There was a lot there to chew on, not the least of which was "brixers." Her mother? What would her mother have wanted with all that goofy stuff?
Lucie glared at him. "Sheesh! I can't believe your stupid interrogation about underpants couldn't wait until I was done with my bath. I can't believe you. Will you get out of here, please?"
His mind whirling, Ian stepped back. "Fine."
He was so confused, there was nothing else he could think to do.
* * *
Later, much later, Lucie deigned to come downstairs. She'd brushed her hair into a ponytail, found a pink T-shirt and a denim jumper, and thrown on her favorite collection of five or six vintage bangle bracelets. After squirting on a tiny bit of perfume, she decided she was ready to face Ian.
She could also smell food, as if he were scrounging up things in her kitchen. Coffee, definitely. And something with cinnamon.
She told herself that if it weren't for the fact that she was starving, she would've let him stew longer. Good grief. What a dope. She'd only let him stay in the first place on sufferance, and then he'd invaded her bath!
The creep had actually waved her beautiful underwear designs in the air, called them kinky, and stared at her breasts in the bathtub. Could he be any more obnoxious? He deserved to be spanked.
Spanked. In a pair of bikini briefs. Oh, yeah. He would fill a pair of those out like nobody's business.
Her face flushing with warmth, Lucie almost stumbled on the fourth step down. Okay, now wait just a second. Where did that overpowering mental image come from? She'd worked up a good head of steam being mad at him, and all of a sudden she was lost in a fantasy of how good he'd look in her teeniest bikini briefs and how his firm rump would feel if she spanked him.
She lifted a hand to cover her eyes. She was not being herself. Back to the righteous indignation, she ordered herself. You know, the part about how he had no right to malign your underwear designs when he would fill them out so well himself.
No that wasn't it. Anger, she commanded. Find your anger. You are a professional. You design underwear. You don't have to think about Ian anywhere near your underwear.
But Ian out of the underwear was as dangerous as Ian in it. She was losing it, she thought wildly. Her brain kept feeding her visions of Ian, grinning, beautiful, sexy as hell, jumping in and out of his pants.
As she tried not to stagger into the breakfast nook, he sat serenely at the table, pretending to read the newspaper. She noted, however, that he was still on the front page.
He glanced up. "Hello, Lucie. Did you have a nice bath? Are you feeling rested?"
Oh, right. He was not calm, no matter what he was faking. But she could play this game.
"I'm feeling much better, thank you. So, what've you cooked up?" She bent over to investigate. There was a pot of coffee at his elbow, plus he'd toasted cinnamon raisin toast and found jars of strawberry preserves and peanut butter.
Hanging onto her frayed nerves, she decided there was nothing remotely upsetting about this peaceful, innocuous breakfast scene. But then he licked a little extra jam off his index finger, carelessly, nonchalantly, his pink tongue flicking at the red streak of strawberry preserves. And she felt her whole body flood with hot color as scarlet as the jam.
Jam. Peanut butter. Somehow they got all mixed up in her mind with bikini briefs. Suddenly her mind filled with all the things you could do with Ian Mackintosh on a rainy afternoon involving peanut butter, jelly and skimpy underwear…
Oh, God. She was dying. Lucie grabbed for the coffeepot, sloshing liquid into a cup with a shaky hand, not bothering with cream or sugar.
"Desperate for a caffeine fix, huh?"
"Yeah, desperate." She gulped it down, scalding her throat, not even caring. At least the choking sensation took her mind off all those other bad things she didn't want to think about.
"Hungry?" he asked innocently, lifting the plate of toast, waving his hand over the jars he'd set out.
"Yes. No. I mean, yes." She was starving. But her mouth went dry. Could she really put peanut butter or jam in her mouth after what she'd just been thinking of doing with it? She grabbed a piece of dry toast and started to chew it.
"You're eating it plain?"
"I like it plain."
"If you don't like the choices, you could look for something else." His gaze was level and curious, as if he were dying to ask what her problem was. Or maybe just what Pandora's Boxers were for. She had promised to come down and explain it all. "Your cupboards were pretty bare, though. Except for this, all I saw was a box of macaroni and cheese."
Gazing in the direction of her cupboards, Lucie said vaguely, "Yeah, I needed to get to the store, but didn't have time before the wedding. But then I thought I'd have all day Sunday. Best-laid plans…" she began, wishing immediately she hadn't said the word laid or that his dark eyebrow hadn't raised when she did.
"Best-laid plans, huh? Is that how you're describing your fling thing?"
Cretin. "I'm doing my best not to describe it at all," she said tartly. She crunched into her dry toast before she accidentally said anything worse.
"So. Pandora and her boxers." Ian paused. "Are you interested in explaining?"
"I want you to know, this is really none of your business." Pulling up a chair, Lucie topped off her coffee cup and took another long swig, shuddering as the caffeine filtered through her system. "After you burst into my bathroom and got all fussy that way; like some caveman or something, I really shouldn't tell you."
Ian tilted his head to one side. "So why are you going to?"
"Because…" Why was she? Because her underwear had thrown him off-balance, and she liked it. Because she wanted to keep him that way. "Because I am not ashamed of Pandora's Boxers. I think they're beautiful and destined for great success. I also think," she argued, warming up now, "that they would fit you perfectly, so all your nonsense about porn stars and Chippendales dancers and stuffing with socks is just that—nonsense."
Okay, maybe she shouldn't have said that. The tips of his ears got pink, and she found herself dying to steal glances at his crotch. It was like a cartoon, where every time she looked at him, he magically appeared wearing nothing but underpants. Blue ones, red ones, pink ones. Big ones, little ones, very, very little ones…
Not smart, Lucie.
"Maybe you should forget that last part," she added, shoving her chair around the other way. Anything rather than look directly at him. "The story of Pandora's Boxers starts with my mother, whose name was Pandora. Her dream was to design lingerie."
"I suppose everyone needs a dream," he said thoughtfully. He moved his own chair so that he was back squarely in her line of vision. "And hers was to design men's underpants?"
"No, lingerie," she returned. "My mother was only into ladies' lingerie." She raised a hand to forestall his objection. "The briefs and boxers came later. Anyway, as I was saying, my mother started with a dream to create comfortable, flattering bras, corsets, camisoles, that sort of thing, for full-figured women, with lots of support but no wires or bones or stays."
"Full-figured, huh?"
Were his eyes glued to her chest or was that her imagination? Who knew what he was doing over there? Lucie crossed her arms just to be sure. "Right. Full figures. My dad—since you've met him, I don't think this is going to come as any surprise—did not appreciate her goal to design underwear. He thought it was trashy. But she didn't care. She went for it, anyway."
She tried to decipher Ian's expression. Did he, like her father, think it was stupid? She told herself she didn't care. She and her mother knew what was important: the dream.
"Go on," Ian prompted with a hint of mischief in his voice. "I can't wait to hear what comes next."
"Pandora's Boxers were a big hit, right from the start." Lucie shrugged. "A huge hit."
"And then what happened?"
"After she made a pile of money, you mean? Well," she related, ticking items off on her fingers, "her success in the underwea
r biz screwed up her marriage royally, she and my father got divorced, he remarried Ginetta the Wicked Witch and they had Steffi, I lived with my mom and learned how to sew little camisoles and tap pants at her knee, my mom died, and that was the end of that."
He looked confused at end of the rapid recitation. "The end of Pandora's Boxers? So you are saying all that stuff in the guest room is twenty years old?"
"Heavens, no." Lucie frowned, scooting around in her seat. "Weren't you paying attention? My mother only did ladies' lingerie. But I… Well, my dream is to resurrect her dream. And I thought, why not add a men's line, too? Why should overendowed women be the only ones who get the right foundation garments?"
There was a long pause on Ian's end of the table. His ears were pink again. "I thought you were a teacher. Now you're saying you're an underwear designer for men with large, uh, equipment?"
Was he making fun? She gave him a wary glance, but he seemed to be sincerely perplexed. He'd better be. As she remembered the size of his, uh, equipment, she thought that he better than anyone should appreciate the need for her product.
"Okay," she explained, "I am a teacher. But I have the summers off. I keep a sewing room right next to your room, the guest room, I mean. So I work on my designs there, especially in the summer."
"This is something you'd like to have as your career, but you can't make a go of it?" he asked slowly, as if he were catching on.
"Yes. That's it," she said with more enthusiasm. "It's like a hobby, but I'd love to make it my career. In the meantime, the teaching is a good cover for my father, who still hates the whole idea of Pandora's Boxers. He has this thing about being embarrassed in front of other men—I'm not sure if it humiliated him because my mom was making more money than he was, or because she was out in public, talking about boosting your cleavage and rounding your derriere."
"I guess I can understand that."
"Oh, please. It's so ridiculous!" Rising to her feet, Lucie paced back and forth in the breakfast nook. She was too frazzled to sit in one place anymore, especially across a table from Ian and his damn equipment. "By all rights, it shouldn't be his company to be embarrassed by, anyway," she maintained, launching into an argument that was so familiar she didn't really have to focus to make it. "I'm sure my mother planned to leave the company to me—she always told me it was my legacy. But she was never the most practical person, and who knew she was going to ski into a tree in St. Moritz when I was twelve?"
Ian's forehead crinkled with concentration. "Wait a minute," he said slowly. "Your dad owns Pandora's Boxers now? Your mother left it to him?"
"I'm afraid so." She sat back down. "When my mother died, it turned out she'd never updated her will from when she was still married to my dad. So he got Pandora's Boxers along with everything else."
"That hardly seems fair."
"Tell me about it. But I was only twelve. What was I going to do?" Lucie chewed her lip. She thought she detected a certain sympathy in Ian's eyes. "My Aunt Penny, my mother's sister, said she would contest the will on my behalf, which freaked my dad out. If she didn't, if she let it be, he promised to hold onto Pandora's Boxers for me until I was old enough to run it myself."
"So what's the problem? Why hasn't he turned over the company by now?" he asked, pulling his chair closer to hers.
"I made the mistake of telling him about these great ideas I had—first stretch velour bras for busty women and then the brixers with an extra big pocket for well-endowed men. That was really my breakthrough idea," she explained, leaning nearer in her eagerness to convince him.
"What's a brixer?"
"Oh." Sliding the knife out of the peanut butter, Lucie drew a rough picture for him on a plain piece of toast. "I couldn't really find a good name for them, so I made up my own. See, they're fitted like a brief, only with longer legs. You've seen them, right?"
"Uh, yeah."
When she looked up, his head was right next to hers, as he bent closer to see her sketch. "My dad…" Why was it so hard to concentrate with him so close? She licked her lips, letting the peanut butter knife dangle in her other hand. "My dad had a fit," she said slowly. "He told me that a desire to design underpants proves I'm too immature to run the company."
Ian's hot gaze flickered over her lips. "So there is no Pandora's Boxers anymore?"
"He's turned it into an underwire bra factory." Doodling, Lucie twirled her index finger through the thick design on the toast, not at all sure what she was saying or doing anymore. A fog had descended over her brain. Oops. Now she was stuck with a finger full of peanut butter she didn't know what to do with. "Underwire bras," she repeated awkwardly. "My mother would've hated that."
But Ian did something she didn't expect. He smiled. He caught her hand in his, he brought it to his lips, and he sucked every tiny bit of peanut butter off her finger.
Lucie's mouth fell open. She couldn't breathe.
"I'm thinking we can do each other a big favor," he said in a warm, honeyed tone that slid right down her backbone.
"A f-favor?"
"A one-for-one deal. You help me get rid of Steffi, and I help you get Pandora's Boxers back."
She stared at her finger, still wet from his mouth. "How?"
"You and me, together."
She recalled saying almost exactly those same words to Baker Burns less than twenty-four hours ago, and look what a mess that turned into. "I don't think—"
"Your part would be figuring out how to get Steffi to dump Kyle," Ian overrode her. "You come up with that part of the plan, and I'll help you get Pandora's Boxers from your dad." He smiled again, like a fox just emerging from a henhouse. He might as well have had feathers sticking to his lips.
Hiding her whole hand under the table, Lucie shook her head, trying to clear it. Again, she asked, "How?"
"Your father keeps telling you he'll turn over the company once you prove you're mature enough." Ian leaned back in his chair, balancing it on two legs. "I know men like your father. When he says he wants to see proof that you're mature, he means you have a guy around to bail you out—as in, a guy he approves of."
She hated to admit it, but he was right. How many times had she heard her dad sing Steffi's praises for nabbing a great husband candidate and settling down? Still, Lucie had a very good idea where Ian was going with this, and she didn't like it one bit.
"So what more," he said slyly, "could he want than me?"
Lucie stood, turning away. "You're not serious."
"I'm eligible, aren't I?" he argued, coming after her. "Clearly I have a certain business acumen, so he can't object on those grounds. What was that you said about the perfect Ken doll with all the accessories? Barbie's Dream Family, isn't that what you called it?"
"Well, yes, but I hardly meant—"
But Ian was off and running. "So we're agreed that I'm presentable. Not to mention the fact that after this morning, he already thinks we're an item, so there's a credibility factor."
"I never suggested that you wouldn't pass muster," she broke in, getting aggravated. "But why would you want to? I know I'm not your type." He started to object, but she held him off. "Please. I've seen Feather. I know what you're looking for. Someone young, beautiful, simple, and very temporary. That isn't me."
He rose, advancing on her, until he had her backed into the wall, one strong arm on each side, and he was staring her right in the eyes. "We do have a certain chemistry. That works to our advantage."
"Chemistry?" Lucie stared at his collarbone. "I—I don't think so."
"Oh, come on. Last night—"
"I don't remember any of it. Not a single minute," she insisted.
"Not even one?" He dipped his head, pressing his warm, soft lips to the nape of her neck.
Lucie closed her eyes, trying really hard not to moan. Hell, of course she remembered. Far more than she wanted to. But she wasn't going to tell him that. Not even if he sucked her finger, or kissed her, or started to unbutton her…
"Stop that!" She sma
cked his hands away from her blouse.
"I think I just proved my case. Chemistry," he said with satisfaction.
"You probably have chemistry with a cardboard box. Like that thing with the peanut butter just now." Angrily, she demanded, "Who wouldn't start to melt when you suck their finger?"
"I have lots more tricks with peanut butter," he murmured. "Wanna try?"
"I knew it!" Waving her hands in the air, she changed the subject before he sandbagged her again. "It doesn't matter. I still say I'm not your type." Hastily, she added, "And you're not mine, either."
"I believe you," he said easily. "You just turned thirty, so I'll bet you're past ready to settle down. You want the house, kids, sheepdog, minivan, blah, blah, blah."
"Gee, you make it sound so attractive." Too bad he was absolutely wrong. Sure, she wanted to settle down. But she wanted a romantic, reliable, caring man first, not to mention some fun.
If and when she found this mystery man… Well, the rest of it could wait. Sheepdog? Minivan? Not on your life. She had trips to Paris and walks in the rain and sonnets by moonlight at the top of her agenda. Not that Ian Mackintosh knew the first thing about any of that. All he knew was one-nighters with whipped cream and a cherry on top…
She squeezed her eyes shut. Okay, that wasn't fair. He hadn't mentioned whipped cream or cherries. No, that was her fertile imagination.
"Don't take it personally," he said, insinuating his body against hers. "No one is my type if we're talking long-term. Because I don't—talk long-term, I mean."
"Given that fact, do you really want people thinking you're in a relationship with me?" Lucie ducked under his arm, desperate to put a few inches between them. "Won't that sort of ruin your reputation?"
"Half the people I know already think I am in a relationship with you. Why would I care now?"
"No, half the people you know think you had one night of bad judgment, one night of crazed, greased-weasel sex—"
But he ran roughshod over her words, striding up behind her, breathing on her neck from back there. "Lucie, it will probably do my reputation good for people to think I'm in a real, live relationship. And to tell you the truth, I haven't got anything better to do. I'm basically sitting around waiting for a check to get mailed. In the meantime, nobody cares much where I am or what I'm doing or who I'm doing it with."
JUST A LITTLE FLING Page 8