Return to You

couldn't appreciate prime male flesh.
"Underneath that tough, Sam Spade exterior, you're just a big baby,
aren't you?"
    "Because I think the woman is absolutely
nuts?" He shook his head. "Sorry. You'll have to try harder to bait
me."
    "Well, there has to be someone else around
here you can go out with."
    "Nope. The only other woman is Jezie, my
neighbor's daughter, and she's only six. I'd wait for her but she
already told me she only loves me like a friend."
    "Ouch."
    "Yep. So was that a final no on me helping
you with the underwear?" he asked, his topaz eyes a study in little
boy eagerness.
    "Got that right, my friend."
    "Damn." He sighed dramatically.
    Olivia laughed and pushed him toward the
door. "Out. Before you scare any more of my customers away."
    "You mean they don't like a big, lurking
stranger giving them his opinion on which bras to buy?"
    "Unfathomable, isn't it?"
    "I just can't figure out some people." He
bent down to drop a light kiss on her lips. "See you later,
sweetheart. Come over some evening and we can watch a movie on my
new big screen TV."
    "What is it with men and electronics?"
    "They don't talk back like our women do." He
evaded her punch to his arm, laughing. As he opened the front door,
he turned around. "Olivia, if the guy doesn't want you, he's a fry
short of a Happy Meal."
    She watched him leave, gaping. If she were a
weepy woman, she'd have tears in her eyes. But tears were for
wimps, and she never cried. Not in eleven years.
    Rick may be astute but clearly he
over-interpreted this situation. She didn't want Michael, she
assured herself on the way to the backroom. Michael himself pushed
her into that decision.
    She moved the burgundy velvet curtain aside
and shimmied through the narrow aisle. She lifted two boxes and
carried them to her front counter.
    Michael had cured her of any delusions of a
life together when he dumped her the day after graduation. She'd
had such hopes for them...
    She shook her head,
remembering how devastated she'd been when he told her he was going
to LA to accept the job offer her father made him. Her own father . The chance
of a lifetime, Michael had said to her. The break he needed to get
into the movie industry and become the next Martin
Scorsese.
    She snorted, grabbed the box cutter, and
stabbed open the top of the first box.
    The chance of a lifetime hadn't included
her. She was sure he'd ask her to go with him, but when she'd
brought it up he said having her along would be too distracting. He
needed to focus on his career; she'd only be in the way.
    "Bastard," she mumbled, rifling through
cellophane to get to the merchandise inside.
    The sad part was that she'd have followed
him to the ends of the earth if he told her he wanted her.
    But he didn't.
    "I was so stupid." She ripped the plastic
wrapping off the merrywidow.
    It'd taken her years to get over Michael.
She wasn't going to make the mistake of getting suckered by his
charisma again.
    She dropped the corset on the counter and
attacked the wrapping on the next one, shuddering as she remembered
the despair she felt when Michael left her.
    But things turned out for the best. She'd
gone to Paris and, after two weeks of wandering the streets
aimlessly, met Cassis de Bonneville. The owner of an upscale
lingerie shop, Cassis hired her as a clerk and taught her
everything she knew about lingerie.
    After five years in Paris, Olivia came back
to California with a dream: to start her own business. Her store
wouldn't just sell underwear—her store was going to sell
romance.
    Olivia grinned and looked
around. She'd done it too. Romantic Notions had been open for six
years, and it'd done phenomenally. She sold higher end lingerie,
accessories, and what she called romance
enhancers —candles, body lotions, and games.
She also had a stash of toys in the back that she offered her more
adventurous customers.
    She hardly lived in a void anymore. Between
her successful business and good friends like Eve and Gwendolyn,
she had a full life. And her Granny Mae loved her, even if she did
nag her to death more often than not.
    She didn't lack for anything.
    Except for sex.
    "I'm not even going to venture there." She
scooped up her shipment of merrywidows—appropriately named, because
any woman who was without a man had to be pretty damn jolly—and
carried them to a display table she'd cleared earlier. She arranged
them, fanned out, larger sizes on the bottom.
    She touched the black lace on the corset.
She, of course,