Past Midnight (6 page)

He’d take what he could get.

 

 

IT WAS BARELY TWO THIRTY IN THE AFTERNOON, AND ERIN FELT AS if her head might explode.

“Honey, come and meet Ryan.” In the cacophony of the exhibit hall, she read his lips as Dominic waggled his fingers at her.

The man called Ryan folded her hand in both of his. He was short and slight like a jockey, blond and good-looking in an ethereal way, his skin pale, blue veins close to the surface. She preferred a hardier type, like Dominic.

“It’s so nice to meet you, Mrs. DeKnight.”

“You can call her Erin,” Dominic said, adding the name of the team Ryan either owned or worked for. His words, though, were washed away in a burst of laughter from the next booth.

Her head ached beneath the overhead lights beating down, accompanied by the noise magnified in the high-ceilinged hall and an overabundance of cologne that didn’t quite mask the odor of too many sweaty male bodies.

Dominic loved it all—the people, the loud voices, the activity, the endless schmoozing. He actually seemed proud showing her off to the cast of characters he’d met over the years. Now let’s see, Ryan was the one who liked . . . She couldn’t remember.

“Yes, please call me Erin.” She echoed Dominic.

Ryan—was that his first or last name—dropped her hand as if sensing he’d held on too long. “You’re as beautiful as your husband claimed.”

Dominic stamped her with a hand on her nape, drawing her closer. He leaned over to whisper in her hair—“More so”—then raised his voice to include Ryan. “I’m glad Erin could finally make it here with me this year.”

Most men would shrivel having to introduce their wives at this traditionally male-dominated trade show. If the parties afterward were anything to go by, trade shows and conferences were where guys went for a week away from the wife. But not Dominic. He was different.

She owed it to him to put on a good face for his friends. They were her customers, too. She searched for a topic . . . and Ryan’s preferences hit her. He liked twins, as in a threesome with female twins. She hid a smile. Okay, not the topic she’d bring up now, but maybe she’d tease Dominic with it later.

But while she was thinking of what to say, Ryan moved on to the reason he’d stopped by the booth. “I hear you’ve got a through-coat gauge now.”

Erin could feel each breath in and out of her chest. Dominic had been working on the gauge last year when . . . She swallowed past the lump in her throat.

“Sure we’ve got one.” Dominic’s voice had gone oddly flat, his eyes darkening. He bent to pull the sample locker from beneath the table.

The gauge had become one of their top sellers this year, yet this was the first time during the trade show that Dominic had brought out the sample, let alone set it out among the others he’d put in the display cases.

Rising, Dominic laid the instrument across Ryan’s palm. “Check it out.” He held up a painted metal pipe. With an ultrasonic gauge, you didn’t have to cut the pipe to measure the center thickness. Only one available side was necessary, an important characteristic when you were trying to measure corrosion on the inside. With the through-coat gauge, you could obtain accurate measurements even on a piece of metal with a coating such as rubber or paint, which made it essential in high-performance racing.

Dominic was knowledgeable, personable, and he loved talking with people. He knew something about everything, could offer an insight on almost any subject. He was a charmer, not in a male-female way—though he was certainly capable of that—but he knew how to put people at ease, how to talk to them, how to bring them around to his way of thinking. If there was something wrong with a hotel room, he sweet-talked the front desk clerk into fixing it and ended up with accommodations twice as nice.

The trade show was more about showing off your wares, making an indelible impression, getting people to call you on Monday morning with the order. Yet with this gauge, Dominic was monotone, almost an automaton, reciting the features as if he were a disinterested telemarketer reading lines from a brochure. He didn’t look at Ryan. He didn’t look at her. A tick fluttered momentarily beneath his eye.

Still, Ryan walked away after ordering five of the gauges. Dominic laid the instrument back in the sample locker and shoved it out of sight under the table again.

In her worst moments, she’d hated Dominic for how easily he put aside his guilt, how easily he forgave himself, as if all he’d done that day last year was miss a meeting. She’d even envied his ability to forget. Yet watching him now, her whole body trembled. Maybe the only difference between them was that Dominic was better at hiding his grief and guilt. Suddenly, she couldn’t stand his silence, his brooding. And that gave her the tiniest inkling of how he must feel when she was in one of her moods.

“Twins,” she said, grabbing his hand. “Ryan was the one who was always looking for twins.” The smile she pasted on was so big and so phony it made her cheeks hurt.

He looked at her then, and each facet of his face seemed to shift; the tense line of his jaw eased, the frown slipped from his brow, his eyes lost the deep obsidian cast, and finally, his lips curved slightly. “You always said you were falling asleep when I told you that stuff on the phone.”

She’d
never
fallen asleep on those nights, had loved them. She wished she had the words to tell him that now. Something held her back. Something always did these days.

“It’s the little lady.” The voice boomed across the hall as if he were on the other end instead of standing outside their booth. Jamison. Erin couldn’t remember his first name. For all intents and purposes, these guys didn’t have first names. And she’d never been so happy to see anyone, as if he’d saved them from something terrible.

Before she could open her mouth, he gathered her up in a bear hug, his belt buckle pressing into her belly. She almost squeaked, staring helplessly at Dominic over the man’s shoulder.

She’d met him once. Jay’s memorial. He and his wife had been kind.
Please don’t say anything about that now.

“Pretty as a picture.” Jamison beamed with his big Yogi Bear smile as he set her back on her feet.

“Schmoozer,” Dominic said without inflection. Then he squeezed her hand. He held on for a few minutes of conversation that didn’t require her input. Slowly, his grip relaxed, the tense moments over the through-coat gauge drifting away. Maybe she’d imagined them in the first place.

 

 

“HERE’S THE INVITE.” JAMISON HANDED DOMINIC AN EMBOSSED card. “You know how to get there?”

“Looked it up on the Web. You weren’t kidding about posh.” Dominic had even looked up the prices of houses out in Windermere.
Definitely
posh.

Jamison shook his fingers in the air, then blew on them as if he were trying to put out a fire. “That husband of yours says he’s bringing you to Miterberg’s party tonight.” He socked Dominic in the arm, then leaned in close to Erin. “Do not
ever
tell my wife what goes on.” He zipped his lips. “I’m trusting you.”

“Not a word,” she promised.

He guffawed. “Right. I know you ladies stick together.” Soon after, with another hardy hand clasp, Jamison moved on.

“Why don’t you take the car and go back to the room?” Dominic said. They’d been at it since nine that morning, without even a break for lunch. He’d sent her off for a salad and a burger, but she’d brought the food back to the booth to eat with him. Now, she was sagging, shoulders drooping, eyes glassy from too much frenetic activity going on around her. She wasn’t used to men bear-hugging her, but she’d handled it well.

At work, when she had her fill of people, she could close her office door. Here, you couldn’t get away from the noise. It never bothered Dominic. Erin was different.

She hadn’t said a word while Ryan was here, not a thing when he retrieved the through-coat gauge. Dominic’s gut had clenched, partly from the things it made him remember, partly from fear of how she’d react if he showed the slightest enthusiasm about it. For a couple of months after Jay died, he’d considered scrapping the project altogether, probably would have if Cam Phan hadn’t stepped in until he could get his bearings.

Yet, despite his fears, Erin had bounced back after Ryan’s visit. She’d even joked about the twins as if
she
had to bring
him
out of a funk. It gave Dominic hope for the weekend, hope in general. Wrapping his arms across her back, he pulled her flush against his chest. She didn’t fight it. He nuzzled her ear, drinking in her scent, his heart thumping in his chest. It had been so long since she’d allowed him small intimacies like this. “Take a bath, get all gussied up for tonight.”

She opened her mouth. He knew what was coming. She didn’t want to go to the party. She’d tell him to go alone.

Instead, she dropped her eyelids to half-mast. “Your friends at the next booth are staring.”

“Because you’re beautiful,” he whispered.

“It’s because your hand is on my ass.”

She wore tight jeans again and a thin sweater that molded to her breasts. He hadn’t felt his hand drifting lower. “Does it make you hot?”

“That you have your hand on my ass?”

“No.” He shook his head slowly. “That they’re watching.”

The blue of her eyes deepened, and she moistened her lips, catching his gaze on the sight. “It does,” she admitted. “As if I’m on display.”

His skin felt suddenly stretched tightly over his bones. Giving her butt a one-handed squeeze, he pressed her hard to his cock. “A bath, a glass of wine. Get ready for anything, baby.”

Tonight, he was going to see how far he could push a few limits.

WINDERMERE WAS AN UPSCALE TOWN OUT ON THE ISTHMUS IN the Butler Chain of Lakes. Quaint, it was like something Erin pictured up in the northeast, with a pretty town square and a landmark town hall. Though it was close to nine o’clock, the icecream shop was still doing a brisk business and couples walked hand in hand on the sidewalk, navigating around families with strollers. Everyone was taking advantage of the unusually warm December air.

Fifteen or so miles southwest of Orlando, Windermere was idyllic. On the way in, they’d passed a sign for a nearby prep school. No ordinary public school for Windermere. This was where the rich came to live and play. It was the kind of place where you’d have to get a permit to have a garage sale and pay a deposit for the signage to make sure you took it down afterward. Then again, Windermere residents wouldn’t have garage sales; they’d do auctions at Sotheby’s.

Driving out toward the lake waters—which of the Butler Chain, Erin wasn’t sure—they left behind the houses and hit mansion central, the lakefront properties.

“Don’t be nervous,” Dominic said, anticipating her mood.

It was one of the habits she’d driven him to, anticipate and circumvent. It made her more determined to keep any black mood at bay for the evening. “I’m not nervous,” she gave the obligatory white lie. Her mother had cleaned houses like this for a living.

Dominic turned down a lane framed by trees, something tall, thin, and evergreen. Cypress maybe. Or juniper. He drove with his hand draped over the wheel. “You look sexy in that dress.”

It felt like a throwaway compliment, something said to make conversation. She didn’t call him on it. “Thank you.” Ever so polite. Yeah, she was more than a little nervous. The black velvet number hadn’t been out of its plastic hanging bag in a very long time.

Ground lights flanked the drive he pulled into. There was no gate, but a uniformed man stood by a pillar topped with a lion’s head. Dominic lowered the window and handed over the embossed card Jamison had given him.

Beyond the entry pillars, the front yard was a vast expanse of grass dotted with flowering bushes and a huge box hedge on either side, separating the property from the next estate. Lights gleamed along the front of the two-story house, illuminating the three-car garage and the walkway to the front portico and open double doors.

Invitation inspected and accepted, Dominic rolled away, stashing the card on the dash. He smiled at her, his teeth gleaming. “What do you think?”

He’d described the opulence of some of these parties, but she hadn’t quite believed him. “I hope the food is just as good because I’m starving.” He’d brought her a salad when he returned from the show, telling her to save her appetite.

“I guarantee you’ll be totally satisfied.”

With another flash of his teeth, she was pretty sure he wasn’t referring to food. Since the time that couple had stumbled upon them in the woods, they’d gotten a kick out of fantasizing about watching and being watched. But though Dominic had ventured to the Internet to scope out sex clubs, they’d never acted on it. Just the phone sex after some trade show or conference he’d attended. She’d suspected he made up half of it merely to excite her. And it had worked.

They pulled their nondescript rental car in among Mercedes, Jags, BMWs, and a fire-engine-red Mustang. A young parking valet with short blond hair opened her door and held out his hand to help Erin from the car.

Dominic loved people and parties, but he was also looking for something from her. Connection. She owed him at least this, a little pretending, a little forgetting. Why the hell not?

 

 

SHE WAS GORGEOUS IN BLACK VELVET, A DRESS HE HADN’T SEEN IN longer than he cared to admit. Even before they lost Jay, she’d worked too hard. He’d allowed her to. She’d paired black suede high heels with sheer black stockings. Wanting to save the surprise and heighten his anticipation, he hadn’t watched her dress and wasn’t sure if they were thigh highs. His skin heated in hope.

He knew her well, her signals, the nuances by which he gauged her mood. He also knew she hated it when he read her correctly. Now she was playing the dutiful wife.
This is what he wants, so this is what I’ll do and then maybe he’ll get off my case
. That wasn’t good enough for him.