Something Wild (2 page)

And if any other girl had tossed a line like, "Be ready for anything" at him, Ryan might've backed off. He'd just moved here from Chicago to get a new start, and part of that meant settling down, walking the straight and narrow, and avoiding
anything
that might get him into trouble. But Penny the Sandwich Girl seemed … harmless. Too cute to be wild. And the way Ryan saw it, that made her the perfect girl for him. New city, new job, and now a nice, down-to-earth girl to date.

So sure he'd meet her tonight. Ten o'clock. Corner of Fourth and Walnut. While he might not be ready for anything, he would go prepared for a nice, fun, uncomplicated evening with a nice, fun, uncomplicated girl.

* * *

As the lunch rush waned and the restaurant began to empty, Penny called Patti over to the long, mahogany bar where she was removing half-filled glasses and dirty plates to a tub bound for the dishwasher.

"Whatcha need?" Patti approached the bar clutching a damp rag in her fist.

Penny widened her eyes as if to say
pleeeeease.
"An afternoon off.
This
afternoon, in fact. Do you mind if I leave after we get the lunch mess under control?"

Patti tilted her head in response, her long, light-brown hair falling over one shoulder. "What for?"

"Well, you know Martin's going out of town tomorrow, right? So I want to plan a … special evening with him before he goes. Before I make my decision."

Patti's mouth dropped open. "Pen, you can't seriously be thinking of marrying him. I mean, are you? Really?"

Penny pursed her lips in irritation. "Yes, I am. Really." Most of the time, Penny accepted her older sister's well-meaning wisdom, but at the moment, she felt uncharacteristically bold. "What of it?"

Patti blinked. "Touchy."

"Well, you would be, too, if I said something like that to you."

"I'm sorry," Patti said. "But I'm worried about this decision of yours. You haven't known the guy long enough to be marrying him."

"I've known him for two years!"

"He's been a
customer
for two years. That's not the same as knowing him."

"Even so, we get along great, we like the same things, we respect each other's ambitions, and he's a really nice person. So what if I haven't been dating him forever? If something works, it works. Right?"

Patti narrowed her gaze on Penny. "Don't take this the wrong way," she said softly, "but don't you think Martin is just a little … boring?"

Penny sighed, for more reasons than she could easily name. When it came right down to it, wasn't she really pretty boring herself? Oh, she was fairly witty on her good days and she got along well with people, but it wasn't as if she was the life of every party. In fact, Patti's accusation seemed as good an argument as any in
favor
of marrying Martin.

And she also guessed it hurt a little to have her sister cast aspersions on a man she liked and cared for. She felt the need to defend him, both for his sake and hers. "Maybe he's
not
so boring."

"Oh?" Patti lifted her eyebrows.

"Ask me tomorrow," Penny said with a coy grin.

"Ah." Patti nodded knowingly. "You haven't slept with him yet."

Penny chose not to answer, but suspected the warmth climbing her cheeks replied for her.

"Well then, by all means, take the rest of the day off. There are enough servers on the clock to keep things under control, and if the guy's leaving tomorrow, I certainly don't want to prevent the big event from taking place."

"Thanks," Penny said quietly, although she couldn't help feeling the unspoken part of Patti's words, as well—
I
don't want to prevent you from finding out he's boring in bed, too.

On every other level—family, friends, the successful business they'd built together—she and Patti always saw eye to eye and treated each other like equals. But when it came to guys, romance, love, Penny always felt as if she were behind in the game, as if Patti knew more than her. She didn't understand why, since they'd both had their fair share of serious relationships, and they both remained relatively confident, content, single women. But maybe Patti had always been just a little more adventurous, a little more knowledgeable about sex, a little more … everything.

Well, Penny hoped her sister was wrong about Martin. She hoped by the time the sun rose tomorrow morning, she'd be able to announce that he was indeed
not
boring, and that they were fabulously, wildly compatible in bed.
Take that, Patti.

And it really would happen, too; she could just feel it. Everything was going to go her way. After all, Patti would probably drop over in a dead faint if she knew some of the stuff—the fantasies—that had played through Penny's mind lately. She hardly knew where they were coming from, but if someone as straitlaced as Penny had a secret side, then surely Martin did, too. Now, to find it.

As Penny made the phone call to secure a limousine, then grabbed up her purse to set out shopping, she put more of tonight's plan in place in her head. She'd figured if she was going to go through with this seduction business, she might as well go all the way. So she'd sifted through her growing sexual desires and picked out an easily realized fantasy, one of several that'd always been a loosely formed thought, yet which had gathered into something more solid in her mind over the past days.

Stepping out into the hot summer sun that beat down on the city sidewalk, she glanced at the large digital clock jutting from the corner of the building. It was almost two. T minus eight hours and her fantasy would begin, and Martin would get the thrill of his life.

* * *

Seven and a half hours later, Penny sat behind the black limousine's tinted windows, feeling like someone else. Which stood to reason, since she'd paused before the mirror in her foyer not long ago trying to figure out who she saw there. With hair volumized by electric rollers that hadn't seen the light of day since high school, makeup that somehow changed the entire appearance of her face, and especially with the little black dress and strappy heels she wore, it was no wonder she couldn't recognize herself.

She'd instructed the driver to stop the limo at the corner of Fourth and Walnut at precisely ten o'clock where a gentleman would be joining her. Only now, as she rode in unnerving silence, did she begin to wonder if the stoic thirty-something driver suspected what was about to happen back here. She pressed the button that raised a dark panel between them.

Eyeing the bottle of champagne in the ice bucket, Penny reached for it. She'd intended to save it for Martin and his seduction, but she needed it now. Hopefully it would calm her down. Filling one of the long, fluted glasses provided, she drained it by half, then paused as the bubbly, tingling sensation skittered through her.

Drinking another quick glass and a half as they neared downtown, she thought she was almost relaxed. But then, maybe
relaxed
was the wrong word. As it had earlier in Martin's office, fear was beginning to give way to anticipation.

Her fantasy was to make wild love to a man in a moving limousine. It was fairly simple as fantasies went, she supposed, but that made it attainable, too, and something about it just sounded so glamorous and urgent. Although she'd never experienced it, she'd always been fascinated by the idea of two people so truly impassioned that they couldn't even wait to get home.

The limo tooled around the downtown streets, moving past Fountain Square, turning right onto Walnut, soon passing the awning-covered entrance to the Two Sisters Pub, still open for business on a Friday night. But Penny's thoughts had nothing to do with work. Instead, she pondered the black push-up bra and thong panties beneath her dress. No one who knew her would believe she even owned such things, let alone wore them. Oh, she'd always liked pretty lingerie, but the stuff she had on tonight, underneath
and
on top, fell into a different category. Even she could scarcely believe that good girl Penny Halloran could be this utterly wild! She bit her lip and silently thanked God for inventing champagne. Yet as she gazed out the tinted windows as they circled the block, she suffered a startling thought. What if somehow the windows weren't really tinted well enough? What if somehow people on the street or in other cars could actually see in? She knew it was a crazy thought, but the idea of being seen was almost enough to squelch the delicious bit of naughtiness that had begun to bite pleasantly into her spine. She wanted to be wild, she wanted to give herself over to complete abandon, she wanted to be
everything
for the man she was about to seduce, but she also wanted to shut out the rest of the world, make sure they both knew they were the only two people involved.

So Penny reached up and drew the tiny shade over the window next to her, snapping it shut at the bottom, then moved about the whole interior of the limo, darkening every window the same way.

When she was done, the inside of the car was as black as a cave. Martin wouldn't be able to see her—her voluminous hair, her crimson lips, her sexy, clinging dress. But at least he would be able to
feel
that part, then peel it off her, so maybe that was all that mattered. Their hands, their bodies—all exploring and connecting. And of course, if she really
did
want Martin to see her, she could easily flip on the overhead light… But maybe, she decided, this whole thing would be easier to accomplish in the dark.

With that in mind, Penny reached up to the car's ceiling and located the switch that controlled the interior light. Shifting it until the overhead bulb came on, she studied the settings: On, Off and Door. She didn't even want Martin to see her when he stepped inside the car, so she moved the switch to Off, immersing herself in a darkness that wouldn't be interrupted when the door opened.

The truth was, an old nemesis had begun to return over the last few minutes. Fear, nervousness. She'd never done anything so completely contrary to her normal self, and at the moment—champagne or no champagne—she was beginning to grow uncertain if she could pull this off without feeling like an idiot. What on earth would Martin think? What if he didn't like it? What if he thought she was easy, sleazy? What had she been thinking to rent a limousine just for the purpose of having sex in it?

Penny was a heartbeat away from forgetting the whole idea of seduction, and instead trying to convince Martin she'd intended nothing more than a fun evening of champagne and barhopping on

, when the limo pulled to the curb, gliding to a slow stop.

They were at Fourth and Walnut; Penny could feel it. And somehow, just arriving there, just knowing she stood on the very brink of either embracing her desires or running from them, girded her strength in a way she'd never imagined.

Penny swallowed hard, determined to take this bold leap into sexual abandon without looking back. This was it, the beginning of something wild.

* * *

As Ryan pushed through the revolving brass doors that led out to

, the sultry summer air hit him like a brick. He thought to reach up and loosen his tie, but instead tightened it a little instead, wanting to look good for his date, or at least as good as a guy could look after working fourteen hours straight. It had seemed silly to drive home, then come back to meet Penny, when there was plenty he could do at the office. He intended to make a good impression on Martin and go places in this company, and he figured there was no time to start like the present.

The glow of streetlamps lit the city night, but when he glanced at the corner she'd indicated on her note, no one was there.

Well, no one but whoever sat in that shiny black limo. A matching black-clad driver stood at the car's door.

Ryan shifted his gaze to the green awning bearing the familiar Two Sisters logo—a cartoonish line drawing of two women, one holding up a hamburger, the other a mug of beer—and wondered if Penny might be inside. But no, she'd said the corner, so he'd wait there for a few minutes before looking elsewhere.

When he checked his watch at five after ten, he glanced up to see that the limo still lingered. And only then did it dawn on him. Could
she
possibly be inside it?

Nah, surely not. Not Penny the Sandwich Girl.

Yet for some reason he kept staring at the limo, and the longer he stared, the more he began to think, maybe. After all, the damn thing had been sitting at the corner since he'd walked out at ten on the dot. It seemed an elaborate first date, but the idea that she was inside began to press on him.

Even as he took a few tentative steps toward the big, black car, he actually debated forgetting this whole thing. He had the odd sense now that perhaps this "uncomplicated girl" was a little more complicated than she'd seemed. Yet something, call it curiosity, a simple Alice-in-Wonderland need to see what lay down the rabbit hole, drew him toward the car.

His heartbeat increased as he got nearer, wondering what awaited him. And even as his better judgment told him to turn around and walk away, to go get a drink somewhere by himself and then go home, curiosity bloomed into a pinch of excitement in his chest.

"I'm supposed to meet a woman here named Penny," he said to the driver.

The man responded by opening the car's door.

Ryan stepped into the cool air of the limousine with total confidence. Only when he sat down and the door shut behind him did he realize he'd been immersed in total darkness.