Tori Carrington - You Sexy Thing!

Tanja smiled at him and added his briefcase to his overloaded arms. “You did.” She turned him around, then patted his bottom. “Now get a move on, Doc. We’ve got a plane to catch.”

Chicago

A KITCHEN.

Well, maybe not a kitchen, but definitely a kitchenette. One of those kinds that you could barely move around in but held all the basic necessities, like a new microwave, an old stove and an empty refrigerator. Gracie was vaguely aware of the door closing after the bellboy as she stood staring at the cramped space immediately to the left in the enormous Chicago hotel room. She’d come across a place like this once before, in Fort Lauderdale. Likely this wing used to be an apartment complex that had been converted to a hotel. A quick glance around the spacious living-dining area, and the bedroom and bath to the right, fueled her speculation.

The strap to her laptop-carrying case slid off her shoulder. She allowed the case to drop slowly to the floor, enraptured with her new find. She hadn’t had grains of salt under her fingernails since she began this crazy promotional tour. She opened and closed cabinet doors, peered into the empty but cold refrigerator, eyed the limited number of pots and pans, all with a ridiculous grin on her face. Someone watching might have thought she’d unearthed Atlantis instead of a chipped old stove, but she was beyond caring. She’d been in dire straits ever since she and Rick had caught dinner at a poor excuse for a Thai restaurant last night in New York and she had itched to get back into the restaurant kitchen to show the clueless Greek owner how it should be done. Instead, Rick had guided her out of there before she irreversibly embarrassed someone. Like herself.

Gracie ran her hand across the clean counter then straightened the miniature coffeemaker. Okay, so the place didn’t even come close to resembling her own state-of-the-art kitchen in Baltimore, but it was workable. Truth be told, she’d done a lot with much less in her first apartment, right after she’d graduated from college. Back when she had been determined to strike out on her own, pull her own weight and ignore the checks from her father’s accountant that piled up, unopened, on the scratched desk near the door that bore at least three dead bolts and countless chains and security devices. She’d never been prouder than when she’d made that little one-room place home. And she’d learned the finer points of making do with what one had. A trying but immensely gratifying experience. Especially when all her hard work had landed her a spot with a midlevel psychiatric practice before branching out on her own four years later.

She leaned against the wall and tapped a finger against her lips. A list. She had to make a list of what she needed from the store. The essentials were here. She wouldn’t have to invest in salt and pepper or sugar. The hotel had provided coffee and a small selection of teas, though she always traveled with her own supply ordered specially from Arizona.

What should she make? Something simple, requiring the fewest ingredients. But something that would fill the small place with a delectable aroma and would go with a good bottle of red wine. No, white. Fish. She was in Chicago, wasn’t she? Surely they would have a good selection of fish. Waking up to the smell of fish would remind her of home if not endear her to her neighbors.

A brief call to the concierge gave her directions to a small family-owned grocer a couple of blocks away. She hung up the phone on his offer to have an order placed on her behalf, then grabbed her purse and headed for the elevators.

A small cowbell above the advertisement-covered door announced her arrival at the grocer. No larger than the hotel room she had just left, the neat grocer had a good selection nonetheless. And plenty of fresh produce. As she happily made her selections, she allowed her mind to wander at will. Although only after five p.m. central time, darkness enveloped the street, weaving a web of billowed intimacy Gracie embraced. Chicago’s climate was similar to New York’s, albeit windier, earning the architecturally rich city its name, but it had an altogether different atmosphere. The unique, laid-back flavor of the mid-west was laced throughout despite the city’s valiant efforts to shrug it off. And the people weren’t as cynical, the lapping waves of Lake Michigan against the coast seeming to lull them into a feeling of peace.

“Can I see the trout, please? Yes, that one. To the left.” Grace accepted the paper-protected fish from the woman behind the counter and examined the clear condition of the eyes and the pinkness of the gills. She stared down into the open mouth, the sight comically reminding her of Dr. Dylan Fairbanks’s reaction when she’d told him he needed to get laid.

She handed the fish back. “I’ll take it.”

She added the item to her basket and turned toward the produce section. While Dr. Dylan’s facial expression had resembled that of the trout, she had the distinct impression that he was anything but a cold fish. Something elemental lurked in his green eyes. A maturity, an intensity, an innate sexuality that made it difficult to meet his gaze head-on initially, yet held you captive thereafter. An intriguing paradox that reminded her how her skin had tingled after their meeting at the radio station. How verbally sparring with him had made her wonder what going a couple of rounds with him in bed might be like.

He was a sex therapist, so she didn’t doubt he’d know all the exciting little details. But there was a difference between knowing and practicing. And she suspected that Dr. Dylan would put into practice everything he’d learned.

A shiver shimmied down the length of her spine, making her feel suddenly warm in her light raincoat.

Absently adding a couple of lemons to her basket, she moved on to pick through lettuce. An idea danced along the fringes of her thoughts and she unsuccessfully tried to grasp it. She envisioned her book. No, no, it didn’t have anything to do with her mother’s refusal to read it. She made a face, banishing the image of Priscilla’s tight-lipped face before it could spring roots. She moved to the tomatoes, testing them and adding a couple to her groceries. Rick? Did it have anything to do with her assistant and his mysterious company that morning in his New York hotel room? No, that wasn’t it, either. Although the idea of a couple struggling against twisted sheets did ring a distant bell. Either that, or someone else had just entered the grocery store.

She edged along peppers and mushrooms then came to a halt before a large display of cucumbers. She slowly picked one up.

The bell rang louder. And along with it came a vivid image of Dr. Dylan Fairbanks’s grinning face when they’d discussed masturbation.

Stumbling right in on the heels of the image was her sheer terror when the radio shock jock had asked Dr. Dylan whether or not he was a born-again virgin. She’d barely registered his response, so afraid that the host would shine that “virginal” light on her. Thankfully, he hadn’t. But that did nothing to assuage her longstanding fear that someday, someone would ask her the question, despite her carefully made-up appearance of being one hundred percent hot tamale who practiced the very advice she preached. And then where would she be? Not that she was a virgin by any stretch of the imagination. But she wasn’t what she pretended to be, either.

Leading up to the promotional tour, she’d been petrified of being fingered for a fraud. Her theory on the need for sexual safaris was the greatest of her unpracticed advice. She remembered seeing an interview once with a marriage counselor who had never been married. The host had virtually thrown the psychologist’s advice right out the window, despite her years of backbreaking field research. Of course it had been one of those late-night, openly televised forums where the host made a point of going for the cheap shots. But the fact remained that if her limited sexual experience were to come to light, her hope of getting her word out would be little more than a car left abandoned at the side of the road with its hood up.