One Wild Night

Now Anita was being a pest and he needed to come up with the right way to squish her before she caused too many problems for him. How shameless could a person be? How unreasonable? What was the reason she was telling Lucy all of this? He was certain it was just to make Lucy feel guilty and to cause misunderstanding between them. What he couldn\'t understand was what she stood to gain from it, since they both knew that he was NEVER going to get involved with her again, whether or not things worked out between him and Lucy.

"Should I just fire her?" Tom asked after a while, even though he hated to mix business with pleasure.

"On what ground?" Lucy asked, turning to look at him. Even though Anita made her feel very uncomfortable, she knew that it wouldn\'t make sense to let him fire her just because of her insecurities.

"What if I say because I don\'t like seeing her?" Tom asked, and Lucy smiled.

"We both know you are more reasonable than that. I hate that I let her get to me this way. I\'m sorry," Lucy murmured.

"You don\'t have to be sorry. Just tell me what I can do to help you feel better? I don\'t like the way you\'re feeling right now. Should I give you my black card? I read somewhere that women love to shop when they\'re upset," Tom said, making Lucy giggle.

"Don\'t make me a materialistic person," Lucy chided with a smile, "I already feel better merely by being with you like this. So don\'t worry. I\'ll be okay, I just need to clear my head," Lucy assured him.

"Alright. I should help you clear your head then," Tom said with a wink as he turned the car in a different direction from the house.

"Where are we going to?" Lucy asked in surprise at the sudden turn.

"Somewhere I think you\'ll like. You\'ll see," Tom promised her with a mischievous smile.

Lucy gazed at him as he drove the car, and different thoughts ran through her mind while she watched him. After some time she cleared her throat, "Can I ask you a question?" She asked curiously.

"Sure. Anything."

Lucy took in a deep breath, "Why are you interested in me? I mean, I\'m sure that there are many other ladies who would want you even if you were jobless and couldn\'t afford anything. So why me?"

Sparing a glance at her, Tom could tell from how tense she looked that his response mattered to her a lot, and as such, he needed to make sure that he didn\'t just say the right thing, but he told her exactly how he felt about her.

He reached for her hand with his right hand, and raised her palm to his lips, kissing it softly, "How about I answer your question at the end of the day?" Tom asked, and Lucy gave him a nod as she tried to focus on what he said and not the fluttery feeling in her belly.

"And just so you know, I\'m not trying to stall or anything. I just want to make sure you\'re thinking straight before I say anything," Tom added as he let go of her hand. The last thing he wanted was for her to think that he didn\'t know why he wanted her.

"Sure. I believe you," Lucy assured him with a small smile.

A few minutes later Tom drove into the parking lot of a club Lucy recognized, and she sat up to look at the place in surprise before bursting into a peal of laughter, "You\'ve got to be kidding me!" She exclaimed as she looked from the building before them to Tom, and then back again.

Tom smiled as he watched her. He had guessed that bringing her back to the club where they had met was going to cheer her up a little, and he was glad to see that she looked excited.

"Since you\'re so good at roleplays, how about we reenact the night we met? And then I will tell you why I\'m so crazy about you, aside from the fact that you\'re crazy," Tom asked with a grin.

Lucy giggled again as she shook her head at him. It seemed like years since she was last there, even though she knew that it was barely a month ago. So much had happened in less than a month. So much had changed.

"Are we going to end the night at your friend\'s mansion then?" She asked with a teasing smile.

"That\'s if you\'re drunk enough to be knocked out in the backseat of the car. So what do you say?" Tom asked, wriggling his brows playfully.

"This should be fun," Lucy said with a grin as she let down the car visor mirror, "I\'m not with my lens, and I\'m still dressed in work clothes," she complained as she let down her hair once again, and then fished inside her handbag for a lipstick.

"You still would have caught my attention with your hair up and glasses in place. The only reason I prefer seeing you without your glasses and with your hair down is that that\'s the first version of you I saw," Tom assured her as he watched her fuss over her appearance.

Lucy flicked him a smile, "You know you\'ll have to go in first, right? I\'ll be right behind you," Lucy said as they both got out of the car and Tom gave her the car key.

Once he disappeared into the club, she adjusted her skirt and took off the blazers she was wearing. She threw the blazer on the backseat of the car, leaving just her gray-colored sleeveless turtleneck shirt which was tucked into a charcoal-colored knee-length bodycon skirt.

Satisfied with her appearance, Lucy combed her fingers through her hair one more time and adjusted the glasses on the bridge of her nose before shutting the car and catwalking into the club.

She stopped by the entrance as she had done the first time, and let her eyes move around the hall. This time she wasn\'t standing there as the naive and shy lady she was the last time, looking for a one-night stand. This time her eyes moved around until they settled on Tom who was already sipping from a glass of wine and was watching her intently.

"Hey, pretty!" One of the men called, but Lucy ignored him as she made her way towards the bar.

"Hello, Sam!" Lucy greeted the barman with a wide smile, and he looked at her for a moment as though he was trying to recall where he had seen her, and then his eyes lit up when he finally recognized her.

"Lucy, right? You look different. It\'s the glasses, I think," he observed with a welcoming smile which Lucy returned.

"I think so too," Lucy said with a grin, pleasantly surprised that he not only remembered her face but her name too.

"How have you been? You settled in okay?" He asked as he went around the bar with a barstool which he moved to where Tom was seated as he had done the last time.

"Yeah. Got some really nice neighbors," Lucy said as she sat down while ignoring Tom who now appeared to be busy with his phone.

"That\'s great. You want a double martini?" Sam asked curiously, and Lucy turned to look at what Tom was drinking.

"I\'d like to have what he is having," Lucy said, and Sam looked from Tom to Lucy and then gave her a nod before walking away.

"It\'s called a mojito," Tom spoke from beside her.

"Excuse me?" Lucy asked as she pushed a stray hair behind her ear.

"I figured since you wanted to drink what I\'m having, you should know what it is called," Tom responded, "Hi, I\'m Thompson Hanky," Tom said with a playful light in his eyes, and Lucy giggled at the joke.

"It\'s very nice to meet you, Mr. Hanky Panky. You can call me Cinda Paris. So what do you do for a living?" Lucy asked, looking at him expectantly.

Tom looked around him as though he was nervous, and then signaled to her to come closer so that he could whisper the answer into her ears, "I\'m a banker," Tom waited for a second before adding, "I mean I\'m a donor at the sperm bank."

Lucy howled with laughter as Sam returned with her drink, and he looked at them both curiously, remembering that Tom had been the one who had taken her home the last time, "You both seem to be getting along quite well," he observed with a small smile as he set down her drink.

They both exchanged a look but said nothing to him, as they watched him leave, "So what about you? What do you do?" Tom asked curiously.

Lucy leaned forward in her seat, "I\'m a stripper," she said in a sultry whisper, and Tom chuckled as he watched her. He could tell she was having fun. Not only were her cheeks filled with color, but her eyes were also filled with warmth and light.

One of the many things he loved most about her, was how easy it was to please her and get her to snap out of a bad mood. He intended to keep it that way. All he wanted was for her to always be happy, and he would be damned if he let Anita or anyone else disturb her peace.

While they were both at the club having fun, Anita who was seated in her living room watching the evening news, picked up her phone when it started ringing, "Yes?"

"I think you might like what I found," the person at the other end of the line informed her.

The right side of Anita\'s lips arched in a crooked smile, "Send it to my email. You can proceed with the others," Anita said before hanging up.

For Lucy\'s sake, she hoped that she would back out easily now that she was still playing nice and acting like a friend.. Things were going to get messy for everyone involved if Lucy failed to back out.