Making Over Maris

by Sabrina York

  Making Over Maris

  Sabrina York

  Wired, Book Three

  When über-nerd Jack asks Sara to make him more attractive to women, she can’t say no—even though it’s an impossible task. He’s shaggy and doughy and hopelessly inappropriate. He has no style or emotional intelligence but he’s a good person. And a great friend. What Sara never expects? Beneath all that fur and geekiness is a steamy hunk just waiting to emerge.

  Jack takes Sara’s regimen very seriously, working out and losing weight until he feels like a new man. He even complies with her command to shave his beard—because Jack didn’t ask Sara to make him over so he would be attractive to other women. He only wants to be attractive to her. They go on a series of fake dates, each hotter and more sinful than the last. It’s not long before Sara discovers Jack’s secret desire to be dominated and what began as an arrangement becomes something amazing—something that could be real.

  Inside Scoop: Our hero appreciates Femdom—with the right woman. Our hero doesn’t appreciate perfect strangers grabbing his junk. Ask nicely first, ladies!

  A Romantica® BDSM erotic romance from Ellora’s Cave

  MAKING OVER MARIS

  Sabrina York

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to a certain Goodreads Book Addict who urged me to give Jack his comeuppance. Ahem. So to speak.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to Carrie Jackson for her editing genius, making sure Jack got his just desserts, and to Syneca Featherstone and the Ellora’s Cave art department for an awesome cover featuring our own Alpha Caveman, De Angelo, who totally rocks the nerd look! To all the Ellora’s Cave staff who work so hard to make these books shine, you are all amazing!

  My heartfelt appreciation to Sidney Bristol for her sage advice in this story, as well as to my fellow writers for their support. Especially Avery Aster, Delilah Devlin, Cerise DeLand, Tina Donahue, Desiree Holt, Mark Henry and Gina Lamm.

  And deep appreciation to Charmaine Arredondo, Crystal Biby, Monica Britt, Kim Brown, Fedora Chen, Carmen Cook, Celeste Deveney, Shelly Estes, Stephanie Felix, Joany Kane, Angie Lane, Rose Lipscomb, Laurie Peterson, Tina Reiter, Hollie Rieth, Regina Ross, Dee Thomas, Michelle Wilson, Christy, Elf and Gaele—who always support my books and writing.

  To all my friends in the Greater Seattle Romance Writers of America, Passionate Ink and Rose City Romance Writers groups, thank you for all your support and encouragement.

  Chapter One

  “You want me to what?” Soda spurted out of Sara Grant’s nose. She mopped it up and gaped at Jack Maris, at his coke-bottle glasses, his scraggly, crumb-strewn beard, his ubiquitous black t-shirt with some vague video game reference splattered all over it.

  “You heard me, Sara. I want you to make me attractive to women.”

  Holy crap.

  Yeah. That’s what she’d thought he’d said.

  She shuddered and stared down at the lunch table, at her suddenly unappetizing tuna salad. “Jack—”

  “Listen, Sara. I know I’m kind of a dork…”

  Kind of?

  “And I’m hardly Brad Pitt.”

  Hardly?

  “But I really need your help with this.” He reached across the table and grabbed her hand. “Please?”

  She tried to ignore the crack in his voice. They’d been friends, coworkers and partners in crime for years. He’d been the one who told her about this job at the company he’d started with his friends—badgered her to apply for it, even. Because of that alone she’d do almost anything he asked.

  But this? Impossible!

  And it wasn’t just the physical aspect of things. It wasn’t that he was dumpy and doughy and extraordinarily…be-furred. Seriously. A Wookiee would be jealous.

  No. It wasn’t all that scruffy hair or the beer belly or the fact that he always looked vaguely unkempt.

  Okay, maybe not vaguely.

  The real challenge was the simple fact that Jack was utterly clueless about women.

  He’d been an über-nerd since high school. A brilliant nerd but a nerd nonetheless. To think she could magically transform him into some steamy hunk, to teach him how to be romantic, to unlearn him of all his hideous habits to the point that women—normal women—would want him, was ridiculous.

  She shook her head. “No.”

  He surveyed her in silence, tapping his finger on the table as though he was running computations in his head. He did stuff like that. A lot. Jack was always thinking. His jaw clenched. “I’ll pay you.”

  Sara balled up her trash and tossed it across the room into the mini basketball hoop the guys had set up over the break-room trashcan. Two points. “You couldn’t pay me enough.”

  Aw, hell. She hadn’t meant to sound so flippant. Truly she hadn’t. The wounded expression flickering across his features made her wince. But it was there for a second and then gone, quickly replaced by a flare of resolute determination. Sara winced. She knew that expression.

  “Come on, Grant. There must be something you want. Something you really want?” He waggled his brows. Two furry caterpillars warred on his forehead. “You know I can afford it.”

  Yeah. He could. Though it was not apparent from his sartorial ineptitude, Jack was a freaking bazillionaire. However, that didn’t make the prospect of taking on such a ridiculous project more appealing.

  Still…she did want something. She only mentioned it because there was no way—no way—he could deliver.

  “Okay… I want to spend my thirtieth birthday atop the Eiffel Tower with a glass of champagne in my hand and Mr. Right at my side.” It was her fantasy. Had been forever. Since she was a girl. But that milestone was only a couple months away and all she had was a bedpost scarred with the notches of “perfect men” who hadn’t worked out.

  And Todd still hadn’t called her back. She didn’t even want to think about how that made her feel.

  The notion of a romantic thirtieth birthday with the man of her dreams seemed suddenly ridiculous.

  Which probably accounted for the sarcasm in her voice.

  But Jack was oblivious to the sarcasm. He was oblivious to most things.

  He peered at her through his thick glasses and fondled his beard. “The Eiffel Tower?”

  “Yes.”

  “In Vegas?” He nibbled on his fingernails.

  Sara smacked his hand away from his mouth and glowered at him. Vegas? Seriously? Was that were his brain went? Apparently it was. To top it off, he was completely unaware he was proving her point. No woman—with even one romantic molecule in her body—would want him.

  Even if she could do this.

  Even if she pulled off a miracle.

  You could give a guy a haircut. You could trim his Mentat eyebrows. You could even dress him in a suit. But you couldn’t change his core nature.

  Experience had taught her that.

  Experience had tried to teach her that.

  Like any red-blooded woman, Sara responded to a hot, hard, muscular, well-maintained man. But in truth it was a man’s soul, his spirit, that indefinable something that was his most alluring aspect. How he treated a woman. Spoke to her. Seduced her. If a guy was drop-dead gorgeous but didn’t have a romantic side, he was only good for a fuck. Most women wanted more than that.

  Sara wanted more than that.

  She hadn’t found it.

  Well, she had found it. He simply hadn’t called her back.

  Damn it all anyway.

  And Jack? Jack’s core nature was G-E-E-K. Chronic, incontrovertible, unadulterated geek with a bad case of social incompetence, especially when it came to the female of the species.

  Jack would never have it. Like, ever.

  His ears went pink at her glare. “Oh.”
He mangled his napkin. “You mean Paris, France.”

  “Yes, Jack. Paris. France. Not Paris, Las Vegas or Paris, Arkansas.”

  He sucked in a breath through his teeth. “Okay. If you do this, I’ll send you to Paris, France for your birthday.”

  Her heart ker-chunked. He couldn’t be serious. Surely he wasn’t serious. She decided to push it. “For a week.”

  “A week?”

  “A week. And you’ll hire me a dreamy male escort as well?” She was joking but that faraway look meant he was doing the math.

  “How much does a male escort cost?”

  She bit back a laugh and shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never hired one before.” It hardly mattered. It wasn’t as though any of this was actually going to happen…

  “All right.”

  Sara’s head snapped up. “What?”

  “I’ll do it. Paris for a week and a male escort for your birthday.”

  “Jack, I was joking.”

  A muscle in his jaw worked. His gaze glittered. “I’m not. I’m not joking.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Do you have any idea how much it would cost for airfare alone?”

  “The cost doesn’t matter. It’d be worth it. If you could teach me what I’m doing wrong…it would be worth everything I own.” This last bit he offered in an agonized whisper that echoed in the empty reaches of her soul.

  He seemed so…vulnerable. So lost. Desperate, maybe.

  So unlike the Jack she knew.

  Jack Maris always had an evil grin and a cheesy joke or a super-snarky comment in the offing. He was completely self-assured—even when he probably shouldn’t be.

  But now this. An annoying, helpless, wounded expression that made her feel like a royal jerkess. She shouldn’t be such a douche. She was kidding around but he wasn’t.

  He fixed his gaze on the tabletop and scratched at the Formica with a nail. “It’s just…I’m…so tired of being alone.”

  His wrenching confession tugged at her heartstrings. She knew exactly how he felt. She was tired of being alone too. But she could get a date—even though all the guys she went out with somehow magically transformed into croaking, wart-covered, slimy toads by the third date. She glanced at her phone even though she’d promised herself she wouldn’t. Even though she knew—knew—Todd hadn’t called.

  Amphibians though they inevitably proved themselves to be, guys asked her out all the time. She dated more than she wanted to. For some reason she kept hoping somewhere in that veritable knot of toads was a prince.

  She’d even settle for a nice guy.

  A nice guy who called.

  But for someone like Jack—someone who looked like he did and wore clothes harvested from a pile on the floor of his closet, someone who preferred video games to sex games, someone whose encyclopedic knowledge of the female gender had been gleaned from C-grade porn—for someone like him, dating was out of the question.

  Oh sure, hot chicks would be all over him if they knew his net worth, if they knew he co-owned one of the most successful software companies in the country and wrote some of the hottest video games on the market.

  But they didn’t know and they wouldn’t. Because Jack rarely left his lair—his lair being the computer lab where he worked with a herd of the smartest interns on the planet.

  None of them dated either.

  Yeah, hot chicks would be all over him if they knew what he was. But for some reason, Jack kept himself incognito.

  Which was fine with Sara. She didn’t want him with that kind of woman anyway—someone who would only want him for his money. Even though he was nerdy and awkward and “nerdlinger” shy, he deserved someone who would love him for himself.

  Everyone did.

  She sighed. “I’ll think about it.”

  You’d think she’d agreed to play Halo with him, the way he leaped up from his seat and yanked her into a big, warm hug. “Thank you, Sara! Thank you! Thank you!”

  She pulled away and frowned up at him. At six-four he towered over her. “I said I’ll think about it.”

  “Yeah. I heard.” He grinned. God, he was almost cute when he grinned like that. “You’re awesome. Thanks.” He headed out the door but then stopped in his tracks. “Oh. Do you want to do movie night?”

  She stilled. She loved movie night. “What do you have?”

  “A pirate copy of A T-Rex on Pleasure Island.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “It sounds awful.”

  “It is.” One of their shared passions was watching—and ripping—atrocious movies. “So this planeload of Italian models crash-lands on a remote island in the Bermuda Triangle—”

  “Naturally.”

  “And there happens to be a pack of radioactive carnivorous dinosaurs living there.” He chortled. “There should be lots of screaming. And bloodletting. Body parts.”

  “Lovely.”

  “Roberto Tintoretto is the star.”

  “Oh my God. He was execrable in The Squid Thing.”

  “Yeah. You MST3Ked the hell out of that one.”

  She laughed at the memory. “Yeah. Okay. Maybe this weekend.”

  “Perfect. And Sara?”

  She took a drink of her soda and crushed the can. “Yeah?”

  “Thanks for the other thing. You know. Thanks for thinking about it.”

  “Sure.”

  But God. She hated that he appeared so hopeful.

  Because she wasn’t going to do it.

  The blood pounded in Jack’s veins, making him lightheaded.

  Holy crap.

  She’d said she’d think about it.

  Barely able to contain his excitement, he made his way back to the lab, through to his office and settled in his task chair. He entered his encrypted password and stared blankly at the screen as his machine ran through its security reboot. Like a zombie, he tapped in the responses to all the cues. His mind was elsewhere entirely.

  She’d said she’d think about it.

  She hadn’t said yes. But she hadn’t said no.

  Anticipation trickled through him.

  Imagine if this worked. Imagine what might happen. What could happen.

  He could have Sara. In his arms. In his bed.

  He shivered.

  She’d been his fantasy, his walking wet dream, for years. Forever.

  He still remembered the first time he’d seen her, there in the hallway at Midway High School, with her heart-shaped face, crystalline-blue eyes and mop of black curls. He’d set eyes on her and something inside him had blossomed.

  He’d known he hadn’t had a chance in hell of winning her. She was so cute and bubbly and outgoing. And all the guys flocked around her like nerds to a Star Trek convention—and he’d been a “red shirt”. Super Dork.

  So he’d initiated Operation Friend Zone. If he couldn’t have her as a girlfriend, he would have her as a friend. He could have her in his life. A piece of her at least.

  He’d joined all the clubs she joined—even drama, which had been miserable. Then he’d enrolled in two science classes way below his level, solely so he could invite her to be his lab partner. He’d helped her get into the same university that accepted him. He’d browbeaten his partners to hire her as marketing manager for their fledgling company…

  All so he could be around her.

  And it had been enough—almost enough—until lately.

  Lately it’d become unbearable.

  It probably had nothing to do with his envy of Adam and Tristan—his best friends—who had found their mates. Nothing to do with the agony of watching them stumble around, besotted and blissful. Going home every night with females. Females who loved them.

  They were probably even getting laid.

  Surely that wasn’t jealousy skirling in his gut.

  Tristan was going to be a father for Christ’s sake.

  Jack had roomed with Tristan in college. They’d played beer pong together. And now he was going to be someone’s dad.

  Frankly, Jac
k was feeling left behind.

  He’d spent a lifetime building the persona of a guy who didn’t care that he was unappealing to the fairer sex. It had served as an invulnerable shield from the sting of being unappealing to the fairer sex. His snark, his sarcasm, had protected him.

  Somewhere along the line, it quit working.

  That he was alone—and lonely—had started to hurt. A lot.

  In the past few months—since Adam and Tristan had announced their engagements—he’d gone into a downward spiral, haunting third-rate cable channels, watching chick flicks and blubbering at the happy endings.

  It was revolting.

  But then—in that dark, miserable hole—a light had flared. He’d been lounging in his media room, making his way through a platter of prefabricated microwavable sandwiches while watching one of those sappy rom-coms—a film about a woman who’d asked the man she loved to teach her how to be the perfect wife—and the idea had sprouted.

  It had worked in the movie. The hero and the heroine ended up in love. Maybe it would work with Sara.

  If she agreed to help him on this quest, she’d have to spend time with him. Think about him. Maybe—dare he hope—touch him on occasion.

  And maybe, just maybe, she’d actually see him.

  His computer played the first few bars from the Ride of the Valkyries, signaling it had completed its logon, and Jack hunkered over the keyboard, willing his brain to shift back into work mode.

  She said she’d think about it.

  That was good enough.

  For now.

  Chapter Two

  “Hey.” Kat Hart, the company’s accountant and Sara’s best friend, poked her head into Sara’s office after lunch, conveniently interrupting a dismal moping session.

  Todd still hadn’t called.

  She needed to stop thinking about him.

  Sara arranged her lips into a configuration she hoped would pass for a smile. “Hey there. How’d the fitting go?”

  Kat made a face and threw herself into one of the chairs on the far side of Sara’s desk. Her crisp blouse was rumpled and her usually prim honey-colored bun was askew. “Getting married is a pain.”