The Arrangement. Suzanne Forster

his new sketch. That’s where it seemed to start and end these days, with the sketches. He never got to the building, never even got to the design, though that was his first love.

      The walls of his office were lined with photographs and paintings of classic boats, most of them crafted of wood, and to his mind, works of art. Today’s serious racing yachts were built with man-made materials, and though their lines were beautiful and their speed breathtaking, they lacked the soul of their graceful forebears.

      He set down the juice unopened, picked up his pencil and drew in the hull with a couple of strokes. It was coming now. She would be small, fast and graceful, a sloop. Like her.

      Once again, his mind went directly to Alison, like a car heading into a curve and driving off the road. How could you not think about a woman who slept naked in a cool dark room, shades drawn, even during the day?

      He’d gone there to talk at various times, but she hadn’t answered the door, not even when he pounded. He’d let himself in and found her in bed, entwined with the sheets and stretched out like a nude in a painting.

      At times he could have sworn she was sleeping with her eyes open, like a sphinx. He never quite knew what to make of the strange creature he’d fished out of the sea, but he could not make the mistake of falling under her spell and wrecking himself on the rocks.

      Someone had tried to frame him by making his wife’s accident look like murder. Posing as him, they’d taken out a two-million-dollar insurance policy on Alison a month before her accident. All the arrangements, including the results of her annual medical exam, had been handled by fax and phone, and it could just as easily have been Alison herself doing it. Voices were easily disguised on the phone.

      Just days before the accident, he’d told her he wanted a divorce. Their prenuptial gave her a million dollars for every year of marriage if he initiated a divorce, and nothing if she did. Without blinking an eye she’d asked for the money. He’d had it wired to the account she indicated, and forty-eight hours later, she’d disappeared off his boat.

      It was enough to make a guy think. The wife he’s about to divorce vanishes with a nice chunk of change and he’s prosecuted for her murder? It was a tidy bit of revenge, if that’s what the wife had in mind. Of course, it had backfired.

      “Andrew?”

      Her voice always startled him. It wasn’t Alison’s. But then, how could it be, he reminded himself, after all those operations?

      He looked up to see her standing in the doorway of his study, lithe and tan in her white shorts and flowing, slightly wild, dark hair. She held a note in her hand. Good, he thought, she’d found it.

      She was up, walking and talking.

      She wasn’t sleeping like the sphinx.

      Good.

      2

      She glanced down to see if her breasts were properly exposed in the plunging wrap top. Her fringed skirt hit midthigh, which was baby stuff on this street corner. Most of the girls’ fannies were falling out of their clothes, and some of the flesh was disgustingly jiggly. Not a pretty sight in broad daylight. At least she was toned. And she’d known enough to wear a skirt, the working girl’s uniform. Short skirts weren’t just sexually suggestive, they were efficient.

      A sleek silver Porsche pulled to the curb. Not very discreet of the silly bastard, she thought as she walked over to the passenger door. The window zipped down and the baby-faced thirty-something driver checked her out.

      “I was looking for a blonde, younger and stacked,” he said.

      “Aren’t you lucky.” She gave him a flirty wink and pulled off her silk scarf, exposing platinum-blond curls that would have done Gwen Stefani proud. It was a wig, but this guy wouldn’t care. He just wanted to get his apples picked, and that meant serving up as much of his particular fantasy as she could manage.

      Young wasn’t an option. Stacked, she could do something about. She cupped her breasts and pushed them up, bending toward the car window. Silly bastard, she thought as she saw his salacious grin.

      “Get in,” he told her.

      She barely had the door shut when he peeled out, leaving a streak of smoking rubber behind them.

      “The perfect place,” he announced as he turned onto a deserted side street a couple blocks up, and parked. The grin reappeared as he unzipped his pants and made himself readily available.

      “Knock yourself out,” he said.

      Cheeky little SOB was going to pay for that remark, she promised herself.

      He continued to laugh and joke as she worked him over, pleasuring him with her hands and her mouth until suddenly, he wasn’t laughing anymore. He was begging her to stop. Of course, she redoubled her efforts, and within seconds he was squealing like a baby pig.

      “Damn, woman, let me at you,” he gasped.

      He reached for her in his apparent ecstasy, and she shoved him away. “No intercourse! We agreed.”

      “Yeah, but I need to get off again. That’s how freaking hot you are, Julia.”

      “Don’t call me by my name!”

      “Oops, sorry.” He pointed past her nose, gesturing toward the badly maintained public park they’d pulled up next to. “There’s a park bench. Let’s check it out.”

      “You’re not sorry.”

      “You won’t be either, sugar. Get your sweet ass on that park bench. I’ll make a cushion out of my coat like the hell of a guy I am.”

      Moments later, Julia was sitting on the bench, spread-eagled. She tried not to scream with pleasure as he mounted her with the agility of a gymnast. He could have been doing push-ups. His hands were braced on the back of the bench as he leaned over her and pumped ferociously.

      Moans of ecstasy gurgled up in her throat, but she didn’t want him to know he was giving her the most intense sex she’d ever experienced, the little bastard. She’d refused to let him penetrate until he put on a condom, but that’s where her common sense had ended. Here she was, in a public park on a bench under a tree, and she probably wouldn’t have cared if the park patrol had driven up.

      “Say I’m the man,” he sputtered, “tell me I’m the man! Say it!”

      She got the words out, and his face contorted. “Oh, my God,” he whispered. “Oh, Jesus!”

      Julia gasped as he pulled out abruptly and ejaculated all over her breasts, soaking her wrap top as well as her skin. That, she wasn’t so thrilled about. He could have waited for her, like a damn gentleman. But that thing he’d told her to say might come in handy.

      She managed to clean up the mess he’d made with a hanky she’d tucked in her bra. In her mind the perfect square of fine lace separated her from the role she had to play in order to get what she’d come for, so to speak. She realized how sordid the situation would look to anyone who didn’t understand what was at stake, but she knew the truth, clung to it. This wasn’t an illicit afternoon tryst for her. It was a quest, and he had what she sought, the holy grail.

      As soon as she had her feet on the ground and her skirt back where it belonged, she made her pitch. “Okay, we did your damn fantasy. You got what you wanted. Now, when do I get what I want?”

      He was still engrossed in putting himself back together. “You’re pretty good, but not that good. I’m going to need another session or two, or three.”

      “Jack Furlinghetti, you dirty rotten liar.”

      “Hey, I’m an attorney, aren’t I?” He laughed uproariously and then reached over and caressed her lips with the pad of his thumb. The sound he made was the hiss of escaping steam. “You’ve got nothing to worry about,” he said.

      Julia was steaming, too, and not just from the sex. She damn well better