her mother suggested. “Faith was always a good dancer.”
Through the linen of her dress, Ty squeezed and she closed her legs around his warm hand. “I have an early morning,” he said.
“I’m tired.” Faith looked at her mother and yawned. “But you two can go ahead. I can take a taxi home.”
“I’ll take you.”
She looked at Ty and said, just above a whisper, “That might be inappropriate.”
“The things I’m going to do to you are very inappropriate.” He lowered his mouth to her ear. “You should probably be afraid.”
“Are you planning anything illegal?”
“Not the first two or three times.” He shrugged. “I’m not sure aboat the rest.”
Chapter 13
It’s kind of empty,” Faith said as she stood in the center of the darkened solarium. Overhead, stars crammed the clear night sky, and she felt like she was floating twenty-eight stories above Seattle. “Virgil and I didn’t stay in the city very often, so I never got around to doing anything up here. I always pictured lots of plants and cane furniture. Maybe a tiger, like in Who’s That Girl, with Madonna. Hated that movie, but I loved that big garden and the tiger.”
“Are you nervous?”
The heels of her hot-pink Chanel pumps tapped across the tile floor as she moved to the edge and looked out. “Can you tell?”
“You talk a lot more when you’re nervous.”
She put her hands against the glass and gazed at the Space Needle, all lit up like a giant flying saucer. On the way home from the restaurant, they’d stopped at a pharmacy and he’d run in and bought condoms. Magnums. “You make me nervous.”
He moved close behind her. “Why?”
Several reasons. Starting with, “Were those magnums necessary?”
“I like ’em snug.”
Oh God. And ending with, “It’s been a long time for me.”
He bent his head and asked close to her ear, “A long time since…?”
“I was with anyone.”
He placed his hands on her hips and pulled her back against his chest, nestling her behind against his erection. “Anyone but Virgil?”
She looked into the shadowy outline of his watery reflection. So tall and powerful and ready. “Virgil was good to me and I loved him, but we never…” She couldn’t say it. She couldn’t betray him even though he was gone. “Our marriage wasn’t about that.”
His hands touching her hips and stomach stilled. “You never had sex?”
She didn’t answer.
His barely visible gaze met hers in the glass. “Not even with someone who could?”
“Of course not.”
“How long were you married?” He sounded incredulous.
She turned her head and looked back over her shoulder into the variegating light touching his face. “Five years.”
He was silent for several heartbeats. “You haven’t had sex in five years? A woman who looks like you?”
“Why’s that hard to believe?” Quiet laughter escaped her lips and whispered across his chin. “You said I was ugly.”