Just This Once by Evelyn Jeannie Hall

Ten

MAY

Lacey tugged at her top to try to feel a bit of a breeze under her breasts as she rushed to cross the intersection. Elizabeth had asked her to come home, and since there had been a note of urgency in her tone, Lacey hightailed it out of Zane’s luxurious king-sized bed and back to Brooklyn. She’d dashed into the double loft apartment she and Elizabeth shared with her pulse pounding through her like a jackhammer.

“Hey,” Elizabeth greeted her with a gigantic smile. For once, her sister’s happy expression struck her as genuine rather than the cardboard veneer she sometimes wore. It’d been a long time—maybe even years due to her widowhood hitting her so hard—since Elizabeth had shown such unfettered glee. Lacey felt a flood of gratitude for whatever had caused it.

“What’s going on?” she gusted out. Being in such a hurry had left her breathless.

“I have some news. Some fantastic news.”

“Okay. Don’t keep me in suspense.”

“Mr. Farawinder is selling his bakery,” Elizabeth told her while tugging at her left earring, and Lacey came to a complete standstill. This didn’t sound like fantastic news. It sounded like horrible news. Working there provided both she and Elizabeth with their only source of income. The establishment being sold could mean losing their jobs.

Then, Elizabeth giggled. Like, literally giggled. Lacey was starting to wonder if some dopehead had meandered by her sister on the street outside and given her a contact high.

“Think I’m missing the punchline.”

“He’s selling it to me.” Elizabeth commenced jumping up and down, hyper as a border collie when its owner came home after a long absence. But Lacey felt thunderstruck. How the hell did her sister think she could afford such an enormous investment? “Can you believe it?”

“Uh, not really,” she answered honestly.

“Okay, okay, I’ll put you out of your misery. This is all being made possible by a particular brother-in-law investor.”

Lacey let out a sigh of relief. That made sense. “That’s nice.”

“Nice? This is the opportunity of a lifetime for me, and all you can say is it’s ‘nice?’”

“Extra nice, then.” Lacey batted her eyelashes innocently. “Terrific. Marvelous. Outstanding.”

Elizabeth rolled her eyes at her. “Here’s the thing, I’ll get to make my mark with this business. We already have a decent customer base, and once I do a bit of revamping and marketing, we can make this place stand out from the crowd. I’m even planning on changing the name to the Bread and Breakfast Bakery. What do you think?”

Since the current name of the establishment was the decidedly un-creative Farawinder’s, her idea would be quite an improvement. The name would also hint at the fact that they concentrated on the morning crowd by closing no later than three in the afternoon. If they ran out of everything first, they closed sooner. And Elizabeth going into business for herself through a ready-made facility she already ran?

Lacey couldn’t imagine anything better.

“I think it’s awesome. Congratulations.” She embraced her younger sister, making sure Elizabeth could feel her sincerity.

“Thank you. I’m going to go ahead and sneak downstairs.”

“But it’s Sunday.” Farawinder’s didn’t open on Sundays.

“That makes it the ideal time to nail down a plan of action. I need to decide on new paint colors and measure for a countertop replacement. I also have to procure some estimates on how much changing out the marquee sign will be. I’d like it to light up since we open before dawn a lot of the time.” Elizabeth babbled all of this as she wound her way to the door, her voice edged with excitement. There was a terrible squalling noise, and her sister gasped, kneeling over to pick up Lacey’s cat, Spice.

“That’s what you get for being underfoot all the time,” Lacey chastised her orange feline, but at the same time she darted over to check her pet for injured paws.

“Poor baby, I’m so sorry,” Elizabeth cooed, stroking each paw in turn before patting along Spice’s long fluffy tail. A kaleidoscope of purples and lavenders played over the two of them from the transparent artwork of irises hanging in the nearby window. The cat purred loudly telling Lacey that despite her protests, the animal hadn’t suffered any irreparable harm.

“She’s fine other than being a perpetual trip hazard.” Lacey reached out to collect Spice from her younger sister’s arms.

Nice, Elizabeth’s kitty, stayed on the back of their loveseat rolled up into the shape of a cushion. The black feline hadn’t even cracked her eyes open throughout the whole ordeal. Sometimes Lacey envied their pets, but since she herself had been doing quite a bit of laying around with Zane over the past thirty-six hours, she couldn’t complain. Not to brag, but she was nearly as content as her fat and sassy feline.

“Soooo…” Elizabeth drew out the word, casting a discerning glance at Lacey. “Have a pleasant weekend?”

“Exceptionally pleasant,” Lacey answered her, not batting an eye or meeting her sister’s. This particular excursion with Zane had been something of an anomaly since she’d stayed all the way through Sunday morning after meeting him at their appointed time Friday.

“You’ve been spending a lot of nights away from the loft over the past month.”

“Sweet baby girl,” Lacey chirped at the cat in her arms as if she hadn’t heard Elizabeth.

“Four weekends in a row, in fact,” her sister pried with subtle relentlessness. “I find that interesting.”

“Mmm,” Lacey hummed noncommittally, refusing to take the bait.

“So, same or different?”

“Huh?”

“Griefous, Lacey,” Elizabeth ground out, resorting to her seldom used made-up curse word and pronouncing it like the term “grief” mixed with “fuss.” Glen Yates had grown up in a religious household and hadn’t been too keen on his wife having a potty mouth, which Lacey knew she could never have tolerated. “Have you been going out and hooking up with a bunch of different guys? Or is this the same one?”

“Nosy much?”

“Evading me much?” her younger sister returned, hands on her hips.

Shit.

“What does it matter?” Lacey challenged her.

“It doesn’t matter except…”

What was she getting at? “Except what?”

“I’m curious, okay? So, sue me.”

“It’s one single guy, for God’s fucking sake. One. I’m having a fling with this hot dude I met. And by hot, I mean blazing like an inferno on the surface on the sun. Happy now?”

Elizabeth grinned at her. “I am. Happy for you. So, how serious is it? People have gotten married in less time than that.”

“People have gotten married after knowing each other for an hour, so I don’t think that’s necessarily relevant.”

“True.”

“Here’s the thing. The sex is phenomenal, the best I’ve ever had.” Lacey fanned herself dramatically. If she were to use a hashtag to describe Zane, it’d probably be something akin to #ScruptiousAbs, #StaminaKing, or #SensationalCock. Deciding to have him as her friend with benefits had been the best decision she’d ever made. It was like the man’s penis had been designed to her precise specifications. Spending time with him left her feeling pliant, limber, and ludicrously sated.

Also, Zane wasn’t just a sex god and a nice guy, she’d discovered they had quite a bit in common.

Over this past weekend, she found out they both liked this show called Beauty and the Beast. But it wasn’t the version from a few years ago. This one had come out in the 80s. He liked how badass and ferocious the character of Vincent could be—a half-man half-lion guy played by Ron Perlman of Hellboy and Sons of Anarchy fame—while she liked the more romantic elements and the fact that the heroine was played by Terminator 2’s badass actress Linda Hamilton. Vincent might be fierce, but he also climbed up to his woman’s high-rise balcony just so he could hang out and read her poetry.

Swoon.

How rare and special was that? And Zane had not only heard of the program, he’d become a devoted fan just like Lacey had. He liked Star Trek: Deep Space Nine—the only Star Trek she’d ever watched—and Friends, too. What were the odds?

When her little sister’s complexion reddened to a similar degree as the sunburn she’d suffered back during their flight home, Lacey had to stifle a snicker. While she herself had never shied away from frank sexual talk or the fact that she considered orgasms a basic necessity of life, Elizabeth tended to be more standoffish about the subject. Maybe because her youngest sister had only ever had two partners Lacey knew about. A high school boyfriend who’d moved away and Glen, and Lacey wasn’t even certain she’d gone all the way with her high school guy.

“So, you’re having your lesson with Zane, then going out with your mystery fella?”

Fuck a duck.

“No,” Lacey studied her cuticles. “Zane and I have rescheduled for…” she trailed off. She’d been about to say Saturday afternoons, but that didn’t sound any better than Friday evenings did. “Wednesdays at six. There at the firm. That way it won’t impinge on my dates.”

Lacey paused to see if her sister would accept this, knowing that like in poker, she had to hold the line and keep her expression blank.

“Any chance I’ll ever get to meet your new beau?” Elizabeth asked her, at long last.

What? And bust this entire racket wide open? Yeah, no. Lacey spotted a frayed end on the rich brocade throw they’d tossed over the back of their burgundy velour loveseat and focused on it ruthlessly.

“Hate to disappoint you, but probably not. Neither of us are looking for anything real.”

But her sister didn’t look disappointed. She looked contemplative. “Not at all?”

“Nope.”

“But you’re dating him and only him, right?”

“Yeeeah.” She drew the word out, sensing a trap.

Elizabeth wrinkled her brows. “What about him?”

“We’re not formally exclusive, but to my knowledge, he hasn’t been seeing anyone else, either.”

The bolt of spiky sharp jealousy the image of Zane with another woman engendered in Lacey astonished her. She wasn’t the jealous type. Or at least, she never had been. Their arrangement had been left “open” by design. So why did the thought of him taking someone else into his arms make her keen to smash something?

“So you’re keeping things… casual,” Elizabeth reiterated.

“That’s right,” Lacey snapped. Why was her sister not willing to leave well enough alone, anyway?

Elizabeth’s next response sounded downright smug. “Okay.”

“What do you mean, ‘okay?’”

“I don’t mean anything by it.” But then, her little sister’s smugness became even more pronounced as she straight up smirked at Lacey. Smirked. She set down Spice, pivoted on her heel, and pranced off toward their kitchen. Lacey felt tempted to shut her out by heading up to her bedroom, but while each of them occupied their own lofts on either side of the space, the lack of walls meant next to no privacy. Throwing a temper tantrum didn’t have the same impact when she had to climb a ladder and didn’t even have a door to slam. “Want some scrambled eggs?”

“Yeah, I want some scrambled eggs,” Lacey threw back at Elizabeth, aggravated because she did want the scrambled eggs. Her sister was an excellent cook. “Wait. Weren’t you going to go downstairs and draw up some plans or something?” If only Lacey had remembered that key tidbit before, maybe she could’ve staved off this dangerous discussion.

“I was, but you distracted me with your love life.” Elizabeth shrugged. “I’ll make some breakfast, then go downstairs. If you and your man ever do become serious, can I meet him?”

Jeez Louise. Be like a certain ice princess and let it go. “That’s not gonna happen.”

“But if it does…”

“Yeah, sure. If we ever become an item, you’ll be the first to know,” Lacey told her, knowing full well she’d never have to make good on that promise.

And just because she’d felt a brief spate of jealousy didn’t mean anything noteworthy. It didn’t mean anything. Not at all.