Engaging Men. Lynda Curnyn

not a word was forthcoming. After all, though we didn’t hang out much anymore, Josh and I were friends. And though we hadn’t fared well as a couple, we had come to depend on each other in some ways. At least until Emily had entered the picture.

      “C’mon, Ange,” Josh said now. “You have to understand how Emily must feel. I mean, you are my ex-girlfriend.”

      And, apparently, I thought as I scanned his embarrassed features for some sign of the man I thought was one of my closest friends, that’s all I would ever be.

      But I didn’t have time to ponder my flagging relationship with Josh. Because suddenly my relationship with Kirk took a turn for the better.

      When I came home from dinner that night, there was a message blinking on my answering machine. “Call me when you get in,” came Kirk’s voice over the machine (rather insistently, I might add).

      I opted not to call.

      What? It was late. I didn’t want to wake him up.

      Besides, I didn’t want to do anything to break my feeling of sheer power. A power that only grew when, while I was sitting at my desk at Lee and Laurie the next day, Jerry Landry leaned over my cube, eyes gleaming as if he were going to tell me some dirty secret, and said, “You got a call at the control station from Kirk. You want me to transfer him?”

      “Sure,” I said, my insides shimmering with an excitement I had not felt since the early days of Kirk’s and my relationship. I glanced at Michelle, who raised an eyebrow at me. Kirk never called at the office. Not only was it near impossible to get through during the day, he never really had a need to. Until now.

      “Thank you for calling Lee and Laurie Catalog, where casual comes easy,” I answered as I was supposed to, praying Kirk’s call had gotten to me before a customer’s.

      “Hey,” Kirk said, “what’s going on?”

      “Hey,” I replied, as calmly as I could.

      “Why didn’t you call me back last night?” he demanded. I almost felt a pinch of guilt at the hurt in his tone.

      “I’m sorry, sweetie,” I said, rushing to make amends as was my nature (despite what you might think of me, I really am no good at this game-playing stuff). “It was just so late when I got home and I figured you were tired, and—”

      “What the hell time did you get home?”

      Wow, he was mad. “Uh, eleven-thirty.” I neglected to explain it was because I had spent a major part of the evening letting Josh know just what I thought about the fact that he felt it necessary to exclude me from the most important day of his life. An utterly fruitless endeavor, as I discovered that not only did I not understand Emily Fairbanks, I understood Josh even less.

      “What the hell were you doing?” Kirk barked. “Oh, never mind. You coming over later?”

      “Later?” I glanced at Michelle, who was nodding her head in the affirmative. “Uh, okay.”

      “Good, because we need to talk…. See you around ten-thirty.”

      “Okay,” I said, clicking off the line and turning to face Michelle. “He wants to talk….”

      “Bingo!” she proclaimed, clapping her hands together.

      My eyes widened. My God. It was working….

      I showed up at Kirk’s place around quarter to eleven. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t Kirk standing in the doorway of his apartment, waiting for me.

      “Hey,” I said, approaching cautiously.

      He didn’t answer, only pulled me into his arms and proceeded to kiss me in a way he never had before. A bit roughly. Not that I minded. In fact, I liked it very much.

      I linked my arms around his neck, pressed my body into his, looked up into those gray eyes I thought I knew so well and saw something unfamiliar stirring there. I would have called it anger, if not for the kisses he kept feathering over my mouth, my chin.

      And here I thought I was going to get a speech about Josh.

      Kirk broke the kiss, but only long enough to lead me down the long hall to his bedroom, where he pulled me down to the bed and proceeded to molest me.

      In the best way, of course.

      Better. Because I had never seen Kirk in such a…fever. He was always so in control (not that that was a bad thing—it accounted for his longevity in the sack). Now he was like a man driven by demons, tearing at my clothes (well, not exactly tearing—he did have a certain respect for fashion and knew what these little Lycra numbers went for), running his hands over my body as if committing it to memory.

      Once he was inside, I nearly came when he gazed down at me, a look of pure possessiveness in his eyes.

      You can just imagine what effect that had on me. And this time, Kirk didn’t even attribute it to the mattress.

      Now, as we lay curled into each other, I felt a ribbon of pleasure move through me. For no matter what manipulative devices had brought Kirk to this point, I couldn’t deny that what had just happened between us was very, very real.

      “That was nice,” Kirk said, nuzzling my face with his and causing another flutter to rush through my satiated body.

      “Yeah, it was nice,” I said, gazing up into his eyes, which had now gone soft and were looking at me in a kind of wonder.

      I came home the next day after an evening during which Kirk had made love to me no less than three times. It was if he were trying to drive home (literally) the fact that I was his and no one else’s. A pretty heady experience, as you can imagine. Not even the rigorous morning I had spent at Rise and Shine could dispel the glow I was feeling.

      As I rode the bus home from the studio, I realized how foolish I had been to spend money I didn’t have on azalea plants I didn’t want and steaks I would inevitably render inedible. Kirk loved me. Really loved me. I felt like an idiot for going to such lengths to prove something to myself that I should have already known. And since I knew I’d feel like an even bigger idiot when my Visa bill came, I had resolved to undo some of the damage I had inflicted on myself by returning the azalea. After all, I hadn’t ordered it. I could march it right back to Murray the florist, play the disgruntled consumer and get my money back. It was a simple plan.