Cosmos was where she remembered it, its sign shimmering in reds and blues. She headed for it, shaking off the uncomfortable sensations and unanswerable questions. A mix of traditional wine bar and dance club, the long rectangular space was jammed from the entrance to the far back reaches. People congregated six deep around the bar, shouting, drinking, laughing. Everyone was young or wanted to be, beautiful and reckless and seeking the next adventure. Music accosted her, a fast, frenetic beat that matched the sexual frenzy of the crowd. Ignoring the glances of women and men, she edged her way to the bar and flagged down one of the two bartenders who shimmied and slipped around each other in the narrow aisle in a mad pantomime of the dancers out on the floor.

“What’ll you have?” A sloe-eyed redhead in a white open-collared shirt and tight black pants slid a cardboard coaster toward her.

“Whatever dark brew you’ve got on tap,” Derian said.

The pretty bartender nodded, pulled a draft, and passed it across the bar. Derian pushed a twenty back, waved off the change, and turned to survey the bacchanal. Bodies writhed on the dance floor, heads bent close over small tables, and figures shifted stealthily in the shadows, surreptitiously initiating the dance they would play out before the evening ended.

Derian pointedly did not encourage the appraising glances that came her way, avoiding eye contact, a slight nod, or a tilt of her glass that would signal she was ready to play. She wasn’t interested in a hookup. The impersonalness of casual sex with a stranger never held much appeal—especially when sex was just a desperate attempt to ward off loneliness. She’d rather replay the evening with Emily than settle for a poor substitute. And she wouldn’t even be thinking about Emily if she hadn’t been so damn tired and worried over Henrietta. She needed some sleep, not a few hours of physical forgetfulness, and she’d be herself again.

She stayed long enough for a second beer and when the alcohol finally seeped into her muscles and she knew she’d be able to sleep, she headed out into the night alone. Fifteen minutes later she was back in her apartment, stripping off her clothes by the side of the bed she hadn’t slept in in three years. As she pulled back the covers and slipped nude beneath, she thought back to the fleeting kiss she’d stolen from Emily.

She smiled to herself. Stolen kisses. Something she hadn’t done since she was a teenager. She hadn’t had to steal kisses after that. Willing women were always quite willing to give them. The unanticipated desire for Emily’s was as fresh and innocent as anything she’d experienced during those first youthful couplings, and that realization was as troubling as it was impossible to forget.


*


“How much is that?” Emily asked when the cabbie double-parked in front of her apartment building.

“The other miss took care of it,” the driver said, turning in his seat with a wide smile. “Very generous.”

“Oh, thank you, then.” Of course Derian had taken care of it. Derian was obviously very used to looking after women. Her confidence and easy way of taking control did not strike Emily as overbearing, but merely customary. And, she had to admit as she fit her key into the foyer door and made her way up to her apartment, she’d enjoyed being pampered.

She’d grown up wanting for nothing—she’d gone to good schools, had all the clothes she’d needed, had the advantages of her father’s station and her family’s position, and never given much thought to her wants. As a child and young teen, her needs had always been met. Life had changed after the accident, but then she’d been too focused on what she must do to be concerned about luxuries, physical or otherwise. All she’d wanted was to succeed. She was doing that. She wasn’t there yet—she still had goals, things she wanted to accomplish at the agency. And she was still far from securing Pam’s future.

She was so used to every day being another step toward achieving all that, the evening with Derian had unexpectedly awakened her appreciation for things she had put aside. Simple things like enjoying a woman’s attention—and Derian was a master at that. She had friends she talked with, socialized with, but none of them gazed at her with the intense focus that Derian had all evening. Derian’s attention was so absolute, Emily could easily have believed she was the only thing in Derian’s world that mattered. For a few hours, she’d let herself enjoy the feeling, knowing all the while it couldn’t be true.

She laughed at her silliness as she put her coat away and headed straight for the bathroom and a shower. As enjoyable as the evening with Derian had been, it wasn’t likely to be repeated. Once Henrietta was on the mend, Derian would disappear, returning to a life so far from Emily’s as to be unimaginable. Constantly traveling, searching for the next excitement—the next exciting woman. Emily was definitely not one of those. The most excitement she usually ran into during the course of a day was a fascinating new manuscript culled from the slush pile.

When she closed her eyes to lather her hair, an image of Derian’s face formed beneath her eyelids. Deep gaze boring into hers, drawing closer and closer until soft heat glided across her mouth. The kiss. Eyes still closed, steam rising around her, enclosing her in a warm cloud, she let herself drift on the memory for just a few more minutes. Fingertips to her lips, she could still feel the electricity. She’d never in her life been kissed when she hadn’t expected it, when she hadn’t somehow known it was coming. When she’d spent an evening with someone whose company she enjoyed, who she found attractive and knew was attracted to her, a kiss had been the next logical step, or the last. Usually the last. Some had gone further than that. She wasn’t a nun, after all. But truthfully, the few pleasant hours in bed hadn’t been enough to drive her to repeat the encounters. She knew herself too well to think she could have a sexual relationship with someone merely for the sake of the physical, and she hadn’t felt anything deep enough to offer anything else. She would never misrepresent herself to anyone. To her, lies were about far more than spoken words. Actions were truth.

She stepped out into the small mist-filled room, leaving only the light in the shower on. She wrapped a towel around her hair and dried off with another, deciding the evening was a moment out of time for both her and Derian. They both loved Henrietta, and her illness had shaken them. Their shared affection was a bond that had drawn them together in a moment of fear and uncertainty. Derian was fascinating, but she was anything but. She couldn’t imagine a single reason why Derian would seek her out again.

As she slipped into bed, she accepted the evening for what it had been, a fleeting intersection of very different lives, not to be repeated. As she turned on her side and drew the covers around her, she pressed her fingers to her lips again. The memory of the kiss remained.

Chapter Ten

Heart pounding, Derian grabbed her phone off the nightstand before the second ring. “Winfield.”

“Still up before the sun, I see,” Aud said. “Or have you not been to bed?”

Derian’s breath shot out on a curse. “I thought it was the hospital.”

“Oh my God.” Aud sounded crushed. “Derian, I am so sorry. I didn’t think—”

“No, that’s okay.” Derian rubbed her face, glanced at the time. 5:30 a.m. “I was lying here awake. You’re right about that.”

“I just thought I’d try to catch you before the day got away from us. Really, I’m an idiot.”

“No comment, Counselor.”

“Can I make it up to you over breakfast? That’s actually why I was calling. It’s been a long time.”

“There was Rio,” Derian pointed out.

“Yes, and that was nine months ago. And I think we had about as much time together then as we had last night. I seem to remember your attention was on a redhead, or was it the brunette with the tattoo on her—”

“Breakfast would be good.” Aud had a way of making her affairs with women seem like they were dalliances with other women, when there was no us to consider in the first place. She couldn’t cheat on a best friend, could she? She didn’t think so, but Aud appeared to disagree. Ordinarily she didn’t mind, but today she was too beat to find the implied criticism just friendly teasing. They were both responsible for the distance between them, and her involvement with other women was not the cause. Hell, Aud hadn’t likely been sitting alone in her Madison Avenue penthouse pining for company these last five years. “I’ll meet you. Half an hour?”

“Good. Lindy’s?”

Derian smiled wryly. Aud was determined to keep the past alive. She couldn’t count the number of breakfasts they’d shared in the late hours of the night at Lindy’s, when they were young and still best of friends. “Sure. Why not.”

“I’ll get us a booth.”

Aud disconnected and Derian headed for another shower. Her head was muzzy and her stomach queasy. Four hours’ sleep was usually enough to recharge her batteries, but the transatlantic flight, the stress, and too little real sleep punctuated with restless dreams had her running on empty. She didn’t often dream, and never dreams like these. Dreams filled with amorphous faces and a seething sexual unrest that left her agitated and unsatisfied. She flipped the shower dial to hot, waited for the steam to rise, and left the lights off in the bathroom, preferring a few more minutes of dark solitude before the day intruded. The heat brought blood rushing to the surface of her skin, and as her flesh awakened, the persistent tension between her thighs accelerated. The drumbeat of insistent desire was not to be denied. She slid one hand down the slick surface of her abdomen, caught the taut pulsing heat between her fingers, and squeezed. Her breath caught, her vision swam, and a spring coiled deep inside. A low moan escaped.