Brazen Virtue

off her clothes.
    The man she was talking to barely spoke at all. He was glad. If he closed his eyes, he could imagine she was talking to him. And only him. He’d been listening to her for hours, call after call. After a while, the words no longer mattered. Just her voice, the warm, teasing voice that poured through his earphones and into his head. From somewhere in the house a television was playing, but he didn’t hear it. He only heard Desiree.
    She wanted him.

    In his mind he sometimes heard her say his name. Jerald. She would say it with that half laugh she often had in her voice. When he went to her, she would open up her arms and say it again, slowly, breathlessly. Jerald.
    They would make love in all the ways she described.
    He would be the man to finally satisfy her. He would be the man she wanted above all others. It would be his name she said over and over again, on a whisper, on a moan, on a scream.
    Jerald, Jerald, Jerald.
    He shuddered, then lay back, spent, in the swivel chair in front of his computer.
    He was eighteen years old and had made love to women only in his dreams. Tonight his dreams were only of Desiree.
    And he was mad.

Chapter 3
    S O WHERE ARE YOU going?”
    Because Ed had won the toss, he was behind the wheel. He and his partner, Ben Paris, had just spent the better part of the day in court. It wasn’t enough to catch the bad guys, you had to spend hours testifying against them.
    “What?”
    “I said where are you going?” Ben had an oversize bag of M&M’s and was eating steadily. “With the writer.”
    “I don’t know.” He downshifted at a stop sign, hesitated, then cleared the intersection.
    “You didn’t come to a complete stop.” Ben crunched into the candy. “The deal was if you drove you’d obey all traffic signals.”
    “Nobody was coming. Do you think I should wear a tie?”
    “How do I know if you don’t know where you’re going? Besides, you look ridiculous in a tie. Like a bull with a bell around his neck.”
    “Thanks, partner.”

    “Ed, the light’s changing. The light—shit.” He tossed the candy into his pocket as Ed cruised through. “So, how long’s the famous novelist going to be in town?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “What do you mean you don’t know? You talked to her, didn’t you?”
    “I didn’t ask. I didn’t figure it was my business.”
    “Women like you to ask.” Ben worked the imaginary brake with his foot as Ed squealed around a corner. “She writes good stuff. Got some grit to it. I guess you remember I was the one who turned you on to her books.”
    “You want me to name the first kid after you?”
    With a chuckle Ben punched in the car lighter. “So does she look like the picture on the book, or what?”
    “Better.” Ed grinned but rolled down the window as Ben lit a cigarette. “She’s got big gray eyes. And she smiles a lot. Got a great smile.”
    “Doesn’t take you long to get hip-deep, does it?”
    Ed shifted uncomfortably and kept his eyes on the road. “I don’t know what you mean.”
    “I’ve seen it happen before.” Ben relaxed his brake foot as Ed dropped behind a slow-moving sedan. “Some little number with big eyes and a great smile flutters her lashes and you’re gone. You’ve got no resistance when it comes to women, pal.”
    “Studies show that men married less than six months develop an annoying tendency to give advice.”
    “Redbook?”
    “ Cosmopolitan.”
    “I bet. Anyway, when I’m right, I’m right.” The only person he knew better than himself was Ed Jackson. Ben would have been the first to admit he didn’t even know his wife as intimately. He didn’t need a magnifying glass to recognize the first stages of infatuation. “Why don’t you bring her over for a drink or something? Tess and I can check her out.”
    “I’ll do my own checking, thanks.”

    “Back up, partner. You know, now that I’m a married man, I take a very objective view of women.”
    Ed grinned through his beard. “Bullshit.”
    “Truth, absolute truth.” Ben swung an arm over the back of the seat. “Tell you what, I can call Tess and we can arrange to go with you tonight. Just to protect you from yourself.”
    “Thanks, but I want to try to struggle through this on my own.”
    “Have you told her you only eat nuts and berries?”
    Ed gave him a mild look as he took the next turn.
    “It might influence the choice of restaurant.” Ben flipped his cigarette out the window, but his grin faded