by Hailey North
“That’s not necessary,” she said, wishing she’d screamed out yes!
“It might be better if I did. I wouldn’t want David to think another man was sending me flowers for romantic reasons.”
“Ah,” Daffy said. “Put the card in the mail to me at home.” She’d slip it under her pillow and dream about what might have been.
6
Hunter hadn’t gotten where he was in life by lying around dreaming.
He plotted. He planned. He executed.
Standing in his office high in the sky in downtown New Orleans, gazing out across the spectacular view of the winding Mississippi River, he checked his faithful Timex. Ten more ticks and his phone should ring.
Given the exodus of oil companies from the city, Aloysius had rented their plush offices at a steal. Normally, Hunter fully appreciated the sights afforded by the floor-to-ceiling windows of the forty-second floor. Today, though, visions of Daffy Landry filled his mind.
The leather couch across the expanse of muted ivory carpeting beckoned to him. What he wouldn’t give to have Daffy on that couch with him!
Again he glanced at his watch. He allowed himself a slight smile, picturing her beneath him on the sofa, her silky hair fanning out as she reached up to him even as he leaned to kiss her lips.
From the first moment he’d seen her, he’d been intrigued by her. Face it, Hunter, you wanted her. It wasn’t curiosity. It was male need, possibly even pure and simple lust.
And the more his friends warned him away from Daffodil Landry, the more determined he grew to win her.
When he’d been eight, he’d fought battles with his fists. In high school, he’d learned to conquer with his charm. In college and since then, he’d surged ahead, relying on his brains and then on his instincts for creating software products just enough ahead of their time to corner the market.
No matter the weapons used, a swift and successful strike demanded precision.
His phone rang.
He answered, listened to the messenger’s report, smiled, and hung up. After counting to twenty-five, he lifted the phone and punched in the number of The Crescent.
A receptionist with a Brooklyn twang answered and said, “The Crescent-holderminute,” all in one breath. Must be Daffy’s sister’s day off. Thank goodness she’d been there the other day. Hunter wasn’t sure why, but he suspected Daffy never would have agreed to meet him. Not for coffee, not for tea. There’d been chemistry between them, undeniably, but she’d also been on her guard.
Just about now, though, according to his brilliantly conceived plan, those defenses should be weakening. Women couldn’t resist thoughtful men who listened—really listened—to the little things they said about themselves.
He didn’t like to get too far ahead of himself, but he was pretty sure he wouldn’t need thirty days to win Daffy. She’d been hot enough to melt the carpeting at the Orphan’s Club fund-raiser—and that from clear across the room.
Hunter began to whistle, for once not minding having been put on hold.
Across town, Daffy hugged her arms to her chest and gazed raptly at the package she’d just opened. “What a sweetie,” she murmured, lifting the PJ’s coffee tumbler filled with candy corn. “He actually listened to what I said—and remembered!”
Jonni could keep her flowers. This candy corn was more special than any floral offering Daffy had ever received—and she’d received more than an FTD florist restocking from a wholesale horticulturist.
Her intercom buzzed and she ignored it. Reaching for the lid of the tumbler, she popped it off and scooped out one lone candy corn. Smiling, she lifted it toward her lips, eyeing the white tip and picturing Hunter sitting so close beside her at PJ’s only two days earlier. And she’d worried she’d never hear from him again!
Twice more the intercom buzzed. Maybe it was Marguerite on the rampage. Daffy grabbed her phone.
The temporary receptionist came on the line. “I’d take this call if I were you.”
Wondering if she was capable of attracting a gorgeous, desirable, wonderful man without seeking to turn around and destroy him like the black widow she feared she was, Daffy said, “Oh, and why is that?”
“Sexy, doll. Just give him a listen.”
And with that, the receptionist rang off. Daffy started to follow suit when the weirdest idea popped into her mind. Could it be Hunter? If so, why now, right at this moment when she was sucking on a delicious piece of candy corn and thinking he walked on water? Now, could that be a coincidence?
“Daffy Landry,” she said, her voice in its most clipped reportorial style.
“Hunter James,” came his voice, slow and silky and ready to spend the rest of the day caressing her.
Daffy gripped the phone. Silly images like those had to be banished from her mind. Hunter James was far too sure of himself.
Someone had to teach him a lesson.
And it looked like it was going to be Daffodil Landry who wrote the syllabus.
She let silence speak for her, sitting back down and circling her ankle to form the first ten letters of the alphabet. All the while, she held that one silly piece of candy corn in her right hand. After she’d completed a J with a flourish of toes, she said, “And what can The Crescent do for you today?”
His answer was a long time coming. Finally he said, “Just thought I’d follow up on our conversation of the other day.”
“Mmm,” Daffy murmured. Conversation! He wanted her to throw herself at his feet, like a dog groveling over a barbecue-flavored dog bone. He’d calculated his gift, right down to the timing of the delivery! Tickling the sweet tip of the candy corn with her tongue, she said, “You still want to run that ad with us?”
“Ad?”
She smiled. He’d forgotten all about his personal ad. Clearly that had been a pretext to procure a coffee date with her. Silly man. Hunter James wasn’t the kind of guy a girl needed an excuse to go out with. Not that she’d let him in on that secret right now. “You remember—the ad that will send the woman of your dreams straight to your door?”
“Right.”
Daffy smothered a grin. Hunter had out-clevered himself. He’d obviously known the exact moment the package would be delivered. He’d called expecting her to fling herself, via the telephone, into his arms. “I’m tied up till five today, but if you’d like, I can send an assistant over to help you. I have an intern from Tulane who’s very good.” That ought to whet his appetite. He’d be expecting a sorority chick and who would appear but Greg, who led the front line in rushing for the Tulane Green Wave. “Where’s your office located?”
“Downtown, but never mind the intern. Pick you up at five?”
He recovered fairly quickly, she’d give him that.
“No can do,” she said, managing to sound wistfully disappointed. “I’m busy.” Yeah, busy opening a can of cat food for Mae West.
“Well,” Hunter said, dragging out the word, “have a nice day.”
And he hung up.
Daffy glared at the receiver of her telephone. “Have a nice day?” She slammed it down on the cradle. From the next cubicle over, she heard an amused “Temper, temper.”
Her glance fell on the engagement calendar open on her desk. The month of April was chock-full of assignments, parties she had to attend to photograph the beautiful, the socially responsible, and the upwardly bound of New Orleans. She turned a page; May looked pretty much the same, only not yet as full.
Hunter had proclaimed he could make any woman fall for him in thirty days. Daffy nibbled the tip off the piece of candy corn she still held in her hand, then added the orange midsection. She’d met him on Tuesday at PJ’s. That was three days ago. Finishing off the yellow top of the corn, she reached for a red marker. Beginning with Tuesday, she numbered the days one through thirty, which brought her to the third week in May.
“Okay, Hunter” she murmured, “show me your best stuff.” Thirty days—well, less than that now—wasn’t much of a siege. The candy co
rn had been a clever opening gambit, but he’d overdone it with the phone call. She nibbled another piece of candy and smiled as she thought about him remembering what she’d said and going to all the bother to find the candy and put it in the coffee mug. Hunter was not only sexy, he was romantic, too. Any woman who didn’t fall for him would be nuts.
She sighed and circled the thirtieth day. She wasn’t going to lose a bet as simple as this one. It was day thirty-one that worried her.
In his office high above the city, Hunter slowly let go of the phone. He could have sworn he’d detected the aroma of that candy corn. His secretary had informed him that she’d gone to a lot of trouble to locate the traditional Halloween fare at a time when the stores were full of chocolate Easter bunnies and fluffy marshmallow chicks. As motherly as she was, she’d be disappointed to learn her efforts had been somewhat torpedoed.
He grinned, rather reluctantly. This round went to Daffy. Any other woman would have done exactly as he had predicted.
But then, it wasn’t any other woman he wanted.
Four o’clock found him lounging against a planter box outside the rear walkway of The Crescent’s offices. Locating Daffy’s car had been simpler than he could have hoped. The personalized plates on the BMW convertible said it all: DAFFY.
“Which is what you are, standing around in a parking lot,” he said out loud. Never in his life had he pursued a woman in quite this way. The way women were always after him, he’d never had to exert himself. Even when he’d been the poor kid in town growing up without a father, he’d had girlfriends. Oh, not the snooty rich ones like Emily Godchaux, but plenty of others.
Admiring Daffy’s car, Hunter considered a concept he’d studiously avoided. Without a doubt, Daffy fell into the rich-girl category. Anyone in Aloysius’s childhood circle qualified. But was she snooty? Would she look twice at a guy like Hunter had he not ridden the high tech-and-IPO money wave into the big time?
Hell, would she look twice at him today? With his plan in mind, he’d changed into his gym clothes at the office. Aloysius had insisted on introducing him to membership in the New Orleans Athletic Club and they often worked out after work. Aloysius sported designer outfits; Hunter stuck to his habits of years past. He glanced down at his gray sweat shorts and T-shirt. Well, at least they were clean. He’d stuffed his feet into an ancient pair of flip-flops he kept for some unclear reason in the back of his Jeep.
Being rich took a lot of getting used to.
He heard the rustle of footsteps approaching and swung his gaze toward the back door. Four-fifteen. He grinned. Wouldn’t Daffy be surprised to see him!
Not wanting to frighten or startle her, he’d positioned himself in full view of the back door, smack in the middle of the path to her car. He might be lying in wait, but skulking and lurking were not his style.
Daffy, however, appeared lost in thought and completely unaware that he stood in full view of her. She carried a purse over one shoulder, a camera bag over the other, and in one hand she cradled the PJ’s tumbler.
“Having a nice day?” Hunter never used that cornball expression, but since he’d been hornswoggled by her cool nonchalance on the phone earlier and the inane sentiment had popped out of his mouth, he might as well use it again. “Turn a weakness into a strength” was one of his favorite mottoes.
She stopped in her tracks, then shifted into reverse a step or so. Her sunglasses hid her expression from him, but he’d be willing to bet he’d achieved his mission of taking her by surprise.
Thinking of taking her led his mind to places it was better off not traveling to—at least not yet. Her simple cotton dress, the same color as his mother’s favorite deep pink roses, clung softly to the curves of her body. The neckline was cut in a U deep enough to beckon Hunter to look more closely, which, of course, he did. Her camera bag had tugged the dress slightly off one shoulder and Hunter admired the slope of her neck and shoulder. The hemline skipped above her knees by several inches, inviting the eye to travel upward, which, of course, he accepted. He thought he spied a hint of an outline of a bikini pantie but decided no feminine daytime attire could be quite so scanty.
Daffy clutched the coffeehouse tumbler. He was doing it again, that trick he had of looking at her as if he could see through her dress. Why, if she asked him, he could probably tell her that she was wearing a thong the color of crushed raspberries.
Not, of course, that she was going to ask him any such thing. “I’m certainly having an interesting day,” she said at last. “Are you headed to the gym?”
He plucked at his gray cotton T-shirt. Daffy’s mouth watered at the way the fabric clung to his broad chest. The shorts reminded her of her junior high journalism teacher’s favorite expression when asked how long a story should be: long enough to cover the subject, but short enough to be interesting. Hunter’s legs shouted strength. They were tanned, like he’d been lounging pool-side, and had just enough hair to give them that manly cast Daffy loved.
“Jazzfest,” he said.
“Now?”
“No time like the present.”
She started forward. “Don’t let me hold you up. They close the Fair Grounds at seven.” She paused. “Did you know that?”
“Yep.”
He hadn’t budged. She’d have to brush by him to get to her car. Daffy hesitated.
“Go with me?”
She should have kept walking. “I’m pretty busy,” she said, though reluctantly. The idea of doing something so carefree as going to Jazzfest for the last two hours of the day appealed strongly to her. Surprisingly, she’d never done that before. She visited the annual confab of music, food booths, and crafts every few years but had never gone so late in the day, probably feeling she wouldn’t get her money’s worth for the price of admission.
Though with Hunter at her side, who cared about throwing away seventy dollars?
“So you mentioned.”
Daffy glared at him, thankful for her dark glasses. He wasn’t going to make this easy. She’d trumped him earlier, but at the moment, she didn’t feel like resisting him. Making a motion with the tumbler, she said, “Thanks for the candy.”
He smiled. “You’re welcome. By the way, I know how to own up to a mistake when I make one. It was presumptuous of me to call you this morning.”
Daffy laughed. “You’re one smooth operator, I must say. Okay, I’ll go to Jazzfest with you, but I’ll have to change clothes.”
“Shall I drive you to your place?”
“That’ll take too much time. I’ll just follow your lead.” She reached out and touched the soft cotton of his T-shirt right over his heart. His gaze flickered and then held, his eyes darkening. Two could play at pursuit. Slowly, she withdrew her hand. “I always keep a gym bag in my car. Give me five minutes.”
Letting go of the breath he’d been holding, Hunter nodded. He reached into the pocket of his T-shirt and pulled out his own sunglasses. He should have been wearing them all along. He strongly suspected Daffy saw right through him. She whisked over to her car, dumped her things, and sped past him, disappearing into the offices of the paper.
The paper . . . Hunter frowned. He’d been so distracted by Daffy that he’d almost forgotten the original reason he’d visited this building. He’d been in search of the Love Doctor’s identity. Funny, but those stinging words didn’t rankle quite so much now that Daffy Landry had entered his life.
Still, he might as well kill two birds with one stone. Jeez, but he was full of platitudes today. Well, why not? The sky was a bright blue, a breeze kept the eighty-degree temperature in check, and Daffy Landry had agreed to go to Jazz-fest with him.
What more could a man ask for?
Daffy reappeared and Hunter knew instantly the answer to his own question.
Daffy’s gym clothes bore absolutely no resemblance to Hunter’s loose-fitting shorts and ages-old T-shirt. For one thing, the skimpy, body-molding crop top was made of Lycra, or did Saran Wrap now come in designer colors? A brigh
t slash of hot pink across the black background highlighted her breasts. Not that Daffy’s breasts needed the extra exclamation of color to call attention to them.
Hunter swallowed. The shorts were of the same fabric and stopped mid-thigh. Thank goodness she’d tied some sort of wrap around her waist or Hunter might have started salivating right then and there. He must have been staring at it, because Daffy gave him a half smile and said, “I know it’s not cool enough for a wrap, but the sun’s still strong enough that it’ll come in handy to protect my shoulders.”
Right. “Your shoulders,” Hunter said. “They are almost bare.”
She nodded and smiled sunnily this time. “I’m ready if you are.”
He was ready, all right, but thoughts of Jazzfest were fast slipping from his mind.
“Do you have a car or did you walk over?”
Her sensible question cut short his visions of sweeping her into his Jeep and driving straight to his place. Good thing. He was still camping out with Aloysius at his aunt’s tony Garden District house, and the last spot on earth he wanted to take Daffy was anywhere within vision radius of his business partner.
“Car.” He pushed off the planter box, where he’d taken up residence, and pointed toward his four-wheel drive. “Over here.”
Daffy fell into step beside him and Hunter enjoyed several sidelong glances at the hot-pink stripe. “Nice gym clothes,” he said.
“Thanks. Yours, too.”
“These old things?” Hunter was actually surprised.
“I have no idea how old they are, but they do show your body to advantage.”
Hunter opened the passenger door. “Remind me never to throw them away,” he said, helping her step up to the seat.
Mistake.
He only touched her arm, right above the wrist.
She settled into the seat, a calm expression on her face. Hunter felt as if he’d been singed by a hot plate, like the one his mother cooked on when their stove broke and the landlord refused to replace it.
How could she remain so oblivious?
One touch made him crave another.