Forbidden Pleasure

trying to palm off on me. Balsamic on the salad, and I want more than one of those blueberry muffins in the basket tonight.'

While they ate an orchestra tuned up, and by the time they reached dessert people were beginning to dance. The music being played wasn't at all new, given the audience. There were foxtrots, waltzes, rumbas, and sambas. The Seligmanns got up to dance, and Emily smiled watching them.

'Aren't they cute?' she said. 'He adores her, and she adores him.'

'They're good people. I'm glad you have them,' he answered.

'I'm lucky,' Emily admitted. 'Only in America would an Irish-Polish Catholic girl have Jewish parent figures. Sam's ancestors and my Dunham ancestors were among the founders of Egret Pointe. There has been a Dr. Seligmann here as long as anyone can remember.'

'I don't think of the States as having such history,' Michael Devlin admitted. 'I am not going to ask you to dance, angel face, because if I do I will embarrass us both. I can't seem to hold you in my arms without getting a hard-on.'

She blushed, but laughed softly at the same time. 'What is going to happen with us, Devlin? This tutorial is getting out of control, isn't it?'

'I don't know,' he said slowly. 'I don't find that I am unhappy-rather the opposite. What about you?'

'I feel the same way,' Emily said quietly. 'Let's see how well we travel together. When are you going to Frankfurt?'

'Early October,' he replied. 'Want to meet in England on the tenth?'

'I'll make the reservations at the inn in Barrow tomorrow,' she said. 'How long do you want to visit with the Palmers?'

'I'd better fly back the fourteenth so I can be in the office that day,' he said. 'I don't want J.P. asking why I'm away so long. Since I'm going to smooth things out with Sava and Pruny, I'll call it business, and then say I wanted to check on my house as well, since I was there. Who will know you're away?'

'Rina and Essie,' Emily replied. 'I'll fly home the sixteenth, so Sava and I can have a little girl time together. I know I said three days, but I haven't been to England in a while, and I can call it a research trip.'

'You two should get out there and dance,' Rina said breathlessly as she returned to the table. 'They're playing real music.'

'We're enjoying drinking our wine and talking,' Emily quickly spoke up. 'Besides, we don't want your friends gossiping, do we?'

'They'll gossip anyway,' Rina said with a grin. 'That's what we do every Monday morning: eat doughnuts, drink coffee, and gossip. We've been doing it for years. Now that we're all working again we just meet earlier. And you have to admit that no one has seen you having dinner at the club with a handsome, eligible man in years, Emily.' She turned to Michael Devlin. 'And I know you're eligible, and quite the man,' Rina told him. 'Oh, Emily is very quiet, but I see how happy she is. It would be such a pity if you were gay. Every time I see those men on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy I want to weep. That Kyan! So handsome and sexy. Jai… now Jai I would take home and mother. He's adorable.'

'I'd like Carson as a best friend,' Emily said. 'He makes me laugh, and he's so witty. But kind too.'

The evening was coming to an end. Fewer couples were dancing now. The dining room was growing quieter. Dr. Sam insisted on picking up the check, and they all left together, passing by the now empty table where Rina's friends had been sitting. In the parking lot they kissed, then went to their separate cars. The Seligmanns' Lexus pulled away first. Michael Devlin's Healy followed.

'He's in love with her!' Rina said triumphantly.

'Stay out of it, Rina,' her husband warned.

'I just want her happy, Sam. She deserves to be happy.'

'Yes, she does,' he agreed. 'So stay out of it. They are two grown people, and they will find their own way. What's meant to be will be.'

'She'd make the most beautiful bride.' Rina sighed.

Sam Seligmann laughed as they drove along. 'My wife, the matchmaker,' he said fondly. 'A daughter and two sons, and you're still not satisfied. Now I know what your ancestors did back in Russia, Rina.'

She joined in laughing. 'So I'm a Golda the matchmaker,' she said. 'Sue me!' Then she grew serious. 'Do you think he'll marry her, Sam?'

'You said he was in love with Emily,' her husband reasoned.

'But he's forty, and never married before,' Rina fretted.

'Do you think she loves him?'

'You can't see it? Oh, yes, Sam! Emily loves Michael,' Rina declared with great assurance. 'He's her first love, and I suspect her last love. She isn't a girl to give her heart lightly. Oh, God! What if he doesn't want a wife?'

'What's meant to be will be,' Dr. Sam repeated. 'It's already written in the book of life, Rina, my darling. So stay out of it!' He turned their car onto Ansley Court.

***

The Healy turned into Emily's driveway. They walked together into the house.

'Are you hungry?' she asked him.

He pulled her into his arms. 'Only for you.' His mouth took possession of her, moving tenderly over her lips, tasting her with his tongue, playing with the tongue she offered him back. 'Why are you always so delicious?' he murmured against her short strawberry-blond hair. 'I can never get enough of you.' His hands pushed up her silken skirt, caressing her hips, her buttocks. He backed her against the kitchen table, green eyes dancing mischievously. 'We're going to do it on the table,' he growled in her ear. 'Right now, angel face!'

'Devlin!' She gasped as he lifted her up. She was quivering with her excitement. Tomorrow he would return to the city, and she wouldn't see him again for almost a week. Her buttocks felt the rough oak beneath them as he lowered her. His head was between her open legs, searching out the core of her, finding it, teasing it. 'Oh, yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!' she encouraged. Her nipples were hard and tingling. She slipped the straps of her dress off her shoulders and freed her breasts from the fabric. He was pulling her forward onto his cock. His mouth found her nipples. 'Oh, God!' He was inside her, moving slowly at first, and then with a quicker and more intense rhythm. He suckled on one of her tits hungrily as he worked them to a fever pitch. Emily cried out as they came together in a blaze of heated passion.

What the hell is the matter with me? Michael Devlin asked himself as he pulled himself off of her. He loved her. Did he really want to go back into the city tomorrow morning and spend the day away from her? But what if it didn't last? What if it had just been a wild and wonderful fling that Emily had initiated to learn about sex? And that had been her-their- original intent. Maybe she was one of those women who prized their independence above everything else. He needed more time. He was too old to offer his heart to a woman, only to have her refuse him.

'Do you have to go back tomorrow?' she asked him.

'Yes,' he said. 'If I leave around noon I'll miss all the traffic. The Healy doesn't like idling in traffic.'

'You could leave the Healy here, and take the train in on Tuesday morning,' she suggested casually.

'I pay for garaging in my building,' he answered her.

'Oh.' She sounded disappointed.

'We have the rest of tonight, and tomorrow morning,' he told her as he helped her off her kitchen table. 'And if you need me to come back next weekend, I can.'

Emily nodded. 'I think you have to come back every weekend until the book is finished,' she told him. 'And after that, only if you'd like to, Devlin.'

He ruffled her soft hair. 'I would like to, angel face.' Was the suggestion casual? Or did she mean something by it? Could she care for him as he did for her?

'Let's go to bed!' Emily suggested happily. Men were so dense. Did Devlin really think she was going to let him get away from her now that she had found him? If he loved her, as Rina said he did, he wouldn't want to leave her.