AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Laurel ran the back of her wrist across her forehead.
“Your imagination’s working overtime. I’m making bread, not working out my frustrations.”
“Ah,” Susie said knowingly. She watched Laurel give the dough a few more turns and punches before dumping it into a bowl and covering it with a damp dish towel. “Because,” she said, going with instinct, “it occurred to me, it might just be Damian Skouras you were punching out.”
Laurel turned away and tore a piece of paper towel from the roll above the sink. She thought of saying, “Why would you think that?” and looking puzzled, but she’d barely gotten away clean the last time Susie had raised Damian’s name. Susie knew her too well, that was the problem.
“I told you,” she said flatly, “I’m making bread.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
Susie cleared her throat again. “So, have you heard from him?”
“Suze, you asked me that just the other day. And I said that I hadn’t.”
“And that you don’t expect to. Or want to.”
“Right again.” Laurel took the coffeepot from the stove and refilled Susie’s cup. She started to refill hers, too, but when she saw the glint of oil that floated on what remained, her stomach gave a delicate lurch. Wonderful. She had definitely picked up some sort of bug. Just what she needed, she thought, as she hitched her hip onto a stool opposite Susie’s. “So, where’s that handsome hunk of yours this morning?”
“At the gym, toning up his abs so he can keep his devoted fans drooling. And don’t try to change the subject. It’s your handsome hunk we were talking about.”
“My...?” Laurel rolled her eyes. “What does it take to convince you? Damian Skouras isn’t ‘my’ anything. Don’t you ever give up?”
“No,” Susie said, with disarming honesty. She lifted her cup with both hands, blew on the coffee, then took a sip. “Not when something doesn’t make any sense. You are the most logical, levelheaded female I’ve ever known.”
“Thank you, I think.”
“Which is the reason I keep saying to myself, how could a logical, levelheaded female turn her back on a zillionaire Apollo?”
“It was ‘Adonis’ the last time around,” Laurel said coolly. “Although, as far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t matter what you call him.”
“You didn’t like him?”
“Susie, for heaven’s sake...”
“Okay, okay, maybe I’m nuts—”
“There’s no ‘maybe’ about it.”
“But I just don’t understand.”
“That’s because there isn’t anything to understand. I keep telling you that. Damian Skouras and I went to dinner and—”
“Do you know, you do that whenever you talk about him?”
Laurel sighed, shook her head and gazed up at the ceiling. “Do what?”
“Well, first you call him DamianSkouras. One word, no pause, as if you hardly know the guy.”
As if I hadn’t slept with him, Laurel thought, and she felt a blaze of color flood her cheeks.
“Aha,” Susie said, in triumph. “You see?”
“See what?”
“The blush, that’s what. And the look that goes with it. They always follow, right on the heels of DamianSkouras.”
Laurel rose, went to the sink and turned on the water. “I love you dearly, Suze,” she said, squeezing in a shot of Joy, “but you are the nosiest thing going, did you know that?”
“George says I am, but what does he know?” Susie smiled. “Men don’t understand that women love to talk about stuff like this.”
“Stuff like what? There’s nothing to talk about.”
“There must be, otherwise you wouldn’t turn into a clam each time I mention Damian’s name.”
“I do not turn into a clam. There just isn’t anything to say, that’s all.”
“Listen, my friend, I was here that night, remember? I saw the way you guys looked at each other. And then, that was it. No further contact, according to you.”
“Hand me that spoon, would you?”
“You can’t blame me for wondering. The guy’s gorgeous, he’s a zillionaire and he’s charming.”
“Charming?” Laurel spun around, her cheeks flushed. “He’s a scoundrel, that’s what he is!”
“Why?”
“Because—because...” Laurel frowned. It was a good question. Damian hadn’t seduced and abandoned her. What had happened that night hadn’t been a Victorian melodrama. She’d gone to his bed willingly and left it willingly. If the memory haunted her, humiliated her, she had no one to blame but herself. “Susie, do me a favor and let’s drop this, okay?”
“If that’s the way you want it...”
“I do.”
“Okay, then. Consider the subject closed.”
“Great. Thank you.”
“It’s just that I’m really puzzled,” Susie said, after a moment’s silence. Laurel groaned, but Susie ignored her. “I mean, he looked at you the way a starving man would look at a seven-course meal. Why, if Ben Franklin had come trotting through this place that night, he wouldn’t have needed a kite and a key to discover that lightning bolts and electricity are the same thing!”
“That’s good, Suze. Keep going like that, you can give up dancing and start writing scripts for George’s soap.”
“You make it sound as if you didn’t like him.”
“You clever soul.” Laurel flashed a saccharine smile.
“How’d you ever come up with an idea like that?”
“Yeah, well, I don’t believe you.”
“You don’t believe me? What’s that supposed to mean?”
Susie rose, went to the pantry cabinet and opened it. “It means,” she said, taking out a box of Mallomars, “that lightning must have struck somewhere because I’ve never known you to come traipsing in at dawn.” She peered into the box. “Goody. Two left. One for you, and one for
me.”
Laurel glanced at the chocolate-covered marshmallow cookie Susie held out to her. Her stomach lifted again, did a quick two-step, then settled in place.
“I’ll pass.”
“I can have both?”
“Consider this your lucky day. And how do you know what time I came in?”
Susie bit into a cookie. “I went running that morning,” she said around a mouthful of crumbs, “so I was up at the crack of dawn. You know me. I like the streets to myself. Besides, these old floors squeak like crazy. I could hear you marching around up here. Pacing, it sounded like, for what seemed like forever.”
Not forever. Just long enough to try to believe there was no point in hating myself for what I’d done because it was already part of the past and I’d never, not in a million years, do anything like it again.
“Where’d he take you that night, anyway?”
“You know where he took me.” Laurel plucked a cup from the suds and scrubbed at it as if it were a burned roasting pan. “To dinner.”
“And?” Susie batted her lashes. “Where else, hmm?”
To paradise in his arms, Laurel thought suddenly, and the feeling she’d worked so hard to suppress, the memory of how it had been that night, almost overwhelmed her.
Maybe she’d been a fool to leave him. Maybe she should have stayed. Maybe she should have taken up where the blonde had left off...
The cup slipped from her hands and smashed against the floor.
“Dammit,” she said fiercely. Angry tears rose in her eyes and she squatted and began picking up the pieces of broken china. “You want to know what happened that night?” She stood up, dumped the pieces in the garbage and wiped her hands on the seat of her jeans. “Okay, I’ll tell you.”
“Laurel, honey, I didn’t mean—”
“I slept with Damian Skouras.”
Susie took a deep breath. “Wow.”
“I slept with a guy I didn’t know all that well, didn’t like all that much and didn’t ever want to see again, because—because—”
“I understand the because,” Susie said softly.
Laurel spun toward her, her eyes glittering. “Don’t patronize me, dammit! If I don’t understand, how can you?”
