MacIntyre took a threatening step toward Morgan. “The chamber of commerce has had several complaints about your window displays, and they’ve come up several times during my discussions with the other aldermen. I’ve suggested to several of them that we move to shut you down.”
“Gosh, if you close me down, where will all of your members go to buy their porn and sex toys?” Morgan’s smirk could’ve peeled paint.
“You can only fuel a business with attitude for so long, Ms. Talley. After that you’ve got to put up or shut up.” Swelling with righteousness, MacIntyre headed for the front door.
“I’ll remember that the next time one of your girlfriends comes in here looking to supplement her shitty sex life.”
Emory sucked in a deep breath, wishing she could handle MacIntyre with some of Morgan’s flair. Confrontations were not her thing. Had Alex not stepped into her shop earlier, there was no telling what kind of awkward position MacIntyre’s lunch date would have put her in.
“He’s gone, Em. You can come out now.”
Emory emerged from the back hall, peeking over a rack of lacy lingerie to make sure MacIntyre’s sports car had left the curb.
“Why are you hiding from that douche bag anyway?” Morgan hopped up on her glass counter and picked up a price gun. “He’s full of shit. You should hear the way his employees talk about him. The guy spends half his time sexually harassing them. One of these days those girls are going to grow some brass balls, and he’s going to wind up in court.”
“He’s been coming by the shop a lot lately.” Emory had never mentioned MacIntyre’s increasingly frequent visits to Morgan.
Morgan looked up from the sticky mess of price tags she was trying to fix. “I told you dating him was a bad idea. What possessed you to do something like that anyway?”
“I told you. He asked.” It was impossible to explain her reasoning to someone like Morgan.
“You can’t go out with a guy just because he asks. You have to wait for something worthwhile.”
Like Alex. “I don’t get asked much. I hate to turn down something when it might be a year before someone else bothers.”
Morgan set the gun aside. “A year? C’mon, Em. Be serious.”
It was like a flashback of high school, when the socially awkward preacher’s daughter had come to school in her dowdy sack-shaped denim dresses with her hair strangled into a bun. Her father would never have allowed her to date, but it would’ve been heaven to be asked. To be wanted.
“You are serious.” Morgan’s carefully shaped eyebrows lifted in surprise. “I always figured you were just picky about your dates.”
Since they were on the subject of men in general, Emory wondered how she could steer Morgan around to the topic of Alex without being too obvious. “Not all of us can be like you. You change guys like underwear.”
“Except I don’t wear underwear,” Morgan quipped.
“You know, there might be something to that easy-access approach. Maybe I should try it.”
“Hang on.” Morgan’s gaze narrowed. “You met somebody, didn’t you? That’s what all this is about!”
Emory was momentarily speechless. She’d been going for subtle. How the hell had Morgan deduced all of that from one sentence? The worry that her friend might not approve of Alex bubbled to the surface. “Would you be mad if I was seeing someone you used to date?”
“Who?”
“Alex Dalesio.”
Morgan’s expressive eyebrows nearly launched off her face. “Lucky girl! And we never dated. We fucked. Definitely a difference.”
“That’s pretty much what we’re doing too.” Emory tried to sound nonchalant, but didn’t know how. She didn’t have enough experience in the world of casual sex to know how to seem unaffected. “That’s how Alex does things, isn’t it?”
“A week here, a month there? Yeah, that sums it up.”
She thought of Alex’s dancing blue eyes and brilliant smile. A band of tension wrapped around her heart. Maybe she wasn’t cut out for this casual stuff. “So, how do you know when he’s losing interest? I mean, can you predict an expiration date? You know. So I’ll have a heads-up.”
“A heads-up?” Morgan jumped lightly off the counter. “How long has this been going on?”
“Like twenty-four hours?”
“Oh, sweetie.”
Emory felt suddenly lightheaded. “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.” She thought of the way it felt when he held her in his arms, the scent of his skin and the taste of his lips. Casual sex meant those things weren’t hers to keep.