Falling in Love Page 9

  “Got a match, oh, handsome stranger?”

  “What…?” She patted Austin on the bum and sent him looking for them, trying to appear calm.

  They lit the candles and put them on the coffee table, well off to one side and out of the way. Bethany went over and snapped the lights completely off. She grabbed the blanket.

  Whipping it up and spreading it out, she put the wine bottle and their glasses down in front of the couch.

  “Sit down. It’ll be like camping.”

  His heart began to pick up significantly.

  Austin settled into a cross-legged position and watched Bethany as she put the ashtray down, lit up a smoke, puffed on it, and then let it sit on the corner of the ashtray. Screwing up her eyes, she picked up the cards and shuffled. She was so cute in her skirt, knee socks, and filmy white blouse, so full of class and not like a lot of the other girls. A glimpse of frilly white panties and creamy thighs sent adrenalin rushing through him. This was about something deeper. It was about something more. He didn’t really know how to ask a girl if she wanted to go steady. He’d never done it.

  “You won’t even know what hit you.” She smiled sweetly.

  “Oh, really!”

  Men had their vanity and it could be manipulated. With a frank look and a wicked grin, Bethany hinted at his impending defeat. He looked so confident! Hah.

  “Do you know what stakes are?” She bit her lip, but she liked the little put-down thing for the additional hints of colour it caused, high up on his cheekbones.

  “Ah…yeah.”

  He thought for a moment.

  “What are we betting for?”

  “Wishes.”

  Austin shrugged elaborately, getting into the game as far as he dared.

  “Your every wish is my command. You must be the Lady of the Lake or something.”

  She giggled, covering her mouth. Then she stabbed him with a look.

  “Cute.” Eyes downcast, she nodded inscrutably, lips moving silently.

  He settled down to wait with a look of puzzled humour on his features. Looking up, she was ready.

  She rattled through the basic rules. Austin was familiar with five-card stud, his mouth twitching when the word came up. Her hands were a blur. He stared at the cards she had dealt him.

  He discarded, all well and good.

  “Give me two.”

  She gave him a couple of cards. This one was in the bag anyway. Never start a battle you can’t win—her crazy dad again.

  “So what do you mean?” Austin’s eyes regarded her from across the blanket.

  He looked down at his hand, and up at her again.

  “Here’s how it works. I deal, you make the bet. We switch back and forth. When you deal, I get to make the bet. It’s only fair.”

  “So if I win, I get my wish?”

  “Yep. And if the dealer wins, then you have to keep your side of the bargain. The bet is a fair trade. Promise? Do you promise?” His nod was quick and assuring, so she went on. “That makes it interesting for both of us. You can refuse a bet, but you have to make an alternate trade for something else.”

  “Got it.” Austin looked at his cards and thought for a second. “I still don’t know what we’re betting for…”

  She just let that one lie for a moment.

  Her look seemed to imply that he did know. His heart stopped cold.

  He had no idea of what to wish for…he didn’t dare speak.

  “Just this once, I’ll go first.”

  Austin nodded, eyes darting right and left, taking a small sip of wine as he looked at her with the most profound solemnity on his face.

  She had a gulp of wine and puffed the smoke. Austin picked it up and had a haul off of it.

  “Socks for socks.”

  He looked at her.

  “If you lose, I get your socks. If I lose, you get my socks…see, it’s easy, really.” She looked archly at him, blowing him a little kiss.

  Austin grinned at the relief. Something small to start with.

  Scene Three

  Within four or five hands, Austin was sitting in his gotchies, blushing beet red and with a big bulge in his white cotton briefs announcing to the world that he was a man, and a very aroused one at that. Within the first few hands, Austin was in love with Bethany. She could do anything she wanted with Austin. No problems there as far as he was concerned.

  She regarded her prey.

  Austin had the longest legs, with big feet and shanks that kind of stunned her, all covered in curly auburn hair. His chest could have used a little meat on it. His hip bones stuck up. There was a thick patch of belly hair and smaller tufts on his chest and around the nipples. His shoulders were good and the stomach looked hard as a rock, an impression reinforced by ribs rippling below the skin. Ian had always given the impression of gently rounded shapelessness and pale, clammy flesh. She hadn’t known any better at the time…

  Austin worked in construction and had a nice tan on his back and shoulders, although the legs were pretty white. His ropy arms were tight with muscle and stark with tendons and big veins going all up and down…the bones of his wrists stuck out. He had strong, beautiful hands.

  She sat across from him. Her feet were bare and he’d managed to win her slender gold wristwatch. Oh, how she enjoyed watching him crow over his little moments of triumph. If only he knew. He seemed fascinated by her thin gold ankle bracelet.

  With unconscious grace, she removed the band from her hair, shaking out the long, coppery tresses. She gave him an appraising look, with her clear, intelligent, grey-blue eyes.

  “So that’s a freebie, then?”

  She smiled her Mona Lisa smile.

  “Why sure, baby.”

  “Thank you for your kindness to a stranger.”

  She just smiled.

  Austin was a goner.

  “Well, stranger. You don’t seem to have too much more to lose.”

  Austin looked down at his underwear and then at Bethany sitting there cool and calm as an iceberg, her high breasts poking at the cloth of her blouse. She didn’t much look like a librarian.

  Not anymore.

  It was better to say nothing, not a thing. He chewed his lip.

  She showed no discomfort at sitting in a room alone with a man who was virtually naked. He was the one that was scared. He was afraid to ruin it. She stubbed out the smoke and lit another.

  She had a sip of wine. They sat examining each other.

  She had dealt the cards and he discarded when necessary. She apparently did the same. But she was really good. She was cheating on Austin somehow. That was all right with him. Poker wasn’t so hard when you didn’t have to ante up cold hard cash and if you weren’t too interested in winning. In this game there was no way to lose. It took him a few hands, but he’d figured it out. He started discarding high cards, anything he had a pair of…he reversed the usual system.

  He had her right where he wanted her. The thought brought a sudden grin.

  “What?”

  He shook his head.

  “It’s nothing…really.”

  “You bastard.” Her jaw dropped open and she stared in astonishment, but there was something a little too theatrical about it…

  He sat there in his underwear and smiled at the girl across the blanket, straightening up his posture a bit, flexing his hips and buttocks, and getting comfortable.

  She gave a sharp nod.

  “Right!”

  He grinned.

  “Go, on, silly. It’s your bet.” Come on, Austin.

  Austin nodded.

  “I don’t have much to bet with. How about a kiss for a kiss?”

  “No fair! That way you can’t lose.”

  He appeared to think, stalling a bit now, but he had an idea.

  “One of my kisses for an ear nibble. Or your panties. What’s it going to be?”

  She nodded and spread her cards as his heart pounded.

  They hadn’t exactly clarified that…


  Sure enough, she’d won again. Austin showed his cards, a handful of the dregs. Playing it cautiously, he crawled over on his hands and knees to give the lady an ear nibble, which involved licking and tonguing it as well. She clawed his ass through the underwear and then up higher on his back and shoulders. She pulled him close and kissed him thoroughly, whispering his name and gazing deep into his dark eyes, her breath hot in his face. Then she pushed him off. She lay gazing up at him.

  “What about the panties?”

  “Hah!”

  He cocked his head sideways and she gave a gentle snort.

  “Aw, what the hell.”

  She laid back and raised her bum. She watched Austin as he lifted the skirt and carefully peeled them down.

  The aroma coming from down there was total revelation and the reality of what was happening really began to sink in…he’d never even seen one, not up close before. Not for real.

  It wasn’t the proper time to say it. But he really was kind of in love with Bethany. They’d only met three weeks ago. He took the panties, flinging them aside without a glance. He picked up the cards, staring as she took up a comfortable pose, brushed her skirt down and waited for him to deal.

  “You men think you’re so smart.” She watched his hands as he shuffled and dealt, much more professionally now.

  Interesting. He seemed so clumsy at first.

  “Now I know better, Bethany. By the way, I think I might be falling in love with you.”

  He meant it. He wasn’t lying. She knew it instantly.

  He nodded, uttered a deep sigh and shrugged philosophically. He seemed sort of vulnerable at that moment.

  They both knew what the stakes were.

  Their eyes were riveted on one another as Austin dealt out the cards swiftly and surely, never taking his eyes from her face.

  She found herself blushing, needing air all of a sudden. Her heart thudded. This was good. Really good. It almost scared her. This was perfect.

  He put the deck in the middle and glanced at her glass.

  “More wine, old girl? Heh-heh-heh.”

  “That sounded very much like an evil chuckle.” With a curl of her lip, she blew a stray wisp of hair out her eyes.

  Giving Austin a long look, Bethany picked up her cards and prepared to lose a few hands.

  Cigarette smoke curled up unheeded until Austin reached over. He took a puff and then decisively crushed it out. He raised a glass in toast. She reached for her own glass.

  She was right about Austin.

  This was going to be an interesting night.

  Throwing Chocolate

  Scene One

  “What the—”

  Vicki Stewart, clad in leotards, high, fur-lined boots and a brown woolen coat with four pockets, her silken hair combed out straight, was browsing in the Laura Secord store at the mall. She shared her mother’s feisty ways, although she was a tall girl, in which she took after Dad.

  She really wasn’t planning to buy anything, merely to kind of drool over it. For her, Valentine’s Day, coming up in a couple of weeks or so, wasn’t going to be a happy thing. Not the way it should have been, could have been…would have been.

  Valentines’ Day wasn’t even time for sorrow. It was more of an anger thing this time around.

  It took Vicki a moment to catch on.

  Something had just bounced off her breast. Something fell to the floor with a clatter and a rustle. It seemed to come from somewhere fairly high up…

  At first she thought she had accidently knocked something off a shelf with her elbow or her purse, but a small and colorfully-wrapped candy was right there by her foot. She wasn’t mistaken. It was right there.

  She gave it a little kick and it disappeared under the display.

  There was nothing quite like that right here, and hence it was hard to see where she might have knocked against anything.

  Something sailed into her vision and hit her square in the chest. The small object bounced, tumbled and fell, and skittered away in behind a pyramid of candied oranges or something.

  There was a strange man staring at her from over the top of the display. He was grinning at her.

  He made a sudden flick of the arm and another candy flew her way.

  “You toad!” Giggling, she ducked away, admittedly now smiling.

  What a fool. If the shop staff saw that, they’d have a fit. They were in behind the sales counter, with the rear glass doors open, bringing in fresh trays of specialty chocolates and arranging them in the racks. He was kind of cute, in a pleasant-faced twenty-five-ish sort of way, with bold eyes, neatly styled dark hair, and a raffish grin.

  Shaking her head, she moved along the row. The smiling, and not overly, repulsively, ugly fellow stayed in her peripheral vision. He bit his lower lip, keeping an eye on the front counter, hands out of sight down low. His face turned towards her again.

  Something whizzed past her head.

  “You idiot.”

  Stop that.

  Vicki bit her tongue for fear of really letting loose on the guy. She had dealt with this sort of thing before, though.

  He was kind of cute, too.

  The staff didn’t catch her hiss, and the guy just didn’t care apparently. He was the class clown or something, and he bounced another bright missile off her, hitting her right in the breasts again this time.

  “What is your problem?” She shook her head half in anger and half in amusement. “Who are you?”

  All she wanted to do was to kill some time while Aunt Myrna went to the dentist. Aunt Myrna had to go to a trendy mall dentist, instead of a stuffy downtown crappy old Victorian house kind of dentist. Blast Aunt Myrna. Once in the mall, with time to kill, her basic shopping instincts had been aroused.

  “Oh, come on. They’re good. Try one.” He pitched another one, this time a little more gently, over the display, and this time she caught it perfectly.

  He winked and then, spinning on a dime, he went back the other way. His neck was a little red, his head was down and yet he was whistling cheerfully. His eye kept rolling up to look back at her, humorously enough, but he was finally going away. That’s all she really cared at that exact moment in time.

  “Idiot.”

  She unwrapped it, still shaking her head.

  “Crazy. Weirdo.”

  Yeah, she knew what he wanted.

  Inside was a small square of milk chocolate, which she popped into her mouth.

  With a rising sense of mirth, and some element of disbelief, she saw something scrawled on the inside of the wrapper. His phone number! The nerve of some people’s kids. She almost spit the chocolate out in her surprise, but it was already half melted and partly chewed and it tasted all right. It tasted okay—no poison or nothing.

  At least she didn’t think so. No one could be that crazy, right?

  But then again, no one could be that stupid, to actually put it in her mouth. It tasted all right. In fact, it was very good chocolate. So the knucklehead had good taste in chocolate.

  How hard was that? Chocolate was chocolate.

  Big deal.

  Stamping her foot a little, still sort of mystified, she crumpled up the wrapper and with a quick glance around, tossed it in behind a pile of candied apples, which by the way were awesome here—she had occasionally dreamed of them, during the long watches of the night, and she really wasn’t a heavy girl or anything. They were just that good.

  “Kind of figured you’d do that.” As she turned, he was right there and she drew up suddenly.

  He’d gone all the way around the outer fringes of the store and come up from behind in the one and only cross-aisle.

  He pressed another candy into her hand. She grinned in spite of herself, amused at his persistence. He was a fairly nice-looking guy…but.

  “That’s for later.” He stuck his hand in a brown paper bag and came up with a handful.

  She laughed and tried to duck around him.

  “Stop. It. Oh, Honey, you’re making a
scene.”

  She squealed and giggled and tried to evade him, but he gently hip-checked her up against the display shelf. They were both laughing now. When she tried to go first one way, and then the other, he just blocked her. To the impatience and disapproval of store staff, who were only now becoming aware of the pair, a grinning Steve Parker stuffed as many chocolate candies into as many of her pockets, as they dashed back and forth, from side to side in the aisle, as he possibly could in the brief time allotted.

  “Fuck off!”

  The guy nodded, ever so humbly, in mock surrender.

  “I’m sorry. I just can’t help myself.” With one final wave and an insouciant grin, Parker dropped her hand and she fled in precipitation, face all red with embarrassment. “You have my humble apologies!”

  He was backing off, bowing and scraping, hands raised in surrender.

  She was still giggling and at the same time uttering dire imprecations—whatever the hell that means. There was room so she bolted for the opening.

  His theatrically loud ‘bwa-ha-ha…ha…ha’ followed Vicki out the big front archway and down the mall as she strode off to the left, fighting the urge to look back. She just couldn’t do it, ultimately. She had to know if he was following her.

  She risked a quick look back.

  He was standing in front of the store, the now seriously depleted bag of goodies in one hand, looking pointedly down at a small trail of colorful objects.

  “Hey, Vicki! You dropped something!” He raised his arms like paws or something and bent his knees, bobbing his head and made as if to sniff her trail, like a bloodhound.

  God, what a bad actor.

  “Go to hell!”

  How did he know my name?

  That was weird.

  Scene Two

  Steven had been asking her friend at work, Melanie, about her. Apparently he’d seen them together on lunch and he knew Mel from somewhere.