“I love how you can turn pretty much anything around and point the finger at someone else.”
She heard no rancor behind Kate’s words. If anything, she may have detected a note of admiration in the commentary. Millie took the compliment at face value. “Everyone has a talent,” Millie said, plastering on a smile.
“If it makes you feel better to think you’re all cool with a casual affair, fine.” Kate looked straight at her, her expression intense and solemn. “But be sure you’re being honest with yourself from the get-go. Nothing more embarrassing than getting slam-dunked by an arrow-shooting cherub.”
Without deigning to reply, Millie bent and scooped up her bag. As far as she was concerned, the conversation was over the second someone introduced naked angels into what was essentially a straightforward conversation. She told her best friend she and Ty were lovers. She’d made no allusions to anything more, nor did she indicate she had any such designs.
Millie steeled herself against the temptation to buy in. She’d already spent half the night haunted by the guy. She wasn’t going to spend her waking hours mooning as well. If Kate wanted to get all touchy-feely about a night of screwing, that was her problem.
“I’ll tell you what made me feel pretty damn fantastic,” Millie said as she rose. Holding up three fingers, she waggled them proudly. “Three orgasms.” Pausing inside the door, she looked back at Kate with a puzzled frown. “Or was it four?”
“I know.” Kate grinned and kicked back in her chair, planting her grasshopper-green high-top sneaker on the corner of the desk and crossing one blindingly clunky foot over the other. “I had five this morning.”
The boast halted Millie’s retreat faster than a battalion of G.I. Joes wielding assault rifles. Flaunting the advice given by the town’s best and only plastic surgeon, she frowned at her friend, trying to gauge her level of veracity. “Liar.”
Kate raised her hands palm up. “My pants aren’t on fire, but that might be because I wasn’t wearing any at the time.”
Ninety-nine-point-nine percent certain the woman was lying, Millie scoffed. “You are so full of crap.”
Then Kate started ticking things off on her fingers. “Two in bed. Technically, one was before we went to sleep, but it was after midnight, so I’m counting it. One in the shower. Another while I was applying my lotion.” She paused, a dreamy smile ghosting across her face. “I swear, the man has a thing for the scent of lanolin.”
Millie squeezed her eyes shut, torn between imagining Danny McMillan splashing about in a vat of moisturizer, and…not. “Stop.”
“Then the toaster got jammed, and he had to use tools and electricity and strawberry jam, and, well, one thing led to another.”
Flashbacks of Ty lounging against his kitchen counter dressed only in low-riding running pants flooded her brain. The scent of food and sex pervaded every last molecule of oxygen. The potent aftertaste of spicy shrimp and hot man had tingled on her tongue hours after he’d kissed her goodbye. “I hate you very much.”
Kate laughed and dropped her feet to the floor. “No, you don’t. And no matter what you try to tell yourself, I also know you’re dying to spill all the gory details, Mil.”
“No, I’m not.”
“But I can wait,” Kate continued as if she hadn’t spoken.
Millie stiffened. Did Kate know she’d echoed the exact sentiment Ty expressed the night before? Had she given something away? Was there a chink in her armor she hadn’t realized the rest of the world could see? Apparently, people figured if they waited long enough, she’d cave. Well, she’d prove them wrong on that point. She’d sleep in Ty’s bed when she was damn good and ready to sleep in his bed, and not one minute before. And she’d give Kate the gory details of her dealings with Coach Ransom when and if Millie thought she might have reason to do so.
“Take a number,” Millie called over her shoulder, then took off down the hall at a pace brisk enough to make seasoned power walkers breathless.
Let them wait. Jocks like Ty and Kate—Danny too—were so damn cocky. They played the glory sports. They were used to the scrutiny of rabid fans and waves of adulation hurtling toward them each time they tied their laces. They didn’t know about strength born from silence, the power one gathered from competing against only their personal best. They might be champions in those sports ruled by whistles and buzzers. They might excel in arenas where success was measured only in points. But they didn’t know true endurance came with only the sound of one’s own breathing.
Millie had never jumped the starting gun in her life. If they thought they could get her to do so now, they were going to have a damn long wait.
* * *
She bought a pair of the prettiest, pasteliest panties she could find—with a split crotch.
Millie also had an assortment of low-cut demi bras in a rainbow of sherbets, matching lace boy shorts because she refused to wear a string of floss up her ass, and one almost puritanically demure satin teddy in her shopping bag. Of course, she chose a retina-searing shade of streetwalker red for the last one. She figured she needed at least a splash of red if she wanted to ignite sparks in the bedroom.
While she was out shopping for this recent uptick in her sex life, Millie also made a stop at the one and only adult store in town. As far as sex shops went, Fantasia’s was pretty tame. The storefront was a tiny space in an ancient strip mall. The neon-red lips and a sign warning the underage away were the only hint of what lay behind the tinted glass.
Millie had been patronizing the shop for years. The way she figured, any woman over thirty and without a regular partner in her life had better be well versed in
