A compact UPS package the size and weight of a cinder block was propped against the back door when she arrived at the shop. As she lugged it inside, Madison wondered what item would have that poundage and belong in a lingerie store, but then again, Naughty Bits was far more than a lingerie store. In the BDSM section, there were plenty of things that should be in a medieval dungeon. Maybe it was a ball and chain, complete with engraving. A special-order gift for the Master who had everything.
A special order gift fit, since it appeared to have been delivered this morning, but the store had been closed for weeks. She hefted it through the stockroom and took it up front, since it’d be easier to have it sitting behind the counter, ready for whomever had to be contacted to pick it up.
She left it there as she went to unlock the front door. Not because she was open or expected any customers this early in the morning, but because she’d never liked the feeling of being locked in. She turned back toward the display counter, and saw the envelope.
All curiosity about the package vanished.
To MadGirl was written on the outside. Unlike the package, it looked as if it had been placed in its current location weeks ago. It bore a light layer of dust, same as the glass of the display counter beneath it.
Leave it to Alice to think of doing something like this. Taking a breath, Madison fished out a letter opener from the drawer beneath the cash register and slit the envelope open. Bracing her elbows on the counter, she ran tense fingers over her face, a reassuring hard stroke, then unfolded the pages.
Sell doesn’t have to be a four-letter word. You used to know that.
Madison blinked. Now, of all times, her sister would choose to be snide? Through a letter sent from the other side of the grave? She had to give her credit for a great hook line, though. Alice always did that with her letters. She never started one with the traditional “Dear Madison.” Her handwritten script had flourishes as if she thought she were Thomas Jefferson. She’d done cursive that way since the eighth grade.
Nearly every day for the past two months, Madison had broken down and cried over some little quirk about Alice. Today it was going to be her sister’s damn handwriting. She blinked through her tears and kept reading.
I’m not being snide. Sell connects to two other really important four-letter words. Want. Need. But I think the word that best describes it is provide. Did you ever look that one up in the Encarta dictionary? The legal term means to require something in advance as a condition or as part of a contract. The nonlegal term is to supply somebody with something, or be a source of something wanted or needed by somebody. Sets off a whole lot of feelings deep in the gut, doesn’t it?
Madison swallowed. “Stop it, Alice,” she muttered. “Just stop it.”
Fuck is another four-letter word, one I think gets a bad rap. Cock, cunt, come . . . somebody was on a roll with those. Do you think God and the Devil were playing a word game that day? See how many naughty words can start with C, and whoever wins gets to oversee everything connected to sex. Go! You know the Devil won that one, hands down. God’s still pissed about it. Probably why He started the rumor that sex was a sin.
Madison choked on a laugh, tasting the salt of her tears on her lips.
Okay, starting to get tired, so have to cut to the chase. Here’s the thing, MadGirl. Great selling isn’t about tricking someone into buying crap. It’s about helping them get something they truly need that adds value to their lives. The salesperson who does that is the one who really deserves the Maserati. I think angels are the master salespeople of the universe.
“Okay, now you’re just loopy on the drugs.” The ache in her throat increased as her voice echoed in the waiting silence of the store. Waiting for a mistress who would never return, who’d known how to turn a lingerie store into an adult Disneyland, complete with the enchantment, promise of princes and happily-ever-afters. She’d told Alice that once, with derision dripping off every word. Now she thought it simply as it was. Truth.
Yeah, you’re thinking they overdid the morphine today, and you may be right. But it doesn’t mean I’m wrong. So, exercising the right of the dying, I’m going to play angel. I’m leaving you my store. You knew that, but what you’re going to find out from my executor when you call him about this letter is that I set aside enough money for you to live on and run it for the next several years. If you don’t want to keep the store after a year, sell the inventory and return to the life you were living, or seek another path. But promise me you’ll give it a year. I’m thinking the fates will align to make that possible.
They had. Which was as remarkable a coincidence as reading the words now. She moved to the last paragraph.
I wanted to “provide” you with this. I loved you more than anyone, MadGirl. Given how many cool, amazing people I met in my absurdly short life, that’s saying quite a lot. You always did underestimate what kind of gem you are. Maybe you’ll get a chance to shine here and see what I always saw in you.
Okay, goddamn her. Madison put the letter down on the counter and slid down the wall behind it, giving in to the hard sobs.
Her sister hadn’t let her in on any of it. Madison had been up in Boston, selling stocks and bonds, managing people’s investments. Alice had called once a week, despite Madison being passive aggressive at best during most of the conversations. Because that had been the state of their relationship for the past few years, Madison hadn’t caught the vital clues, the allergy attacks that came more frequently, the colds and flu bugs. Her sister had been getting weaker and sicker.
Then, a couple months ago, Alice had called on a Thursday, not their usual day. In her matter-of-fact way, she’d said if Madison could come home that weekend, she’d really like to give her a quick last hug. She also wanted Madison to go through her collection of high-end, well-sterilized sex toys to see if she wanted any of them before they had to be boxed up and dumped. Incredibly enough, the Senior Citizens’ Auxiliary at the hospital wouldn’t accept them as donations for their thrift shop. You’d think they’d realize there’s nothing better for cardiovascular health than a good daily orgasm . . .
Her lips twitched at Alice’s acid observation now. During that call, she’d simply been stunned. To the point she’d said absurd things like, “Okay, let me check my schedule, I have this meeting, but I know I can get out of that . . .”
Alice had always known her so well, no matter how much Madison hated that. She’d merely listened. “No worries, little sis. Come if you can.”
Of course, once off the phone, Madison’s brain had cleared. She’d called her boss, told Barbara what was happening, and that she had to go. With her typical sensitivity, Barbara had said she had to at least come in Friday and handle her scheduled client meetings, because Barbara had a tee time with board members. Madison refused. Barbara told her it could cost her the job, and Madison retorted that if she was that replaceable, Barbara could keep the damn job. They’d find the files that would cover anything needed for those meetings sitting neatly in the center of her desk. Hell, her assistant could run two portfolio reviews.
Just like that, she walked away from a job at which she’d excelled for five years. Crazy, right? But it was like she’d been treading water in a pool, blinded to the fact dry land was as close as the nearest ladder. Until Alice arranged a wake-up call in the form of a simple death bed request.
Come give me a quick hug, little sis.
If the memory had theme music, it would be something sad, wistful. Instead, the overtly erotic strains of Boléro injected Dudley Moore and a running Bo Derek into Madison’s brain, jarring her fully into the present.
She’d forgotten music played when someone came into the store. Alice not only had the classics like Boléro, “Somewhere in Time” and Claire de Lune on the playlist, but sultry Latin numbers by Enrique Inglesias and pure fuck-me-now Barry White and Boyz II Men songs. Madison remembered she’d also thrown Rod Stewart’s “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” and “Tonight’s the Night” into the mix because, well, why not?
Once the door triggered the music, it would play the whole song, unless someone else came in. Each time the door opened or closed, it switched to a new song, a way for Alice to know she had a customer arriving or departing. If there were no new customers, after a song played in its entirety, there would be silence. She’d asked Alice once why she didn’t set it up so the music played constantly, and her sister said there was value in silence as well.
Honest to God, Alice’s choices gave the store a personality all its own. Madison wouldn’t be surprised if she could hear the store breathing during those quiet periods.
She yanked her attention back to the more important issue. She wasn’t alone, and she was hiding behind the register counter. She shouldn’t have unlocked the door yet, but she hadn’t expected lingerie shopping to be popular at seven a.m. Jesus, she hadn’t even flipped the OPEN sign over or turned on lights, not that people paid attention to those things. Having worked sales before, she knew customers were as bad as kindergarteners when it came to noticing details.
She should just pop up from behind the counter like some kind of macabre cartoon. “Yes, how may I help you?” Instead, she wiped her eyes and rose into view in a way that made it look like she’d been bending below the counter to get something out of the cabinet, rather than pushing herself up the wall as if her weight had tripled since she’d landed there. “I’m sorry, we’re not open yet.”
The words were spoken before she took a look at her first customer. A good thing, since she might have stammered. He wasn’t what she was expecting. Not just because he was a he, though she’d assumed men weren’t the store’s target demographic. Of course, it had been a long, long time since she’d been in a lingerie store herself, and Alice had possessed an eclectic clientele.
This guy was in his early to mid-twenties, and looked like he’d escaped from the cover shoot for a romance novel. His stone-washed jeans belted at his lean waist, the style defining a superior tight ass, noticeable because he was turned away from her, examining the merchandise on the rounder closest to him. The sleeves of his denim shirt were rolled up at the cuffs, exposing tanned forearms. He had good shoulders—wide enough for his age. As he grew older and his muscle weight thickened, they’d probably get even nicer. She expected beneath those clothes his body was well-sculpted by the gym. Guys who worked out hard moved like wild animals, with easy grace and strength.
His sandy brown hair brushed his collar and brow, and when he glanced toward her beneath an attractive scattering of strands, his blue eyes reminded her of the sky. “Hi. I’m Troy. I work next door.”
“Oh.” Not a customer then, even though he’d been perusing a rack of bras, fingering a lacy D-cup with speculative interest and no self-consciousness. Cross-dresser? A lifetime ago, before their falling out, she’d spent time in Alice’s world, brushing shoulders with everything from transgender to cross-dressers to dungeon masters. She’d learned enough about the various cultures to pick up the basics.
Because of that, she didn’t think he fit the type. He wore his clothes without any excessive fashion sense. Simple, basic guy clothes: blues and denims, work shoes. Though a cross-dressing straight guy was possible, his gaze marked her with automatic hetero interest. Interest in what she looked like out of her clothes, not how she wore them.
“Nice to meet you.” She regretted her listless tone, but he didn’t seem fazed by it, approaching the counter to extend his hand. She suppressed the urge to take another swipe at her face, make sure her nose wasn’t running. Yeah, that would be nice. Wipe her nose, then offer her hand to shake.
In Boston, her client list included exacting millionaires and powerful corporate businessmen. She could handle an employee from . . . what was next door? A hardware store, that was right. In this artsy downtown area of Matthews, a quaint municipality on the outskirts of the much bigger city of Charlotte, all the stores were kitschy boutique-type ventures. The hardware store, the brief glimpse she’d had of it, was a historic leftover from eighty years ago, maintaining the original brick façade in front. It was still run like one of the old-timey general stores, advertising horse feed and strawberries in season, for heaven’s sake, as well as small engine repair.
Alice had relocated here from a Charlotte strip mall location a few years ago. In those previous visits, before their two-year estrangement, Madison hadn’t had a chance to meet her new neighbors.
“When we heard you knocking around, Mr. Scott told me to come over and see if you need anything.”
She realized he still had his hand out, and she was staring at him as if he’d sprung out of the walls. With a jerk, she lifted her hand to clasp his. Instead of doing the functional shake, he closed his fingers over hers, just held them. He had a rough palm, a strong, warm grip, and those eyes never left her face. “We’re so sorry about Alice. She was an incredible person, and she loved you so much.”
Wow. He just zeroed right in on the personal, leaving her nowhere to hide. Madison blinked, hard, and unconsciously squeezed his hand, to find her own squeezed right back. She’d been dealing with lawyers, city clerks, real estate people . . . all of whom talked about Alice in distant niceties. This man was just as much a stranger as they were, but his obvious personal connection to Alice, physical and emotional, made her hungry to maintain the contact. She didn’t want to make a fool of herself, but Troy saved her from that. He covered her hand with his other one, holding hers sandwiched between them and giving her an appropriate excuse to keep it in that position.
“She left me this place,” Madison heard herself say. “I’m not sure how to run it. I mean, I know how to run it, I’ve been in sales, but . . .”
Good grief, Madison. She shrugged to get him to let her go and put both hands on the counter, pressing her palms against the cool glass. Beneath it was an array of jeweled nipple clamps and clit jewelry, displayed as elegantly as any offering in New York’s Diamond District. She was pretty sure some of them had actual diamonds, since one had a $2,000 price tag. For nipple jewelry? In contrast, on top of the counter, Alice had a basket of plastic hopping penises, breasts and bright red lips. There was a cheerful yellow bow on the basket to draw attention to it.
Alice. God, I’m going to miss you.
Troy hesitated, then picked up one of the toys, wound it up, let it hop across the counter, making them both smile. “She was crazy,” he said. “Crazy, wonderful, beautiful, sexy.”
She glanced up at him. Had they been lovers? Somehow she didn’t think so. Yet his tone was intimate. He lifted his dark lashes to meet her gaze. It was impossible not to focus on his mouth, those eyes. When she saw him recognize that she was staring, she flushed. He straightened to his six-foot height.
“Sorry. Mr. Scott says I need to be careful about doing that. I tend to be distracting.” He said it without ego, giving her a half smile. “He says there’s nothing wrong with looking the way I do, as long as I give as much pleasure as I take. But since I love giving it, it gets kind of confusing, because that’s a form of taking, you know?”
Fortunately, he didn’t seem to expect an answer to such a complex question. “Anyhow,” he continued, “I’d better get back. Come by later if you want to check out our store. You’re always welcome. Mr. Scott wanted to give you time to settle in, but remember to call if you need us. We’re here for you.”
With a nod, he moved back to the front door. Bolero was in its final strains. As he opened the door again, another song started. It was “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” done in a poignant ballad piano style. Alice used to sing it to her, call her Little Star.
Christ, how was she going to do this?
—
She locked the door and worked in the back on inventory for a couple hours, but eventually she came back to the cash register, pulled out her handheld and started making a list. Okay, if she really was going to do this, she needed to plan an ad in the local paper, announce a grand reopening under new management.
When her palm settled on the folded letter she’d left on the counter, she saw she’d missed a postscript on the back of the last page. Unfolding the thin paper, she lifted it up to catch the dim light, since she still hadn’t turned on the overheads and the sun was high enough that she wasn’t getting as much of its light through the east-facing front window.
P.S. You can trust Logan with anything, MadGirl. Don’t forget that, no matter what. You can trust him like you trust me, like family. No, even more. Like a soul mate. He took care of me until you came.
Alice had died three days after she arrived. There was already a nurse in place, helping with bathing, medications and the like, but Madison’s understanding was she’d only been called in full-time right before Madison arrived. Because of everything else going on, she hadn’t thought about the day-to-day primary caregiving, and Alice hadn’t brought it up. Nor had the nurse discussed someone else. Had Alice instructed her not to say anything? Who the hell was Logan?
Alice had never mentioned him in her letters or emails, not ever. Yet Madison could supposedly trust him more than she trusted her sister, the only person she’d ever trusted?
With a sigh, she set the paper down. She shifted and bumped that heavy package, a reminder that it was still there. When she squatted to take a closer look, she let out a mildly irritated oath. It wasn’t her package. It was supposed to go next door, to A Different Time Hardware. Damn it, she’d had Troy right here.
Well, she could use the break. The quiet of the place was getting to her. It was like Alice was standing there, waiting, watching, yet separated from her by a veil that couldn’t be penetrated. It was making her head hurt.
She also hadn’t brought a soda, and she’d bet they had some over there. With the times-gone-by theme, maybe even an orange cream one, something she rarely indulged but today seemed to call for it. Maybe that and a Mallo cup. She’d pass out from sugar shock and discover this was all a bad, crazy dream, her sister gone, leaving Madison to run Naughty Bits.
When the store was in its planning stages, about a decade ago, Madison had been the first to call it that, teasing her sister: “A career selling naughty bits . . .” Next thing she knew, Naughty Bits had its Christmas grand opening, with the catch phrase “Where naughty is nice . . .” She’d helped Alice decorate a tree with everything from filmy, sparkly thong panties to crystal snowflakes and tiny bullet vibrators in gleaming colors of blue and silver. They’d put a porcelain angel at the top dressed as a dominatrix, complete with wings that looked like two fanned-out floggers, tipped with gold.
She picked up the package, the weight on the label indicating it was a little over twenty pounds. The clanking she’d mistaken for chain was probably nails or some kind of fastener. Exiting the front door of her store and locking it behind her, she walked down the sidewalk. It was about ten o’clock, so the other stores, mostly bistros and clothing boutiques, were starting to open. According to the hours printed on the hardware store window, they opened at seven a.m., Tuesday through Saturday, which explained why Troy had been able to show up in her store at about that time.
The humid air suggested it was building toward a hot June day, but enough of a breeze stirred the crepe myrtles planted along the sidewalk to keep things pleasant. Around the entrance to the hardware store, hanging baskets spilled out lush falls of petunias, tempting pedestrians to buy.
The door was already propped open with an iron boot brush. A chalkboard sandwich sign had been placed beside it with the day’s specials: tomato plants, $3; all garden implements 20% off; fresh baked apple pie and coffee, $1.50.
Heated apple pie was one of her favorite breakfast foods, and she smelled it the second she stepped into the shop. Given that the next thing to hit her senses was Troy, it wasn’t a bad combination.
She had a direct view down the aisle to where Troy was stocking. He’d donned a work apron, which didn’t diminish the view a bit, given it didn’t cover anything in the back. The shirt stretched over his shoulders as he reached toward the higher shelves. Since he was on a ladder, his ass had a nice taut lift. Maybe it was because she’d spent her morning immersed in articles of erotic fantasy, but her mind was flooded with an image of him sprawled facedown across a bed. He’d be sleeping, wearing nothing but a very artfully arranged sheet. She’d see a hint of pale buttocks just above it, the lengths of firm thighs exposed below. His fine toes would be curled against the cotton. One sandy lock of hair draped in his eyes, his lips parted, inviting a lover to press her lips to his, tease his tongue, wake him in all ways.
“He’s beautiful, isn’t he? I’ve seen women’s hands curl at their sides and them not even realize it, as if they’re restraining an overwhelming need to touch him.”
She jumped, not only because she had company, but because her private thoughts had been intruded upon so accurately. When she turned, she discovered something even more unsettling.
Her tongue had tangled at the sight of Troy. What she was looking at now stole all words and left only incoherent need, strong enough to close her throat entirely, take her breath.
Yes, Troy was beautiful. Everything a virile young man should be. What was standing behind her was what such a young man could aspire to be, even though she expected few achieved it. It wasn’t just this man’s looks. It was everything beneath, the inside creating the outside.
Like Troy, he was six feet tall or better, with shoulders like what she’d imagined Troy’s rounding out to with maturity. He wore jeans and workboots as well. The cotton shirt unbuttoned at his throat gave her a glimpse of curling chest hair. She saw Anglo-Saxon in the strong bones of his face, a large man with large hands, a commanding presence. The warm brown eyes that focused on her face held so many things . . . Standing inside that gaze, it would be impossible to feel anything bad, no heartache daring to intrude while she was under its spell. He was near, and that was all that was needed.
Okay, rein back the crazy and return to reality. He was close to forty, with gleaming, thick brown hair brushed back from that masculine face. It was long enough he had it tied back. She couldn’t see how far it fell down his back, but the fact that he had it tied back suggested it went past his shoulders. She mocked men who wore long hair after they left their teens. It was pretentious and ridiculous, an attempt to hold on to vanishing youth. On him it looked right, a natural part of his persona, the way it would on a man born into a time period where long hair was the fashion. Vikings, seventeenth-century Scotland . . . It only enhanced his masculinity, the way it did a pirate or desert sheikh. She’d told Alice she loved that look in men—just not many men could pull it off.
He did.
For the second time today, she found herself caught simply staring, not responding like an articulate adult. She took an extra moment, struggling to recall his remarkable statement about Troy’s beauty. Not the usual thing for a straight male to point out. “Are you two . . . together?”
The word trailed off as his gaze sharpened on her. Christ, even if Matthews was an annex of the urban Charlotte area, she was still technically in a small Southern town, not Boston. “I’m sorry. That was rude.”
“Not where you’re from, obviously.” The trace of amusement in his brown eyes relaxed her, on that point at least. He crossed his arms and hooked his thumbs under his armpits, giving her a thorough perusal. “Down here, it’s still like congratulating a woman on her pregnancy. If you’re right and she is pregnant, all’s good; if you’re wrong, you’re telling her she’s fat.”
He had a voice that could narrate books. Whether they were romances with quiet whispers in the dark, seafaring adventures that called for commanding roars or English mysteries needing a sexy, cultured tone with the right pauses for emphasis, his voice would hold attention, ears straining to catch every intonation.
He shrugged. “No, we’re not together. And not just because you’re my preference. I’m training him for someone else, in exchange for blatant exploitation. Home Depot has fifty thousand square feet, but I have Troy. The local ladies turned out in record numbers for my spring gardening sale. I even lured a healthy percentage of gay men away from the Depot’s home décor offerings.” He winked.
“Do you offer to let everyone touch him?” she asked.
“I wasn’t offering that. Just observing how tempting it is to do so.”
“Sounds like entrapment.”
The brown eyes got warmer. “Spoken like a woman who knows the rules and rarely breaks them.” He glanced at the box in her arms. “Is that for us?”
“Oh. Yeah, here.”
“Since we share an address, deliveries sometimes get left at the wrong door. Sorry, I should have had you put this down right off. It’s like a pile of bricks.” He’d taken it from her as he spoke, moving behind the counter. She tried to keep her focus on his face, rather than the way the shirt strained over his broad shoulders. The temptation to reach out and touch the curls of coarse hair at his throat was making her fingertips tingle.
She cleared her throat. “I figured someone had sent you a cinder block.”
Those attractive lips curved as he fished a box cutter out of a drawer and slit the box open. “Lead. We have customers who pour their own bullets for hunting, self-defense and historical reenactments, so I keep a supply, along with primers, powder and the like. But there should be something else in here.” His expression brightened. “Right here on top.”
He freed the item from the packaging with remarkable gentleness, revealing a set of antique gold metal hinges. “The supply house for bullet lead also does metal work?” she asked.
“They’re an eclectic enterprise. A mom-and-pop place in Missouri. They even have a blacksmith who shoes horses and makes swords for Renaissance faires. I’ve been out there and visited. Almost bought an Excalibur replica, but decided on a good wood lathe. The lathe was cheaper.”
She studied the engraved design on the hinges. It looked like barbed wire, but on closer inspection she assumed it was a vine of thorns, interspersed with tiny leaves and loops. “You don’t usually see thorns without a rose.”
“No, you don’t. The potential of the thorns is often overlooked.” He extended a hand. “Let me show you.”
She curled her fingers together, uncertain, though she knew she was being foolish. She was intrigued, and she was in a public place. Still, she hedged at the physical contact. This guy was doing weird things to her. She needed to get back to her store. “Hand holding? We haven’t even been introduced officially.”
His gaze met hers. “I’m Logan Scott.”
Trust Logan. Like you’d trust me. Or a soul mate.
This was the man who’d cared for her sister, all except those last three days. While she couldn’t fathom why her sister had made sure they wouldn’t meet until after she was gone, the knowledge of who he was now gave Madison the confidence to comply with his request. She put her hand in his.
His fingers closed around hers. She’d never thought of a man’s touch as unforgettable, but she drew in a breath at the way it felt. Reassuring. Firm and strong. Something that would become a permanent craving if taken away.
“At last,” he murmured. “We meet.”