ten minutes of bad Muzak wasn’t quite right…it was torture.
The pencil slipped and flew across the room.
She sighed. The phone maze wasn’t just torture; it was cruel and unusual punishment.
She was throwing pencils, her head ached and she was sure her blood pressure was probably through the roof all because of the computer-induced runaround.
“Your call is important to us….” the machine began again.
Suddenly, it was as if a lightbulb went off over her head. A bolt of inspiration struck.
Ari actually smiled, despite the fact that the machine was now playing a horrible instrumental version of “Like A Virgin.”
The machine had it all wrong. This call wasn’t important to the company, but it was very important to Ari’s future.
Very, very important.
1
“SO, I GUESS we should just do it,” Collin Walters said without a hint of enthusiasm.
“Pardon?” Adrienne Kelly asked her long-time fiancé.
Collin looked rather pale today. And pale for Collin’s blond-haired, fair-skinned complexion was just about as white as a sheet.
The only plus to this particular shade of ghost-white was that it made his eyes look very blue, rather than their normal washed-out sort of grayish-blue.
Maybe Ari was just being exceptionally dense today, but she didn’t have a clue what Collin was talking about.
They were sitting on a bench in a quiet corner of Penn’s Campus. It would have been more convenient to sit right outside Penn Hospital, but the view would have consisted of Philadelphia traffic. The green space in the center of the campus was much prettier to look at and worth the short walk.
They often shared lunches here, but Collin had never just blurted out doing it statements before.
Now, if it were any other man, she might think he was talking about sex.
Hey, babe, let’s just do it.
She felt a bit hot and tingly at the thought.
Not that Ari was the type of person who would want to do it in a public place. But it might be nice to have someone want her bad enough to want to do it in a public place.
But Collin would never suggest doing it on a park bench. As a matter of fact, he wasn’t overly prone to doing it at all.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t. But his sex drive rode a few notches below her own.
Not that she was a nympho.
But Ari liked sex.
Hot, wild, abandoned sex. Fast and hard. Slow and soft. She just liked it.
Collin blamed his less than lustful sex drive on his stress-filled career as a surgeon. Ari sometimes worried that maybe it was something more. Maybe they just didn’t click.
No, of course she clicked with Collin. They were perfect for each other. He just worked too hard.
Collin interrupted her wild musing and repeated, “A date.”
She must have still looked puzzled, because he said, with exasperation tingeing his voice, “Don’t play coy with me, Adrienne.”
Coy?
That was the description of someone who promised sex, but didn’t follow through.
Coy didn’t describe Ari at all. She’d follow through in a New York minute…a Philadelphia minute, to be more exact. She’d gotten herself quite worked up thinking about hot sex in a public place.
Of course, unless Collin had become psychic or suddenly much more perceptive than he normally was, he didn’t know that she’d been thinking about doing it right here, right now, so what was he talking about?
“Coy?” she repeated, knowing she sounded as confused as she felt.
“You’ve been nagging about setting a wedding date since the day we got engaged.”
Ah, wedding dates.
No nooky on a park bench.
A wedding date.
That’s what this was all about. Just then his statement fully hit her.
“Nagging?” She was sure that even Collin couldn’t miss what was her annoyance this time.
He raked his fingers through his blond-to-the-point-of-being-white hair. With a normal, mortal being, this would result in someone’s hairstyle un-styling.
But not Collin’s.
He was the kind of man whose perfection couldn’t be messed with.
Ari assured herself that she liked that quality about him. It’s just that sometimes—like at this particular moment—she forgot she liked it.
“Adrienne, why are you being difficult? This is what you wanted. We’re going to choose a date and move ahead with our plans.”
“Why now?”
“It’s a perfect time.”
Perfect.
Perfect like everything else about Collin.
He came from the perfect, nondysfunctional, upper-class family.
He’d been a perfect trouble-free teen, gone to his father’s ivy league alma mater and followed in his father’s footsteps and become a surgeon.
He’d even joined his father’s practice. He was the perfect son, his parents reminded her…frequently.
She’d noted they’d never referred to her as the perfect potential daughter-in-law.
She realized that Collin was reciting all the reasons that now was the time to set a wedding date. “…you’ve not only finished your thesis, but you’ve had it published. You’ll be starting a great new job. And my career is quite solid now. We’ll plan a small Friday night ceremony and a weekend getaway, so we won’t interfere with your work schedule.”
“I’m sure they’d give me time off for a honeymoon.”
A tropical beach honeymoon.
Just her and Collin. With no outside demands. Totally alone and stress-free.
Lolling around in the sun. Having sex.
Going out to eat. Having sex.
Sleeping late. Having sex.
What was up with her today? She had sex on the
