Andie nodded. “He would according to the gossip I hear from the students in the kitchen.”
“I bet you hear a lot.” Marie shook her head. “But all that stopped after he met Winnie. They hit it off right away and that was all she wrote. From then on it was Winnie and Lennox.”
“Did she know how you felt about him?”
“I don’t know. I never told her that I had admired him from afar or that I had a crush on him. Besides, he never looked at me the way he looked at Winnie. And that hasn’t changed.”
So why hadn’t she given up? Why was she still half in love with him after all these years? Why had she jumped at the chance to work at his academy when he called her up and offered her a job so soon after its completion?
Because some part of her held on to the hope that someday he would want her, that he might desire her in that same way.
“There’s no delicate way to ask this,” Andie said. “So I’ll just be blunt. What does he do for sex? I mean, I find it hard to believe he’s been celibate for so long.”
Mariela knew she wasn’t able to hide either her wince or the bitterness in her voice. “I can’t say for sure, but I know he heads to the mainland a few times a month. It’s always overnight on a Friday and he’s back on Saturday. I assume that’s what he’s doing. Though I don’t know anything about who he might be meeting there.”
She’d thought about sneaking out to spy on him, follow him to see where he went.
“There’s no good way to follow him,” Andie said. Obviously her mind was as devious as Mariela’s. “Since it’s an island, he’d see another boat behind him.” She thought for a second and snapped her fingers. “I know! Have you thought about telling him you need to go to the mainland? That way you can ride the boat with him and maybe follow him when you get off?”
“Yes, but then I think about being on the boat with him. Knowing, or at least being fairly certain of, what he’s getting ready to do . . .” She shook her head. “I can’t do it. I can’t be so close to him, knowing that there’s another woman waiting for him on the other side.”
“I can understand that.”
“I can’t help but wonder about her. Is it always the same woman? Or does he have a handful that he rotates through? What’s the sex like? Is it rough? Does he dominate her, just a little? Or is it strictly vanilla?”
“You have to stop. You can’t torture yourself like that.”
But Mariela couldn’t stop—and it felt so good to be able to share her thoughts with someone else, she didn’t want to stop. “And then, after I ask all those questions, I look in the mirror and ask myself, why not me? Is it so impossible that he could find something in me to interest him?”
“Because you’re worth more than that and you deserve better. You want to be more than a convenient way for a man to scratch an itch.”
“I can’t help but think that sometimes maybe scratching the itch is enough. I mean, it’s more than I’m doing now.”
Andie pressed her lips together in a line. It was so hard for Mariela to believe that a few months ago, Andie had enrolled at the academy as a virgin. Now she was sitting in Mariela’s office offering her sex advice. The universe was certainly funny sometimes.
“I know what you need,” Andie finally said with a nod. “Yes, indeed. This is perfect.”
“I can’t wait to hear, Oh, Wise One,” Mariela said, and she was teasing, just a little.
“Joke all you want, but this is foolproof.”
Mariela lifted an eyebrow.
“You need a plan,” Andie said confidently. “A master plan of seduction.”
WINNIE’S JOURNAL
Holy hell and a half, Marie knew him! Okay, truthfully, she’d never met him, but she knew who he was. Lennox MacLure. Real estate mogul. Except she had an odd look on her face when she admitted she knew who he was, like there was more to the story than that. But she wouldn’t tell me. I didn’t understand, she’d never withheld information from me before.
Then she told me he wasn’t my type. Well, screw her. She only said that because she wanted him for herself. I could tell by the way she looked at him. But the thing was, I knew she wouldn’t do anything about it, so I decided to march up to him and introduce myself.
CHAPTER
Two
On a scale of one to ten, Mariela put the idea of a seduction plan at around a six. She didn’t think anything too scripted would work. Besides, hadn’t she been working from a plan for the last couple of years?
But Andie looked undeterred. In fact, she looked downright excited.
“Where’s some paper?” Andie jumped off the loveseat and jogged to the desk. “And a pen. We have to write this down.”
Mariela found she couldn’t roll her eyes and tell her to drop it. Poor Andie was way too positive this plan would be the thing that turned Lennox around. No, she couldn’t tell her to stop, but she could tell her the truth.
“I really don’t think this is going to work,” Mariela said. “Trust me. I’ve done it all.”
“Not like this you haven’t.” Andie had found a pad of paper and turned to a clean page. “You see, I bet you’ve always worked on trying to get Lennox to notice you.”
“Isn’t that the point?”
“Eventually. But what we need first is for him to understand that he needs to accept his Dominant nature.” Andie wrote furiously on the paper.
Mariela had to admit it sounded like a good place to start. And, truth be told, she hadn’t approached Lennox from that angle. It might be worth at least hearing Andie’s plan. “Go on.”
“He’s a man,” Andie spoke without looking up. “So we have to keep in mind that whatever we do, you need to let him think it’s his idea. He’ll balk if he realizes it’s someone else’s plan.”
“That’s a man for you.”
“Exactly. The second thing to remember is we have to take baby steps. No big leaps. He isn’t going to go from nothing to a full-fledged scene, you know?”
Mariela nodded, a bubble of excitement starting to grow in her belly. “Makes sense.”
“The third and last thing before we get into the actual plan is that we have to expect setbacks and not let them get us down.”
“That’s a hard one.”
“Right. But probably the most important.” Andie looked up. “You’ve said he’s been in denial for a long time and that means his patterns of behavior are seriously ingrained. Setbacks are going to happen.”
She knew Andie was right, but she also knew how hard it was not to feel discouraged when he acted cold toward her. She had to remember she was in this for the long haul.
“I guess when any setbacks crop up, I’ll have you here to support me and not let me quit.”
“Now you’re starting to get the idea.” Andie had a mischievous gleam in her eye. “Now, step one. Do you think he needs to direct a scene?”
Mariela shook her head. “I think we need an even smaller first baby step. I’m not sure the last time he watched a scene.”
Andie gave a low whistle. “That bad?” At Mariela’s nod of confirmation, she continued. “Okay. So step one should be him watching a scene.”
“We should jot down any ideas we have for how we’re going to accomplish these things.”
“Yes.” Andie wrote something else down. “I think that one should be relatively easy. We have the new students coming in. We can arrange for all the instructors to be busy and he’s the only one who can be in the classroom making sure no one gets hurt.”
“Yes, that’s the perfect first step. It’ll be just far enough outside his comfort zone to stretch him, but not so far that he’ll have to refuse.”
“This is going to work. I can feel it.”
“I hope so.” Mariela had to admit, it was the most optimistic she’d been in a long time. Heaven alone knew why she hadn’t given up hope entirely way before now. She’d actually tried to break away once. She left for the summer two years ago, never planning to return to the islan
d, but she didn’t last a month before she was back and near Lennox once again.