by Sami Lee
“If people don’t like what they see, they won’t bother to move beyond appearances and get to know you—or in this case, your book.”
Jake folded his arms across his chest and regarded her with a curious tilt of his head. “Well, if that isn’t some of the most twisted logic I’ve ever heard.”
Fists moving to her hips, Libby retorted, “This from the man who wrote ‘Ladies, if want to reel in a fish, you have to use the right bait’.”
“Marlin,” Jake corrected, the turn of his lips hinting at chagrin. If it weren’t for the dim lighting in the garage, Libby might have believed the dark tinge in his cheeks was a blush. “I said reel in a marlin. Men are the fish in that analogy.”
“Oh, I got that. Men as fish,” Libby gave a delicate sniff, filling her nostrils with the scent of grease, old sweat and the salty pungency of prawn heads left to bake on the nearby boat ramp.
“What’s your point, Miss Allison?”
“My point is you seem perfectly happy to tell women how to dress, how to talk, heck, how to think in order to please a man. But you aren’t willing to come with me to buy one little suit, perhaps get a haircut—” she let her opinion about his shaggy, too-long-to-be-fashionable style be known with a sweep of her gaze, “—in order to promote your work in the best light possible.”
“Look, lady.” His expression softened a little with something she easily interpreted as condescension. “I’m sure you think you’ve done the right thing in coming here. I get it. Peony Publishing wants you to whip me into shape, make some kind of metrosexual out of me. Tell me, do I look like I could pass for a metrosexual to you?”
Libby smiled despite her irritation at his tone. “Not yet. But when I’m through with you, you won’t know yourself.”
“And that is exactly what I don’t want. So I think the best thing for you to do is head on back to your office and chalk me up as a lost cause.” Libby couldn’t contain a little squeal of outrage when he reached out and tapped her on the nose with his dirty, callused index finger. “Thanks for stopping by, chickadee.”
Libby stood, shock rooting her to the spot, and watched him return to the group. The three other men seated on upturned crates all darted their gazes away, pretending they hadn’t watched everything that had just unfolded.
How dare he tweak her nose and send her on her way, like some Girl Scout selling cookies he didn’t want to buy? Did he think she would run out of here like a scared rabbit?
Apparently, he did. Jake McCallum parked his butt and lifted his abandoned beer to his mouth as though she no longer mattered, while Libby remained where she was, fuming and ineffectual.
Well, ineffectual wasn’t good enough. Libby didn’t do ineffectual. Miranda was counting on her to get this right, to secure the future of Image Solutions. Libby was hardly going to let some boorish oaf of a man like Jake McCallum ruin everything because he didn’t feel like shopping, when it was obvious nobody needed the help of a fully stocked department store more than he did.
Her heels were clacking on the cement floor before words had formulated in her mind. But when she reached the group of men and opened her mouth, she found she had a lot to say.
*
“You, Jake McCallum, are an arrogant, supercilious, bald-faced hypocrite.”
Jake had been called worse things by women over the years, but he’d never been reamed out with quite as much conviction.
He turned back to stare at Libby Allison. She was dressed in red and white from the polka dot silk scarf in her hair to the red suede ankle boots on her feet. Her polka dot blouse looked silky and too delicate for the interior of an auto shop, her narrow red skirt like something out of a 50’s sitcom. Her hair was a golden fountain sprouting from the top of her head and her face was…no denying it, pretty. Taut lines of frustration and anger narrowed her big blue eyes and thinned her shiny lips, but she was attractive all the same.
His Dad, Saul, would say Libby Allison was as cute as a button. Jake didn’t let the outrageous adorability of her exterior fool him. She might look like a pixie-faced movie starlet on the outside, but something told him the inside was all steamroller with a full tank of gas, ready to roll right over him.
A lot of maintenance, a girl like her. The highest kind. And in Jake’s opinion, upkeep was supposed to be for cars, not for women.
“Well, I guess you pegged me, chickadee.” Jake delivered the words with the laconic drawl that seemed to irk every woman he’d ever come across, taking some juvenile relish in the teasing rhyme. Anyone would think he was still in the school yard. With a sigh of resignation, he stood once more to face her. “You get paid for character assassinations too?”
“Assassinate? I wouldn’t need to touch your character to do it damage. Its wounds are self-inflicted. You’re not even willing to give this a chance, even though your publisher clearly instructed you to do so. Isn’t that disrespectful to the investment they’ve made in you?
Not for the first time, Jake rued the day he’d let his sister Angela talk him in to taking Peony Publishing up on their contract offer. This writing gig was not a new career he was launching. It’s Not Him—It’s You had been little more than a lark, a blog he’d started to blow off steam about his trials in the dating world. The blog had caused a minor online stir that had turned into a loyal following, and Jake had gone along for the ride, making each post more entertaining than the last. Sometimes he’d embellished his dating disasters for maximum effect. Sometimes, unfortunately, he hadn’t needed to. Angela had even shown him how to make money from advertising, and when Peony had come sniffing around, offering to compile his posts into a dating advice book, it had been Angela who’d insisted he do it.
So where was Angela now that the scary pixie lady wanted to go over him with a fine-tooth style comb? Jake would have loved to chew her out about the mess this book deal was starting to make of his previously uncomplicated life.
“Don’t you care if your book is a success?”
Jake took a thoughtful swig of his beer, pretending to mull over Libby’s question. Then he shrugged. “Nope.”
The pint-sized blonde appeared stunned. “That’s just crazy.”
Jake tilted his beer bottle at her. “In your opinion.”
“In everyone’s opinion.”
“Listen, I already have a job.” Jake gestured around the garage with his beer bottle. “I don’t really give a crap if the book makes a hundred bucks or a hundred thousand.”
Well, that wasn’t entirely true. He’d take the hundred thousand if it landed in his lap. Inject some cash flow into the garage, send his mum and dad on a nice long holiday. Not that Jake thought for a minute a print version of a bunch of blog posts was going to race out the door of every bookshop in the country.
“Your publisher obviously cares how the book does,” Libby pointed out. “Or they wouldn’t have sent me to make sure you’re capable of selling it.”
“Aw, Jeez,” Jake muttered testily. “What difference does it make what people think of me? It’s the product that matters, isn’t it?”
“You are the product, knucklehead.”
Her insult caused laughter to ripple through the guys. Even Rodney, the apprentice who always acted shit-scared of him, was laughing. This girl was doing a verbal takedown of him, and the guys who’d always respected him were getting their afternoon entertainment while she was at it. Enough was enough.
Jake took a step forward. To her credit, Libby didn’t even flinch. Jake pushed the moment of admiration aside and scowled. “You always insult your potential clients, Libby?”
Her lips curved triumphantly. “So you admit you’re my client.”
“I said potential. I still don’t see the necessity for all this. I own a suit. What if I promise to get it out of storage and dust it off for the book launch?”
“Dust it off!” She clucked her tongue in a thoroughly irritating manner. “I should think not. You need a complete re-style if you’re going to create the buzz you need t
o sell copies of your book.”
He heard the air quotes around the word book and didn’t like it one bit. It was all right for him to call his own work a joke, but for some jumped-up shop assistant with an attitude to look down her nose—that was another situation altogether. “You don’t like the book.”
“I’m afraid I’ve only had time to skim the first few chapters of the advance copy Peony sent me,” she informed him while checking out her French manicure.
In other words, she’d paid only enough attention to support her already concrete opinions about what a jerk he was. She’d probably hated him the instant she read the book’s title. He could tell her he hadn’t picked it, that he’d never intended to tell women how they should behave in relationships and that fancy editing could put a whole different slant on things, but what was the point? She’d already formed her view, and from the stubborn set of her pointy little chin, he didn’t see it changing anytime soon.
This was yet another reason why he should never have taken his sister’s advice and accepted the book deal. He may not be the nicest bloke in the world, but he didn’t relish the possibility of being the most hated guy on the southern continent. For one thing, the notoriety was going to kill his social life.
Not that he’d had much of one lately.
What a lecture Libby Allison would give him if she knew that. A dating guru who was so sick of the game he’d voluntarily spent the season on the bench. He was relieved, at least for now, to be out of the cauldron of coffee dates, away from the potential minefield of casual sex. Lately, he’d stuck to work, beer and poker with the guys and spending nights alone in his apartment above the garage, listening to classic Radiohead until he fell asleep on the couch.
Shit. When put like that, his life sounded pathetic.
“Okay, you win.” Nothing like a little harsh self-reflection to make a guy get off his high horse. “I can try and do something this weekend.” He’d put in an appearance, let the girl pick out a couple of shirts and get it over with. He could manage that.
She pursed her lips. “I think we need more time.”
“I’m working. I can’t just leave.”
“Sure you can.”
Jake groaned at the familiar voice and the certain knowledge that Saul McCallum was going to take the side of the bouncy blonde. His father was always telling him to get out more, to get away from the garage. If Saul had had his way, Jake would never have left his other life in Sydney two and a half years ago to help him run the business in the first place.
Back then Saul had suffered a heart attack. As they both well knew, if Jake hadn’t come back when he did, his dad would have had to sell the business. Everything the old man had worked for gone in a puff of smoke, all because Jake wasn’t here to pick up the slack.
Jake had been determined not to let that happen, and Saul had never quite forgiven Jake for giving up his high-flying job in Sydney to come back here. Neither had he forgiven himself for needing Jake too.
“I’m Saul McCallum,” Jake heard his father tell Libby. “I own this place.”
“McCallum. You two are related?”
“Jakey’s my son.”
Jake winced at the childhood nickname.
“Of course he is. I see where he gets his looks.”
She thinks I’m good looking?
His father let out a pleased laugh at the chickadee’s clichéd charm. Jake rolled his eyes. He couldn’t believe he’d been fooled for even a nanosecond, or that he’d gotten a kernel of satisfaction from the possibility that Libby Allison thought he was attractive. She was only trying to ingratiate herself with Saul. Her view of Jake as a badly dressed grease monkey was fairly transparent. Clearly, he was not her type.
Jake tuned back into the conversation in time to hear his father officially granting him the next two days off so Libby could whip him into shape.
“Sounds painful,” Jake muttered, already dreading spending the next two days with the perky, fiery-tempered Libby Allison. Image consultant. What kind of job was that anyway?
“Don’t grouse, son,” Saul said. “You could do with a woman’s touch.”
Ain’t that the truth. He doubted his dad had meant the comment that way, but too many nights sleeping alone on the couch had obviously started to get to Jake. Sadly, he didn’t see his reawakened libido being satisfied anytime soon.
And certainly not by the petite, polka-dot-loving blonde he was stuck with for the next couple of days.
Chapter 2
Yes, I Am Wearing That
Don’t waste your time trying to change how your man dresses. Most men don’t give a rat’s ass what’s in fashion this season. And no matter what you put him in, he’s the same primal, testosterone driven animal underneath. You might as well embrace it.
At ten after nine the following day, Jake climbed the stairs to the headquarters of Image Solutions. Situated above an office offering tax returns done while you wait—how else should they be done?—and a pokey store touting vintage clothing—read: secondhand—the office space was understated, which surprised Jake. After meeting Libby, he had half suspected the walls to be painted bright pink and decorated with pictures of LOL cats. But the cream walls and standard black and gold lettering on the glass doors bespoke of a business that took itself seriously.
It wasn’t going to convince Jake to take anything about this situation to heart. He was doing this to get Libby Allison off his back, and to fulfill the promotional requirements of his publisher. A second read through of the contract he’d signed had reminded him he’d agreed to this kind of treatment, should Peony consider it necessary. Best thing to do was get it over with as quickly as possible.
“Mr. McCallum.”
A tall woman who was the physical opposite of Libby approached him as he loitered in the small waiting area. She wore a pair of black-framed glasses that accentuated the remoteness of cool-grey eyes and her black hair was smoothed into one of those immaculate chin-length styles that meant business. The edges looked like they could cut glass. Her pantsuit was black, her silk blouse bleached white. Jake guessed immediately that she had a wardrobe full of the dour-looking outfits—pantsuits aplenty in every color from navy to charcoal.
“One and the same.” Jake stuck out his hand—freshly washed and looking like new.
“Miranda Eastwood.” The woman took his proffered hand in her slender one. Her shake almost crushed Jake’s fingers. “I’m afraid Libby’s been held up a few moments. Would you like to take a seat while you wait?”
“Sure.”
Jake sat in one of the beige chairs placed beside a coffee table stacked with fashion magazines and copies of Business Review Weekly. He tried to temper his look of surprise when Miranda took a seat beside him. She crossed her legs and rested her pale, long-fingered hands on her knee, her body angled slightly toward his.
Her gaze rested upon him, coolly assessing. Her concentrated focus was unnerving. “So you’re an image consultant too?” Jake asked, annoyed that her silence had reduced him to inane small talk.
“That’s Libby’s department. I’m a training and development manager, mostly for corporate clients.”
That explained the Business Review Weekly subscription, but not how a stern woman like Miranda had ended up in business with someone like Libby.
Before Jake could ask about it, Miranda went on. “Are you aware that first impressions form eighty-two percent of a person’s long-term opinion of you?”
“Did you know that seven out of ten statistical quotes are made up on the spot?”
From the downward turn of Miranda’s lips, Jake guessed his little joke hadn’t gone over well. “I don’t mean to cause offense, but you, Mr. McCallum, do not make a good first impression.”
“Why would that cause offense?”
Miranda continued as though she hadn’t heard Jake’s droll remark. “For a start, your clothes are all wrong. But hopefully, Libby can help you with that.”
“She seems determined to
try.”
“Wearing jeans and a T-shirt to a professional appointment makes you appear sloppy.”
Jake followed her glance down to his faded jeans and green T-shirt. Across the front of the shirt in white was a cartoon depiction of a man on his knees holding out a credit card to a standing woman. The caption below it read International Symbol for Marriage.
“Nothing wrong with what I’m wearing.” He afforded Miranda’s attire the once over. “Better than looking like a funeral director.”
Instead of the anger Jake expected to see, Miranda Eastwood’s expression remained impassive. In her eyes though, he could swear he detected a flicker of something that might resemble amusement in better lighting. “You’re going to be trouble,” she told him.
“That’s what all the girls say.”
A door behind them opened and Libby Allison stepped out. She wore her hair in a ponytail again, but today it stuck out from the right side of her head. Was that still called a ponytail or did it have a whole other name? Her dress was green and white and fit her like a glove in all the right places, flaring out a little around her knees.
Oh, man. Not that Jake didn’t like a slim-fit pair of jeans on a woman, but the way Libby poured herself into a dress about knocked his socks off. Too bad she hated him. Pursuing her might have been worth the romantic challenge.
“Jake, sorry to keep you waiting.”
She crossed the waiting room to stand in front of him. Jake felt himself shooting out of his chair, years of lecturing from his mother on the importance of gentlemanly conduct overriding his unfortunate inability to make a good first impression. “No problem.”
Libby’s blue irises had flecks of gold in them. It was an unusual enough color combination that Jake found himself staring into the silky-soft depths. She held his gaze, her pupils dilating almost imperceptibly. Whatever she’d done with her make-up made her lashes seem particularly exotic and lustrous.
Lustrous? Geez, Jake, you sound like a cosmetics commercial.
Miranda cleared her throat, making Libby start. She straightened her spine. “Shall we go? We can take my car. I can write off the parking costs.”