Sex on Tuesdays Page 2

  My face felt like a slice of lasagna that’s been left out in the sun too long. You know, hot, dried out, throat clogged with what felt like lumps of dirt. Closing my eyes, I grabbed a quick steadying breath and let it out slowly to the count of ten. The hot flush I was experiencing had nothing to do with menopause and all to do with bloody Simon and his creepy Number Seven story.

  Voices rose and fell around me, yet I scarcely heard them. Enticing food smells emanated from the kitchen without producing one single drop of saliva. Acting like a secret agent from one of those spy comics my brother Rob used to read as a kid, I lowered the newspaper shielding my face and peered over the top.

  Okay, perhaps I was overreacting, but after Simon’s warning of monsters and crazies using the dating game as a springboard for violence, I wasn’t prepared to take any chances. If I waited for Craig at our prearranged meeting place outside the restaurant, I could end up with a blood-filled hole where my liver used to be. So…my plan was to observe from inside and if my date looked remotely shifty, sneak out the back door and run like hell.

  From my position at a table-for-four by the window, I studied the steady flow of people-traffic motoring along the footpath outside. They came in all shapes and sizes. Hurrying, dragging their feet, alone, in groups, scowling, smiling, chattering, stressed-out, laid-back. All heading for who knew where. I’ve always enjoyed people-watching, but tonight, on edge, I had eyes for only one person…

  Craig from Accounts.

  What about that gorgeous dark-haired Latino in the silver-grey suit? Damn…didn’t stop. Oh well, Latin lovers, as well as being hot and passionate, were also known for having a short fuse. Oh! Uh! Creepy guy with scraggly beard and voluminous black coat approaching. Slowing down. Scratching bum….

  Lowering my newspaper I leaned forward on the balls of my feet, ready for a quick getaway. The bearded guy had stopped and was looking around. Heart beating faster than a pneumatic drill on a road-works program, I pulled away from the window and flattened my body against the back of my chair.

  Please God, if that’s Craig don’t let him see me.

  It wasn’t until Creepy Guy stumbled over to the gutter, stomped hard on an empty drink can, shoved it into a pocket inside his long, dragging overcoat, and moved off down the street, that I released a rasping sigh.

  I owe you one, God. And I promise to stop stealing Simon’s Mars bars from his desk drawer and blaming his age-related loss of memory for their disappearance. That is, of course, unless I’m having a raging hot flush at the time and need a chocolate fix in a hurry.

  This was getting ridiculous. After all, meeting Craig could turn into a watershed moment for me. Could even provide hands-on experience for my column, as well as a journey towards finding my own Mr. Right. The man who rang every sexual bell for me…the man who could make my column authentic.

  Why had I let Simon get me so paranoid? My niece worked with Craig for goodness sake, so he must be okay. If the guy was a violent crazy, surely Suzy would have noticed. Although, come to think of it, Suzy did have a few complications clouding her mind at the moment. Like an ex-husband she despised but enjoyed having sex with, and a broken marriage with a husband she loved but who was found wanting between the sheets.

  But if Craig was a normal, testosterone-charged guy, why was he searching for the woman of his dreams on a blind date? Did he have a face like a monkey’s backside? Was he the spindly guy bullies knocked over and buried in the sand at the beach? Or was he just lonely, with unhappy relationship experiences in the past, like me?

  “G’day. I’m Craig Taylor. Are you Danielle Summers?”

  The panicky scream rising from my throat froze microseconds before it pierced the air. Pages from the newspaper slipped from my nerveless fingers, scattering every which-way across the floor, together with my tote bag and sunglasses.

  “Allow me,” said Craig, bending to retrieve my belongings from under the table.

  As he bent over, the muscles rippled under the black t-shirt that clung to his torso like a second skin. The denim of his faded jeans pulled enticingly across his oh-so-tight butt. Yum. My heart, which had gone into virtual cardiac arrest at his unexpected appearance, jumped and skipped like a kid on a caffeine high.

  And why not? The guy standing in front of me—smile so perfect it would enhance any toothpaste commercial—was no hammer-toting monster. Craig Taylor was so drop-dead gorgeous, for a moment I thought I’d died and gone to Hunk Heaven. There was something vaguely familiar about this particular hunk, but I couldn’t place where I’d seen him before. Probably in a Cleo centerfold. Navy blue eyes, one of those Greek god noses you find on marble busts displayed in national museums, physique of a gym addict and a mouth so yummy, so full, so mesmerizing, I had to forcibly hold onto the seat of the chair to stop from leaping to my feet and tasting it.

  But damn…he was young.

  Way, way too young.

  “That’s me. Guilty as charged,” I said and let out a frustrated sigh as he handed me my tote bag. “Thanks.” Hell, this guy was sliding down his mother’s birth canal around the same time I slid to the floor legless after too many tequila hits at the local pub, probably celebrating my 21st birthday.

  “My pleasure.”

  So why had he accepted a date with me?

  I shook my head, confused. “Why would a Cleo centerfold go on a blind date?”

  Oh, bugger! Heat blazed across my face. “Tell me I didn’t just say those words aloud.”

  Craig’s laugh confirmed the worst. “Suzy did warn me you were a bit of a sweet-talker.”

  “Did she also warn you that I’m old enough to be your moth…er…big sister?”

  “Oh, yes. And that’s cool. Mature women have so much more to offer in bed than young tight-assed career women, don’t you think?”

  Bed?

  As though we were discussing a subject as mundane as the advantages of eating lean pork chops as opposed to a fast-food hamburger-with-the-lot, he shrugged, then indicated the chair opposite. “May I?”

  Nodding my acquiescence so vigorously I was in danger of losing my head, I watched my very own Greek god pull out the chair and fold his beautiful well-toned body into its plastic contours.

  Bed?

  “As I was saying,” he went on, evidently not noticing my fish-gasping-on-the-end-of-the-line expression. “In my opinion, mature woman are more at home with their bodies. They’re just naturally sexier than women in their twenties and thirties. Take Kirstie Alley, or even Demi Moore. How cool are they?”

  I sucked in my stomach, pushed my boobs fore and centre, cleaned my teeth with a flick of the tongue and then dredged up my best older-woman, sex-kitten smile, which I had to admit was somewhat rusty. But hey, this gorgeous pin-up from Accounts was blatantly hinting at going to bed with me.

  So what if I’d failed Math at school? So what if I used my fingers to add up in an emergency? I knew exactly what one man and one woman in bed equaled—hot sweaty heart-thumping sex.

  I licked my lips in anticipation. Felt an overriding urge to leap up on the table and scream my good fortune to all the losers in the restaurant whose current menu didn’t offer sex with a centerfold—and then reality splattered me with a baseball bat and left me floundering. Craig was in his twenties while I was pushing the big 5-0. And wasn’t the game of sex normally played without the security of clothing? I cringed, imagining Gym Boy’s firm six-pack crushing against my sagging breasts—his tanned, well-toned body wrapped around my cellulite.

  Oh, God, no. Was I really ready for this? Two years without practice. What if I’d forgotten how to do the sex dance? What if Craig from Accounts was into threesomes and had a gorgeous blonde bimbo stashed in his bedroom waiting for us? What if he undressed me and then, disgusted with my wrinkles, tripped over his feet in his hurry to get away? I’d never live through the humiliation.

  Finally, still unsure of what to do if Craig really did come onto me, I took a steadying breath and placed a hand over my wil
dly hammering heart. If the damn thing didn’t slow down soon Craig would be ringing 9-1-1 for me instead of flicking a triple-ribbed, lime-scented condom from the stash in his back pocket. Smiling at the vision on the other side of the table, I was once again hit by the vague sense that I’d seen the man before. “Do I know you from somewhere, Craig?”

  He closed one eye in a sexy wink. “Hey, gorgeous, there’s no need to bring out that tired old cliché. It’s okay, I dig you.”

  I let out another sigh. It was no good. As tempting as Craig I-love-mature-women was—and boy was he tempting—I could not get involved. How could I? The guy was more than twenty years my junior. And what if my readers found out that Danielle Summers, the Tribute’s sex expert, had bedded a baby? Or, even worse, the baby whined and blabbed about me being crap in bed?

  It could be the end of my “Sex on…” columns. And then I’d be back to dirty fingernails and writing about the wonders of pigeon poop as fertilizer in the gardening section of the Tribute.

  Craig, obviously mistaking my dazed expression for pre-sex thirst, signaled a passing drink waiter. “I’ll have a beer, thanks mate,” he told the waiter before turning to me. “And what about you, Dani? What would you like?”

  My friend Megan told me about this cocktail which is all the rage with the young sophisticates at the moment. She said it was the coolest drink around and ace for steadying the nerves. And boy did my nerves need steadying. The drink consisted of 2 parts vodka, 1 part white rum, ½ part pomegranate and a splash of lime. I smiled up at the waiter. “Can you make a Virgin Scream?”

  Craig chuckled low in his chest. “If it’s all the same to you, Dani,” he spluttered. “That’s my job. After dinner, my sweet little virgin, I promise I’ll make you scream until your throat closes over.”

  “I’m not a…! A Virgin Scream is a…”

  I broke off. What was the point? My face a bush fire of embarrassment, I studied a small black spot on the tablecloth that looked as though it had once been a fly. “Don’t worry about it,” I mumbled. “Just get me a red wine.”

  “A pinot noir for the lady and a Toohey’s lager for me,” Craig said dismissing the smirking waiter. “And now,” he drawled turning back to me, “on a scale of one to ten, just how loud a scream are we discussing here?”

  If I ground my teeth together any harder, my dentist, compliments of my already sagging credit card, would soon be buying another Prada handbag for his wife. “Can we please talk about something else? Like your job?” I cleared my throat and forced the muscles of my face into a smile. “How long have you been working in Accounts?”

  The twinkle in his eyes could have lit up the foyer at the Festival Theatre. “I’d rather talk about you and me and screaming virgins.”

  “Craig, there is no you and me. Tonight’s date was a mistake. Hey, you’re a good-looking young man but you’re too—”

  He reached for me, his cool fingers caressing the contours of my face and turning my brain to mush. “Shhh…let’s not talk at all. Let’s just see where this night leads. Okay?”

  “But Craig…” And then his teasing fingers found my lips, one naughty digit nudging its way inside my mouth where it began to play games with the sensitive areas of my tongue. Games that sent my hormones crashing through the restaurant roof.

  “Mmm…” I said, meaning—Don’t stop. Please don’t stop. Or I’ll have to clamber across the table and rip your shirt off.

  My breath came in hot choking gasps as I sucked the finger further into my mouth, clamped my lips around the digit and drew it in and then pushed it out again with the tip of my tongue. If this kept up much longer, I’d have a screaming orgasm right there in the restaurant and bite his finger off at the second joint.

  “Would you like to order now?” The waitress hovered beside us. She must have returned with the drink waiter who’d carefully slid two glasses on the table between us and stood back to take in the entertainment.

  My mouth was far too busy to bother about inconsequential matters like ordering, or eating, so Craig slid his credit card across the table and did the honors. “We’ll have the roast duck done in orange and mushroom sauce. That okay with you, Dani?”

  Still suckling, I nodded. At that precise moment I didn’t care if he ordered roast rat with a side order of witchetty grubs.

  With his finger still attached to my mouth, Craig shuffled his chair closer. A ripple skittered down my spine and settled in my groin when his other hand landed on my knee and began inching up my skirt. I closed my eyes. How could I let this go any further? Craig was in nappies while I backpacked across Europe. Probably started high school the day I discovered my first grey hair.

  So I definitely had to stop rocking his cradle and walk away.

  But when he withdrew his wet slippery finger from my mouth and ran it slowly over my lips while his other hand played tiptoe-chasy across the soft skin of my inner thigh, I could barely stop from crying out. Holy crap! The heat building to a crescendo between my legs and draining blood from my brain made it impossible to think clearly.

  What was it I had to do again?

  Lush lips, sizzling, yet soft and silky, settled on mine.

  Oh what the heck! Let me at him…

  “Danielle Summers, fancy meeting you here.”

  From a long way off I thought I heard Simon’s voice. Or was it that damn conscience of mine butting in again?

  “I always eat at Erika’s on a Monday night,” Simon continued as he pulled out a chair at our table. “Okay if I park my bum here?”

  Craig, eyes narrowed to slits, lips set in a predatory snarl, leapt to his feet sending his chair crashing backwards and all my erogenous zones sniffling and wailing at their loss. Perhaps he was going to sock Simon in the nose and then carry me out to his car like a Super Hottie. We could always finish that knee-melting kiss stretched out on a king-sized bed at his house, lights turned low while he slowly undressed me.

  Eyes sharp as granite, Simon made a great production of raising one eyebrow as he studied the blustering Craig. “And who do we have here?”

  “Simon,” I hissed almost ready to punch him in the nose myself. “What the hell are you trying to pull?” When he didn’t answer I shook my head at him deciding to get the introductions over first and then kill him. “This is Craig Taylor. He works with Suzy.” I then turned to Craig, who for some reason had taken a step backwards. “Craig, this is Simon Templar. He’s a colleague of mine and he was just leaving.”

  “Oh, so that’s who you call yourself now…Jack?”

  “Jack?” Had Simon been drinking? Showing the first signs of dementia?

  “Dani, meet the one and only Jack Rivers, star reporter for that dishrag of a paper, Gape.” Simon’s sharp eyes drilled holes through my slowly wilting, but still sexy, Cleo centerfold. “I’d have thought if you’d wanted to spend time with a reptile you’d have visited the zoo.”

  “Jack Rivers? From Gape?”

  Tight-lipped, Simon nodded.

  “But this is Craig from Accounts.” It was like I’d stumbled into another dimension. “He works with Suzy.”

  Cold logic settled like a lump of steel in my chest. I’d been duped. But why? Why would Jack Rivers pretend to be my blind date? And where was the real Craig Taylor? No wonder I thought I’d recognized the man. The rare times I’d rifled through the smutty pages of Gape, Jack Rivers’s head study had been on the top of the most sordid column of all.

  But why had he led me on tonight?

  What did he want from me?

  And more importantly, how was I ever going to live this whole embarrassing debacle down?

  “I need to visit the Little Boy’s room,” Jack Rivers squeaked, backing away from our table so quickly he almost took out a passing drink waiter.

  Pity the passing drink waiter wasn’t a Sumo wrestler with anaconda arms. He could have held Jack in a headlock while I twisted off his balls and presented them to Erika’s head chef to turn into gourmet rissoles with onion an
d gravy.

  Instead, the reeling waiter was five foot nothing and was probably booked to ride the favorite in the first race at Morphetville Racetrack on Saturday.

  No use to me at all.

  When Jack disappeared down the passageway, I scrambled to my feet ready to follow. I needed answers.

  “I’m going after him,” I declared, scowling down at my sidekick.

  Simon picked up the salt shaker and examined it carefully, as though the results of next week’s lottery were written on the side. “Dani,” he drawled without looking up. “Didn’t the man say he was going to the john?”

  “So what?” My voice rose in exasperation. “Even if I have to study the color and texture of his urine flow while beating the crap out of him with my handbag, I have to know why he pretended to be Craig Taylor.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t worry, Simon. It’s a girl thing.”

  “Girl thing or not, you’d better sit down.” Simon glanced around the restaurant and I followed suit. Damn. Diners were either craning forward expectantly or leaning back in their chair, arms folded, blatantly enjoying the show.

  Wind slowly draining from my sails, I sunk back into my chair. “I’ll never find out what this was all about, will I?”

  “Maybe not, but I do have some good news for you.”

  “Unless Jack Rivers was devoured by a tiger while peeing in the urinal, whatever you say won’t even be a blip in the good news department.”

  “We’ll see.” Impersonating a magician in the act of pulling a rabbit out of a hat, Simon produced a smashed cell phone from his inside pocket and scattered the mangled remains across the table. “I caught Gape’s sneakiest photographer perched at the end table taking photos of you and Jack on his cell phone, and guessed he must be part of whatever scam Jack had cooked up. There’s no film to confiscate in these damn techno-toys, so I had no option but to destroy the evidence. Stuck the phone under my size ten Colorado boots and jumped up and down. Several times.” He grinned. “The photographer was not a happy camper.”

  I grinned back. Almost threw my arms around Simon’s neck. However, knowing his allergic reaction to anything demonstrative, I stopped myself just in time.