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"I have a suggestion," Madison said. Glancing at Geoff's face, she took her cue from his conflicted expression and hoped she wasn't losing her mind. "Sam has opened a door that I suspect you all have thought about, but maybe not in as much detail as she has."
"Sam, overthinking things? With her OCD personality? Not a chance." Chris said it with a straight face, earning a shove from Geoff and a mock scowl from the young woman.
Madison chuckled. "Men aren't great at asking directions, so someone has to be willing to get out of the car and ask before things get too frustrating." She gestured around the store. "I'm not going anywhere. Why don't you all go down the street to the sandwich shop? They have great breakfast bagels and outdoor seating, and it's a lovely place to relax and chat. You can talk about it. Talk about what each of you really wants."
As she met their eyes in turn, she realized they were listening to her as if she knew what she was talking about. More amazingly, she felt as though she did.
Nothing more dangerous than a little knowledge, she reminded herself dryly, and tried to rein it back, keep it in safe parameters. "I think Sam knows what she wants, but she's afraid of losing or offending either of you by saying it. I also think Geoff knows what he wants, but he's not sure how both of you feel about it. And Chris . . ." She turned her gaze to him, thought of Troy, and couldn't help smiling. "You're the easygoing one of the group. You'll be the one who boils it down to what it is, keeps them both from overthinking it."
He grinned at that, but he had a thoughtful look of his own. With her serious talking points, he'd realized more was happening here than awkward doublespeak and playful costume choices.
"So go talk about it. Go home and play with the idea, play with each other. And then come back to me when you're ready."
"You're not going to sell us anything?" Sam's brow furrowed. "We're interested in--"
"No, she's not going to sell us anything." Geoff cut in, met Madison's gaze. "Not right now. But later."
"Yes, later." She put her hand on Sam's arm. "I could load you up with several hundred dollars' worth of merchandise. But you'd take it home, play with it, then set it aside like a gimmick, vaguely unsatisfied, because you played with the wrapping, not the present. Not what lies beneath the surface. Figure that part out, then you can come back and decide how you want to wrap up the gift."
Sam considered that, then nodded. Impulsively, she covered Madison's hand, squeezed it. "I'm so glad I followed my intuition and came back here. I don't know about your sister, but you seem exactly as my friend described her to me."
The words lanced her heart, painful but not necessarily wrong or bad. "I learned a lot about this kind of thing from her." I just have to open myself to listen. And please God, let Alice be guiding me now so I don't run these three nice people down the wrong path and ruin their lives.
"When you come back, if you come back, I'll be delighted to put you on my frequent buyer reward program," Madison said. "Here, take my card. You can call me if you want to check my inventory from home. We'll have a website running again soon, though I'm always happy to have you come here to see me."
Chris and Sam both looked toward Geoff. Geoff put his hand on Sam's lower back and touched Chris's arm, holding it briefly in a way that had the man giving him a bemused look. "Bagels sound good," he said. "Thank you, ma'am. We appreciate it. We'll be back."
"I hope so." She sent them off with another smile and wave. When the door closed, a sultry Latin tune winding to a finale over the store speakers, she drew a shuddering breath. "Oh my God. Did I really just do that?"
She'd taken over, guiding them toward actualizing their fantasies and improving their sex lives, maybe their very relationship. While in that zone, she'd felt like she'd been doing it for the past ten years, not for these past few minutes. Her first real sale. Nearly. If they came back.
She gave the ceiling a suspicious look. "You're not possessing me, are you, Alice? Because that would really piss me off. I'm not sure about this whole selling-something-by-not-selling-it. It seems like exactly the kind of thing you would do."
But it seemed right to Madison as well.
"She doesn't strike me as the possession type. Though I can arrange fo
r a priest if you need it."
She twisted around to see Logan standing at the opening to her storeroom. "I need to change the locks. The people next door have no respect for privacy."
He chuckled. "Sorry. I was putting something else in my overflow storage and couldn't help overhearing. Well played."
It bolstered her more than she wanted to admit. Riding the feeling, she decided to act on another impulse, with a far greater potential for disaster.
"Okay," she said. "About the movie. My place. A week from Friday. And no sex. Like you said."
Because if she stated the term, he'd honor it, as he had last night. On Friday, when he crossed her threshold with all that out-front sexuality that promised he could leave a woman as satisfied as a cat with a bowl of cream, she'd regret it, but another part of her liked knowing she could trust him like that.
Giving her a nod, his eat-you-with-a-spoon smile, he disappeared. She listened to his steps, taking him back to his store. For the first time in a long time, she felt the excitement of the unexpected, the thrill of . . . infatuation. It was terrifying.
Fortunately, the strains of "Bolero" began, telling her she had more customers. That was exciting as well. She hoped she'd see Geoff, Sam and Chris again, and not just because she needed to pay the rent. She wanted to see how the story turned out . . . or continued . . . or began.
*
"What kind of oil would you prefer, Mrs. Grady? This one has a touch of vanilla, but more importantly, the chemical blend comes closest to replicating your own natural lubricants, working with your body, and helps with the pH balance so you're not as susceptible to infection. Here, I have sample bottles, if you'd like to take one with you rather than committing to a purchase right away."
Madison added the sample bottle to the fifty-something woman's pink bag of merchandise, which included several pairs of stockings for her excellent legs, a remote-controlled, multisetting bullet vibe and the special panties with the insert to hold it.
