There was a pause that was long enough I almost thought she’d hung up on me.
“Hello?”
“I’m here,” she answered. “You could have told me that when I picked up instead of wasting my time, you know.”
I frowned. I took a seat in my overstuffed lounge chair, reclining in it as I held the phone to my ear. “I didn’t think talking with me was a waste of your time.”
“Look, it’s not that I don’t enjoy our chats—”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“—but I’m on the clock. Officially, this is a business call.”
“And unofficially?” I prompted.
She hesitated. “Unofficially, I called to set up a meeting with Mr. Parker, but I’m not necessarily upset that we had time to… talk.”
I imagined a blush on her cheeks. A rosy color would look good on her, natural amidst the deliberately styled hair and the big eyes and those pretty button-down dresses. “Good. Because I’d like to keep our conversation going, regardless of whether or not Mr. Parker decides to sign with S&W.”
I waited after that. It was true. I wanted to keep talking to her, but I didn’t want to have to sign anything to do that. I was a notorious flirt, it was true, but that didn’t mean I was willing to get into the legal crap to win someone over. If I’d been willing to do that, I’d have been married already.
Yeah, right. Fat chance of that ever happening.
After a moment, Courtney responded. “Well, I can’t promise anything. But S&W is willing to promise Mr. Parker quite a bit.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m not sure that S&W can offer anything to change his mind.” I waited a beat, then couldn’t help myself. “What can you offer?”
Instantly, I regretted asking that.
“I’m not going to offer that player anything,” she snapped at me. “I know how he is with women, and I want no part. This is purely a business transaction, and if he isn’t willing to consider the generous offer of Ms. McKenna, then I’m really not interested in furthering the conversation independently.”
“Whoa, whoa, easy honey,” I said, doing my best to soothe the feathers I’d just ruffled.
“Don’t call me honey.”
“Courtney,” I corrected myself. “I’m glad that you wouldn’t sacrifice your integrity just for a sale. I had that sense about you right away.”
“Are you trying to butter me up with flattery?” she accused.
I grinned. “Maybe. Is it working?”
She tried to resist, but I heard a laugh escape her lips. “Okay, maybe a little bit. But I still want to set up an appointment with Mr. Parker. Any chance of that?”
I held back a sigh. I realized instantly where I’d gone wrong here—she thought I was my agent, not me. Which wouldn’t be that big of an issue if she didn’t know what I looked like. But she did, so how the hell was I going to get a date with her if she recognized me? It was one thing if I had time to win her over, but I was quickly losing that time.
“I’ll pitch it to him,” I finally said, knowing already what “Parker’s” answer was going to be.
“Thank you,” she said sincerely. I could hear the smile in her voice, and it made me feel warm inside.
“You bet. Don’t hesitate to call, Courtney. I like our chats, too.”
She laughed again but promised she would when she got a chance. We hung up then, and I mulled over my predicament. How was I going to win her over when she thought Trent Parker was a total asshole?
“I’m going to have to do some serious work.”
Chapter Eleven
Marnie
Three days after the mind-blowing, spur-of-the-moment, complete and total brush with insanity that was sex with Callum Reid, I had lunch with Courtney. Although we were good friends, the kind that generally told each other everything, I hadn’t yet brought up my tryst with Mr. Reid. It wasn’t that I was ashamed—people had sex; we were both consenting adults—but I was a little embarrassed. It was Callum fucking Reid for Christ’s sake. Of all the guys to end my dry spell, he was not exactly the one I’d been banking on.
But, man, what a way to end a dry spell, I thought, picking apart my sandwich to eat each individual piece.
“You’re disgusting,” Courtney informed me matter-of-factly.
My eyes went wide, and I jerked my gaze up to look at her. I was so terrified that I was caught, so focused on how I’d gone all wanton lady with Reid the other night, that I didn’t realize she wasn’t talking about that at all. She was still looking down at her salad, mixing it all dutifully together, and I realized that she was talking about my eating habits.
“You’re gross,” I told her finally, a little breathless. “How can you just mix all those flavors together and expect them to be tasty? That’s just wrong.”
She lifted her shoulders. “Makes more sense. It all gets mixed up in my stomach. And at least I don’t have to touch anything with my fingers. Gross. Do you know how many things you’ve touched in the last twenty minutes that you don’t even realize?”
“No,” I said dryly. “If I knew that, I’d know what I’d touched, wouldn’t I?”
She flicked a piece of lettuce in my direction. “You know what I mean.”
I lifted a shoulder in a shrug, then popped a piece of my tomato into my mouth. I chewed thoughtfully. After I’d swallowed, I asked Courtney, “Any luck with Parker?”
She stabbed her salad aggressively, then popped the forkful into her mouth. With narrowed eyes, she chewed. When she’d swallowed her mouthful of rabbit food, she scowled. “No. I called Malcom—his agent—and according to him, Parker isn’t interested in signing with us. He swore he’d try to pitch it to him again, but I haven’t heard back from him in a couple of days. I’m starting to think it’s a lost cause.”
“Damn it,” I cursed. “It cannot be a lost cause. I need this too much.”
Courtney nodded. “I know. I’ll keep trying, but I have the sense that this doesn’t have anything to do with our offer. I think he just doesn’t want to sign with the company.”
My mind flashed to Reid. He’d been sexy; hotter than hell. He looked like one of those old-time movie stars, the kind who oozed sex appeal and were smooth as silk. They could do no wrong with their hands on a woman, and Reid had been the same. He’d touched me and suddenly my body went up in flames. Maybe it was just the dry spell being broken, but I didn’t think so. I had a hunch that he was simply good at sex.
And whether I wanted to admit it or not, I wanted to test my theory out. I wanted another piece of him. Maybe even a taste this time.
Jesus, Marnie, I scolded myself silently. Pull yourself together. He isn’t the only cock out there.
But he did have a damn fine one. And it felt incredible shoved all the way—
I shook my head. “It’s because of his connection to Reid,” I told Courtney, hoping to keep the glazed look of desire off my face. I didn’t know if I was successful, so I popped a piece of cheese from my sandwich into my mouth. I chewed the bite, then added, “Which means we’re going to have to use that against them.”
Courtney raised her eyebrows. She was munching on a bite of salad and took a minute to respond. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that we’re not going to win by trying to lure him over here with milk and cookies. We need something on him. We need to play him instead of letting him play us.”
“Okay, and just how do you plan to do that?”
I delicately sipped my iced tea, and putting it back down on my desk, I smiled sweetly at her. “It’s simple, my dear Court. We’re going to take that closeness with that bastard Reid—” That sexy, orgasm-inducing, sex god of a bastard. “—and make it a weakness. Instead of telling Parker that it’s loyal to stick with his friend, we’re going to tell him that it’s cowardly.”
Courtney’s brow furrowed, her red lips pouting. “What? How the hell are we supposed to do that?”
“Simple. We’re going to tell Parker that we understand
why he’d want to go with his friend—after all, it’s been a while since he’s been with a new publisher. This book is the first in a new series, and maybe it’s not as good as the others. Maybe he’s not as sure of himself. You can’t blame someone for wanting to err on the side of caution, right? Who wouldn’t want a guaranteed cheerleader? After all, what are friends for…?”
I smiled as I watched Courtney’s mouth drop open in surprise. It took her a moment before she collected herself. Slowly, she shook her head. “You are a diva. A total evil, genius diva. And I one hundred percent support you.”
“Thank you.” I popped a piece of mayo-covered bread into my mouth. “We’ll make him think that going with Reid is a cop-out. That he’s only doing it because he’s scared of an honest opinion of his book. He’ll be so turned off by the idea that he won’t be able to go through with it. He’ll turn around and come crawling back to us. It’ll be a win-win.”
Courtney 100 percent agreed, but there was a portion of the plan that I wasn’t sharing with her. A personal portion that I deemed just as important as the professional one.
Don’t let Callum in again.
A one-night tryst in the heat of the moment, as a means of overcoming a dry spell, as a single moment of weakness I could forgive. I could let that go because no one was perfect. And even though Callum Reid was not just an editor at Tarvish Press, but the owner thereof, which happened to be the one company that S&W Publishing was in direct competition with, I could accept a single mistake like that.
After all, he was incredibly sexy.
But I could not let it ever happen again. I told myself a thousand times that it didn’t matter if I did see him again. It wouldn’t be a repeat performance, but I had a hard time believing it. There was this niggling little sense in the back of my mind that I wanted him. Bad. And that was unforgivable.
I can’t let him in, I told myself silently.
It didn’t matter what my libido was screaming. I promised myself that this was a onetime deal, and the best way to keep that promise was to stay the hell away from Callum Reid.
Chapter Twelve
Callum
We stopped by a street vendor outside of the café where Trent was trying to drag me, because I was tired of this fucking health food bullshit and he was being a pain in the ass.
“Two dogs, relish, mustard, and a diet soda,” I told the vendor, an older man with a bushy mustache that reminded me of that old video game with the plumbers. I paused, then glanced over my shoulder at Trent, who was eyeing the cart with a mixture of disgust and envy. I grinned and added, “Plus whatever this guy’s having.”
Trent glanced up at me, eyes wide and eyebrows raised. He looked like a damn kid with his hands caught in the cookie jar. It was hilarious.
“Oh, no, I’m good,” he tried to argue, holding his hands up to indicate he wanted no part of the heart attack in a tube that I was trying to sell him.
I snorted. “Please. You were all but eye-fucking those dogs. Just get one and stop pretending like you’re one of those health food hipsters who believes in everything from PETA to free-range.”
He scowled at me. “Free-range is a good thing. It’s better for the animals, which is better for the meat. Stress makes them taste bad.”
Rolling my eyes at him, I accepted my two hot dogs from the vendor. “Just order the damn food. You’re fucking killing me with this bullshit.”
“Say what you want, but if it weren’t for me and my health food bullshit, you’d weigh three hundred pounds and probably have a cardiologist on call.”
I ignored him as I bit into the first hot dog. Heaven, I thought. Ain’t nothing like a dirty water hot dog from an honest-to-God vendor. It’s not New York, but damn if it isn’t close. I couldn’t help but notice that despite all of Trent’s arguing, he was eagerly ordering three hot dogs—one to go, he claimed—all with mustard, relish, and two with sauerkraut.
When I raised an eyebrow at him, he only shrugged. “What? A man’s gotta eat.”
When I’d gotten my bite down, I commented, “Three? A bit hungry for a health food hipster.”
“I am not a health food hipster,” he snapped, for a second seeming legitimately upset. It passed quickly. “And the third one’s for Sara. She’ll be pissed if she figures out that I got a dirty water hot dog and didn’t get her one. And you know she’ll know.”
I laughed loudly at him, shaking my head a little. “Yeah, well, that’s what happens when you let a woman run your entire life like that.”
He choked down half of his first hot dog in a single bite, chewing obnoxiously. He spoke around the food in his mouth, telling me, “You just wait. You think you got your shit figured out, but one day it’s gonna hit you. Bam, like a freight train. And there won’t be any stopping it.”
“Stopping what?”
“Her. Whoever she is, she’ll sweep you into her embrace and that’ll be it. You’ll be toast. Then you’ll be getting extra hot dogs for her and sending her cutesy little text messages and wondering how in the hell you ever spent your life without her.”
I raised a single eyebrow at him in skepticism. “Oh? I’m going to get a secretary?”
Technically, I had a secretary already, but she didn’t really run my life. Mostly, she served a perfunctory position that ensured I didn’t overbook myself, and when I did, she straightened it out. On most days, she sat around doing her nails and talking to her friends on the phone. I didn’t mind paying her for it, because she did her job when I required it of her, but to say she ran my life was a joke. She didn’t have any more control of my life than I had over tornados.
He swallowed the rest of his first hot dog, then quickly started in on his second. “No. You’re gonna get a girl, and then she’s gonna lead you around by your dick. Worse, you’re gonna like it.”
My mind flashed involuntarily to the sexy woman I’d had just the other night, the way she’d come undone beneath me and around me. She’d been needy and wanton, and damn it all if she hadn’t been the sexiest woman alive at that moment.
Marnie McKenna.
I forced my gutter-swimming thoughts back to the conversation and forced myself to bark out a laugh at the suggestion that a woman might slip into my life like that. “I highly doubt it. You know my policy on that. I don’t have the time or the patience to deal with a woman—and she likely doesn’t have the patience for me. Why fuck with it? There are plenty of gorgeous women out there who are happy to ride me and leave me.”
Trent finished his second hot dog, and for a brief moment I wondered how in the hell he’d managed to devour two in the same space of time where I’d gone through only half. But that was Trent, so I didn’t linger on it.
“Besides, it’s not like you’re sleeping with Sara,” I pointed out. “And you definitely don’t have a long-term girl in your life.”
He shrugged, swallowing his last bite. He eyed the third one in his hand, like maybe he was considering downing that one, too, but seemed to think better of it. We both knew that Sara could be a beast when she wanted to be, and no one wanted to mess with that.
“My romantic life doesn’t really have anything to do with yours, you know,” he told me casually, grabbing my diet soda and taking a swallow. He made a face. “Jesus. Really? The only healthy thing you’ll do is a fucking diet soda? And you say the stuff I eat tastes terrible.”
“The stuff you eat does taste terrible,” I informed him, swiping my soda back. “And this isn’t healthy. It’s worse for you than the regular stuff.”
He waved me off. “I’m just saying that I don’t need that stability. I’m a damn writer. I’m riding high on my latest best seller this month, next month I’m starving on a street corner begging for change after the next flop.” He shrugged like it was no big deal. “That’s the way it goes. But you’re a routine kind of man. You need a woman who is routinely with you in the same way.”
I was about to argue with him over how ridiculous that was and how he should stick to wr
iting fiction instead of waxing romantic philosophy when his phone began to ring. He dug it out of his pocket, holding up a single finger to indicate that I should stop talking for a minute while he took the call. I turned the other way, looking out toward Mount Rainier, to give him a little bit of privacy.
His voice was low as he spoke into the receiver, but I caught some of it. “Yeah… talked about it… set it up… Sara… restaurant… contract revision…”
I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, but I couldn’t help picking up and piecing together what he was talking about. It sure as hell sounded like business to me—which meant publishing. And since I was trying to muscle myself in between him and S&W Publishing, I was suddenly very interested in just what the hell that conversation was all about.
When he ended the call and shoved his phone back into his pocket, I rounded on him. “What was that all about?”
He lifted his shoulder. “Just business.”
I narrowed my eyes suspiciously at him. “Business. What kind of business?”
“Don’t worry about it,” he insisted, but I wasn’t in the mood for whatever games he was playing.
“That was Marnie, wasn’t it?”
The accusation seemed to startle him, at least for a second before he could replace his surprise with an easygoing grin.
“Marnie, eh? Are you on a first-name basis with your great rival’s best editor? Or did I miss something?”
I could have kicked myself in the teeth for saying that. Jesus, why not just come out and say that I fucked her brains out the previous night?
For half a second, I seriously considered telling him just that. Then I thought better of it. He’d never let me live that down, and I had the feeling it would suddenly make my job of convincing him to publish with Tarvish a hell of a lot harder. And I just wasn’t interested in extra work.
So I kept my mouth shut about the fucking awesome sex and said, “Don’t change the subject. That was her, wasn’t it?”
“Maybe. She’s pretty sexy, don’t you think? Legs that run the length of the highway, right?”
The Art of Love Page 19
