Chapter One
Esa laughed with a mixture of amusement and exasperation as her best friend poked at her shoulders and herded her out the door like she was a cow in the Chicago stockyards.
“What’s with you?” Esa asked as she closed the office door and locked it.
“I’ve got a date at six,” Carla said, her face glowing with excitement and the new foundation product she’d bought on the internet last week while she was supposed to be filing Esa’s Medicare claims. Esa sighed. That’s what she got for hiring her down-and-out best friend to be her administrative assistant.
“You’re nuts. We’ll never make it downtown by six in Friday night construction traffic.”
“We don’t have to make it downtown,” Carla said with a self-satisfied expression. “We just have to make it to the viaduct on 63rd and the Dan Ryan.”
“You have a date with someone at 63rd Street and the Dan Ryan,” Esa repeated dryly.
“Well, not exactly. It’s not so much a date as it is a checking-out-the-goods session. Kitten’s reporter called it a Scheduled Traffic Flirtation, I think.”
Esa’s steps slowed as they crossed the parking lot. She’d caught a nose-full of trouble on the cool autumn breeze. It was hard to say whether it was the reference to her hugely successful, size four, mischievous little sister or the mention of her ridiculously popular magazine for single young Chicagoans, Metro Sexy, which had the more pungent odor.
“Scheduled Traffic Flirtation?” Esa asked warily.
Carla giggled hysterically as she grabbed Esa’s arm and hurried her to the awaiting red convertible.
“You didn’t read the article in Metro Sexy, did you? The one about singles flirting in Dan Ryan construction traffic? I’m the one who gave Kitten the idea,” Carla squealed with irrepressible excitement. “I’ve been waiting for the right moment to tell you. I’ll explain everything once we get on the road. Give me the keys, I’m driving.”
Esa caught a quick glimpse of vanity plates that read SXKITN69 on the back of her sister’s racy Ferrari convertible. You’d think she’d been driving naked to work for two days given all the lewd stares, shouted indecent proposals, suggestive cell phone waving and creeps following them off the interstate. Esa’d practically killed them during Smoky-and-the-Bandit style evasive maneuvers, trying to lose the horny jerks while Carla laughed hysterically in the seat next to her.
Kitten—Rachel that is. Esa refused to call her sister by that stupid childhood nickname—lived and worked downtown. Otherwise there was no way in hell her extremely pretty little sister would put up with the ridiculous behavior Esa had been forced to endure while driving that racy sports car to the suburbs. But maybe Rachel just considered such idiocy part and parcel of her sexy image.
Suddenly her sister’s insistence that she trade cars with her took on a sinister aspect. Rachel had claimed that she needed a more staid vehicle for her extended business trip to Indianapolis.
That was Esa all right, the staid, stodgy, boring, older Ormond sister.
“How long have you been planning this?” Esa asked as she got into the passenger seat. She realized that she sounded bitter but in truth she was a little hurt that Carla and Rachel had been plotting together without her knowledge. Sure, she was the gerontologist in the family and not the life of the party, sexy publisher but she was still a fun-loving city gal, wasn’t she?
Or at least she used to be.
Carla, Rachel and she used to regularly stay out until three or four in the morning on the weekends, dining out at the trendiest restaurants, helping to plan Junior League charitable functions and then dressing to the nines for the lavish events, skipping out of work early on a Friday to catch a Cubs game, dancing and drinking at the clubs and creating all sorts of mischief in the romance arena.
The appeal of being a carefree Chicago socialite had dimmed quickly, however. Esa grew weary of the backbiting and vicious sniping between women. In addition, her parents—who used to wear patient, vaguely amused expressions when she and Rachel discussed Junior League events—could hardly be considered high-society headliner material.
“We haven’t planned it for long,” Carla said with a wave of her hand before she pulled on her seat belt. “A month or two. Long enough for me to have organized the Dan Ryan Construction Flirting chat loop online.”
“The what?”
Carla’s ecstatic expression faded quickly when she glanced down.
“Oh shit.”
“What?” Esa asked, more confused by the second.
“I forgot it was a stick shift.”
Carla’s blue eyes looked enormous when she met Esa’s gaze. Her lush lower lip, shiny with freshly applied lip gloss, poked forward in a pout. Esa knew from years of experience that Carla’s “helpless blonde” expression reeled the sharks in like filet mignon on the end of a hook. Fortunately for Esa, she was both a straight female and a vegetarian.
“I can’t drive a stick shift!”
“I know you can’t. I was wondering what you thought you were doing,” Esa replied with a smirk.
Carla’s eyelids narrowed speculatively. The manic gleam returned. “You’ll just have to drive.” She plopped the keys into Esa’s lap and clambered out of the driver’s seat. “I told Vito I was a blonde bombshell. You’re an auburn-haired girl-next-door. He’ll never mistake you for me. What difference does it make who’s driving?”
Vito? Esa mouthed in silent incredulity. Her knuckles turned white as she gripped the car keys. This just kept getting better and better, didn’t it? She still hadn’t moved when Carla flung open the passenger side door.
“Well?” she asked breathlessly. “Come on, Esa, you owe me after forcing me to go on that boring medical bookkeeping seminar last month.”
“I sent you on that all-expense-paid seminar in Des Moines, Iowa because I thought you might want to improve your job skills,” she muttered between tensed lips. Carla gave her a bland look.
“All right, I’ll drive. Under one condition,” Esa added when she saw Carla grin triumphantly. “Tell me everything about this stupid idea. I want to know precisely what kind of idiocy I’m going to have to bail you and Rachel out of.”
“You won’t be able to bail us out if you’re in the clinker right there with us. Come on, Esa, picture it—a yummy, muscle-bound, bronzed construction worker-dude glazed from perspiration after some serious labor in bed.” Carla’s eyes sparkled merrily. “Don’t tell me you’re not thinking about how fun it would be.”
Esa didn’t put up too much of a fuss when Carla insisted she put down the top on the convertible once they’d reached 67th Street on the Ryan. The crisp fall air felt refreshing on her skin and temporarily made her forget that she was breathing the fumes of thousands of trucks and cars that communally moved like a gargantuan glass and metal slug on the pavement. Now that she understood that Carla’s “date” wasn’t actually mobile—some psycho stalker who could follow them into the city—but a stationary target, Esa felt a little better about her friend’s crazy scheme.
“Since when have you been attracted to construction workers?” Esa asked as they inched forward in the clogged river of vehicles. The gargantuan project to widen I-94, otherwise known as the Dan Ryan, was already the stuff of urban legend even by Chicago standards, where everyone knew there were only two seasons—winter and road construction. The Dan Ryan project wasn’t so much highway construction as it was road building on an epic scale, like the Romans used to do. Commuting from Esa’s downtown loft to her suburban office had become a downright nightmare.
Carla waited for the rattling ‘L’ train next to them to pass before she answered. “Are you blind, Esa? You must be the only straight woman in Chicago who isn’t drooling over those hunks while you’re driving to work in the morning. I mean, there’s got to be—what?—thousands of them parading around out there. The only thing better than tight butts in jeans are flexing tight butts in jeans.” Carla checked her lipstick quickly in the mirror. “Steely thighs, bronzed biceps, broad shoulders—”
“Anything holding these guys’ body parts together?” Esa asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “It’s a good thing I drive us to work or you’d be helping other horny woman in the city contribute to Chicago’s traffic nightmare.”
“Just stop it right now, Esa.”
Carla’s sharp rebuke nearly caused Esa to plow into the Ford Taurus in front of them.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asked Carla in dawning amazement. Carla hardly ever got truly pissy, which is exactly what she appeared to be at the moment.
“I should be asking you the same thing,” Carla said as she hurled her lipstick into her makeup bag like a deadly missile. The scowl she wore marred her otherwise pretty, perfectly made-up face. “Or better yet, I should be asking you who you are and what you did with my best friend Esa Ormond. Clearly someone has stolen her and replaced her with some kind of alien robot whose idea of a good time is to write journal articles on the pros and cons of Viagra use and attend bingo night at the Shady Lawn Nursing Home.”
“Carla, listen—”
“No, you listen. I tried not to complain too much when you started to refuse to go out with Kitten and me. I figured you’d just been burned a few too many times dating and were starting to focus more on yourself and your career.”
“I did want to focus more on my career—”