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“RED-VELVET-LINE HANDCUFFS?”
“Check.”
“Silk blindfold?”
“Check.”
“Crotchless crimson lace panties?”
“Check.”
“Cinnamon-scented massage oil?”
“Check.”
“Plenty of condoms?”
Eden Montgomery clicked her tongue and shot her petite, fuchsia-haired assistant a chiding glance. “Ashley, I’m a professional. Of course I’ve included condoms.”
“Hey.” Ashley waved a wrist adored with an exquisite parrot tattoo and tapped her electronic pencil against the tablet computer she held in her hand. “I’m trying to keep you out of trouble.”
“What do you mean?” Eden frowned. “Trouble?”
Ashley cleared her throat and set her tablet down on the work table. “Well…”
“Cough it up. What’s on your mind?”
“Um… I didn’t want to say anything before because it’s a rush order, but you created this exact same basket two months ago. You called it Seduction in Scarlet.”
Eden stared at her assistant and then shifted her gaze to the basket.
Her throat tightened. Good grief, Ashley was right. The basket was identical to one she’d made for a famous Broadway actor’s thirty-fifth birthday, right down to the vermilion pashmina lining the basket.
“Don’t look so stricken. Repeating yourself is no great tragedy, even if you do advertise your baskets as one-of-a-kind. Seriously, Eden, who’s gonna know?”
“I’ll know.” Eden began dismantling the basket, tossing items across the counter. They m
ade a skittering sound as they slid, underscoring her dismay. Her reputation was her word. She refused to be guilty of false advertising.
“No time for a major overhaul. The customer is picking it up this afternoon,” Ashley said.
“I don’t care.”
“What will you to do instead?”
“No clue.” Eden glowered at the demolished basket and tamped down her fears.
“Admit it, you’ve been frazzled for the last few weeks,” Ashley said. “What you need is a long vacation.”
Frazzled wasn’t the word for it. Lately, she had been well... stagnant.
As the proprietor of Wickedly Wonderful, a tiny boutique in a trendy slice of Manhattan. specializing in erotic gift baskets for honeymoons and anniversaries, Eden’s business lived or died on the strength of her creativity.
Unfortunately, her artistic fount had dried up and she’d slammed headlong into an invisible mental wall—blocked, clogged, bereft of an original concept.
The thrill was gone.
She couldn’t really pinpoint when she’d lost connection to her work, but about five weeks ago, almost two years to the day after the tragic fiery accident that had led her to specializing in the erotica space, she’d noticed her concentration slipping.
Before the fire, she’d operated a normal gift basket business, creating content for holidays, bar mitzvahs, birthdays and baby showers, but she had difficulty keeping the retail space solvent despite her success on Etsy.
And then two things had happened. One, a regular client had asked her to design an erotic gift basket for her sister’s honeymoon and, two, Eden’s apartment building had caught fire.
She’d helped her elderly neighbor, Mrs. Grant, escape but she’d then returned to the building to help others. A burning ceiling beam had fallen, pinning her p
elvis to the floor. Two burly FDNY firefighters had arrived just in time to save her from dying of smoke inhalation. They hadn’t, however, been able to stop her from receiving third-degree burns.
Eden briefly closed her eyes, sucked in her breath, and grimaced at the memory of that fateful night that had changed her life forever. She splayed a palm across her lower abdomen.
“What’s going on?” Ashley angled her head and the tiny hoop earring pierced through her left eyebrow caught the light and glinted gold. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not really.” People confided in her, not vice versa. She was more comfortable being the shoulder to cry on than the one who did the crying.
“Thinking about the fire?”
Eden shot her a look. Ashley was more perceptive than most people realized. Her flibbertigibbet personality gave the impression of someone too mercurial for deep thoughts. Those people were wrong.
“Why would you suppose that?” Eden asked.
“Because you touched your scar.”
Immediately, Eden jerked her hand from her lower abdomen. She’d had reconstructive surgery last summer, and the scars were much less noticeable now. She needed to stop focusing on her wounds. Not so easy to do when the burns were indirectly related to her current creative slump.
Following the fire, a prominent news outlet had done a feature piece on her, lauding her as a hero. She’d felt awkward with the title and the attention. She’d done what anyone else would have done in the same situation. A reporter and her camera crew had come to the shop and spied the sexy basket Eden had built for her client. The reporter homed in on that basket and touted Eden as the Renoir of erotic gift basket design.
After the story came out, orders poured in, and her business mushroomed. She renamed the store, changing it from Hildy’s Hideaway—after her grandmother who’d owned the shop before her—to Wickedly Wonderful. Her financial woes vanished, but she’d felt like a fraud. She
knew next to nothing about the sexual adventures she created, beyond her own vivid imagination and diligent internet research.
To counter her inadequacy, she’d studied every sex manual and erotic book she could lay her hands on, from the Kama Sutra to The Story of O. Her newly gained, but totally academic knowledge of sex, combined with her degree in art history from N.Y.U., inspired her creativity.
At first, she lived vicariously through her work and things were fantastic. She loved exploring the tempting fantasies she’d never experienced in real life.
To date, she’d only had one lover. Harry Jackson, an old college friend she’d trusted but had never been particularly aroused by. She’d lost her virginity at twenty calmly and rationally, unclouded by complicated emotions. She’d experienced enough chaos and drama in childhood, and she’d been determined to stay grounded when it came to romantic encounters. She refused to be like her mother, never staying in any one place or relationship for long.
She and Harry had agreed to deflower each other. Poor Harry, he’d been as inept as she. Their fumbling attempts were a clear-cut case of the virginal leading the virginal, with neither one of them experiencing fireworks, but at least they hadn’t broken each other’s hearts.
Her limited sexual experience was a closely guarded secret. Who would buy erotic gift baskets from a woman with a nonexistent sex life?
Snap out of it. You’ve got work to do.
She kneaded her brow. Her mind was empty of even a whisper of a sensual fantasy. She drew a complete blank. She was officially tapped out, empty, drained. Closing her eyes, she waited for a flash of insight.
Nothing.
Oh, come on, visualize
some sex-god movie star.
Zero.
Eden couldn’t dredge up a single person who popped her cork. Panic ripped through her and she rhythmically worried red cellophane wrapping paper between her fingers, her fussbudget mind snatching up the fear and sprinting with it, spinning a hundred “what-if” situations.
What if she never felt sexy again? What if she couldn’t break this block? What if her business failed? What if she lost the store her grandmother Hildy had owned for forty years before Eden inherited it? Worst-case scenario? She would end up a bag lady on the street, pushing a grocery cart of discarded rubbish she’d gleaned from trash dumpsters and mumbling nonsense to herself.
Her eyes flew open.
What was she going to do?
“Don’t start imagining some huge catastrophe,” Ashley said. “Let’s just replace everything that’s red with black and call it Midnight Memories.”
“But the customer wanted red.”
“Then just change a few things. Instead of the pashmina, use a satin teddy. Replace the handcuffs with ropes. Instead of massage oil, go for body paints or edible panties.”
“That’s not part of the artistic vision.”
“Well, this artistic vision was a rerun. Either ditch the lofty standards or be happy with a duplicate.”
“You’re right. Let’s do it your way.”
They worked silently for a few minutes, exchanging and rearranging items.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Ashley asked at last.
Ashley was a sweetheart, but Eden wouldn’t unburden herself to the free-spirited nineteen-year-old even though she probably knew more about sex than Eden, and she was six years younger. Ashley’s advice was bound to be something wild and fantastical, like have a red-hot one-night stand with a handsome stranger she found on a hook-up app.
Well, she’d tried that, hadn’t she? Her one miserable attempt at connecting with her femininity had ended in terrible failure when Josh Cameron—a guy she’d met on Tinder—had been so repulsed by her burns h
e’d fled her apartment.
That reaction didn’t do a lot for a woman’s self-esteem.
Eden clenched a red satin bow in her hand and sank her top front teeth into her bottom lip, trying to dispel the memory of her single pathetic attempt at sex after she’d been burned. In the wake of Josh’s reaction, she’d been too afraid to try again.
“Do you wanna know why I think you’re so frazzled?” Ashley asked.
“Not really.”
“You need to booty call.”
“Ashley!”
“Don’t go prude on me, that’s a man-shaped vibrator you’re holding. Seriously, that’s why your baskets have been blah lately. You need divine inspiration.”
“Thanks for your opinion. I’ll take it under consideration.”
“I know a spray-paint artist who specializes in nudes. I think you two would really hit it off. He’s hot.”
“I can find my own dates, thank you.”
“Hmm. I’ve been working here almost ten months and you haven’t hooked up with anyone even once. You spend your time building fantasies and no time living them. Under those conditions, anyone would burn out.”
“I appreciate your concern, but my love life is my personal business. Could we talk about something else, please?”
Ashley shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
At that moment, the wind chimes over the door whispered a resonant woodsy sound and a shapely older woman, wearing the latest designer fashions, stepped over the threshold.
Jayne Lockerbie, her favorite customer.
Eden smiled.
Jayne was one vibrant granny who believed sex should be discussed freely and enjoyed often. She’d been a flower child in the late 1960s and she loved shocking her conservative friends and relatives by gifting them with Eden’s baskets.
“Yo, J. Lo!” Ashley
Ashley greeted Jayne in a breezy style that Eden envied.
“Hey, Ash, what’s happenin’?” Mrs. Lockerbie grinned.
“Not much. How’s Mr. Lo?”
“Sexy as ever.” The woman winked. “In fact, that’s why I’m here. I need a very special gift basket for our forty-fifth wedding anniversary.”
“No kidding? That’s outstanding. Married forty-five years and still having wild sex.” Ashley giggled.
“Better than ever. There’s nothing sexier than lived experience.” Mrs. Lockerbie turned her attention to Eden. “Now, about that basket. I was thinking maybe some Tarzan and Jane action. What can you create for me that screams king of the jungle?”
“I’ll help her, if you wanna finish that.” Ashley nodded at the basket Eden was working on.
Normally Eden handled all gift consultations, but Ashley knew Jayne well and she was trying to help.
“Sure,” Eden said. “That’ll be fine if Jayne’s on board.”
“Really?” Ashley’s eyes lit up.
“Do mind if Ashley takes your order this time, Jayne? We’ll prep the basket together, of course.”
“Absolutely. Maybe Ashley will even share some of her sexual escapades with me.” Jayne winked. “I haven’t forgotten what it’s like to be young.”
“What do you think about leopard-print loincloth? We’ve got a great new supplier from South Africa.” Ashley ushered Jayne to their cubicle-sized back room.
“Hmm, sounds promising,” Jayne said.
Shaking her head, Eden returned to her task and tuned out Ashley and Jayne’s mur
mured voices. Would she ever have a love life Jayne’s? Married forty-five years and still enjoying terrific sex?
With those scars? Not likely.
Eden sighed. Some people were lucky in love. Apparently, she was not. On that score, she was her mother’s daughter.
But could she be lucky in lust?
Expanding her sexual horizons would be good for both business and her creativity. It was the missing piece of the puzzle and in her heart she knew it. Her cautious nature had held her back for too long. Lack of experience had her feeling like a fraud, and that caused her artistic block.
Just because that jerk Josh had fled from the sight of her naked body, didn’t mean every man would run from her scars. She needed a sensitive lover who knew his way around a woman’s body.
Okay, all right. She did need to get laid. But even if she took a huge risk, stripped off her clothes in front of a stranger and revealed her secret vulnerability, she had no prospects in mind—Ashley’s hottie spray-paint artist aside—and she sure as hell wouldn’t go back on the hookup apps.
She tied a big red bow around the basket and then stepped over to place it in the orders-waiting-to-be-picked-up glass display case. She set the basket down, and then slowly raised her head and peered out the front window.
The air hung heavy with the rich scent of impending rain as a humidity-laden wind gusted and sent street debris swirling at the curb. It was one of those an enigmatic, electrically charged afternoons that lingered between dwindling summer and impending autumn, a sultry day that could stir a woman’s blood.
And that’s when Eden saw him. ...
