Bad Behavior

by Kristin Hardy

  He looked down at his glossy Johnston & Murphys. “Be a shame to mess up such nice leather. I have a better idea.” He snagged a couple of flutes of champagne from a passing waiter. Turning, he handed one to her. “To improved relations,” he said, raising his own glass.

  “Working relations, you mean.”

  “All kinds of relations.” His gaze was very direct on hers.

  Her pulse bumped. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” she said, a little unevenly.

  Something flared in his eyes, then, something hot and purposeful and entirely carnal. “Oh, there’s a will all right. And I’d be happy to show you the way.”

  She swore she could hear each individual beat of her heart, it was thudding so hard. Everything else receded from her vision. There was only Dom and that mouth of his, that absolutely delicious mouth, that mouth she’d never been able to get enough of.

  “—took a twenty-four time print buy for a teen denim line in Vogue,” someone guffawed in passing.

  “Idiot,” their companion rejoined.

  Like Delaney would be if she didn’t get her head together. She rolled her attention from Dom. No more of those mind-melting stares of his that made her mush. If she was going to kiss him she was going to do it on her own terms. And if she was going to boff him—and she had to face it, it was only a matter of time—she’d do that on her own terms, as well.

  In defense, she raised her glass, feeling the champagne bubbles pop and fizz under her nose. Back to reality, she thought. “We should look around a little, find the reception area.”

  “You mean, make an appearance?” he asked.

  “That’s the whole reason I’m here. Work, remember?”

  “Why do I get the feeling that matters only when it’s convenient?”

  “Perhaps because you’re cynical and suspicious?”

  He whistled. “Harsh.”

  “I thought a truly effective CEO wasn’t afraid of a few hard truths.”

  “I can tell you all about hard, darlin’.” Amusement vibrated in his voice. “For example, right now—”

  “—we should go through the galleries,” she finished for him.

  “Coward,” he said in an undertone as they walked away.

  At the entry to the main downstairs gallery stood a life-size sculpture of several couples. They appeared to have been made almost entirely of graphite pencils sharpened down to one inch nubs and glued together. Prickly Pairs, read the title card.

  “They should have called it Write for Each Other,” Dom said.

  “You might have a point,” Delaney replied, walking around it. At his pained look, she laughed. “Don’t look at me. You started it. I’m merely keeping up.”

  “You’re a sharp one,” he acknowledged and it was Delaney’s turn to groan. “Do you think the artist got carpal tunnel sharpening all of them?” he continued.

  “Let’s hope she had an electric sharpener.”

  “Let’s hope she had several.” Dom snagged a scallop wrapped in bacon from a server’s tray.

  Delaney picked up one, as well, and they crossed into the next gallery.

  “Now, these are more my style,” Dom said, nodding at the paintings that hung on the walls.

  It was an eclectic series of subjects: a bicycle, a collection of trees, a portrait of a solemn-eyed little boy. Delaney stepped forward to look at a painting of a sunset. Then she looked closer with a frown. The sun of the sunset wasn’t paint. It looked distinctly like…

  “Are these—?”

  “Collage art,” he told her. “The artist’s considered a real up-and-comer.”

  Okay, so he knew about art…and clothes and probably what wine to order at the best restaurants in town. All a long way from Stan’s Garage and the boy she’d once cared for.

  All a long way from what she thought she wanted.

  So she concentrated instead on the images around her as they walked through the room. “It blows me away that these are collages. I assumed they were acrylics.”

  “Nope.” He grinned. “Junk mail—advertising circulars, magazine ads. I almost bought one of the pieces last year. This one,” he added, stepping closer to a landscape scene.

  “How do you start with a piece of junk mail and produce something like this?” Delaney mused.

  “I guess you have to get really good at seeing the essence of things. And then seeing how that essence can seem different in a different context,” Dom added, watching her closely. “Maybe what it’s about is abandoning your preconceptions.”

  She had a funny feeling he wasn’t talking about art. “Pretty sophisticated thinking, Jake the Snake,” she said lightly. “Whatever happened to the kid who liked to play on the garage lifts? You’ve changed.”

  “Jake the Snake was a fourteen-year-old boy.” An edge entered his voice. “Of course I’ve changed. Haven’t you?”

  “As little as possible,” she said.

  “Truthfully.” He swallowed the rest of his champagne and rested the glass on a nearby table. “And here I thought you were the one who liked change. Or is it only the little changes you can deal with?”

  Now it was her turn to be stung. “What, I’m shallow because I like to have a good time? I don’t feel the need to get all stuffy and settled? There’s plenty of time for that later.”

  For an instant, they stared at one another, the air between them crackling with electricity.

  “Melon wrapped in proscuitto?” A waiter approached, offering bites of cantaloupe on toothpicks. And Delaney traded her empty champagne glass for one of the sweet, salty morsels, purely for something to focus on.

  “I guess this is the part where the referee sends us back to our corners for the next round,” Dom said drily as the waiter walked away. “I didn’t mean to hit a sore spot.”

  “What makes you think you did?” she returned blandly, concentrating on rolling her toothpick up neatly in the white napkin.

  “I don’t know, it kind of looked to me like—”

  “Dom!” a voice interrupted.

  IT WAS JANET, IN A NARROW blue cocktail dress, striding toward them from the next room.

  “What a pleasure to see you,” she said as she stopped before them. “I’m so glad you could come.”

  When Dom put out his hand, she gave him one of those coy girl handshakes that was more a finger squeeze than a hand clasp.

  The kind he’d never been able to stand.

  Delaney, he was betting, shook like a man. Coy wasn’t a part of her repertoire. She didn’t pose, in her personal life—or in her sexuality. She barged ahead and dared you to match her step for step.

  “You can thank Delaney for getting me here,” Dom said, releasing Janet’s hand as quickly as he could.

  “Oh, absolutely.” Her voice cooled and she flicked a glance at Delaney. “What an…interesting outfit, Delaney,” she commented. Janet’s sleeveless blue dress appeared conservative but was cunningly cut for body consciousness. It showed off a pair of trim legs and a subtle hint of cleavage.

  With its long sleeves and high neck, Delaney’s gold number should have looked sedate by comparison. Somehow, though, by covering up she only increased the awareness of the body beneath.

  Then again, she’d probably have looked sexy to him in a paper bag.

  “Please, come in and meet some of our board of directors,” Janet continued, drawing him next door where they’d set up a bar and a buffet of canapés. In here, the ads themselves were the art. As in Delaney’s office, the walls were hung with framed shots from campaigns for various Vision Quest clients—a toothpaste ad that featured a diamond-draped woman leaning over her lover to press a hot, purposeful kiss on him, a wine campaign showing a meadow picnic so gorgeous and romantic that Dom could practically taste the grapes that the woman fed to her partner.

  Subtle, effective. Create the image, soft sell the product. As with the reception itself—good food, good liquor, luxe location. Understated message. If the product or service were good, the
dollars would follow.

  “Dom, I’d like you to meet a few members of our executive board,” Janet said as they stopped before a group of men who stood near the bar. “Jeff Bates, our president. Randy Fowler, vice president of operations. Oh, and Carter Price, creative director,” she ticked off as he shook hands all around. “This is Dom Gordon, president and CEO of Gordon’s Auto Centers,” she added.

  Delaney, he noticed, stood back and watched.

  “Just read something about your company the other day.” Bates radiated bonhomie, from the top of his gray head to the whiskey in his hand. “Going public, aren’t you?”

  Deftly done, Dom thought. Janet would have briefed them all on her prospects but making that clear would kill the casual mood. Handling it this way made Bates seem informed, detail oriented and interested. There was sharp intelligence behind those eyes.

  “The road show part for possible investors is the worst,” Fowler put in. “I was head of marketing for Layton Medical back when they went public. I knew I was in trouble the day I was filling out a form that asked for my address and I put down LAX.” He laughed and took a swallow of his drink.

  “I had to do something to get my frequent flyer miles up,” Dom said easily.

  “Dom’s considering a rebranding campaign,” Janet put in.

  “Good timing, with the IPO coming,” Price said.

  “We did one for Getaway.com before their IPO and their stock price jumped twenty percent in the first quarter,” Bates noted. “But I’m sure Janet can get you that data.”

  “Dom’s already sitting on a detailed proposal from Vision Quest,” Janet said quickly. “I took care of that right away.”

  “What’s the concept?” Price asked.

  Janet blinked. “Well. I, uh…”

  “A soccer mom driving her kids around when the minivan breaks down,” Delaney broke in smoothly. “We see a G.A.C. courtesy car taking them to the soccer game, and then picking them up to return them to the garage. We cut to a shot of her paying. She looks at the bill and tells the kids she’ll take them out for a burger.”

  Price nodded. “Convenient, quick, economical.”

  “That’s what we’re trying for,” Delaney agreed. “Their core message is dependability and honesty, so we didn’t want to go with anything too slick. Oh, and the slogan is ‘G.A.C.—service done right.’”

  “I like it,” Bates said.

  Janet shifted a little. “I think we’ve come up with something that will really work.”

  We? It was the first Dom had heard of it. “Delaney and I did some brainstorming by e-mail earlier this week.” Dom kept his voice pleasant. “She’s sent me all the material I need for now.”

  When Price nodded fractionally, Dom knew the message had been sent. “If you’re dealing with Delaney, you’re in good hands.”

  Janet’s eyes narrowed.

  “But we didn’t bring you here to shill our services,” Bates added jovially. “Get yourself another drink and some of that great food and wander around, enjoy the art. Including ours,” he added, waving at the wall of Vision Quest images.

  “I’ll do that.”

  “Good to meet you.” Price met his eyes as they shook. “It’s been informative.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Dom said. “Good to meet you all.”

  Dom and Delaney walked away, moving through the downstairs galleries, helping themselves to champagne and canapés.

  “I’ll hand it to your management,” Dom said, examining a stuffed mushroom. “They know how to put on a reception.”

  “They know a lot of things. Thank you,” she added in a low voice.

  “For what?”

  “For covering for me with Janet the other day. For what you said in there. You didn’t have to and I appreciate it.”

  “About working with you?” He deposited his empty napkin in the garbage. “I’m big on credit where credit’s due. Looked to me like Janet was trying to shanghai some of yours. It bugged me.”

  “She sees G.A.C. as her ticket to the boardroom.”

  “Ha. She’s dreaming. We’re not GoMusic.”

  “Not yet. But you’re going to turn G.A.C. into something big. Don’t think they don’t know that.”

  Dom stopped and stared at her.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I think you just gave me a compliment,” he said.

  Her cheeks reddened. “I guess I lost my head for a minute with everything you said to the board.”

  “I tell it as I see it.” He watched her sip champagne. “You came up with the idea, you got me the proposal, not Janet. Someone needed to know that.”

  “Are you sure you’re not angling to get naked with me?” she asked as they mounted the curving stairs to the second floor.

  “Depends. Is it working?” he asked.

  Her teeth flashed in a smile. “Ask me again later.”

  They reached the top of the stairs and the landing that overlooked the atrium. On the wall by the entry to the galleries, foot-high letters spelled out the name Ty Ramsay.

  “Ty Ramsay the actor?” he asked.

  “The same.”

  “That’s right, I remember reading that he paints.” Dom stood back and let Delaney walk into the exhibit space ahead of him, watching her skirt swish against her thighs.

  “He’s good,” she said. “Remember Trish and Sabrina down in Mexico?”

  He forced his gaze hastily upward as she glanced over her shoulder at him. “The screenwriter and Pantolini’s daughter, right?”

  She nodded. “Sabrina is Ty Ramsay’s cousin. And he and Trish are a serious item. They’ve been nuts for each other pretty much since they met.”

  “Sometimes it hits you like that,” Dom murmured. Through the slit in the back of her dress, he could see the gentle flex of her muscles as she walked. And the drumbeat of desire began to thud through him.

  It was a smaller space than the downstairs rooms where the crowd was collected. Instead of pristine white, the walls glowed the soft brown of old wood. There was an intimacy here, a sense of breathless quiet. The rooms were bathed in shadow. Only on the paintings did the spotlights shine.

  And it drew them in.

  Men, women, the bodies flowed one into the other in a series of images that circled the first room and led to the next. The paintings weren’t simply pictures, they were emotion, desire rendered in pigment and canvas. There was about them an aura of extravagant sensuality, an intensity, a desperate longing in the lines of the bodies reaching toward one another.

  Dom knew about desperate longing. He knew all about the wanting, night after night. And the dreams that faded away in the stark morning light leaving him with only a vague impression of silky warmth amid the ragged clutch of need. Need to press against her and inhale her scent, need to immerse himself in her and absorb her taste. Need to bury himself in her and find the release that was becoming bound up with something more by the day.

  The rooms seemed to warm and darken as they threaded their way through the exhibit, as though the sumptuous sexuality of the images had become physical. The yearning became touching. The colors intensified as the figures drew closer to one another. And Dom followed Delaney, aching to put his hands on her.

  At the very back of the innermost room, he and Delaney stopped before a painting as tall as the doorway. Red and brown and black swirled together, the sweeping arcs of paint resolving themselves as two bodies. Not apart, though, not now. They weren’t reaching out like the others, they weren’t poised with glances of yearning. They weren’t even stretching to embrace.

  They were making love.

  He swore he could sense the heat, smell the scent of desire of the two bodies twined around each other. He could feel the brush of hand against skin, hear the groans of arousal.

  And then he heard the soft catch of Delaney’s breath and found himself tightening.

  “How does he do it?” she whispered.

  Her eyes were enormous in the dim light. In
the shadow, the rest of her face seemed reduced to lips and cheekbones.

  “Pretty amazing,” Dom said, staring at her.

  “I was talking about the painting.”

  “I was talking about you.” He stepped toward her and slid his hands around her waist.

  She moistened her lips. Her eyes seemed to get even darker. “There’s a reception full of people down there,” she murmured even as she moved up against him. “What if—”

  He gave a quiet laugh. “What if we kiss each other?” He slipped his hand into the back slit of her dress, feeling the soft skin, the springy muscle beneath. “What if we wind up in bed? I’m all for it.” He curled his fingers around the dip of her waist, leaned in until his mouth was over hers. “Come on, Delaney,” he murmured. “I dare you.”

  He didn’t kiss her, though. That wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted to press his lips against the soft skin of her throat, to feel the frantic beat of her pulse against them. He wanted to smell her, bury his face against her and inhale that tempting scent that had beckoned to him all evening.

  And taste her.

  He heard her breathing hitch as he licked the side of her neck, bit it softly. Then he cruised up to kiss those soft cheeks, the line of her nose, the fragile, fluttering shades of her eyelids.

  And only then did he capture her mouth with his, diving deep in an explosion of—

  A distant clack of high heels sounded on the stairs.

  Dom made a noise of frustration. “Why are we here?” he muttered before letting her loose.

  “We’ve got a limo downstairs with a seat the size of Rhode Island,” Delaney said breathlessly. “Maybe it’s time to get you to the airport.”

  He leaned in to press a quick kiss on her lips. “I think that’s the best idea I’ve heard yet.”

  THEY TUMBLED INTO THE CAR like giggling teenagers, wrapping themselves together as soon as the door shut, pausing only long enough to raise the barrier and block out the driver as he got in.

  And oh, Delaney thought, it was exquisite to feel Dom’s hands, his mouth, his body against her. It was hard to remember why she hadn’t wanted this all along. It was impossible to think about stopping.