Black Jack

May 1997 • New York, New York

Lydia Charbonneau let her right wrist roll forward, squeezed the bar over the left handle, and pressed the gearshift down with her left foot, slowing as she came to the traffic jam going into the Holland Tunnel. Her palms were sweaty inside her leather gloves and the elastic of her panties was cutting into her butt. Once she came to a halt, she shifted into neutral, planted her biker-boot-clad feet on either side of her Harley and stood up, grabbed her jeans in the back, pulled the wedgie out, and plopped back down on the butter-soft leather seat.

She got heckled at by some jerk, but a girl had to do what a girl had to do.

And what Lydia had to do was confront her demon, who wasn't really a demon at all, but a man who claimed to love her.

Or at least want her enough to spend over a year scouring the country for her, never knowing he was scouring the wrong country.

Lydia didn't lie to herself.

In spite of what anybody said, Jack Blackwood's interest in Lydia had nothing to do with love and everything to do with convenient sex, misplaced gratitude, and free childcare. She wasn't sure in what order.

At least one of us should get her manslut.

Maybe if you just got to know each other better ...

Still, knowing this, knowing she was walking right back into the heartbreak she'd fled, her mind wouldn't stop nibbling on the observations of her best friend Victoria as if they were a particularly satisfying appetizer buffet.

Lydia leaned to her right to see a pathway right through the tunnel, if she were willing to split lanes, but New Yorkers were bitchy enough to open a door on her, making her slam right into it.

It won't hurt to see if there's something more between you. If it's hopeless, quit your job, move here permanently, and let Victoria take care of you.

So said Victoria's manslut, Jack's second-hand advocate, knowing how mansluts think.

It was tempting.

So tempting.

Last year, she'd hopped a plane to Spain as if it were a getaway car, no plan. Just somewhere to light with the only family she had, her best friend from college.

She knew she was going to have to find something to occupy her for however long she needed to heal, but it had been easy enough to get an interim job at a university that couldn't keep its music department staffed because it was a tiny little program that existed solely as a pet project for one of the benefactors. There were maybe one hundred musicians enrolled, most needing remedial training, and it was, quite frankly, the worst thing on Lydia's CV to anybody who knew anything about her professional status.

But for a tenured professor who spoke fluent Spanish and could teach in English, who was a highly sought-after piano teacher who needed a quick but productive escape and didn't mind the relatively large salary, it was perfect.

She'd arrived unannounced on Victoria's doorstep with a half-full backpack only to be welcomed with a "Oh, hi. Take me to work. Pick me up at nine." Then Victoria had taken care of Lydia in her nonspecific and careless way. She didn't even know she had.

She always had.

She'd never once asked for rent. Never once asked for grocery money or half the utilities or to put gas in her car.

Of course, she also hadn't noticed that Lydia had paid half the rent, bought the groceries, paid half the utilities, and did, in fact, put gas in her car. Lydia was aimless, not penniless.