The Real Deal Read online

  “Simon Brant does not want to have sex with me!”

  “Are you sure about that?” The words were spoken in a deep, masculine voice from behind her.

  Her heart plummeting to her toes, she spun around with the cell phone stuck to the side of her head like a hi-tech earmuff. Simon lounged in the guest room doorway; the formerly closed door swung carelessly against the wall.

  She opened her mouth, but the only thing that came out was air. Jill was saying something, but Amanda couldn’t make any sense of it. She was too busy hyper ventilating from embarrassment.

  “Simon,” she choked out.

  “Yes, Simon. You’re obviously interested in the man.” Jill’s impatient voice in her ear had a dreamlike quality to it.

  Reality was six feet, two inches of masculine perfection and a sardonic gleam in gunmmetal gray eyes.

  “Jill,” she said, breaking into her friend’s familiar tirade on Amanda’s lack of a love life.

  “What?”

  “Simon’s here. I think he wants to talk to me.”

  Jillian’s gasp was audible. “Simon’s there?”

  “Yes.”

  “How much did he hear?” Her friend’s whisper was too little, way too late.

  “Enough.”

  The Real Deal

  Lucy Monroe

  KENSINGTON BOOKS

  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  “Simon Brant does not want to have sex with me!”

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Teaser chapter

  Teaser chapter

  Copyright Page

  To Lori Foster for her generosity and friendship,

  which are an indescribable blessing to me

  and to her Book Junkies, authors and readers

  that have enriched my life

  by letting me hang out with them online.

  Thanks, guys! Major hugs.

  Prologue

  Thunk.

  Pain jarred through Amanda’s shoulder as the baseball bat connected with the treadmill, but the darn thing didn’t even shift. The black metal monster taunted her just as it had for the past two years. Her nemesis.

  The symbol of her husband’s dissatisfaction with her body.

  Of her failure as a woman.

  Swinging the bat in a high arc above her head, she then brought it down with all the force of the anger and despair warring inside her.

  Thunk.

  This time the pain was so great her fingers flexed open in an involuntary spasm and she dropped the bat.

  “No. You aren’t going to win!”

  For one horrifying second, she saw herself as someone else might see her—a madwoman in a Jackie-O dress and heels, attacking a piece of exercise equipment with a baseball bat and screaming at it as if it were animate.

  She didn’t care. She hated that pile of molded metal as much as she hated what she’d allowed herself to become. She bent over, her shoulder and arm throbbing, and grabbed the bat again. Melodious chimes, discordant with her mood, halted her mid-swing.

  She spun on her heel and stomped through the perfect Southern California showplace that had never felt like a home. Sun glinted off the polished tile floor of the foyer, causing a white glare that hurt eyes gritty from crying.

  She didn’t want to deal with a visitor. Didn’t even know if she could. It was probably someone for Lance. Today was Saturday, golf day. Her husband usually spent it with his tanned and toned business associates on one of the many prestigious private courses found along the Southern California coast. Only, today, Lance was otherwise occupied.

  Which was something she had every intention of telling whoever was on the other side of that door, right before telling them to go away.

  It would serve the lying swine right if she told his visitor just what was occupying her faithless wretch of a husband.

  Red hair sticking up in a wild tangle showed through the glass semicircle insert in the door. Jillian. Thank you, God. Amanda could deal with Jillian. Jill would understand. Heck, she’d probably ask for her own bat.

  Amanda yanked the door open. More sunlight glared and little black spots wavered before her eyes, obscuring the flamboyantly dressed woman in front of her. “Hey, Jill.”

  “Amanda! What happened?” Jillian swept inside with her usual dramatic flair, her Day-Glo orange dress competing with the sunlight for brightness. “I came by to talk you into some serious mall-walking, but you look like you’re competing with Tammy Fay what’s-her-name for the Miss Raccoon title.”

  Amanda scrubbed at the hot wetness on her face with one hand. “I’m thinking more along the lines of Lorena Bobbit.”

  “What did that SOB do this time?”

  Amanda almost laughed. Almost, but she couldn’t quite make it. Jillian was the only person in her life who considered Lance less than an ideal husband.

  “You’re implying that he makes a habit of screwing me over.” Which couldn’t be further from the truth.

  Jillian’s brightly painted lips twisted in a grimace. “He’s a condescending jerk who wouldn’t know a truly sexy woman if she fell on her knees in front of him and offered him a blow job.”

  Humiliation mixed with anger as Amanda recalled doing almost exactly that—and getting turned down. A sob tore from her already raw throat and she felt her knees buckle. Wiry but strong arms wrapped around her, stopping her descent to the floor. A string of curses that would do any movie director in Hollywood proud stung Amanda’s eardrums.

  “Come on, honey.” The familiar fragrance of Jillian’s perfume wrapped around her, as soothing as her friend’s voice. “Let’s go in the kitchen and get you something to drink. You look a little shocky.”

  Shock didn’t begin to describe how Amanda was feeling. “He was in his office. He was naked, Jill. It’s been so long since I saw him that way, I almost didn’t recognize him.” Her pathetic joke fell flat as another keening wail snaked up from her battered soul. She gulped and breathed before trying to talk again. “He wasn’t alone.”

  “I kinda figured that, you being so upset and all. I didn’t think him jacking-off to a copy of Playboy would have left you white-faced and shaking.”

  That did make her laugh, just one small, choked giggle, but it was better than the crying that had been making her throat raw for the past two hours.

  “So, who was it? The new paralegal?”

  Three little words. Who was it? And it all came rushing back. Walking into the anteroom of his plush law office. The sounds coming from the other side of his door in an otherwise silent building. The mesmeric pull of those sounds. The long walk across deeply piled carpet, making no sound herself except for shallow breathing that seemed to grow thinner with each step. The feel of the cold doorknob under her hand. The excruciating slowness as she turned it. The door swinging inward on silent hinges and the tableau that burned like acid against her mind’s eye.

  “No. Not his assistant.” Amanda stopped abruptly, pulling Jillian to a standstill beside her. She leaned back against the white wall, needing the support, the connection wit
h something solid and real. “He was with . . .”

  She took a deep breath and Jillian waited for Amanda to continue, for once totally silent.

  She closed her eyes, trying to block the picture swimming before them, but the image only grew more prominent against the inside of her eyelids. “He was standing there. Naked.” She’d already said that. “He wasn’t alone.”

  Jillian didn’t remind her she’d already said that too and Amanda was grateful.

  “He had his arms around a woman. She was up against the wall. H-he was inside her. Standing up. I don’t know who she is.” Amanda didn’t know if she could finish it. “A m-man was standing behind him, only he wasn’t just standing. Lance was . . . he was . . .” She couldn’t say it. Couldn’t repeat the exact nature of the threesome’s lewd activity, couldn’t tell her best friend who the man copulating with her husband had been.

  She didn’t even want to think it. The double betrayal was ripping her guts out.

  “Both of them? He was screwing both of them?”

  Amanda’s eyes flew open at Jillian’s shriek and she stared into green eyes dilated by the same shock that had her trapped.

  “Yes. Well, Lance was doing it to the woman and the other man was doing it to him.” Even saying it made her sick and she felt bile rise in her throat.

  Jillian followed her mad dash to the bathroom, handed her a glass of water afterward and kept up a steady stream of cursing the whole time. “What did you do?” This time her friend’s voice came out in a whisper.

  “They were really into what they were doing. They didn’t notice me. So, I snuck out.”

  “He doesn’t know you saw him?”

  Amanda shook her head, her formerly neat French twist rubbing against the wall. She could feel hanks of her long hair coming loose and settling against her shoulders.

  “What’s the bat for?”

  Her mouth twisted. “I was trying to beat up the treadmill, but it didn’t work. The damn thing is indestructible.”

  Jillian made one of the expressive sounds she was so good at. “Honey, you said the d-word. Next thing I know, you really will be sharpening the knives.”

  Amanda grimaced. “I’d rather destroy the treadmill. I can’t go to prison for that one.”

  Jillian nodded, her red hair waving like some mad monkey on top of her head. “You’ve got a point.”

  The next thing Amanda knew Jillian had grabbed her wrist and she was being dragged toward the garage. “Come on, I bet even Lance has a cordless screwdriver. All men have them. Even men who don’t know the difference between a flathead and a Phillips. They’re status symbols or something.”

  “And do you know what to do with one?”

  “Sure. I’ve been living on my own since I was seventeen. I even know how to use a snake on a backed-up toilet.”

  Amanda chose not to comment on that dubious accomplishment.

  Ten minutes later, she and Jillian were both armed with cordless screwdrivers. Her husband, who Jillian had guessed rightly wouldn’t know how to use one, had not merely one, but three screwdrivers. All different models.

  It didn’t take long for Amanda to get the hang of using the tool under the competent instruction of her friend. Soon, the whirring of the battery-powered motors mixed with metal scraping against metal. Before long, the treadmill lay around them in pieces. They moved onto the Stair Master and even managed to dismantle the pneumatic weight bench.

  Amanda squeezed the trigger on her screwdriver, making it whir noisily. “This is really therapeutic. I wish my aerobics tapes could be dealt with the same way.”

  Jill grinned. “Hey, the baseball bat oughtta work on those.”

  It did, but Amanda still felt dissatisfied. She needed more. She’d spent two years married to the food and exercise gestapo and she wanted revenge. She let the bat fall to her side and wiped the sweat from her forehead. “It’s not enough.”

  Jillian’s eyes twinkled with a look that had been scaring those who knew her since before she could talk. “Come on.”

  Amanda followed her into the entertainment room and her gaze fell on the giant screen TV that filled up half of an entire wall, Lance’s newest and most prized toy. She swiveled her head and met Jillian’s eyes. Their green depths reflected the same sense of purpose beating a rhythm in Amanda’s breast. It took a lot longer than the treadmill and they both had to jump out of the way when the heavy screen crashed to the floor, splintering into pieces, but when they were done, she felt better than she had in months.

  They both stood, staring at the remains of the exorbitantly expensive piece of equipment, and then Jillian looked up. “Anything else?”

  Amanda thought about it. She could think of several things it would bother her husband to lose, but her blind desire for destruction seemed to be satisfied.

  “No. I just want to pack my stuff and get out of here.”

  A curious sense of relief was beginning to pervade her being as she realized she never again had to suffer the critical comments and sexual rejection that typified her marriage to Lance. She was tired of feeling like a failure.

  Maybe her womanly attributes were overblown in comparison to the boyishly thin chick her husband had been boinking. Maybe she was too pale for Southern California beauty, too short, too chesty, too hippy, too pretty much everything, but who said a woman was defined by her sex appeal?

  She was on the inside fast track at Extant Corporation. Investing her time, energy and emotion in her career made more sense than giving those precious resources to her jerk of a husband, or any other man for that matter.

  One thing was certain—she was never going to make the mistake of giving a man the power to hurt her again.

  Chapter 1

  With an accuracy born of years of practice, Simon brought the katana down in a precise arc that left the silk scarf hanging in two even sections from the hooks in the ceiling. Moving into the next position, he swung the Korean sword in a horizontal path that sent two scraps of red silk fluttering to the floor.

  Pushing his muscles to the burning point, he worked through his form three times and completed an entire set of stretching exercises before taking care of his katana and hanging it back on the wall of his private gym. A few swipes with a small towel took care of the wet sheen of sweat on his chest and arms.

  He crossed the room and turned out the lights, leaving as the only source of light the moon’s rays filtering in through the windows that made up one wall of his gym. Returning to the center of the room, he sank to a cross-legged position on the floor mat. The dark waters of the Puget Sound glimmered, their cold depths calling to the chill in his soul as they always did.

  He’d built his home on an island, less than an hour’s ferry journey from the mainland and only two hours from Seattle. The perfect location for a man who liked his privacy, it was also easy access to the technology resources he needed for his research.

  The entire computer industry was racing to see who could develop a usable prototype of a fiber-optic processor, and he was determined to be the first. It was that need that had sent him in here looking for clarity of mind and an easing of the physical tension that always accompanied his deep immersion in a project.

  He hadn’t found it. His mind, usually so clear after a workout, spun from one thought to another.

  For some reason, instead of focusing on the results of his most recent experiments, old memories demanded his attention tonight. Memories he would have been happy to bury into oblivion, five-year-old memories that had no place in his life today.

  He could see Elaine’s face, the beautiful features taut with stress, her eyes glistening with tears as she said good-bye. “You’ve got to understand, Simon. You live in the shadows. I want to live in the light. Eric likes being around people. You’re always looking for excuses to avoid them. You want to spend all your time in that stupid lab of yours. A woman can’t live like that.”

  He remembered each word verbatim.

  A woman can’t liv
e like that.

  At the time, he had wanted to believe she was wrong, that she’d been making excuses for her own choices. But five years on, he had to concede she was probably right.

  After Elaine, he hadn’t had a relationship that lasted long enough for him to even start considering marriage. His infrequent girlfriends invariably bailed after the novelty of the sex wore off. He was too intense. Insensitive to their needs. Too wrapped up in his designs and experiments. Too cold. Too uncommunicative.

  Some had even decided after having sex, that he was just too big. He wasn’t a monster, but damn it, he couldn’t help the fact he was not average.

  He wanted marriage. A family. A life like the one he had known so long ago before his mother’s death, one that had warmth and companionship. Hell if he knew how to go about procuring one, though. He didn’t know how to turn down the intensity. He could no more give up his computer experiments than he could will his sex to stay at half-mast during intercourse.

  His current project fascinated and challenged him in a way that nothing, particularly no woman, had since he was six years old and programmed his first robot. So, why was he letting old memories taunt him?

  But he knew. Eric’s ecstatic voice over the phone. Elaine was pregnant with their second child. He was hoping for a girl this time. Simon wasn’t jealous of his cousin’s relationship with Elaine. He had accepted a long time ago that they made a more natural couple than he and Elaine had ever done.

  The fact that their relationship had never progressed to the bedroom should have clued him in long before Elaine’s big good-bye scene. But part of his problem, he freely admitted, was a certain amount of cluelessness where women were concerned.

  Simon counted Elaine as both family and friend now, just the same as Eric. He made himself a frequent visitor to their home so he could spend time with them and their little boy. The kid called him Uncle Simon and he liked it. It made him feel like he belonged to someone.

  But none of that changed the velocity of the lonely winds that howled through his soul as he contemplated a bleak future.