Hidden Pleasures - Brenda Jackson [16]
Nikki then leaned over the table. “With you owning an etiquette school, you’ll be the perfect person to teach him manners. Are you going to take Galen Steele up on his offer?”
Brittany pushed a lock of hair out of her face. “Of course not! He doesn’t even know what I do for a living.”
Nikki chuckled. “There’s a joke around town that a woman hasn’t been bedded unless she’s been bedded by a Steele. They’re supposed to be just that good.”
No man was that good, Brittany thought. At least none in her past had been worth the trouble. “Well, I plan on contacting him tomorrow. There has to be another way.”
Nikki shrugged as a half smile eased across her lips. “I don’t know. I understand when they see a woman they want, they go after her. Of course they drop her after a while, but there are a lot of women who would love to be in your shoes right now, including me. Not for Galen, mind you, but I’ve always had this thing for Jonas. He’s a hottie.”
Brittany stared across the table at her long-lost friend. “Let me get this straight. If given the chance you would accept his terms of an affair?”
“Of course,” Nikki said without any thought. “I’m a career woman and I’ve pretty much given up the notion of finding Mr. Right because it seems they’re already taken. What you have out there now are men like the Steeles, the Hard-Ons, the Idiots and the Dawgs. They are the men who want one thing and one thing only. I’m prepared for them because personally, I want only one thing myself. I no longer have any grandiose ideas of settling down, marrying a man who is my soul mate, having babies and living happily ever after. All it takes is for me to watch divorce court on television to know it doesn’t work that way. At least not anymore and not for most people.”
Brittany felt sad for her friend. When they were teenagers, Nikki had dreamed of a knight in shining armor.
“What about you?” Nikki interrupted her thoughts by asking. “I remember you weren’t in a rush to ever marry. You wanted to see the world first. And,” she added, lowering her voice, “you were sort of against men because of what that man tried to do to you that time.”
Nikki’s words suddenly yanked Brittany out of the present and pushed her right smack back into the past when she’d been thirteen and Mr. Ponder, a male friend of one of her foster parents, had tried forcing himself on her. He would have succeeded had she not bit him hard enough for him to let her go. It was the first time she’d run away from a foster home. After telling the policemen who’d found her what happened—or almost happened—the authorities had placed her in another foster home right away.
That move had been a blessing because that’s when she’d met Nikki. Nikki’s family had lived across the street from the Dugans. At first the trauma of what the man had tried doing left Brittany withdrawn, confused and alone. But all that changed when Nikki became her friend. At some point she’d felt comfortable enough with Nikki to share her secret.
“Brit, maybe I shouldn’t have brought it up,” she heard Nikki saying. “I’m sorry.”
She met her friend’s apologetic gaze. “No, I’m fine, although I haven’t thought of it in years. But now I’m wondering if that episode has anything to do with why…”
When her words faltered, Nikki raised a brow and asked, “Why what?”
Brittany glanced around to make sure no one was listening to their conversation, leaned over the table and whispered, “Why I don’t enjoy sex like most women.”
“It might and then again, it might not. Some men are just selfish in the bedroom. It’s all about them and they could care less if you get your pleasures or not. You might have been involved with those types.”
Nikki smiled and then continued. “What you need is a man who has the ability to tap into those hidden pleasures. And if that’s true, based on what I’ve heard, a Steele is