Loe raamatut: «Switch Me On»

Chapter One

Because Bruno Brandt designed big city power grids, he thought he knew everything about electricity, but the current that jolted through him when he saw the woman in Boondocks made him feel like Frankenstein being hit by lightning. It was 2:00 a.m. and he hadn’t slept his usual four hours the previous night. He’d red-eyed from the west coast, then flown himself from Raleigh-Durham in his helicopter, landing down the road at his cottage in Blackwater Inlet. Back-water Inlet, locals called it. He hoped it didn’t start snowing this far south, the way they kept predicting, because it would ruin his travel schedule, and he wanted to make his upcoming meetings in Chicago. So much for global warming. Plowing to the bar, he yelled for another drink since the first hadn’t done jack to warm him.

Not so the dental hygienist. She was hotter than live wires. Well...tonight she was a DJ, not a hygienist, go figure. She had the sexiest voice he’d ever heard. Star quality. Leaning on the bar, he knocked back a second drink, letting the couple next to him do the small talk. That was the cool thing about small towns, everybody was so damn friendly. In one night, he could meet more people in Blackwater Inlet than he’d met in D.C. in a lifetime. Robby Shoemaker and his wife, Alice, were not shoemakers by trade, as it had turned out, but owned the only shrink practice in town.

Not that Bruno liked being psychoanalyzed. Alice had started the convo guessing he wasn’t married and pointing at his naked ring finger, making him feel like he was on a date with one of the gym-bodied climber-types he knew in D.C. When she’d guessed he’d experienced some sort of loss, she’d hit too close to home. He’d started to leave but the drink hadn’t made him any sleepier yet. He was cursed by many things, including the ability to hold his liquor.

Besides, every time he heard the voice of the DJ, a warm hand grabbed him by the balls and squeezed. Lots of females had whispered dirty somethings to him, but oh, the things he wanted to hear this one say. Even dumb things like, “Oh, Bruno,” where the words alone might sound boring, but the intonation would make it steamy. The voice was strangely familiar, too. He could swear he’d heard it before, but he couldn’t have, because they’d never met. It was deep, but not so throaty that she sounded like Marlene Dietrich chain smoking too much weed.

He studied her half-unbuttoned gauzy white blouse. Nice tits. A little drink dribble on the front sent a certain devil-may-care message, and he heard her say into the microphone, “Come do me, baby.” What she really said was, “At Boondocks, the music never stops.” In D.C., cops would be breaking up the party, but in Blackwater Inlet nobody gave a rat’s ass if the crowd was still slurping daiquiris at sunup.

“Next song up is ‘Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer,’” she continued. Already, Bruno had drunk through “Christmas Tree on Fire” and “I Want an Alien for Christmas,” and since he had plenty of reasons to be glad this particular Christmas was over, the hygienist-cum-DJ was hitting all the right irreverent notes. Everybody was laughing and dancing and shrieking inane shit over the music, detoxing from the holiday just like him. He yelled, “Scotch rocks,” then traced a circle above Robby and Alice’s glasses, buying a round for which they thanked him. The polished wood of the bar reflected his gesture. Like the glitter ball and jukebox, the bar had either been here forever, or was reclaimed from elsewhere, not that Bruno was going to worry himself over which.

He just wanted to unwind after the long meeting day in which his employer, the federal government, had brought in a motivational speaker who’d kept assuring everybody there was no i in team. Everybody already knew Bruno didn’t do team. He’d mind the monkey suit a lot less, too, if the hygienist-cum-DJ assisted him in the suit removal segment of his evening. Well, morning.

She was doing slutty with a touch of class, Bruno’s favorite thing, and he was miles from D.C. It felt like forever since he’d slept with somebody outside his social network, someone totally new. Strawberry-red hair whipped around the woman’s face like escaped electrical wires, and in back, the wild upswept hairdo was held together with something sharp and pointy, knitting needles or chopsticks or something. The dim light was hiding everybody’s flaws, and he couldn’t see unless she was under the glitter ball that hung above the dance floor like a prehistoric artifact. It reminded him of last night, when he’d been channel surfing in the Marriott. He’d seen a spaceship that looked just like the glitter ball on the History Channel, in one of their programs about aliens. That was the downside of globalism. Living out of hotels. He liked the minibars, though.

And meeting women on the road, which was the biggest perk. This one was a revelation. She’d been the first thing he’d noticed when he’d arrived in Blackwater Inlet a week ago, if only because he was a woman watcher. Immediately, she’d come to exemplify every boring thing Bruno was escaping, the whole reason he’d started buying himself toys this year. The helicopter, Road Rover and getaway cabin. He’d learned the hard way that you only go around once, and it had made him commit to a more hedonistic lifestyle.

He’d ascertained the woman was a dental hygienist who worked on the second floor of the mall, the only architectural structure in town that even had an elevator. It was right down the road from one of two trailers he’d been told to call offices while he was in Podunk-ville. For a week, he’d watched her arrive at the mall like clockwork, driving a gray Honda car that was at least a decade old and still showroom. She always parked in the same spot exactly five minutes after his own arrival on the lot. Every morning, she stopped in the coffee shop, as he had done five minutes before her, and he imagined she was buying a corn muffin, no butter, and lukewarm decaf tea without chai spices.

Day in, day out, she’d worn her strawberry hair blown out like all the ambitious, work-a-day females he knew in D.C., board-straight in that tired Jennifer Aniston haircut. Just the kind of woman who could make a man feel like one more working stiff in a sea of gray flannel suits. Every day, she wore a tweed skirt and neutral-toned sweater-set under a bleach-white lab coat. The same diamond stud earrings. At lunch, she was always with her boss, the dentist, officiously carrying his books or clipboards. He was equally bland.

Bruno had silently named the woman “Mrs. Secretary,” since it was hard to think of her as something so contemporary as a “Ms.” or “assistant” or “admin.” And anyway, she was a hygienist. She’d probably rinse with peroxide if a guy kissed her. Worse, she always flirted with the dentist, at least that’s what Bruno thought she was trying to do. She’d chuckle as if the dentist was some incredible wit in a late-night romance movie. Bruno had watched way too many of those movies in the Marriotts while munching minibar chips. What kind of couple bonded while holding surgical tools and leaning over John Q. Public’s open mouth? But now...

What a 180. She’d been a living reminder he was at work on time. He was having breakfast in the same coffee shop. His car was in the same parking spot, even if it was a Road Rover. Now she was like boring circuitry that had been rewired to do something extraordinary. Maybe the black nail polish was over the top, but he could get past that, especially this late at night. When it came to the sexpot voice, big jangly earrings and boobs all over the place, Bruno was all in. She’d gone from representing everything he was escaping to everything he wanted to try. From where he was standing, her earrings looked really interesting. Of knotted gold and silver, they seemed of Celtic design. Totally different from the diamond studs she wore by day.

He hadn’t been this intrigued since a mysterious near power outage almost took out Chicago, back in 2012. Should he sleep with her now? Plan to hook up later? Women never said no. Even if they didn’t know about his big career and child prodigy awards and all that crap, it usually only took ten minutes to solicit the “yes.” But with someone as duplicitous as her, he could not imagine TMA: The Morning After. That was as interesting as sex. She wouldn’t stick. He knew that. Girls like her weren’t meant to stick. That was the whole point of them. He used to lie and say he wanted more, but since the tragedy of his past year—the loss that Alice Shoemaker, the shrink, had prodded about—he was done with lies. You only lived once.

What was her game? Finishing his drink, he placed the glass on the bar, said his goodbyes to the Shoemakers, and went to find out.

* * *

“Ari, that snowbird’s watching you like a hawk,” Paulie, the owner of Boondocks, yelled over the music.

“He’s on his way over,” Paulie’s wife, Sally, added. “Don’t run this one off. He’s really cute.”

Aribella Madden playfully swatted Sally, then made her way onto the dance floor, bumping into Larry Carson. With the employees from his jewelry shop, Larry was singing “Deck the Halls with Loads of Money.” Ari flashed on seventh grade when selling diamonds had been a twinkle in Larry’s eye and he’d given her a ring from a bubble gum machine as a promise. Her heart warmed, as it always did at fond memories of men she’d dated, or just hung out with, which meant almost every guy in the bar. It was always easier to remember what she’d liked about her exes in hindsight. Larry’s Unwelcome Incident had occurred when he’d married Sally’s sister, Katie. Quickly, the two of them had made three wee ones, but Larry still called when he received inventory he knew Ari would love, like the earrings she was wearing.

Ari had noticed the stranger, of course, but she was sworn off men again, and he’d been in the darkest part of the bar, over by Paulie’s pride and joy, the vintage jukebox. He’d been talking to Robby and Alice, too. Bad sign. Maybe he knew Robby from Raleigh, since Robby had gone to Duke. That might be interesting, since Ari, herself, was moving to Raleigh the week after the Unwelcome Incident to end all Unwelcome Incidents. The Final Incident, which was twenty-one days away. Just this morning she’d signed a lease on an apartment, and tomorrow, she’d start advertising for a tenant to rent her cottage, providing herself with a new income stream. The inlet had awesome coastal properties, but due to the economy, locals often went to work in nearby cities, then the population doubled on holidays when they boomeranged.

If the guy was visiting Robby and Alice, it really was a bad sign, though. Robby was Ari’s STRE—shortest-term romance ever—and the only one whose marriage had not been an Unwelcome Incident. During their few dates the year before he’d found Alice, Robby had tried to psychoanalyze her, so his was one couch Ari was happy to forget.

What did the man approaching her do? Play basketball? He had to be six-four or something, but he wasn’t stooping down to everybody’s level. Exuding raw confidence, he used his hips and shoulders to part the party, not his hands—she always noticed a guy’s hands—and then he stopped in front of her. The music stopped, and her voice sounded a little slurred to her own ears. “Friend of Robby and Alice’s?”

“Just met. Shrinks,” he warned, with a quick shake of his head. “Beware.” He was so tall that he’d had to adapt, evolving an interesting way of bending more with his knees than waist, then he tilted his head sideways and dipped it, so he could peer into people’s eyes. Her eyes. Once he’d arrested her with his vision and convinced himself she was focused solely on him, he lowered another fraction and made the sign of the cross with his fingers.

Her feeling exactly. “On the upside, if you’re a serial killer, or have some truly disgusting fetish, the Siggie Freuds would have figured it out by now and warned me.”

“So much for patient-doctor confidentiality.”

“The only thing worse than shrinks is shrinks who gossip.” Robby Shoemaker had announced to half of Blackwater Inlet that she had issues with intimacy, but that had only been with him! He’d said she had a weird thing for guys’ hands, too. She liked guys’ hands, sure, but why would that be weird?

“There are fetishes that don’t disgust you?”

“Some. And I draw the line at dating serial killers.”

“That’s what I hate about small towns. A guy can’t get away with anything.”

“Girls either.” She’d learned the hard way. “Let me guess. Big city guy.” Due to the daiquiris, it came out sounding like big shitty guy, so she corrected. “City.”

“Shitty on occasion,” he confessed. An index finger, which he seemed to have a habit of raising, pointed into the air, as if to alert her that he needed to clarify. “Never to you.”

All men said that. He did have interesting hands. They were in constant motion. Big and super-masculine, the fingers long, strong and thick, and yet artistic, somehow. Despite their size, she could imagine them working on small, intricate things. Boats in bottles. Keyboards. Female parts that usually stayed hidden in folds of flesh. Not that she wanted to know more about him, she told herself. She’d spent years laying the groundwork for the moves she was making this month, and she wasn’t going to risk some man turning her head. She hated to admit it, but men did have incredible power over her. Could she help it if she was female?

She wished hands weren’t her weak spot. He had awesome hands. Robby had been right about her in that regard. Now the guy was rubbing the sexy hands together in a way that sent a warm thrill through her. Everything in the dim bar became a lumen brighter, the edges around objects sharper. Yes, this guy was definitely tactile. He untwined his fingers, then pressed his palms together again. Using the thumb of one hand, he massaged the webbed area between a thumb and index finger. Nicely trimmed nails, but not too fussy. She hated obvious manicures.

Because she’d been studying the hands intently, she missed something he said. Before she could ask him to repeat it, jukebox music tidal-waved over them, and a finger circled his ear to indicate he could no longer hear. Bending, he leaned closer, probably to ask if she’d like to dance, but before he could, something took hold of her, either hormones or instincts or alcohol, and she shot him a game grin and simply yelled, “Yes!” For a second, he had made her want to say yes to anything.

“That’s a record,” he yelled.

As his hips and shoulders rocked to house music, she decided there was something really edgy about this guy. Easily, he could have seemed too geeky, but he was oh so not. Like how he was still wearing a suit this late on a Saturday night, and hadn’t bothered to undo the tie. Most guys would have loosened the knot, at least. Instead of looking out of place, he seemed like he didn’t care what he wore or what anybody thought of him, and she envied him that.

“A record?”

Not breaking dance stride, he brushed back his sleeve, practically forcing her eyes to follow his index finger as he swiped it across the watch. It was as if he’d sensed her attraction to his hands and kept them moving on purpose. Like the suit, the watch looked expensive but utilitarian. She couldn’t decide if everything he wore was custom, or if a female did his shopping, or if he hated shopping but was so hot that he’d look awesome in anything. Tilting his head, he angled it until he’d positioned his eyes in her line of vision again, so she wasn’t staring at his expansive chest.

“Sometimes it takes me a full ten minutes to get the girl to say yes,” he yelled. “Usually she tries to find out what she’s agreeing to.”

“Bet you’ve made better time than ten minutes.” He was pretty slick. As he smiled yes, the crowd got hit by something electric and pulsed, pushing her into his arms. Unprepared for the jolt that hit her when his hands settled on her waist, she felt it zip through her, positively electric. All the fabric between her skin and his fingers seemed to vanish. A fireball shattered near her solar plexus, exploding and sending darts of pleasure to all her extremities. For the space of a heartbeat, everything seemed suspended. She could swear those hands were strumming her sides, causing the ripples of vibration, and all at once, she felt really drunk, as if she was staggering, not dancing.

“You can tell me your name,” he yelled.

No way, she thought, urging Hot Hands under the glitter ball to get a better look at him before they went one dance step further. Another sizzling jolt of heat pulsed through her veins, this one higher voltage, leaving her nerves jangling. He had more sculpted facial bones than she’d realized. Knitted eyebrows as dark as his hair made him look totally unnerdy, way more calculating. The splash of blue in his gray eyes was more visible now. Whoa! Another fuse ignited, and a line of fire raced through her veins and ended at her heart, making it stutter.

Not that she could afford any entanglements. In twenty-one days, she’d be out of Blackwater Inlet. Nothing was going to change that, especially not some sexy stranger dragging her toward the steamiest, darkest abyss at the edge of the dance floor and yelling, “Let’s get sweaty, baby.” She wasn’t sure how many songs played before he’d pulled her under the light again, both of them panting hard, but by then, perspiration was coating every inch of her skin, tickling all the crevices.

He yelled, “Do you have a name?”

He was still fishing. When she caught a whiff of Boondocks’ most expensive scotch mixed with testosterone and mint, the grain alcohol of the male cocktail, she knew she’d better avoid this guy the way an alcoholic avoided a drink. He’d said, the girl usually says yes in ten minutes.

“The Girl will do.”

“What will she do?”

“Remains to be seen,” she yelled. “And that’s annoying.”

“Summing people up by their function?”

Her mother, Mom Mad, short for Mommy Madden, did it all the time. She nodded. The man’s hands were on her waist again. She could feel the itch in the fingers, which were trailing where her hips flared. Drums sounded and she danced away, writhing to the beat, but then some yahoo slammed the guy. For that instant, the whole world was reduced to jumbled impressions. His thigh muscles rippling beneath his slacks; her cheek bouncing off a rock hard chest.

She should have known the culprit would be Hunter MacKenzie. He probably thought he was helping her out by pushing her into a man’s arms. Hunter Mac still had a warm spot for her, although they’d only kissed a few times in high school, and his Unwelcome Incident had been one of the first. She’d been a bridesmaid.

The stranger was still trying to steady her. From cheek to toe, they touched all the way down, her breasts cushioned against a chest carved out of granite. She shut her eyes in bliss, feeling all those straining, bulging muscles. It wasn’t overkill, either, like with body builders, just nicely honed. And there was so much tension inside him that when she looked up, into his gray-blue steelies, she felt woozy. Maybe she even tripped. She wasn’t sure. His grip tightened and she suddenly wondered exactly how much she’d had to drink.

“You okay?”

No! She was jittery all over! He did the unique, lean-dippy thing he’d evolved due to his height, not stopping until his eyes found hers like laser beams. Chalk one up to Darwin.

He mouthed, “I’m sorry!”

“It was Hunter MacKenzie’s fault!” she yelled. She was going to kill him for that stupid body-slam.

The guy looked frustrated. “I don’t think I can call you The Girl.”

“Sure you can. You’re The Boy.”

He smiled. “I can keep that straight.”

Whoa. He was looking at her with frank sexual interest. It was sort of a relief. She did do the physical part of relationships really well. Kissing, anyway. She’d had sex, too. Not tons, but enough. It was okay, just never the fireworks she’d hoped. No big explosions, and she hated the predictable letdown. In a second she’d feel...yes, there it was. A tug of longing that said this guy would be different, followed by a rush of warmth. The feeling was like a sweet promise that always turned out to be The Big Lie. Not that she was inorgasmic or anything, but sex was supposed to be at least as interesting as a vibrator, right?

Tonight, she wasn’t going to unwrap the package. She’d enjoy the pretty paper, bow, and greeting card, but she wasn’t sticking around to watch another late-night rerun of her floundering love life, season umpteen. Lifting his wrist to show him his watch, she decided to tell him his time was up, and make some joke about his ten-minute track record—they’d been dancing way more than ten minutes—but when her finger grazed his wrist, she felt his pulse leap. Heat flared like fire on a match. She guessed all the sweaty dances had worked their mojo. The heady elixir of man-sweat had taken his scotch, testosterone and mint cocktail to a whole new level, too. Give me the garnish! Kick it up a notch!

She was reminded of old advertisements she’d spent hours studying—the Marlboro Man, Old Spice and Irish Spring. He was all of them rolled into one. His hand turned deftly in hers, and as his wrist moved, she figured he had to be double jointed or something, then her mind went blank, the whole bar fuzzy at the edges. His strong hand was in hers, palm to palm, and she simply felt lost. When he twined their fingers, it seemed more intimate, somehow, than if he’d just ripped off all her clothes. The Big Lie talking. She’d been here a million times before.

Old Smashing Pumpkins was playing, making her think she’d better start worrying about pumpkins turning into carriages. Dropping his hand, she danced away, but he seemed confident she’d boomerang back. Just like whatever was passing between them, the beat was raw and thumping, and when he found her, they were dancing in earnest. Jumping. Shaking. Vibrating. Getting down and dirty with some bumps and grinds. She lost him, he found her again, and by then she realized there was no escape.

“Awesome!” she conceded.

“You’ve got the sexiest voice I have ever heard,” he yelled.

El dudes always mentioned her pipes. “I know.”

All he was really saying was that he wanted to get laid. After a few more songs, she finally took pity because he kept fishing for the personals, and she yelled that she and Paulie, the owner of Boondocks, had hung out together in the tenth grade, long before his Unwelcome Incident with Sally. Back then, Ari’s dream had been to work in radio, and since Paulie now kept a DJ setup for ladies’ nights, he insisted she spin songs when she came in.

“You know everybody here.”

“You’re the only guy I haven’t slept with. Small town, you know.”

“So you’re not The Girl. You’re The Girl With a History.”

“Okay. Maybe not everybody,” she conceded.

“Definitely not everybody.”

“How would you know?”

“You haven’t slept with me.”

She’d never been so glad to hear heavy metal. For Ari, it conjured images of old men in leather pants eating bats on stage before they destroyed their own guitars, but this guy could dance to anything. What a workout! She was suddenly glad Paulie didn’t allow anything touchy-feely on his jukebox because this guy might suddenly announce he could freaking waltz.

He was reaching for his tie now, too. A bad sign. It should have meant something red with exclamation points like Wrong Way! Or Stop! Instead, it was just turning yellow and flashing, saying Trouble Up Ahead. And who didn’t know that already? “You are formal for Paulie’s,” she yelled as those maddening, fluid hands tugged off the tie in a seamless gesture, looped it around her neck and used the ends to pull her to him.

Suddenly, she wished they’d met in work mode when she looked more respectable. Then she kicked herself for wanting to impress him. That was this guy’s appeal, right? He seemed too at ease with himself and living for the moment.

“I don’t usually party like this,” she suddenly screamed, but the words were lost. “I’m trying to be good!” There it was again, her approval seeking. It meant something deep inside her, something over which she had no control, was responding to this guy, and she wanted him to...like her.

“You aren’t going to be good in that outfit, sweetheart.”

Sweat beaded and slid down her cleavage, and when he used an end of the tie to dab at it, she wound up yelling more nonsense about the holidays, her nutso family, the new place in Raleigh and her workload, and of course, next month’s Unwelcome Incident. The Final Incident.

Frowning, he yelled, “You like your work?”

“Love it!”

He looked a little appalled, which was strange. Most men saw dollar signs when she said she liked work, but he only waved a hand as if to say, to each his own. The tie he was using to clean up her neck was pure silk, and suddenly she gasped. The fingers tracing her neck, skin on skin, felt even more silken than the tie.

Bending, he yelled, “I don’t know if I’m staying here.”

Relief flooded her. He wanted her to know he wasn’t up for LTR. Good. But why was he here? Because Ari hadn’t had time to get her hair done, she hadn’t talked to Mrs. Eli who owned the salon, and who would have filled her in on the town’s latest gossip.

“In town for the night?” She couldn’t hear the response, and by the end of the next song, he’d danced her into the darkest, most isolated corner, between the bar and jukebox. The next conversation started with a super long leg pushing between hers, guiding them apart, bringing a sweeping sensation of warmth. Glancing around, she leaned against the jukebox. No one was watching. He was whispering something, but she didn’t know what, just something every bit as dark as it was promising. And it was only a promise. The Big Lie. Already, she was imagining the morning after when she would admit he wasn’t going to be The One. Already, she was telling herself it was the twenty-first century and nobody was looking for The One.

Teeth caught her earlobe in a bite that was a little painful, yes, but oh so pleasurable. A playful tug, then a quick, hot, flicker all the way down her neck, turning into teasing kisses just inside the collar of her blouse. Suddenly, her nipples tightened, aching as her blood raced, and she was imagining kisses in places more intimate. Her breasts, yes. But mostly right where the hard ridge of thigh was creating such steady pressure. Her chest rose, her breasts swelling, as if for his touch, and she gasped as he responded, his arms tightening, wrapping around her chest, stealing her breath. Shuddering, she had no doubt he could unbutton complicated garments with his teeth, and in her mind, she was imagining him doing it. Her blouse was falling to the floor, her bra opening, those hands stroking...