Going to Extremes

Opening one of the small champagne bottles she brought on trips for nightcaps, she curled into bed with Dan’s book. She’d see what the buzz was about and remind herself why the breakup had been the best thing that had happened to her.

She scanned the chapter titles until one caught her eye. “The Excesses of Youth” started out in italics:

A young man of my acquaintance fell head over heels with a woman who considered sensual pleasure her religion.

Hmm, that sounded familiar.

Being young and naive and uncertain of himself, he was soon drowning in the whirlpool of her passion. He couldn’t be away from her, began failing classes, avoiding his friends, until he had nothing else but her. In short, he completely lost sight of his identity, his needs and his life goals.

This was about Dan and her, no question. Electricity rushed through Kathleen. She skimmed ahead.

Of course, inexperienced as he was, the young man was unable to recognize the psychological problems with which his lover struggled. Her obsession with pleasure kept her from recognizing real emotion. Sex was like a drug to her. The young man’s intense reaction—she’d forced him into her world of excess and extremes—affirmed her sense of herself and her importance in the world. Her narcissism made it hard for her to see the damage she was doing to the man she believed she loved.

Luckily, the young man had enough self-knowledge to realize what was happening before it was too late. After a terrible incident of anger and jealousy, he broke away from the woman before her emotional recklessness destroyed him.

Oh. My. God. So much for Dan’s “We were young…I was bewildered” bullshit. He thought she was narcissistic, unbalanced, immature and emotionally reckless?

She’d accept immature and unbalanced. Maybe even reckless. But she’d been crazy over him, too. A little scared, but mostly because of how jealous and possessive he’d acted at the end. In his book, he sounded noble and brave, standing up for himself against the depraved nymphomaniac.

Oh, this was outrageous. Anger pulsed through her in thick clots, thudded against her skull, pounded at her temples. She would talk to him right now. Straighten him out, once and for all. She launched herself out of the bed and marched across her suite, her feet barely touching the carpet.

At her door, she stopped. If she burst into his room and yelled at him, she’d look like an emotional maniac. Any person would be upset—no, enraged—at being maligned, even anonymously, in a book to be read by thousands. Tens of thousands if their promotional tour had its intended impact.

But she would not give Dan the satisfaction of seeing her yell or cry. She would calm down first and rationally explain how dead wrong he was.

She took a deep breath and blew it out slowly, dizzy with fury. She clenched her fists, then forced herself to release them. Calm, calm, calm. You can handle this. But her anger wouldn’t go away that fast. She began to pace, stopping each time just as she reached for the door to go to him, spinning on her heel and marching the length of the suite again, like a caged leopard—a caged, furious leopard…the source of her fury just outside the bars.

Dan McAlister was not above the sexual fray. Maybe he could fool his readers, his clients, the Rhondas of the world, but he couldn’t fool Kathleen. She knew him. That way.

For some reason, JJ’s words came to her: So sleep with him. Show him the error of his ways. No. Absolutely not. Sex was a beautiful physical connection between two caring people, dammit. It should never be an act of revenge or anger.

Besides, how could she sleep with a guy she wanted to deck?

No, she would talk to him. Gently explain in her most sensible voice what a wrongheaded, self-centered dick he was.

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