by Jessica Sims
Beau stayed inside Giselle’s office for an hour and a half. Not that I was timing it. Or listening at the door—not that I could hear anything. Quiet, conversational chatter continued the whole time he was in there, muffled by the occasional throaty peal of laughter from Giselle. The sound of Beau’s rumbling bass laugh made my knees weak.
Gee, I was glad they were having such a good time together.
Beau emerged from Giselle’s office without flowers and gave me the lazy, confident smile I was already getting used to. “Hello again,” he said, heading toward my desk, where I tried to look busy. He stood across from me, directly in my line of view.
I got up and grabbed a big stack of filing. “I’m really busy, Beau.”
“Aren’t you even the slightest bit curious as to what I talked to Giselle about?”
I opened the file cabinet and dropped a stack of Qs into a J folder. Who cared? I’d fish it out later. “All right, then. What did you talk about?”
“You and me seeing each other. Giselle is fine with it; you’re not in any trouble. In fact, we’re going out tonight.”
I plopped another set of files randomly into the drawer. If only he knew the truth: I wasn’t in trouble because of the simple fact that I was being blackmailed. “Great,” I said, trying to force enthusiasm into my voice. “I can’t wait.”
Actually, the small, selfish part of me was very excited about going out with him again. The practical, thinking-of-my-sister’s-safety side was worried. And all of me was concerned about Giselle. “What about the rest of the week? Until your heat?”
“Taken care of, If you’re willing to put up with me,” he said with a smile.
I didn’t have a choice. “I’m sure I’ll manage,” I said in a voice that I tried to make light and teasing. “You’re pretty hard on the eyes, but I’ll try and suffer through for a good cause.”
A slow, wicked grin spread across his face. The warm feeling fluttered in my stomach at the thought of seeing Beau again so soon. It grew when he moved closer to me and put his hand on my arm. He smelled terrific, sun-warmed. I wanted to lick him and taste it.
I blushed at the thought.
“Tonight at eight,” he said, reaching out to touch the soft end of my long ponytail. “Dinner. Wear your hair down, please. For me.”
Giselle emerged from her office, a hint of a frown crossing her lovely face at the sight of the two of us standing so close together. I skittered backward and rammed into the file cabinet. Ow.
Beau glanced over at Giselle, then took my hand and pressed a light kiss to the back of it. “I’ll pick you up here,” he said, and left the office with a quick nod and smile to Giselle.
Uck. Giselle. I froze against the file cabinet and didn’t move until Beau disappeared from sight and the bell on the front door clanged against the glass. Then Giselle slithered forward like a snake with prey in its sights. “You’re going out with him at eight.”
The tension in my shoulders eased. “I know.” I took the information sheet from her with cautious fingers.
“To be on time, you’ll need to be dressed and ready to leave by two.”
Where were we going to dinner? Timbuktu? “Two?”
Her smile was brilliant. “You have a date with one client at two thirty. Another client at five. Then you see Beau at eight to placate him.”
She was going to stack my dates one after another, for maximum use of her new toy—me. I immediately felt dirty but shoved the feeling aside. I’d agreed to do this, even if it made me feel used. “Okay,” I said, taking a deep breath. Then I asked, “Clothes?”
She handed me a pink business card from her dress pocket (where did she have pockets in that thing?). “You’re going to see my friend Francesca over at Saks in the Galleria. She’ll get you set up with some decent clothing.” Giselle studied my appearance. “See if she can’t do something with your hair and makeup, too. We want innocent but seductive.”
“Right.” I said, taking the card from her. In the corner of my eye, I saw Sara exit the filing room, and just as quickly go back in at the sight of Giselle.
“So who am I dating?” I forced a smile to my face.
“Do you remember Mr. Jason Cartland? He was in yesterday.”
I drew a blank for a moment, then gasped. “The hot guy? Were-cougar?” We seemed to be brimming with horny were-cougars lately.
“It would seem so,” she said smugly. “He’s your two thirty.”
Well, this might not be so terribly awful. Jason was a beautiful man, and he seemed nice. Comfortable, despite his too beaming white smile. “Who’s the five?”
“His name is Garth,” she said with a look of delight, as if she’d just seen dollar signs flash in front of her eyes. “He’s very rich. Middle-aged, never been married. Country music song writer. He likes baseball and trucks. He’ll be quite a catch.”
Blech. “Sounds lovely,” I said. “And he is …” Tall? Short? Fat? Desperate? Deaf? Mute? Lord, I hoped he was mute.
“Naga.”
I blanched. “Snake?” I hated snakes.
“Snake,” she agreed. “And you’re going to tell him that you love snakes. Understand?”
“I love snakes,” I parroted back in a gushing, idiotic voice. “Snakes and baseball and country music. They’re my favorites.”
“Good girl,” Giselle said, patting me on my cheek like I was a dog.
Chapter Five
A couple of hours later, I looked utterly delicious and felt completely miserable. Francesca had picked out a few outfits for me, not one of them practical in the slightest. I was currently trussed in a black lace cocktail dress with terribly cute but impossibly high heels. My feet hurt after just five minutes, but I had to admit that the effect was impressive.
So was the bill for everything.
Francesca had sent me to a beauty salon after she’d picked out my clothing. My long straight hair had been fluffed and teased and blown-out within an inch of its life, and the resulting white-blond mess atop my head was gorgeous, artfully tousled, and crunchy with hairspray. It looked great as long as you didn’t touch it. The makeup artist had lined my eyes with a delicate gray liner that made them seem bigger, and had pinked my complexion with some artful blush. The resulting effect was dewy, and I looked very much like a nubile ingénue.
Jason seemed to think so, too, and the looks he was giving me were going to cause a permanent blush.
He was every inch as dazzling as I’d remembered. He had a heavy build, all muscle and tanned flesh, whereas Beau ran toward lean (but with very broad shoulders). He wore a charcoal wool jacket with an open-neck pale blue silk shirt. He looked every inch the rich playboy—except for one thing. For all his gorgeous looks and his money, Jason was very heavily into cheap cologne. Very. Heavily. Either BRUT or Old Spice.
Still, the character of a man wasn’t determined by the quality or quantity of his cologne, and I resolved to look past it. I gave Jason a faint smile over my water glass.
“Is that all you’re going to eat?” he said, indicating my small salad. “Please order anything you’d like.”
I gave a small shrug. “I’m really not that hungry.” Actually, I was ravenous, but Giselle had two more meals scheduled for me, so I was holding back. Plus, everything I put in my mouth seemed to taste like Old Spice. So I drank my water and pretended interest as Jason talked.
And tried not to think about Beau. He’d smelled really nice. Last night when I’d been cuddled up against him, a faint, spicy scent had clung to his skin that I hadn’t been able to figure out. Deodorant or body wash, maybe. Very subtle, and clean.
My nose itched. I decided that I liked subtle and clean.
“—friends with Beau Russell?”
I focused back in on my date, who was beaming a megawatt white smile at me. “I’m sorry?”
“I was asking about Beau. He’s a friend of yours?”
Blank, I stared at him. He’d heard my phone conversation and wanted to call us “friends�
�? “I guess you could call it that.” Is that what Giselle was calling it? Best to play along.
“I hear he’s an important man in his clan.”
Talking about him made me unhappy, so I said, “I wouldn’t know.”
To my relief he took the hint and switched the topic to other things. Jason was a wonderful date—he was witty, charming, laughed at my attempts at humor, and made me feel pretty. Women slowed as they walked past our table, checking him out. He touched my hand repeatedly, devoured me with his eyes, and made it obvious that he wanted to eat me up like candy.
So why was my brain entirely focused on the man I’d been out with last night? Both men were were-cougars. Both men were handsome. Jason was the epitome of niceness, while Beau’s playful smile drove me crazy with desire.
Torn between two cougars. Strangely enough, not a problem I’d ever thought I’d have.
My next date wasn’t much better.
It was another restaurant (the default setting, of course) and it started out well. At least for the first five minutes. After that we steered directly into uncomfortable territory.
“So,” Garth the naga said, “what do you do?” His eyes watched me with entirely too much interest, his gaze focused on my cleavage. At least Jason had had the decency to look me in the eye.
I toyed with a bit of chicken parmigiana. Was I supposed to admit that I worked at the agency, or should I lie about it? As I hesitated, Garth’s tongue flicked over his lips. Good God, was that thing forked?
Distracted momentarily, I had to regroup. “I’m a professional bookkeeper.”
The forked tongue was seriously giving me the creeps.
“That’s fascinating,” he said in a tone of voice that meant it was less interesting than Styrofoam. “So how did you get into Giselle’s agency? It’s very exclusive.” As in, how did a lowly human manage to become worthy of notice?
“Oh, the usual way.” I didn’t know what the usual way was, but I was willing to bet he didn’t, either. Something slithered against my shoe and I recoiled. What the fuck? Was that his tail?
He gave me a look that I assumed was supposed to be seductive. “Sanctioned humans are rare,” he said, his eyes glued to my neck like I was wearing some sort of flashing beacon around it. Could he see Beau’s mark as well? “Especially virgins.”
“Giselle told you I was a virgin?” I tried to ask it in a casual tone of voice, as if I hadn’t been screaming inside. As one might ask if their date was a Republican or a Democrat. Or a naga.
Garth looked surprised at my question and took another drink of his wine, his tongue flicking at the edge of the glass. Yep, definitely forked. I suppressed a shudder.
“Indeed. A virgin is highly desired,” he said. “You have been claimed as worthy of notice, you are disease-free, and you are considered a fair mate for any member of the Alliance.”
I was glad I wasn’t eating—if I had been, I was pretty sure I would have thrown up. “A mate?” I said. “How nice.” Lucky me. I picked up my glass of wine and swirled it around, hoping I looked like I knew what I was doing. I had no idea why people sloshed their wine around in their glass.
Garth leaned forward. “Is your heart claimed by another?” His whatever-it-was slithered against my shoe again.
Ugh. If Giselle thought she could blackmail me into marrying one of her clients—after she’d squeezed them for every dollar she could, of course—she was sorely mistaken. I was not about to mate this guy. In fact, I was starting to dread the rest of the dates that she had lined up for me, except for Beau. Garth was staring at my neck again, as if he’d like to cover Beau’s mark with one of his own. My hand slid to my collarbone and I hid the mark. “Oh, my, look at the time,” I said, feigning surprise. As if I’d been so charmed by our date that I’d completely lost track of the hour. I put my napkin down on the table. “I really should be going soon.”
He reached for my hand, an ardent look on his face. “I’ve never met anyone like you,” he declared, his moist palms gripping my hand between them. “You’re beautiful and sophisticated and … virginal.”
Obviously Garth didn’t get out much if he thought I was sophisticated. And it was a little creepy that he kept tossing in the “virginal” thing. I tried to extract my hand from his. “How sweet of you.”
“We need to go out again,” he said, refusing to let me do said extraction. “I could be falling in love.” His eyes flicked again to the wonder spot on my neck that everyone seemed able to see but me.
Would he be half so smitten if I hadn’t already been staked out as private property? I doubted it. “Excuse me, I need to go powder my nose.”
He lifted my trapped hand to his mouth and kissed the back of it, his tongue flicking against my skin. I barely managed to hide the shudder that rocked through me. “Bathroom,” I yelped and jerked my hand away hard, then grabbed my purse and raced to the ladies’ room. There was an attendant in there, and I offered her a twenty. “Can you tell me if there’s a back way out of here?”
She gave me a knowing look. “That your date out there in the bolo tie and the yellow vest?”
“None other. You’ve got to help me,” I said and leaned in. “I think he’s wearing spurs.”
She shuddered. “There’s a door through the kitchen. I’ll take you back there.”
Chapter Six
After penning a note on a napkin, I asked the attendant to give it to my date. It was a brief explanation, one that I hoped seemed innocent and coy (to please Giselle’s sensibilities). I cited “female troubles” and apologized for leaving him so abruptly. I had a hunch that girly issues wouldn’t scare him off, though. There was a reason men like him were single, after all. It was because they were clueless.
All coherent thoughts fled from my mind as soon as I entered the office and saw Beau standing there in a casual gray jacket, hands tucked into his pockets. He turned and gave me that slow sensual smile, and my brain nearly fried at the sight of him.
Gorgeous. I’d never get tired of looking at the man.
His smile dimmed as I approached and his nostrils flared. “Perfume?” Then his eyes scanned my hair. “You look … nice.”
There was a ringing endorsement for a girl. Here I was with my hair and makeup done professionally, and he was looking at me as if I’d been an alien. I simply smiled and shifted on my painful but cute heels. “It’s good to see you again,” I said, then immediately felt like an idiot. It had only been half a day since I’d last seen him.
“Shall we go?” He gave me another polite smile, but it didn’t have that sexy curve that I remembered. Was something wrong? He treated me as if I’d been a stranger. I might have been okay with it once, but after daydreaming of cuddling up next to him in bed again (breathless, hot daydreams that made my legs weak), it bothered me to see him look at me like that.
He glanced over at me. “Are you hungry? We can go for drinks if you’d rather.”
But he’d gone to the trouble of making a reservation, and I didn’t want to give him any more opportunity to be irritated at me. So I gave him a bright smile in return. “Dinner is fine. I love Italian.” Too bad I’d just eaten it. Twice.
What followed was easily the most awkward date I’d ever had—which was saying something. I tried to eat like I was enjoying myself, but my stomach was already full from the previous meal and what was in my stomach was churning.
Beau was silent as he methodically ate. He had good manners, at least. Used a knife, made use of his napkin, and was polite to the waiter. It was me he ignored.
I ate a few more bites, then I couldn’t stand it any longer—the food or the silence. “What is it?”
A flare of emotion crossed his face and was just as quickly hidden. He put down his fork. “It depends. Do you not want to be here with me?”
“I’m just tired,” I admitted. “I had a long day at work.” The previous two dates had definitely felt like work. I’d had to smile and be friendly and act interested, to be “on” the ent
ire time. I picked up my wineglass. “How was your day?”
“It was hell.”
I choked on my chardonnay. “I’m … sorry. Is something wrong?”
He ran a hand down his face. “Everything. Nothing. I’m sorry. I’m just … let’s not do this tonight, all right?” Beau folded his napkin and placed it on the table.
“Oh,” I said, feeling stupid at the hurt that bubbled up inside. “Of course.”
So much for having the grand problem of whether I should date him. It didn’t seem to be a problem after all. I should have been thrilled, relieved. Something good. But all I felt was really, really disappointed.
“Let’s get out of here,” Beau said, dumping a wad of cash on the table as he stood. He moved to pull out my chair and I could feel the frustrated emotion vibrating off of him.
What was wrong with him tonight?
Relief and sadness warred on the walk back to the office. A tiny part of me was glad that I wouldn’t have to go through another exhausting date, one less problem on my plate full of troubles. But not seeing Beau again bothered me more than I cared to admit. We’d clicked on some deeper level, and I realized suddenly that I wanted to see more of him. Maybe we could have drinks at a smoky bar to cover Sara’s scent. Something.
He needed a woman before Saturday, and if we called things off that meant he’d have to find someone else—because the heat wouldn’t take no for an answer.
We reached the dark strip mall that housed Midnight Liasons, and Beau stopped in front of the door. I knew that if he walked away now, he would walk out of my life. And this was feeling like a good-bye.
He gave me a faint smile, his eyes gleaming catlike in the moonlight. “I’m sorry, Bathsheba.”
I reached out and grabbed his lapel, stopping him before he could turn away.
He looked at me in surprise. “What is it?”
“I wanted to give you this,” I said in a breathless rush, and kissed him.
