by Betina Krahn
His head came up, lips glistening, eyes dark and luminous.
“Pocket—” he rasped, trembling as he searched for the opening.
She shifted her leg, ran her hand down the fabric until she found the condom. She pulled it out and pressed it into his palm.
“You do it,” she said against his lips, “I’m busy.”
Seconds later his hands were on her hips, guiding her down onto him. The angle was perfect, the contact was intense, and it didn’t take long for both of them to see stars. And skyrockets. And colliding planets. It was a whole damned NASA launch of sexual release.
Even more remarkable was the afterglow. He held her tightly, and as she laid her head on his shoulder, he stroked her hair. When she found the energy to caress his face, he pressed a kiss into her palm. That simple gesture seemed somehow the most intimate act of the whole night. It was tenderness distilled.
They showered together and dried each other with the hotel’s big, fluffy towels, reveling in that intimacy. When she reluctantly drew away to head for her clothes, he followed and dragged them out of her hands.
“So that’s how it is with you Ivy League business types. A red-hot quickie or three and it’s off to the next poor, innocent musician?” He pulled her against his big, warm body. “The least you can do is stay and cuddle with me for a while.”
She laughed but sensed an earnest desire beneath his teasing and let him walk her back to the bed. Climbing in with her, he pulled her against him and murmured that he could really get used to the feel of her in his arms.
Tears stung her eyes and she had to close them.
This was every woman’s fantasy…
6
LIGHT WAS STREAMING in around the curtains when she woke the next morning and found herself facing a strange digital clock that nearly gave her heart failure. Hotel room, it said. And ten o’clock. She bolted out from under the covers and onto her feet, feeling as if she’d just gone twelve rounds with Brad Pitt, Ed Norton and the entire Fight Club.
The rasp of regular breaths nearby registered, and she whirled to find Nick sprawled across the other half of the king-size bed, snoring softly, sporting a serious case of bed head and beard shadow. Warmth washed over her.
She’d never seen anything quite so sexy in her entire life.
The heat rising through her was quickly dispelled by a draft of cool air that reminded her she was naked. A tingle of goosebumps spawned full-frontal flashbacks of last night’s Nirvana. Whoa, baby.
Whoa.
Ohhh.
She backed away from the bed, unsettled by the thought that he might awaken and find her watching him with her heart in her eyes.
She hadn’t expected to feel this way. Somewhere between the heart-stopping sex, the toe-curling intimacies and the mesmerizing music, the desire for more had taken hold of her. On the way to the Drake, she had convinced herself that a steamy night with the legendary Nick Stack would be the boost to her confidence and the workout her sex drive needed. And she’d have a heck of a memory to warm long winter nights.
But now she didn’t want the memory, she wanted the man. She wanted to wake him up and have breakfast with him and spend the day with him and take him home to her apartment and show him her favorite parts of the city—
Oh, God. Her heart stumbled over the realization. She was thinking about somedays and tomorrows…a relationship.
Get real, Samantha.
By his own admission, he’d been in this same situation many times before. Nights like this were probably a dime a dozen for him. It was a sobering thought; one that called attention to a host of other less-than-comforting realities. He was a musician, a man with a very public past, a man whose every aspiration and experience was the opposite of hers. Men like him were singles, not long-play albums.
She had learned the hard way that one glorious night—even the best night of her life—did not a relationship make.
Tears sprang to her eyes.
The best night of her life.
She had to get out of there.
Tiptoeing into the parlor, retrieving garments from the floor along the way, she fumbled her way into them. No panties. She cringed. They were probably still wedged in the bedclothes somewhere. She was dying to use the bathroom, but decided to find one in the lobby rather than risk waking him. Biting her lip, she looked at the figure in the rumpled bed and then at the piano where they’d—The sight of the hotel robe in a heap behind the bench sent a painful surge of longing through her.
Leave. Now.
Outside in the hall, waiting for the elevator, she caught sight of herself in a mirror. Her hair had dried in five different directions, her lips were puffy and there was a pillow crease on her cheek. But it was her eyes that gave her away. They were soft and luminous, utterly sated. She groaned. She looked as if she’d spent the night in Olympic orgasm trials.
“Snap out of it.” She pulled her jacket together and ran trembling fingers through her hair. “No purse, no keys. Not even cab fare. Where the hell was your head, Drexel?”
The aching fullness in her chest provided the answer.
It was following her heart.
She was out the Drake’s front door, pulling up the collar of her thin suit jacket against the wind, when she realized she’d be walking into CrownCraft’s offices in yesterday’s clothes. Several blocks down the street in those aptly named “killer shoes,” she had the idea to duck into Bloomingdale’s and buy a new blouse and some underwear. She knew many of the saleswomen there and hoped they’d allow her to charge it to her account without her card.
But even the clerks she knew at Bloomie’s needed to see a driver’s license or photo ID. It occurred to her that she couldn’t even get into the security-obsessed CrownCraft offices without her company ID. Her only option was to have her assistant locate her purse in her office and bring it to her.
By the time Renee arrived with her bag and the coat she hadn’t thought clearly enough to ask for, Sam was so grateful, she greeted her with a huge hug. Renee studied her boss’s rumpled appearance with a wry look but, to her credit, handed over the purse without a single question.
It was two o’clock before Sam arrived back at the offices, wearing a new blouse, underwear and sensible shoes…fortified by food and a venti latte. The sight of her coming down the hall with Renee brought Dale, Sarah and the rest of the team to their feet.
“So—” Dale followed her into her office while the others clogged the doorway behind him “—how did it go, boss?” When her jaw dropped, he clarified: “The shoot. Did we get the photos or not?”
She tried not to look as sheepish as she felt.
“We got photos of some kind. Halcyon agreed to use our lab here in the building and get them processed before going back to New York. Dale, I want you to interface and give him all the help he—” The phone rang.
“Our esteemed leader.” Sarah pointed toward the ceiling, indicating the executive floor and their VP of Marketing. “He’s been calling all day for a report.”
Sam shooed everyone back to work, checked her hair in the glass of a picture on the wall and headed for the elevator.
As she passed Dale’s desk, she could have sworn she heard him sing “‘Yeah, bay-beee.’”
NICK SAT ON THE SOFA in his suite at the Drake, staring at the phone, listening for the sixth time to Sam’s voice-mail recording. Where the hell was she? Why wouldn’t she pick up the phone?
But then, if she did answer, what would he say? Everything that came to mind sounded like a cheesy song title. “I Feel Good.” “Baby Come Back.” “One More Night.” He had come perilously close to singing one of them onto her voice mail. Pride pulled him back before he made a compete fool of himself.
Samantha. The syllables of her name rose and fell in his mind like notes. With her, he had felt plugged into the universe’s main line, alive and full of creative juice. She made him laugh, made him lust, and made him want to make music about how she made him feel.
> Then sometime during the night, she just picked up her clothes and walked out, leaving him with a cold bed and a morning-after full of memories. It had been a long time since he cared if a woman took off while he was still sleeping, and longer still since any woman had made him feel such a wild mix of anticipation, arousal and anxiety.
He placed the phone back in its cradle, embarrassed by his eagerness. What made him think she’d want to see him again? Did he honestly believe that a few tunes and some sizzling sex would make her forget he was a has-been rocker without a record deal, a musician whose income and prospects depended on a fickle public…an ungrateful asshole whose behavior put others’ jobs in jeopardy?
Two or three calls she might somehow “miss.” But six? Heat crept up his neck, flooded his ears and finally ignited a burn in his face.
Who was he kidding? She had a fast-track career, and the looks and brains to make it to the top of her field. She’d taken a flyer with him, that was all. Scratched an itch. Satisfied a curiosity. She’d gotten what she wanted and was ready to move on to bigger, better things.
“Bigger?” he snarled. “Not freakin’ likely. Not better either.”
Still, when the phone rang some time later, he pounced on it. “Ah, I caught you” came a man’s voice. Nick’s heart sank. “I was afraid you might already be at the airport.” It took a moment to realize that those affable tones belonged to photographer Halcyon White.
“My flight doesn’t leave until seven-thirty.” Nick glanced at the suitcase waiting by the door.
“Is there any way you can take a later flight? I just finished the first prints. There’s something you need to see before I hand these over.”
“I don’t have approval,” he said, biting back the word anymore.
“I promised you some proofs and I think you should see these before I present them to CrownCraft. They’ll be ready in a couple of hours.”
So, at eight o’clock that evening, while his agent was winging his way back to the west coast without him, Nick was being escorted through a darkened and empty CrownCraft building by a security guard. In the photo lab on the basement level, he was met by Halcyon White and an older guy with a graying ponytail, whom Halcyon introduced as Dale Emerson.
“At the end, I just snapped a few different angles and hit the jackpot,” Halcyon said, leading him past a series of eight-by-tens drying on lines to a light box just outside the darkroom door. He handed Nick a lens and pointed to a specific frame on a strip of negatives. “Try this one.”
Nick stared at the image, then looked up with a startled expression.
“Wait until you see it printed,” Halcyon said, leading Nick back to the enlargements they had passed on the drying line. He unclipped one and handed it to Nick, who carried it to a brighter light and stared at it with such intensity that his hands began to shake.
“This one is special. It’s the one I think CrownCraft should use,” Halcyon said, watching him closely. “But it will have repercussions.”
“Yeah. I get it.” Nick’s gaze was lightning-blue and crackling with energy when he looked up. “It’s one hell of a photo.” It had to be, to have changed his thinking, his mood and his plans in the blink of an eye. His smile grew until it became a wicked laugh. “By all means, use it.”
THE NEXT AFTERNOON, when Sam came back from lunch, she was met with an emphatic summons from Marketing’s creative director. She found Halcyon White in the main conference room with designers and marketing execs crowded around like frenzied worker bees.
“There you are!” The photographer corralled her with an arm and ushered her through the others to the nearby light table.
“What’s going on?” she asked as he handed her a magnifying lens.
“I’ve worked day and night getting these ready,” he said, gesturing to the negatives. “This is good stuff, Samantha. Really good.”
She glanced at head designer Dale, who looked ready to burst with excitement, then put the magnifier over the negatives Halcyon indicated. She blinked. There were two figures in the photo. She shot upright.
“I thought you said you were shooting around me.”
“I did. Except in these last few shots.” Halcyon nodded to Dale, who stepped aside to reveal a print enlargement of the photo she’d seen.
She and Nick were there in profile, staring into each other’s eyes, backlit and revealed with amazing clarity. Even at a glance, the impression of longing, tension and sex was downright palpable. Their faces were all but glowing with desire. It was the very embodiment of awakening chemistry between a man and a woman, that precious instant when a whole universe of possibility unfurls before two people.
“What the hell is th-that?” She had to scramble for words.
“That is romance,” Halcyon said with unmistakable pride.
“That is our CD cover,” Dale added, grinning from ear to ear. “And our POS piece. And our mail-outs to Rewards Card participants.” He regarded the poster-size enlargement with pride. “In short, that is the center of our whole marketing campaign.”
The reality of it came crashing down on her.
“B-but that’s me,” she croaked. “I never agreed to be part of this.”
“But you are a part of it.” Halcyon trained his laserlike perception on her and gave her a knowing smile. “A big part.”
“Look, Sam,” Dale stepped in, lowering his voice. “Photos like these are rare in a photographer’s career. This is a signature moment for Halcyon as well as us. When people get an eyeful of this poster, they’ll stop to look, they’ll sigh and they’ll buy something that reminds them of love and romance—our products. This is the best POS inducement I’ve ever seen, and I’ve worked some pretty big accounts.”
She looked around the conference room at the account managers and company execs staring speculatively at her. They were wondering just how far she’d gone with Nick after the shoot. And why wouldn’t they? Her lust and longing were up there in living color for all to see.
Hers. She stared at the photo. And Nick’s.
Heat surged through her skin. The moment captured in that photo, that intimate, naked flash of feeling, was a prelude to the most intimate and pleasurable night of her life. And unless she said something, it was going to be used to sell valentines and stuffed animals and cutesy slogan mugs. Nick’s complaint about how they were “chopping up his best days to use as punchlines in valentines” came back to her with a vengeance. She understood with painful clarity, now, just how he felt.
Feeling the critical stares of her colleagues, she struggled to reframe the situation. It was business. It was just a photo. But another glance at that life-size depiction, and the kisses in the elevator, the whole night of sexual delight came back in a rush. Who was she kidding? This was as personal as it got.
After all of her hard work, it was excruciating to think that her biggest success might come from selling out—literally—her most private feelings. She felt as if she’d just taken a giant step backward for all womankind.
“There has to be—We don’t want to—” She tried to think.
“There’s our golden girl.” A familiar voice announced the arrival of the VP in charge of CrownCraft’s Marketing Division. Ken Bentwhistle smiled broadly and straightened his Gucci tie. “Fabulous photos, Drexel. I’ve just been upstairs with the others massaging the numbers.” The others meaning the company’s flock of veeps and the CEO himself. She started to hyperventilate. “With a push, this campaign can rescue our sagging card and specialty sales. Christmas orders are down, but this gives us a focus for the new year. Brilliant stroke, Drexel, putting this Stack guy’s music in our valentines.”
Sam groaned. Silently.
Three days later, the letter from Legal arrived, requesting her signature on a release that would allow them to use her image in the campaign. “A formality,” they said, as if it were a foregone conclusion that she’d sign. And as a smart marketing manager, why wouldn’t she?
But it took two more
calls from Legal before she sat down at her desk with the release form in one hand and a pen in the other. Nick had already signed a release in his original contract, which meant she was going to bear sole responsibility for plastering their faces all over America.
Her way of coping with the sly looks and questions aimed her way over the past few days had been to shake her head good-naturedly, as if she were in on the joke, then tamp her feelings deep inside and guard every word. But now she sat at her desk and stared at the legal verbiage through prisms of tears. What would he think when he saw the posters and CD?
Her gaze went to the phone. Should she call him and apologize? What would she say? That she was sorry for letting the company turn the best night of her life into fodder for a sales campaign? And how stupid would she feel if he laughed his butt off at the irony?
No. She finally allowed the memory to rise. He had enjoyed their time together as much as she had. But they were grown-ups. Consenting adults. He probably expected her to figure out that it was a one-time thing.
With an ache around her heart, she picked up her pen and signed the release.
7
TWO WEEKS INTO THE New Year, Sam came down from a meeting in the executive conference center with her face and pride on fire.
“This is your baby, Drexel.” VP Ken Bentwhistle had waved a stack of messages at her in front of a room full of upper-level management. “Stack is trying to pull out of the appearances. If he doesn’t show, we lose two sizable markets and all the publicity kick for this campaign. We’ve got too much invested to let that happen. I want you on this guy like white on rice. Babysit him, hogtie him—hell, kidnap him if you have to—but get him to those appearances!”
By the time Sam left the meeting, her face was scarlet and her stomach was in knots. She knew why he was refusing to come, and on one level she couldn’t blame him; he’d finally seen the posters and CD cover. With barely a month to Valentine’s Day, they were being hung and stacked and displayed in stores across the country. He couldn’t miss them. He had to be furious with CrownCraft, their agreement and her.