Mercy.
The man really knew how to kiss. Of course he did. Practice makes perfect.
She couldn't rouse much disgust for that, not when his lips were covering hers with a sure, steady pressure that was somehow soft and hard at the same time, and easy, and deep, sending urgent signals to her fuzzy brain about wrapping her arms around him and pushing her breasts into his chest.
She held the cup of paint to the side and slid her free hand around to his back. He'd gripped her by the waist and was bending her under the force of his kiss. She arched—terribly, wonderfully conscious of the ache in her breasts as they rubbed against the rough denim of her overalls … the melting sensation between her thighs…
The prodding of a growing hard-on. Whoa. The man was a quick draw. With a hefty six-shooter, by the feel of it. "Umm," Mia said.
Julian took the opportunity to slip his velvet tongue into her mouth. Grape and peppermint. Sugar and spice. Seduction and delusion.
"That's enough."
He lifted his head and said, "You're wrong." His lips were stained purple from hers. "It's not enough." With a wicked quirk of one black eyebrow, he reached for her again.
She plastered a hand to his chest and pushed. "Listen to me. I said no."
He took his hands off her, straightening up. His eyes were dark and questioning, his hair ruffled, his tie a little askew. Impossibly attractive.
She quivered with frustration. Every inch of her skin was at war with her brain, the nerve endings screaming for appeasement. While she was attuned to her sexuality and usually listened to her body's needs when a walking advertisement for sex appeal strolled into her life, this was one time where she intended to lead with her head to protect her heart. Given his reputation, Julian Silk was a pleasure she'd have to deny herself.
And she needed to do so in a way that his overblown ego really understood, so that there'd be no teasing, chasing or seducing in their future.
None? A pang of longing ran through Mia like a strummed guitar.
"You didn't like the kiss?" Julian said, still cocky.
"The kiss was okay."
"Just okay?"
She shrugged. "If I had to rate it…" That gave her an idea. Oh, she was mean. But it was a perfect pinprick of an idea, sure to let the air out of his balloon.
She thrust a couple of fingers into the cup of paint and swirled them through the purple goo. He smiled when she reached toward his face, as if he expected a reenactment of his smooth move and silken tines. He didn't even seem to notice when purple drips splattered his tie.
She bypassed his mouth and started finger painting his forehead.
"Hey!" He pulled back. Her fingertips skidded. "Hold still."
He gripped her wrist. "What are you doing?"
She continued to stroke the paint over his skin, finishing quickly. "Settling your score."
"What does that mean?" He let go of her and put a hand up to his brow.
"No, don't smear it. Go and look in the mirror."
Frowning quizzically, Julian brushed aside the backdrop screens and went to stand before a wall-hung mirror. He put his hands at his belt and stared at the numbers she'd painted on his brow. "Seventeen?" His eyes glinted. "That's on a scale of one to ten, I take it?"
"Not exactly." She pursed her lips, trying to keep from laughing. "You don't recognize your own number?"
"I wore number twenty when I played soccer in school."
"Your bachelor number," she said.
He grew more quiet and less cocky. "Ah."
She pulled a tissue out of her pocket and wiped off her fingers, the stickiness shredding the fine paper. "See, it's like this. Maybe if you were number one, or at least in the top five … but seventeen? A girl's got to set her standards higher than Bachelor Seventeen. I'm sure you understand."
When he didn't respond, she wadded the tissue in a tight fist. Maybe she'd been a little hard on him.
Julian turned to look at her with a bemused expression. "What did you do, memorize CG's entire list of bachelors?"
Mia hesitated. Great. Now he'd think she was a gold digger. "I told you, I hear things."
That was true, sort of. One of the art models she often hired for body-painting experiments had come in a while back with the bachelor issue of Celebrity Gossip, joking that her accounts were overdrawn and she needed to snare a rich husband. While Mia had painted the model's skin, they'd flipped through the pages and laughed at the poses of the self-consciously sexy bachelors. There had been several pro athletes displaying their rippling muscles, an indistinguishable clump of Wall Street millionaires, one blue-collar guy for show, a couple of artists and a slew of actors—one of whom the model swore was as fruity as his Hanes briefs.
And then there was Julian. Number Seventeen. CEO of Silk Publications Ltd. and the brilliant mind behind the swift rise of Hard Candy, the glossy lifestyle magazine with a guy-power attitude. Since its inception, Hard Candy had stormed both the newsstands and pop culture trends with its cheeky articles about sex, sports, careers and entertainment, and even cheekier layouts of barely dressed pretty young Miss Thangs.
Mia had lingered over Julian's page for a minute or two, telling herself that she was only interested because she'd been booked for the Hard Candy cover shoot.
There had been a paparazzi shot of Julian doing the exiting-limo-with-hot-babe thing. One formal portrait of him wearing a serious expression and a suit and tie—probably lifted from his company's annual report. But the photo that had captured her attention was a candid, taken at the seashore with dunes and a weather-beaten beach house in the distance. Julian was building a sand castle, looking all brown and sun-bleached, wearing nothing but deck shoes and cutoff jeans, one arm wrapped around a little girl with a sun hat pulled down to her jet-black button eyes. The display of his sand-sprinkled muscles had been impressive, but what was most attractive was the sweetness of his kinship with the child—a niece, according to the caption.
"Number Seventeen tries harder," he said.
Mia laughed and shook her head. "Tempting, but no. I always go for the best." Oh, her parents would choke if they could hear her! While both of them had always preached modesty, they'd also wanted her to make something of herself—or at least marry very well. She'd disappointed them on all counts.
"Hmm. I'll keep that in mind for next year, when the new list is released." Julian sighed and rubbed his chin. "It's a tough task, but I'll take it on. Wining, dining, kissing and seducing my way up the list…"
If he was trying to make her jealous, he was succeeding.
Nonsense. She tossed her head. "Whatever. As long as it's not with me."
"Certainly not. I may never make it to the Number One slot you require. But a man's got to try."
She picked up the heavy toolbox, lugged it toward the door, then thought better and set it down. "Here," she said, digging into her pocket for another tissue. She handed it to Julian. The crooked purple numbers had dried on his forehead. He didn't seem to mind, and he carried them off with a certain slapdash style, but she was feeling petty.
"Reconsidering my offer?" Julian said, smirking at her like a cocky bastard as he scrubbed away the brand.
She snapped to. "Absolutely not."
"Till next year, then," he called after her as she wrapped her arms around the toolbox and hauled ass for the door. Show a guy like that one inch of vulnerability and he'd have her naked between the sheets before she could wrap her lips around a No, Thanks.
"Have fun," Mia muttered as the heavy metal door clanged shut. She stopped, shuddered as if a train had just whizzed past, then hefted her materials and headed for the street, making a mental note to invest her spare change in a condom factory now that Julian Silk was on a mission to seduce. If his reputation was correct, he'd already cut a swath through Manhattan. She'd better put out a warning bulletin to the boroughs.
* * *
3
A week later, with many schemes regarding his seduction of Mia Kerrigan conjured and abandon
ed, Julian was still trying to figure out his next move when his kid sister, Nikki, came into the office looking for a job. Serendipity, he thought. She might be useful, for a change.
Nikki was twenty-three, a recent college graduate, just returned from a grand tour of Europe—two months sunning in Ibiza, partying in London and wining and dining in Venice. When he'd asked about museums and landmarks, Nikki talked about power-boating with Guiseppe and lashing Simon at the Dungeon. Julian shuddered to think.
"Jules, luv, you've got to give me a job!" In full drama princess mode, Nikki threw herself horizontally onto the new leather sofa that had replaced his dad's old leather one. She swung her feet onto the armrest, kicking away a pillow needlepointed by their mother, beloved by their father and sneered at by the designer who'd "done" the office when Julian moved in.
"Why?" he said, even though he already had an idea of how to combine their objectives. But Nikki had to think she'd persuaded him into giving her a real and valuable position in the company. She would treat a make-work job like the rest of her gifts—from the first edition Little Women left out in the rain to the Aston Martin she'd crumpled on the gatepost of their country house when she was applying lipstick in the rearview mirror while practicing her British accent.
"I can't be a decorative but useless heiress forever. Maybe for another few years, but what happens then?" Nikki waved her arms, happily chattering away while Julian listened with one ear while paging through his stack of messages. "Nobody cared about Stella McCartney until she started designing for Chloé. Gloria Vanderbilt had her jeans, Paloma Picasso did perfume…" She paused, reflecting on her ancient predecessors. And he'd thought she knew nothing about history.
"Look at Sofia Coppola." Nikki sighed. "I want to be my own person. I want respect. I mean, I didn't go to all the trouble of hiring a look-alike ringer to take my college finals only to hang the degree on a wall and never use it. But does anyone—"
Julian interrupted more forcefully. "Nikki, tell me you didn't."
She grinned at him from her supine position, her long dark hair spread across the cushions. "You're so easy to tease."
He rolled his eyes upward to ask his dad for forbearance, much as he had when Nikki had first informed him that she was getting a journalism degree so they could work side by side. If Jim Silk was watching, he was getting one helluva kick out of Nikki's latest idea. Nothing would have made him happier than to see his girls kept safe and close under Julian's protection. He'd said so, in fact, over the beep of heart monitors and the sobs of his wife. How could Julian decline the chore?
But there were limits. "Nik, do you really think you can just march in here and be handed a plum job?"
"Why not?" Nikki wrinkled her nose. "That's the point of being the boss's sister. And a shareholder. Anyway, who died and made you king?" She giggled at her wit. "Besides Dad."
"I worked my way up." At his sister's age, Julian had also hoped to choose his own career. Race-car driving, he remembered with some embarrassment. But he'd been the good son and had done as his father wished, starting as an intern at one of the Silk publications and moving from position to position until he knew all aspects of the business. When his father had died unexpectedly with the company in disarray, Julian had been well prepared to take over the reins.
Nikki sat up and flung back her hair. Uh-oh. She must be serious.
"I'm willing to do that," she said. Quite earnestly. "I'm not asking to be the next Anna Wintour by tomorrow. I can start as a columnist."
Julian humored her. "What kind of columnist?"
His sister scowled, distorting her pretty face. "I don't want to tell you because I know you'll say no."
"Oh god. Not Leather & Chrome," he said, citing the motorcycle magazine that was one of their smaller, more obscure publications. Nikki had gone through a rebellious biker-chick phase when she was seventeen. Their father's death had curtailed it before she could crack her head open or fall in with a truly dangerous crowd.
"Julian! You know I'm a vegan now. Leather is cruel. Plus, it really stinks and it made me sweat like a pig."
"Of course. I forgot." If something was a trend, Nikki would follow something.
Aha. Trendy. Which of their magazines was hottest right now? That was where his sister would want to go.
The answer came instantly: Hard Candy. Home of bikini-clad bimbos and tips on oral sex.
Nikki would be employed there over his dead body.
"How about a fashion magazine?" he suggested. That way, she'd only do damage to her credit cards.
She shook her head. "High fashion is for rich old white women."
He wanted to ask her how much she'd paid for her spike-heeled boots, distressed jeans and the skimpy snipped-silk top that showed off her navel ring, but he resisted. The last time he'd questioned Nikki's look, she'd come home with a tattoo that had sent their mother into a week-long dither. If he let her loose at Hard Candy, she'd be researching sex toys in a week. Or worse—posing for a spread wearing edible undergarments.
"Watch out. I may start you at Puppy Monthly." Julian turned over a page in the ad sales projections for next spring. "What ever happened to Frodo, anyway?" Frodo was the teacup Chihuahua Nikki had carried in a designer bag everywhere she went … for about a month.
"He's Mom's now. She took him with her to the Vineyard while I was vacationing and got attached."
"So that's who was yipping in the kitchen last time I visited. I thought the cook had gone off her Zoloft again."
"Are you trying to distract me?"
"Usually that's easy to do."
"I know." Nikki sighed. "But I'm serious this time. I want to do something with my life."
"You could get married, like Lis." At twenty-nine, Elisabeth Silk Reingold was the oldest sister. She and her husband, Sam, lived in the Nashua countryside and had two little kids who called him Uncle Julie and gave him kisses that smelled like peanut butter.
"I'm way too young to get married," Nikki said, appalled at the thought. She studied her brother for a moment and apparently decided that he couldn't be serious. Her lips twitched. "I'd rather be like Very. She knows how to have fun."
Julian groaned. Very, short for Veronica, was the middle sister and his worst nightmare. She'd been in college and on track for a responsible life when their father's passing had hit her like a locomotive. Soon after, Very had dropped out with a vow to live every moment to the fullest. Ever since, she'd been racing with a jet-set crowd of club kids. When in residence, she stayed out till dawn, partied like a maniac and slept till noon, only getting clean and sober to pay sporadic visits to their mother. Next to Very, Nikki was almost responsible.
Maybe giving her a job wasn't a bad idea. She probably wouldn't stick it out, but at least for the short term it'd be easier for him to keep an eye on her.
Nikki's lashes flickered. "I was flunking I could write for…"
Not Hard Candy. Anything but. Julian seized on the idea he'd been toying with at the back of his mind ever since she'd barged into the office.
He held up a hand. "Wait. I have an assignment for you."
"An assignment? One measly assignment?"
"You don't start off as a columnist, Nik. That's a prestigious position you have to work up to. Most of our writers broke into the field doing freelance assignments."
"Oh." Nikki brightened. She got up and approached his desk, exuding genuine interest. "What's the assignment?"
Julian wondered if he was being smart. It could be disaster, bringing Nikki and Mia together. But setting his sister free to find her own story could lead to worse.
Plus, this way he'd have reason to see Mia again.
Not that his throbbing dick needed an excuse.
He shifted at the thought. "It's a simple project, to start you off. If you do well, I'll think about giving you a permanent position." At the magazine of his choice. "I want you to do background research on an artist. We're thinking of featuring her in a, uh, fashion layout, so I ne
ed you to—"
Nikki clapped her hands. "A feature article! Yippee!"
"Hold on. I didn't say you'd be writing the article. The first step is gathering background information."
"But why can't I write the article?" Nikki climbed onto a desk chair on her knees. "No way am I doing the drudge work so some other writer can sashay in and slap their name on my story."
"That's how it's done." Sometimes, but not for a relatively minor piece like this one. Mia Kerrigan might get a three-paragraph blurb. The focus of the layout would be on her luscious works of art.
Nikki leaned forward and put her elbows on his desk. Her boots stack up in the air behind her. "Please let me write the article." She reached a hand across his desk. Batted her lashes. "Pretty please."
He gave her hand a pat, feeling very fatherly except for his motivations. Those were, well, sort of sleazy. But Nikki was an easygoing kid. She'd laugh if she found out his motive was dating and mating Mia. So … why not get two birds with one stone?
"We'll see," he said, "if you're responsible and thorough about gathering the preliminary research."
Nikki popped up. "Fab!" She went and grabbed her bag—a slim leather clutch now that Frodo was ensconced at the beach house with their mom—and pulled out a wafer-thin PDA. She stood with poised stylus. "What's the deal? Got a name and number?"
Julian turned on the phone and buzzed his executive assistant, Dustin Sheppard. "Shep, will you call Petra Lombardi over at … her office and get Mia Kerrigan's number for Nikki?"
"For Nikki?" came the disembodied voice.
She made a face at the intercom, temporarily holstering the stylus.
"I'm sending her on assignment. She'll be out in a minute." Julian checked his schedule. "Send my next appointment in as soon as she leaves."
"Yessir. Whatevah you say, sir."
Julian disconnected. "Wiseass."
"Who, me?" Nikki laughed. "Is there anything you can tell me about this artist? Like, what does she do, since it's a fashion layout—paint fabric? What's her name again?"
"Mia Kerrigan." Instantly, Mia's baby-doll face and full lips sprang to mind. They'd shared sweet candy kisses, but Julian figured Mia for being a tigress in bed. She had spark, verve, an electric energy. She had bite.
TASTE ME Page 3
