by Shirley Jump
Jackpot.
With the shoe as leverage, he could surely get Sarah’s attention, be able to work out some kind of deal, encouraging her to be more amenable to writing a favorable-to-the-company article. Maybe convince her he wasn’t the bad boy she thought he was and see how writing an in-depth story on LL Designs’ new season could benefit them both.
Who better to understand and appreciate his launching of a shoe line than the woman who was in possession of the debut pair of Frederick Ks? At the same time, it hadn’t taken him long to realize working with her meant bringing her into the office—and risking that she would see the missing Frederick K on his desk. He could just see the headline now: Desperate Business Owner Swipes competitor’s Newest Design.
Yeah, not the kind of press Caleb was looking for.
Still, it was a chance he was willing to take. He had a feeling this could be a very beneficial arrangement for his business.
He reached up, grabbed the shoe and shoved it into one of the drawers of his desk. He would tell her he had the stiletto—but after he had a chance to explain what had happened, and make Sarah Griffin see he wasn’t as bad as her headlines painted him.
The numbers on his office clock had just flipped to 2:00 p.m. when Martha buzzed Caleb. “You have a visitor,” she said.
Caleb chuckled. Right on time. He wasn’t surprised. Sarah Griffin was probably completely freaked out about the missing stiletto. Losing something like that—particularly when the issue’s deadline was right around the corner—had to have her stomach in knots. And to lose one of the ultra-secret Frederick Ks? If her job wasn’t already on the line, it would be soon.
And that gave Caleb leverage. “Send her right in,” he said.
“Uh, it’s not a her.”
Not a her? Had Sarah Griffin sent someone else in her stead? Or had she decided he was bluffing about the shoe and just blown him off?
His door opened and a heavyset man in a bright blue suit stepped inside. He stood about six feet tall and half that in width, with a shock of short white hair that stood out in a cloud-shaped halo around his head. Beneath the suit he wore a red-and-white striped button-down shirt, complete with a matching pocket square. There was nothing about the man that said simple, understated or pay-me-no-mind. Not his clothing, not his mannerisms and definitely not his infamous booming voice. “Hello, Caleb.”
“Frederick. How nice to see you.”
The flamboyant owner of Frederick K designs chuckled. “Don’t lie, my boy. We all know you hate my guts.” He crossed the room and stopped by one of the visitor’s chairs but didn’t sit down. Probably avoiding wrinkles in his perfectly pressed bright-blue suit.
Caleb rose, and came around to lean on the edge of his desk. “Let me guess. You’re here because you’ve realized this fashion business is just too competitive for you and you want me to buy you out.”
Frederick K snorted. “That’ll be the day. Oh, no, I’m here to offer you the opposite.” He leaned in, his dark-brown gaze meeting Caleb’s. “I want to buy you out. Lock, stock and barrel.”
The offer came as a surprise to Caleb but he didn’t betray that emotion. Why would successful Frederick K want to take over struggling LL Designs? Was it merely to eliminate a little more of the competition? “I’m not for sale. And neither is this company.”
Frederick K laughed, the sound hearty, coming from somewhere deep in that expansive gut of his. “You’d rather file bankruptcy?”
“We’re fine.”
Another laugh. “My, my. You are delusional.” Frederick reached into the inside breast pocket of his suit, withdrew a sheet of paper and fluttered it onto Caleb’s desk. “My offer. Sign it, and you’re released from this—” Frederick waved a hand. “—prison of your mother’s making.”
A tide of anger rose in Caleb’s chest. Give up his mother’s company? Sell her decades of hard work to this buffoon? “I will never sell to you. I won’t sell you so much as a thread of my mother’s company.”
“I always thought you were a bad businessman, but never a fool.” Frederick K shook his head, making the white cloud dance. “And I’m so rarely wrong.”
Caleb pushed off from his desk and towered over the other man. “Get out of my office.”
“I’ll see you at the shows in a couple of weeks,” Frederick K said. “Unless of course you’re smart enough to quit while you’re behind.” He gestured again toward the slip of paper.
“I’ll be there,” Caleb said. “And LL Designs will be the one getting the buzz this year. Not Frederick K.”
“Delusional,” Frederick K muttered again, under his breath, then he walked out of Caleb’s office. Caleb was tempted to slam and lock the door behind him, but he didn’t.
The man had been right. He’d taken the pulse of LL Designs, and found it weakening by the day. A smart businessman would have taken the offer of a buyout, pocketed the cash and walked away. Then this entire burden would be on someone else’s shoulders and he’d be free to pursue his own career again, rather than the one he’d inherited.
He could be free. Of the worries. The stresses. The too-heavy burden of being CEO.
Caleb picked up the single sheet from Frederick K, dropped into his office chair again—
And sent the paper through the shredder.
The elevator seemed to take its sweet time bringing Sarah to the top floor of the steel-and-glass building that housed LL Designs. She’d hemmed and hawed for a good ten minutes about whether or not Caleb Lewis had been serious or just looking for a way to get back at her for all the gossip columns. Either way, she couldn’t be sure without taking him up on his offer.
Offer, ha. It had been a dare, couched in friendly terms.
He wanted to see if she was willing to step into the lion’s den to find out if he had her missing stiletto. It was possible, she had reasoned, that the entire thing was a set-up. That Caleb Lewis had used the wanted poster to formulate a ruse that would make a fool out of her. And in the process, exact a little revenge for all those columns.
But then she came back to the look on his face when he had seen the poster. He knew something—and she was not leaving here until she found out what it was.
The elevator doors opened. Sarah’s steps stuttered when she saw who was waiting for the car.
Frederick K.
The designer was talking on his phone—barking into it, really—and didn’t even notice her as she passed by him and into the corridor. Not that he ever had. Frederick K was the kind of guy who talked to his people, and told them to talk to all the “other” people. Those who existed beneath his stratosphere.
Had he been here about the shoe? Had Caleb Lewis double-crossed her? After the elevator doors closed behind Frederick K, Sarah breezed straight into Caleb’s office, bypassing his assistant’s desk over the woman’s objections. “Did you sell me out?”
Caleb stared at her. “Sell you out? To whom? For what?”
“I just saw Frederick K leaving here. Did you tell him?”
“About the shoe you lost?” A grin darted across Caleb’s face. “Now, why would I do that?”
“Because that’s the kind of man you are.”
The grin disappeared, replaced by a scowl. “You have me all wrong.”
“I wrote the stories, Mr. Lewis. I did the research. I know you.”
He came around his desk, until mere inches separated them. His woodsy cologne teased at her senses, tempting her to draw closer. She didn’t.
“You’re wrong, Miss Griffin,” he said, his voice low and quiet. “I’m not the man you have portrayed on your pages.”
His gaze met hers, and her thoughts stammered to a stop. Every time she came into contact with the owner of LL Designs, Sarah forgot her own name, never mind what she was going to say.
He had a way of riveting his attention on her, making her feel like no one else existed in his world at that moment except her. But she knew better—she herself had put together the gossip pages that linked Caleb Lewis
to every runway model in a five-mile radius. A smart woman would avoid entangling herself with a man like him. He had heartbreaker written all over his face.
“Why am I here?” she asked. “If this is some kind of ruse—”
“Don’t you want to know where that shoe is?”
Did he have it? Or know something she didn’t? Her heart skipped a beat. She put a smile on her face, hoping diplomacy would bring him over to her side—and get her the information on the stiletto that much faster. “I know my articles on you haven’t been that flattering, and I appreciate you being so understanding about this shoe…fiasco.”
He perched on the edge of his desk and crossed his arms over his chest. “I never said I had it or that I would give it back, just like that.” He snapped his fingers.
Damn. He must have the stiletto. Then why wouldn’t he admit it?
What did he want?
“One shoe doesn’t do you any good, Mr. Lewis. Certainly—”
“Quid pro quo, Miss Griffin. You want something and so do I.”
She glared at him. “If this is some twisted way of propositioning me, I assure you—”
Laughter burst from him. “I assure you, this is not about sex.”
Her ego smarted at the words, and heat climbed her neck. Well, geez. He didn’t have to be so blunt about it.
Why did she care what he thought about her? She had no desire to be part of Caleb Lewis’s model harem. But still…
It’d be nice to have him notice her. Just for ego’s sake. That was all.
“I want ink,” he said.
“Ink?” She pushed her glasses up on her nose, acutely aware that in her jeans and dark-brown cowl-neck sweater she didn’t exactly scream sex goddess. Surrounded by images of the stunning women who wore LL Designs’ latest creations, she felt out of her element. Particularly with Caleb Lewis zeroing so much of his attention on her. Attention that clearly had nothing to do with sexual desires.
Was that because her brown sweater made her look about as sexy as a loaf of bread? Or simply that Caleb was sticking to business only? Still, his questions, his directness, unnerved her. Sarah was usually the one behind the scenes—not the one in the scene. “Isn’t that what Office Depot is for?”
“I don’t mean printer ink,” Caleb said. “I mean a story. On my company.”
Suspicion rose inside her again. He knew what she’d written—surely he read Behind the Scenes—why would he want her, of all people, to write the story on his company? One that he undoubtedly expected would put a positive spin on the struggling design firm? “Why me?”
He leaned forward. “Because contrary to some of the…fluff—” In his tone she heard the struggle to use a euphemism for his true feelings about those columns. “—you have published in the past, you are the best writer on staff over there. And though I may have disagreed a time or ten with what you’ve written about me,” at this, a grin whispered across his face, then disappeared so quickly she wasn’t even sure it had been a genuine smile, “I have found your writing to be smart and witty.”
The compliments washed over her, settling into the insecure cracks in her writer persona. She didn’t care if someone was the most successful writer or painter in the world, there was just something about the creative spirit that was more vulnerable than that of, say, an accountant. She’d obsessed about every story she’d ever written, always sure her editor was going to kick it back with a big red REJECTED stamp across the top. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet, Miss Griffin. There’s an addendum to this offer.”
“Mr. Lewis—”
“Call me Caleb, please.” That grin danced across his features again, and Sarah’s stomach did a little flip-flop. “I feel like my grandfather when you say that.”
“Caleb.” His name slid off her tongue. Too easily. “The editorial calendar is set months in advance and I can’t—”
He pushed off from the desk and closed the gap between them. He was so close, she could see that his eyes—which she’d always thought were just blue—were a tempting combination of blue-gray, like the sky just after a storm cleared. She didn’t recognize his cologne, but resisted the urge to inhale the deep, musky notes. “If you wanted to badly enough, you could.”
Could what? Kiss him? Because some insane part of her wanted to do that. Pretty darn badly. Especially the way he looked today—in a white button-down shirt open at the collar, the crimson tie tugged down just enough to expose a tempting V of his neck. He’d taken off his suit jacket and draped it over the back of his chair. The simple deletion had transformed him, and the relaxed, almost cavalier tone to his attire made her want to see what would happen if she unknotted that tie, then slipped each one of those tiny white buttons out of their holes and—
She cleared her throat and moved back. “No can do. I’m sorry.”
Really sorry. She’d have done about anything to see him grin again. No wonder the models gushed about him as though he was a movie star. He had the kind of charm that tempted a woman to drop her guard, expose a chink in the walls around her heart, and go after him with wild abandon. She’d watched him from afar a thousand times, but up close—
Up close, he exerted a raw sexuality that said he would be very, very good in bed. Oh, boy.
“I’m sorry,” she said again, “but I’m not willing to compromise my ethics and just write some pretty little ego-stroking piece about you to counteract any bad press you may have received.”
He scowled. “This isn’t about me.”
“Then what is it about?”
“The company. I want a story written on LL Designs. Showcasing the company in a way your publication hasn’t done for years. I promise, it’ll be a great exclusive.”
For a second, she thought of another kind of exclusive—the kind where Caleb Lewis paid attention to her and no one else. The kind where she spent her evenings with him parked in front of a roaring fire, exploring every delicious inch of his tall, broad frame. And him doing the same to her, over and over again.
Get a grip, Sarah. The last thing you need is a relationship with a man like him.
And the last person a man like him would go for was someone like her. She wasn’t leggy or glamorous. She was…just Sarah. Nothing wrong with that, but nothing spectacular about it, either.
“I don’t know,” she said. “How do I know you’ll make this story worth my while?”
“I have something you need.” He paused. “The missing Frederick K stiletto.”
The shoe. He did have it.
All the years she’d worked at Behind the Scenes, Sarah had done her job—and done it well—and figured a promotion to the inside pages, to the real meat and potatoes of Smart Fashion, was only a matter of time. Then she could write real articles about real topics, instead of covering how many drinks some model had before she made a fool out of herself on a tabletop.
Except that hadn’t happened. Karl had kept her glued to the gossip pages, tossing her the occasional accessory story, a paragraph or two on new handbags and nail polishes for the “What’s New” column at Smart Fashion, all the while promising “someday” she’d move to the regular magazine, dangling it like a carrot on a string. She’d despaired of ever writing anything remotely meaningful.
Until one of the main writers for the fashion pages, Betsy Wilkins, had pitched a hissy fit in the middle of a photo shoot over the way her piece was edited, and Karl had ordered her out of the building. The writers’ pit had still been buzzing about the dramatic exit when Karl strode down the hall, dumped the shoes on Sarah’s desk and said, “don’t screw it up.”
Not exactly the rousing endorsement of her future she’d hoped for. For five seconds, Sarah had panicked, sure she wasn’t up to covering the famous designer’s spring designs.
Then she’d taken a closer look at the shoes, and in them, seen an opportunity for much more than career advancement. Rather, a chance for a real change. The kind she had dreamed of ever since she’d first picked
up a pen and imagined herself as a journalist. She’d gotten derailed from that dream for a little, but now she was back on track, thanks to the perfect-size designer shoes.
Half of which were in Caleb Lewis’s possession.
He put out his hand. “Do we have a deal?”
“What deal are you proposing?”
“It’s simple. You give me what I want, and I give you what you want.” His gaze met hers. “Everybody wins.”
She had dealt with the worst of the modeling world’s personalities. Covered stories no one wanted her to cover. Surely she could work with Caleb Lewis and not get swept up in his blue eyes and easy charm.
After all, she knew him. And knew he had about as much sticking power for relationships as a wet piece of tape. She’d be smart, not starry-eyed.
“You have a deal, Mr. Lewis,” she said and took his hand. When they touched, a zing ran through her.
Which told Sarah Griffin this “deal” wasn’t going to be the uncomplicated arrangement she’d hoped.
Not at all.
CHAPTER THREE
“FIRST, we need some ground rules,” Caleb said. He had paused outside the doors to his factory, one hand on the lever, the other lingering behind Sarah’s back. As if he was guiding her inside, but half of him had to admit it was so he had an excuse to touch her again.
When they had shaken hands a moment ago, he’d felt it—that little quiver of electricity running through his body, lighting up senses that Caleb had been sure had gone dark forever. He’d been with some of the most beautiful women in the world and never felt a tenth of the electricity he’d felt when he’d taken Sarah Griffin’s hand.
Why? Was it because she challenged him on every level? Because of their built-in animosity over her column? One of those push-pull attraction kind of things?
But more to the point, what the hell was he doing? She was the enemy. Not a woman he wanted to—or should—get close to. He had to guard the secrets in his life, and guard them well, especially around a gossip reporter. Except every time he looked into her deep green eyes, he seemed to forget that.