She just might, which was why he had to make sure she knew he had a lot more at stake than his libido. He had to take time to reinforce the emotions already building between them.
Most of all, he had to figure out a way to make her believe what had started out as an infatuation with a computer image had evolved into much more than a case of lust at first byte.
***
Seduction was still very much on Meg’s mind the next afternoon. Not that she’d actually decided to try it, but she couldn’t deny she was thinking about it. Mainly because of her dreams.
Her entire night had been fitful and restless, with erotic dreams about Joe, interspersed with nightmares of her cousin Georgie hanging her underwear from the balcony of the mezzanine inside The Red Doors.
“Georgie,” she whispered as she sat in her apartment Tuesday after school, “you’d better watch your back.”
She hadn’t confronted Georgie yet, not wanting to tip him off before she was ready with some payback. She hadn’t figured out a way to even the score with her cousin, but she would.
Maybe she’d out him to his mother about why Georgie had really missed Christmas with the family. Not adequate revenge, but it was a start, anyway. Georgia had lied and said he had a big out-of-town job to do. Her aunt Lulu had been heartbroken because her baby boy had missed the holiday. Meg had found out later it was because he’d wanted to go to a Star Trek convention in Miami.
“Knowing you, I bet there’s a photo of you in a Ferengi costume on some Trekker’s Web site,” she muttered out loud, determined to do a Google image search the next time she was online.
Though she still hadn’t completely decided how to handle the Georgie situation, she had, at least, made a first step toward resolving the problem with The Red Doors. A phone call to one of the owners, Jamie Ruskin, had proven very productive. The woman had sounded truly horrified when Meg told her the situation, and had asked her to come in and meet with her and the other owner, a woman she called Faith, the following day.
Getting back to work on her lesson plans, Meg kept shifting her gaze between the clock and the phone. Despite his promise, Joe hadn’t yet called. She told herself he’d just been busy today. But, deep down, she feared he’d merely been playing Mr. Nice Guy the night before, and she’d never see him again.
When the phone rang, she snatched it up so quickly she knocked the base off the coffee table. “Hello?”
“Hey, how about a picnic?” Warm relief flowed through her at the sound of his voice.
She chuckled. “It’s thirty-five degrees outside. I think you’re about four months early for a picnic.”
“I might surprise you,” he said. “I’ll pick you up at six.”