Sample Saturday - Chapter Two

Seduction in Seattle continues

“Wait for me. Please. I want to be sure you get home safely.” Derrick said.

“I’m a big girl. I can get home all by myself.” Bella instantly regretted her snippy tone. He wasn’t to blame for her issues. “I’m sorry – I didn’t mean to bite your head off.”

Derrick laughed. “Don’t worry about hurting my feelings. I don’t have any.”

Was he serious? Everyone had feelings. The lust devil whispered in her ear, taunting her about feelings she could provoke. Bella shook her head to clear the bad thoughts. She hurried ahead denying herself the comfort of his touch.

Cheeks flaming, she sidled into the women’s restroom without a backward glance. Using cold water and papertowels, she made a disposable compress and sank onto a tufted velvet stool. Deliberately, she applied the cool wet paper her cheeks, neck and cleavage. Anger, embarrassment and even confusion all had the same effect – a blazing flush of her cursed fair skin. Slowly, the hectic color faded.

Bella averted her eyes from the mirror, suddenly weary and sickened by her behavior. She’d liked Derrick’s kiss. More than she should.

She told herself she wouldn’t like being used and abandoned. She told herself she didn’t want passion. She told herself she didn’t want him.

She wanted normal and boring, her small house and peace. She did not want the brief attentions of Mr. Dark and Dangerous, which would leave her tidy life in tatters. He was fascinating, but so were tigers and you didn’t bring one of those home and expect to find the furniture intact the next day.

No matter what she told herself, she couldn’t erase the kiss from her mind.

A rustle of feminine voices from hall spurred Bella into a stall. She wasn’t ready to make polite conversation. Her skin flared with fresh heat. She’d trapped herself – an unwilling audience to two women who’d come in together.

“I thought you and Derrick had a thing,” the first woman said with languid rancor.

“What Derrick and I have is much more than a thing,” the second woman was predictably

defensive. Her delivery cool, with a dash of pique. Her speech patterns polished into bland perfection by exclusive schools.

Of course, Derrick had a girlfriend. Disappointment she had no business feeling settled over Bella cooling her heated cheeks faster than ice cubes.

“He seems to have a new playmate.” The first woman spoke again, deliberately poking the sore spot.

“I’m not worried. She’s a little obvious for him.”

Obvious stung, but Bella listened – sinfully eager to hear more.

“Really Tori? Then the men here go for the obvious type. Derrick’s new friend is turning every male head at the party.”

Poor Tori. With a friend like that, she needed a Lycra powered ego.

“She’s nothing, a new face, a five-minute fad. She’s not going to appeal to Derrick when I tell him what she was doing with the busboy.”

“What was she doing?”

The dab of sympathy Bella had felt for Tori fled.

“Nothing really, well nothing, that I actually saw, but she looks like the type who’d always be doing something with some man. Anyway, she’s too fat for Derrick.”

“You’re cold. Remind me not to get on your bad side.”

“You know what they say, alls fair in love and war. Getting Derrick to the altar may take a little of both.” Tori laughed. Even her laugh sounded expensive, like crystal goblets clinking.
Derrick’s girlfriend.

Bella hated her.

She edged out of the stall – chin leading.

Caught up in her rant, Tori didn’t notice her. “That low rent Mercedes is behind this whole sordid affair. I can see her dainty little fingerprints all over it. I’m out of town for a couple of weeks and she catches Derrick while he’s lonely and desperate and throws one of her pathetic girlfriends at him.”

Bella forgot about her curiosity. Nobody, especially not Derrick’s skinny bitch of girlfriend was going to run her best friend down. Not while she was around to set them straight.

“Didn’t your mama ever tell you every little lie you tell makes you a tiny bit uglier? Even you aren’t pretty enough to tell get away with that kind of lying.”