with him.

When he would have lingered with his lips
near the top of her thighs, she pulled him up, guided him to her
entrance, and moaned when with a smile, he complied.

His touch slow, but not tentative, he entered
her, all the while kissing first one breast, then the other, then
coming back to claim her mouth. With each thrust, the intensity
grew.

Cynthia saw the effort to hold himself back
in his face, and her tenderness for his consideration mixed with
her passion until he took her over the edge, his kisses swallowing
her cries. He waited for another moment, letting her experience her
moment fully, before a few more thrusts took him over the edge as
well.

Spent, he moved to lay beside her, gathering
her close, kissing the side of her neck, even as he enveloped her
in his arms.

Cynthia heard his deep sigh of contentment
and snuggled closer into his embrace, her emotions too strong for
words, she stayed silent. After a while, the regular breathing
blowing across her cheek told her Kurt slept.

And in complete peace, she let herself drift
off as well.

Cynthia hummed a happy tune as she pulled
into Kurt’s driveway. After their fabulous night together, she
wanted to surprise him with a homemade meal, only this time, it
would be one of her signature gourmet dishes.

She glanced over the grocery bags filled with
farmer’s market vegetables and fruit, juicy filet mignon, and a
bottle of Zinfandel. She’d even stayed up late the night before to
make a yeast dough. All she needed to do now was throw it in Kurt’s
oven.

Too late, she realized that she didn’t have a
garage door opener, so she decided to use the key she’d not yet
returned to Kurt to open his front door. She walked from the alley
that fronted his driveway around the corner to the front door
walkway.

She stopped dead in her tracks when she heard
the murmur of voices, and recognized a distinctive baritone.

In front of her, not more than twenty feet
away, Kurt walked away from her toward the beach, his arm around
the shoulder of a willowy brunette. The girl leaned into Kurt, and
Cynthia watched him kiss her on the cheek and squeeze her
shoulders. He murmured into the woman’s ear, but Cynthia was too
far away to hear. Their postures were intimate. This woman clearly
was someone he knew well.

Putting a hand to her mouth to mask the
involuntary moan that came from her lips, Cynthia ducked behind a
bush, clutching at her stomach.

No! The scream stayed in her head. She
thought that he’d cared about her. She’d given herself to him like
to no one else, both body and mind. Swaying, almost dizzy, she knew
she had to get away before Kurt saw her. Not caring about the
strange look Kurt’s neighbor gave her as she wound her way through
the landscaping bushes to avoid the walkway where Kurt could see
her if he just turned around, she found her way back to the car,
berating herself as she went.

Why in the world would a man like Kurt want
her when he could have his pick of women? True, it had seemed so
real, and his emotions, honest. But she knew better, she thought,
banging on the steering wheel through her tears. She knew better!
She had a sudden, violent urge for ice cream and chocolate.

Tears streaming down her face, Cynthia drove
aimlessly up the coastal highway. At one intersection, she rolled
down her car window, stunning the homeless couple to whom she gave
her two bags of groceries. What they would do with raw meat and raw
dough, she had no idea, but she couldn’t bear to look at the
food.

Somehow she found her way home. Walking into
the dark house, she went straight to her bed, curled up in a fetal
position, and cried herself to sleep.

~ ~ ~

An alarm rang incessantly. Kurt, still groggy
from his late night, felt around on the bedside table, trying to
turn it off. He finally woke up enough to realize it was the
telephone.

He had no more than picked it up and put it
against his ear, when his sister-in-law’s voice screamed at him
through the handset. “What did you do to her? I swear if you hurt
her, I will never forgive you.”

“Sharon?” Kurt rubbed his eyes, pulled the
handset away from his ear to deaden the painful noise. After a
moment, the device was silent. He put his ear back to the receiver.
“Sharon. What is going on?”

“What did you do to her?”

“What are you talking about?” Kurt sat up
straighter in the bed, tried to focus. “Who are you talking
about?”

“Cynthia, you big lug head,” Sharon barked at
him. “You know, my best friend, the woman you took to the Bocher
Foundation appreciation dinner Friday night?”

“Cynthia?” Kurt was awake now. “What’s
happened to her? What’s wrong?”

Silence reigned on the phone.

“Sharon? What’s going on? Cynthia left here
late Saturday morning. I haven’t seen her since. Has something
happened?” Kurt fired out the questions in rising panic.

“That’s what I’m trying to find out,”
Sharon’s voice came across with a distinctly frosty tone. “She’s a
mess. We had a date this morning to go do brunch. She didn’t answer
the door, but her car was in the driveway, so I let myself in. She
was balled up on her bed. Won’t tell me what’s wrong. Won’t talk to
me. But I’ve never seen her like this. Ever.”

“What the hell? Sharon, I don’t have a clue.
I last saw her yesterday morning. She was fine. Happy.” More than
fine, Kurt thought to himself. Waking up to her yesterday morning
had been a joyful surprise. He’d barely been able to hold back from
telling her how much he loved her. He knew without a doubt that he
wanted to marry her. He’d never experienced anything like the night
he had with her. Only his desire to make his proposal to her a
memorable one had made him hesitate.

“You did something.” Sharon’s voice was flat.
“Because as I left, she told me to keep you away from her.”

Kurt’s heart sank like a stone. “No!”

“So what did you do? Turn around and find
another woman or something already, now that you’ve finally won
her?”

“Another woman? Are you crazy?” Kurt’s panic
had his voice rising in anger. “Why the hell would I screw up the
best thing that ever happened to me? You want to know what I did?
I’ll tell you what I did,” Kurt yelled into the phone. “I brought
her here, to candlelight and flowers. I asked her permission and
with it, made love to her. It was the best night of my life. I
could barely hold back from telling her how much I love her, how I
want to marry her, have babies with her, spend the rest of my life
with her. The only reason I didn’t was because I want that moment
to be something she’ll never forget. So I held off. That’s what I
did to her. And if you have a problem with that, you can go to
hell.”

“Kurt.”

Incensed, Kurt didn’t answer.

“Kurt,” Sharon repeated quietly. “I’m sorry.
I believe you.”

Kurt raked a hand through his hair, and took
a calming breath. “Thank you.”

“But you have a problem,” Sharon continued
after a beat, “because she also said that you were welcome to the
skinny bitch, which is what made me think she saw you with someone
else.”

“Oh, shit.” Kurt slapped his hand against his
forehead, when his neighbor’s odd comment suddenly came back to
him. “She did.”

“What?” Sharon’s voice started rising.

“Not what you think. I just remembered
something my neighbor said last night. You know, Holly, my cousin,
right?”

“The same Holly that’s your assistant?”

“Yeah, long story, but basically she needed a
shoulder to cry on last night, and since she’s like a sister to me,
I listened, took her out to dinner. I figured Cynthia would
understand, especially since we never made any plans. When my
neighbor made this crack about how he wanted my life with one girl
on the arm and another in the bushes. I didn’t know what he was
talking about.”

“Oh no,” Sharon said. “I vaguely remember
Cynthia saying something about going over to make you dinner last
night.”

“Ah hell.” Kurt put his head back against the
wall and shut his eyes. “Cynthia must have seen us together.”

“I take it she’s not met Holly?”

Kurt sighed. “No, dammit.”

“Ah Kurt.” Sharon’s sympathy came clearly
across in her voice. “Holly is exactly the kind of woman that would
make Cynthia feel insecure. She tall, thin, beautiful.”

“So she immediately jumps to a bad
conclusion?” Kurt knew he sounded as defeated as he felt. “Doesn’t
say a whole lot about what she thinks of me now does it?”

“She’s nuts about you,” Sharon said, “and
doesn’t have the confidence she should. To her, opening up to you
was a huge risk.”

“I get that, Sharon. And I have sympathy for
her what she went through in the past, you know I do. But to be
honest, there’s a point where she has to decide to have faith in
me. I can’t live my life constantly worried about how something
might appear. She either trusts me or she doesn’t.” Kurt’s voice
broke with emotion.

“You want me to talk to her?”

“No, Sharon. I appreciate it and you know I
love you for that. But this is between us.” Kurt rubbed at the
scratchy stubble on his face. “Promise me you won’t interfere.”

Sharon took her time answering. Kurt heard a
deep sigh. “Good luck then.”

I’m going to need it, Kurt thought a bit
later as he listened to the sound of Cynthia’s phone ringing. When
the answering machine picked up, he left a message. But somehow, he
knew he wasn’t going to get a response.

Two weeks later, after a much-needed escape
from reality and her life, Cynthia came home to her condo to find
thirty-five messages on her answering machine. Twenty-five of them
were from Kurt. The first one he had apparently left soon after
he’d kissed her goodbye after their fabulous night together. But
she’d never been home that day, and later had been too upset to
listen to any of her phone messages.

“Hi love,” his voice sounded deep, intimate.
“Thank you for the best night of my life. I cannot wait to see you
again. Call me.”

Just the sound of his voice had Cynthia
drawing in a ragged breath. Over the last two weeks of
soul-searching while hiding out in a cabin in Carmel, she thought
she could weather being just another one of Kurt’s conquests.
Thought she could brush it aside and try to be a friend for
Sharon’s sake.

She was wrong.

In the second message, his voice sounded a
little harried. “Cyn, something’s come up. I’ll explain later. See
you tomorrow?” The last question sounded apologetic, hopeful.

Cynthia didn’t want to think about just what
‘came up.’ She almost stopped the playback right there, but after a
moment decided to go through all the torture at once.

The third message was from Sharon. “Hi Cyn,
call me. I need to talk to you.”

She had called Sharon from her hideaway, but
never had let her ‘explain’ anything. This situation was something
she was going to deal with on her own.

Most of the rest of the messages were from
Kurt. For the others, she listened only to the first few words to
determine if they were important and whether or not she needed to
respond, before proceeding to the next message. At first, Kurt
sounded tense. “Cynthia, I’d like to see you today. Could you call
me back please?”

By the last one, he sounded defeated.
“Cynthia. I’ve been to your place. I’ve been to your work. I’ve
tried every phone number. I don’t want to accept that you don’t
want to see me, but I’m going to have to leave it in your hands
now. You know where to find me. Goodbye.”

Goodbye. He hadn’t said that in any of the
previous messages. Cynthia sank to the couch, tears freely falling
from her eyes. It sounded so final. It was what she wanted, wasn’t
it? To be left alone? Hadn’t she decided she was better off without
him?

So why did she feel so dreadful?

Pushing aside the thoughts, she picked up the
handful of scribbled telephone messages from folks other than Kurt
that she needed to return. With a determined step, she walked into
the bedroom. She would go into Grandma’s, lose herself in work and
catch up in the office.

An hour later, Cynthia caught the look of
surprise when Sharon found her toiling away in the office.

“Oh, thank goodness, you’re back. I was
afraid I’d have to do the books.” Sharon came behind the desk to
give her a hug. “You okay?”

When she didn’t’ respond, Sharon gazed at her
critically. “Did you eat at all during the time you were gone? You
look like you’ve lost weight.”

Cynthia shrugged. “For the first time in my
life, food didn’t appeal.”

Sharon stared at her for a moment. Her voice
quiet, she said, “You need to talk to him.”

“I don’t think so.” Sharon was her best
friend. But on this topic, Cynthia was not going to waver. “Leave
it alone, Sharon.”

“But—”

“I mean it Sharon.” Cynthia stared her down.
“I can’t talk about this. Not now.” Maybe not ever, she thought to
herself.

Sharon let out a sigh, brought both of her
hands to her face and rubbed. She seemed to have an internal
debate, then sighed again. She put up both hands. “Okay, okay. I
think you’re both being stubborn and unreasonable. But it’s your
life.”

“Yes, it is.” Cynthia kept her eyes on the
spreadsheet. Only when she heard Sharon’s footsteps descending the
stairs back to the sales floor did she let the tear roll down her
face.

~ ~ ~