Sex with Walter was like a Pap test, only not as muchfun.
She wondered if his being a gynecologist was the problem: he got the two mixedup.
They’d been engaged for six years. It salved her conscience, and her mother’s. Not that she’d ever spent an entire night at Walter’s, of course, but the unexplained hours didn’t have to beexplained.
Cynthia hadn’t imagined how lonely she’d feel when her mother died. Or that within the year this jumpy kind of panic would set in, as though her youth was slipping through her fingers. She’d imagined her life in bright colors, not this uniform gray. There had to be something wild and unpredictable she could do. She decided to start in the bedroom. Inprivate.
Nowhere in her fantasy had she imagined having to be rescued by an FBIagent.
She hadn’t been this mortified since sixth grade, when Daniel Prewitt asked her, in front of the whole class, if she wanted a stiffy, and she’d thought he’d asked her if she wanted a Slurpee and saidyes.
Face it. You were born to be a boring accountant married to Dr. Dull. Her career as a femme fatale was definitelyover.
Her makeup looked garish in the mirror, and she remembered in horror that she’d rouged her nipples like the magazine suggested. She hoped to heaven FBI Agent Wheeler hadn’tnoticed.
She remembered the way that cold, hard gaze had just flicked over her without any hint of emotion. Her naked body hadn’t kindled the fires of lust in him any more than it had inWalter.
She could have spray painted the Stars and Stripes across her chest and it wouldn’t have raised hisflagpole.
Being found handcuffed naked to a bed by a strange man was bad enough. To be in that predicament and leave him unmoved… No, wait a minute. She remembered the flicker of humor that had flashed in his eyes when he found out it wasn’t a criminal act but a sex thing. He hadn’t been unmoved at all. He’d beenamused.
Her naked body struck him asfunny.
She wanted todie.
But first she had to get rid of theFBI.
He was sitting in the living room. Her living room. Completely at odds with the antique furniture and her mother’s collection of Hummelfigurines.
“Sit down,” he commanded. There was no sign of the gun, but just knowing he had it on him somewhere gave her a fluttery feeling in herstomach.
Shesat.
Polite as always, she remembered to thank him. “Thank you for–” She cleared her throat. “Releasingme.”
He gazed at her for a long moment. “What’s going on?” he finallyasked.
“I beg your pardon?” Could this day get anyworse?
“I don’t have time to play games. Whose house isthis?”
“Mine.”
He snorted. “Look, honey, I sent the cops home. You’re a hooker who makes house calls. Fine with me. I’m not the vice squad. I just want to clarify the situation before I escort you out thedoor.”
Her mouth dropped open and the first ray of sunlight brightened the worst day of herlife.
“You think I’m a prostitute?” He believed men wouldpayto have sex withher?
He sent her the kind of look she imagined an FBI guy would give a hooker. She might even have played along with the idea except for the part where he was planning to lock her out of her own house. “I’mnot—”
“Save it. Where’s thejohn?”
“Down the hall to your left,” she answeredprimly.
He chuckled. “You’re good, you know that? If I hadn’t given up the wild stuff…” His gaze wandered her body lazily, and she had her second pleasant shock of the day. Back when he used to be wild, he might have paid to have sex with her. “Where’s theguy?”
Belatedly she realized he had used the term “john” as in paying customer, not bathroom. “He was called away. To deliver a baby, Iimagine.”
