Evening Storm by Anne Calhoun Page A

slight challenge in her eyes.
    She wore an old Oxford cloth shirt, tailored for a woman, the sleeves rolled up to her elbows, the placket unbuttoned to just between her breasts. He thought about all the places he could put his hand. Her forearm, where he could stroke the sensitive patch of skin inside her elbow. Right at her breastbone, where he could stroke the thin skin covering the ribs that housed the heart he coveted. Or he could reach out his right hand to her left shoulder and stroke in the slow tender line from the tip of her chin down her throat to the notch between her collarbone. Over and over and over again.
    That’s what he did. He let his fingers curl around her shoulder, felt her bra strap bisecting the slope between shoulder and neck, felt the heat exchange between his palm and her skin. With each slow pass he learned something new, the way her pulse stuttered, the way her breathing hitched, that it took almost no friction at all to raise a streak of pink under the scattered freckles. If he kissed her, made love to her, the slightest hint of beard stubble would mark her.
    Her breathing was barely audible over the city’s summer hum: jackhammers and trucks, cars and the subway, the machinery of modern life banging away all around them, but in the pursuit of what? Money? Fame? Fortune? Or he could pursue this, the simplicity of his skin against hers, his thumb on the soft, slightly damp, tender flesh of her throat. The simplicity of cotton. This anchored him while his world was spinning out of control. He thought about what he didn’t get at that party, about what he had yet to do, because he was falling and it was a long goddamn way down.
    â€œTell me,” she said.
    ***
    His hand rested purposefully on the ambiguous territory at the juncture of throat, collarbone, and chest, holding Simone as thoroughly as if he’d handcuffed her. Jealousy and desire blended together in her veins while he stared into space, remembering moments she wished he’d never experienced in the first place. But when Ryan started talking, he was in the present, looking at her, not in his memories with Daria.
    â€œDaria’s not like Jade. When she’s not onstage or in front of the camera, she wants to disappear,” he said, an assessment that matched Simone’s experience in Irresistible’s showroom. “Success turned her into public property, so she values every second of privacy she can get. Private pleasures are even that much more valuable, like owning a Van Gogh.
    â€œWe’re at a party where everyone wants to talk to her, shake her hand, congratulate her, but what they really want is to be seen with her. Does she remember what it’s like to not be a commodity? In an hour or so, the press of bodies in the living room will overwhelm the air conditioner, and the room already stinks of a clash of perfumes and sprays and desperation. The average net worth in the living room is well into eight figures, so you’d think we’d reek of satisfaction, but instead there’s the sense of never enough.
    â€œI’m standing in a library of a man who hasn’t read a book since he left business school. It’s dark, lit only by the desk lamp, and cool. She seems relieved to have found a hidey-hole, so I watch her stroll along the perimeter of shelves, looking at the pristine spines. I can’t tell if she’s acting the part of a person who loves books, but if she is, she’s earning another Oscar. I let her get lost in a rare quiet moment, watching the way the light catches the gold thread in her cream gown. Whoever designed that gown knew what he was doing. It’s the exact color of her skin, so she looks like she was made from the same rich cloth. I wonder what color she chose at your shop. I saw silk, satin, and lace in green, gold, red, blue, and white.”
    The question had a probing quality, as if he wanted her to confirm a detail he should know. For a split