Chapter 4
He was still grinning as the door swung closed behind him, the elation of flirting with Cami thrumming through his veins. It had been a good day before he’d seen her, and now it was a great one. Maybe buying sex toys for beautiful women should become a customary act of celebration for him.
Des jogged across the plaza to where his motorcycle was parked and salty ocean air filled his lungs.
As muscle memory guided his briefcase into the straps at the back of his bike, his eyes wandered toward Plaza Optometry, two doors down from Sex on the Beach.
With the optometrist’s contract tucked safely into his briefcase and the signature drying with the second, he had only two stores left on his list.
On the western side of the plaza was the family-owned convenience store.
It was run by an aging man named Rodger, who had intended to leave it to his eldest son when he retired.
From what Des had gathered, that son was happily employed as a carpenter on the outskirts of the city and had no interest in retail.
It was only a matter of time before Rodger came to terms with that and signed on with him.
On the eastern corner was Sex on the Beach.
It had been running for nearly five years, steadily building a reputation as a knowledgeable and fun business to shop at for all your bedroom-adjacent needs.
Lenny was Des’s biggest obstacle. She had become adept at avoiding him, and he still didn’t understand why.
Out of all the people invested in this plaza, she was the one with the least to lose by selling, and, at this point, the most to gain, since he’d been authorized to increase her offer every time she declined.
He couldn’t say he was entirely disappointed Lenny was dragging her feet with him. Every time she ducked his visits, it gave him an excuse to go back in. When he did, there was always a solid chance Cami was working, and seeing Cami was more motivating than was smart. Or professional.
The first time he’d met her, he’d been struck by how out of place she’d seemed.
She handled herself professionally enough, never blinked or blushed at customer requests or the products she dealt with, but there was something about her that seemed.
.. unworldly, he supposed. Not that he considered himself a frequent peruser of adult toy stores, but the usual sales assistant he encountered in that type of environment was edgier than Cami could ever be.
She had no piercings, no visible tattoos.
With that straw blonde hair, wholesome brown eyes, and the faint trace of a midwestern accent, she seemed like a farmer’s daughter.
The kind he desperately wanted to roll around in the hay with.
Not that anything physical would ever happen. There was nothing explicitly condemning it in the Calogistics business book, but it would be especially scummy considering she didn’t know what he actually did for a living.
He could still buy her the occasional vibrator, though. It would be crossing the line to take her to bed, but at least he could get her off in a roundabout sort of way.
An insistent vibration in his pocket alerted him to an incoming phone call. He glanced at the screen, ready to send the caller to voicemail until he saw Gabriel’s name. “Hey.”
“Did you get the signature?”
He’d long ago given up on convincing his business partner to start phone calls in a polite and socially acceptable manner.
“Yep. Plaza Optometry is locked in.”
“Perfect!” He could almost hear the celebratory slam dunk of the tiny basketball Gabriel liked to lob at the net on the back of his office door. “I just got off the phone with Adrien.”
His esophagus started to itch; contact with Adrien always gave him heartburn.
The man had a monopoly on impatience and his ‘my-way-or-the-highway’ attitude had cost him more than one lucrative business deal, which was why he’d hired Calogistics to handle the Paragon Plaza project.
But ever since he’d brought them on, he’d had trouble keeping his fingers out of the pie.
“Great,” Des droned.
Gabriel sighed into the phone. “I’m doing what I can, Des, but you know this guy’s not happy if he’s not knocking down buildings. We need the ink dry on this one.”
“I know.” From across the parking lot, his eyes drifted to the storefront of Sex on the Beach. It was a nice day; Lenny would be out on the beach with her dog. “I need… maybe another three months? Seaver needs a soft touch, or—”
“Des,” Gabriel cut him off. “Adrien’s giving us thirty days.”
The stomach acid rising in the back of his throat hardened into a rock and sank, hard, back into his gut.
“A month?” he repeated. “That’s not enough time, I can barely get Lenny to talk to me—”
“That’s the time we have.” Gabriel’s tone was still friendly, but there was a finality to it that told Des all he needed to know.
If he couldn’t pull this off in the time allotted, they would lose the contract.
He could kiss his bonus check goodbye. “You’re fine, Des.
You’ll have this one in the bag in no time, and then you can wave your big fat bonus check in your dear old dad’s face. ”
His mouth tightened with his rising anxiety, but he didn’t bother redirecting the conversation. He’d let Gabriel distract him, for now. “I’m not going to do that.”
Ever since they’d started Calogistics, Gabriel had been fond of teasing Des about doing it just to ‘stick it to Dad’.
He’d learned to shrug it off, but it wasn’t far off the mark.
After he’d left med school, his primary goal had been to get a job that would pay enough to pay his parents back for his tuition.
When he’d accomplished that, it became more about showing them that their version of success wasn’t the only one.
It wasn’t about showing anyone up. It was about proving what he could do.
“You should, though,” Gabriel exclaimed. “But first, come by the office, and on your way in, stop and get me a green tea.”
“I’m not doing that either,” he said flatly.
“Come on. If you don’t get over your fear of green tea, you’re doomed to be alone for the rest of your life.”
“I’m not afraid of green tea.” It was just that the smell of it made him want to drive his bike into a brick wall. A holdover from his green tea-obsessed ex. “And I like being alone.”
“A likely story. Go talk to Seaver, and then get your ass in the office. See you when you get here. Bring tea!”
Gabriel hung up.
Des glanced back at the storefront of Sex on the Beach, the dark privacy coverings on its windows a tinge more ominous now.
Thirty days. He had thirty days to get the Snack Stop and Sex on the Beach to sign on the dotted line, or the last four months of work would go right down the drain.
He had to focus. No more flirting with Cami when he was on the clock. Just business. Get in, ask for Lenny, get out.
In spite of himself, his mind conjured the familiar image of Cami’s hips swinging as she rounded the checkout counter, the way her jeans hugged her ass.
Okay, maybe a little flirting with Cami. But absolutely no funny business. He’d already blown one career. He couldn’t blow this one too.
By the time her shift was finished, Cami was more than ready to retire to the apartment she rented above the store.
She’d been on the closing shift, so after Des left she’d had another five hours of retail work to live through with the knowledge that there was a vibrator in her purse.
She worked around sex toys all the time and it never bothered her, but now that there was one that a gorgeous man had basically written her name on, she couldn’t focus.
She left the store through the storage room exit and climbed the staircase to her apartment, her purse bumping against her hip with her steps—an insistent reminder of its contents.
When she unlocked and pushed open her door, she was already toeing her shoes off.
She kicked them off in the vague direction of her shoe mat and then dumped her purse onto the arm of her secondhand sofa.
Right on top, tucked into a brown paper bag for discretion, was the vibrator.
She withdrew it from the bag, letting the hard plastic packaging cool her fingertips.
The cardboard advertising insert was brightly colored and friendly.
The plastic even had neat little pop tabs for easy removal.
Everything about it screamed great for beginners!
Could she? The idea alone was preposterous, staggering with the impropriety. She should leave it in the package and give it back, insist Des get a refund or at least take this to use with… whomever.
But if he had a whomever, would he have insisted she take this?
What are friends for? His words echoed through her mind, the hint of promise in his accompanying smile making her skin too warm.
He knew she wanted him. He had to. Buying a vibrator for her was probably a tease.
I could use this with you, but I won’t. And thank God for that, because if Cami found this mortifying, she probably would have died on the spot if he’d offered to give her toy lessons. Death by spontaneous combustion.
She popped the easy-open tabs and pulled the little vibe from the packaging. It slipped easily onto her middle finger, fitting snug against her fingerprint with an easily-thumbable on/off switch.
Would this tiny little thing solve her incredibly embarrassing problem? Was it possible that the only missing ingredient in her orgasm recipe was a scrap of purple silicone?
Frowning, Cami divested herself of her name tag and took a moment to rinse the vibrator off in the bathroom with soap and water. Then she unceremoniously shoved her jeans and panties off and clambered onto her bed in the corner of the studio apartment.