I’m in the shower. The light in the bathroom is low, just a few scented candles burning on the vanity. The air is heavy and warm and suffused with the scent of orange blossoms. I close my eyes, the tension in my muscles melting away. When I open them again, a shadow appears beyond the curtain. Before I can scream, the curtain is thrown aside.
I gasp.
It’s Brad Pitt.
In his Achilles armor. (But not the silly helmet.)
His hungry warrior eyes devour the sight of my wet, naked body as he wrests the breastplate from his chest. It makes no sound as it hits the tile floor. “I want you.”
“But Brad…” My eyes widen with shock as he sheds his leather… (skirt? shorts? No, that’s not right. Tunic! Tunic is good. Manly but still Greek.) …his leather tunic. “What about Angelina?”
“That unsightly hag? She’s dead to me.”
My nipples pucker at the sight of his rock hard body. His movie star skin is radiant in the flickering light. So is mine, and not in the usual blanched, I-just-crawled-out-from-under-a-rock-pass-the-SPF 90 way, either. In my fantasy, I am not pale…I am golden. I am shimmering. I am luminous.
But enough about me.
Brad Pitt steps into the shower.
At this point, I make a sort of half-hearted attempt to hide my nakedness behind the curtain, but my modesty is no match for Brad Pitt’s lust. Through the steamy semi-darkness, I see his towering cock, feel his penetrating stare, sense his uncontrollable desire. My legs start to tremble.
“Give me what I want, or I’ll take it from you.” He backs me against the wall, his muscular chest barely brushing the tips of my breasts, because Brad Pitt knows how sensitive they are. How crazy a light touch drives me.
“No.” My protest is demure, feeble. It turns him on.
Without another word, he grabs my wrists and pins them behind my head. Holding them there with one hand, he slides the other one between my legs, running the length of his index finger through my silken folds. I try to get my hands free, but I’m no match for the strength in even one of his warrior arms. “What are you going to do to me?” I whimper.
“I’m going to fuck you, Erin. Right now.” He takes his warrior cock in his hand and rubs my clit with the tip. “Would you like that?”
“Yes,” I breathe, giving in to the tension coiling at the center of my body. “Fuck me. Right now.”
He slides in slowly, a little at a time, until he’s buried to the hilt, practically lifting me right off my feet. Then his cock begins to vibrate against my clit but it’s Brad Pitt so I don’t question it or anything and he’s whispering dirty words and fucking me hard and I want to claw at his perfect warrior ass but I can’t because I cuffed one hand to the towel bar behind my head with my pink fuzzy cuffs like it’s him restraining me and the other is holding my vibrator and oh god oh god oh god Brad Pitt can make me come so hard…
“Yes!” I cry out softly as the orgasm swells to the breaking point, my core muscles clenching the firm shaft of the Naughty Rabbit. “Oh God, Brad, you’re so—“
THUMP.
My eyes opened. Did I just hear something downstairs?
Fumbling with the off switch, I removed the Naughty Rabbit and hid it behind my back, as if shame would be my biggest problem if some intruder was in my house. (Actually, the thing was pretty solid. I could’ve probably used it as a weapon.) With my heart hammering in my chest, I set the vibrator down, uncuffed my hand from the towel bar, turned off the water, and listened.
Nothing.
I stayed that way, dripping and breathless and shaking for another minute or so, then I pulled the curtain aside. The bathroom door was still closed.
But I couldn’t remember locking it.
Stepping over the side of the tub with the fuzzy cuffs still dangling from my left wrist, I tried the handle. It turned easily, and the lock didn’t pop.
Omigod! My jaw dropped open and my hands flailed. I’d been so anxious to get to the Brad Pitt part of my crummy day that I’d forgotten to lock the door! I lived alone, but I always, always locked the bathroom door when I showered at night, especially if I was taking toys in with me. (After all, my mother had a key to my house.) But I’d been so worked up—and tipsy—when I came upstairs that I hadn’t done it. Note to self: three glasses of wine in an hour is too many.
Suddenly I couldn’t recall double-checking the lock on the front or back door before coming upstairs, either. Wait, had I even locked it after coming in from the grocery store? My stomach churned as I tried to piece together the last couple hours—after a late rehearsal at the studio and two difficult conversations with helicopter dance moms, I’d gone to Kroger, come home, put away groceries, and answered a phone call from another dance mom I should have ignored. Looking to unwind, I’d guzzled some wine and gotten distracted by Troy on HBO when suddenly the urge to shower with Brad took hold and I couldn’t ignore it (I wouldn’t have turned down Eric Bana or Orlando Bloom either. Sweet Jesus, all three of them in one movie…). Telling myself I deserved a little break from reality after the week I’d had, I’d poured a third glass of wine, stumbled upstairs, and dug out my personal Secret Box of Sexy from under my bed. The wine and the Box were now sitting on the vanity next to the candles in a sad little romantic display of a typical Friday night in my life.
But I had a bigger problem.
Had someone gotten into my house? Worse, was he still there? Friday night fantasies aside, an actual stranger intruding on my shower was not sexy.
Grabbing a towel from the cupboard, I held it to my chest and peeked out into that hallway.
Nothing.
But something wasn’t right. I could sense it. With dread coursing through my veins, I slid the cuffs off my wrist, tossed them into the Box and hastily dried myself a little. Still half wet, I exchanged the towel for the robe on the bathroom door hook and slipped my arms into the sleeves, moving slowly, trying to calm my galloping-out-of-control heart by telling myself not to be paranoid. Really, what are the chances that the one night you forgot to double check the locks is the night something bad happens? And you probably locked them anyway; you always do.
But just in case, I said a quick Hail Mary.
Confession: I am not a very good Catholic. My Hail Marys and Our Fathers and Unfailing Prayers to St. Anthony and whatnot unfailingly coincide with moments of great calamity or impending humiliation in my life. I try to make up for this by attending mass (sort of) regularly and helping out at the Capuchin Soup Kitchen on holidays. Whether or not this actually evens the scales as far as God is concerned remains to be seen, but so far so good.
Tiptoeing into the hall, I immediately felt cool air blowing up the stairway. A draft, as if I’d left a door not just unlocked, but open.
Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. Poised at the top of the stairs, I listened hard, but my heart was booming so loudly I couldn’t hear anything else. My chest hurt, too. After a minute or two of tense silence, I started down the stairs. It’s nothing, I told myself, although a small part of my brain thought I might be having a heart attack. Maybe I left a window open. Maybe I didn’t lock the door and it blew open. Maybe I just forgot to turn the heat up when I got home from the studio and that’s why it feels cool. See? Look at that, front door’s closed.
I tried the handle. Locked.
Exhaling in relief, I walked to the back of my townhouse, through the small front room and dining room into the kitchen.
Which was where I panicked.
Because the back door was open.
Frantically, I scanned the kitchen counters, my breath trapped in my lungs.
My purse was gone.
My computer was gone.
My iPad was gone.
My phone was gone.
For a few moments, I stood blinking in disbelief, like maybe there was some mistake and I’d somehow simply misplaced the items. But all the power cords and chargers were there, and I knew I’d plugged my phone in after hanging up with that mother earlier. It didn’t take long before reality sank in—I’d forgotten to lock the door. Someone had been in here and stolen my things.
Someone could still be in here.
Too stunned and scared to even make a sound, I bolted back through the dining room and front room and right up the stairs to my bedroom, where (at my mother’s insistence) I had an actual land line phone.
I locked the door and dialed 911, gave the dispatcher my address and a rundown—leaving out the part about showering with Brad Pitt—and told her I was staying put until the cops checked the entire house and told me it was safe to come out.
I forgot about the Box of Sexy.
It was that kind of day.
#
I waited under my covers the entire time the police were checking the house, about twenty minutes. I had the phone under there with me, and I called both Mia and Coco, but neither of them answered their phones. I left messages, telling them what happened and begging both of them to call me back. I would’ve called my mother, but she’d left this morning for a twelve-day religious pilgrimage to Spain. I should have gone with her, like she wanted me to. Now God is punishing me! He knows I have unholy thoughts about Brad Pitt (a married man!) and now I have to pay for it!
A knock sounded on my locked bedroom door, making me jump.
“Ma’am? We’ve checked the house. There’s no one here.” The officer’s voice was deep and reassuring. “When you’re ready, we’d like to speak with you. We’ll wait in the kitchen.”
I peeked out from the covers, eyeing the door suspiciously. “How do I know you’re really the police and not the intruder?”
“Well, you could open the door and take a look at me in uniform.”
“No way. Slide your badge under the door or something.” That’s what they did in the movies, right?
“Come on, Erin. Open the door.”
“No. And how do you know my name?”
“The police department has all kinds of useful information, like who lives where. Either that or I’m psychic.”
I made a face at the door. Did I know this guy? His voice was familiar somehow, but I couldn’t think of who it could be. “I’m not in the mood for jokes.”
“You never did have much of a sense of humor. Now come on out and see me in uniform. I think you’ll be impressed. The ladies usually are.”
My jaw dropped. Who on earth was this? Curiosity got the better of me, and I threw the covers off and jumped out of bed. In front of the door I paused for a second, my hand on the handle, thinking that if it was a scary hairy madman I’d be ready to give him a great big grand battement to the balls. Then I turned the handle and yanked it open.
Oh dear.
Oh dear.
The crazy thing was, he was so handsome I had the fleeting thought this whole burglary thing was a hoax and this “cop” was actually a stripper. For a second I just stared at him, half expecting him to rip open his shirt at the chest and start gyrating.
Confession: I really, really wished he would. (For a couple of reasons.)
But he didn’t.
“Have I changed that much, Red?”
It hit me. “Oh my God. Charlie Dwyer. You’re a cop?”
He smiled, and if he hadn’t been such a turd when we were younger, I might have melted right there at his feet. As it was, I could only shake my head in disbelief at this nightmare—not only had more than two thousand dollars’ worth of electronics been stolen from my townhouse while I was upstairs getting myself off, but here to protect me was the bully next door who’d kidnapped my hamster for ransom and held up my charity lemonade stand with a Taser. And he was drop-dead gorgeous! Where was the justice in the world?
“Since your manners are evidently lacking in the wake of this unfortunate event, I’ll take the lead here. Nice to see you again.” Charlie held out his hand, and I took it without thinking. He didn’t really shake it; he just sort of closed his fingers around my palm and held it. I looked at our hands—mine was much smaller and paler. He squeezed it gently. “You’re shaking.”
I pulled my hand away, crossed my arms. “It’s been a rough night. Did you find anything?”
“Your purse was on the sidewalk out front. No wallet inside. We think this is one of the guys who’ve been hitting unlocked houses and cars for the last few weeks.”
“He didn’t take my entire purse? What about my keys?” My voice shook. God, what if he’d gotten away with keys to my house? To my car? To my studio?
“Relax. Your keys are on the counter, and your car is still in the garage. He’s probably on foot or on a bike with a backpack, so he doesn’t take more than he has to. Mostly just electronics.”
“Jesus.” I closed my eyes. “Is this the guy I heard about on the news? The cat burglar?” It sounded so absurd to me. So unreal. Before tonight I’d actually giggled at the stories, picturing a skinny guy dressed in black with pointy black ears on his head and whiskers drawn on his face with a magic marker. But now he scared me. “How does he keep doing this?”
“He’s small and quick. He likes houses close together, or townhouses like these, and we think he parks somewhere farther away. It’s possible he jumps on a bus too.”
“If you know so much about him, why can’t you catch him?” I snapped, pulling my robe tighter around me.
“Easy, Red. Why don’t you come downstairs and answer a few questions that might help us out?”
At the second mention of his old nickname for me—not so much for my strawberry blond hair as for the color my face turned when he’d tease me—my scalp prickled. “Fine,” I said through clenched teeth. “Just give me a minute.”
Charlie nodded and turned for the stairs, and I put the phone back on the charger before turning out my bedroom light and following. On a whim, I decided to duck into the bathroom and take a quick peek at my hair. I hadn’t even combed through it after my shower.
And then I saw it—the Box.
Oh no. Oh my God.
My Secret Box of Sexy was right there on the vanity, on display for anyone to see! My fuzzy pink hand cuffs and Pure Romance lube and a little black Lelo box containing my SIRI massager…each item brought another heavy layer of humiliation, like those lead aprons you have to wear when you get an x-ray. It wouldn’t take a detective to deduce what my Friday night plans had been, considering the burning candles, the glass of wine, and the contents of the Box. I’d left my Naughty Rabbit on the tub floor—what if he’d looked in there?
And my hair was wet. Dear God.
Distraught, I shoved the box into the cabinet under the sink and tossed my vibrator in there, too. Then I stared at myself in the mirror and tried not to cry, my lips pressed together and my hands gripping the edge of the vanity. If Crayola made a crayon the color of my face right now, they’d call it Mortification Red.
I felt so dumb. This whole thing was my fault. And now I had to go downstairs and admit that to the police. To Charlie Dwyer, reformed bully turned law enforcement officer. If he even was reformed—maybe now he was just a bully in a uniform. On the wall to my left was a small window, and I honestly considered trying to escape through it.
But instead, I dragged a comb through my hair, chugged a few swallows of wine, blew out the candles, and shuffled down the stairs. I nearly told myself things couldn’t get any worse, but then thought better of it. Why tempt fate?
When I walked into the kitchen, I saw Charlie standing with his back to me. Another officer, wearing plain clothes and gloves, was messing around with the back door handle. My purse was on the floor near his feet. I rushed for it, but the man held up a hand.
“It’s better if you don’t touch it. If it’s OK with you, I’d like to take it to the lab and test it for prints. If I can’t do it without ruining the leather, I won’t.”
“Oh.” Stumbling back, I sank into one of the two chairs at my small island, which also served as my kitchen table. “OK.”
“Erin, this is Detective Walker.”
I nodded miserably at the plain-clothes man.
“Ms. Upton, as far as you know, he wasn’t in any other room but this one?” The craggy-faced detective straightened to his full height, which was pretty impressive. Seated between him and Charlie, I felt like a dandelion between two redwoods.
“That’s correct.”
“And he entered through this door, which was unlocked.”
I gritted my teeth. “Yes.”
“All right then. Charlie, I’ve got everything I need for now. I’m gonna head out.” The detective picked up my purse and nodded at me. “Ma’am. Very sorry this happened. I’ll get your purse back to you as soon as possible.”
“All right. Thank you.”
He disappeared out the back door, shutting it tightly behind him, leaving Charlie and me alone.
“OK, Erin. Let me ask you a few questions about tonight.” He stood across from me, leaning back on the kitchen counter. He looked totally out of place in his dark blue uniform against the pretty white cabinetry and exposed brick. Between us, a clear glass bowl of bright green apples stood out against the island’s marble top, and to his right was my coffee station complete with a little chalkboard sign that said But First Coffee. I loved my kitchen. Even at midnight, with the cold October dark pressing at the windows, it was cozy and cheerful. A police officer did not belong in it.
Especially this one.
From his pocket he took out a stubby pencil and tiny notebook, the kind with the spiral at the top, and flipped to the next blank page. “Why don’t we start with the timeline. Were you home all night?”
“Well, I was at the studio until about seven, then I stopped at Kroger, and then I drove home. I parked in the garage and came in the back door. I usually lock it behind me right away—I’m very careful about security—
“Of course you are,” he interrupted, writing something down in his notebook.
I blinked in surprise. Was he being rude or sympathetic? It seemed like a bad sign that I couldn’t tell. “But I was carrying four big bags of groceries. Then as soon as I set them down, my cell phone rang.”
“What time was this?”
Automatically, I got up and looked around for my cell phone so I could check the time the call came in. Then it hit me—it was gone. “God, this is so annoying! I don’t know,” I said miserably, slumping in the chair again. “About seven thirty? Seven forty-five? It was totally dark outside.”
“And then?”
“And then I had a long and stressful conversation with one of the many dance moms who are intent on ruining my life, and when I hung up, I was very upset.” Just then I noticed some crumbs on my dark wood floor, beneath the stool at the counter where I’d eaten an entire bag of honey mustard pretzels earlier. The overwhelming urge to get a broom and dustpan and sweep them up bit at me like a bloodthirsty mosquito. I can’t stand crumbs or spills or messes.
“A dance mom?” Charlie picked up his head.
“A mother of one of the dancers at my studio. I don’t think she’s the one who robbed me, but I wouldn’t mind if you wanted to lock her up.”
He smiled slightly. “Why?”
“She’s crazy. They’re all crazy.” For the millionth time, I wondered if taking over the studio had been a huge mistake.
“So you’re a dance teacher. You used to dance as a kid, too, right?”
“Yes, I did.” I eyeballed him, one eyebrow cocked. “And you used to make fun of me and call me Twinkle Toes. Among other things.”
He looked interested. “What else did I call you? I mean, besides Red.”
“Teacher’s Pet.”
The smile widened. “You were.”
I pursed my lips together. Secretly I hadn’t minded being called Teacher’s Pet, but he didn’t know that. “Crybaby. You called me a crybaby, too.”
“I don’t remember that.” The look on his face said, Since I don’t remember it, it can’t be true.
“You did. I was nine. It was after you robbed my lemonade stand. Remember that? The one I was having to raise money for children’s cancer research?” I wasn’t normally so combative, but this was already a bad night, and Charlie Dwyer knew how to push my buttons. He always had.
“Oh, right.” He laughed. “I held it up with a squirt gun.”
My mouth fell open. “A squirt gun! You told me it was a Taser.”
“A Taser? Where the hell would I have gotten a Taser?”
“I don’t know, but that’s what you said it was. And you said if I didn’t give you all eleven dollars and fifty cents you’d zap me and I’d wet my pants.”
He laughed again. “You even remember how much money it was?”
“Yes!” I sat up taller, my spine rigid with anger. “It’s a very traumatic memory. And you don’t look a bit sorry for it.”
“Why should I be sorry? Serves you right for being so gullible.”
Yeah, this was old Charlie Dwyer all right. How totally unfair he got that jawline and those blue eyes! His hair was nice too—thick, sandy brown and close-cropped, all the better to showcase the symmetry of his handsome features. What a waste. “Can we get on with this, please?” I sniffed.
“Fine with me. So you hung up the phone,” he prompted. “What’s your cell phone number, by the way? And who’s your carrier?”
“Verizon.” I recited the number and went on. “I hung up the phone, and I was so upset I forgot about locking the door.”
“You forgot?” He shook his head, shaming me. “You’re a woman living alone, and there’s been a rash of home invasions in this area.”
A woman living alone? What an asshole! “What difference does it make that I’m a woman?” I snapped. “This could have happened to anyone.”
“Agreed. Anyone who left their back door unlocked after dark.”
I wanted to defend myself, even though part of me agreed with him. “Look, I made a mistake, OK? I feel bad about it. And you’re making it worse.”
He glanced around. “I noticed you don’t have curtains on the windows in here.”
“I just moved in recently. I took the old ones down because they were hideous, and I have new shades, but I haven’t had time to put them up yet.”
“I’d make time. It’s like a fishbowl in here. Anyone can see right in.”
“I’ll take care of it,” I said evenly. Weren’t police officers supposed to make you feel safe? Be a comforting presence after something like this? “You know, you need to work on your people skills a little.”
“Noted. OK, what did you do after the phone call?”
Chugged wine. Ate a bag of pretzels. Ogled sexy men in tunics. “I had dinner.”
“And then you went upstairs?”
My face warmed. “Yes. Um, I turned off all the lights, went up and took a shower, but when I was drying off, I heard a noise down here. I threw on my robe and came down to check, and I noticed right away my laptop was gone, along with my phone, iPad and purse.” My stomach pitched and rolled at the memory, and I shivered. Someone had been in here, in my house while I was upstairs in the shower. I hadn’t even locked the bathroom door, which caused a fresh wave of nausea. Closing my eyes, I held my aching belly. My God. This could have been so much worse.
“And were you going to arrest him yourself?”
My eyes snapped open. “Huh?”
“Those cuffs up there in the bathroom. I assume they belong to you?” With a wicked gleam in his eye, Charlie raised his brows. “Maybe you were going to shock him with your little Taser in the black box first. I didn’t know Lelo made self-defense products.”
It was one of those moments where I’d have welcomed a nice catastrophic event—an earthquake, perhaps. An F5 tornado. A volcanic eruption. Anything that would cause the earth to split and swallow me whole so that I would not have to respond.
I gave it a minute.
I gave it a Hail Mary.
No luck.