Take Me Twice

2

“YOU’LL NEVER GUESS who called me.”

Laine glanced up from her menu at Clark’s Diner, her and her oldest friend Judy’s regular Saturday lunch spot. She had a pretty good idea. The same person it always was when Judy said, “You’ll never guess who called me.”

“Who?”

Judy leaned forward, one dark brow lifted, brown eyes sparkling behind her narrow, aqua-framed glasses. “Grayson Alexander.”

“No kidding.” Laine did a quick internal scan of her emotions, noting with triumph that she wasn’t feeling even a hint of that crazy thrill his name used to provoke in her without fail. Nothing but friendly, affectionate warmth. “What’s he up to?”

“The usual.” Judy sat back, watching Laine entirely too carefully, so Laine continued to explore the menu she knew practically by heart. She wasn’t in the mood to be psychoanalyzed. She’d been trying to find a roommate for an entire week, in fact had interviewed her sixth candidate this morning. A woman named Shadow, who hoped it would be okay if she burned incense every day. Oh, and her pet rat would be welcome, wouldn’t he? Worse, Shadow had been the most promising candidate.

“He and Chuck Gartner—do you remember him? He was a year older than us at Princeton. Charming geek, about twenty feet tall…”

“Yes, I remember.”

“He and Chuck are making a go of their interactive media business. They have an office on Broadway by the park. And Grayson bought a house in Princeton on Knoll Drive.”

Laine nodded. “Sounds like he’s doing well.”

“I know. Huge sigh.” Judy patted her ample chest. “He still makes my heart go pitter-pat. Killer looks, perfect body and enough charm to sink the Titanic. Not that he’d look at a lonely, overweight doormat like me.”

“Oh, will you stop.” Laine glared and held up a finger. “One, you are not overweight and—”

“Ahem.” Judy raised her hand to interrupt. “I weigh what you do and I’m a foot shorter.”

“Eight inches. And I’m a beanpole. Two—” she held up a second finger “—you’re only lonely because you don’t get out there and find people to—”

“So shoot me, I’m shy.”

“Three, you—hey!” Laine let her hand smack down on the table. “Why don’t you find a Man To Do, too?”

Judy scrunched up her face incredulously. “Me? Are you kidding? I walk into a bar, men run out screaming.”

Laine rolled her eyes. “Utter crap. What about…whatshisname? At that bar we went to the night you—”

“Roy?” Judy pointed to her chest. “He was just into boobs.”

“Well…there’s a start. I mean they’re part of you.”

Judy let out a snort of laughter and shook her head. “Men To Do is not for me. I can’t screw a guy for the hell of it. I have sex once, I want to wash his socks for all eternity. It’s just who I am.”

“Nonsense. I used to be that way, too, but I evolved. You can, too.”

“Evolved?” Judy scoffed. “You mean you got massively hurt by Grayson and are scared to try again.”

“No.” The casual denial came out not so very casually and a strange, angry feeling invaded her stomach. “You’re always romanticizing our relationship. I was twenty. He was my first love. At that age, I thought if you fell in love, that was that, you had forever all sewn up.”

“It can be that way.”

Laine put down her menu and pressed tense fingers to her temples. “Trust me, I know. I hear it every time I go home. That’s how it was with my mom forty years ago and my sister ten years ago and what’s the matter with me that I can’t hang on to a man? I say they were just plain lucky meeting Mr. Right the first time. Nothing is ‘forever’ for sure. Not marriage, not career, not anything.”

Judy waved her off dismissively. “Gloom and doom.”

“It’s not all gloom. Look at all the stuff I’ve done in my life. I’ve had four jobs, dated six men, tried two different grad school programs and am headed for a third, met tons of people—I’ve had a blast. I’ve really lived, unlike my parents and sister who’ve done the exact same thing every day of their lives since birth. If I’d married Grayson I’d probably be at home now in the same house I’d lived in forever, in the same bathrobe and slippers I’d had forever, trying to keep track of about a hundred children.” She shuddered. “Now that is gloomy.”

“I don’t know.” Judy sighed and fingered the necklace of colored-glass beads at her throat. “Sounds pretty great to me.”

“Instead.” Laine picked up her water glass and toasted her friend. “Instead, I’m totally free and about to embark on my next great adventure.”

“Right.” Judy’s cynical eyebrow crept up the left side of her forehead, even as she hoisted her water glass and clinked with Laine. “He’s not seeing anyone, you know.”

“Who?” She knew damn well who. She just didn’t want to admit that he’d stayed in her mind even this long.

“Grayson.”

“And?”

“Neither are you.”

“And neither are you, Ms. I’ll-always-love-Grayson. Why don’t you try to go out with him?”

“Ohhhh, no. Oh, no. Ohhhh, nononono.” Judy turned a lovely shade of pink to match her cotton sweater. “Not me. This guy will always belong to you.”

Laine threw up her hands in surrender. “How can you think that? You were there for the entire fiasco in college. We weren’t meant to be. What’s the point of drumming all that up again?”

“Let’s just say that as much as it would make my life, I am under no illusion that he wants to know how I am when he calls. He always mumbles for a while then gets to the real point—‘How is Laine doing?’”

“So?” Laine picked up her menu. She was not getting into this. She was hungry and it would only make her cranky. Grayson was ancient history, and happily so. It had taken her years and years and years to get over him, her first real love; she wasn’t anxious to stir that up again. “He just wants to know how I am.”

“Nope. It’s more than that. He gets all awkward and choky-sounding when he asks.”

“Hair ball?” She moved from Salads to Sandwiches. Nothing appealed.

“Laine.”

“Maybe he’s eating.” Burgers, no. Chili, no.

Judy made a sound that demonstrated in no uncertain terms what she thought of that possibility. “I told him you were looking for a roommate.”

“Uh-huh.” Laine’s eyes zeroed in on her usual lunch order. Okay, so she always had it, but today was a comfort food kind of day and the chicken noodle soup at Clark’s was delicious, rich and full of big pieces of chicken.

“He said he was interested.”

Laine’s head jerked up. “Interested?”

Judy crossed her arms over her chest, looking like the winner of a smug contest. “I thought that might grab your attention.”

“Interested in what, interested?”

“Interested in being your roommate, interested.”

Laine closed her menu. Her body and brain seemed to be on hold until they decided how to react to that one. “I thought you said he had a house in Princeton.”

“He does. But he has appointments in the city, and it would be easier for him not to have to commute back and forth on the train.”

“Oh.” Still no reaction. She wasn’t sure if that was good or not.

“He’s willing to cough up half your rent and only stay there when he needs to.”

“Oh.”

Judy beckoned as if she were trying to coax words out of Laine’s mouth. “So?”

Laine stared at her friend, no doubt looking utterly blank. She hadn’t a clue what to think. Or feel. Grayson Alexander wanted to be her roommate. Grayson Alexander. Wanted to be her roommate. Her roommate. Gray—

“So, what do you say?” Judy was leaning forward again, scheming eyes alight.

“I don’t know.” Laine glanced around the diner as if the other customers might be able to step in to tell her what to say. “I guess it sounds…ideal.”

“You don’t sound like you guess it sounds ideal.”

“No. It does. It sounds ideal. I guess.”

“Of course it sounds ideal. Because it is ideal.” Judy pounded her small fist on the table. “It’s totally ideal. You guys are friends, you know him, you can trust him not to steal from you or have any weird habits or friends. No risk. And he won’t even be there most of the time. I’m telling you, it’s perfect.”

“Well.” She nodded seriously. “I guess it is.”

“It’s more than perfect.” Judy gestured into the air, then clasped her hands. “It’s fate.”

Laine narrowed her eyes. “Okay, let’s not get carried away.”

“But you’ll say yes?”

She shrugged, feeling off balance and totally unused to the feeling. It was pretty amazing timing that Grayson had called Judy just when Laine was looking for someone. And it did seem the perfect solution. The obvious choice.

It’s just that this little tiny voice inside her was sounding a warning. Perfect solutions and obvious choices had this way of turning on her. Jobs turned out to be deadening, men turned out to be wrong for her, graduate programs turned out not to be her calling.

But the voice wasn’t really loud enough for her to hear the details of what it thought was so wrong, and the overwhelming practicality of the solution was pretty compelling. In one stroke she could secure her playtime summer, save herself from having to live with a stranger and, as it turned out, she’d have the place to herself most of the time anyway.

Laine looked at the anxious face across the table and grinned. Not to mention Ms. Puppy Love would have easy drooling access. How could she say no? “Well, I mean, if he calls and asks and it all seems…well, yeah.”

“Hurray!” Judy threw up her hands and nearly punched the waitress who had finally arrived.

Laine smiled wanly and placed her order for the chicken soup. Definitely a comfort food day. She hadn’t seen Grayson in years. Five to be exact. She heard news of him now and then, maybe a couple of times a year if that, through Judy. After the initial nasty breakup, when she’d caught him with his fingers in another cookie jar, they’d managed to be friends for years, though admittedly they’d always seemed to stretch the boundaries of “friendship” to include sex. Lots of sex. Fabulous sex. Then he’d moved to Chicago and that was that. An unspoken agreement that it was time to move on. Now he was back in the area and she’d not only see him, she’d share intimate living space with him.

Okay. She could do that. She was way over him. They were friends. Buddies. Right?

“You okay?”

Laine blinked across the table to find Judy looking at her over the tops of her funky glasses with concern. A giddy bubble of laughter swelled in Laine’s chest. Her worries were ridiculous. Grayson was an old friend—granted, a friend she’d wanted to marry at one point, but that was years and years and years ago. They’d both moved on and she was a different person now. Rooming together was merely a practical arrangement to get them through the summer. She’d be out most of the time in pursuit of her adventures and her Man To Do and he’d be into whatever or whoever he was into.

Of course she was okay.

“Yes. Yes. I’m fine. I’m totally fine. I’m more than fine.” She laughed and handed her menu to the waitress. “In fact, thanks to Grayson, this is once again going to be the best summer of my life.”

From: Angie Keller

Sent: Sunday

To: Laine Blackwell; Kathy Baker

Subject: Men To Do

Why, honey chile, welcome to paradise! I am so glad you will be joining us! Me, I found a Man To Do only last night and my, my, my, I am feeling quite Queenly today. He was extremely manly and possessed an oh-so-talented tongue. My mama would have fainted dead away if she knew how I carried on. But I say God gave me this body to use, and I’m doing it.

Have fun!

God bless,

Angie

From: Kathy Baker

Sent: Sunday

To: Laine Blackwell; Angie Keller

Subject: Way To Go!

Wow, Laine, you are ready to roll! And okay, you have given me courage, I really need to do this (one of these days). I just don’t know where to meet men! The ones online here in Milwaukee seem so not my type—okay, maybe I overanalyze—but I can’t get excited about any of them just from a squinty little picture. Guys, a little tip: it is so not enticing to see half an arm around your neck from where you cut your last girlfriend out of the photo.

I wish I had Harlot Angie’s balls and could walk into a bar and just pick a guy out.

Anyway, congrats on your free summer and keep us posted!!

’Bye,

Kathy

GRAYSON HUNG UP the phone in total unabashed triumph. He was the salesman of all salesmen. The über-salesman. He’d just taken a call from a guy named Bob, who was trying to sell him some sales-training course. In the space of a half hour, Grayson had carefully and skillfully turned the conversation around, found out Bob’s company needed a new Web site, and secured a sales appointment for Jameson Productions, his own damn company.

He chuckled, reveling in that moment of rare beauty when Bob the Salesman Trainer had realized what was happening to his high-pressure call.

Hey, you’re selling me.

Grayson stretched one side of his body, then the other and leaned back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head.

Listen. That was all you had to do. Listen and ask questions. People would always tell you what you needed to know to get in. Too many salesmen did the professional equivalent of trying to carve a delicate wooden figurine with an ax. The good citizens of this country were axed every day with information, requests, advertisements, news, bothered at home by telemarketers, overwhelmed with options. To make a difference, all you had to do was shut up and listen. Use your tiniest chisel and, bit by bit, make that figurine emerge.

In six months Grayson had grown his and Chuck’s company to where they were on target for a half-million in annual business. And he was only just starting. What he needed now was one plum, one ripe, gorgeous, enormous company with ongoing needs for Jameson’s Web design and interactive media offerings.

It was out there. He just needed to find it. Having Laine’s place to stay in would give him more time in the city, more time for appointments, more time to see Chuck and the programmers for face-to-face consulting on projects, and less time commuting.

He pushed back against the chair, making its upholstered metallic innards creak. Not that less time sitting on trains was the only reason he’d jumped at the idea. He called Judy because he was being ridiculous, acting as if sitting home avoiding Laine was some show of strength. He wanted to see her again. Wanted to find out why she still invaded his dreams. And yeah, he wanted to do some other things that he better not admit, because it wasn’t very gentlemanly of him to be thinking of her that way after five years, before he’d even been able to talk to her again.

Grayson picked up the phone and dialed her number, his heart still racing from his morning run, coffee and the thrill of success securing another appointment. He’d been about to call Laine when this bozo Bob had called him. Now he couldn’t wait to hear her voice.

“Hello?”

She was out of breath. A grin spread over his face. Hot damn. He couldn’t help it. She sounded so good.

“You working out or something more fun?”

“Grayson?”

The sound of his name from her mouth made him smile harder. “How are you, Laine?”

“Grayson! I’m fine, how the hell are you? Judy said you’d call. God, it’s been five years.”

“I know. But I thought of you every one of them.”

She gave a familiar snort of laughter. “How sweet.”

“Yeah, well…” He put his feet up on his desk. “That’s me.”

“Though I noticed when you picked up the phone, you always called Judy.”

He went to cross his ankles and both feet slipped off the desk, nearly toppling him out of his chair. “Hmm…yeah, well…Judy is…she’s…Judy is Judy.”

“And Laine is Laine?”

“And never the twain, yeah.”

He grinned, picturing her talking to him on the phone—tall, slender, dark hair, blue eyes, flushed from working out. The kind of woman who drew men’s stares everywhere she went, all the more because she was so unconscious of how stunning she was.

“So now after five years, five thoughts of me and phone calls to Judy-who-is-Judy instead of Laine-who-is-Laine, you suddenly want to move in with me?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, there’s a switch.”

He left the barb alone. “Work with me here, Laine.”

“I don’t know…” She responded to his tease with mock hesitancy. “I’m not much of a worker these days.”

“Then play with me?”

“Play with yourself.”

He burst out laughing. Bam! Walked right into that one. You couldn’t get much past Laine Blackwell. “Okay, okay. Yes, I want to move in with you. A few nights a week when I have appointments in the city.”

“Why?”

“Didn’t Judy tell you?”

“Forget Judy. Tell Laine-who-is-Laine.”

“Okay, Laine-who-is-Laine. Having an apartment in the city will help me professionally.”

“Ah.” She blew out a sigh. “So you finally admit you need professional help.”

He couldn’t stop grinning. He suddenly missed her fiercely, as if all the years they’d been apart had hit him retroactively. “That’s right.”

“This is good. You must have come a long way.”

“You know I can come a long way.”

Her turn to laugh, that big, loud, honest belly laugh she released when something really struck her. He was pumped by the sound, even higher than he’d been. And turned on, totally jazzed by their sparring. He couldn’t wait to see her. And yeah, there were still one or two of those ungentlemanly thoughts on his mind. In fact there were lots of them. Who was he kidding? He was no gentleman when it came to Laine. Though only once had he stooped to being an outright jerk, an episode he still wished he could go back in time and erase.

“Are you going to let me in, Laine?”

“Into my apartment.”

“Of course? What else would I mean?” He grinned, waiting, rubbing his thumb along his chin.

“Nothing.” She took a deep breath and let it out.

His grin faded. “Is there a problem?”

“No. No. There’s not a problem.”

He cocked his head. There was a problem. He hoped to hell she was merely rediscovering her need to be naked under him. “Why the hesitation?”

“It’s fine. You can stay here when you need to. It will be fine.”

“You don’t sound sure.”

“I’m sure.”

She wasn’t sure. Maybe he’d gone too far. “You understand that I’m doing this because of my job.”

“Oh, of course. Of course. I understand that.”

Was she relieved? Sorry? Embarrassed? He couldn’t tell without seeing her face. “Because given our history, I didn’t want you to think I was only trying to get into your pants again.”

Which was true. He wasn’t only trying to get into her pants. He did need a base in Manhattan.

“Oh, no. I didn’t think that at all. Honest, Grayson.”

He frowned. Where was the zinging comeback? She sounded utterly sincere. It must have occurred to her they could get back together for some fun. Judy had said she wasn’t involved with anyone. Two consenting adults with a history of explosive chemistry. In the same apartment. All night long. Didn’t take much imagination to keep the scenario heating up.

But then she’d always been pretty naive about his basely motivated gender. For a second he nearly felt ashamed of himself, but then shame was a useless emotion and it wasn’t as if he was planning to force her. He knew he could make her want him, even after this many years. Whatever that sexual TNT was between them, he had a feeling it would never go away. He’d bet his company they’d be in the sack together within a week.

And Grayson Alexander never made bets he could lose.

3

From: Laine Blackwell

Sent: Monday

To: Angie Keller; Kathy Baker

Subject: Men To Do and (ack!) Old Boyfriend Returns

First things first, I’ve decided that hanging out in bars is not going to get me my Man To Do. Too iffy, too expensive, too dangerous. And I’ve either met or dated all my friends’ available male friends, so no point going that route. Therefore (drumroll and trumpet flourish), I’ve been cruising NYdates.com. Can’t say for sure I won’t find any weirdos there, but I figure if I can thumbs-up pictures that attract me and thumbs-down men who can’t put two sentences together (or punctuate, what is up with that?), then I’m ahead of the game.

And, well, what do you know, I have found a few possibles, one in particular, Antonio, a dark and very sexy-looking Italian (attached is the link to his profile and photo), who fits my height and punctuation requirements and who sounds totally full of himself, which I’m thinking would classify him as…let’s say…the Vain Foreigner. I’ve e-mailed him, so we’ll see what happens.

Woohoo! This summer is going to be so incredible! I’ve signed up for a yoga class and a cooking class, and I found this skydiving company in N.J. and a tap-dancing class and I’m going to take a French class, too, and I’m so into this!

Okay, I better go. In a very short while, Grayson shows up. I’m excited about seeing him and, okay, nervous and not really sure what it will be like. I mean we were sort of obsessed with each other for a lot of years even after we broke up. It took him moving to Chicago to finally get him out of my head, not to mention my bed. But he’s definitely out and will stay out of both! So we’ll see.

’Bye!

Laine

P.S. Of course I’ll give the full report if my Vain Foreigner writes back.

GRAYSON STRODE DOWN the dark, stuffy, narrow eighth-floor hallway of Laine’s apartment building, carrying his overnight bag, briefcase and laptop, and clutching the enormous bouquet Roger the doorman had asked him to bring up. Apparently some guy named Ben was sending Laine flowers on a regular basis. Grayson did not like the sound of that, not that he had a claim on her anymore. Not yet at least.

Eight-K, 8-L… He reached 8-M before his brain kicked in that he was going the wrong way to get to 8-C. He let out a groan and turned around, wanting to wipe away perspiration at his temple, but too impatient to drop everything to take care of it.