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Jane felt heat coming into her cheeks. “I’m allowed to have a sex life—”
“I know. You just never have before. Not in all the time I’ve known you, I bet.”
Jane clamped her mouth shut, thinking back to exactly when she’d hired Lainie. Had it been that long? She wasn’t going to answer that.
“Just be careful, okay? I don’t want to see you get hurt,” Lainie said.
“I won’t. I know exactly what I’m getting into. I certainly know that nothing lasting will ever come out of this, and that I’m not his usual type, which has made him more interested than he’d normally be. But I know that in the end, we’ll just go our separate ways, and that’ll be it.”
“And you’re fine with that?”
She sighed. “I wouldn’t say fine with that, but I’m an adult, and like you said, I get lonely at times. Wyatt’s here, and I’m here, and he’s…he’s…he’s the sexiest man I’ve ever met in my life, Lainie. I’m thinking about going to dinner with him in one of my power suits with no underwear. Does that sound…normal?”
“Not for you,” Lainie yelped.
“No, I mean for a woman not like me. A woman who likes men. Really likes them. And really likes sex. For that kind of woman. Would that kind of woman do that?”
Lainie sighed. “Jane, are you sure he didn’t drug you? Maybe I should come along on this date, just to make sure he doesn’t…that he isn’t…you know? A bad guy. Or we could run a background check on him. You have that friend on the police force. Just in case. How about that? A background check and a credit check. You can’t be too careful.”
“Yes, you can. I’ve been careful too long. And I’m done with it,” Jane declared.
She was going to dinner without her underwear, after all.
Chapter Nine
The next afternoon Jane skipped out on much of the work she’d hoped to accomplish. Her heart just wasn’t in it. She went home and took a bath instead. A nice, long, sexy soak, because she wanted to smell good all over.
The no-panties thing had been just a crazy idea at first, but Lainie had been so sure Jane had become demented or perhaps incapacitated by drugs someone had slipped her, that Jane had been insulted a bit. Granted, it wasn’t like her to ever do that, but surely it wasn’t completely out of the realm of possibility.
It was like the odds of her winning the lottery, maybe. Not probable, but not impossible.
She decided she was going to do it.
It’s not as if it would kill her, and no one would ever have to know. It wasn’t as if she’d promised to hop in bed with Wyatt tonight, even though she suspected he was fairly certain she would. And at this moment, she wanted to. But if later she got too nervous, too scared, or changed her mind, she didn’t have to, and if she did, her pantyless state could very well go undetected.
It could be her wicked little secret.
Jane was not as stuffy or prudish as anyone thought. She liked that idea. That it was more like a dare she’d given herself, something she wanted to prove to herself.
Opening up her closet door, she frowned at row after row of power suits, all virtually identical except for their color. Was she really that boring? That predictable? It was just so easy this way. Buy good-quality suits that didn’t go out of style, pick a color, pair it with a white blouse and she was ready to go, day after day.
Jane sighed. Wyatt had asked her to wear one.
She picked the brightest color she had—a hot, candy-pink—then got to all those white blouses. It was definitely not a buttoned-up, white-blouse kind of night, either.
In her underwear drawer, she picked up lace camisole after lace camisole. Jane wasn’t a busty woman, and she wasn’t going to endure a stuffed or even water-filled bra to try to make her look bustier every day, just to please some man who only wanted to look at her chest. But she did like camisoles with a little support that doubled as soft, comfortable bras. They were pretty, and some were even soft and pretty at the same time. Truth be told, she felt a bit sexy in those little camisoles. She just always wore her buttoned-up blouses over them.
Tonight…maybe she’d skip the blouse and wear one of her prettiest camisoles instead.
She found one in white satin, the neckline made of lace trim and cut straight across, so it didn’t look like a bra or underwear necessarily. She slipped it on, thinking it certainly felt a little wicked against her skin.
Pulling on the slightly cropped jacket to her suit and buttoning the two buttons, she thought it looked sexy. She was showing some skin, but nothing outrageous, as long as she didn’t take off her jacket.
She gave herself a pep talk that she could indeed do this, slipped off the jacket and then put on a robe, so she could take the time to do her hair and put on a little makeup, saving the panties or no-panties decision until the last possible minute.
Her hands actually shook as she put on mascara.
Why did women do this to themselves? Get so worked up over a man? She found lotion, to match the scent she’d used in her bath, smoothed it over her skin around and even beneath the camisole. Which had her thinking of Wyatt’s hands under there, touching her everywhere.
Jane frowned, watching the clock move ever closer to the appointed time of their date. It wasn’t as if the man was going to push his way into her apartment and strip her naked the moment he arrived.
At least, she didn’t think so.
Maybe she could call Lainie and ask if…that might be something she should be prepared for, although how a woman prepared for someone like Wyatt to do something like that to her.
She set the bottle of lotion down, dropping the cap as she tried to put it back on. Maybe she should have a drink, and not a white wine spritzer.
He was just a man, she kept telling herself. Reasonable in some things perhaps, more good-looking than most, kind to his elderly uncle, but beyond that, just a man. She was probably all worked up over nothing.
Her doorbell rang.
Jane yelped, practically jumping out of her skin.
He was a full nine minutes early!
She dropped the robe, grabbed her skirt and put it on, along with the jacket and buttoned up. She’d never put on her panties, and she was feeling incredibly, sinfully bare, but looking in the mirror.
No one would ever have to know, she told herself as he rang the doorbell again and she went to answer it.
Wyatt stopped in the doorway and stared, a slow smile coming across his face.
“Pink is a great color on you, Jane.”
She stood absolutely still, feeling cool silk and lace against her breasts and, down there, nothing but a slight breeze coming up her short, straight-cut skirt.
He reached out, letting his fingertips skim along the lace neckline of the camisole, his eyes dark and smoky looking. “If this is underwear, I’ve changed my mind. I approve.”
“It’s not underwear,” she claimed. Not really. “It’s a camisole top.”
“Pretty,” he said appreciatively.
He looked good enough to eat, she thought, in his sleek, dark, perfectly fitted suit. But he didn’t needed to hear it. And given the look in his eyes, she really didn’t trust him not to push her down on the couch and start taking her clothes off, right here and now.
“I’m starving,” she said, taking him by the arm and steering him toward the front door. “We should go.”
“Whatever you want, Jane. I intend to be a perfect gentleman tonight.”
“I don’t believe that for a second,” she told him.
But she got him out the door, into his car and on the way to the restaurant. Jane leaned back in the soft leather seats of his sleek, roomy Mercedes, and tried to relax as he drove just a tad fast for her tastes, but seemingly in perfect control.
It was just dinner, she told herself.
His cell phone rang. He took it out of his pocket, glanced at the number, then clicked it off. “Sorry. Meant to do that before I picked you up.”
“It’s all right. Mine’s not turned off, either, now that I think about it.”
She fished it out of her purse, where it had been buried under everything and saw that she had three missed calls, including two from Ms. Steele while she’d been in the tub.
“Uh, oh. Was yours from Ms. Steele?”
Wyatt nodded. “But we’re not going to think about her tonight. Tonight is for us.”
“I know, but…she called me twice, which doesn’t really bother me, but Amy, the sweet aide who’s such a great cook, she called, too, and she never calls me.”
“Jane, if you want to call her, go ahead.”
“If I don’t call, I’ll spend all night wondering what’s wrong.” She hid the redial button and waited until Amy came on the line. “Amy, it’s Jane. Is everything all right?”
“Jane, I’m so glad it’s you. Do you…know where Kathleen is?”
“She’s not at the cottage?”
“As far as we can tell, she’s not anywhere at Remington Park. She missed her regular tennis lesson and we started looking for her. Then we figued out that Mr. Gray’s missing, too. They didn’t say anything to you about…taking off for a few days, did they?”
“No. What about Gladdy? She must know.”
“We’re looking for her right now, but I thought you might know what’s going on or that, if you didn’t, you’d want to know. We can’t find Kathleen.”
“We’ll be right there,” she told Amy. “Uh. I’m with Mr. Gray’s nephew, so you don’t have to call him. I’ll fill him in. See you in a few minutes.”
Wyatt groaned as she got off the phone. “Don’t tell me.”
“They can’t find Leo or my grandmother. They’re canvassing the whole place to find Gladdy right now, hoping she knows where they are.”
Jane groaned unhappily. She’d so been looking forward to an evening with Wyatt, even if the prospect did scare her a bit.
“Can we throw uncle Leo into a dungeon in chains when we find him?”
“I wouldn’t tell on you if you did.” Jane sighed. “So, where does he like to take his women?”
“All sorts of places, but he doesn’t drive anymore. It was a battle, but we finally got rid of his car. Does Kathleen still drive?”
Jane nodded. “Not often, but she does. She and Gladdy keep a car at Remington Park that they share. Gram and Leo could be anywhere by now.”
They got to her grandmother and Gladdy’s cottage to find it in an uproar of worried older women, a few security guards and Ms. Steele in full-battle mode, questioning a withering Amy, who looked as if she just wanted to hide.
At the sight of Wyatt, Ms. Steele made a face that actually scared Jane a bit. Amy came running over to her, whispering, “She wants to fire me, Jane, and I didn’t do anything wrong. I swear.”
Jane eased around to put her body between Amy and Ms. Steele. She’d protect Amy. So would Wyatt.
The administrator puffed up her chest and glared in their direction. “So, the two of you have no idea where Mr. Gray and Ms. Carlton might be?”
“No,” Wyatt said.
“Neither said anything to you about going away for a few days?” she grilled them.
“Nothing,” Wyatt insisted.
“What about Gladdy?” Jane tried. “Gram would never take off without telling Gladdy where she was going.”
“We still have people looking for her,” Amy said.
“Did you look in Gram’s room? Are any of her things missing?” Jane continued.
“I looked, but I really wasn’t sure if she’d taken some things or not. But her big suitcase is there,” Amy offered.
“There’s a smaller matching one, something made to fit under a seat on an airplane. What about that?”
“I didn’t see it.”
Jane headed for Gram’s room, Wyatt and Amy following her. At first glance, it looked as if everything was in place. Jane opened the top two drawers. They hadn’t been cleaned out, but Amy was right. It was impossible to tell if Gram had packed for, say…a few days.
She opened the closet, saw the big suitcase, pulled it out and unzipped it.
Empty.
“She keeps the smaller bag inside the big one, to save space,” Jane said.
She did a quick sweep of the room looking for the smaller bag anyway. Wyatt helped, shaking his head when he came up empty.
“So, she’s gone,” Jane said.
They searched the grounds and Gladdy’s room for another twenty minutes before Ms. Bea, one of the residents of the cottage, woke up from her nap and came out of her room to hear that Kathleen was missing.
“Oh, my goodness. I had no idea you were all looking for her,” Ms. Bea said. “She gave me a note to give you, Jane, as she was rushing out the door this afternoon.”
The lady pulled out a familiar envelope in light yellow—Gram’s signature stationery—and handed it to Jane.
Tearing it open, Jane read:
My Darling Jane,
Please don’t be upset. I know you think this is wrong, but I’m absolutely certain it’s right, and at our age, Leo and I simply don’t have time to waste. I hate that you won’t be there for the ceremony, but we’ll be back in a few days and have our own little family celebration then.
All my love,
Gram
