“You certainly photograph well,” Vivian added.
It only took one look at her for Jack to immediately understand that Valerie didn’t want him to do this. He could see the nerves all but roiling beneath her perfectly polished surface. He realized that a feature in People, with their massive subscription base, coupled with a spot on the most popular morning talk show in the country, were quite different on the exposure meter from a local news spot and fifteen minutes on drive-time radio.
Of course, he had no desire to prolong this circus, either. In fact, he was opening his mouth to explain why he agreed that it would not be a good idea to overexpose the whole Prince Charming thing, knowing Eric would jump in and back him up—when Valerie nervously clicked and reclicked her pen and said, “Yes, he’s got great presence, but we’ve hired him to dispense advice exclusively for Glass Slipper magazine. It’s why people will buy it. It might not be smart to just give that away right off the bat. His platform should be the magazine, not a talk show.”
It dawned on Jack then that, even though today had gone so well, she still didn’t trust him. She didn’t think he could handle this without screwing up and giving away the charade. Had he spent a few more minutes thinking it through, he might have realized that she was more concerned that prolonged media exposure invited prolonged media scrutiny. Then again, if he was the kind of guy who took the time to think things through, he wouldn’t have been in this spot in the first place.
Which is why, before Eric could step in and help her out, he jumped right out of the frying pan without so much as glancing at the fire. “Well, you did hire me as your spokesperson,” he said.
Eric’s mouth dropped open. “Jack—”
Valerie’s reaction time was a bit slower. She turned to stare at him.
He smiled, all benevolent and helpful as he looked at the assembled group. “It’s just one interview, a few pictures, and a couple minutes talking to the talk-show hosts, right?” He shrugged. “I don’t see why this should be a problem.” He turned to Eric. “Do you?”
Eric all but drilled holes right through Jack’s forehead despite the grin he kept on his face. “Maybe we should discuss this,” he said tightly through the smile. He looked past Jack to Valerie, who was looking very relieved at the intervention.
Which only served to piss Jack off more.
“When do they need a response?” Eric asked.
“Right away, I’m afraid,” Valerie said, obviously hoping the tight time frame would work in her favor. “The booking agent from the show is waiting for a call back from me right now.”
As if they were seated at Centre Court, Wimbledon, the godmothers’ heads turned in unison, from Valerie to Eric and Jack, then back again.
“Do you mind if we talk this over privately?” Eric asked, already reaching for Jack’s elbow.
Jack neatly sidestepped him. “No need. Honestly, I don’t see the big issue here. As your spokesperson, I expected to do the occasional media function. I feel responsible for the situation we found ourselves in this morning and I’d like to do what I can to make it up to you. I’m sure it will help boost your magazine sales, and it can’t hurt my book sales, either. As far as I can tell, we all come out winners.”
The godmothers breathed a collective sigh of relief. Valerie, on the other hand, used that brief moment to glare at him. He smiled. She was going to have to learn that he didn’t do well with being micromanaged. Or underestimated. Besides, it wouldn’t affect his timetable too much. He could still be out of here in a week or two. Then Valerie wouldn’t have to worry about what he might say or do, would she?
“This is simply fabulous,” Vivian gushed. “If People is foolish enough to let us build our subscriber base on the backs of their established mailing list, then more power to us, I say.”
“Exactly, dear,” Aurora concurred.
“It does seem to be a good opportunity for us both. Thank you for going the extra mile,” Mercedes said, finally giving in to a small smile.
“Not a problem,” Jack assured them.
“Dear, why don’t you go make your calls,” Aurora suggested to Valerie.
“Thank you for your hospitality,” Eric broke in, “but if it’s okay with you, Jack and I should also take our leave now. We’ve got to go over the revised schedule and make plans accordingly.”
Both Aurora and Vivian looked crestfallen, but not wanting to upset the coup they’d just scored, they all quickly agreed. “Of course,” Mercedes said with a nod of finality. “Naturally, Glass Slipper will take care of whatever expenses are incurred. Valerie will schedule your transportation and accommodations.”
“Of course,” Valerie agreed with a fixed smile as she gathered her cell phone and stacks of notes and crammed them into her satchel.
“Would you like us to fix you a plate to take with you?” Aurora asked. “You didn’t get tea.”
“Don’t go to any trouble,” Valerie answered for all of them. “We have a lot to go over.” Turning so the godmothers were behind her, she shot Jack a death glare. “We’ll be sure to have a long dinner while we go over every last detail.”
“You do that, dears,” Aurora said. “It’s been a whirlwind that appears to continue, so you have to take care of yourselves.”
“Oh, we’ll be taken care of,” Valerie assured her. Under her breath, as she passed by Jack and Eric, she muttered, “All the way along our descent straight to hell.”
Sexual attraction
Hunger is a powerful thing. It can make you deaf, dumb, and blind to reality. Hunger is sneaky. It can make you believe that feeding it is more important than anything else. Hunger is also vital. But indulge at your own risk. Or it will come back to bite you on the ass.
Chapter 14
Valerie Wagner was a woman on the verge.
The question was, of what? Her career was taking off. And yet, every time she looked into the smiling faces of the godmothers, the guilt factor increased. And every time she looked into the grinning face of the source of that guilt, her lust increased despite the irritation.
This was not good.
Her intercom buzzed. “They’ve arrived,” Tracy, her new assistant, chirped. “Should I direct them to the conference room, Ms. Wagner?”
“Yes, please. And it’s Valerie, okay?”
“Yes, Ms. Wagner.” She stopped, giggled. “I mean, Valerie.”
Valerie sighed and gathered her notes. Had she ever been that young? Probably. But hopefully she’d never been that vacuous. When Elaine had told her to hire someone to take on the day-to-day increase in traffic she was now having to handle, Valerie had been secretly thrilled. She had staff! She’d immediately planned on hiring someone with verve, attitude, and a hunger to get in on the ground floor of something good. Much as she saw herself back in the early days. And the middle days. For that matter, all the days leading up to taking this job.
Instead, she’d gotten Tracy. Well-meaning, klutzy, heavily mascara’d Tracy. Who also happened to be Elaine’s niece. Nineteen, fresh out of high school, and taking a break before starting college. Valerie got the feeling she was being used as incentive to make Tracy want to end her break early. After only two days on the job, Valerie was totally on board with that program.
She stopped by the teenager’s desk on her way out. Tracy was busy blocking out her schedule with a variety of colored highlighter pens. Valerie could only hope there was actually some sort of method being employed, but a quick glance at Tracy’s Sponge Bob screensaver reminded her that methodical and forward-thinking were two adjectives she’d likely never employ when describing her new assistant.
She put a short, neatly printed list of numbers on Tracy’s desk. “I need you to contact these people. It’s just a confirmation list, so you should be able to get through it quickly. If anyone hedges, put them through to me. If there are any changes, tell them I will call them back.”
Tracy looked up from her artwork, beaming like a puppy who’d just figured out how to use th
e paper for the first time. “I hope you don’t mind,” she said, nodding to the desk calendar as she uncapped a fresh pen. “Color makes me happy. I think the world needs more color.”
“Very Peter Max of you.”
“Who?”
Valerie swallowed the urge to sigh. “Never mind. Just take care of the call list first, okay?”
Tracy recapped the pen and bobbed her pert blond head. “Sure thing, boss.” She fanned her liberally applied M*A*C foundation with the call-back list. “You know, I still can’t believe you scored Prince Charming.”
I can’t believe I want to score with Prince Charming, Valerie thought, but managed not to say.
“And who knew he was such a hottie?” Tracy burbled. “All my girlfriends are going to drop a total brick when I tell them he was standing not two feet away from me and actually spoke to—”
“Tracy, the calls?” Valerie broke in, smiling faintly.
Her assistant immediately adopted what she probably thought was a serious, businesslike demeanor. Renee Zellweger would have been more convincing. “Yes, Ms. Wagner.” At Valerie’s short sigh, she quickly cleared her throat. “I mean, Valerie. I’ll get this done right away.”
Shaking her head, Valerie strode quickly toward the conference room. How was it that for every minute she spent with Tracy, she felt five years older? She shifted gears and mentally tried to prepare herself for the upcoming meeting with Jack and Eric.
She’d waved them off when they’d all left Glass Slipper, Inc. less than seventy-two hours ago, but only after she’d made sure Eric was aware it was his job to explain to Jack exactly why she wasn’t very happy with him. She’d spent every minute since then with a cell phone in one hand and her Palm Pilot in the other.
The calls they’d gotten Friday morning had turned out to be the mere front wall of the avalanche. “God forbid he play by the rules and just say no, like we’d agreed,” she muttered. Because then she might be able to sleep at night and stop using Rolaids as condiments with every meal. When she had time for one, that is.
She pushed into the conference room, intent on taking charge from the get-go and not letting up an inch until she was certain they were all on the same track. Meaning her track. Which was to bull their way through the now white-hot glare of media they’d attracted—or, rather, that Jack had attracted—pray they didn’t slip up, keep him from basking in the glow for even one second longer than was absolutely necessary, then mercifully close the door on this charade. Then maybe she could settle into the slightly more sane and humane pace of playing publicist for a bimonthly publication. And at some point, she might even stop feeling guilty, and start believing in, and enjoying her success.
Who knew, she might even be able to figure out a solution to her totally unreasonable attraction to Jack.
Her blossoming optimism was swiftly extinguished by the sight of Jack sitting at the conference table, talking with a woman Valerie had never seen before.
“I think women are as perplexed by men as we are by women. Myself included,” Jack was saying, quite amiably and somewhat flirtatiously, if you asked Valerie. Of course, Jack was just being Jack, but the result was the same.
“So I can’t help the guys out,” he went on, “but I try my best to demystify my gender for the opposite sex when and where I can.”
Once Valerie dealt with the totally uncalled for pang of something that felt the teensiest bit like jealousy, she simultaneously assimilated two vitally important pieces of information. One, Jack was giving relationship advice. And two, that little recorder in front of the woman indicated she was taping his comments. Meaning, she was a reporter.
When Tracy had said “They’re here,” she’d assumed her assistant meant Jack and Eric. “Where’s Eric?” she blurted, thinking only that she had to stop this farce as quickly as possible. And she needed backup.
“Valerie, good, you’re here.” Jack swung his feet off the black conference table, where he’d been making himself very comfortable. “Eric was unavoidably detained.” With that damnably amused smile, he stood and gestured to the woman, a polished, slim blonde with a wide, attractive smile. “Petra Mackaby, this is Valerie Wagner. Valerie, this is Petra. She’s the stateside correspondent for Okay! magazine in the U.K.” He smiled, quite pleased with himself.
That’s about to change, Valerie thought. “Hello,” she managed through a partially clenched smile.
“A pleasure,” the pert British woman responded. As she pushed to a stand, her bobbed hair and gravity-defying boobs bounced pertly in unison. Everything about her was pert.
Valerie had had it up to here with pertness.
“Valerie is Glass Slipper’s publicist,” Jack explained.
The younger woman’s cleverly sculpted brows rose as the light of recognition dawned in her—of course—sparkly blue eyes. “Ah.”
She didn’t need to tack on “The one from the front page of the tabloid,” as it was clearly a given.
Petra extended a hand. Valerie took pleasure in noting the bitten-down nails, knowing it was small of her. She didn’t care.
“I hope you don’t mind my tagging along here,” Petra said in her lovely British lilt. “I assure you, I plan to report only the good things.” She smiled adoringly at Jack. “As if there could be any bad.”
Jack grinned. Valerie barely refrained from rolling her eyes.
“Yes, well, I certainly appreciate the interest in our spokesperson, but at the moment his contract is somewhat restrictive when it comes to giving interviews. Jack, I’m afraid I have you promised to a number of other outlets and we’re in danger of overextending the boundaries of our agreement.” She looked back at Pertra. “I’m sure you understand.”
The gleam in Petra’s eyes turned somewhat more speculative. “Ah, yes. I believe I do.” She glanced between the two of them, then began gathering her things.
Jack stepped in. “Now, Valerie, don’t be hasty. Petra is doing a sort of day-in-the-life article. I thought you’d approve of expanding Glass Slipper’s exposure to an overseas market.”
Petra didn’t pause in stowing her recorder and scooping up her trendy Gucci white leather bag. “It’s quite all right, Jack. I believe you’ve given me enough to work with.” She smiled at Valerie, and there was a definite smugness to it now. “More than enough, I’m sure.”
“At least let me arrange transportation for you,” Jack offered, reluctantly accepting the abrupt change in plans.
Petra waved him off. “I’ve taken quite a bit of your time and I don’t want to delay your meeting with Ms. Wagner here another moment. It appears she’s got important things to discuss. I can take care of myself.” With one last knowing glance at Valerie, she slipped on a pair of red Boomslang sunglasses and was gone.
“I’ll just bet you can,” Valerie muttered, definitely done with everyone calling her Ms. Wagner. It made her sound as bitchy as she felt. “Day-in-the-life, my ass. More like, night-in-my-bed.”
Jack closed the conference-room door and turned back to a still cross-armed Valerie. “What was that all about? I honestly thought the article was a good idea.”
“I have the feeling you’d think anything that presented itself in body-hugging black knit would be a good idea.”
His lips quirked. “Ah.”
“Don’t you ah me.” She slapped her notebook down on the table. “And you can wipe that amused smirk off your face while you’re at it. Didn’t Eric explain anything to you? Do you realize what just happened?”
“I don’t smirk.” He lifted a hand when she growled. “I will cop to being amused.”
“At some point during all this, you’ve begun to believe you really are Prince Charming, haven’t you?” She folded her arms again. “Well, you might think you can charm your way through a few interviews and a few reporters, but you forget that I know the real deal. The real you.”
Jack came closer, his gaze suddenly very focused. It took considerable willpower, but she managed to remain rooted to the spot
.
He stopped mere inches in front of her. “You don’t know the real me,” he said calmly and very intently. “You don’t know anything about me except the bits and pieces I’ve had to reveal to pull off this farce.”
Valerie struggled against the almost hypnotic tone of his voice, the tugging tractor-beam pull of his gaze. “What I know,” she told him, damning the faint quaver in her tone, “is that you just handed that woman an article better suited for Page Six than some human-interest story that might have done us some good.”
“I didn’t hand her anything. We were getting along just fine until you came in.”
“I bet you were,” she said, realizing as she heard her own words what she sounded like. The brief kick at the corners of his mouth told her he thought the same. “What you do on your own time is up to you. But you don’t have any of your own time until we’re done with this fiasco.”
“What fiasco?” he asked, honestly perplexed. “I mean, I know none of us planned this, but as far as I can tell, the magazine is selling like hotcakes, and Eric’s popularity is multiplying just as fast.”
“Is that why you jumped in and said yes to the godmothers, even though you knew I didn’t want you to? Even though we’d agreed you wouldn’t? To help Eric’s career? Because I don’t think he—”
“No, I did it because you looked like you were about to have a stroke at the idea of putting me in front of a camera. Honestly, Valerie, you worry too much. And, frankly, I don’t think you give me enough credit.”
“You? I don’t think you give me enough credit! You said after that little tabloid-making stunt that you’d do things my way. But did you, at any time, think to clear this little chat through me? No. You have no idea what I’ve been dealing with over the weekend, or how hard I’ve worked to safeguard our little secret and yet still appear to do my job.” She knew she had to rein it in, get herself under control. Jack was far too calm about this whole thing, which only served to make her look even more like a screeching shrew than she already felt. “And dammit, where is Eric this time? He was supposed to—”
Dear Prince Charming Page 20