Mr. Fix-It (4 page)

“Change?” Carter suggested before biting into the big strawberry. “Women always want to change a man.”

“I was going to say adapt.”

“Adapt is a high-rent version of change.”

“Change is when a woman wants a man to stop scratching his ass every night after he slumps into bed with her. Adapting is when a man scratches his ass while he’s brushing his teeth in the bathroom, where she doesn’t have to hear or see it.”

Called to defend his gender, Carter used the remote to mute the television. “Okay, you make a really good point, but—”

“I make an excellent point.” She took the remote, and though she wasn’t the least bit interested in the Elizabethan Bedding Show, she turned the volume back up.

“Inviting me here isn’t going to help you, you know.”

Inexplicably wounded by his offhand remark, she tried to force some interest in the luxurious, 20-piece quilted gold bedding ensemble. “I don’t need help. I needed a favor, and that’s what I got.”

Carter pulled the dish of strawberries and chocolate closer. He grasped the long green stem of a strawberry and transferred the heavy fruit to the still pool of chocolate. Khela’s tummy grumbled its envy when Carter brought the sweet treat to his mouth. Other parts of her body responded with jealousy when he used the tip of his tongue to collect a drop of chocolate from the plump round of the strawberry.

“What you need is a man,” he said before chomping into the chocolate-drenched fruit.

Khela’s mouth dropped open.

“I’m not talking about the chumps you’ve been with, who’ve clearly soured you on relationships,” Carter went on. “You need a real man.”

She daintily cleared her throat. “I have one. You. And on Sunday night, you turn back into a pumpkin.”

His movements casual but deliberate, Carter retrieved the bottle of Dom Perignon from the end of the bar. Room service had already stripped the foil and untwisted the wire cage, and as he returned to the sofa, Carter used his thumbs to work at the cork.

“Heads up, doll,” he said, bracing the butt of the bottle against his right hip.

Twisting the bottle rather than the cork like a professional sommelier, Carter freed the cork with an understated pop. A wisp of champagne fog escaped the bottle, but there was no cartoonish overflow as he brought the bottle to Khela. He sat facing her, their knees touching.

“Nice work,” she said, taking the bottle in both hands. “Not a drop wasted.”

“Sloppiness is for show. For amateurs.”

“Cheers.” She raised the bottle in a quick toast before taking a hearty swig from it. Champagne wasn’t her favorite libation by any means, but there was something delightfully decadent about drinking complimentary Dom Perignon from the bottle.

She passed the bottle back to Carter, who took a long swallow from it before propping it on his knee.

“I’m white, you know,” he said matter-of-factly.

“I prefer to think of you as melanin-compromised,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“I would have thought it might be a disadvantage for you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Well, you said you needed a certain kind of man to accompany you this weekend. Wouldn’t it be more convincing if you were here with a black guy?”

“You’re the best I could get on such short notice,” Khela said.

“You’re a real sweet talker, you know that?”

“What I mean is that I needed someone handsome. That’s all. Someone who fit the mold of the heroes I create. My heroes are all races. You love who you love, plain and simple.”

“That’s profound, from someone who doesn’t believe in love.”

She continued as though he hadn’t spoken. “I’ve dated black men, white men, Latin men, Jewish men. My ex-husband is—”

Carter abruptly sat up. “You have an ex-husband?”

“Don’t look so surprised. It comes with the territory.”

“Are a lot of you writers divorced?”

Khela stared at the vaulted ceiling as she gave him an accounting. “Martine is on her third husband. Kitty is still with her second. Garland—”

“He’s straight?”

“—is on his sixth or seventh longtime companion,” Khela finished. “January Rose was married for twenty-eight years. Her husband died last year. Heart attack. Rose is the only person I know, author or civilian, who found true love. Then her husband ups and dies on her.”

“I’m sure, given a choice, he wouldn’t have upped
or
died.”

“It just frustrates me.” Khela stared at her feet. “Even the people who find real love don’t get to keep it.”

“They had twenty-eight years,” Carter pointed out.

Khela whipped her head around to face him. “Would that be enough for you, if you managed to find the one person in the world who made every day worth living?”

Her gaze locked onto his, the yearning in her eyes almost palpable. Too late, Carter looked away, self-conscious at having perhaps revealed too much of his own longing.

“January Rose is a genuine sorceress,” Khela said softly, looking away. “Her romances are so good because she has lived what she writes.”

“What about Carmen?” Carter passed her the champagne.

“What about her?” Khela remarked sharply.

“Is she divorced?”

Prickled, Khela snapped, “What if she is?”

The left side of Carter’s mouth rose in a telling smile. “You’re jealous.”

“Of what?” she scoffed.

“My interest in Carmen.”

“No, I’m not,” she lied to his face. A spiky ball of acid green jealousy rolled around in her stomach, surprising her with its potency. “Are you really interested in her?”

He sat back, holding the bottle to the chandelier light to gauge the amount of champagne remaining before he answered her. “She’s really beautiful.”

The jealousy ball expanded exponentially.

“She seems very smart, too,” Carter went on.

Khela’s champagne hissed and fizzed in her belly and started to come back on her.

“But she’s not my type,” Carter grinned.

“You suck,” Khela snarled around a reluctant smile. She relaxed into the sofa and snatched the champagne from him. After her stomach settled, she gulped another swig. “But since you brought it up, what kind of woman
is
your type?”

Carter picked up two more strawberries and toyed with them in one hand. “Do you want to know my ideal, or what I’d settle for?”

“Both.”

“My ideal is easy.” He cleared his throat. “I want someone smart. Attractive. Unpredictable.” He glanced at her. “Unpredictable in a fun way, not a let’s-carry-vials-of-each-other’s-blood way.” He found it easier to confess his desires to his strawberries, so he kept his gaze on them. “I want someone who’ll look at me and see what really matters. And want me, anyway.”

“What about money?” Khela’s mouth went dry.

“What?”

“You want your dream woman to be smart, pretty and a barrel of monkeys. Don’t you want her to have a well-paying job, too?”

Confused, Carter shook his head. “I’d rather she had a job that made her happy.”

She thrust her chin at him. “But money would be a nice perk, wouldn’t it?”

“Why do you have your tail up all of a sudden?”

“I’m not…” She stopped when she heard the hostility in her voice. She softened and said, “I don’t mean to. It’s just that men seem to be more attracted to my bank account than to me.”

Carter snickered. “You’re no better.”

Khela almost punched him. “What the hell does that mean?”

“You invited me tonight because of the way I look. That’s just as bad as someone wanting to date you because of your income.”

She stifled her initial reaction to his insult, which was to cuss him out, when she noticed his somber expression. He was right, not that she’d ever admit it to him.

“You sound like you’ve got experience in being used,” she said quietly.

“I was engaged to a woman who wanted to marry me because she liked my genes,” he sighed.

“I don’t know if I blame her,” Khela admitted. “You do look pretty good in your Levis.”

Carter reached over and gave the end of her nose a light thunk. “G-E-N-E genes, scribbler, not J-E-A-N-S. I overheard her and her parents debating our future the night before the wedding. It was at the Cypress Ridge Golf and Tennis Club in Decatur. Her parents were paying for everything, since my people didn’t have a pot to piss in. Savannah—”

“You were engaged to a woman named Savannah?” Khela chuckled.

“Do you wanna hear my tale of tragedy and woe or not? ’Cause I can just go on to bed, if—”

“Go on,” Khela urged. The champagne loosened his tongue, intensifying the slow, sleepy, undiluted ’Bama drawl that Khela could listen to all day. “I’m sorry.” She giggled softly.
Savannah…
“I’ll bet she was a pageant girl, wasn’t she?”

He chuckled. “The name gave it away?”

“Yep. So what was she? Miss Chilton County Peach Blossom? Miss Elkmont Soybean?”

“She began her career at three when she won Grand Supreme at the Southern Baby Belles and it ended nineteen years later, when she came up third runner-up for Miss Alabama. That’s when she decided it would be best to get hitched, start makin’ babies, and force her husband into her daddy’s cattle business.”

“At least she told you her plans up front.”

“Uh uh.” He slowly shook his head. “I didn’t know the master plan until I overheard it at the wedding rehearsal dinner. She and her parents were talking to some of their kin, and I heard them say that Savannah’s people had enough brains and money to take care of us, but that I had good genes to contribute. Our children would be tall, strong and good-looking, and in another generation, you’d never know that ‘lesser’ stock had been a part of their evolution.”

“That’s gross,” Khela said.

“I was just a human version of Secretariat to them. Someone to sire good foals. Savannah and I had words about it. She admitted that love wasn’t her motivating factor in accepting my proposal. I called off the wedding, left Alabama before her daddy could load his rifle and I haven’t been back for more than two days at a time since.”

“So we’re both walking wounded,” she replied.

“I guess so,” he muttered.

They sat, silent, watching the bright lights break over the harbor.

“I’m sorry I used you,” she said softly.

“I’m sorry I’m so handsome.”

His remark was just the right thing to break the tension, and they spent the next moment laughing. Carter scooted closer to Khela, putting his feet up on the cocktail table so that his ankle touched hers.

“If we were characters in one of your books, what would be happening to us at this point in the story?” he asked.

She shrugged. Looking at her strawberry rather than at Carter, she answered his question. “I suppose what was supposed to happen would have happened already. My heroine would have slipped into the shower with the hero for hot, urgent ‘first sex’ in the tight, steamy confines of the shower stall.”

Carter inhaled deeply through his nose, his eyebrows rising with the expansion of his chest.

Khela ran her knuckles along her thighs, unmindful of the way Carter’s eyes followed their path. “The showerhead is on a flexible cord, so they would have had all kinds of fun with that. They would have spent at least fifteen-hundred words learning each other’s tastes, textures and responses,” she went on, “and then he would have surprised her by putting her pleasure first. And he’d know very creative ways to please her. She would respond in kind, of course, probably trying techniques and positions she’d only heard of or read about.”

Her voice softened, and now she spoke more to herself than to him. “The way he stared at her would almost be enough to bring her to orgasm. She might touch herself while he watched, partly to tease him, partly to let his reaction thrill her even more. When she was ready, she would pull him to her, and their bodies would fit together as though they had been made for each other. She would have found carnal freedom and expression the likes of which she hadn’t before thought herself capable.”

She shook herself from her reverie and looked up to see Carter staring at her, his forehead creased in rapt attention. “She would make love to this man with her whole self. Without guilt, without regret…without expectation.”

After a moment of silence in which he was aware of nothing but the contact between his ankle and Khela’s, Carter rattled his words loose. “Would your hero ask permission before he kissed the heroine?”

Pensive, Khela stared at the chafing dish. Seduction in a bowl. That’s what the warm chocolate represented as she toyed with the giant berry in her hand. Everything about chocolate was designed to seduce—its scent, color and certainly its creamy, sinful taste. But the pool of melted chocolate before her held no temptation, not compared to Carter.

His eyes fluctuated between honey and cinnamon as they delved into hers, and Khela longed to run her fingers through his dark hair. He smelled so fresh, masculine and clean. So much better than chocolate.

“No,” she replied. “He wouldn’t need to.”

Her strawberry fell to the carpet and rolled under the cocktail table as she pitched herself onto Carter. His strong hands caught her ribcage in time to keep her mouth from crashing violently into his. She kissed him, and he let her, opening his legs to cradle her between them. Her heavy, eager breaths mingled with his as she tasted each of his lips and his chin before deeply kissing him once more. Awkwardly, she maneuvered her hands under his T-shirt and raised it, exposing his chest. Tiny nips here and there sent his blood rushing south, and Khela settled more comfortably upon the hard bulge pressing into her lower abdomen.

He palmed her backside as she cupped him and caught his lower lip between her teeth. Carter shifted, rolling her onto her back to lie half atop her. He covered her throat and chest with kisses, savoring her softness. She took his face and brought his mouth back to hers, amazing him all over again at how well she kissed.

If her writing was only half as good, it was no wonder she’d had so many bestsellers. Carter grinned against her lips, wondering what else she did with such skill.

He slipped one strap of her camisole from her shoulder, kissing its path to the cap of her shoulder. His lips traveled lower, over the thin cotton jersey, until they closed over the taut tip protruding from it. Khela drew in a shivery breath, her spine arching toward Carter. The warm, languid melting sensations she wrote about began to flow through her as Carter spoiled her flesh. When he slipped a hand under the waistband of her pants, she thrust her fingers into his hair and guided his head to her neglected breast. His fingers delved deeper, his longest coming to rest along her moist cleft. Slowly, wonderfully, beautifully, he began to stroke her, his touch light and knowing.