Chapter One
Seattle, Washington
Claire would not say his name for the one-millionth time. Would definitely not think of his hard body or his hot mouth or the things she wanted to do with him.
Perhaps denying herself was ridiculous, but it was an exercise in self-control. She had little or no other means to stop him from appearing in her dreams, flashes of him in her thoughts, filling her fantasies uninvited. He was living back home again; her father had told her when she called last week. He’d come back to renovate his parents’ house. She inhaled, banishing an image of him, and scribbled onto the yellow legal pad.
You’d think a broken heart would stop bleeding.
She pinched the pen between her fingers and drew a line through the words. If only forgetting were possible. She’d considered hypnosis but was too embarrassed to pursue it as a remedy. If she could be done with him by elixir or tonic, she would have ordered a magical potion from sheer desperation, even if only for some placebo effect.
All she had at the moment was an ink pen, moving and marking fine lines over her words. She didn’t stop until the letters were obliterated. But not the sentiment. Or the feel of his lips.
Dustin, she sighed. Her personal critic groaned.
“Fine. One million one and counting,” Claire grumbled.
She took a last sip of her coffee and set the cup down on the table. She needed to occupy her mind so he didn’t keep reappearing in her thoughts willy-nilly. Only in her secret writing could she find an escape if she chose or seek to fulfill her fantasies of the man she’d left back home. Tonight Dustin seemed to take possession of her thoughts, but it was her body that wanted fulfillment. She half-closed her eyes and imagined the things Dustin would do to her. Her breath caught, her eyes fluttered, and he was gone.
Claire moaned, slamming her hand down in frustration. She had to stop imagining him. These fantasies tended to spill into her nighttime writing, and if she wasn’t careful, her next heroine might very well fall into the arms of a motocross-riding hero who closely resembled the boy next door. Even on the opposite coast, without seeing or talking to him for years, he was dangerous.
The words she’d written on the yellow pad might be hidden, but the lines did not erase her feelings. Her writing was more like her life than she’d rather admit. She hid all week at her desk at Ethos working in a job that was safe while she longed to do something else. At first she’d believed getting hired by a cutting-edge magazine like Ethos was the realization of a life goal. She was writing for a living. Each week she hammered out a story for her editor, until recently, when she’d realized her life was no different than before. She wasn’t happy as a journalist. She couldn’t make herself fit into a slot by never giving into her own desire to write from the heart. Deep down she was a card-carrying romantic, with an e-reader filled with love stories and an ever ready box of tissues.
There was one place where she could be alone and take control of her memories of him. A world of respite, where things might have a black moment, a darkest hour, but in the end things worked out for her fictional characters, two people who fell in love, with some form of happy ending and many, many steamy, sexy scenes. Her only curse was to have an ever present imaginary critic who constantly whispered sweet nothings in the form of harsh criticisms. At the moment, the critic was nowhere to be seen and Claire could bring her sexy fantasy world to life.
She reached for her computer. Her fingertips sat poised at the keys as the image of the scene within a story evolved. She bit her lip, thinking of Dustin, and shook her head.
“Stop that,” she hissed softly.
Claire readied her imagination. She refocused on the screen. She flexed her curled fingers in anticipation. As if a shot was fired, Claire’s fingertips began tapping out the rhythm of the story, a current flowing from her body into the computer. Claire leapt forward into the realm of creation, escaping her apartment kitchen, laying out the groundwork of her next story. The walls melted away.
Cynthia’s gray suit spoke clearly of business and nothing at all frivolous. Her skirt fell an inch or so above the crease at the back of her knees. The seams of her stockings ran perfectly straight down the back of her calves. But her shoes…they spoke an entirely different language than her suit did. Six-inch heels—sling-back stilettos in Madeira-wine-colored patent leather. She lifted one arched foot, dangling her shoe. There he was, coming through the front doors of the office with a cup of coffee and reading the newspaper. Her heart tripped and somersaulted. She held her breath, and once again he walked by her as if she were a piece of the reception room furniture.