“You look like the cover of Business Weekly,” I say.
“That’s me. All business. All the time.” He chuckles, but I can tell it’s forced. “I hate leaving you here like this. Sometime I’ll bring you to Denver and show you all the best places I used to love when I lived here.”
“That’s okay. I understood from the beginning that this was a business trip, not a pleasure trip.”
“Callie, even the most boring business trip is pleasurable if you’re along.” He leans over and kisses my lips. “Last night was amazing. You sore today?”
“You mean in my pussy or in my ass?”
“I was talking about your ass, but I meant on your ass, not in your ass. But do you want to be sore in your ass? I can probably make that happen.” He grins.
I tingle all over. Anal sex is another thing I’ve never given a second thought, but when Donny Steel brings it up, I find myself getting really hot.
“I’m not really sore. Maybe just slightly tender.”
“You enjoyed it, then?”
“Couldn’t you tell? I loved it. It was… I guess it’s just hard to describe. It was painful, yes, but the pain wasn’t hurtful pain, if that makes any sense. It was more like something I knew would lead to pleasure, and it did.”
“Baby, I will do whatever you want. But at some point, I promise you, I am going to worship that body the way it was meant to be worshipped.”
“I’ll hold you to that.”
“Absolutely. I totally want you to hold me to it.” He kisses my lips once more and then stands up straight. “I’ll probably work through lunch, but I’ll make sure that you, Rory, and I have dinner reservations somewhere…say, around seven?”
“Okay. I’ll tell Rory.”
“All right. I love you.” He walks to the door, opens it, and then looks over his shoulder and puckers his lips in a kiss. Then he closes the door behind him.
I hear his footfalls on the carpeting of the hallway for a few seconds until they die away.
I put my head back on the pillow. Rory’s probably still asleep. Oddly, I slept like a baby, despite all my worries. I wish Donny had been able to.
After a few moments of lying still in bed, I wrestle the covers away from me and get up. Maybe I’ll go down and hit the gym. The bank won’t open until eight o’clock, so Rory and I can’t do anything until then anyway.
I throw on some sweat pants, a tank top, and my Brooks running shoes, and then leave the hotel room and head toward the elevators.
To my surprise, Rory stands at the elevator. She’s dressed in leggings and a short-sleeved sweat shirt.
I clear my throat.
She turns and meets my gaze. “What are you doing up so early?”
“I was about to ask you the same.”
“I can’t sleep. I’m antsy.”
“You slept on the drive.”
“I know. Weird. I sure can’t now. I thought maybe I’d get on the treadmill or elliptical or something.”
“Exactly where I was heading. Donny already left. Apparently he has an early breakfast meeting with some people.”
“At six fifteen?”
“Yeah. He’s got a lot on his mind too. The difference is I know about what’s going on with him, and before you ask, I can’t tell you.”
“I wasn’t going to ask. Believe me. I don’t want anything else on my mind.”
“Fair enough. He doesn’t know what’s going on with me. With us.”
“I know you want to tell him, Callie.”
“I both do and don’t. This was all so long ago. You and I aren’t the same people we were then. I mean, what we did…”
“We had our reasons,” Rory says. “Tell me the truth. If the same thing happened today, would you behave any differently?”
I ponder her question. Would I? Pat Lamone threatened to destroy us. He brought other people into his vicious little head game. Looking back, even thinking it through, it seems like a bunch of high school drama. But it could have affected our parents’ livelihood. And for that reason, I would still attack the way we did then.
“I’m waiting for your answer,” Rory prods.
“I would have done the same thing.”
“Me too.”
The elevator door opens, and we both step in.
“Want some coffee?” she asks.
I nod. “We can have breakfast in the hotel restaurant or just stop for coffee before the gym.”
“Just coffee,” she says. “For me, anyway. I can’t eat.”
Just as she says it and I’m about to agree, my stomach lets out a ferocious growl.
“Callie, you are the only person in the world who can be hungry when our lives are nearing ruin.”
“First, I’m not hungry. That’s my belly, not me. And second of all, Rory, our lives are not in near ruin. We can contain this. We have to,” I add more to myself than to Rory.
The elevator jerks to a stop, a little more forcefully than it normally does.