Fancy Pants (Wynette, Texas #1)(64)

“Oh, yes... yes. Dallie... my wonderful Dallie... my lovely Dallie...” A cacophony of sound seemed to explode in her head as she came and came and came.

He heaved hard, and something halfway between a moan and groan escaped him. The sound gave her a feeling of power, touched fire to her excitement, and she came again. He quivered over her for a wonderfully interminable length of time and then grew heavy.

She turned her cheek so that it pressed against his hair, felt him dear and beautiful and real against her, inside her. She noticed that their skin was stuck together and that his back felt moist beneath her hands. She felt a small drop of perspiration fall from him onto her bare arm and realized she didn't care. Was this what it meant to be in love? she wondered dreamily. Her eyelids drifted open. She was in love. Of course. Why hadn't she realized it long before this? That was what was wrong with her. That was why she'd been feeling so unhappy. She was in love.

“Francie?” he murmured.

“Yes?”

“You all right?”

“Oh, yes.”

He eased himself up on one arm and smiled down at her. “Then how 'bout we head for the motel and try it again on top of those sheets you were so set on?”

On the drive back, she sat in the middle of the front seat and leaned her cheek against his shoulder while she chewed a piece of Double Bubble and daydreamed about their future.





Chapter

13



Naomi Jaffe Tanaka let herself into her apartment, a Mark Cross briefcase in one hand and a bag from Zabar's perched on her opposite hip. Inside the bag was a container of golden figs, a sweet Gorgonzola, and a crusty loaf of French bread, all she needed for a perfect working night dinner. She set down her briefcase and placed the sack on the black granite counter in her kitchen, leaning it against the wall, which had been painted with a hard burgundy enamel. The apartment was expensive and stylish, exactly the sort of place where the vice-president of a major advertising agency should live.

Naomi frowned as she pulled out the Gorgonzola and set it on a pink glazed porcelain plate. Only one small stumbling block lay between her and the vice-presidency she craved—finding the Sassy Girl. Just that morning, Harry Rodenbaugh had sent her a stinging memo threatening to turn the account over to one of the agency's “more aggressive men” if she couldn't produce her Sassy Girl in the next few weeks.

She kicked off her gray suede pumps and nudged them out of the way with a stockinged toe while she removed the rest of her purchases from the sack. How could it be so difficult to find one person? Over the past few days, she and her secretary had made dozens of phone calls, but not one of them had run the girl to ground. She was out there, Naomi knew, but where? She rubbed her temples, but the pressure did nothing to relieve the headache that had been plaguing her all day.

After depositing the figs in the refrigerator, she picked up her pumps and headed wearily out of the kitchen. She would take a shower, put on her oldest bathrobe, and pour herself a glass of wine before she started on the work she'd brought home. With one hand, she began unfastening the pearl buttons at the front of her dress, while with the elbow of her other arm, she flicked on the living room light switch.

“What's doin', sis?”

Naomi shrieked and spun toward her brother's voice, her heart jumping in her chest. “My God!”

Gerry Jaffe lounged on the couch, his shabby jeans and faded blue work shirt out of place against the silky rose upholstery. He still wore his black hair in an Afro. He had a small scar on his left cheekbone and tired brackets around those full lips that had once driven all of her female friends wild with lust. His nose was the same—as big and bold as an eagle's. And his eyes were deep black nuggets that still burned with the fire of the zealot.

“How did you get in here?” she demanded, her heart pounding. She felt both angry and vulnerable. The last thing she needed in her life right now was another problem, and Gerry's reappearance could only mean trouble. She also hated the feeling of inadequacy she always experienced when Gerry was around—a little sister who once again didn't measure up to her brother's standards.

“No kiss for your big brother?”

“I don't want you here.”

She received a brief impression of an enormous weariness hanging over him, but it vanished almost immediately. Gerry had always been a good actor. “Why didn't you call first?” she snapped. And then she remembered that Gerry had been photographed by the newspapers a few weeks before outside the naval base in Bangor, Maine, leading a demonstration against stationing the Trident nuclear submarine there. “You've been arrested again, haven't you?” she accused him.

“Hey, what's another arrest in the Land of the Free, the Home of the Brave?” Uncoiling himself from the sofa, he held out his arms to her and gave her his most charming Pied Piper grin. “Come on, sweetie. How 'bout a little kiss?”

He looked so much like the big brother who used to buy her candy bars when she had asthma attacks that she nearly smiled. But her temporary softening was a mistake. With a monstrous growl, he vaulted over her glass and marble coffee table and came for her.

“Gerry!” She backed away from him, but he kept coming. Baring his teeth, he turned his hands into claws and came lurching toward her in his best Frankensteinian manner. “The Four-Eyed Fang-Toothed Phantom walks again,” he growled.