Perfectly Saucy. Emily McKay

glanced down at the delicate silver watch on her wrist. Four forty-five. Alex would be here soon and the next hour was going to go either very well or very badly.

      Turning, she paced the length of her kitchen, the three-inch heels of her shoes rat-tating across the tile floor, echoing the pounding of her heart. She reached the arched doorway to her living room and kept going, the plush cream carpet muffling the clatter of her heels as she strode toward the sliding-glass door that looked out onto her back patio and pool. She stood for a moment, watching the surface of the water ripple in a breeze and wishing she wasn’t perpetually early. Today, fifteen minutes seemed like an eternity.

      Her telephone rang, its shrill clatter piercing the silence. She spun around, lunging for the cordless phone she kept on the coffee table, sure it was Alex calling to cancel their appointment.

      Her heel caught on the carpet and she kicked off her shoes, nudging them under the table as she grabbed the handset. For a second she clutched the phone, exhaling sharply so she wouldn’t sound like such a nervous wreck. Would she be disappointed or relieved if he couldn’t make it?

      Mustering her courage, she punched the talk button and tried to sound casual. “Hello? Sumners residence.”

      God, why did she always sound as though she was answering her parents’ phone?

      “What are you wearing?” demanded a feminine voice.

      “Patricia?”

      “No, it’s your great-uncle Vernon. Of course it’s Patricia.” Her voice practically rang with exasperation. “He’s going to be there soon, right?”

      “Maybe ten, fifteen minutes.”

      “So don’t waste my time with pleasantries. If you’d responded to my e-mails at work today, we wouldn’t have to do this at the last minute. Now, what are you wearing?”

      Jessica had made the mistake of telling Patricia over lunch about her plan to meet Alex this evening. The other woman had ignored work all afternoon, peppering Jessica with frantic e-mail questions. Most of which Jessica had ignored. “Why does it matter what I’m wearing?”

      “You’re going to see Alex for the first time in how many years?”

      “Ten.”

      “And you don’t think it matters what you’re wearing?” She didn’t give Jessica a chance to answer but plowed right ahead with the conversation. “Just tell me it’s not one of your god-awful, prissy little sweater sets.”

      “No,” she said through gritted teeth as she made her way to the entry hall. “It’s not one of my practical and comfortable sweater sets. I’m wearing a simple black silk sheath dress.”

      “Is it tight?”

      Jessica paused in front of the hall mirror just long enough to shoot herself a piercing look. “No.”

      “Is it low-cut?”

      “No.” She felt a sinking sensation deep in her belly. Had she worn the completely wrong thing?

      “It’s at least short?”

      Jessica extended her leg to get a better look at the length. “Four, maybe five inches above the knee.”

      “Good. That’s good. Your legs are your best feature.”

      Please, Dear God, let Alex be a leg man.

      “Okay,” Patricia barked, clearly moving beyond the clothing issue. “So what’s your game plan?”

      “Game plan?”

      “What’re you going to do? Just invite him in and proposition him?”

      “No, of course not!” When she’d spoken to Alex on the phone earlier this afternoon she’d said something inane about wanting to hire his construction company to do work on her house. But she’d had no idea how she would segue from “Want to remodel my kitchen” to “Want to go out sometime?” Or, after a date or two, to transition to “Want to tear off each other’s clothes and have mad, passionate sex? Often?”

      To Patricia she said, “I just…”

      “Just what?”

      “I don’t know.” She spun on her heel and stomped back to the kitchen, suddenly irritated with herself. “I don’t really have a plan.”

      “Exactly. You don’t have a plan. That’s what worries me. You always have a plan.”

      “That’s not—”

      “Did you or did you not just send everyone in our team a detailed plan of what to do in case of a tornado?”

      “I’m the floor safety manager now. It’s my job to—”

      “We live in California. There are no tornadoes in California.”

      “But—”

      “Ever.”

      She started to explain that she was just trying to do her job well. That she took her new responsibilities at work seriously. But wasn’t that the problem? She always took everything so dang seriously.

      Before she could put any of that into words, Patricia babbled on. “So, yes, it scares me that you have no plan. This is just so unlike you. Inviting Alex Moreno over so you can seduce him or whatever is just so…so…”

      “Like something you would do?”

      “Exactly. This is what concerns me. You are acting like me.”

      “Well, you can stop worrying. I’m not going to seduce or proposition him. I promise. I just want to see him again.”

      To see if any spark of attraction still lingered between them.

      And if it did?

      Well, she’d worry about that when the time came.

      “See him again?” Patricia asked shrewdly. “There wasn’t something going on between you two back in school, was there?”

      “No,” she said dismissively. And it wasn’t entirely a lie.

      “I didn’t think so. I mean, I’d heard the rumors, but I never thought they were true.”

      “Rumors?” She’d certainly never heard any rumors connecting the two of them.

      “That you were secretly in love. That you were going to run away together. I figured it was nonsense. I mean, you and Alex Moreno? It was more absurd than that rumor about the giant snake living in the second-floor bathroom.”

      “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, more than a little offended about the snake comparison.

      “Just that you weren’t each other’s type. You were such a Goody Two-shoes in high school. And he was always in and out of trouble. And on top of all that, your father was the judge. How ironic would that have been? The daughter of a judge dating a guy who’d been arrested at least a dozen times.”

      “Hmm. Very,” Jessica said noncommittally. Of course, the real irony was that, although the rumors had been false, at the time, she would have given anything for them to be true.

      “But I guess you must have had a crush on him then,” Patricia continued blithely. “Or else you wouldn’t be thinking of having your passionate fling with him now. Not that I blame you. He was scrumptious even at eighteen. And just so bad.”

      Patricia’s inflection on the word “bad” made it clear she thought “bad” was a very good thing.

      And Jessica supposed she knew what Patricia meant. Even a Goody Two-shoes like her could appreciate the thrilling appeal of being naughty. But that was never what had drawn her to Alex.

      It wasn’t his bad-boy charm, his many arrests or the titillation of shocking her parents and her peers. No, what appealed to her most about Alex Moreno—even now—was all