Slightly Settled - Wendy Markham Mills & Boon Silhouette

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apartment will never be as fancy as a Central Park South elevator, but it’s definitely looking a little better since I started using my catering cash to buy “real” furniture, plus curtains, rugs and even a great stereo system.

      Still, that doesn’t mean I want to spend the better part of a Saturday night there alone.

      Looking as though I’ve just told him I plan to compose a “Farewell, world” note and scale a girder on the Brooklyn Bridge, Raphael declares, “Absolutely not, Tracey! You can’t go home. We see the movie, we shop, we dance. In fact—the hell with the movie. Let’s just shop and dance.”

      “I thought you really wanted to see it.”

      “I can’t believe I’m saying this, Tracey, but…” He looks over his shoulder as though expecting to find someone eavesdropping, then lowers his voice to a near-whisper. “I’m starting to think Madonna should stick with singing.”

      “Raphael. You? I thought you said she should have been nominated for an Oscar for her last film.”

      “Supporting actress only,” he clarifies, pausing to bend over a table and straighten one of his many small glass sculptures. His apartment is filled with outrageously expensive clutter that he and his delusional friends refer to as objets d’art. I call them chotchkes, and you would, too, if you saw them. I can think of a zillion better ways to spend what little cash I have.

      “And anyway,” he goes on, “that was two films ago. Let me tell you, Madonna’s no Cher. Her acting went downhill in that last romantic comedy, which I said in the first place she should never have done. And I hear this new one isn’t very good, either. I might even wait for the DVD. Unless you really wanted to see it, Tracey.”

      “Me? No! I was just going for you.”

      “Then it’s settled.” He gives a single nod and declares with the veneration of a Hells Angel embarking on a nocturnal Harley journey, “Tonight, we shop.”

      Shop we do.

      Two hours, three cab rides and a pit stop at my apartment later, I’m sitting across from Raphael in a dimly lit bar. He’s traded the burgundy leather for a pair of equally tight retro acid-washed flare jeans he couldn’t resist. I’m in a fetching vintage Pucci print minidress. Raphael insisted on buying me a lime-green boa to go with it—They’re all the rage in Paris this season, Tracey—but it’s draped on the back of my stool over my brown suede jacket. Screw Paris.

      “I’m just not the boa type,” I tell him when he begs me yet again to wrap it around my shoulders.

      “Maybe not a few months ago, Tracey, but the new you definitely screams boa.”

      I glance down, half expecting to see something other than my newly familiar shrunken self.

      I shrug and sip the lethal pink concoction Raphael ordered for each of us. He dated a bartender a few weeks ago, and now he’s into all the fancy cocktails of yesteryear.

      I forget what this one is called. At first it tasted like Windex, but now it’s going down easier. “I have to say, I’m just not hearing the screaming, Raphael.”

      “That’s because you’re not listening. You’re trying to keep the new Tracey hidden behind the old Tracey’s insecurities. I say, release her!”

      “And deck her out in a lime-green boa? That seems cruel.” I drain the last of my drink.

      Raphael leans his chin on my shoulder. “What do you think, Tracey? Want another cocktail here, or should we move on to Oh, Boy?”

      Oh, Boy is, of course, the club we’re headed to.

      I glance around the bar. It’s getting crowded. And I’m craving a cigarette, but like all bars in Manhattan, the place is full of No Smoking signs.

      I’m about to suggest moving on when I lock gazes with a Very Cute Guy standing with a small pack of Very Cute Guys back by the rest-room sign and the jukebox. He flashes one of those flirty, raised-eyebrow smiles that guys are always flashing at Kate. Never at me. Never until now, anyway.

      I realize this might be my fleeting last chance at heterosexual contact this evening.

      “Another cocktail here,” I tell Raphael, hoping Very Cute Guy doesn’t think Raphael and I are together. I glance at him, taking in the snug silk shirt, the pink drink, the eyelash perm.

      Nah.

      “Are you sure you want to stay?” Raphael asks. “Because this place is getting packed, Tracey.”

      VCG seems to be shouldering his way toward us. Or is he just trying to escape the bathroom fumes or the blaring Bon Jovi? Hard to tell. But just in case…

      “Let’s stay for one more,” I say decisively.

      Cute Guy’s name is Jeff. Jeff Stanton or Stilton—something like that.

      How do I know this?

      Because a few minutes after our second drink arrived, he popped up and introduced himself to me.

      His name is Jeff, he’s a broker—or trader. I don’t know, exactly; something boring and Wall Street.

      Oh, and he has an unhealthy obsession with Star Wars.

      How do I know this, you might ask?

      Because he has Star Wars sheets. Sadly, I am so not kidding.

      And if you’ve figured out how I know about his sheets, you also know that I’m not only dressing like a trollop these days; I’m conducting myself like one.

      Did I get wasted and sleep with Jeff Stanton/Stilton/Something that starts with an S and ends with an N?

      Yes.

      Do I regret it now that the morning light is filtering through the slats of his blinds and I can’t even recall which freaking borough I’m in?

      Hell, yes.

      It’s bad enough that I’m in a borough at all. I had him pegged for Manhattan, Upper West Side. Tribeca, maybe. But a borough?

      At least it’s not Jersey, I tell myself, sitting up in his twin bed—yes, I said twin bed—and pulling the StarWars flat sheet up to my chin as I assess the situation and try to remember how I got from Point A—the bar—to Point X-rated.

      It’s freezing in here, by the way. I’m surprised I can’t see my breath. And there’s no quilt on the bed.

      Oh, wait…there is a quilt. I can see it when I peer over the edge. It’s been passionately pitched into a heap on the floor beside my clothes—with the exception of my lime-green boa, which is draped over a dresser knob across the room.

      How the hell did it get there?

      And while we’re on that topic, how the hell did I get here? And where is here?

      I remember asking Jeff S-n, at one point in the night, if he lived in Jersey.

      I remember him laughing and saying of course not, as though I’d accused him of being a rifle-toting redneck bootlegger from West Virgin-ee.

      What I don’t remember is when Raphael abandoned me at the bar with Jeff S-n or how it was decided that I would be borough-bound to have sex with a complete stranger.

      I only know that much liquor was involved, followed by a long cab ride over a bridge. It could’ve been the Golden Gate, for all I noticed while I was making out with Jeff S-n in the back seat.

      So what happened when we got here, wherever we are?

      Searching my mind for reassuring memories of doormen or elevators or quaint parkside brownstones, I vaguely recall a side street crammed with parked cars, apartment buildings and small houses.

      An educated guess tells me Jeff lives in one of them. There are major gaps in my recollection of our pre-bed travels.

      I

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