by Jo Leigh
“I don’t see why. You’re a big-shot racing guy. You date movie stars. You live a different kind of life than me. Frankly, I’d bore you silly.”
“You let me be the judge of that.”
“What if I don’t want to see you?”
He leaned forward until their lips almost touched, pausing for an instant, and then he captured her lower lip between his front teeth. A second later, he let her go, only to steal her breath with a kiss, his soft lips on hers, his tongue teasing her mouth open. Her eyes fluttered closed and her arms moved from her chest to his back. With gentle pressure, he rubbed his chest against hers, sweeping against her nipples. Pleasure and heat flowed from her breasts down to her stomach, and then lower still. She squeezed her thigh muscles, but the feeling didn’t go away.
He did something terribly wicked with his tongue, thrusting it inside her, then pulling back, as if showing her what he wanted to do to her body. Goose bumps covered her flesh as vivid pictures came to mind. Him, naked—oh, lordy—thrusting into her, making her scream.
She whimpered. He moved his lips from her mouth to her ear. “I’m going to explore every inch of you, Jamie,” he whispered, his hot breath making her shiver. “I’m going to know you better than you know yourself. And I’m going to give you pleasure you’ve never even dreamed of.”
Then he stepped away, and, before she could catch her breath, she heard the front door close.
When she got it together enough to walk, she went to the couch and took off the top of the gold box. Two dozen red roses were flared beautifully, the long stems stripped of any thorns. She picked up the small card lying to the side of the flowers: “Dear Jamie, I dreamed about us. You had roses. See you tonight, Chase.”
She picked up the box and brought it to her face so she could smell the flowers. His scent lingered, despite the sweet aroma of the gift. She could still feel his hard chest, his big hands, his soft, talented mouth.
Oh boy. She was in trouble. Bad trouble. She headed for the kitchen and a vase. Her first flowers, ever. And they were from a man who was from a completely foreign world, a man with enough experience to host his own radio sex show.
She put the box on the counter and stared out her window. The view from here sucked. It was just another building. And when she looked down, all she saw was a walkway where no one ever walked.
She couldn’t let him into her life, not even for a moment. He was dangerous. He did scary things to her body. To her mind. Given even the slightest opportunity, he’d find out. Even if he never touched her down there, he’d know. He’d see it in her eyes, feel it when she trembled in his arms. And if he found out—the rest of the world would find out, and where would she be then?
No one had ever given her roses before. Because no one had ever been close enough before. She’d been busy with school, with the radio show. She’d never dreamed things would happen so quickly for her, or so publicly. But they had, and here she was.
Whittaker was right. She was a fraud. The honorable thing to do would be to quit. But that would kill her. She’d never loved anything the way she loved her show, loved its callers. And she knew she was helping. Honestly.
There was just the one problem, the one that could ruin everything if it ever got out. The fact that she was, at the ripe old age of twenty-six, a virgin.
4
JAMIE GOT TO THE STATION a little after five-thirty. Determined not to dig herself in deeper, she had spent the day trying to figure out a way to extricate herself from this mess without ending up fired. Unfortunately, all the ideas she’d come up with so far required either some form of magic or breaking several major laws.
She stopped at the reception desk, where the night guy, Geoffrey, smiled broadly as he gathered her mail. Over six foot five and thin as a rail, the twenty-year-old had neon-orange hair and more piercings than her aunt Emma’s pin cushion. The pierced body parts were offset, of course, by tattoos ranging from the sublime (a perfect, tiny red heart at the base of his neck) to the ridiculous (Bart Simpson, bent over, pants down, eyes drawn on the buttocks).
She shifted her briefcase to her left hand as she took the unusually large stack of mail. “Thanks.”
“My pleasure.”
His tone made her pause. So did his grin, which had widened dangerously, exposing the braces on his molars.
“What?”
“Nothing.” He arched his right brow. “Except that the switchboard has been lit up all day. I swear, girlfriend, Mr. Holt has a major woody over this little stunt of yours. Brilliant.” He crossed his arms over his Amazon.com T-shirt and idly fingered his nipple ring through the material. “And excuse the hell out of me, but could Chase Newman be more divine? I don’t think so.” “Why don’t you go out with him?”
He sighed. “If only.”
She shook her head as she headed toward her office. File cabinets on both walls made the hallway narrow, and if someone had to find a file, all traffic came to a halt. Oddly enough, in her time here she’d only seen a file drawer open once or twice. She imagined they were filled with old ad logs and personnel files.
It wasn’t until she neared her door that she heard her name from across the way. Elliot Wolf, the program manager, waved at her while he talked on the phone. Jamie sighed. Like the Energizer bunny, this nightmare kept on going and going and going….
“Sit,” Elliot said, then to whomever was on the phone he added, “Tonight at the Palm II. Ciao.”
She didn’t want to sit. She didn’t want to talk. She was cranky and getting crankier by the minute.
“So,” he said, running a hand through his Brad Pitt hair, complete with dark roots. However, the likeness ended there. From the forehead down, Elliot looked eerily like a young Vincent Price, mustache and all. On the gaunt side, with a voice a little too high, he devoured scary movies like Raisinets, and his hobby, like Vincent’s, was gourmet cooking.
“Elliot, I have work to do.”
“I know. This’ll just take a minute. Sit.”
She obeyed, giving him a pained sigh in protest. She hated the chairs in his office. Leather and chrome, they tilted back, making it hard to get out of them again. But they looked chic, and Elliot loved chic. He’d decorated modern, with a very expensive, very ugly Chuck Close print dominating the room. He never had anything on his desk but his notebook computer, as clutter was one of his pet peeves. He had no such qualms about his secretary’s desk.
“Here’s the scoop.” Elliot perched on the edge of the credenza. “We’re running highlights of your shows for the next two weeks. Sound bites the other DJs will play before commercials. I’m working with Cujo on the reels. We’ve set up a separate phone line for people to call in their comments and suggestions. Holt is planning a major ad campaign, which means we need you and Newman for photos. Greg Gorman is going to do the shoot, but he only has two hours on Tuesday available, so if you have something scheduled at eleven, cancel it.”
Jamie sat perfectly still, afraid that if she moved she’d throw up all over his Berber rug.
Either Elliot didn’t see her distress or he chose to ignore it. “We’ve already heard from Independence. They love it. They want it. And dammit, Jamie, you’d better sweep Newman off his goddamn feet. I’m not kidding. We need this to happen.”
With her education and résumé, she felt reasonably sure she could get a job at McDonald’s. Because she certainly wasn’t going to be working in radio much longer. What really got to her was that yesterday her world had been nothing but roses. Now, all she had were thorns.
“Why aren’t you smiling?”
“There’s nothing to smile about. I can’t do this, Elliot. I mean it.”
His pale face grew paler. “Don’t do this to me, Jamie.”
“I’m not doing it to you. I’m not doing it because it’s a terrible idea. There’s no way in hell I’m going to let Chase, or any other man, seduce me. Not in two weeks or a hundred. So what’s the point?”
“Publicity.” He leaned forwa
rd, putting his hands together as if in prayer. “This is the best thing that’s happened to this station since I came on board. Don’t you get it? We all win with this. You get syndicated, I get a monster raise, Fred gets to be the big hero, and Marcy can name her own price.”
Jamie couldn’t look at the desperation in his eyes. “I never signed up for this. My personal life should be my own.”
He leaned back. “In a perfect world. But, honey, this is radio. And opportunities like this don’t fall in your lap very often.”
She grunted. “Opportunities. Right.”
“It is an opportunity. If you use it. You’re smart, now be savvy. Milk this baby until it’s dry.”
“Is that it?”
He nodded. “Don’t forget about Tuesday.”
She hoisted herself out of the chair and headed toward his door. She stopped there, facing him head on. “No. You have pictures of me. I’ll play along, but I won’t help.” She left the office.
“Jamie…”
She just kept walking.
CHASE LOCKED UP HIS BIKE, grabbed his helmet and walked into the radio station. It was almost eleven, and Jamie was nearly done with her show.
He wanted to see her. Except for racing, little excited him these days. Not even other women. One was much like another, and while his libido was always fully engaged, his interest rarely went beyond the bed. Jamie was interesting. He’d thought a lot about why, and the only thing he could come up with was that she wasn’t at all what she appeared to be.
His last “girlfriend,” for want of a more accurate description, had been exceptionally beautiful. A model, in fact, who had surprised him with her intelligence and curiosity. But for two weeks he’d watched her primp in front of any mirror she could find, anguish over the right dress, pour all of her energy onto the pages of Vogue. She’d wept when he’d said goodbye, but she’d made sure her mascara hadn’t run.
Jamie was probably more of the same. Not that she was obsessed with her looks, though he felt pretty certain she was obsessed with her work. But, hell, this was only going to last a couple of weeks, and she did present a challenge.
He wanted to see what she’d do. And he wanted to sleep with her.
He’d tried a lot of things in his life, almost everything at least once. He wasn’t into games, or sex that required a bunch of props. But something about Jamie made him want to pull out all the stops. That innocent act of hers fired him up. What would it be like to tie her to the bedpost and make love to her until she begged for mercy? That image had plagued him all day. Of course, he’d have to work up to that. She wasn’t about to give in without a fight.
The receptionist’s eyes widened as he walked into the office, but Chase was used to that. As celebrities went, he wasn’t a real contender, but he did get great seats in restaurants and theaters, along with the occasional rabid fan. He smiled at the young man. He didn’t get the whole piercing thing, though. What was the point? But to each his own.
“Mr. Newman.”
“Chase.”
The smile the young man flashed turned flirtatious. Chase wasn’t interested personally, but like piercings, the flirting didn’t bother him.
“She’s got about ten minutes left of her show.”
“Thanks. I’ll just go on back.” He headed down the hallway, and, as always, the ghost of his father floated on the walls, in the sound his boots made on the thin carpet. Chase tried hard not to remember too much. Not because the memories were painful but because they made him feel weak. He missed his father. He missed the sound of his voice, the way he looked in his dark suits.
A publicity poster of Jamie brought him back to the present. He studied her for a moment. Mostly her eyes. They were so damn big, almond shaped, framed with thick, dark lashes. Her nose, in comparison, was small, but her lips…ah, man, they were great. Just right. Plush and smooth… He hurried past the poster toward the booth.
He stopped at the production booth first. Cujo waved him in. Chase liked him, even though the guy was strange as hell—maybe because of it. Cujo was the ultimate techno-geek. His long blond hair was always unkempt, his chin most times in need of a shave. He lived in jeans and Metallica T-shirts, and he loved his job almost as much as he loved to smoke a joint at the end of the night.
“Uno momento.” Cujo toggled some dimmers on the board, bringing up a commercial for cell phones. “How you doin’, bro?”
Chase shook his hand. “Hanging in.”
“That’s what counts.” Cujo nodded toward the broadcast booth. “You be careful in there. She’s a mite prickly.”
“Oh?”
“She told a caller to quit jerking off.”
“And that’s not her usual modus operandi?”
“Jamie? Hell, no. She believes everyone is worth saving. Man, she should meet a few of my friends. That’d change her tune.”
Chase turned toward the window. Jamie sat behind the desk like the captain of a spaceship, her controls at her fingertips, the great, fuzzy mike inches from her mouth. She’d seen him. She didn’t appear overjoyed. In fact, her scowl seemed downright unfriendly.
It was showtime.
“What did Jon say this morning?” Jamie said into the mike, ignoring Chase with due diligence, even when he sat down and put on his own set of headphones.
“He said he forgot that we had a date,” said the caller. “He’s the one that wanted to go out tonight.”
Jamie turned a quarter of an inch in her chair. Away from him. “Gabby, we’ve talked about this before. Jon has a habit of forgetting dates.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know. But I do know you can’t keep doing this.”
“Doing what?”
“Depending on Jon for your happiness. Gabby, do you honestly believe he has your best interest at heart?”
Jamie shot Chase a quick glance. He leaned back in his chair, put his feet up on Jamie’s desk and clamped his hands behind his neck. He closed his eyes, listening to Jamie’s voice, letting his imagination run full throttle.
“BUT, DR. JAMIE, he said he loved me,” Gabby said. She plucked another tissue from the box on the coffee table and wiped her eyes. Usually, Dr. Jamie understood. In the past few months, she’d been about the only one who understood.
“Does he show you?”
“Sure.”
“How?”
“Well, he tells me I’m pretty and he likes my hair.”
“I didn’t ask if he told you he loved you. I asked if he shows you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“That’s right. I don’t think you do. What matters is how he treats you, Gabby. If he puts your feelings ahead of his own. If he respects you and honors you, and he shows you kindness.”
“He does.”
“Does he?”
Gabby looked at the phone, then put it back to her ear. “Well, not all the time. But no one could do that.”
“You don’t think so?” Dr. Jamie sounded a little upset. “Tell me something, Gabby. Do you wait all day for Jon to call? For him to come over? Does life begin when he’s there and fade when he’s not?”
“Well, sure.” Gabby looked over at the dining room table. She’d paid almost five dollars for the flowers in her mother’s favorite vase. And she’d put out the company china. She’d bought him the knife he’d been looking at in his magazine, and she’d wrapped it real pretty with the bow-making machine she’d picked up at a garage sale two months ago. As of four o’clock this afternoon they’d been going together for two years. She remembered their first date like a photograph. Everything about it had been perfect. Her dress. His smile. The way he’d kissed her. But lately he hadn’t seemed real excited to see her, not like in the beginning.
“I think that’s a problem, Gabby. We’ll talk more about it after the commercial.”
Gabby heard the music that meant Dr. Jamie had to do something during the break. Sometimes they chatted, just like real friends. But most times, Gabby went on hold. She
suspected, although she’d never ask, that Dr. Jamie had to run to the little girls’ room. She couldn’t very well stop her show to do her business, could she?
Gabby had made Jon’s favorite meal. Lamb chops. She’d even found the little booties that slipped over the bones. In the beginning, he’d gone on and on about what a good cook she was. He hadn’t said that in a long time. Of course, they hardly ate any meals together. He was so busy at work. If he kept on going like this, he’d make himself sick.
She sniffed again, dabbed her eyes with her tissue.
“Gabby?”
“I’m here.”
“Do you think it’s fair that Jon should have to be responsible for your happiness?”
“He’s not responsible. But I love him so much that when he’s here, I’m happy.”
“What would his reaction be if he called you for a date, but you were busy doing something that makes you feel good? That gives you pleasure? Something yours and yours alone?”
“Well, I don’t know. I don’t think he’d be very happy about it.”
“I think he’d be relieved, Gabby, that you were taking care of yourself. That he didn’t have to come up with some way to make your day. That the pressure was off him.”
“It’s not pressure to want your boyfriend to come home to his anniversary dinner.”
“I know, Gabby. You’re hurt and frustrated. When you talk to him, try to tell him what happened, but tell him in a way that doesn’t blame him. Just talk about how you feel.”
“I feel terrible.”
“It’ll get better. It would get better faster, though, if you’d go to counseling.”
Gabby sniffed again. “I’ll try.”
“Okay. Thanks for calling.”
“Bye.”
The line went dead, and Gabby dropped the phone into her lap. The tears that had been under control while she’d talked to Dr. Jamie poured out now. Rivers of hurt, oceans of disappointment.
The dinner was ruined, and so was her life.
“WE’RE BACK, and we have time for one more caller.” Jamie pressed line four, Audrey from Teaneck, who wanted to talk about Chase. Everyone, except for Gabby, poor thing, wanted to talk about Chase. About the bet. About seduction.
