The Art of Love

by Kayla C. Oliver

  “If you’re interested in a job,” he told me, gesturing toward the S&W Publishing table, “I could get you a meeting with my publishing house. Hell, I could even get you an interview with the owner himself.”

  He smirked, smug and self-important, and it made me want to slap it right off him. Clearly the guy had no idea that I already worked for a publishing house—the one that I was standing in front of as a matter of fact.

  “How generous of you,” I said sweetly. “But I’m not sure I’m qualified.”

  His smile grew and he took a step closer to me. “Honey, I’m sure you’re qualified.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. Yeah, maybe to be your late-night plaything, I thought, then instantly regretted it because all of a sudden my mind was filled with R-rated images that involved our naked bodies getting kinky in the bedroom.

  Ignoring that familiar heat between my legs, I batted my eyelashes at him and said, “I wouldn’t want to waste anyone’s time.”

  “You wouldn’t,” he said. His eyes darted deliberately down to my shirt and what little cleavage was showing.

  I had some weight on my chest, so I was more aware of how shirts fit me and how many undone buttons I could get away with before things got raunchy.

  “In fact, I think you’d make everyone’s time a little more pleasurable.” He moved closer still until one more inch would put our chests pressing together. “You’ve certainly made my day better.”

  A thrill ran through my body. Yes, he was a self-assured editor who was trying to use the promise of a meeting with his boss as a means of getting into my panties. But he was also sexy, and I’d hit a hell of a dry spell in the sex department. These days, it was me and a dirty book coupled with a late-night fingering session to fill those very special needs. So it really wasn’t my fault that I was thinking of jumping his bones and seeing if that one between his legs was hard, ready, and willing.

  “Happy to help,” I told him simply, my voice a little breathier than I’d intended.

  “Here.”

  He offered a card, holding it up between us. I didn’t even glance at it, because I already knew I wasn’t going to do anything with it. I wouldn’t be lured into his bed with bribes and offers to meet his boss. I had standards.

  Even if my body didn’t in that moment.

  “What’s that?” I asked innocently.

  His grin was smaller now, hungrier and more predatory. It was also sexy as hell and did lovely things to that hotspot between my thighs. “It’s my card. You’d probably have to start as a secretary,” he murmured, his voice low and husky. “But I’ll show you the ropes.”

  My mind pictured him wrapping lengths of silky braided rope around my wrists, holding them behind my back as I arched my bare breasts forward. I imagined him tightening the cord, just enough to pinch a little, then lean forward to slide his teeth on the lobe of my ear. I could all but hear the way I’d beg him to do more, to get to it, to be as dirty and kinky as he wanted.

  The fantasy was visceral and had me wet instantly. I swallowed thickly.

  “There might be some late nights,” he promised, his eyes flashing, “but you’ll enjoy them.”

  I shuddered. I’m sure I would. Reaching up between us, I took the card from him. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were trying to seduce me.”

  His smile turned downright wicked. “Maybe. You don’t seem to mind too much,” he pointed out.

  “Maybe I don’t,” I answered. “But I’m not sure I want to sleep my way into the company.”

  He shrugged. “Don’t worry. It wouldn’t be like that. You seem very capable.”

  Yeah, I’m sure I fucking do. Asshole already thinks I’m a damn secretary. But to him I said, “Then maybe I’ll give you a call.”

  “I’d like that.”

  He might have tried to kiss me then, or take me up to the room that the company had likely booked for him, but I wasn’t interested in playing this game. Well, not really. Yes, I was starved for sex and my body felt ready willing and able, but that didn’t mean I was interested in giving it up to some stranger just because he promised me a pointless job that I didn’t need.

  But he didn’t get the chance to insult my integrity because his phone went off then. He made a frustrated sound in his throat but dug into his trouser pocket to fish out his phone just the same. He scanned it briefly, then glanced up at me again. “Sorry about that. I have to take this. But please, call me.”

  I told him I’d think about it, then waved with fluttery fingers as he walked off, answering his phone as he did so.

  About a second after he left, Courtney came up beside me. She was manning the booth while I was supposed to be chatting people up, but she’d disappeared briefly for a potty break.

  “Who the hell was that sexy slice of manly goodness?”

  Courtney was 90 percent serious and 10 percent horny. Lucky me, I got the 10 percent in that moment.

  “Some asshole editor.”

  “You’re an editor,” she reminded me bluntly.

  “Yes, but I’m not an asshole.” When she didn’t say anything in response to that, I shot her a glare. “You’re an asshole.”

  She laughed. “Are you going to bang him?”

  “You didn’t just say that,” I groaned.

  She shrugged. “What? Banged is a thing. It’s sexual intercourse, but no one thinks ‘are you going to have intercourse with him’ is sexy.”

  “I’m not going to sleep with him.”

  “I’m just saying, you’ve had a dry spell—”

  “I have not!” I argued, knowing even as I did it was a lie. “I go on dates.”

  “That Single Mingle website does not count. Do you remember that balding, dead-cat-on-his-head-for-a-toupee-wearing accountant you got last time? I mean, please. My grandmother gets more action than you do.”

  “Your grandmother’s dead,” I pointed out carefully.

  “Exactly.”

  I frowned. Courtney was a damn pain in my ass, and if she weren’t a fucking excellent secretary in addition to being my best friend, I’d have fired her ass and told her to stop being so damn nosy. “You’re lucky I don’t have time to hire a new secretary,” I muttered.

  “Seriously. Are you going to sleep with the guy or not?” she asked, taking her seat behind the desk and straightening our business cards again.

  I considered her words—tried and failed not to be offended by them—then said, “It wouldn’t be terrible to call him, right?”

  She nodded. “Definitely nothing wrong with that.”

  After a moment, I finally caved and looked at the card. I was seriously considering calling him when I noticed the name on the card. “Oh, hell no,” I said instantly.

  Courtney raised her eyebrows from the other side of the desk. “What?”

  I flipped the card over and held it out so that she could read the embossed lettering. “Tarvish fucking Press.”

  “Jesus, Marnie! Leave it to you to sleep with the damn enemy!”

  But I wasn’t sleeping with him, nor would I ever do so. If he worked for Tarvish Press, then I wanted nothing to do with the bastard. Tarvish had stolen twelve of our clients in the last six years, largely thanks to the fact that the asshole billionaire who owned the place was independently wealthy and could promise all kinds of things to the clients that he could fulfill even if the company wasn’t set up for it. He and Dorian had had a rivalry that went back years, possibly from their college days, and my loyalty to Dorian was enough on its own to keep me from so much as dialing a Tarvish Press number.

  Gripping the card between my fingers, I tore it up into tiny squares, then dumped them into the trash can.

  Courtney sighed. “Too bad. He was sexy.”

  “Sexy and working for the devil.”

  She shrugged. “We all sell our souls to the company store,” she reminded me.

  “Yeah, well, at least our devil is sexy.”

  She agreed easily. We went back to hustli
ng for S&W Publishing, and I made a point of forgetting all about that sexy, devil-worshipping editor from earlier.

  Fuck that. I didn’t need a man in my life, dry spell or not. My career came first, and that was the way I liked it.

  Chapter Four

  Trent

  I was seriously looking over my manuscript, with my legs propped up on my writing desk and my reading glasses sliding down my nose toward the tip. I leaned back heavily in my chair, with a cup of coffee cooling near the window and a typewriter sitting off to the side. It had been years since I’d even used it, but it was a nice little reminder of how much more difficult writing used to be. I wrote everything on my laptop—triple backed up on different hard drives and uploaded to iCloud just to make sure I didn’t lose a fucking thing—but every once in a while, I dicked around with the old girl.

  Just a friendly reminder that writing is difficult and should be treated with respect, I thought. And that technology is fucking awesome.

  I was in the editing stages of my latest novel. Callum had been nosing me about it for months, asking if I’d decided who to sign with yet, but I was leading him on. I hadn’t, as it was, and since the contract was up with my last publisher, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go back. They’d done well for me on a number of projects, but they were getting greedy—and they expected my business like they were entitled to it. I didn’t like that.

  So I was still keeping my options open, and I acknowledged that there was a good chance I’d end up signing with Tarvish. I didn’t like mixing business with pleasure, but I was confident that Callum could keep things separate.

  While I was working, my phone went off. It was the basic ring tone, telling me I didn’t know the caller.

  I considered letting it go to voice mail, but I was annoyed by the suggested edits for the manuscript. I had Sara look it over and give me feedback before I submitted it to a publishing house—whenever I’d decided on one—and generally, she was spot-on. Officially, she was a friend who I paid generously to help me out. Unofficially, she was my secretary, my editor, and on occasion, my therapist and romantic-date counselor. We were purely platonic, one of the few beautiful women in my life who I’d not been interested in sleeping with, and that made her special.

  But not special enough that she didn’t get a day off, which was why I was fielding my own calls and griping about the notes she’d made on my manuscript.

  “I like the damn mage,” I grumbled, tossing the manuscript aside and going for my phone. I glanced at the screen. It was a number here in Seattle, but beyond that, I didn’t recognize it.

  After a moment, I answered. “Hello?”

  “Hello, I’m trying to get ahold of Mr. Trent Parker’s agent,” came a serious but sexy woman’s voice over the phone. Her timbre was deeper than most women’s and lacked a lot of that high-pitched charm that a lot of women tried to use to get their way. Instantly, I appreciated the dark chocolate tone that came through the receiver.

  “Agent?” I asked, a little surprised. I hadn’t had an agent since my first novel, and I’d been burned bad enough that I wasn’t interested in changing that. Sara handled a lot of that for me, too, but… But she’s not here right now. A grin slid across my features before I could help myself. “This is him,” I told the woman. I paused, scrambling to come up with a name to use. “Uh, Malcom. Malcom…” I searched the books on my shelves to come up with a plausible last name. When I landed on Resner, I blurted it out before I could reconsider. “Resner.”

  There was a pause, and I wondered if I’d just screwed myself with my sloppy naming practice right there. You’d think I’d be better at this, given my profession.

  But then she said, “Mr. Resner, this is Courtney Hughes. I’m calling on behalf of S&W Publishing. I assume you’ve heard of us?”

  “Malcom,” I told her, ignoring her question.

  “I’m sorry?”

  A grin spread across my face. “Please, call me Malcom.”

  There was another pause then. “As I was saying, Mr. Resner, I work for—”

  “Nuh-uh,” I said, deliberately being a pain in the butt. “I only talk business with people who are willing to use my first name.” Or middle name as the case may be.

  I waited a beat, then the woman sighed. “Fine. Malcom. I work for S&W Publishing, and I’m calling from the office of Marnie McKenna. She’s one of the best editors in the business, and she’d be very interested in meeting with Mr. Parker to discuss his latest novel.”

  All my playing with the poor woman aside, there was honest business to be discussed here and I had to acknowledge that. “I see. And why should Mr. Parker consider S&W?”

  In all honesty, I was 98 percent positive that I couldn’t sign with S&W. I could go just about anywhere and not get a lot of flak for it, but S&W was Tarvish’s main competitor. If I signed with them, Callum would fucking lose his shit. I couldn’t do that to a friend.

  But I was all about equal opportunity. I wouldn’t completely write someone off without at least giving them a chance.

  Plus, this Courtney person had a fucking sexy voice.

  “We’re a highly rated publishing house,” she informed me, that low voice firm and serious. “We have services that range from cover design to marketing to—”

  “Which any publishing house worth their salt will have,” I interrupted her rudely.

  “In that case, maybe Mr. Parker should go indie,” she snapped. “Hire a bunch of no-names and give them a chance—they all offer the same services. See if he can’t make them some gold at the cost of his latest novel’s success, what do you think?”

  Before I got the chance to answer, she pushed forward.

  “Or he can go with the best. High-quality design and printing. An impressive, unprecedented e-book deal, not to mention editing from one of the best in the business today and a firm that has made a point of doing all it can for the sake of their clients. We don’t make money until you do. That’s the policy here, and if you think Mr. Parker can do a halfpence better anywhere else, then I invite you to risk it. Just keep in mind that he wasn’t happy enough with the last ‘any publisher worth their salt will have those services’ publishing house to renew a contract with them.”

  I was grinning like an idiot with my eyebrows high on my forehead when she was finally done. I was impressed, I could admit it. She was a ballbusting, broke-no-shit kinda woman, and I found that insanely sexy.

  All of a sudden, I wanted to know what she looked like. What she was wearing. How she liked to touch herself in the middle of the night when no one was around.

  And yes, I was a horny bastard and I didn’t care. Getting told off by a woman was fucking sexy.

  When I got myself under control again, I cleared my throat and said, “You bring up some interesting points.”

  “Will you consider a meeting with my boss?” she asked instantly.

  “Well, that depends,” I said, pretending to be thoughtful.

  She waited a beat, then, “On what?”

  “Can I call you Courtney?”

  She hesitated. I could picture her in my mind—well, my fantasy version of her which was big-busted with wide hips and pouty lips—rolling her eyes, annoyed with me already. But she said, “I suppose.”

  I was grinning again. “All right, then. I’ll make you a deal. I’ll make sure that I—” I broke off, forgetting that I was Parker’s agent, not Parker. “I mean, that Mr. Parker will meet with your boss—what was her name again?”

  “Marnie McKenna.”

  “Right. Ms. McKenna. He’ll meet with her—under one condition.”

  “Which is?” she asked impatiently.

  My smile was downright wicked and I knew it. “Which is that you will owe me a favor.”

  She hesitated. “A favor? What favor?”

  I shrugged, which of course she couldn’t see. “A favor to be decided at my discretion at a later date. Do we have a deal?”

  There was a long, extended pause. It was long enough
that I checked my phone to make sure that the call hadn’t been dropped, but she was still there on the other end. I wondered if she was sitting at her desk, cursing her unfortunate stars, or if she was imagining some of the naughty favors I might ask her.

  I hoped the latter.

  Finally, she spoke again. “Fine. Deal. Have your client stop by our office tomorrow afternoon. Tell him not to be late.”

  She hung up before I could say anything else.

  Tomorrow at the office, eh? Guess I’ll see if that secretary is half as sexy as her voice is.

  My hopes were up. I wanted to know what Courtney looked like on the other end of the phone.

  Chapter Five

  Marnie

  I adjusted the papers on my desk again, the third time in ten goddamned minutes.

  Proving that Courtney was a damn goddess, she’d gotten me a meeting with Trent Parker that afternoon. It was in thirty minutes, and we’d been getting ready for him since Courtney confirmed the timing with him. She’d been doing research on the man—she probably knew what type of drink he liked to order at the bar by now—and I’d been getting a contract ready. I was doubtful that I’d be lucky enough to get him to sign this first one. He was an experienced author. He’d been signed with three other publishing houses now, the first two little indies that had given him a leg up into the publishing world, and the last one a big name that had propelled him into stardom.

  And apparently fucked it all up by treating him poorly, I thought.

  Still, I wanted to have an offer ready for him right then and there. That way we had somewhere to go. Something to talk about. It wasn’t hypothetical, or “we’ll see what we can do.” Instead, it was all about fine-tuning the details.

  There was a knock at my door and I looked up to see Courtney standing there. She was dressed in one of those cute little vintage dresses with the wide belt. She didn’t have the petticoats today, but her hair was curled perfectly in victory rolls.

  “You look like you have cat ears,” I told her bluntly.

  She shrugged. “As long as it doesn’t look like a cat is sleeping there, I’m good.”