The Sexiest Man Alive: Life and Love on the Lam (A Loveswept Contemporary Romance)

by Juliet Rosetti

  “Oh, drop dead!” Mazie flung a dish towel at Apricot. “Everything is your fault,” she hissed at the TV image.

  A purple gnome scampered across the computer screen, bent over, dropped trou, and mooned Mazie. She zagged a lightning bolt at his butt and he exploded in a puff of violet smoke.

  If only it were possible to zap real-life problems that easily, Mazie thought. Why couldn’t you dial back real life to beginner level and start over again? She would scroll back three weeks, back to when her life had been normal, back to the day before that evil woman on Milwaukee’s most popular local show had proclaimed Bonaparte Labeck “The Sexiest Man Alive.”

  Chapter Two

  Three Weeks Earlier

  “I’ve decided to become a dominatrix,” Juju announced.

  “That’s nice.” Mazie opened the window to let out the paint fumes. “Is that where you wear spike-heeled boots and whip guys’ butts?”

  “And get paid to do it.” Juju carefully brushed paint onto a cabinet door. “Three hundred bucks for a one-hour session—do you believe that? Plus it’s the only profession where customer service means treating customers badly.”

  “It sounds kind of illegal.”

  “Well, it’s not. Dominatrixing is disciplining, not getting paid for sex. Clients schedule appointments to be punished the same way they schedule dentist appointments. All perfectly legal; I checked it out. No sex involved—in fact, the guy doesn’t even get to touch you, unless you let him kiss your feet or something.”

  The way Juju explained it made it sound sort of appealing. For three hundred bucks an hour, Mazie wondered, would she be willing to wear a cat suit so tight that it thrust her spleen up into her ribs and order a man to lick her toes?

  “I’m going to need equipment,” Juju said. “I already have my outfit—I’m going with a kind of lady buccaneer theme, with an eye patch and a long, curly red wig—but I still need whips and stuff. A woman I know is throwing a passion party tomorrow night and I figure I could pick up a few things there.”

  “A passion party? Does that involve partner swapping?”

  “You don’t know about passion parties? Women are flocking to them like crazy these days, ever since that book came out.”

  “What book?”

  “Spank Me Like You Mean It. It’s hot; it’s kinky, it’s a number one bestseller.”

  “I guess I could check it out at the library.”

  “Then get in line. I hear the waiting list is in the hundreds.”

  Juju Danda always knew exactly what was trendy. She was Filipino—her name was a shortened form of Jhun-Jhun—but claimed to be Thai because American guys thought Thai girls were hot. She had exquisite pale brown skin, silky black hair usually worn in a beehive to add a couple of inches to her four-eleven frame, and a sprinkle of freckles like nutmeg powder across her nose. She was not much bigger around than a pretzel stick, but she’d dealt with her lack of cleavage by having amazing silicone boobs installed. They looked like a two-pack of Hostess Sno Balls set out on a tray. Her legs were incredible, with muscular thighs and built-up calves, a result of her workouts on skates. Men always adored Juju when they first met her because she was tiny, cute, and fragile-looking, but any fantasies they had about dominating a sweet, submissive Asian woman were soon shot to pieces because Juju reacted to attempts to control her like a cat ordered to fetch a tennis ball.

  Mazie had first met her when Juju, then the manager of a downtown coffee shop called Hottie Latte, had hired her as a waitress. Mazie hadn’t minded the job; the tips were great and the work wasn’t that hard. The only drawback had been the required uniform: flimsy lingerie and high heels. Then just a few weeks ago, the Hottie Latte building had been sold, the shop had gone out of business, and all the Hotties had been thrown out of work. Juju had turned to an exciting career in Roller Derby, while Mazie, after much job hunting, had found a job in the field of geriatric nutrition.

  Finding a job was tough when you had a four-year gap in your résumé.

  Oh, that? I had a job with the state, in the transportation sector. Stamping out license plates.

  She’d been released from prison when newly uncovered evidence had convinced a judge that she was innocent of murdering her husband. She’d applied for her old job, teaching music at a Milwaukee high school, but school boards weren’t enthusiastic about hiring an ex-convict. The fact that she’d been proved not guilty made no difference; she still carried an invisible barbed-wire tattoo.

  She’d finally found a job working for a charitable organization that delivered meals to the elderly. No job security, zero benefits, and a minimum-wage salary that barely covered Mazie’s rent. She’d managed, however, to scrape up enough cash to purchase two quarts of low-gloss acrylic paint to redo her kitchen.

  Pale delphinium blue, like the photos she’d seen of Claude Monet’s kitchen. Her table and her chairs—ladder-backs with woven hemp seats purchased at a yard sale—would be yellow like the ones in Monet’s dining room. She’d invited Juju to help, coaxing her with the promise of a bottle of chardonnay.

  Finally the last jot of paint had been applied to the last cabinet. Juju and Mazie looked over their work and saw that it was good. Except for the dribbles and blotches and uneven spots, but you hardly even noticed them if you drank more wine and kind of squinted your eyes.

  “So eight o’clock tomorrow night for that party,” Juju said. “Bring your checkbook.”

  Mazie waffled. “Ben and I sort of have a standing Saturday-night date.”

  “You’re too available to him, that’s your problem. He needs to hear no once in a while. Tell him it’s a girls’ night out.”

  Was that true? Mazie wondered. Was she too available? You can always count on good old whatshername.

  Wine bottle in hand, Juju wandered out into the living room. As she scrubbed the paintbrushes at the sink, Mazie heard Juju turn on Milwaukee Tonite! Apricot Ames came on, her high-pitched voice vibrating with synthetic enthusiasm, as though she gargled with sparkly confetti.

  “Holy Batman!” Juju cried. “I don’t believe it! Mazie, get out here!”

  Soapy-handed, Mazie hurried to the living room. Bonaparte Labeck stared at her from her Goodwill television set.

  “… this year’s Milwaukee Tonite!’s Sexiest Man Alive,” Apricot Ames gushed, “is a breathtakingly handsome bachelor who seems unaware of his own powers over women—but don’t take my word for it, ladies—check out this yummy photo for yourself.”

  Juju and Mazie goggled at the photo on the screen. It must have been taken at a pool, because Ben was wearing swim trunks and his hair was plastered to his head. He didn’t seem aware that his photo was being taken; he was facing away from the camera and was shown in three-quarters view. He was toweling off, the better to emphasize the roller-coaster bumps of his biceps, his broad, powerful chest, his flat, stunningly sculpted abdomen. The wet, clinging trunks left little doubt about his below-the-belt endowment.

  “Okay, ladies, here are his vital stats,” Apricot continued, sounding like a sixth grader with a crush on the football captain. “Our Sexiest Man is six feet three inches tall, one hundred eighty-seven pounds of hard, solid muscle. He has chocolate brown eyes and adorably messy hair that’s a shade between burnt umber and raven. And check out those high cheekbones—a legacy from an Ojibwa great-granddaddy—and the adorable boxer’s nose, courtesy of a hockey puck he forgot to duck.”

  Juju pretended to stick her fingers down her throat. “Who wrote that drivel—the president of the Justin Bieber Fan Club?”

  “Shh.” Mazie found herself drawn to the screen, where photos of Ben in hockey gear were flashing in quick succession, some from his college days and others of him in action with the Snowplows, his amateur team.

  Apricot’s teeth flashed toilet bowl white. “Salivating over that name like we are, viewers? Bonaparte! Labeck! Born in St. Amelie, a small town on the Quebec-Vermont border, Bonaparte grew up in a traditional French-Canadian family with three
younger sisters, a dad who’s a master carpenter, and a mother who’s a professor at a junior college. He was a three-sport athlete at St. Paul’s Prep School, lettering in hockey, baseball, and basketball, but it was hockey that gained Bonaparte his scholarship to the University of Wisconsin, where he made varsity his freshman year and helped his team win three division championships.”

  “I gotta tape this,” Juju said, whipping out her phone. At this moment, probably every other woman in the Milwaukee metro area was doing the same thing.

  “It was Bonaparte’s part-time job in college that gained him a foothold in the world of television news casting,” Apricot babbled on. “He began as a cameraman with a college news station and now works as a videographer for WPAK, Channel 13. He’s definitely on the wrong side of the camera, don’t you think, girls? But this hardworking guy is not just about the job.” Apricot gave a lascivious wink.

  “Bonaparte’s interests range from golf to fishing to skiing to book clubs. He’s known to his peeps as a gourmet cook who adores having a big group of friends over for impromptu spaghetti dinners. His specialty, as you might imagine from his French background, is crepes Suzette.”

  Mazie laughed out loud. What a crock! The extent of Labeck’s culinary ability was poking holes in the plastic covers on microwave dinners.

  “Now for the question you’re all dying to ask.” Apricot lowered her voice. “Is the charismatic Canuck available? Mais oui! Bonaparte is a hunk-about-town, known to hang out at Flanagan’s in the Brady neighborhood, the Bling Bling downtown, and the Guinness Club near Marquette U. There is currently no main squeeze in his life, and reliable sources tell us that Mr. Sexiest is looking for Ms. Right! Coming up next: thirty-one ways to turn those moldy leftovers into beauty products. Stay tuned!”

  Chapter Three

  Sexiest Man Alive. What a load of crapola. Ben Labeck slammed his gear bag into his trunk. Women always accused men of judging them solely on physical appearance, but women were just as guilty. No—they were worse. Look at the covers of those romance novels his sisters were always reading. Naked guy torsos with impossibly ripped delts, pecs, and abs. Most of the photos didn’t even bother to include the man’s head, as though his brain wasn’t important, just his equipment.

  Why the women on that program had picked him as their—he winced—sexiest man—was a mystery. There was nothing special about him. A lucky combination of genetics had given him non-scary facial features. As for his body, he lifted weights a couple times a week, but his built-up core muscles were simply a result of years of skating, starting when he was two years old. There were thousands of guys with better bodies. By the time he hit forty, he’d probably look like the Pillsbury Doughboy because he hated exercise. Give him a ball of any shape and a little competition and he’d play sunup to sundown, but sitting in front of a weight machine and pulling levers—too boring to contemplate.

  The Sexiest Man Alive. What he wouldn’t have given for that title when he was a gawky seventeen-year-old, a one-hundred-forty-pound skeleton with big ears and a face that hadn’t yet grown into his nose. Homecoming week of senior year stuck out in his memory as particularly painful. Ben attended an all-boys high school in his hometown. Ben’s buddy Nick was dating a girl from the nearby public high school named Kate, who’d set up a double date with her girlfriend for their school’s homecoming dance. Ben’s date turned out to be a sixteen-year-old named Elena.

  Who was very pretty. And who didn’t seem at all thrilled to be his date. Ben was wearing a white shirt and one of his dad’s ties, a sport jacket that left two inches of bony wrist exposed, and pants that had fit before he’d had his latest growth spurt. An attempt to tame his snarly hair—an infuriating combination of straight and wavy—by a self-administered haircut had ended disastrously, leaving him looking as though he’d been scalped. His nose had been broken that afternoon at hockey practice—one of his genius teammates had decided to take a whack at a puck after everyone had removed their helmets and were skating off the ice. Ben had wadding in his nostrils, an enormous bandage across his nose, and a half-moon black eye. The nose packing made him talk like Daffy Duck.

  His hands were shaking as he’d attempted to pin the corsage onto Elena’s dress. Finally she’d snatched it away and pinned it on herself.

  Things had pretty much gone downhill from that point.

  “Être maison avant minuit,” Elena’s mother had ordered. Be home by midnight.

  They’d been home by ten thirty. Elena bestowed a peck on Ben’s cheek before scurrying into her house. Probably couldn’t wait to get on the phone and report to her girlfriend about her dud of a date.

  Ben’s nose healed. His feelings didn’t. Luckily, going to an all-guys high school, he didn’t encounter girls every day, except for his sisters, who didn’t count. He knew he wasn’t the type girls swooned over. He was a straight-A student with a geeky interest in photography. The fact that he was an outstanding hockey player didn’t impress anyone—this was Canada, after all, and most guys played hockey at a semipro level.

  Everything changed when he went to college. His grade point, his Provincial Achievement Tests, and his hockey prowess sufficiently impressed scouts from the University of Wisconsin that they’d offered him a full four-year scholarship. He’d jumped at the chance and signed the papers before they changed their minds. Then he’d left for the United States.

  Ben had believed he was Americanized; French was his first language, but he’d learned English in school and exposure to American TV and movies made him familiar with the slang. Still, Madison had been a major culture shock. Everything was somehow noisier and larger in the States. He hadn’t known that Americans dug hockey, but in Madison, hockey was huge. Hockey matches weren’t just games; they were Super Bowl–style extravaganzas, complete with the Badger marching band, cheerleaders, Jumbotron scoreboards that produced pyrotechnics, gymnasts and hula hoopers and mariachi bands and ten thousand bloodthirsty students chanting, “Kill, maim, pillage, burn!”

  To his shock, Ben discovered as a mere freshman that people on campus knew who he was and said hi to him. No Canadian reticence here; Americans were outgoing and friendly, and for the first time in his life, Ben was popular. He didn’t care that it was only because he’d made the hockey team; he just cashed in on his fleeting moment of fame because he was convinced it would end any minute. He went to parties where the booze flowed freely and the bongs passed from hand to hand and the music was so loud, it made the hairs in his ears shrivel up. At home, Ben, like most other Quebecois, had grown up having wine with every dinner, but drinking on campus was a very big deal and getting drunk until you passed out was a guy rite of passage. Ben said no to the booze and the drugs because the competition for slots on the ice was so brutal that he needed every functioning brain cell. But he didn’t pass on the girls.

  Oh, the college girls …

  Twelve years later the thought still made him smile. The Madison girls. Beautiful, bold, and available. He discovered he had a type. Tall and blonde, brains optional. To Ben’s amazement, American women considered him handsome. Somewhere along the line his face had grown into his nose and ears. The fact that he was French-Canadian, with Ojibwa ancestry, lent him an air of the exotic. His accent, which he worked strenuously to lose, only seemed to increase his appeal.

  He’d done well academically in college, majoring in business, because that was what his dad had advised, but his heart had been in photography and he’d finagled a part-time job with the college’s television station. When he’d graduated Ben had been drafted in the third round by the Columbus Blue Jackets, a pro team. He’d played for them two seasons before a shoulder injury had ended his professional career. One of his college buddies, who worked at a TV station, had tipped him off that a Milwaukee cable station was looking for a cameraman. He’d gotten the job, spent the next couple of years learning the ropes, then had been recruited by WPAK, the local ABC affiliate.

  The job was laughably described as forty ho
urs per week. Some of it was in the studio, filming the morning news program, but Ben found that he preferred being out on assignment. When there was an after-hours story to film, the station called Ben first rather than the guys who had families, and there were days when he worked twenty-four hours straight.

  But Ben didn’t intend to be a camera jockey all his life. He wanted to do documentaries. He’d already made one, a film on meth addiction among the Chippewa tribes in northern Wisconsin. A local cable station had picked it up and it had been nominated for an award. Currently he was working on a series of interviews with World War II veterans. He was doing everything himself, from writing the interview questions to editing and production, and he loved the freedom it afforded him.

  The trouble was, it took up so much time. Between the Snowplows—the amateur team he played for—and his job, he had little time for anything else. This “Sexiest Man” thing was only going to make things worse. Already it’d made his life on the team hell. His teammates had almost wet their jock straps with glee when they’d heard the news, handling it with all the sensitivity and understanding one might expect of a group of sex-obsessed, dirty joke–swapping, beer-guzzling, aging athletes. In a word: unmerciful.

  They’d stacked his locker so that when Ben opened it he’d been showered with condoms. They’d scrawled stuff in lipstick all over the locker room mirrors, the mildest of which was I WANT TO FUCK YOU, SEXY MAN! Someone had shoved a blow-up toy called Passionate Patti into the shower with him. The guys were having a blast at his expense. Making fun of the sexiest man alive was the most fun they’d had since Manny Garcia’s wife, convinced he’d been screwing around on her, had shown up in the locker room and chased Manny around with a bread knife.