“No. That just makes it look worse.”
“True.”
“Hal,” called Ryan’s voice. “I don’t want to know what you’re doing in there, but maybe the lack of a girlfriend is getting to you, bud.”
“Cabela, this is not what you think. Now go away!”
His blond torturess was holding her sides.
“I can’t believe he thinks I’m whacking off in my office!” Hal hissed at her.
“Well, it does look bad…”
“You might want to stop laughing for a minute and realize that I’m trying to be a gentleman and save your reputation at the expense of my own, you ingrate!”
This set off another wave of laughter. “My reputation? What is this, Gone with the Wind?”
He stared at her, outraged, while she twisted her hair into a knot and secured it with an Underwood Technologies pen from his desk.
“Hal, honey. It’s past the millennium and frankly, like Rhett, I don’t give a damn.” She headed toward the door and then cast a regretful glance over her shoulder at his still-raging erection. “Good luck with that.”
She twisted the knob, pulled and Ryan fell into the room. Shannon prodded him with her toe. “What have we here?”
“That would be a specimen of Attorneyus Nosyus, a subset of the Lowlifeus variety,” Hal said in scathing tones, fixing his counsel with a hard stare.
Ryan grinned weakly. Then, still on his knees, he gazed up at Shannon, slack-jawed. “Hot damn,” he said. “What…so what do you charge?”
“Goddamn it, Cabela! She’s not a—”
“Much more than you can afford,” Shannon told him, and made her exit.
“THEN WHAT IN THE HELL is she doing with you?” Ryan had asked, before fleeing from Hal’s office.
It was a really good question. Hal dug his fists into his tired eyes and thought about it. The goddess had gone down on her knees in front of him. She’d unzipped him, taken his penis out and—
Boing! It awoke with a vengeance.
“Stop that,” Hal growled at the offending member. He grabbed two heavy software manuals off the bookshelf behind his desk and dropped them into his lap.
Now, where was he? Oh, yes. Shannon had been prepared to do something for him that probably wouldn’t have given her much pleasure. Why?
He could understand the benefits to her of comfort sex or even just scratching an itch. But to put it crudely, goddesses didn’t need to give head. By virtue of their looks alone, they were pretty much exempt from it, like a charity was exempt from federal taxes.
He was more than a little mystified. Hal picked up another company pen and spun it between his fingers, remembering how she’d shoved the other pen into that wild, untamable, sexy hair of hers.
Maybe she likes it.
Oh, get real. His sister Peggy’s voice popped into his brain. They’d once had a discussion about men, women and sex. Peg had told him a few home truths. “No woman likes it. How would you like having something the size of a cucumber shoved down your throat?”
Hal winced. When he’d asked about those sexy moans a past girlfriend had made, and her assurances that she didn’t mind, Peggy had snorted. She shot him a pitying glance. “God, you men really do live in fantasyland, don’t you?”
So why…why had Shannon done it? Or started to?
Well, duh. The whole thing had just been designed as a tease, that’s all. She would have gotten him all hot and bothered and then not followed through.
Hal forced himself to turn back to the Internet logs. Information leak? He had a leak in his brain. His gray matter was running out of the shell like raw egg white while he obsessed about sex with his image consultant. He couldn’t operate a successful business like this. It was time to get back to work.
Ryan’s sneakiness bothered him. There was a time when he’d have chalked it up to a boyish prank: a desire by Cabela to bust his balls later.
But under the circumstances, it raised the hairs on the back of Hal’s neck.
“Hey, handsome…” Tina, his receptionist, poked her head in, her hand full of message slips.
Hal almost looked over his shoulder before he realized that she was talking to him. “Hi, Tina. Ha-ha.”
“No joke! You are looking amazing these days. By the way, you forgot to pick up your messages when you came in.” She undulated into his office in one of her small skirts and handed him the stack. Hal noticed that her bare legs were very tanned. Had she been to an electric beach, too?
“You can just put people through to my voice mail,” he told her. “Really. You don’t have to take messages.”
“Oh, I don’t mind.” She smiled.
He opened his mouth to tell her that it wasn’t a question of whether she minded—it was all about the most efficient use of her time—but he decided he’d just sound like a jerk. “How’s the layout for the annual report going?”
“Good, good. Well, back to work with me!” Tina turned and left his office, wiggling in all the right places. He was human; he noticed. But the white streak on the back of her calf told him that she hadn’t been to an electric beach: she was using a self-tanning product.
The world was a strange place: white people trying to turn themselves dark. Dark-skinned people trying to lighten theirs. It was all very silly. He thought of Shannon’s Dr. Seuss wall calendar and the star-bellied sneeches.
The sneeches hopped in and out of a machine that put stars on their bellies when stars were in fashion, and removed them again when they were not. Shannon was trying to turn him into a star-bellied sneech. He preferred to be a sneech without.
“You’re losing your mind, Underwood,” he muttered to himself. And his affliction was directly traceable to Shannon Shane.
“I’M A REPORTER,” Shannon said to Hal the next day.
“No, you’re the devil.”
They sat in the conference room of Underwood Technologies after chasing out Ryan and some members of his legal staff. Cabela, the little worm, had tried to mumble an apology to her. She’d raised a brow and patted him on the shoulder. “Wishful thinking,” she’d said. “I understand.”
It had been a masterful act of degradation, if she did say so herself. She was good in the role of bitch-goddess…if only she didn’t feel so insecure and screwed up inside. She’d spent the night tossing and turning while various strangers jumped out of crowds in her dreams and claimed to be her parents. Gomer Pyle had announced he was her father, while Morticia Addams declared she’d breast-fed Shannon as a baby.
Now she sighed and tapped her legal pad with a number two pencil. “I am not the devil. We’ve had this conversation. Now, once again—I’m a reporter. Let’s say I’m doing a feature on you and your company for the local TV station, okay?”
“Yup. I tell you that I have no time to talk with you and you can find out all you need to know on the Internet.” He seemed to have said it just to annoy her.
“No.” She stabbed toward him with the pencil. “First, you are all about my comfort, if the reporter is at your office. Would I like a seat? Would I like something to drink? How can you accommodate me?”
“Seems a little obsequious,” Hal said.
“It’s polite. And that’s another thing. For a general television audience, you want to avoid five-dollar words like ‘obsequious.’ Nobody will know what it means. Say ‘brownnosing’ instead.” She rubbed at her temple and then shook her head. “Actually, just say as little as possible, but be friendly and open.”
“You’d pay five bucks? Just for ‘obseq—’”
“Hal! Stop being a smart-ass. We have a limited amount of time here. And—” she frowned at him “—why aren’t you starting to show some color?”
“Uh—”
“You’re not going to the tanning place, are you?”
He shook his head.
“Damn it, Hal! We don’t have much time! Your first interview is when? Next Thursday? That is less than a week away.”
“I want to use a br
onzer instead,” he told her. “If it’s absolutely necessary. I hate lying in that coffin thing, and the little tartlet in charge made fun of my sock.”
She knit her brow. “Your sock?”
“The tube sock.”
Shannon put a hand over her mouth and stared at him. “You didn’t really…oh, Hal! I was kidding about that!”
“A guy can never be too careful.”
She laughed until her ribs hurt. Hal really was borderline hopeless, even if he was starting to become very good-looking. Finally, when she caught her breath, she said, “Show me your teeth.”
“I’m not using those whitening strips, either. Those things ooze gooey gel, they’re disgusting and they make me drool. I hate them.”
“I make you drool, too, but you don’t hate me, right?”
“You want the truth or a nice lie?”
“Ouch. Well, since I’m teaching you how to churn out those nice lies, then lay one on me, baby.” She braced herself.
He stared at her, his blue eyes intense under the knit eyebrows. His arms were folded across his chest.
“Body language is important, Hal,” she said. “Your position right now is defensive, guarded and—”
“I only hate you about twenty hours out of the twenty-four,” he said in a considering tone. “I don’t hate you at all when we’re acting on our, uh, animal magnetism. I do hate you when—”
“—hostile.”
“—you poke me, prod me, lecture me and in general look me in the teeth.”
“But that’s my job!” she almost wailed. Then she recovered. “And you’re supposed to be telling me nice lies! What you’re telling me is the naked, ugly truth.”
He seemed to take pity on her. “I don’t really hate you twenty hours out of the day. Probably only about eight or nine. Is that more acceptable?”
“Definitely.” She went back to being flip again. But she didn’t want Hal to hate her at all. She wanted him to like her…a lot. “I can handle being hated during business hours. And let me remind you that you are paying me to look you in the teeth. Remember?”
“Yeah. That is a bummer. And very warped, too, paying thousands of dollars for a beautiful woman to insult me, manhandle me, steal my clothes, flog me into exercising and try to dye various parts of my body.”
“I’m not that bad…”
“You are very, very bad,” Hal said softly. His eyes darkened and gleamed. “You are my dream bad girl.” He slapped his hands on the table. “It’s dangerous, in fact, for me to be around large flat surfaces when you’re near. I want to pull you onto them, naked, and take you for a spin.”
“Do you ever think about anything besides sex?”
“Yes. But it’s regrettable.”
“Do you ever think about me in any other context?”
He nodded. “A lot.”
“I mean as more than a taskmaster and a tormentor.”
He grinned. “I know what you meant. And the answer is, again, yes. I still wonder what it was that had you so upset the day we met. I wonder whether you sleep on your stomach or side or back. I debate whether or not you wear funny socks under those CFM boots of yours.”
Her insides started to melt into a marshmallowy goo. Stop that! Where’s your starch? Where’s your Greenwich grit?
But Hal continued, making it difficult for her to breathe. “I want to know what toothpaste you use, and whether or not you like Rocky Road ice cream…and when the hell you’re going to take your car in to be cleaned and sterilized by a professional. I think about that day I first saw you—a wild, wet woman in leather driving in the rain with the top of her convertible down. At the time, I thought you were just crazy. Now, I think it had something to do with your upsetting news. Did it?”
She picked at her cuticles, then nodded.
“You’re helping me out, Shan. Why don’t we see if I can help you?”
She straightened her spine and rubbed at her neck. “This isn’t something you can help with.”
“I’ll bet you’re wrong,” said Hal. “Why don’t you try me?”
16
SHANNON LOOKED into those blue eyes of his and searched for her recklessness. She delved deep for the characteristics that allowed her to throw back her head and laugh at Cabela’s assumption that she was a hooker. Where had her impulsiveness gone hiding? What had she done with her brazen side? When had her moxie evaporated?
Why did revealing a simple fact to this man seem dangerous?
It’s not the fact itself. It’s what he’ll do with it. How much he’ll see behind it.
Hal pushed back from the table and stood up, obviously disappointed in her. “My apologies,” he said. “I forgot that you’re all about image. We should stay on the surface and avoid any topic of depth.”
“Don’t sneer at me, Hal.” She said it quietly, with a pleading note that she despised.
“You can take off your clothes for me, but you can’t share something that upsets you. Explain that, why don’t you? I really want to understand. Because I know you’re not just a garden-variety slut.”
Anger ignited deep within her. “No, I’m a hot-house slut, honey. Rare and expensive and complicated to take care of. So you keep that in mind before you go reaching for any more nectar.” She stared him down until he finally looked away.
“I shouldn’t have— I didn’t mean—” Hal threw up his hands.
“Don’t apologize now, Hal. You threw it out there. I did sleep with you after knowing you only six hours. Or somebody with the name Shannon Shane slept with you.” She started to collect her things: legal pad, pen, take-out coffee cup.
“What the hell does that mean? And where do you think you’re going?”
She finally dredged up a scrap, a torn edge, of recklessness and threw the information out there. “It means that the day before I met you I found out that I’m adopted! And touching you, sleeping with you, was a reminder that I was alive and could feel sensation, even though I was numb. I needed to know that even though my whole identity had just been ripped away, there was still somebody there, somebody for you to get inside.”
She found her bag and tossed the pad and pen into it, then hitched the handles over her shoulder. “You want to call me a slut for that, you go right ahead. But you participated, too, buddy! And that means you wear the same label, because I’m not allowing any double standards.”
She headed for the door.
“Where are you going?” Hal repeated, starting after her.
“Around the goddamned bend.”
He caught her arm. “I didn’t call you any names, okay? I said I knew you weren’t a slut. You heard an accusation instead. I’m not judging you, Shannon. I’m just trying to understand you.”
“Good luck,” she muttered. “I don’t understand myself.”
“Do any of us understand ourselves? Really and truly?” His eyes reflected compassion. They were the blue of logic, but also the blue of soul. The blue of stability. And the blue of hope.
He smiled at her, and she realized she’d been staring for some time. “What do you see in there, Shan? In my eyes?”
She blinked, hesitated. “I don’t have a name for it…other than…you. I just see you.”
He nodded and cupped her chin. “And who am I?”
The warmth of his hand, the simple affection, the way he looked at her—all of it undid her. “You,” she repeated. “You’re just you.”
“Exactly.” He said the word as if complimenting her for the most brilliant deduction ever made. Clearly the man was mad. A mad genius.
“Hal, are you feeling okay?”
“I’m fine,” he said, tugging her over to the polished boardroom table. He pushed her in the small of the back so she bent over it.
“Hal, no. I am not getting naked with you on this particular flat surface!”
“Shh. Just look.”
She saw her reflection mirrored in the glossy finish. “Yeah, so? What are we doing, playing Narcissus?”
“What do you see, Shannon?”
“Me,” she said impatiently. “Now, can I—”
“Aha! You see you.”
Nuts. The man is stark-raving nuts.
He gazed at her expectantly.
“Yes? I. See. Me.” She used the tolerant tone one might employ with a toddler.
“Then it doesn’t matter who your biological parents are,” Hal said triumphantly. “You are yourself, no matter what.”
She chewed on his statement for a minute, then shook her head. “That’s very New Age, but it’s a meaningless truism. And it’s way too simplistic for the way I feel.”
He sighed. “I don’t know dick about New Age. But if something is true, then it’s not meaningless. And the way you feel is, in actuality, very simple.”
“How do you know that?” Shan was starting to get annoyed.
“You feel that your identity is gone. Right?”
“In a nutshell.”
“Well, it’s not. Whether your father’s name is Joe or Bob, you’re still you. Whether your mother’s name is Twinkie or Sue, you’re still you. It doesn’t change anything.”
“Bullshit!” Shannon exclaimed. “Different parents would make me look different, change my characteristics, even my personality. My age. My health.”
“Yes, they would. But you don’t have any other parents.”
“Yes, I do,” she said with heavy patience. “The point is that I’ve just discovered them.”
“You still have the same parents you’ve always had. The ones who conceived you, whether you knew about them or not.”
“But—”
“You are still you.”
“Yes, but—I am so confused! The issue here is that I was deceived, all my life, until now.”
“I thought you said the issue was your identity,” Hal reminded her.
Furious, she stamped her foot. “It is!”
He shook his head. “Nope. For the last time, let me point out that you are still you.”
She let out a primal scream. “But I could have turned out differently, don’t you see?”
“You could have. But you didn’t. So you know who you are. Clearly. Therefore, you have no identity crisis.”
Unzipped? Page 11
