Alison Kent - No Strings Attached

She was blond. She was built. She was not about to apologize for her love of makeup. She had a brain. She was not a bimbo. She liked men. She was not an easy score.

Why was that so hard to understand? she wondered, and pedaled even harder, faster, closing her eyes and pushing beyond the burn. She doubted her reputation or her mouth truly crossed Sydney’s line in the sand.

But Chloe loved gIRL-gEAR, her vice-presidential perks and position, the cyclical industry of fashion and her partners, the five women who’d been her best friends since their days in Austin at University of Texas.

Hell, she even had a soft spot for Poe, though the other woman’s ambition irritated Chloe more than a broken underwire on a brand-new bra. Poe needed the air released from her inflated self-opinion. She might have five years on Chloe, but Chloe had the heart Ms. Annabel Lee was missing.

The ringing of the phone in her bedroom slowed Chloe’s cathartic pace, but she didn’t stop pedaling until the machine picked up and she heard Eric Haydon’s voice.

“Yo, Chloe. About that first wish.”

Chloe sat up straight on the bike and listened to the recording being broadcast from across the hall.

“Be at Haydon’s. Saturday morning. Nine on the nose. Oh, and the outfit you had on yesterday? Wear it.”

The line went dead, then came the dial tone, followed closely by Chloe’s disbelief. That was it? Orders he assumed she’d follow left on an answering machine?

And what was up with the dress code? He knew she wouldn’t wear those clothes again on a dare. She certainly wouldn’t wear them because he’d told her to. Or would she? After all, she’d been stupid enough to grant him three wishes.

She’d had enough exercise, and her fill of that bossy Eric Haydon. Hopping from the bike, she headed for the shower, flinging pink Lycra and spandex all over the bathroom. Once the hot water started melting her balled up muscles, she was better able to think.

Other than removing sex from the equation, she and Eric had set no boundaries for this granting-of-three-wishes business. She supposed it was a fair enough trade-off.

Eric knew he’d be accompanying her to gIRL-gEAR business affairs. She knew she’d be doing anything Eric wanted her to do…except crawl naked into his bed. Chloe sighed.

How terribly disappointing.

HAVING ARRIVED at Haydon’s only minutes before Chloe, Eric leaned against the back end of his car, legs crossed at the ankle, arms crossed over his chest, and watched her pull her lime-green VW Beetle into the parking lot.

If he was a betting man, he wouldn’t take better than fifty-fifty odds that she’d worn the outfit he’d wanted her to wear. Still, she was here. And that was saying something.

He continued to watch as she jerked her sunglasses from her face, the keys from the ignition. With a look between a frown and a glare, she climbed from the car, her eyes never breaking contact with his.

“Well, blow my mind. A woman who can follow orders.” He grinned. He winked. Because seeing her in play clothes had just become the highlight of his day. “I think I’m in love.”

“I see your mouth is making promises you don’t have the backbone to keep,” she said, tucking both her shades and her car keys into her knapsack and slinging it over one shoulder.

“Not promises as much as observations,” he said, ignoring her dig. He pushed himself erect and headed for the passenger door, then added a dig of his own. “Unless you want me to see what I can do about paying up.”

Chloe, of course, ignored him. He’d opened the car door and now stood with both wrists draped over the frame. Chloe waited, one hand wrapped around her knapsack’s shoulder strap, the other at her hip, feet unmoving and eyes cutting from Eric’s to the Mustang and back again.

“I take it that you want me to get in?”

“You got it.”

“Do you mind telling me where we’re going? Or what we’re going to do? And, most of all, why you wanted me to wear this ridiculous getup yet again?”

Ah, yes. The Chloe he still didn’t love…but was starting to appreciate way too much. “How ’bout you get in the car and trust that all will be revealed in good time?”

“In your good time, you mean,” she groused, but she did slide down into the car’s bucket seat.

Eric closed the door behind her and skirted the rear of the car, slapping his hand on the trunk on his way to the driver’s side. Talk about your bad mood. He couldn’t believe Chloe could really be that worried about her position at gIRL-gEAR, worried enough to bite his head off when he was the one she’d come to for help.

She’d been one of the original girls. To his mind that made Chloe irreplaceable, the same way Ted Williams would always be a Boston Red Sox, Michael Jordan a Chicago Bull, Joe Namath a New York Jet. No. There was something else going on here. But Eric wasn’t going to ask her yet.

He slid into the driver’s seat, slammed the door and turned over the two hundred sixty horses beneath the Mustang’s hood. He shoved the five speed into reverse and whipped the car around, squealing his tires out of the parking lot and onto westbound Richmond Drive.

Chloe slid him a sideways glance. “Is the length of the skid mark a guy lays in direct proportion to his opinion of himself?”

“Nope.” Eric grinned. He wouldn’t be able to afford retreads if that were the case. “That’s just me giving the horses their head. Gotta put the sweethearts through their paces.”

“Humph. Typical man. Your car gets treated better than your date.”

Eric downshifted for the traffic light a half block ahead. “How do you figure?”

“‘Give the horses their head.’ ‘Put the sweethearts through their paces,”’ Chloe mimicked, digging for her sunglasses. The sun was at their backs, but glared off the approaching cars’ glass. “Your date doesn’t even get a straight answer when she asks where you’re taking her.”

Women. Couldn’t even give a guy a chance to spring a surprise. Had to be all distrusting and suspicious…though, in this case, suspicion was not unwarranted, Eric had to admit. “Trust me, princess. I know how to treat a date. And if we were dating, I’d be more than happy to show you what you’ve been missing.”

“I know exactly what I’ve been missing,” she mumbled. And he swore he heard her add, “Cary Grant.”

Eric frowned. The girl needed help. “Tell me something, Chloe. If you can’t find a man you’d like to keep company with, why don’t you quit dating instead of setting yourself up for disappointment?”

She was quiet for a long minute, staring straight ahead through the windshield. He was about to give up and turn the conversation to the weather when she finally said, “I don’t set myself up for disappointment. I mean, it’s not like I go into a date hoping the evening will crash and burn.” She gave a careless shrug. “It just happens.”

No one crashed and burned every single time. No matter what Chloe said, it just didn’t happen. “How open is your mind then? Because I gotta say, you’re not exactly little Mary Sunshine.”

“How would you know?” she snarled. “We’re not dating, remember?”

“We don’t have to be dating for me to see that you have a hell of a negative attitude.”

Chloe closed the front pouch of her knapsack; the jerk of the zipper sounded like she’d ripped a jagged hole in the air. “You can let me out anytime. I can get myself back to my car, thank you very much.”

Eric hated to do it. He really did, but he whipped the car in a U-turn and headed back to Haydon’s. He wanted her company, the company she usually offered, or had offered before she’d hit this personal downhill slide.