Her nose had actually twitched. The thought of kissing him must have been practically unbearable. He had kicked into reverse and said goodnight without it.
The story of his life.
Until now and Reese Wallace.
3
Reese
This man needed her so badly it hurt.
Reese could transform him, eventually, but in four days? Show him how to seduce a woman in time for a date on Friday? Although, if he really stuck to his sliding scale (candidates on a sliding scale? Was he even a human being?) and picked a good match for his personality, her job might be a piece of cake.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Four days is a rush job. It would be a hack at best.”
Kenneth held up his hands in supplication. Damn, they were big. “I’ll pay extra. I’ve been reading up on your column and others, too. I can show you my detailed plans and reports. My work-out log. Hell, I can show my abs.” He yanked his yellow-and-green paisley shirt from his maroon pants, exposing the rippling ridges of his muscular stomach. He had a slim waist and a mouth-watering washboard in smooth pale skin. This body never saw the light of day, like the skin vampires had in her favorite books.
Reese’s eyes flicked up to check his lips. Full and plump, but very masculine. Sculpted features and pale-blue eyes? She drew back. Maybe he is a vampire.
Would she be so lucky?
“All right, put the abs away.” Closing her eyes, she waggled a finger at him. She wasn’t supposed to drool over the clients. When she checked again, the abs were safely stowed out of her sight. “Success in dating and wooing is not, contrary to what many sites for men will tell you, about muscles and showing dominance. Women are more nuanced.” She was having a hard time breathing, remembering his awesome six pack—but really, she was nuanced.
Truth be told, she was lonely and had been since things went to hell in a handbasket between her and Jeff about two years ago, but seriously. There was more to courtship than great abs.
Or shoulders.
Or thick golden-brown hair paired with light eyes.
Or—
“Reese, please. I am man enough to admit that I am lost in the jungle of the dating world and will never find my way out alive without help. This date means everything to me. The lady has stellar credentials, acclaimed published papers, genuine blond hair, and a smile to die for.” He gave her a crooked, guilty smile, as if admitting his attraction was like stealing cookies. Her heart swelled. This woman had no idea how lucky she was. “I can’t let this go up in flames like the last one. Name your price. Four days, whatever you think we need to work on.”
“I don’t know,” she said. Reese had advised dozens of men and women online in short private sessions. Life goals, weaknesses, strengths, how to focus and live in the now in order to move forward with their love lives, all while her own was non-existent. She had done it, and they were happy with the results.
But a one-to-one client in real life? This was a big step forward.
“Based on the rates I noted, coaches charge anywhere from twenty-five to three hundred dollars an hour, but four days of intensive coaching sessions? You tell me,” he said.
This could be a ton of money.
She would have her first real-life client. It would be a success. This could finally bring much needed funds to invest in her venture, complete with a happy client to quote. There would be book deals and conferences. Little funds made more funds, like rabbits breeding in her garden of dreams—making more clients.
She could be a life coach to men, teaching them about what women want and need, as well as how to be the best version of themselves.
Wasn’t that what everyone wanted? Some people needed more help than others.
And Kenneth—whoa baby. Kenneth needed some hands-on work. Her hands clasped together to stop getting too handsy at that very second. But the foundations for success were already there.
But they would have to be discreet.
She risked getting fired if this got out. No one at work could know. A flush rose to her cheeks imagining her boss scrolling through her list of top ten bedroom games for relighting the fire.
Kenneth cleared his throat. “Five hours a day at one hundred dollars an hour?”
Then again, four days was really tight. “Kenneth, this might not work, there are no guarantees.”
“At one hundred fifty an hour, plus I advertise your help to the copious number of geek friends I have in the area when it is a success, which, of course, it will be.”
Her accountant brain fired through the calculation. Three thousand dollars and word-of-mouth advertising for free? Buffalos stampeded the last remnants of her doubts, and her hesitation was nothing but a puff of smoke on the distant horizon.
“Let’s do it.” She stuck her hand out to shake.
A client.
She was giddy.
He was in maroon corduroys and blue shoes.
She was going to be sick.
Taking a deep breath, she willed her shoulders to drop to their normal position and stop inching up to her ears. “We can’t be seen together at work. Mum’s the word, got it?”
“I will be the soul of discretion. You can count on me.” He put his hand out to shake. His warm fingers wrapped around hers and brushed her wrist, sending sparks straight to her chest.
Concentrate, Reese. “Are you free for an early lunch? There is no time to waste.”
He nodded.
“All right, meet me at the Lakeside Shopping Center food court, in front of the Sushi Bar in thirty minutes.”
He nodded, and she pushed him out of the break room, then collapsed against the door. Three thousand dollars? For four days of work? The ads she could buy, the graphic art, the new logo she needed, a web-design overhaul. She needed to make a shopping list.
Shopping list.
Shit.
She rushed out of the break room and through the maze of cubicles.
“Barb!” She found her coworker hunched over the trash can by the copier.
“Hold on, I dropped a box of paper clips.”
“Barb, listen. I have to leave early for lunch. It’s an emergency shopping situation.” She left out long and arduous in front of emergency. There was going to be a lot of ground to cover in the time she could eke out of a lunch break.
Barb righted herself with a groan, lurching to vertical like the Titanic moments before it sank to the depths. She reached up to pat Reese’s cheek in understanding. “Emergency shopping? Is that when your list has four bottles of wine and three boxes of assorted chocolates on it?”
“Pretty much. And new shoes.” But not for me.
Kenneth, her new star, would blaze to life in the full glory of masculinity, starting in thirty minutes at the shopping mall food court.
4
Kenneth
Kenneth eyeballed the teka maki at the end of his chopsticks, food poisoning statistics for uncooked seafood running through his head.
He could do this. Regular people ate sushi every day.
Dip funky round food in soy sauce, smear with wasabi, and boom—in his mouth.
Boom—in his mouth.
And boom…he couldn’t do it.
Reese was halfway through her bento box already, thoroughly enjoying her lunch, free of food poisoning, at least so far. She motioned at his sushi with her chop-sticks. “Take time to savor the meal so you can talk to your date. Ask questions. Answer questions, but don’t talk about yourself too long. If the opportunity presents itself and seems right, you can offer to share a particularly tasty bite of your food, but a part you haven’t touched yet. Eating together is one of the most important rituals you will ever engage in with a woman, besides making love, of course.”
He choked. He couldn’t do this in public.
“It feels odd because we’re not attracted to each other, but this is great practice for the real thing.” She touched his arm. “Would you like one of my salmon roe rolls?”
Reese was
touching his arm. He vaguely registered that she offered one of her squishy fish egg rolls, but there was skin to skin contact. That tiny touch sparked mad desires in him. He wanted to pick her up and carry her off, caveman style to his den, light fires with sticks, and roast meat—meat—for her, then have wild sex for six hours.
Six. Hours.
He dropped his chopsticks. If a little thing like arm touching ignited his lizard brain—limbic lobe, amygdala, and hippocampus firing torpedo neurons at full speed—how was he going to get through his date with Amanda like a civilized human being?
Focusing on the situation at hand, he reached for his coat pocket. “Before I forget, this is for you.” He removed a thick envelope imprinted with his bank’s name and logo and set in on the table next to her water. “Three thousand, as agreed.”
“Wow. Thank you for your confidence, but I think half now and half later would be—”
“I know you are going to get me through this, Reese. Take it now.”
She pressed her lips together, not protesting any further, and tucked the thick envelope in her purse. “For this to work, I need to know more about you. Your dating and relationship experiences in the past. Everything. Where are the problems, what do we need to concentrate on, etcetera. I’ll send some worksheets for you to fill out as soon as possible. Today, keep in mind that seduction is most natural and satisfactory when two people are attracted to each other. You say the date you have lined up is promising—is she your ideal sort of woman?”
“Without a doubt. It’s no accident, though. I selected her specifically. All the reading I’ve done shows that opposites do not attract or form lasting relationships, statistically speaking. With that in mind, I reviewed the available women on the dating sites. Then I listed desirable qualities in order of importance such as proximity, common interests, career goals, favorite book, favorite games, and attractiveness. And then I filtered the list based on that, entered in the numbers for the likely candidates, and found the most likely matches.”
Reese blinked. She frowned, eyebrows pinching together. “I love how physical attractiveness is last in your list. Shows a lot of emotional maturity. Women will sense that like sharks smell blood and come for you.”
It was his turn to blink several times. “Does this have anything to do with”—he lowered his voice and glanced around nervously—“shark week?”
Coughing, she managed to answer no while catching onto his meaning. She slurped her tea, then whispered, “What do you know about shark week?”
“Is the first rule of shark week not to talk about shark week?”
“Very clever. Plus, show up with chocolates and you’ll be safe.”
He heaved a sigh of relief. “I’ve been told I’m clever before. But about showing emotional maturity, that’s a good thing?”
“Definitely.”
“Because the shark analogy doesn’t do it for me. And to be honest, attractiveness is number two on my priorities.”
“Ah. What’s number one?”
“Cosplay.”
“That’s like the Ren Faire but for sci-fi?”
He took her hands in his. “Not exactly, but don’t worry about it. Also, I’ve noticed when you get stressed, there is this double line that appears between your eyebrows and your shoulders tense. That can’t be healthy.”
She freed her hands. That was a bad sign, right? “If there were an official list of rules for men to follow concerning women, up at the top somewhere would be ‘Never point out a woman’s wrinkles.’ Full stop.”
“But they’re cute. It’s personality. Character.”
“And the rule right after it would be ‘Don’t use cute to describe any random body part.’ Capisce?”
“Did you know the correct form would actually be capisci?”
“I have another rule for you,” she said, hands fisted. “Are you writing these down?”
“You probably wouldn’t believe how excellent my memory is.”
She closed her eyes and inhaled slowly through her nose. As she released, a humming sound came from her throat.
A yoga technique. Nice. He had watched a YouTube video on breathing techniques once. “Does breathing like that help with stress?”
“You wouldn’t believe how much. All right. Are you going to eat that? Should we give up on the eating ritual for now? Because there is shopping we need to do.”
Kenneth rubbed the back of his neck. Of all the evil things upon this planet… “How much shopping?”
“Glasses, clothes, shoes, for starters,” she said.
“Sure. If you’re with me, I can take the pain.” Ignoring the growing tension in his shoulders, he picked up his tray. “I’ll be back at my desk in an hour, right?”
“I’d say it will take a bit longer than forty-five minutes, but who knows? We might glide through the stores like penguins on ice and get really lucky.”
“Penguins? So, the coaching for the rest of today is shopping?”
“Lunch-time coaching is shopping. Tonight, I think we need to work in depth on wooing and conversation. Romantic dinner setting this time. I mean, you’re twenty-eight, and you obviously have some success at getting a first date, so it’s not like you need work on lower-level confidence. I mean, it’s not like you still have your V card.” She shoved her trash in the can with a chuckle. “All right, let’s go conquer your new look!”
Reese clapped his shoulder to guide him onward.
He remained rooted to the spot.
“Reese, what do you mean I don’t have a V card? Of course I still have my V card.”
5
Reese
V card? His V card? At twenty-eight?
Reese’s brain was stuck on repeat.
A twenty-eight-year-old virgin.
A twenty-eight-year-old virgin.
Kenneth might as well have been a unicorn. When her brain finally became unstuck, it was completely off track.
There is a solution to his problem and I could participate, sang an off-tune voice in the back of her mind.
“You have your V card?” she whispered, glancing around to make sure no one was listening. This was a matter of her client’s privacy. “What—how did that happen?”
“Of course.” He reached for his back pocket and flipped open a frayed, slightly decaying wallet.
She stared, utterly speechless as he found a sky-blue card among the one hundred assorted cards he had squirreled away.
“I keep everything,” he said, holding it out to her. “The Vulcan Fan Club of Higher Falls membership card, otherwise known by the ‘V card.’”
A huge V decorated the background, and his signature graced the bottom in thin scrawling letters.
Reese took a deep sigh in relief. The outlook was decidedly less bleak for the future of her rush job with Kenneth. He had some experience and was half-way there in the dating scene. He wasn’t a virgin.
She handed the card back, chuckling. “Thank goodness, just some goofy Star Wars thing.” She patted his shoulder, intending to grab a coffee on the way to the One Hour Lens shop. “You had me scared there for a moment, I thought you were well on your way to being a thirty-year-old virgin.”
“Virg—” He coughed halfway through the word. He cleared his throat and carefully replaced the card in his wallet. “Actually, it’s a Star Trek fan society and, um, very technically, you could say, about me being a…”
Reese turned to him, studying his face.
He was.
He couldn’t be.
He was.
“You’re not, are you?” she asked.
“Very technically, I am.” He ducked his head, breaking eye contact, and pushed his glasses in place. “I am.”
Reese sat down at someone else’s table. “How did that happen? You seem to be a nice guy. Surely, there was someone, one time…”
“Nice guys finish last, isn’t that the saying?” A nervous chuckle accompanied his answer. “I guess you could say, it never happened. And I know you a
re coaching me on how to seduce a woman in order to have a relationship, and I respect that. I want—I want very much to have a relationship. As soon as possible. Maybe multiple relationships. One after the other, of course. But I’d start with one.”
Kenneth frowned, musing over his words, then nodded in agreement with himself.
Naughty thoughts crept back into her mind. She couldn’t stop them.
A virgin.
A real-life virgin.
He could be all hers. He would never forget her.
Come to mama, my sweet boy. I’ll make everything all right.
Reese held up her hand to stop the stream of images of his naked body based on what she had already seen. All the erotic positions she could show him. All the different ways she could run her lips and tongue over his body.
No. He had just given her a hefty-sized envelope with three thousand dollars in it. She couldn’t have sex with him now.
“Virginity is by no means a showstopper, but right now this conversation is neither here nor there. We must shop.” She motioned for him to follow, but Kenneth remained planted in his spot, arms crossed.
“Shopping is right up there with getting my wisdom teeth ripped out. Could we do this online? I get two-day delivery—”
“I can’t guarantee there won’t be any pain, but it will the good, growing pain. You are learning. I will walk you through every step.”
Reese grabbed his hand. Shopping. The only things they would do together would be getting him ready for his date. That was the job.
The glasses shop was less horrible than she feared. He had a current prescription for the lens and could pick up his new pair of glasses after work. The shoe store went quicker than she hoped. Three pairs—work, weekend, and evening.
Seduction in a Suit: An Office Romance Collection Page 33
