Sherryl Woods - Temptation

She considered his response. It was true. She’d given him very little reason to expect that she would gussy up in her fanciest clothes tonight. As perverse as she’d been from the moment they’d met, she might very well have worn yet another pair of jeans and perhaps her red high-top sneakers. Would he have risked having photographers on the scene for that? She doubted it, although Jason had been turning her preconceived notions about him upside down from the moment they’d met. He wasn’t nearly as stuffy and driven as she would have guessed him to be from the articles she’d read on the internet after he’d left the night before.

As for her accusation that he’d used the opportunity to cop a feel, they both knew he didn’t have to be in public to accomplish that. He was sneaky enough to try it whenever he was of a mind to. To her deep regret, she hadn’t exactly been resisting him.

“Okay, maybe I misjudged you about this,” she conceded. “But did you have to make it sound as if you were about to make some big announcement about the two of us?”

That innocent expression came back. “Is that what I did?”

“Any journalist worth his salt in that crowd of vultures will have my name and the details of our association before tomorrow’s editions,” she predicted.

“I guess we’d better think of something to announce, then,” he said, as if he’d unwittingly trapped himself and was resigned to his fate.

“Such as?”

“Our engagement?” he suggested a little too lightly for her to take him seriously.

“Very funny.”

“It would fulfill their expectations,” he pointed out.

Callie shook her head. “I don’t think so. I refuse to fake an engagement just to get you out of a PR nightmare you created yourself.”

“Hey, I’m past thirty. It’s time to settle down. The engagement wouldn’t have to be fake.”

She regarded him grimly. “Oh, yes, it would.”

He sighed, though she thought he didn’t look quite as brokenhearted as she might have wished.

“Then I’ll just have to sign you for a major role on Within Our Reach,” he said. He patted his pocket. “I have the contract right here.”

“I love a man who’s prepared for all eventualities. Is the engagement ring in the other pocket?” she inquired acidly.

He grinned. “Care to feel around for it?”

“You wish.” She scowled at him. “As for that contract, it’s ruining the lines of your jacket. I suggest you rip it to shreds and toss it in the nearest wastebasket during the first intermission.”

He shrugged and plucked it from his pocket. “I’ll do it now if it’ll make you happy,” he said, tearing it in half without missing a beat.

The gesture was a little too accommodating. Callie suspected the papers were perfectly blank, just meant to taunt her.

“Let me see those,” she said, reaching for them just as the house lights went down.

“Too late,” he said as darkness fell.

For the next hour the best drama on Broadway unfolded before her eyes, but Callie couldn’t think of anything except those papers Jason had just destroyed.

No, she corrected. That wasn’t entirely true. She was reasonably aware of the arm he’d stretched across the back of her seat. And she was shivery from the skimming touch of his fingers on her bare shoulder. All in all, Jason was doing a bang-up job of getting under her skin tonight.

In the lobby at intermission she demanded to see the papers, piecing the two sections together to study the front page. It was a contract, all right. A very lucrative contract. Her mouth gaped when she saw the outrageous sum he was willing to pay her to star in the daytime show. It was less than he was paying Terry, but Terry was a seasoned actor with proven credentials in attracting viewers. She was an unknown who belonged on Wall Street, not some West Side soundstage. It reinforced her belief that television was too far from reality to be taken seriously.

She gazed up into eyes that were watching her perfectly blandly. “You don’t even know if I can act.”

“You can,” he said.

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because for the past week you’ve been pretending to dislike me. The act was amazingly believable,” he assured her, then grinned. “At least to anyone who wasn’t close enough to look into those blue eyes of yours.”

“I wasn’t acting,” she swore.

“Want to bet?” he murmured, already leaning down to claim her lips before she could even form a protest.

Right there in the lobby of the theater, with tourists from Michigan and Texas and Ohio looking on with fascination, with dressed-up New Yorkers totally oblivious, he kissed her, slowly and methodically and convincingly. Weak-kneed, Callie clung to his shoulders. Her resistance turned to ashes, burned to bits by the incendiary nature of that kiss.

Okay, she decided when she could form a coherent thought again, maybe she did like him just a little. But she really hated herself for the weakness.

* * *

Sunday morning, after a night during which her torrid dreams had starred the infuriating Jason, Callie had just about decided she ought to be sentenced back to Iowa. Clearly she was too easily manipulated by a sexy smile and a little persistence. At some point, she had actually considered taping that contract back together just to earn another one of Jason’s devastating kisses.

The memory warmed her and made her want things she had no business wanting, especially with so many strings attached. Just as she yawned and stretched languorously, someone knocked. Since she wasn’t quite sure which of the males in her life was in possession of her key at the moment, she hopped out of bed and dragged on her rattiest old robe. She refused to give Jason the idea that she cared what he thought of her attire.

“Who is it?” she called out as she crossed the living room.

“Me,” Jason responded.

“And me,” Terry added.

“And me,” Neil chimed in.

Good grief, didn’t anyone sleep in on Sunday mornings anymore? She threw open the door and planted herself squarely in their path, as if that would bar them if they were intent on coming in.

“To what do I owe all this?” she asked.

“We were on our way out to brunch, when Jason came along and suggested we all go together,” Terry explained, not quite meeting her eyes. “Get moving, dollface. We’re starved.”

Somehow Callie didn’t believe for an instant that this could be explained away as innocently as Terry was suggesting. “You just happened to meet in the hall?” she asked skeptically.

“Cross my heart,” Jason swore.

“Ditto,” Terry said.

“Neil, you’re awfully quiet,” Callie observed. “Do you have a different version you’d like to share?”

Neil exchanged a highly suspect look with Terry’s boss, then shook his head. “Nope.”

“Satisfied?” Jason asked.

Callie supposed she was going to have to be. Based on prior experience, she knew a woman didn’t have a chance of getting at the truth if men conspired to keep it from her. Her ex-husband had kept quite a lot of truths from her. It had tarnished her views on the male of the species for all time.

“Give me ten minutes,” she said, turning away and leaving them to decide for themselves whether to wait inside or out.

When she emerged from her bedroom fifteen minutes later, she found them sprawled all over her living room furniture. Jason was settled in an easy chair, glancing through a magazine. Terry was stretched out on the sofa, eyes closed. Neil was perched awkwardly on a dainty chair meant for someone far smaller than his six feet two.

Callie gathered from the lack of clutter that Neil had spent most of the time tidying up as he did every time he walked into her apartment. Neil was compulsively neat, which probably explained why Terry retreated to her place so often. His own always looked as if it was about to be photographed for some interior-design magazine.