LITMIR.BIZ

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      “Excuse me?” She’d had a little wine, but she wasn’t unsteady, for God’s sake.

      “That’s my name. Trip.”

      “Oh,” she laughed. “That’s unusual. Because you like to travel?” She hoped it wasn’t because of some drug thing.

      “In a way.”

      Evasive. Maybe it was a drug thing. “You play very well.”

      “Thanks.”

      “Do you live around here?”

      “For now. In a guest house a couple miles away.”

      He wasn’t homeless, at least. “Guest houses are nice—cozy and efficient, with everything you need in a small space and at a small price.” Stop babbling, you dolt. But she couldn’t. Conversational gaps were like a broken filling to her. She couldn’t leave them alone. “That is one great haircut,” she said to keep things moving.

      His gaze locked on, silver and strong, looking right into her. “And you look nice without your uniform.”

      “Thanks.” A blush washed over her. His words and the warmth in his expression had pulled a blanket of intimacy around them on this very public corner on this major city street.

      “My pleasure.”

      His pleasure. A blade of desire cut through her like a Ginsu knife. Wow. She was flirting with a street musician. And it was good.

      Real good.

      “Well, nice talking to you,” he said, gently telling her goodbye. But they’d barely started.

      “Yeah. You, too,” she said, unable to move her feet for a few long seconds. But that was uncool, so she forced herself up the wide stairs.

      “You already know the answer.”

      She wasn’t quite sure the voice hadn’t been inside her head, so she turned and looked down at Trip. The light made him seem ghostly as a dream. “The answer?”

      “To the question you’re asking yourself.”

      It was just a throwaway line, but it shot through her like a flare, illuminating her fuzzy thinking, and she felt…better. Calm and almost confident about the Jared situation. Or maybe about something else entirely…. “I hope you’re right,” she said, and headed upstairs, his music wrapping around her like a caress.

      From her apartment, Claire looked out her window for Trip, but he was gone. Completely. No tall shape strolling away or in the distance. Nothing. Not even a shadow. It was as if she’d just imagined him. Her confident feeling wisped away like smoke on a breeze.

      THE NEXT DAY, Claire used her lunch hour to spend too much money on a black-lace teddy, a red silk sheath and a bottle of champagne. She was thinking positive about tonight with Jared, though doubts stabbed her.

      Her shopping trip meant she hadn’t been able to join Mimi and Georgia for lunch with Kyle Carson, an accountant who worked on the books of a company on the same floor as B&V. He was also one of Mimi’s neighbors, and whenever he was in the office he would drive the three of them someplace for a nice lunch.

      Kyle was good-looking and friendly and kind, and Mimi and Georgia liked to shock him with outrageous tales of their nightlife. Kyle had a live-in girlfriend, though he rarely talked about her. He’d seemed quite disappointed when Claire had said she was busy.

      At the end of the day, she grabbed her shopping bag of sex appeal, removed the champagne from the B&V fridge and took the bus home.

      Inside her apartment, she was startled to find Rex, Kitty’s bodybuilder beau, stretched out on the sofa in black bikini underwear, looking like a model for a Campus Hotties calendar, with one of Jared’s wilted roses between his teeth.

      “Oh. It’s you,” he said around the rose stem, then took it out. Shriveled petals fell to the floor. “I thought you were Kitty.”

      “Sorry. Just me,” she said.

      “No prob.” He didn’t move, except to twirl the rose stem between his thumb and forefinger. More petals dropped. She slid her gaze away from the bulge in his undies and noticed her Waterford candy dish in pieces on the cocktail table.

      “Had a little collision with that bowl,” Rex said. “Sorry.”

      “It’s okay,” she said on a sigh. She’d known having Kitty as a roommate wouldn’t be a cakewalk, but she hadn’t expected to suffer glassware losses or be favored by male centerfold shots.

      She headed to her room to shower and change into her teddy and red dress, and by the time she emerged, Kitty and Rex had taken off. Claire checked her watch. Jared would be landing at Sky Harbor right about now. She turned on some mood music, lit candles and sat down to wait.

      And wait.

      When he was an hour late, she called his cell number. Voice mail. “Just me, Jared. Was your flight delayed?”

      She turned on an old I Love Lucy episode and heated up some of Kitty’s chicken almandine leftovers. After a second madcap episode, she cracked the champagne and called again. “Where the hell are you?”

      Two glasses of champagne and one blotch of paté on the carpet later, she said, “You bastard. You’re not fit to…wash my windows.” That was lame, but she couldn’t think of the right insult—nothing too vulgar or emotionally revealing.

      At ten o’clock, the phone rang. The person on the line struggled for breath. Perfect. An obscene phone call. She was about to hang up, when the voice whispered, “I couldn’t do it, Claire. I’m so sorry.” Jared.

      “What happened?” she asked, knowing she’d hate the answer.

      “Lindi’s pregnant.”

      “She’s what?” That was the last thing she’d expected.

      “And she’s so excited that I couldn’t wreck it.”

      “Oh.” Claire squeezed her eyes shut. She felt angry and bereft and…skeptical. Was Lindi-with-an-i faking? If she was wily enough to pretend to be pregnant, Claire didn’t even want to mess with that. That was Days of Our Lives material for sure. And if Jared’s wife had gotten pregnant exactly when Jared had fallen in love with Claire, she didn’t need Zoe to point out the cosmic coincidence of it all.

      “Well, congratulations,” she said. “You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t rush out to buy you a cigar.”

      “But it’s you I love, Claire. Remember that.”

      Yeah, right. A single tear went splat in the middle of her lap—a Rorschach blot that seemed to resemble her heart. But she wouldn’t waste one more tear stain on her silk dress over this.

      “And I want you,” he said more urgently. “Can’t we work something out?”

      Here it came. This doesn’t have to change anything. I’ll tell her. I promise. After the baby’s born. Or when he’s two. Make that five. Or in college.

      Immediately, the Chickateers came into her mind. She imagined them sitting on the arm of the couch, legs dangling—Kitty fierce, Emily stern, Zoe worried—and they gave her the courage to say what she knew she had to.

      “No way, Jared,” she said, the words ringing clear as a bell. “We are so over. Don’t call me again.” Picturing the Chickateers high-fiving her, she dropped the phone into its cradle.

      Then her heart began to ache. And throb. And burn. She had to do something to feel better. Her first thought was ice cream. If ever Claire had earned the right to eat ChocoCherry Rumba Swirl after ten, this was it. She deserved something rich and luscious and comforting. Especially because the champagne seemed to have turned her into the Leaning Tower of Claire.

      In the kitchen, she spotted the champagne bottle

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