Velvet, Leather & Lace: A Man's Gotta DoCalling the ShotsBaring It All

by Suzanne Forster

Now Jamie was rolling his eyes and making throat-cutting gestures.

  But Lorna had more to say, and while she was at it, she wondered how Jamie Baird liked being brushed off as if he were a piece of lint. She doubted he’d had much experience with that. Welcome to my world, Jamie.

  “Too many women suffer from insensitive treatment,” she told Hud, “especially women of size, and we want them to feel good about themselves again. We believe our designs will help women see themselves as sexual and worthy whether or not a man sees them that way.”

  Hud seemed a little disappointed. “Is that why your designers are all women? You don’t think a man can design for women who aren’t supermodels?”

  “Quite honestly, I think it might be difficult for some men to set their fantasies aside. I could see a man creating a gown simply because he’d like to take it off a woman, or…wear it himself, depending on the man.”

  She made a point of glancing at Jamie with the last remark, and he turned pale again. She had him off balance, but she knew he was going to be breathing fire when he recovered…unless she could turn this interview around somehow, and maybe do something to boost the company’s sales.

  “Hud, can I show you what VLL has in the works?”

  Lorna jumped up and grabbed Hud’s hand, taking him with her to the kitchen, where Jamie stood, sullen and suspicious, his arms crossed.

  “Loren,” she said, trying to smooth things over, “why don’t you get the sketch that goes with our special Christmas package? You know the one I mean, right? It’s in my bedroom.”

  She glanced at the pole, signaling her intentions. Jamie had asked her to plug the pole-dancing package, and she was letting him know that she would. But he didn’t seem all that excited about her idea. He probably could have melted the metal pole with his eyes.

  She sprang into action as soon as Jamie left the room, getting Hud a soft drink from the refrigerator and then briefly explaining why there was a pole in the middle of the kitchen. She gave him a quick demo, swinging in a wide arc, then hooking her leg around the pole and spinning into it. She shook her head and let her hair fly, but that was all she could safely do with a dress on. Apparently, it was enough.

  Hud’s eyes nearly bugged out of their sockets. He was still applauding as Jamie strode back into the kitchen.

  “You have a winner there,” Hud told her. “I wouldn’t mind having a pole in my own kitchen, just to remember you by.” He winked at Lorna and pulled a business card from his pocket. “In case you want to give me another demo sometime. Anytime.”

  Jamie whipped the card out of Hud’s hand, spun him around and had him at the front door before Lorna could respond. Jamie was all very polite about it, but there was no mistaking the command in his voice as he told the reporter that Ms. Baird had to get to the airport, and the interview was over.

  Nor did Lorna have time to brace herself before Jamie came back.

  “Why didn’t you show him the sketch?” she said, scrambling for anything that might put him back on the defensive. No such luck.

  “You pole danced for that guy?” Jamie was clearly appalled. The disbelief in his voice was palpable.

  “Not for him. It was a demonstration. I thought you wanted me to push the pole-dancing package.”

  He shook his head, apparently overcome with disgust. “I do not love to shop! Why did you say that?”

  Obviously it was a delayed reaction. “What else could I say? You walked in carrying shopping bags.”

  “And why did you have to go and tell him that I design the stuff.”

  “I didn’t mean to do that. You were confusing me.”

  “VLL has male customers, too, Lorna, lots of them, and yes, we do design with their fantasies in mind. They buy lingerie for their wives and girlfriends.”

  She lifted a shoulder. “Okay, but if a woman feels sensual, and if it comes from within, wouldn’t men pick up on that? Wouldn’t a sexy, confident woman be a male fantasy?”

  He spun away from her and went to the refrigerator. When he came back he had a bottle of beer and an air of menace that made her think he was about to open it with his teeth.

  “So, are you going to date this guy now?” he asked her. “Are you going to call Hud Campbell?”

  Nervous laughter surged up, but Lorna didn’t dare let it out. “Why are you so angry?” she asked. “I was trying to help. I could call Hud and tell him I’ve given his male fantasy question more thought, if that would help— No? Okay! I was only thinking about the article.”

  “I don’t give a shit about the article.”

  “Then what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  He took the bags from the island, stuffed them under his arm and headed toward the back of the house. “I’m going to take a swim.”

  Lorna watched him stalk out of the room and a question popped into her head. He wasn’t jealous, was he? Her throat burned with sudden heat. Had he risked his publicity campaign and eaten a business card because of her? No. No, she couldn’t let herself go there. That was wishful thinking. Women who entertained such notions about rogues really did need lobotomies.

  She hadn’t accomplished any miracles. She hadn’t reformed Jamie Baird, and she certainly hadn’t made him fall in love with her. But at least she’d said a few things she wanted to say, even if only to a reporter with Jamie listening. She’d also made a new friend, the tough little cookie inside her that she no longer referred to as her inner B word.

  Her sense of satisfaction couldn’t sustain her, however. Sadness swept her. It settled into her chest like a weight as she looked around the room and saw her bags, packed and ready. Maybe it was time to go. There didn’t seem to be much else to do around here.

  JAMIE BURST THROUGH the surface of the water and swam to the edge of the pool. He’d almost expected to see Lorna standing there, and something clicked in his mind when he didn’t. She was gone.

  He could feel it.

  He didn’t bother with the ladder. He hoisted himself out of the pool with his arms and then he whipped the towel off the deck chair, where he’d left it. The house was eerily silent as he stormed through it, and the scent of strawberries that had hung in the air wherever she’d been was already gone.

  A note lay on the dining-room table. He read it with a sense of dread. What had he done? What the hell had he done?

  “Good luck with your fashion show—and your life.”

  She hadn’t even signed it. Well, that was plain enough. It was a goodbye, if ever he’d seen one.

  He toweled off his dripping hair and breathed a profane word. He could hardly fathom how anyone could have messed things up this badly. Unintentional or not, this was a disaster. He’d just thrown an L.A. Times reporter out of his house. He had jeopardized VLL’s ad campaign, and all because of his silly scheme to keep the real Jamie Baird under wraps. He almost wished he could find it in himself to blame it on her. If she hadn’t insisted on giving that interview none of this would have happened. Then again, the switch had been his idea. She wouldn’t even have been here if not for him. And now she was gone.

  The wet towel hit the floor with a splat.

  She’d messed with his mind, his company, his life. And he should have been outraged. Why wasn’t he outraged? Why did his sense of loss outweigh everything else? He had a fashion show and a company to salvage, and all he could think about was whether or not he’d ever see her again.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  SOMEONE WAS TAPPING on Jamie’s shoulder. “Go away,” Jamie mumbled into the sleeve of his shirt. The painful crick in his neck told him he’d fallen asleep with his head on his desk again.

  “Aren’t you ever going home, boss?”

  “Probably not.” Jamie opened one eye and saw Frank Natori, leaning on his trusty mop and frowning at him.

  “You slept here last night, too,” Natori observed. “Someone at home you’re avoiding?”

  Jamie sat up slowly and rolled his neck, absently aware of the cracking noises. He�
�d been camping out at the office the last couple days, going home only to shower and change. If he was avoiding anyone, it was Hud Campbell, who’d been dropping by to see “Jamie.”

  Jamie had used the excuse that Ms. Baird was traveling, and he was house-sitting, but by Campbell’s third visit, Jamie had decided to vacate. Otherwise, a certain reporter was going to get his glasses wrapped around his bony throat. The guy was turning into a stalker.

  “It’s myself I’m avoiding,” Jamie said at last.

  “Ah!”

  “No,” Jamie cut in, “it’s not a woman. It’s my life. Everything’s going to hell on me.”

  “Just as I thought. It’s a woman.”

  Natori seemed pleased with himself, which brought an exasperated snort from Jamie. He was about to argue the point when he realized the futility.

  “Okay, it’s a woman,” he admitted with a sigh. “She’s killing me, and she’s killing this company.”

  Jamie fell back in his chair and pointed to the newspaper that lay open on his desk. His green banker’s lamp was the room’s only illumination, but it clearly lit the feature in the business section.

  “What’s this?” Natori pulled the paper around to look at it. “A newspaper article about your company? What does it say?”

  Natori was the genius who’d told Jamie that women needed to hear certain things from a man, the right words. Jamie gave him a pained look. “All the wrong words.”

  LORNA WAS RIGHT BACK where she’d started, trying to make sense of her life. But now there was more frustration than hope. And maybe even some bitterness. What the hell had happened in the last week? This wasn’t the new start she’d imagined just days ago, before Jamie Baird made his reappearance.

  She couldn’t seem to get started at all. Her humidifier sat unused, and the rituals that had brought her harmony seemed pointless now. Nothing made much of an impression on her, except the fact that the phone hadn’t rung, and most of her energy was taken up in reflection, but not about herself.

  She couldn’t get her damn thoughts off Jamie. There’d been no word from him, not that she’d expected any, but it was becoming clear that she needed some kind of resolution in order to get on with things. The entire course of her life had been disrupted, but that wasn’t what preoccupied her, either. She needed to know that he was all right, and that she hadn’t disrupted his life, at least not too badly.

  She opened her refrigerator door and peered inside at the emptiness. Breakfast anyone? There was a six-pack of cranberry-apple juice and a carton of eggs, probably months past their use date. She grabbed a can of juice, popped the top and took it with her to the knotty pine breakfast nook off the kitchen.

  Her one-bedroom apartment was cramped, but cozy, and her favorite room was the nook. She’d once referred to the wood as “naughty pine” because the knots reminded her of men’s testicles. Hmm, maybe not a good place for her to be this morning? Surrounded by testicles?

  Absently, she fished a piece of paper from the pocket of her pajamas and realized it was a grocery list. She really was in a funk. She’d actually been too distracted to shop. Must be a sign of the apocalypse. Here she was back in her apartment, alone and on vacation but without the bare necessities of life. No comfort food?

  The only thing comforting her this morning were her threadbare, cloud-print pj’s. She’d even patched up the worn spots, determined not to give them up. They’d snuggled with her on Saturday night dates with the VCR and kept her company on sick days. When she was lonely and blue, they were almost as good as a security blanket.

  She took the juice with her into the living room, where she’d opened the front door and windows to create a cross breeze. She had no air-conditioning, and it was still early enough in the day to be cool. When the breezes carried in the perfume from the neighborhood jasmine trees, you could almost imagine yourself being bathed by trade winds.

  A week’s worth of newspapers lay unopened on the floor. She’d been going to throw them out, but she had an entire weekend to kill before she went back to work, and she had to do something. She grabbed one at random and began to look through it. Maybe she would see an ad for a fabulous sale that would give her the will to shop.

  Thirty minutes later, she was still sitting on the floor, leafing through newspapers at random, skimming page after page in search of something to occupy her mind. And finally she found it. On the front page of the business section of yesterday’s paper was a headline about the Velvet, Leather, & Lace fashion show.

  From the opening paragraph, Lorna knew it was going to be bad. Hud Campbell was implying that VLL engaged in sexism.

  “The luscious Ms. Baird refuses to hire men as designers,” Hud had written, “yet has her own male assistant.”

  Lorna read on reluctantly, wincing at several more implications about VLL’s anti-men attitude. Halfway through, she stopped, unable to go on. She had never wanted to hurt Jamie’s business. She’d only been trying to teach him a lesson, perhaps foolishly, she realized now. She’d had little personal experience with the media and hadn’t foreseen how her statements could be misconstrued. Obviously, that’s why Jamie had been gesticulating like a traffic cop during the interview. And that damn Hudley Campbell. It would be a cold day in hell before Lorna would ever demonstrate anything for him, except how to call an ambulance.

  Call Jamie and apologize. Ask him if there’s anything you can do.

  Lorna had just decided to do that when a shadow fell over the newspaper. She glanced up to see the man himself standing in her doorway. She struggled to get up, catching her foot in the leg of her pajamas. A ripping sound told her she’d torn the thin material.

  “Jamie? What happened?”

  “Why?” His voice was hoarse, angry. “Do I look that bad?”

  She didn’t say it, but he looked as if he’d been living on the streets for a week. His clothes were rumpled, his dress shirttail hanging out of his slacks. His hair was messy, even for him, and his jaw was shadowed with stubble. But it was the blood that riveted Lorna’s attention.

  He rubbed his jaw and grimaced. “I guess I should have shaved, huh? Changed my clothes?”

  “What’s that cut on your lip?”

  “I just came from a meeting with Hud Campbell at his office.” He touched his lip, as if he hadn’t realized the cut was there. “He looks worse.”

  “You fought with Hud? Oh, my God, Jamie, why? Think what he’ll write now.”

  “I know what he’ll write now. I told him what to write.”

  Lorna was almost afraid to ask. “What do you mean?”

  She opened the screen door and let him in. Her apartment complex was smallish and wrapped around a swimming pool. The design made the courtyard an echo chamber, and she didn’t want Jamie’s business broadcast to the neighborhood, not that it wouldn’t be broadcast everywhere else soon enough, once it hit tomorrow’s edition of the Times.

  Jamie came in at her urging, but he didn’t take the chair she offered him. He hovered, hands fisted in his pockets, shoulders hunkered like a boxer in his corner of the ring. Lorna had never seen him so disheveled—or desirable. He could have been green and scaly, and he would have been desirable to her. Oh, dear God, was she falling in love with this man? No, no, no. Please, no!

  “What did you do?” she prompted.

  He was matter-of-fact. “I told Hud that VLL couldn’t be anti-male, as he implied, because Jamie Baird is really a man, and not only does he run the business end of VLL, he’s responsible for several of the designs, including StripLoc. And then I shook Hud’s hand and introduced myself.”

  “He knows you’re Jamie, and that I was impersonating you?”

  Jamie nodded. “I laid it all out for him. I figured the anti-male publicity might do more harm than the truth, as long as it was clear the company didn’t deliberately set out to deceive anyone. I told him the media, including his paper, had assumed I was a woman, and there hadn’t been time to clear up that confusion before we got caught up in a
major advertising campaign for the satellite fashion show.”

  “You explained that there wasn’t time to clear things up?” she prompted.

  “Not once the investors got involved. The ad campaign and satellite show were their idea, and they financed it with a huge infusion of cash—at which point, things took off at breakneck speed. Before that, I’d been happy to stay in the background. There hadn’t been any pressing need to explain my presence at VLL because no one ever expected me to stay on and make a career of women’s lingerie, least of all me. I was just doing some friends a favor.”

  “And Hud bought that?”

  Jamie managed a grim smile. “Well, it is the truth. But I didn’t pretend to be a victim of the media. I told him VLL’s executive team was concerned that negative publicity before the fashion show could sink it and take the company down with it, so I’d planned to clear up the confusion after the show—by giving him an exclusive.”

  He shrugged. “VLL isn’t blameless, and I couldn’t pretend we were. Anyway, it’s out there now, and we’ll see what happens.”

  Lorna blurted, “I forced you into that, didn’t I?”

  “The only thing you did was force me out of hiding. It was time for me to step up to the plate and take responsibility.”

  Guilt made her rush right over what he’d said. “No, I was wrong, totally wrong. I should not have gone ahead with the interview after you’d cancelled it. Maybe you deserved it, but your company didn’t.”

  “Thanks, I think.”

  She found a tissue in her pajama pocket and dabbed the blood from his lip, which made him wince, the big baby. She was just so glad to see him. She honestly was. “Do you think Hud will give you a break?”

  “I thought so, right up until the end.”

  “What happened?”

  “He asked me how to contact you.”

  Lorna’s heart sank. “And you hit him?”

  Jamie grinned. “I returned his business card in one of those fancy gift bags with tissue paper—and he hit me. Caught me as I turned to leave. Bad thing to do.”