LENA

What was that? Oh, my gosh, oh, my God—what in heaven’s name was that? Never in my wildest imagination did I dream sex could feel like this. So astonishing, so downright miraculous, I’m just now realizing Booker’s sudden weight is crushing the breath right out of me. “Can’t...breathe,” I wheeze.

He swears under his breath and pushes up on his palms, his biceps jumping into hard relief. Air rushes into my lungs even as I miss his weight pinning me down. I watch a very un-Bookerlike wash of color rise up his throat and onto his face.

“Sorry,” he says. “That was just so damn incredible, it kicked the slats right out from under me.”

“You, too?” That was comforting. But even as we speak, all the amazing feelings are fading, except for an occasional faint pulse deep between my legs.

Leaving me without the first idea of how to act around him.

What, what, what on earth was that thing he did with his tongue? I have worked in bars since reaching my majority at eighteen. So, while I may have only experienced sex one time before this morning—and that a world removed from what I just felt—I thought I’d at least heard most of what there was to know. People in bars talk. Heaven knows most of the women I’ve worked with over the years had a lot to say.

Nobody ever mentioned that tongue thing. I would have remembered that.

I clear my throat. “I have never in my life felt anything like this.” Heck, I had no idea such sensations even existed. Then a sudden thought makes me freeze. “Oh, God, Booker. I could get pregnant from this!”

What the hell had I been thinking? I, more than most people, know what it’s like to be the result of an unwanted pregnancy. I assume that’s why my mother left me at the Blood of Christ, anyway. I always thought she had given being an unwed mom a try, found it just too difficult, and dumped me on the B of C’s steps.

I swore I would never put another child through the same situation.

“No,” Booker says firmly. “You can’t and you won’t. I used a rubber. I’m wearing it still. I can pull out, if you’d like to inspect it.”

Even as my face flames, my new fear-fueled tension flows away. Whew. Yes. Okay. I do remember him rolling something down

down

down

the length of his sex. I blow out a huge sigh of relief.

I can feel myself blushing all over at the mere thought of inspecting the thing—although maybe I’m the tiniest bit tempted. “That’s okay. I wasn’t paying the strictest attention, I guess.”

I wonder if Booker can read my mind, for the grin he gives me is truly wicked. Darned if his (clearly) dirty mind doesn’t stir those crazy feelings once again. Suddenly overwhelmed, I shove at his shoulders, desperate to be somewhere—anywhere—else. “I should go.”

Booker doesn’t budge. “Go where, exactly? It’s Sunday, Lena, everything is closed. Unless...” His dark brows scrunch briefly over his nose. “Do you need to talk to Clara or Dot about this?”

“God, no!” To my surprise, Booker’s brows furrow deeper yet. Baffled, I peer up at him. I would have thought that would be the last thing he’d want—the rest of his employees knowing he and I were doing naked things together behind closed doors. “I don’t imagine you want me to do that. Do you?”

“Hey, shout it from the rooftops, if you want to. Because, making love with you, Lena? Best thing that ever happened to me, far as I’m concerned.”

His words steep me in a warm glow. Yet, I still feel an urgent need to push him away, to distance myself. Getting attached has never ended particularly well for me. And although a huge part of me wants nothing more than to stay wrapped up in Booker’s arms, my smarter self is screaming to stick with making real girlfriends this year and give the messy man/woman stuff a wide berth.

Before I can do or say anything further, however, Booker lowers his head to press a soft kiss into the curve of my neck where it turns into my shoulder. I feel him pulse inside me, growing a bit larger again. “You don’t have to decide anything right this minute, Lena,” he says in a husky voice that sends heat shooting down my spine. “Not today, and not tomorrow either, if you’re still trying to come to terms with what you want from this relationship.” He lifts his head. Pins me in a riveting blue-eyed gaze, which leaves me suddenly breathless.

“Why don’t we just take things nice and slow,” he continues softly. “You hear what I’m saying? Let’s just enjoy each other for a while before we start slapping labels on whatever this thing between us is.” One large, bare shoulder hunches nearly to his ear before quickly dropping back into its original position. “Let’s see where it takes us.”

Relief floods me. Seeing where it takes us is something I think I can do.

* * *

By Thursday, I’m not feeling nearly as dispassionate about this “seeing” business as I was last Sunday. I have a strong desire to keep this connection—whatever it is—strictly between me and Booker. At the same time, I so, so need to talk to someone who knows more about men and sex than I do. Which, frankly? Probably includes most of the population of Seattle.

I think of Will first, of course. But...no. Never in this lifetime. Will is the next best thing to a brother to me—I simply cannot talk about sex with him. Not when it’s sex I’m participating in.

I make a rude noise. Who am I kidding? I’m pretty darn sure Will wouldn’t be comfortable with any sex talk, either.

So, I seek out Dot and Clara, make some plans with them, then walk down to Booker’s office. Seeing Leo industriously pouring over some kind of bookwork at the desk they seem to take turns sharing, I step inside.

Booker is nowhere to be seen.

“Hey,” I say, and barely manage not to wince at the adolescent way my voice hits high C in the middle of the word. I clear my throat. “Have you seen the boss around?”

Leo glances up, then away while he combs through a stack of papers. “He’s in the storeroom,” he says in a distracted voice as he paws through the closest pile to him. “Counting liquor or something.”

“All right. Thanks.”

Leo hums a non-answer, barely glancing up as I withdraw. I make my way to the storeroom, where I find Booker, his jacket thrown atop a case of whiskey and his shirtsleeves rolled up his forearms.

I love seeing him like this; it reminds me of the young man I first knew. He dressed much more casually back then. And he looks so ...relaxed and easy, without so much as a hint of tension. I lean through the open doorway. “You got a minute?”

“Of course.” Reaching for me, he draws me into the room. Into his arms. Bending his head, he kisses me, at first lightly, then more deeply. When he raises his head a moment later, I’m short of breath and my heart is pounding like Henry’s percussion section in full swing. “This is a nice surprise,” he says, brushing a couple of loose strands of hair back into the waves I’d had marceled. Then he smooths his hands down my back to cup my hips.

“I just wanted to let you know I’m going to spend the night with Dot and Clara tonight.”

Booker stills, his grip suddenly a titch too tight. Yet when I glance up into his face, it’s unnervingly expressionless.

Not being able to read him sends me into a hurried explanation. “I’m all at sixes and sevens over what you and I are doing, Booker. I really need some input from women who know more about these things than I do.” I keep my insecure Which is just about everyone to myself.

He looks as though he wants to argue. But he merely gives me a brisk nod of his head and steps back, his hands falling to his sides.

“Have fun,” he says calmly. Perhaps even a bit dismissively. Yet his eyes seem to be saying something entirely different.

I only catch glimpses of him throughout the rest of the night. He isn’t at his normal table on the edge of the dance floor during my sets, and not once do I catch him watching me from the wings as I often do. But after my final act, as I turn the corners leading me back to my dressing room, I keep getting the oddest feeling. As if Booker turned the same one just before I came into view, or is approaching mere moments after I disappear around it.

It shouldn’t bother me he is likely avoiding me; not when I feel such a strong need to do the same to him. Yet, somehow, it still does.

* * *

Less than an hour later, Clara, Dot and I are snuggled up in their living room, wearing our best pajamas and sipping gin martinis. I don’t usually like drinking this late, as it can send me straight to sleep, only to find myself wide awake, tossing and turning an hour later. But I need a little liquid courage before I tell the Brasher girls what I’ve been up to.

Clara puts Marion Harris’ After You’ve Gone on the gramophone and for a moment I forget to be nervous about the upcoming conversation.

“Lord, but I worship her voice.” I sing a few bars along with the record, then, with an impatient shake of my head, stop. “Nope. Sounds better when it’s just her.”

Dot and Clara protest, but in this, at least, I know what I’m talking about. “I’m not being modest, or fishing for compliments; it truly does. Every now and then an artist sings a song that is simply perfection. Miss Harris has done that with this. I don’t have a single urge to change it up and make it mine, and I can’t tell you how rare that is. She owns this song. I honest-to-God doubt anyone could make it sound better.”

The Brasher sisters, bless them, let me listen to it twice through, sitting quietly sipping their drinks while I steep myself in the glory of Marion Harris’s voice. When the song fades the second time into the soft hiss and scritch of the gramophone needle caught in its final groove, however, Dot exchanges it for Varsity Drag. Clara and I hop up to join her in dancing the Black Bottom to its upbeat tune. I collapse back onto my chair a few minutes later and reach for my drink. After draining it, I set the empty glass on the little table next to me.

Slightly nervous, I draw in a deep breath, then softly expel it. “I have something I need to talk to you two about.”

Clara and Dot exchange glances, making me sit a bit straighter on the chair facing them on the sofa. “What was that?” I demand.

“What was what?” Dot gives me an innocent look I have a tough time believing has ever found a proper home on her face.

“Don’t pretend you’re a dumb Dora. We all know that’s a far reach from the truth. What was that look —” I wave two fingers from one sister’s eyes to the other’s “—all about?”

Clara grins at me. “Well, you’re not exactly Sneaky Peeky, are you, missy. We’ve known something was up since the beginning of the week.”

Dot blows a raspberry. “More like since Saturday night. “And let me tell ya, sister,” she adds, “it’s been killin’ us to not demand you spill what the hell it is you’ve been hiding.”

I draw a deep breath, then slowly ease it out. Straighten my shoulders. And confess, “I’ve been having—” I drop my voice to a bare whisper “—sex with Booker.”

Dot and Clara squeal loud enough to wake up the dead—never mind the folks sharing a common wall in the apartments on either side of theirs. “Oh, my gawd, that is much more exciting than anything we thought of.” Clara pats her left breast in the quick tha-thump, tha-thump rhythm of a racing heartbeat. Then, dropping her hand to join its counterpart in gripping the couch cushion on either side of her, she leans forward eagerly. “Tell us everything.”

I do. Well, not everything-everything. But I explain how I was kicked out of the women’s residence the morning of our big night out and the series of events that arose out of it. Much to Dot’s disappointment, I don’t go into detail about sex with Booker. I do, however, admit the way he makes me feel during it is bigger than anything I’ve experienced in my life. That it’s better than ice cream. Better than Marion Harris’ voice singing the perfect song, even. That it is simply...the most amazing experience ever.

Clara scratches her head, looking at me with one brow raised when I finally fall silent. “Soooo...I’m not seeing what the problem is here. If I was blessed with a lover with Mr. J’s expertise and technique, I’d be making the most of it. What the hell is stopping you?”

“That would be my fundamentalist upbringing. Have you ever heard of the things a fella can do with his—” my voice drops “—tongue?”

The sisters look at each other. And grin. “As in using it right about—” Dot rubs a delicate circle over the spot between her legs where her satin pajama bottoms’s seams intersect. “—here?”

“Exactly!”

“Nope. Never heard of it.”

My jaw must have dropped because the Brasher girls laugh uproariously.

“I’m just kidding ya,” Dot says. “Yes. We’ve indeed heard of it. And if one of us has been lucky enough to experience it—” casting her gaze modestly downward, she buffs her nails on her satiny breast “—well. I’d hang onto him.”

“But surely anything that sinfully good will send me straight to hell.”

“I doubt it,” she replies drily. “If it worked that way, hell would be standing room only.”

“Besides,” Clara chimes in, “Booker may have plans for marrying you.”

My heart gives a big, fat thump in my chest at the very idea of living as Booker’s wife in that warm, welcoming Magnolia house for the rest of my years. Of being free to experience over and over again that overwhelming sense of rightness I had in Booker’s arms—the almost out of body sensation, when the two of us merged into one, that this is where I belong.

But I shove it aside. I’m a realist. And realists understand darn good and well the odds of someone like Booker and someone like me ever being together long term.

They aren’t good. Well, maybe once upon a time we had decent odds of making a relationship work, even though our respective positions in the social scheme of the world were miles and miles apart. Still are, as far as that goes. But these days, it’s more about my own doubts. I try to ignore them, yet they’re hard to shake. Unless I can find a way to work through them, I’m more to ball everything up.

And that’s provided Booker’s even interested in something like marriage in the first place.

I shrug with fake casualness. “I’m pretty sure, as far as the Blood of Christ is concerned, even wives aren’t allowed to feel the way Booker makes me feel. I think we’re probably supposed to close our eyes and recite scriptures until it’s over.” I grimace and confess, “Which was actually what I expected I’d have to do, until I learned better last Sunday morning.”

I see Clara open her mouth to accept the detour I threw out and feel a moment of shame. Darn it, I came here with a very real desire for advice. Yet, here I sit, wasting everyone’s time redirecting the conversation to avoid having to expose myself by chatting honestly. Looking at both my friends, I shoot up a hand to put off Clara’s question.

“Okay, maybe I’m throwing up a road sign here to send you down a different avenue so I don’t have to talk about this one.”

Clara reaches out to pat my knee. “You don’t have to talk about it at all, sweetie, if you don’t want to.”

The temptation is sugar sweet to grab the out she’s offering. And yet—

“I think maybe I do. Because, we can joke about it, but one of the real problems is I have been indoctrinated in fundamentalist beliefs. And honestly? It’s not that easy to just laugh them off as hilariously old-fashioned. I try, because my head actually believes they kind of are. At the same time, I hear Matron’s voice screeching, ‘Sinner. Sinner!’ in the back of my mind way too often.”

“And the other problems?” Dot asks gently.

“Is even if the fundamentalist upbringing wasn’t an issue, there’s still the fact—”

I hesitate, because this part is especially difficult for me to admit. No one likes feeling like a loser or, at best, simply not enough. I do want to hear what Clara and Dot have to say, though. And if I expect my friends to tell me anything useful, I owe them the truth. “Aside from Will, I have never had any luck with relationships lasting. People always leave.”

With the uncanny silent communication thing they do, Clara and Dot rise as one to plop down on either side of me on the overstuffed arms of my chair. In an instant, I’m surrounded by their arms, their scent and their comforting warmth. I can literally feel my heartbeat slowing to a range closer to normal.

Then they release me and rise to their feet as one. “Okay, here’s our advice,” Dot says crisply as they plop back onto the sofa. “First of all, Clara and me have seen the way Mr. Jameson looks at you. More importantly, the way he watches you.”

I open my mouth, but Dot makes a shushing gesture. “I know it sounds like the same thing—”

“But trust us, honey, that isn’t the case here,” Clara finishes.

“He looks at you when other people are around or you’re talking to him or something,” Dot says.

Is that supposed to be an explanation? If, so it’s not getting the job done. I’m more confused than ever.

“And you can definitely tell that he admires you,” Clara supplies. “At the same time, he sorta reins himself in.”

Dot nods agreement.

I feel my eyebrows pleat above my nose. This is still not real clear to me. “So, what’s the watch part?”

“Oh, honey.” Dot gives me a knowing smile. “When you’re not looking, he watches you like you’re a filet mignon and he’s starving for a steak dinner. And in those moments, doll? It’s plain as that fine, manly nose on his face he thinks you’re the sheba to end all shebas. The bee’s knees, the elephant’s eyebrows, the gnat’s whistle.”

Blowing a pithily rude sound through pursed lips, I call hooey.

They shrug as one. “You asked,” Clara says.

“True tale,” Dot agrees.

I did ask. And, oh, I would give a bundle to accept their version as gospel. But these are the girls who thought Will and I should be a couple. From whom I’ve resisted telling my news all week because I knew they’d weave impossible fantasies for me, regardless of the facts.

What the heck am I doing? Yes, this was my idea, and the Brasher sisters do know more about men than I will likely ever know. At the same time, the two of them see romance everywhere.

Maybe I should start thinking more seriously about moving on. My contract with Booker only has five more weeks on it, and my skill as a songbird is portable. I can go anywhere.

I can get through five weeks without doing something stupid.

Will often accuses me of being a runner. I prefer to view it as being the leaver instead of the left. And honestly? I’ve never understood why he has a problem with that. I learned a long time ago to read the signs. And I must say, once I realize something is simply never going to work, it’s not as painful to make myself walk away as it is to be left watching yet another person’s back waltzing out of my life.

Everything I have come to know about these friends of mine, however, warns me they won’t agree—and they sure as heck won’t let it go if I argue. I’m just not up for a dragged-out debate. I thought I wanted advice, but it turns out I only needed a bit of knowledge.

So, I flash them a big smile. “I’ll think about what you said, but let’s not talk about it anymore tonight.” I pick up my drink to drain it, see I already have, then look over to Dot.

“Your martinis are the berries! Do you think we could have one more, then maybe teach me another dance?”