ARIANE STOPPED fumbling with the zipper and let her hands fall.
“Oops,” she said.
“Hey, it’s you,” said Guy, as if he’d just noticed.
“Oh, yes,” said Ariane, spreading her hands, grimacing, shrugging her shoulders. “It’s me.”
“I thought everyone was gone.”
“All but me—”
“I heard a sound. I thought it might be a burglar—or a rat or something. That’s why I came poking around back here. I mean, I’m not a Peeping Tom or anything. Not usually.”
“Not usually?” said Ariane. They had begun to flirt, she realized. She wondered why they had begun to flirt and where it was leading. Was he going to bring up the idea of buying his silence with sex? Or, to put it in a more likely way, when was he going to bring up the idea of buying his silence with sex?
“It’s a nice dress,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. She looked down, at the dress, at herself.
“You must be going out somewhere.”
Was it possible that he didn’t realize she was wearing Renée’s dress? She might get away with this.
“Not really,” she said.
“All dressed up with no place to go?”
“You could say that,” she said. “The story of my life.”
“You can’t be serious. A gorgeous girl like you?”
“I mean that there isn’t anyplace to go all dressed up like this.”
“Oh, sure there is. There must be lots of places to go all dressed up like that.”
“Not around here.”
“So, not around here. But why stop here?”
“Good question, but look, I’ve got to get out of this dress. Could you—”
“Sure.” He started to back out of the doorway, but immediately leaned back through it. “Say,” he said, “when you’re not all dressed up, is there someplace to go? Someplace where we could get a hamburger and a beer?”
It couldn’t be Captain White’s. It couldn’t be Corinne’s. It ought to be someplace neutral, where her past wasn’t all over the room. There was no such place. The closest thing she could think of in the instant she had to consider the possibilities was the Babbington Diner, in the center of town.
“We could go to the diner,” she said. “In town.”
“Great,” he said. “Don’t get all dressed up.” He grinned. “I’ll be in the office.”
While Ariane was removing Renée’s dress she recognized the other emotion that she had felt when she was trying it on: sexual excitement.
[to be continued]
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