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"My sister hired her to clean my house," Russ said.
Greg laughed. "You've got to be kidding me. Fishing off your own dock, huh?"
"She's not going to clean my house anymore. But, er."
Greg raised his brows, waiting.
Russ sighed. "I rented my old apartment to her."
Greg's mouth dropped open. Several speechless moments went by, and then, "She must be fucking gorgeous."
"I thought I was helping out. Then suddenly we had a date pla
"Why do you want to get out of it?"
"She's ten years younger! She lives in a completely different world. She's immature. She's trying to find her place in the world."
"And she's hot. Let's not forget that she's hot."
Russ rolled his eyes.
"That's why you're talking to me," Greg said. "You know it's hopeless, but she's hot and you want her."
"If that thought doesn't make me want to break it off with her, nothing will. I don't want to be a creepy old fart."
"Stop being so hard on yourself. Frankly, I'm proud of you."
"What?"
Greg sat back, crossed one ankle over his knee, and said in an expansive, professorial tone, "It means you're getting on with life. And what a way to get on with it!"
"You're not much help."
"You don't want help. You want someone to validate your choice to jump her. You want to be absolved of guilt for being a lech."
Russ scowled. "I have to cancel this date."
Greg put his foot back on the floor, leaning forward and slapping both palms onto the table. "Don't do that, Russ," he pleaded. "You're living the dream, man! You're single, you're rich, and now you've got a hot young thing eager to jump your bones. You have to let her. Keep living the dream! For me. For your teammates. For every man who wishes he still had all his hair, a thirty-inch waist, and sex without begging."
Greg turned toward their teammate Tom, a forty-six-year-old accountant sitting at the other end of the row of tables. "Tom! Tell Russ what your wife did last week!"
"She went down on me," Tom said, a note of awe in his voice. His eyes gleamed as if recounting a visit by a saint. "For the first time in three years. And I didn't even ask. It was a beautiful thing." He touched the corner of one eye and made a noise suspiciously like a tear being sniffed back. "Beautiful."
Greg nodded at Russ. "You see? Three years without a blow job. That's what the future holds."
"You're depressing me," Russ said. "This is what life holds?"
"You're the last of the wild cowboys. We look at you as our symbol of freedom. That's why everyone's wife tries to set you up, marry you off. They want to take away our hope. They want us to forget that we, too, once ran free."
"Then why do we all end up married in the end? Why aren't the lot of you out roaming the range?"
"Gotta have someone to take care of me when I'm old," Tom said from down the table. "I already got arthritis in one foot. High cholesterol, bowel troubles-bad bowel troubles. Who's going to take care of me but my wife?"
Russ dropped his face into his hands, shaking his head. "More than I wanted to know, Tom. More than I wanted to know."
"Of course, the wife's the one who's making me go in for that colonoscopy." Tom scowled into his beer. "I'm not sure a blow job makes up for a camera up my ass."
"You see?" Greg said, his face a mask of pathos. "You gotta run free. For all of us. Seize the hottie, I say! Seize the hottie!"
"I'm too young for a midlife crisis. I'm breaking the date."
"Traitor."
Russ shook his head and promised himself he'd call Emma first thing in the morning and cancel their arrangement.
Chapter Six
Emma looked at the clock and whimpered. Russ would be there in fifteen minutes and she wasn't ready. Nothing was ready! Her eyes went to the microwave and the sexual accessory waiting within it.
Okay, so one thing was ready. But everything else was a disaster! It had been a week since she moved into the apartment, yet somehow that hadn't been enough time to get ready for this night.
She'd been late getting the stuffed, boneless leg of lamb into the oven and it still had forty minutes to cook, plus another fifteen minutes to rest before she could cut it, according to the recipe she'd downloaded off epicurious.com. The lima bean puree with garlic and rosemary had been made ahead and waited now to be rewarmed, but the utensils she had used were piled on the counter and in the sink, and her immersion blender had flung gobs of green puree onto the backsplash, the cupboards, and her blouse. The mint truffle ice-cream terrine for dessert was safely in the freezer, the homemade chocolate sauce in the fridge, but the mint sauce that also went with it was no more than a bag of leaves at the moment.
The table was only half-set. Her hair and face were a mess. Her body was a mess, the shower she'd taken earlier now a distant, sweaty memory.
She took a deep breath, assessing the situation. The lamb was cooking on its own. Setting the table and making the mint sauce could wait. The mixed greens salad was ready to throw together, giving him something to eat while she finished everything else up. If she was going to clean herself up, though, now was her only chance.
She looked down at her hands, which were shaking. Now that she was pausing in her frantic cooking rush she realized that her gut was sloshing with acid, her heart irregularly thumping, her vision blurring from the overdose of adrenaline.
The nervous anticipation was worse than on any first date. It was even worse than the night she lost her virginity.
Am I really going to do this? Am I really going to let a man I hardly know have sex with me three times a week?
She hovered on the thin edge of indecision, swaying between telling Russ to forget it, it was a mistake, she had to have been crazy to have said yes, and going ahead with the arrangement.
Is this really what I want?
She imagined the evening: Russ eating the di
At the end of it she would climb on top of him, her thighs parting over his hips, and guide the tip of his hardened shaft to her opening. She'd feel herself stretching as she eased herself down on him, his erection filling her as she had longed to be filled for so many lonely months, and then his hands would come up to grip her hips and guide her to his own rocking, thrusting motion.
Oh yes. A warm rush went through her loins. Yes, this was what she wanted, nerves be damned! And let the opinions of others be damned as well!
Emma tossed down her oven mitts and dashed for the bathroom to give herself a sponge bath and slap on some makeup. Sitting on the back of the toilet tank was the cold-waxing kit she'd bought earlier in the week and had conveniently forgotten about. She stared at it. She lifted her short skirt and looked down, parting her thighs enough to see if it was really so bad that she needed the wax.
Holy hairy monkeys!
She couldn't show that tangle to him. Couldn't send his penis fighting through that thicket, with its dark curls creeping down the insides of her thighs like vines.