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“Laine.”
“Maybe he’s eating.” Burgers, no. Chili, no.
Judy made a sound that demonstrated in no uncertain terms what she thought of that possibility. “I told him you were looking for a roommate.”
“Uh-huh.” Laine’s eyes zeroed in on her usual lunch order. Okay, so she always had it, but today was a comfort food kind of day and the chicken noodle soup at Clark’s was delicious, rich and full of big pieces of chicken.
“He said he was interested.”
Laine’s head jerked up. “Interested?”
Judy crossed her arms over her chest, looking like the winner of a smug contest. “I thought that might grab your attention.”
“Interested in what, interested?”
“Interested in being your roommate, interested.”
Laine closed her menu. Her body and brain seemed to be on hold until they decided how to react to that one. “I thought you said he had a house in Princeton.”
“He does. But he has appointments in the city, and it would be easier for him not to have to commute back and forth on the train.”
“Oh.” Still no reaction. She wasn’t sure if that was good or not.
“He’s willing to cough up half your rent and only stay there when he needs to.”
“Oh.”
Judy beckoned as if she were trying to coax words out of Laine’s mouth. “So?”
Laine stared at her friend, no doubt looking utterly blank. She hadn’t a clue what to think. Or feel. Grayson Alexander wanted to be her roommate. Grayson Alexander. Wanted to be her roommate. Her roommate. Gray—
“So, what do you say?” Judy was leaning forward again, scheming eyes alight.
“I don’t know.” Laine glanced around the diner as if the other customers might be able to step in to tell her what to say. “I guess it sounds…ideal.”
“You don’t sound like you guess it sounds ideal.”
“No. It does. It sounds ideal. I guess.”
“Of course it sounds ideal. Because it is ideal.” Judy pounded her small fist on the table. “It’s totally ideal. You guys are friends, you know him, you can trust him not to steal from you or have any weird habits or friends. No risk. And he won’t even be there most of the time. I’m telling you, it’s perfect.”
“Well.” She nodded seriously. “I guess it is.”
“It’s more than perfect.” Judy gestured into the air, then clasped her hands. “It’s fate.”
Laine narrowed her eyes. “Okay, let’s not get carried away.”
“But you’ll say yes?”
She shrugged, feeling off balance and totally unused to the feeling. It was pretty amazing timing that Grayson had called Judy just when Laine was looking for someone. And it did seem the perfect solution. The obvious choice.
It’s just that this little tiny voice inside her was sounding a warning. Perfect solutions and obvious choices had this way of turning on her. Jobs turned out to be deadening, men turned out to be wrong for her, graduate programs turned out not to be her calling.
But the voice wasn’t really loud enough for her to hear the details of what it thought was so wrong, and the overwhelming practicality of the solution was pretty compelling. In one stroke she could secure her playtime summer, save herself from having to live with a stranger and, as it turned out, she’d have the place to herself most of the time anyway.
Laine looked at the anxious face across the table and grinned. Not to mention Ms. Puppy Love would have easy drooling access. How could she say no? “Well, I mean, if he calls and asks and it all seems…well, yeah.”
“Hurray!” Judy threw up her hands and nearly punched the waitress who had finally arrived.
Laine smiled wanly and placed her order for the chicken soup. Definitely a comfort food day. She hadn’t seen Grayson in years. Five to be exact. She heard news of him now and then, maybe a couple of times a year if that, through Judy. After the initial nasty breakup, when she’d caught him with his fingers in another cookie jar, they’d managed to be friends for years, though admittedly they’d always seemed to stretch the boundaries of “friendship” to include sex. Lots of sex. Fabulous sex. Then he’d moved to Chicago and that was that. An unspoken agreement that it was time to move on. Now he was back in the area and she’d not only see him, she’d share intimate living space with him.
Okay. She could do that. She was way over him. They were friends. Buddies. Right?
“You okay?”
Laine blinked across the table to find Judy looking at her over the tops of her funky glasses with concern. A giddy bubble of laughter swelled in Laine’s chest. Her worries were ridiculous. Grayson was an old friend—granted, a friend she’d wanted to marry at one point, but that was years and years and years ago. They’d both moved on and she was a different person now. Rooming together was merely a practical arrangement to get them through the summer. She’d be out most of the time in pursuit of her adventures and her Man To Do and he’d be into whatever or whoever he was into.
Of course she was okay.
“Yes. Yes. I’m fine. I’m totally fine. I’m more than fine.” She laughed and handed her menu to the waitress. “In fact, thanks to Grayson, this is once again going to be the best summer of my life.”
From: Angie Keller
Sent: Sunday
To: Laine Blackwell; Kathy Baker
Subject: Men To Do
Why, honey chile, welcome to paradise! I am so glad you will be joining us! Me, I found a Man To Do only last night and my, my, my, I am feeling quite Queenly today. He was extremely manly and possessed an oh-so-talented tongue. My mama would have fainted dead away if she knew how I carried on. But I say God gave me this body to use, and I’m doing it.
Have fun!
God bless,
Angie
From: Kathy Baker
Sent: Sunday
To: Laine Blackwell; Angie Keller
Subject: Way To Go!
Wow, Laine, you are ready to roll! And okay, you have given me courage, I really need to do this (one of these days). I just don’t know where to meet men! The ones online here in Milwaukee seem so not my type—okay, maybe I overanalyze—but I can’t get excited about any of them just from a squinty little picture. Guys, a little tip: it is so not enticing to see half an arm around your neck from where you cut your last girlfriend out of the photo.
I wish I had Harlot Angie’s balls and could walk into a bar and just pick a guy out.
Anyway, congrats on your free summer and keep us posted!!
’Bye,
Kathy
GRAYSON HUNG UP the phone in total unabashed triumph. He was the salesman of all salesmen. The über-salesman. He’d just taken a call from a guy named Bob, who was trying to sell him some sales-training course. In the space of a half hour, Grayson had carefully and skillfully turned the conversation around, found out Bob’s company needed a new Web site, and secured a sales appointment for Jameson Productions, his own damn company.
He chuckled, reveling in that moment of rare beauty when Bob the Salesman Trainer had realized what was happening to his high-pressure call.
Hey, you’re selling me.
Grayson stretched one side of his body, then the other and leaned back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head.
Listen. That was all you had to do. Listen and ask questions. People would always tell you what you needed to know to get in. Too many salesmen did the professional equivalent of trying to carve a delicate wooden figurine with an ax. The good citizens of this country were axed every day with information, requests, advertisements, news, bothered at home by telemarketers, overwhelmed with options. To make a difference, all you had to do was shut up and listen. Use your tiniest chisel and, bit by bit, make that figurine emerge.
In six months Grayson had grown his and Chuck’s company to where they were on target for a half-million in annual business. And he was only just starting. What he needed now was one plum, one ripe, gorgeous, enormous company with ongoing needs for Jameson’s Web design and interactive media offerings.
It was out there. He just needed to find it. Having Laine’s place to stay in would give him more time in the city, more time for appointments, more time to see Chuck and the programmers for face-to-face consulting on projects, and less time commuting.
He pushed back against the chair, making its upholstered metallic innards creak. Not that less time sitting on trains was the only reason he’d jumped at the idea. He called Judy because he was being ridiculous, acting as if sitting home avoiding Laine was some show of strength. He wanted to see her again. Wanted to find out why she still invaded his dreams. And yeah, he wanted to do some other things that he better not admit, because it wasn’t very gentlemanly of him to be thinking of her that way after five years, before he’d even been able to talk to her again.
Grayson picked up the phone and dialed her number, his heart still racing from his morning run, coffee and the thrill of success securing another appointment. He’d been about to call Laine when this bozo Bob had called him. Now he couldn’t wait to hear her voice.
“Hello?”
She was out of breath. A grin spread over his face. Hot damn. He couldn’t help it. She sounded so good.
“You working out or something more fun?”
“Grayson?”
The sound of his name from her mouth made him smile harder. “How are you, Laine?”
“Grayson! I’m fine, how the hell are you? Judy said you’d call. God, it’s been five years.”
“I know. But I thought of you every one of them.”
She gave a familiar snort of laughter. “How sweet.”
“Yeah, well…” He put his feet up on his desk. “That’s me.”
“Though I noticed when you picked up the phone, you always called Judy.”
He went to cross his ankles and both feet slipped off the desk, nearly toppling him out of his chair. “Hmm…yeah, well…Judy is…she’s…Judy is Judy.”
“And Laine is Laine?”
“And never the twain, yeah.”
He grinned, picturing her talking to him on the phone—tall, slender, dark hair, blue eyes, flushed from working out. The kind of woman who drew men’s stares everywhere she went, all the more because she was so unconscious of how stunning she was.
“So now after five years, five thoughts of me and phone calls to Judy-who-is-Judy instead of Laine-who-is-Laine, you suddenly want to move in with me?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, there’s a switch.”
He left the barb alone. “Work with me here, Laine.”
“I don’t know…” She responded to his tease with mock hesitancy. “I’m not much of a worker these days.”
“Then play with me?”
“Play with yourself.”
He burst out laughing. Bam! Walked right into that one. You couldn’t get much past Laine Blackwell. “Okay, okay. Yes, I want to move in with you. A few nights a week when I have appointments in the city.”
“Why?”
“Didn’t Judy tell you?”
“Forget Judy. Tell Laine-who-is-Laine.”
“Okay, Laine-who-is-Laine. Having an apartment in the city will help me professionally.”
“Ah.” She blew out a sigh. “So you finally admit you need professional help.”
He couldn’t stop grinning. He suddenly missed her fiercely, as if all the years they’d been apart had hit him retroactively. “That’s right.”
“This is good. You must have come a long way.”
“You know I can come a long way.”
Her turn to laugh, that big, loud, honest belly laugh she released when something really struck her. He was pumped by the sound, even higher than he’d been. And turned on, totally jazzed by their sparring. He couldn’t wait to see her. And yeah, there were still one or two of those ungentlemanly thoughts on his mind. In fact there were lots of them. Who was he kidding? He was no gentleman when it came to Laine. Though only once had he stooped to being an outright jerk, an episode he still wished he could go back in time and erase.
“Are you going to let me in, Laine?”
“Into my apartment.”
“Of course? What else would I mean?” He grinned, waiting, rubbing his thumb along his chin.
“Nothing.” She took a deep breath and let it out.
His grin faded. “Is there a problem?”
“No. No. There’s not a problem.”
He cocked his head. There was a problem. He hoped to hell she was merely rediscovering her need to be naked under him. “Why the hesitation?”
