The Contingency Plan (The Lonely Heart Series) (2 page)

But she wasn’t a fool. 

Sully had options. 

Everyone loved his larger than life personality and his amazing good looks.  When you put them together, you got high voltage electricity and everything he touched came to life.  And she didn’t mind his prev
i
ous reputation or his personality the way that other girls had.  That was what made things exciting for them.  He was an older guy with experience under his belt and he was always willing to show her new things. 

Plus, it wasn’t hard to impress her.  She just wan
t
ed him to be himself.  She liked him that way.  Just Sully.

When he had first approached her to work more closely on the campaign with him seven months ago, she had instantly recognized their attraction to each other, but never in life did she imagine that he’d make a move.

She had been wrong.

A month into their working relationship, one eve
n
ing after everyone had left the campaign volunteer meeting and they were cleaning up, Sully had asked her out for a beer.  Well ten beers and two ping pong games later, they were in the back of a smoky bar kissing like crazy. The next morning, she woke up at his place in his dress shirt smelling like his cologne and being served eggs Benedict. 

Neither one of them expected it to happen again, but it did – that next evening. It kept happening. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that they were crazy about each other regardless of all their differences, because the more they talked, the more that they realized they were far more similar than anyone else knew.  

Subsequently, Sully quit being a playboy, and Charlie fell in love with her boss. Things never got awkward for them, which was a surprise in itself, but it was only because they kept one cardinal rule – the separation of work and bed. 

“One burger or two?” Sully asked, separating the hamburger meat into small balls. Digging into the stainless steel refrigerator, he pulled out her favorite deli dill pickles and put them on a plate. 

“One,” Charlie said, walking inside of the condo.  She grabbed the handle to close the door to the patio, but Sully quickly protested.

“Leave it open.  That’s why I bought the place.” When he smiled at her, his gray eyes sparkled and her heart fluttered like a teenager.  “The view is unbelie
v
able,” he said, taking out their plates. 

So is the view of you
, she thought to herself with a snicker.  If he only knew how crazy she really was about him, it might change things for the worse. He might freak out and run away from too much em
o
tional pressure.

She knew how these things went. After seeing her mom suffer through four very unhealthy relationships where she had worn her feelings on her sleeve and the men used it against her, Charlie had learned to keep the
Romeo and Juliet
confessions of love and admir
a
tion to a minimum.  They were damned near none existent.  Instead, she just tried to show Sully that she cared.  Actions spoke a hell of a lot louder than words anyway. 

Letting go of the handle to the door, she walked through the carefully designed, very masculine, South Beach posh living room into the open, airy kitchen and sat down on one of the tall bar stools across from him at the island table. 

The receding lights high above them in the black vaulted ceiling shined down on his thick chocolate curls of perfect
preppy
hair and his bronze, Miami deep tan and made his eyes sparkle even more.  Sully’s eyes were devastating – one of his best features on an already great body.  They were like a sea of gray foamy water, reminding her of the beach on a cloudy day.  And whenever he was thinking naughty thoughts it looked like a storm was brewing inside of them. 

He looked at her now with anticipated hopes of cosmic sex while he prepared their meal. 
Sully considered food – even Sloppy
Joes
– an aphrodi
s
iac
.  And she loved to watch him cook.  He seemed so in his element in the kitchen making secret sauces and cutting up vegetables and spices.  But then again, when was Sully ever out of his element? 

“Need some help?” she asked, twisting around in her chair as she stole a pickle from the plate and slipped it seductively into her mouth. 

He paused as he watched her eat the pickle, and then answered with a grin that brought out the dimple in his strong chin.  “No, just sit there and watch me work my magic,” he said, adjusting his
Man’s Job
apron.  “Eat another pickle, if you’d like.  Next time, suck it before you chew.”

“Hmm. I didn’t know that you had a food fetish,” she said playfully. 

“The kinkiest kind of fetish.  I love to watch you eat phallic foods.  Pickles, corn dogs, popsicles, ban
a
nas…”

Charlie picked up another pickle and sucked it b
e
fore biting the tip. “Is that good for you, baby?”

“You have no idea,” he said with a raised brow. 

Obediently, she propped her elbows up on the granite countertop and watched as he cooked, adding more haste to his preparation with her teasing. 

At 31 years old, Sully was the ideal bachelor – i
n
telligent, handsome, well-built, successful and char
m
ing.  Everyone loved Sully; he had been William’s secret weapon in the race.  The women loved him for his beauty, and the men respected him because he was a
man’s man
.  He also was an exact replica of his brother, just a younger, wilder version.  All the Orrin men were prizes from the father to the four brothers, but the youngest was the grand prize.  Sully was special. 

A Yale alumnus, who had been a running back for the Bulldogs and graduated at the top of his class, Sully had come home to work for his father in Florida only recently.  Prior to that, he had worked on coun
t
less campaigns for democrats all over the country.  But like his brother, Sully had a passion for South Florida politics and when Will chose to run for office to change the area for the better, he had jumped at the chance to run the campaign. 

It was supposed to be a win-win situation.  And if anyone had asked Charlie, she would have bet her last breath that they would have won this election. 

Lead by three, lost by five
. 

She dipped her head at the thought. 

“You’re still dwelling on it, aren’t you?” Sully asked, putting the prepared meat into the skillet.  He turned around and wiped his hands on his apron. 

“I am,” she confessed.  

“Let it go, Charlie.  Just for the remainder of the night, let’s just focus on us.” 

“Us?” Charlie cracked a smile at the thought. “What about
us
, Sully?” She loved to say his name. 
Sully. Sully. Sully.
  She adorned him, though she would not say it out loud.  

The food began to burn just in time to save him from his slip up.  He turned his back to her quickly and poured in his secret ingredients.  “I just mean that
we
should have a contingency plan.  Everyone has to have one.  For instance, you knew that if we didn’t win, then you’d have to look for employment els
e
where after the election. I mean, it is November now.  In December, you will graduate from the University of Miami, and then you go into the real world.”

“I’m already in the
real world
,” she corrected, ta
k
ing another swig from her bottle.  She eyed his back and noticed that he was growing tense. 

Heaving a sigh, he said, “Okay, forget I said that.  The point is that you had to have a plan for after graduation, just in case the campaign went to shit.”  He tilted his head.  “Which it did.”

Charlie hesitated.  “I thought that we would win.  I was certain of it as recently as last night.”

Sully was suddenly concerned.  “So you haven’t lined up interviews for after graduation with anyone?”

Charlie tried to shrug her shoulders.  “Of course I have,” she lied. “I’m not stupid.”  She had been. 

There was immediate relief in Sully’s eyes.  “
Exac
t
ly
,” he said with enthusiasm. “You have a contingency plan.  You’re a smart woman.  I would normally say smart
girl
, but considering I’m sleeping with the intern who also happens to be ten years younger than me, I have to say
woman
to make me feel better about myself.”

Charlie laughed.  “I am grown woman.  And you’re only ten years older than me. It’s not like you’re that old, or I’m that young.  In this society, it’s perfec
t
ly normal for older men to date younger women and vice versa, especially in the workplace.”  Getting back to the point, she shifted the attention.  “Do you have one?”

Sully leaned on the island.  “A contingency plan? Of course I do.  I’m going to file for welfare and get food stamps and section 8 since we lost the campaign.  Oh and I plan to get pregnant…immediately. I’m looking for an athlete, but I’ll settle for a musician.”

Charlie spit her beer out laughing at his ridiculous remark.  “I can’t believe that you just said that.”

“
What?
  We’re democrats…you didn’t know? That’s what we do,” he joked, making fun of the ridiculous accusations that they’d heard on the ca
m
paign trail about women, the system and the dem
o
crat’s desire to
baby
the less fortunate.

Rolling her eyes, she wiped her face with a napkin and kicked her shoes off. It felt good to rub her aching feet against each other. “No, I’m serious. Now you were grilling me in your own way.  You mean to tell me that you don’t have a plan set up for
post-mortem
.”

“Hmm.  Clever word usage.  I like that.  Okay.  Here’s the Sully philosophy,” he said, picking up his own beer as he began his lecture.  “Not much of your life should be spontaneous in my opinion.  You should have a plan based upon where you have been and where you are going.  You should wake up every morning with a plan, Charlie, and go to bed making one.  Now life happens in the process, but you should have a just in case plan for that.  You get what I’m saying?   You should have a
contingency
plan for when…well, when life happens.” 

“You still didn’t answer my question,” she said, ignoring his rant. 

Deflating, he lowered his bottle.  “I plan to go and work for the mayor.  He has already offered me a job running his public relations department.” 

“Wow, when did you line this up?” she asked, i
m
pressed and happy that he would be remaining in the city.  Maybe there was hope for them after all. 

“No one else knows.  I spoke with him a few months into the campaign and then again about a month ago, because like I said, you always need a…”

Charlie cut him off. “I know.  A contingency plan,” she said, rolling her eyes. 

“Exactly,” Sully said, nodding her way.  “You’re learning.”

Teaching his girlfriend and watching her learn mildly turned Sully on and gave him an idea for a perfect role-playing session for later.  Walking over to where she sat, he moved his body in between her legs and bent to kiss her full, mouth.  He had waited all day for this and planned to enjoy every minute.  Moving slowly and deliberately with his kiss, he emptied his emotions into every evolution he made around her fleshy tongue, sucking on her big bottom lip and cupping her face with his large hands.  

Drained from his touch, when he finally pulled away from her mouth, she saw stars.  She sucked her bottom lip to taste the last of him and felt a pool of familiar silk below. 

As he stared into her eyes, hypnotizing her, his nimble fingers ran down her crisp, white button-down and began to slowly pick them open. 

She watched with a hint of amusement.

“The meat is burning,” she said, looking over his broad shoulder at the stove.

“Umm, let it burn,” he said, opening her blouse to see her white lace bra.  His index finger trailed around her hidden nipple.  “You make me think of Langston Hughes poem about sweet Harlem women.  You know that.”

“Why don’t you recite it to me when we get to bed?”

Turning around quickly, Sully went over and turned off the stove then returned to her.  “Say no more.  We can eat after we work up an appetite.”

Charlie couldn’t help but giggle.  Mostly because Sully was great in bed.  He had a body like a Greek god – huge meaty chest, carved abs, thick chunky thighs, long legs, muscular back and a more than generous undercarriage. 

“Do you want to do it right here or up in the bed?” he asked, taking off his blue dress shirt.  The veins in his arms protruded down from the caps of his carved shoulders down to his strong hands. 

Charlie cracked a devious grin.  “Let’s do it on the patio,” she said, looking out at the balcony.  “It’s beautiful out there tonight.”  Trailing a kiss down his neck, she shoved her hands down in his slacks and felt his rock-hard manhood. “Plus, I don’t think that we can make it to the bedroom.”