The Bedroom Business

“Bacon and sausages?” she said, smiling before she could stop herself.

“I didn’t know which you preferred.”

“Actually...” Emily sat straighter as she remembered her plan. “Actually, I think I’ll skip breakfast.”

“No way.” Jake reached out, brushed a curl from her fore­head. “Didn’t you pay attention to your teachers, when you were a kid? It’s the most important meal of the day.”

“Yes, but—”

“Besides, you’ll hurt my feelings.”

“Jake, honestly—”

“Honestly, I’ll think you’re trying to get out of eating what I’ve cooked.”

He looked crestfallen, and about as serious as a puppy caught with a sock in its teeth. Emily fought back the desire to laugh.

“It’s very nice that you’ve cooked breakfast, but—”

“But, you have to get back to the city.”

“No. I mean, yes. The roads must be clear by now.”

Jake looped a finger under the edge of the blanket and tugged it off her shoulder.

“They are,” he said softly. “Clear enough so we can go out for dinner. I made reservations at The Hilltop Inn. You’ll love it.”

“I can’t stay. Really.” Emily caught her breath. His mouth was on her throat, his teeth and beard rasping sexily against her skin. “Jake,” she said weakly, “I have things to do.”

He pushed the blanket to her waist. “Uh-huh. So do I.”

“Horace needs...” Her breath hitched. “He needs fresh seed.”

“Call Mrs. Levy,” Jake whispered, as he stroked his hand over her naked hip. “She has a set of keys to your apart­ment.”

“Mrs. Levy? How do you know...”

“She told me, while we were freezing on that stoop, wait­ing for you to ring the buzzer.” Jake licked her belly, blew lightly on her damp skin. “She told me lots of things, Em. That you were sweet, and generous. That you were sexy and beautiful.”

Emily’s hands rose. She stroked Jake’s hair, cupped his strong jaw.

“She didn’t,” she said, and laughed softly.

“Not the sexy and beautiful part, no.” Jake parted her thighs, watched her face as he touched her, felt his heart leap as she moaned. “I found that out, all by myself.”

“Oh. Oh, Jake, please...”

“Please, what?” he said in a husky whisper.

“Please make love to me,” she sighed, and went into Jake’s arms.

Nobody had ever asked Jake to describe himself but if some­one had, he’d have said he was a normal, healthy, heterosex­ual male of the twenty-first century.

In other words, he thought as he sat across from Emily in a candlelit booth at an inn a few miles west of Litchfield, in other words, he’d been with his fair share of women. What the heck. Maybe more than his fair share. He’d taken them to dinner, to the theater, to concerts, to parties. And to bed.

“...and,” Emily was saying, her eyes filled with laughter, “Angela said she wanted to be blonder, no matter what our mother said. So she locked herself in the bathroom. A little while later, we heard this awful screech...”

Oh, yes. An impressive number of women, to bed.

“...green. I mean, bright green, Jake! And Serena and I tried not to laugh, but...”

Except, it had never been an entire weekend in bed, now that he thought about it. Saturday night, maybe Sunday morn­ing, and that was it. By noon, he was always feeling restless. By two, he was out the door.

“I could set my clock by you, Jake,” Brandi had said, with a sad little laugh.

Well, it was true. Saturday night, Sunday morning—that was a weekend. Anything that stretched beyond that, the lady might get ideas that would complicate things.

Plus, there was the boredom factor.

What did you do, when the sex was over? What did you talk about?

Everything, as it turned out. Everything, if Emily was the lady.

They’d finally gotten around to breakfast, even though it was so cold they’d had to start all over, from scratch.

Don’t throw all that food out, Emily had said. It’s wasteful.

So he’d cut up the pancakes for the birds, the bacon and sausages for the raccoons, while she’d made eggs—over easy, as it turned out, exactly the way he liked them—and bacon, and biscuits from a box of mix he’d bought and buried in the depths of a kitchen cupboard.

Then they’d bundled up, gone outside, left breakfast for the birds and the raccoons in the back of the yard, near the tree line. And yes, he’d shown her the lot next door, had a serious discussion about its value until Emily had sighed and said well, its real value was in its beauty, at which point he’d hauled her into his arms and kissed her so that they’d stum­bled back into the house, made love again, slept awhile, awakened, listened to CD’s because, as it turned out, she didn’t really hate all rock and roll and he didn’t really hate all classical stuff...