Baddest Bad Boys(2)

She could moon over that picture for hours. And sometimes did.

She stared down at the lit-up Line 10. Her finger hovered over it.

Oh, no. Of course she wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Eavesdropping was unethical, despicable. That she was tempted to do something so dumb, so contemptible, just showed how crushed out she was. Way too old for this silly juvenile crap, and no way was she going to—

Her finger came down, against her volition. Hit the button. Tap.

“…would be great,” Jon was saying. “This case I just closed did me in. I’ve been neck deep in shit. My boss doesn’t want to see my face for two weeks, minimum. Gotta park my ass somewhere where I can’t get into any trouble. You sure you or Mac won’t be needing it?”

“Nah,” said Danny. “Mac and Jane have the twins to deal with, and I’m taking up the slack at work. I won’t be able to get up there until July at the earliest, so you’d be doing us a favor it you aired the place out, chased off the animals. Otherwise we’ll find it full of raccoon shit.”

“Good, then.” Jon’s voice was dull and heavy, not vibrating with its usual brilliant manic energy. “I appreciate it.”

“You’ve still got the keys to my place, right? I’ll be in meetings til nine. Keys to the cabin are hanging on the board next to the kitchen door on a red canvas strap. Sure you don’t want to crash with me, and drive up tomorrow morning? We could order out. Do some catching up.”

“Nah, sorry. I’ll pass this time. I’m kind of f*cked up right now. I wouldn’t be very good company,” Jon said. “Maybe on the outswing.”

Mary Ann from accounting came bouncing by, and Robin hastily pushed Line 10 and flashed the woman a huge, guilty smile.

Another storm of phone calls came through, and Robin passed them all to the appropriate lines with a flurry of organizational energy that startled her. When she finished, Line 10 was dark and desolate.

But she buzzed with the new info. Her heart thumped. Jon, going up to Danny’s cabin on Kerrigan Creek. All alone…and defenseless.

The idea that popped into her head was nuts. A recipe for total humiliation and embarrassment. But still, that lonely-cabin-in-the-woods scenario was a whole subcategory of classic Jon fantasies, right along with shipwrecked-with-Jon-on-a-desert-island, or snowbound-with-Jon-in-the-Himalayas. Jon as the sexy pirate, she as the cheerfully ravished maiden. Jon as the macho Texas Ranger, she as the spunky saloon girl in low-cut black and red ruffles. Always Jon, Jon, Jon. She’d tried to plug Brad Pitt and George Clooney in, just for variety, but Brad and George didn’t ring her bells like Jon did. A girl had to go with what worked, when it came to orgasms. And Jon—well, he worked. Bigtime.

And she was going to do a double backflip right out of the reception desk if she didn’t move. She buzzed Eliza, the secretary who covered her potty breaks. “Eliza? Would you let me run to the ladies’?” she begged.

“Sure thing, Rob. Be there in a sec,” Eliza promised.

Liberated from the monster console, she raced for the bathroom and locked herself into a stall, where she proceeded to rock back and forth and make terrified keening sounds that only dogs could hear. Oh, God, oh, God. This could be her chance. Could she…really?

Ever since she’d turned fourteen, Jon had ruffled her hair when he saw her and teased her about boyfriends. Were they behaving, and if not, did she want him to kick their asses. Boyfriends, hah. What a joke.

It was a sore spot. What with late blooming, and unbelievably overprotective older brothers, she’d had precious few boyfriends. While she was living at home, the only guys who could get near her were ones that Danny and Mac deemed “safe.” Which was to say, total nerds. All the guys with sneak-into-her-pants erotic potential had been duly scared away by dire threats of death and dismemberment.

To be fair, though, she hadn’t had much time for guys even when she moved out, what with all the gymnastics competing she’d done in college. She’d been training like a fiend when she wasn’t studying, or doing clown gigs. Besides, knuckle-dragging, inarticulate jocks didn’t thrill her. Neither did alienated intellectuals with goatees. And the rest of them were gay. Or else madly in love with themselves.

The truth was, her monster crush on Jon had raised the bar impossibly high and made her insanely picky. The end result being a horrible state. Too dreadful to contemplate. Too shameful to confess.

A virgin, at twenty-five. And climbing the flipping walls.

She wasn’t sure how it happened. She wasn’t the virginal type. Really. It wasn’t a moral thing, or a lifestyle choice. She had no hangups that she knew about. She had stacks of sexy romance and erotica books. And she definitely knew how to be her own best friend.

It was more a matter of poor timing, too much athletic training, and some regular, old-fashioned bad luck. She’d swung in close a few times, but always veered away at the last minute, never sure if it was the right moment, the right guy. So she never broke the ice, and the ice kept getting thicker, and…well, crapola. A very bad state of affairs.

She strongly suspected that one of the reasons she’d stayed untouched was because she’d dreamed for so long of having that first time be with Jon. She didn’t have any illusions about him falling in love with her, or anything dumb-ass like that, but still. It would be great to have the guy she’d fantasized about since before puberty do the honors.