Velvet, Leather & Lace

by Suzanne Forster, Donna Kauffman

  It took her only twenty minutes northbound on Highway 5 to Glendale, but once on her cozy little cul-de-sac, with the neat row of houses from the 1920s, most of them restored several times over, she sat in her car for another few minutes, staring at the blue Tundra in front of her. She was about to do something she hated—ask for help.

  With a deep breath, she walked past her house and knocked on the door just to the right of hers.

  No answer.

  Oh God. She glanced at her watch. Noon on a Saturday. He could be anywhere, doing anything, but his truck was there—

  “Hey, Mia.”

  At the low, husky voice, she whipped around and faced the tall, broad-shouldered man making his way up the walk.

  At just the sight of him, with his fawn-colored hair perpetually rumpled and his light green, see-all eyes sharp and crinkled with good humor, Mia took her first gulp of relief. Jake Holbrook, neighbor and friend.

  He would help her.

  He wore running shorts, a damp T-shirt plastered to his chest and athletic shoes, and would have looked perfectly at home on a Nike ad, all rough-and-tumble tough and leanly muscled. Obviously, he’d just come from a run. He probably had plans for the afternoon, plans she hoped desperately to alter.

  He was smiling at her. Jane had once said he had the smile of a man thinking naughty things which he’d probably be willing to share, if only asked.

  Mia had never thought to ask.

  Not that she didn’t like men—she loved men: tall ones, thin ones, built ones, cute ones… She wasn’t picky, not when it didn’t really matter since she never really kept a man. She didn’t know exactly why that was, but it was a fact. Men came and went.

  But Jake was different; he was a friend, and a friend only and she liked it that way. They ate together at least once a week, they saw movies, they had game nights— Monopoly, cards, whatever—he was great company. Great “friend” company. She’d kept things that way on purpose for reasons too complicated to think about at the moment.

  In any case, Mia’s favorite part of Jake was something far more intangible than just his sense of humor, tough good looks and poker talent.

  He could always be counted on.

  And that, in Mia’s book, made him worth his weight in gold. In truth, at just the sight of him, she nearly threw herself in his arms for a hug, but something held her back.

  Jake swiped an arm over his forehead and hunkered down to pull a key out of his shoe. The shoes had seen better days, and so had his threadbare Lakers T-shirt. His tanned skin shone with sweat. Good Lord, where had all that sleek sinew and smooth flesh come from? The man was a walking fantasy, but she tore her eyes off him and concentrated on the here and now. If she could get him to the Greek Theater today, now even, he’d still have a full week left to help her. “Jake, I’ve never been so happy to see you.”

  “Is that right?” Rising with his key in his hand, uncoiling that long body as he did, he looked down at her with amusement. “Never?”

  “I mean, of course I’m always happy to see you,” she corrected with a little laugh. “But…” she trailed off. Funny how smooth she could be when it came to running a company, or even seducing a man, but with Jake today, finesse flew out the window.

  “How was work?” he asked.

  He always asked. He always listened to her answers, too, and was one of the few people in her life who’d resisted making a crack about the fact that she sold underwear for a living. “Work was—is,” she corrected, “hell.”

  “Sorry.”

  “But I think I can turn this whole disaster around if you’ll—” She broke off and hesitated, having never asked him for help before. “Listen, I’m bad at this, so how about I just get right to it.”

  “Sure.”

  “How swamped is your calendar?”

  He looked intrigued. “For what specifically…?”

  “Work.”

  “Ah.”

  Was that…disappointment flickering across his rugged features?

  He fit his key into the lock of his front door. “You live and breathe your work, Mia. You know what they say about all work and no play.”

  “That’s not true, I do other stuff. I think of other stuff.”

  Again he shot her an amused glance. “Really? Name one.”

  “Well…” Okay, so nothing was coming to her right at the moment. And fine, so she was a workaholic. So what? She rolled her eyes at his soft laugh. “All I want to know is how fast can you get ready to come.”

  He arched a brow, and Mia felt her face flame as she realized how that had sounded, at how he’d clearly taken the unintended meaning. “Okay, back up. That came out incredibly…wrong.”

  His voice seemed lower now, rougher. “And here I thought maybe you meant—”

  “No!”

  “Oh, well.” He was still amused, but also something else now, too, something deeper and darker.

  Arousal, she thought in shock.

  Jake wanted her.

  She looked away. She didn’t have time to think about this, not now, not with her life unraveling, and she stumbled over her words. “I didn’t mean—damn it, Jake. You’re twisting me all around.”

  “Fair’s fair. You’ve been twisting me around for years.”

  “What?

  “Nothing. Forget it.” He let out a low laugh, then opened his door, gesturing her in ahead of him. “How about this? You sit down and have a drink of something cold while I take a shower, and then we’ll start over.”

  “I don’t have time to sit, and you don’t have time to shower.” She led the way to his kitchen and spread the blueprints across his kitchen table.

  He came up behind her, looking at the plans over her shoulder, smelling shockingly good for a man who’d just gone running. But she had no business taking another surreptitious sniff, no business at all.

  “What’s all this?” His chest brushed her shoulder as he leaned in closer.

  “My butt on the line. Look, can you build it?”

  Craning his neck, he looked at her for a long moment. “I don’t know. It’s a pretty fine butt just the way it is.”

  “Jake.” She tapped the drawing of the stage, the pit, the seating, all superimposed with the proposed catwalk and ancient-wonder-type archway and set. “What I need to know is, can you build this in six days?”

  He took a long look at the plans, his sea-green eyes scanning, taking it all in.

  He was a general contractor. Granted he worked in residential, building one spec home at a time because he liked a small crew and liked even more to get his own hands involved in the day-to-day work, but surely what she needed here would be a piece of cake compared to a whole house.

  It was the timeline that proposed the biggest problem. “So?” she pressed. “What do you think? Are you swamped? Do you have time for a job like this? Can you do a job like this?”

  His eyes cut to hers again, and some of the amusement was back. His shirt was still damp and stuck to his hard, sleek torso like a second skin. Most women would be drooling standing this close to such a masculine, virile man, but Mia kept her eyes on his and her libido firmly in check.

  “Yes to all of the above,” he said. “The question is, will I?”

  “Oh, Jake. Please? I’m so out of my league on this. The materials came late, the specs keep changing as we feel our way through our first live show and the contractor just quit on me. He said he didn’t bid enough and he’s willing to risk a lawsuit to get out.”

  “Hmm.”

  Hmm? What did that mean?

  “Sounds like you’re in quite a bind,” he said.

  “You have no idea. Just put me out of my misery, Jake. Say you’ll do it.”

  He looked over the plans again, though she had the oddest feeling it wasn’t the drawings that he saw. She held her breath and waited, and finally he turned his head, once again aiming those mesmerizing eyes of his her way. “Why?”

  Why? “Top-dollar payment,” she said. “We c
an even go time and materials instead of a fixed bid, which would save you a day of paperwork, right?”

  “Yes, but I meant why me?”

  “Because you’re all I’ve got,” she admitted. “I’ll owe you for coming through for me,” she promised rashly. “Big-time.”

  “Big-time, huh?” He tucked a stray strand of her hair behind her ear and let out a sound that might have been a laugh if his mouth hadn’t been twisted in a grimace. “What’s big-time mean?”

  “You name it,” she said, knowing that with him on her side, this whole thing would go off perfectly. “I’ll watch football with you for a month.”

  He arched a brow. She had him—she just knew it. “I’ll do your laundry, wash your car. Anything.”

  At that, his expression distinctly changed, deepened, intensified. And for the first time, she hesitated. “Jake?”

  “I’ll do it,” he said very quietly, watching her very keenly. “In fact, I’m all yours.

  CHAPTER TWO

  JAKE GOT TO THE THEATER by one-thirty that afternoon, ready to begin the task of completing Mia’s miracle. He’d rearranged his schedule—no easy task at the last minute—and had lined up a crew of three—half the size he needed, but Tom and his brothers were close friends of Jake’s, and they’d do the job right.

  Which meant Mia Tennario, owner of eyes the color of mocha and a smile destined to melt the coldest of hearts, not to mention a hot little bod that made his twitch, would owe Jake.

  Oh yeah, now that wasn’t a hardship at all, having her owe him one.

  Now all he had to do was actually get the set and catwalk built.

  Truth be told, he’d had the odds against him before, many times. For one, he’d grown up in the gutter and had scraped his way out of it, clawing and fighting all the way. It’d taken him most of his school years to realize that brawn was one thing, but that brains were actually far more effective.

  Following that epiphany, which had come to him while in the hospital after a beating he’d taken from refusing to join a gang in the mean streets of downtown L.A., life had become easier, even enjoyable. Even through the tough, lean years of building his own business, of counting every single penny until he had enough to scrape together dimes instead, then actual dollars, he’d still managed to get a thrill out of life at every turn.

  These days things were even better. His construction company had been operating in the black all year, he had a bunch of jobs lined up behind this one, and best of all…his neighbor and close friend—the hot, sexy, funny, sharp Mia Tennario—now owed him a favor he most definitely intended to collect.

  Between the sheets.

  Not that Mia knew it. She thought of him as a friend, and that friendship was good. It was real and based on a mutual fondness that had begun the day she’d moved in, when she’d marched up to his front door and calmly asked him to get rid of the family of mice living in her pantry. To her credit, she’d kept her cool until he’d handled the chore, and only then had fallen apart, admitting that the mice reminded her of some of the places she’d lived with her mother, most of which hadn’t been any better than where he’d lived. It had given them an unexpected bond.

  And he’d admired her composure, and had especially loved hugging her until she’d stopped shaking. In return, she’d brought him home expensive men’s lingerie from her company’s catalog. He’d taken the gift, never mentioning that he didn’t wear a robe. Or sleepwear.

  It’d actually taken him a while to realize she hadn’t been hitting on him then. That she simply, truly, only wanted friendship.

  And try as he might, he’d never been able to break that barrier. There was attraction. Hell, the air crackled between them, always had. But she resisted with maddening stubbornness, saying only that she wasn’t into sex.

  Who wasn’t into sex?

  Sometimes at night he’d hear her coming home late from the job she put everything into, hear her letting herself into her empty house, just as he sat in his, and something deep within him would yearn and burn. It was elusive, intangible, and yet he couldn’t seem to put it aside.

  It was that indefinable thing he felt for her that had him dropping everything to jump to her aid today, simply because she’d looked at him with those melting chocolate eyes and said please in that voice that he wanted to hear panting his name in ecstasy.

  There it was. His fantasy. Mia naked and beneath him. And over him. And beside him…

  He had to laugh at himself. Mia didn’t have any such fantasies about him, and though he thought maybe he understood why, it didn’t mean he couldn’t change her mind with the right sort of coaxing.

  In the middle of the impressive but empty stage of the outdoor Greek Theater, he stopped and looked out at the large venue sprawled in front of him. He’d been here once. Dragged here actually, by a date who’d had tickets to the symphony. It’d been several years ago, when he’d had to work tirelessly seven days a week to make ends meet. At the time, he’d just finished a long stretch of seventeen-hour days and had been beyond exhausted. Halfway through the first act he’d fallen deeply asleep and his date had been so insulted he’d never seen her again.

  Walking the length of the stage now, with no symphony in sight, thank God, the hot sun beat down on him, heating the afternoon into a hell-like status. Materials were stacked against the wings, and he could already see they were short on some things, while others wouldn’t work at all.

  No doubt Sizzling Nights needed help.

  He pulled out his measuring tape and eyed the center stage, from where the catwalk would jut out over the pit. The plans he’d studied last night played in his head as he checked measurements. He got up on an extension ladder to take a good look at the scaffolding across the top of the stage, checking what the height would be on the archway, and also what they would have to do in order to suspend lights and cameras from above.

  Truthfully, he didn’t see any fatal obstacles.

  “Jake?”

  He craned his neck and looked down. The height was dizzying. Or maybe that was the view of the woman standing in the pit looking up at him.

  “You’re already here,” she said with obvious relief.

  He tried to figure out what it was about her that grabbed him by the throat and held on. It might have been her short red skirt and sleeveless silky tank that hugged her small but lush body. Or the open-toed high-heeled sandals that showed off her bare, toned legs in a way that could stop traffic. Or how she looked right into his eyes, quietly direct, no evasion, no hidden meanings to anything.

  She probably had no idea how refreshing that was, that she said her mind and didn’t hold anything back, that there would be no mind games. What you saw was what you got with Mia, and for that alone, he’d have wanted her.

  Or maybe it was just the sheer wattage of her relieved smile. Yeah, that was it, the way she looked at him, as if maybe she hadn’t really expected him to do this, but here he was and he’d made her day while he was at it.

  Her hero.

  That worked for him. “I told you I would be.”

  “Yes, I know, but…” She lifted a narrow shoulder as if to say “stuff happens.” Not too trusting, his Mia, but he understood that, too.

  She didn’t trust many. He knew this was because she’d been raised by her wild-child mother, who’d paraded men through their lives like candy, leaving Mia unimpressed at the caliber of the male species in general.

  A damn shame for the male species.

  “So what do you think?” she asked, clasping her hands together in a telltale sign of nerves that he was sure she wasn’t even aware of.

  He tucked his notepad into his back pocket, his pen behind his ear, and climbed down the ladder. She took the stairs from the pit and met him on the stage.

  “What do I think?” he asked. “That red is most definitely your color.”

  She rolled her eyes. “What do you think of the project?”

  “It’s a great venue for what you’ve planned.” />
  She nodded, her long bangs nearly in her eyes, the rest of her dark hair layered and artfully framing her face. “I know.”

  “I need to revise the material list, though, you don’t have enough.”

  “Okay.”

  “It’s going to be expensive to get it all here quickly,” he warned.

  “I understand.”

  “I’m going to keep trying to get more men to work, but that’ll be expensive, too.”

  “Of course.” She still had her smile on her face but he knew her, and could see the worry in her eyes. He’d seen the expression before, several times. Once when she’d gotten stuck in the tree in the middle of her yard during a thunder and lightning storm trying to rescue a damn cat. Another when their neighbor across the street, Mr. Porter, had fallen down his steps. He remembered how Mia had sat with him until the paramedics had arrived, telling stories, stroking the older man’s hand, only allowing her fear to show when she’d seen Jake.

  Whenever she looked at him like that, he wanted to beat his chest like a Neanderthal and save the day, as he’d done when she’d blown out her knee last year. For a few weeks he’d cooked her dinner. And when she’d slipped in the kitchen one night, he’d carried her to bed. Setting her down on her mattress, he’d looked into her eyes and had thought, God, I want you.

  That’s when she’d given him the four little words he hadn’t been able to get out of his mind.

  “I’m not into sex.”

  For the thousandth time he wondered, how could someone not like sex? Especially someone as naturally sensual and earthy and real as Mia, someone who understood enough about human sexual nature to make a living selling sexy lingerie. He had no idea, but he’d wanted to change her opinion on the matter then, and still wanted to.

  “What else?” she asked, looking out at the empty theater.

  “On the schedule it calls for us to be done the day before the show to allow for rehearsals. That’s six days from now. Five if we don’t start until tomorrow.” He shook his head. “I can’t promise you that last full day.”