“Are you that particular about everything?” he asked. “Or just your water?”
She smiled and looked up at him. “Everything.”
“I’ll bet you’re hard to please in bed.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Don’t you think a half hour after we’ve met is a little too soon to speculate?”
He shrugged. “If I’m a bad boy, I have to do something to live up to my reputation.”
“I think you’ve done enough.”
“If you think this is bad, you’d better run now before I shock your skirt off.”
“How about if you stop trying to get rid of me and give me a chance?”
“I think you’re more concerned about your job than I am about mine,” he said.
She shrugged. “I can find clients anywhere. One person isn’t going to make or break my career.”
“Is that right,” he said, a statement rather than a question. He didn’t believe her casual act for a second.
For one thing, there wasn’t anything casual about Naomi. She had the sort of polished formality that came with being a purebred Southern belle. He would have bet money she didn’t even mess up her hair in bed.
And as long as she intended to stick around him, he intended to do his best to find out firsthand whether his suspicion was correct.
A girl like Naomi, though—she wasn’t just going to hop into bed at the drop of his pants. She’d need wining and dining first.
She gave him a calculating look. “I’m serious about discussing the possibilities I see for your career, but we can’t have a serious discussion until you’re willing to listen.”
Career possibilities, makeovers, mass-market appeal. Blah, blah, blah. Whatever. Zane couldn’t have cared less, so he decided he needed to shake things up a little. To keep himself awake.
“How good is your French?” he asked.
“Pretty good.”
“So you know what I said to you earlier?”
I want to make love to you is what he’d said, but judging by the blank look she’d given him at the time…
“Um, yes, I’ve got a pretty good idea,” she said.
But she didn’t. That much he could tell. “Then here’s the deal. You accept my proposition, and I’ll agree to go along with your image consultation.”
Not necessarily the makeover part, but a consultation he could handle. It would give him time to get her right where he wanted her—in his bed and out of his career business.
She smiled an uneasy smile and extended her hand to him across the table. “Okay. You’ve got yourself a deal.”
4
NAOMI SUDDENLY WISHED she’d paid more attention in her college French classes. Had she just agreed to make out with Zane? To take off her clothes for him? To dance naked in the middle of the street with him? The only thing she could say for sure was that he hadn’t asked her how to get to the train station.
And would admitting she had no idea what she’d just agreed to do cancel their deal?
Zane’s expression turned wolfish again, and Naomi suddenly was feeling a little less sure of her superiority over Red Riding Hood.
“We do the consultation first,” she said. “Today.”
“Today? I’ll need to check my schedule.”
“Your schedule must be really full, what with you sleeping in till noon and all.”
The waiter brought their lunch and set it on the table, but Naomi couldn’t even imagine why she’d bothered to order food. She was so keyed up, eating would be difficult. She stared at her crêpe Florentine, garnished with a wedge of melon, and realized that if she didn’t eat, she was going to seem like one of those women who couldn’t eat in front of a man. For the sake of her image, she took a bite.
“If you want the truth, I just got back from Yemen four days ago. I still have jet lag.”
“Oh.” So much for her up-all-night-partying theory. “Sorry. You covered the terrorist violence there?”
“Yep, got caught right in the middle of it.”
“I think I saw something about that on the news. Didn’t your cameraman get shot?”
Zane nodded.
“That must have been terrifying.”
“It was, and now I’ll be relegated to covering weather disasters in the Midwest for the rest of my career.”
“Tornado season’s coming up,” she said, and his expression grew darker. “But that’s not what you wanted to hear.”
“I just need to lay low until this whole controversy blows over.”
Naomi recalled another news story she’d recently seen. “Weren’t you involved in some kind of scandal over there? Something involving a princess?”
Zane gave her a look that made it clear she’d touched on an even more unwelcome subject. “Yeah, something like that.”
The details of the story came to her then. “Now I remember—you slept with her, and then her daddy, the king of—”
“I’m familiar with what happened,” he interrupted.
“You didn’t win any image points at Mediacom for that little uproar, I’m guessing.”
“No, but who knew she was a princess? Or that she was supposed to remain a virgin until her wedding night? Last time I checked we were living in the twenty-first century.”
Naomi smiled. “Was she a virgin?”
“Not by any known definition of the word.” He gave her a knowing look, and she couldn’t help laughing.
“Well, at least you weren’t the original deflowerer.”
“Maybe I can reassure Mediacom with that—I didn’t deflower the princess. Will that improve my image?”
“Doubtful, but I can. We just need to work on cleaning you up a bit.”
“You make me sound like I need a bath.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Why don’t we just get this image consultation thing done now, and you can fulfill your end of the bargain tonight.”
Naomi made like she was enjoying her crêpe. How to admit she had no idea what she’d agreed to do?
She couldn’t.
With the annoying angel on her shoulder screaming, Don’t do it, she smiled. “Okay, no sense in delaying things, right?”
The amusement in his eyes made her feel more than a little like an idiot. “Right,” he said.
Was she that obviously clueless?
She watched Zane devour his sandwich at the speed of a man accustomed to eating on the run, surprised that he managed to do it gracefully. Herself, she still had no appetite, but she forced herself to eat.
It was a weakness, she knew, caring so much about every little detail, caring so much that she present just the right image to the world, but hey, it was her profession. If she couldn’t look her best, how could she expect her clients to trust her?
“You know,” she said between bites, “after Jack called me, I went to the Mediacom Web site and watched some video clips of your news reports.”
“And what’s your professional assessment of my image problem?”
“For one thing, you have an attitude on camera.”
“What kind of attitude?”
“Just this sort of ‘I’m such a cool guy’ thing.”
“But I am such a cool guy, right?” His grin was contagious, but Naomi took her job seriously. She wouldn’t be lured into joking.
“I think the attitude compromises your journalistic integrity to a degree. It attracts attention to you instead of the story.”
Zane’s eyebrows shot up, and his sandwich halted midway to his mouth. He set it on the plate and pinned her with his gaze.
“Is that why I was nominated for a handful of major awards last year?”
“No, but it might be why you didn’t win.”
His expression transformed from disbelieving to pensive. “Okay, I’ll watch some video clips with you, and you can show me what you’re talking about.”
Naomi was careful not to let this small victory show on her face. “I also think,” she said, forging ahead, “that
your look stands out too much.”
“My look?”
“You’ve got this scruffy rebel thing going on. The hair, the five o’clock shadow, the jacket, the jeans—”
“So we’re back to my personal hygiene again.” He was clearly refusing to take this whole discussion seriously, even now.
“I mean, I think you’re a little vain and like the attention your appearance gets you. But you’ll never reach your full potential as a journalist as long as you’re distracting viewers from the story.”
He took a long drink, then fixed her with a gaze that was pure heat. “So I’m a distraction. You don’t seem to be distracted from your job.”
“I’m good at what I do.”
“Are you good at everything you do?”
That was the question of the week. Naomi felt her face flush and wished she’d been born with a darker complexion. “I try to be.”
He flashed a mischievous smile, then polished off the last of his sandwich as Naomi tried not to let her thoughts stray to the issue of her possible frigidity.
And if she really was a lousy lover, would she want any other guy to know? Would she be able to summon the nerve to sleep with anyone and risk proving, once and for all, that she was lousy in bed?
Why couldn’t she stop caring for one night or even a few hours? Just long enough to get laid.
“Tonight I have this thing to go to,” Zane said when he’d finished chewing. “It’s a party to honor shallow, self-important journalists who care more about their own images than they do their stories. Want to go?”
“I never said any of that about you.”
“I elaborated on your ideas.”
“You exaggerated. There’s a difference.” Did she want to go? She had no idea, but she figured if she wanted Zane as a client, it was one more chance to seal the deal.
“Tonight could be my opportunity to prove to you what a noble guy I am.”
And it would be Naomi’s chance to prove to herself she was a woman who knew how to go after what she wanted.
“Okay, I’ll go. Happy?”
“Thrilled.” But his tone was ambiguous. She couldn’t tell if he was simply being coy or making fun of her.
“We should watch those video clips now.”
Zane shrugged and pulled out his wallet. He grabbed the check that the waiter had left on their table at some point when Naomi hadn’t been paying attention, and tucked a few bills into the check holder.
As they stood up from the table, she noticed that the sun was overheating her, that she was growing sticky under her suit jacket and was dangerously close to developing big, wet underarm stains on the red wool. But if she took off the jacket, she’d reveal a stretchy camisole that she hadn’t put on with the intention of it being seen by the world. It was lace, and she’d been so sure she’d wear her jacket all day, she hadn’t bothered with a bra. So she had no choice but to sweat.
A lady never leaves the house without wearing a proper brassiere. That’s what her mother had always said, and Naomi felt slightly scandalous to have even broken that little rule of Tyler propriety.
Somebody call the etiquette police. Next thing she knew, she’d be insisting on paying for lunch, or—gasp—wearing a white outfit in January.
“Something wrong?” Zane asked as he escorted her away from the outdoor eating area.
She waited to answer until they were out of earshot of the other customers, on the sidewalk headed to his apartment. “I’m just a little hot in this jacket,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting such humid weather today.”
Why that was something she felt she couldn’t say in front of eavesdroppers, she had no idea.
“So take it off.”
“I can’t. I’m a bit bare underneath.” God, could this get any more embarrassing?
Yes, if the underarm stains started growing, it would.
He smiled. “When we get back to my place then, I insist you make yourself comfortable.”
So much for her polished professional image. One undergarment oversight, and it was out the door. Okay, so maybe going braless wasn’t exactly the method she would have chosen to advance her career, but she had a pretty good feeling it wasn’t going to hurt her chances snagging Zane as a client.
And she wanted Zane as her client. Wanted him with some kind of crazy force that had little to do with her professionalism and everything to do with his mesmerizing appeal.
She’d do whatever it took to get him. If sex was a weapon, she wasn’t above clubbing him on the head with it.
ZANE HAD TO ADMIT, he’d been slightly impressed by Naomi’s assessment of him, but he wasn’t about to let her know that. If he did, he’d end up looking like a thirty-three-year-old Chuck Albright, complete with shiny ties and stiff-collared shirts.
But he was even more impressed with Naomi’s interpretation of business attire. She’d stripped off her jacket as soon as she’d entered his apartment, revealing a red lace camisole underneath that exposed every lush detail of two of her best features.
As he set two glasses of ice water on his desk, then pulled up an extra chair for her to sit in while they watched video clips, he could see the outline of her nipples through the camisole, could almost taste the faint saltiness of her skin that was glowing with perspiration. He was a happy man.
Thank heaven for steaming hot Georgia spring days.
He could have fired up the air-conditioning, but then that might have convinced Naomi to put her jacket back on, which would have been a damn tragedy.
Instead, he took his desktop computer out of low-power mode and opened up his Web browser, directing it to Mediacom’s Web site.
“I have this stuff on tape, you know,” he said. “It might be better to watch on a big screen.”
Naomi shook her head. “This is easier. I can show you the clips I’ve already seen so you’ll know what I’m talking about. Like that one,” she said, pointing to a clip of a recent report from the Ivory Coast.
He clicked on the link, and they waited for it to load.
A few seconds later, he was watching himself on the computer screen reporting about recent developments in the war-torn country.
“See,” Naomi said, “Right there. You’re so busy doing that John Wayne impression for the camera, I almost forgot about the story you’re reporting.”
He clicked Pause on the video software.
“No, I don’t see.” But he did, sort of. He had a sneaking feeling she was right. “I’m not doing any John Wayne impression.”
“Maybe not consciously, but somewhere along the way, you’ve developed this slightly sensational reporting style. It’s the cowboy look in your eyes, the way you tilt your head, the little smirk you sometimes wear, the way you stand like you own the place you’re reporting from. Watch the rest of the video and try to see what I’m talking about.”
Zane clicked Play, and he watched. He’d never looked at himself through someone else’s eyes before. Even with the many edits he’d done with his coworkers, he’d never really tried to imagine how anyone else saw him. Of course, no one else had ever been paid to “fix” him, as Naomi would be.
He didn’t exactly like the view from her seat.
The video clip ended, and she said, “Well? Do you see what I mean?”
Zane coughed. “Not exactly.”
“Let’s watch another clip then.” She reached for the mouse, but he put his hand over hers to stop her.
“Let’s not.”
Her gaze fell to his hand touching hers, and she shot him a calculating look. “Afraid of what you might see?”
“No, I’m afraid of what you might see.” He flashed a smile, and she oh-so-casually slid her hand out from under his and placed it in her lap.
“Look, I know this can be difficult—having someone else point out all your flaws to you.”
“Actually, what’s difficult is sitting here with you wearing that little scrap of a top and trying to keep my mind focused on work.”
O
kay, it was a sleazy tactic, but if it drew attention away from him…
“I thought you’d figured out by now that trying to distract me with sexual innuendo wasn’t going to work.”
Damn it.
Zane shrugged and smiled. He couldn’t help admiring her ability to put him in his place. “Hey, I thought I’d give it one last shot.”
“Good, now can we watch another clip?”
Zane closed the browser and pivoted in his chair to face Naomi. A little bead of sweat trickled down her temple, and it was all he could do to keep from pulling her into his lap and licking it off.
“We’re finished watching clips,” he said. “I get your point, and while I may not agree that it distracts from the story, I see that if I change those things you pointed out, I’ll be on my way to making the powers that be at Mediacom happy.”
“It’s really just a matter of toning yourself down. You’ve got a strong personality, and it shows on camera.”
“So I need to be a little more boring?”
“Not boring—transparent. You’re there to report the news, not make it.”
Zane blinked at her comment as it resonated through him. He was there to report the news, not make it. While he’d never set out to be the subject of the news rather than its conduit, he knew she was right. Somewhere along the way, he’d accidentally gotten his role confused. And his recent news-making incidents were a perfect example of that confusion.
“Do you understand what I mean?” she asked.
If he let her know how good she was at her job though, she’d be well on her way to turning him into someone he didn’t want to be.
“Sure, you make a good point. I’ve done a few dumb things recently.”
Okay, so that was the understatement of the day.
She brushed her hair away from her face, where it had grown damp with perspiration, and even that innocent gesture made his cock stir. He loved watching her perfect facade crumble, loved that her polish was wearing off in the heat, and that with each passing minute, she was looking more like a real woman with real desires and less like a vision of perfection.
“Then our next step is to talk about how you can eliminate your negative habits.”
Sexy All Over Page 4