HAPTER ONE
Laura Winslow had a job in Human Resources Management in a state government office. She took the job not because it particularly interested her, but because it was stable, secure, well-paying work, barring any layoffs as a result of state budgetary issues. Her parents had encouraged her—strongly encouraged her—to go into state civil service work not because it was particularly meaningful or fulfilling, but because it would give her a steady paycheck, excellent benefits, and a good pension when she retired. She sought a civil service job after four years of college majoring in business management, a major that her parents also strongly encouraged. Both of her parents were responsible people. They majored in practical things in school, things that held the best chance of keeping them fed, keeping roofs over their heads, and providing for their family. And they had raised Laura always to seek the most practical and responsible things in life, which was why Laura, for all of her twenty-nine years, had turned out just like her parents. She took a civil service secretarial job right out of college. She took competitive state exams and moved up the ranks to a management position. She made more money, got a nice apartment, and was looking forward one day to owning a home. Laura was just like Mom and Dad in all ways but one. Laura was single.
Now, Laura had not meant to remain single until this last year of her twenties. As she looked forward to owning a home one day, she had also looked forward to being married by now. She had the perfect boyfriend all picked out, in fact. Joss was exactly what her parents liked: clean-cut, well-dressed, well-groomed, and professional as well as handsome. He worked in management in a bank. In fact, he was their youngest, fastest-rising executive, of which Laura’s parents also approved. He was practical, sensible, level-headed, and responsible; a young man who was going places and knew how to get there. He had stable, gainful employment with a good future. He was exactly what Laura’s parents wanted for her…
…except that Joss had another side, a side that was not at all responsible, a side that by the reckoning of Laura’s parents was selfish and indiscreet and did not lend itself to a stable life, a healthy family, a good home, and a good future. Laura had learned this when she learned where and with whom Joss was spending some of his evenings when he was not spending them with her. The girl was pretty and blonde and ambitious, just out of college and looking to move up, just as Laura had once been. And there was something about the blonde girl’s ambitions that moved Joss in a way that Laura’s practical, sensible responsibility did not, which was why sometimes the girl in Joss’ bed was not Laura, but the blonde. And that was what had immediately ended Laura’s time in Joss’ bed and his time in hers, and why she had so irresponsibly thrown his ring in the lake, driving Joss into fits to match the one into which Laura had flown when she had caught him with the blonde.
And that was why Laura was now single. Responsible, practical, sensible, and single.
One day in the middle of the work week, Laura stepped out of the meeting room with her black hair falling neatly over the professional-looking blouse that she wore with her neatly pressed slacks and her sensible shoes. With her iPad tucked under her arm, Laura sighed in a weary and apathetic way that belied her responsible position in the agency and started back for her own office. Her friend Sylvia, who worked in a cubicle across the larger office from Laura’s private office, had been watching her for the past ninety minutes that they had sat listening to what amounted to the same presentations and reports on a different week. Sylvia was a Latina with short, dark hair. She was basically energetic but accustomed to the general ennui and tedium of the workplace. She bore it well. And she could tell when someone else was not bearing it well: case in point, Laura, who trudged almost like a sleepwalker to her office, down the hall to the large office where her office and Sylvia’s cubicle were, and entered her private workspace and shut the door behind her.
Sylvia was right on Laura’s heels and knocked gingerly on the door that Laura had just shut. “What is it?” came Laura’s half-interested voice from the other side.
“Can I come in?” called Sylvia as the other people who had been at the meeting filed back to their respective cubicles and private offices.
“Do you have to?” asked Laura through the door.
“Yes,” said Laura.
After a pause in which Sylvia could practically feel Laura sitting behind her desk, leaning her head back, and rolling her eyes, Laura replied halfheartedly, “All right.”
Sylvia entered Laura’s workspace, shut the door behind her, leaned on it, and found Laura tapping away absently on her desktop computer. “How’s it going today?” she asked.
Not even bothering to look up, Laura replied, “It’s Wednesday. Two days away from Friday.”
“Is Friday what you were thinking about in the meeting?” asked Sylvia.
“I was thinking about the meeting in the meeting,” said Laura in a voice as deadly dull as where they had spent the last ninety minutes.
“Is that why you spent the whole time drawing circles on a notepad, except when you had to talk?” Sylvia asked. “When you do that, I know there’s something else on your mind besides what people are talking about.”
Finally, Laura looked up with an expression more wan than some people would think a woman so pretty should be wearing. “What else would I have on my mind?”
“You tell me,” Sylvia said, crossing the room to sit down in the chair on the other side of Laura’s desk.
For the first time today, Laura actually looked interested in something. There was a glint in her eyes as she replied, “Oh…I don’t know. I guess I was just wondering whether you have to wear metal boots when walking through water with a metal detector. You know, in case you accidentally drop it in the water. I was wondering whether it would electrocute you.” And she smiled a very naughty Mona Lisa smile at the thought.
Sylvia let out a mischievous giggle. “The ring! You were thinking about Joss and the ring!” And she covered her mouth as the giggles kept bubbling forth.
“I threw it like a girl,” Laura said. “I should have thrown it harder, farther. It went in the shallow part of the lake. If I know Joss—and unfortunately I know him better now than when we were together—he went out wading in that lake to find the ring and get it back. He probably took pictures with his phone to get exactly the spot where it plunked into the water. I can see him now, pants rolled up, wading through all the gunk and the plants with a gross look on his face, trying to get back the month’s salary that he spent.”
Sylvia almost cackled at that. “Oh, you are bad! You are so bad!”
Laura’s satisfied look belied her answer. “I am never bad, you know that. It wasn’t a bad thing I did. What did I do? I threw away a month of his paychecks. He threw away our whole future with that little teller of his. What was more of a waste--what he did or what I did?”
“Is that what your parents said?” Sylvia asked.
“You know what?” replied Laura. “The next thing I’m going to say doesn’t leave this room, understand? This next thing is just between you and me. Screw my parents.”
Sylvia raised a hand to her mouth. “Laura…!”
Laura set her jaw resolutely. “Never heard me talk like that, have you? I never talk like that. But you know what? Sometimes I think like that. And every time for my whole life that I’ve found myself thinking like that, I’ve stopped myself. You know why? Because I’m a good girl. I’m a responsible girl. I’m the girl who always does the right thing. All the time, always the right thing. And you know what? I’m sick of it.”
Sylvia watched, almost not recognizing the person she was seeing and hearing, as Laura leaned back in her chair and seemed to be staring out at nothing. “I always did the right thing. All the parties I went to in school, all the boys who wanted to go to bed with me—and they were gorgeous boys. Jocks and musicians and popular boys. There were so many boys that I could have let do so many things. But I held out. I held out for the real thing. And I had it. I had it a couple of times before Joss, even, when I was in college and after. I never went to bed with a boy that I didn’t care about. Not once. And then there was Joss, and I knew he was the one. And then one day, there he was in his bed with his hand in the till.”
“Oh my goodness,” muttered Sylvia. This was truly a side to her friend she had never seen until now.
“All those years I listened to my parents, lecturing me about this and telling me what to do about that, and I never questioned them. I always took whatever they said as the right thing. I was the good daughter, and I was going to be the good wife. Was a good husband so much to ask for? So, you spent your life doing the right thing, the thing you’re told you ought to do all the time, and what do you get for it? Some stupid blonde wrapped around your fiancé in his bed. That’s what you get for always listening to someone else and never yourself?”
“Do you mean you never, ever did anything just for you?” Sylvia asked.
“Of course I did,” she said. “Every boyfriend I ever had, that was someone I thought would make me happy. And they did, until they didn’t any more. And Joss made me happy—until he started making himself happy with her. But you know something? Lately I think that maybe I haven’t done enough just for me. The boyfriends were great. The engagement was great until…you know. But I’m almost thirty, and I’ve spent my whole life never taking a chance. Do you want to know something? Every boyfriend I’ve ever been with was some different version of Joss.”
“Really? You mean they were all junior executive types?”
“Well, not necessarily exactly like Joss. One of them was pre-law. I thought about going with someone different, an artsy type, you know, like an actor or a musician. I ended up with an architect. I tried again to date someone creative, maybe someone in fashion. That got me a clothing store manager. I was raised never to go outside my comfort zone. Every time I tried for a different sort of guy, I kept getting the same general kind of guy. I’m almost thirty, Sylvia. Am I ever going to shake myself out of this, or am I always going to end up with these same guys, over and over?”
“What do you think you can do to get yourself out of it?” Sylvia asked, genuinely curious after hearing Laura’s very frank accounting of herself.
“I’ve been thinking about it. I’ve been…doing some research. Typical for me, right? Research how to take a risk, that’s me. But I’ve been looking at some things. Before the meeting, I was looking on my tablet, using my own cellular account so the websites I was visiting wouldn’t turn up on the agency systems…”
Sylvia gasped audibly. “Oh my God, Laura! What have you been looking at?”
Laura pursed her lips and considered. Should she tell her friend? Should she confide in Sylvia this much? Well, what was wrong with telling her? She wasn’t doing anything wrong, actually, and certainly Sylvia could be trusted not to go spreading it around. They had known each other for years; Sylvia would never do that. It wasn’t anything scandalous she had in mind. It was only what she had said, something outside of her comfort zone. Finally, she said, “Look at this.” And she picked up her iPad, opened the browser, and called up something from her immediate history. She handed the tablet to Sylvia. “There.”
The iPad displayed the interior of a bar called Scarlet and Crimson, whose theme and purpose were most readily apparent. The place was dark and intimate inside—the kind of “intimate” that spoke of kinds of intimacy above and beyond sitting at a table or in a booth sipping drinks with a stranger. The kind of “intimate” that suggested strangers becoming as well acquainted as they could possibly get. The predominant color in the place was red, thanks to the red lighting that reminded Sylvia of certain places in Europe that she had heard about. The glow of gold candles on the tables offset the red lighting while the black leather upholstery and the teakwood of the tables accented it. But reinforcing the whole effect was the exposed brick of the walls. This was a bar with a message, and the message was “Assume the position.” If the photos of the space did not make that clear, the accompanying quotes from message boards and review websites brought it home. Scarlet and Crimson was the kind of place one went for a very particular purpose, a purpose contrary to everything that Sylvia knew, or thought she knew, about her friend.
Slack-jawed, Sylvia handed the iPad back to Laura. About as quietly startled as she was able to get, she said, “You’re kidding, right? Tell me you’re kidding.”
Laura shut off the iPad and set it down on her desk. “Nope. Not kidding.”
“But Laura…did you read what it says about this place? Those things from the message boards? Did you look at those?”
“I looked. There were some pretty glowing reviews.”
“‘Glowing?’ Is that what you want to call it? Sure, they were glowing—the kind of glow you get after going a couple of rounds with some guy you just met.”
“Some really tall, really muscular, really gorgeous-looking guy, I hope,” said Laura, looking again as if she were gazing at nothing—or more to the point, at something only she could see.
“Laura,” said Sylvia, “I don’t like the sound of this. If you go to a place like this, you’d better not be allergic to antibiotics afterward, if you know what I mean.”
Laura sighed. “That’s the kind of thing I’ve spent my whole life thinking about, Sylvia. Always calculating every little thing I do, always trying to stay two steps ahead of myself. Never just jumping in and doing something. That’s the way I’ve always been.”
“Yes!” Sylvia agreed. “And you know what? It’s given you a good job, a good place to live, and a decent life.”
“And I appreciate all that,” Laura replied. “But don’t you ever think there has to be more than just a paycheck and benefits and a pension? That’s making a living. I’m talking about really being in the world.”
“That’s what vacations are for,” Sylvia argued. “The vacations you never take, by the way. How much time have you got saved up?”
“Plenty,” Laura admitted.
“Then use it!” Sylvia urged. “Use it to go someplace nice and sunny where you can relax. Someplace where you won’t need to get a prescription when you leave. This,” she said, pointing at the iPad, “doesn’t sound like your kind of thing at all.”
“Exactly,” Laura replied. “It doesn’t sound like my kind of thing. Not at all. And that’s the whole point. I’ve spent my whole life doing my kind of thing, going to my kind of places, and being with my kind of guys. And I’ve done everything that anyone ever expected of me. And what did it get me? Sylvia, I’m twenty-nine years old. This year, my twenties are going to be over, behind me. And I will have spent all of my teens and all of my twenties doing everything that was expected of me and never doing anything just because I could do it. What happens when I’m in my fifties, looking back on a life of never taking a chance on anything? I don’t want that. Someday, I want to be able to say I took a chance on something, did something just because I could, just one time.”
“I never had any idea you felt this way,” Sylvia said.
“It’s been coming for a long time,” said Laura. “I’ve been thinking things like this for years and always pushing them down like the way you keep the clothes you don’t like any more at the bottom of the hamper. This time, this once, I’m taking ‘em out.”
“And if you go ahead and do this, if you go to this Scarlet and Crimson place and meet some hot guy over drinks and take him home…pardon me for putting it this way, but he’s going to be taking something out, too.”
Laura smiled a kind of smile that Sylvia had never seen on her in all the time they’d known each other. If Sylvia had to describe Laura’s expression at that moment, she would have called it “wicked.” It made her shudder a bit down her back. Laura looking wicked: it was as if there was another person lurking inside her and only now making herself known.
“Only if he really is very hot,” said Laura. “If he isn’t, I don’t go anywhere with him outside of that bar. Taking chances is one thing, but completely tossing your standards is another.”
“Well, that’s a relief, at least,” Sylvia said.
“So,” said Laura, her wicked look lingering but softening, “you want to come with me?”
“To that place? Laura, no offense, but I’m fine with my life the way it is. It’s not la vida loca, but I’ve got no complaints.”
Laura shrugged. “Okay. Well, you’ve got ’til Friday night to change your mind. That’s when I’m going.”
Sylvia got up from the chair and started for the door. “Let me know how it turns out,” she said, mentally adding, if you’re in a condition to talk about it.
“I will,” replied Laura. “And you’ve got two days to change your mind.”
Sylvia had nothing to say in response to that. She just smiled a friendly but concerned smile back at the woman behind the desk and let herself out.
And when the door clicked shut behind Sylvia, Laura settled back in her seat, the work of the day ahead seeming quite trivial compared to her thoughts of two nights from now.
_______________
Laura was accustomed to dressing for work. When Friday night rolled round, she dressed for business.
She stood in front of the full-length mirror against her bedroom wall, just past the chest of drawers, only a few steps from the bed that with any luck would be filled with her and some breathtaking mountain of manhood in just a few hours. Here, she examined herself in the wardrobe that she had picked out for the evening with all the calculation that she had brought to everything she had ever done in her life. Leave it to me, she thought to herself, carefully planning out in detail how I’m going to do a spontaneous thing.
Her outfit was all basic black. She had chosen black to match her jet-black hair and make herself look completely put together. Laura did not need to wear black to make herself look slimmer; she had never had a weight problem, the result of spending her life eating all the right things (with “cheat days” for chocolate)—another calculation. The black was meant to show off her contours. Her nylon top hugged the curves of her bosom and her sides and was cut low, but not so low as to display her cleavage. She wanted to look seductive but not trashy. Her slacks were similarly contoured to show that she had nice legs without making her look as if she were wearing a leotard. Again, the plan was to look desirable, but not to look like a wanton trollop. The heels of her shoes were just this side of “sensible.” She did not own anything with stiletto heels, but all the heels she did have were just high enough and not a fraction of an inch more. She ran her hands down her sides as if to smooth out what was already perfectly smooth, and with a nod of resolve, she was ready.
And that brought her to the parking lot of Scarlet and Crimson, where she pulled into a space, shut off the motor—and sat behind the wheel of her car, watching people enter. Laura’s heart raced, and she took deep breaths and silent ten-counts to still it. This proved halfway successful as she contemplated exactly what she meant to do this evening, something that she had never done in all her life. She reminded herself that her never having done such a thing was all the more reason to do it. She had spent her twenty-nine years in this world always playing it safe and always doing what she was told was the right thing. And then she posed herself the critical question, What makes this not the right thing anyway?
After all, the other women that she watched sauntering into Scarlet and Crimson did so with a sure and unhesitating step and had no problem with it. One of them may even now be about to hit on a man who was exactly what Laura wanted, which was all the more reason to get her black-clad bottom out of this car and get herself in there. She reminded herself that this was the beginning of the twenty-first century and that women who owned their sexuality and went after what they wanted had no reason to be ashamed. The men entering the place were under no judgement at all, so why should she or any woman be judged? It occurred to her that the only person judging her right now was Laura herself. With another nod of resolve, she set herself to the thing she meant to do, opened the car door and stepped out, and prepared to seek out the one with whom she would do it.
Scarlet and Crimson was exactly as it had appeared on the website, except now, it was full of people and the hubbub they made as they chatted each other up. Laura mentally tuned out the women, or at least the ones who were not hovering near a man, and concentrated on the men. Her heart started racing again as she appraised the quality of the maleness assorted before her. There were plenty of good options. There were taller ones and ones about her height. There were guys dressed casually but not too casually. There were no t-shirts in sight, but she saw a number of sweaters and pullovers. She saw some jeans and some slacks. There were some in suit jackets or ties. Her heart calmed down when she realized that none of them were actually unattractive. No one was too thin and no one was fat, and she could not make out one plain or homely male face or one bald male head in the crowd. This was encouraging, she thought. Her odds of actually taking someone home—and someone nice at that—seemed better than ever. All she had to do was stay calm and hit the right balance of spontaneity and caution, and she should be all right. Perhaps better than all right.
Now it was only a matter of getting herself into the mix with the same alacrity as she pried herself out of the car, and getting to it.
Laura took herself to the bar and took a seat. She ordered a screwdriver from a bartender in a tight muscle-top sweater; he had a nice smile and was of the same quality as the other men in the room. Only now, sitting at the bar and sipping on her drink, did she start to find anything just a little curious about the concentration of good-looking men in the same place. Usually, whenever and wherever one went out, one found a variety of physical types. This was not true of Scarlet and Crimson. Somehow, judging by what she could see tonight, this place seemed to cater to attractive people. Why was that? Was Friday night “good-looking people night”? That didn’t seem to make any sense. Laura wondered if perhaps she were looking a gift horse in the mouth. She should be grateful, she thought, for not having to run the risk of shooting down some guy who was not what she was looking for.
At the far end of the room were two doorways. The one on the right was marked “Restrooms,” and the one on the left had no sign at all. Laura noticed that there were people filing into the doorway on the left, both singly and in pairs, and that that specific threshold had a big, muscular bouncer stationed at it. This was another curiosity. What could possibly be in there? A pool room or other gaming place? Perhaps a poker and gambling room? Or something even more provocative? Intrigued as she sipped at her drink, she wondered if it could be possible to get a peek. She wondered if that bouncer would let her, or if he would send her packing. This seemed like a very exclusive area of the club.
She called the bartender over to her. “Have another?” he asked.
“Not right now,” Laura said. She pointed over in the direction of that one doorway. “Tell me…what’s over there?”
“Oh, that?” the bartender grinned. “That’s a members-only room. Only certain regulars go in there. I’ve never seen you in here before.”
“This is my first time here,” Laura said, feeling a bit like the virgin that she was not.
“I thought so,” the bartender said. “You’ve got to get to know us before we offer access to the members-only room.”
“Why?” Laura asked, her brow furrowing even more curiously. “What goes on in there?”
The bartender’s grin returned, wider this time. “Can’t tell you that.”
Laura was about to speak up and say something else—until a deep voice came rolling in over her shoulder. “Hey, Johnny. Set me up with the usual.”
The bartender nodded in the direction of the voice. “Sure thing, Grant,” and whipped out a glass in which to mix a rum and Coke.
Laura swiveled herself around on her barstool to get a look at the source of the voice, and at once found herself peering into a lush forest of dark hair peeking out from the top of big, solid chest muscles, packed into a tight gray pullover shirt. She looked up that summit of hair into a square-jawed and blindingly handsome male face crowned with an even denser forest of straight dark hair, moussed to perfection and standing tall. Her racing heart threatened to stop, even as her breathing suddenly did.
Eyes as perfectly blue as a calm lake in summer shone down on Laura from that fantastically handsome face. And the deep masculine voice that she had heard over her shoulder fell down upon her:
“Hi. My name’s Grant.”