Buch lesen: «Fired by Her Fling»

ONE

Tallulah Lazenby drained the last drop of her large glass of Sauvignon Blanc and clung onto the comforting buzz of the alcohol, until the feeling dissipated and her nerves returned.

She really shouldn’t be drinking the night before her grievance meeting with the owner of the radio station where she worked as a DJ—a job that had, until recently, made her rise with excitement every morning—but she needed something to dull the growing panic that tomorrow could be her last day of work there.

‘Lula, snap out of it. It’s going to be okay,’ her friend Emily muttered into her ear, clicking her fingers in front of her face and dragging her out of her agitated funk and into the here and now of the dimly lit Covent Garden pub, where they were celebrating a friend’s birthday.

Lula gave her a tight-lipped smile. ‘Easy for you to say; you didn’t make the catastrophic mistake of sleeping with your Station Manager and scuppering your chances at career advancement when you refused to be his regular sex-puppet.’

Emily tried to keep a straight face, but failed spectacularly. ‘I have to say, Lu, it wasn’t one of your best moves.’

She shot her friend a no kidding grimace.

‘Lord knows what possessed you to sleep with him,’ Emily added.

Lula nodded solemnly into her empty glass.

Jeremy—or Jez as he preferred to be called—was an overconfident, self-absorbed philanderer and the exact opposite of what she was looking for in a long-term partner.

‘It was after a very long, very dry patch and he caught me at a moment of weakness,’ she muttered, her face hot with the ignominy of how it had cast a dark shadow over their working relationship when she’d told him in no uncertain terms that there wasn’t going to be a repeat performance.

Jez was not the type of man you said no to.

And she’d paid the price for it.

After a few weeks of stilted and antagonistic interaction, he’d blithely informed her that he would no longer be moving her onto the Breakfast Show—even though he’d been promising to for months. And, just to rub salt in the wound, he was giving her Drivetime Show to Darla—one of the other female DJs at the station—who apparently had no qualms about regularly bumping uglies with him.

So now she was just supposed to float around the station, covering for other presenters when they needed time off from their shows.

A major step backwards on her career path.

‘At least the owner’s taking your complaint seriously,’ Emily said, sprawling back in her chair and licking a bit of lemon off the rim of her glass of vodka and tonic.

Lula put her head in her hands and stared down at the table. ‘I didn’t tell you the worst bit. I found out today that Jez’s daddy is best buddies with the owner. There’s no way he’ll take my side on this. Not when the Old Boy Network is in play.’ She rubbed her eyes and groaned, ‘Nepotism sucks.’

The corner of her friend’s mouth twitched up into a consoling smile. ‘It’ll be okay. You’re the best DJ that station has; they’re not about to let you walk—have some faith in yourself.’

‘Hmph.’

Emily leaned forward and slapped an encouraging hand onto Lula’s leg. ‘You know what you need to do right now? Give yourself a confidence boost so you can stride in there tomorrow with your head held high.’

Lula flashed her friend a pained look. ‘How am I meant to do that, exactly?’

‘You could start by engaging in some power-flirting with a crazy-hot sex god.’ Emily gave one of the trademark saucy winks that had earned her legions of fans on her popular Treasure Trail TV show.

Lula spluttered in mirth. ‘Do they even exist? ’Coz I’ve never met one.’

Emily crossed her arms and shook her head sadly. ‘You know, if you took some time out from your tireless quest to find this mythical “perfect man” and just indulged in a bit of fun—with someone other than your boss, that is—perhaps you’d get your mojo back?’ She cocked a chastising eyebrow, before turning away to answer a question one of the other birthday guests called across to her.

Lula snorted at the back of her friend’s head, but accepted that Emily had a point. She probably should give herself a break and stop worrying about finding The One, but it had been one disappointing relationship after another recently and she was beginning to panic that she was destined to be single for ever.

Hence the foolish move of sleeping with her boss.

She’d just celebrated her thirty-first birthday—which both of her parents had managed to forget about this year—and Jez had been so attentive, so seemingly sympathetic, that she’d found herself succumbing to his determined advances.

And look what had happened.

She was never making that mistake again. Sleeping with colleagues was a fool’s game. It only ever ended in tears and awkwardness. And possibly unemployment.

If only she didn’t find it so nerve-racking talking to men she found attractive. It was much easier to connect with people when she was behind her microphone. If a conversation was going badly on-air and she was floundering, she could cut them off by playing a song or going to an ad break—snatching some time to pull herself together—and nobody was any the wiser. She’d also got into the habit of pre-recording interviews so she could edit them later and pushing her listeners to send a text or tweet to the show, instead of calling in.

Recently it had seemed as though her show on Flash FM was the only place she had a modicum of control. Out in the real world her deep-seated shyness, stemming from way back in her youth, often made her blurt out stupid things or induced one of her humiliating brain freezes and her mortification would show clearly on her face for all to see.

‘Rabbit caught in headlights’ was not a good look on her.

She glanced around the bar, her gaze snagging on a cosy-looking couple to her right. She experienced a sting of jealousy as they giggled at some private joke together.

Was it really too much to ask to meet someone who was genuinely interested in making her the centre of their universe, getting married some day and starting a family? Something she’d been dreaming about since her own dysfunctional family had come apart at the seams.

Her chest gave an uncomfortable lurch. No. This was not the time to start dwelling on her less than perfect childhood.

‘Hey, Lu, speaking of sex gods, check out the guy sitting behind us,’ Emily murmured into Lula’s ear, her hot, boozy breath tickling the hairs on her neck.

Intrigued, Lula swivelled round to get an eyeful of the guy Emily was talking about. She could only make out his broad back and a hint of his profile because he was turned away from her, but she could see exactly what had caught her friend’s interest.

The textbook triangular shape of his torso stretched his expensive-looking shirt to perfection, giving a tantalising suggestion of the ripped body concealed underneath.

Lula would bet her life he could be found sweating away in the gym every morning before setting off for some high-powered job. Something about his self-possessed posture made her think he was somebody big somewhere. You just got a feeling from people like him.

Power and control.

The skin on the back of his neck between the crisp collar of his shirt and the clean, razored cut of his dark, short back and sides haircut was tanned a warm honey colour, as if he’d just got back from a holiday in the sun. Lula could picture him, stretched out on the golden sand in just a tiny pair of swimmers, his body shimmering with perspiration in the intense midday sun.

Ooh.

The buzz from the glass of wine returned, only this time it washed a deep satisfying heat through a much more intimate part of her body.

Good grief, if just a flash of his skin could do that to her, imagine what would happen if she got to speak to him face to face.

Spontaneous combustion, probably.

A crazy idea struck her that made her heart thump heavily against her chest. Perhaps she should practice the façade of kick-ass poise and self-assurance that she was going to need at tomorrow’s meeting on him. She could buy him a drink, then plonk herself down at his table as if she chatted up dishy men every day. She just needed to draw on the confidence she summoned to perform on the radio and she could become the outgoing woman everyone expected her to be in real life.

At work she got past any awkwardness at meeting new people by researching her subjects thoroughly and planning her questions, but she didn’t have the time or tools for that right now. This would have to be a study in improvisation.

She would fake it till she made it with this guy.

Even the suggestion of ‘making it’ with him sent another zingy little frisson deep into her pelvis.

Just flirting, Lula—that’s all that’s gonna happen here.

Okay. Time to get her game face on.

If she could succeed at capturing the interest of a handsome man in a bar tonight, she could damn well persuade the station owner to give her a fair hearing tomorrow.

Tonight, audience, I’m going to be Tallulah Lazenby—top rated DJ at Flash FM, social mover and shaker and loquacious livewire.

She sat up straighter in her seat.

Yes. Positivity. That’s the ticket.

Powered by that rousing resolve, she grabbed her bag and got up, centring herself on her six-inch heels, and primed herself to shimmy on past the sex god and over to the bar.

* * *

Tristan Bamfield winced and placed his empty beer bottle onto the sticky pub table with a firm clunk as the group of women sitting behind him let out another squall of high-pitched laughter.

Usually he wouldn’t stray from the hotel bar when he was working away from home, but he’d found himself needing to escape from the over-zealous attentions of a primped-to-within-an-inch-of-her-life Sloaney who’d zeroed in on him, and this dimly lit traditional London pub, with its purple and black painted walls and trendily scuffed up leather sofas and painted tables, had seemed like the perfect refuge.

Until this vociferous band of banshees had followed him in shortly afterwards, that was.

All he’d wanted was one quiet drink before going back to the cold solitude of his hotel room but it seemed that peace was the last thing he was likely to get in here.

Bah humbug.

He knew he was being uncharitable—he wasn’t usually averse to a bit of lively banter—but he’d been plagued by a vague sense of irritation ever since his father had convinced him—by way of passive aggressive joshing—to come to London and sort out some seedy-sounding mess at his vanity project of a radio station while he swanned around the Middle East on a honeymoon with his fifth wife.

What a total farce.

Tristan hadn’t even bothered going to the wedding, knowing full well this marriage wasn’t likely to last long either. He’d made sure to buy them the most expensive present on their wedding list, though—his way of acknowledging the union and mitigating any potential hard feelings about his no-show. He didn’t dislike his new stepmother—he’d barely even met her—but he couldn’t bring himself to summon up the fake smiles and phoney enthusiasm required at these events any more.

He twisted the empty bottle between his hands and turned his thoughts to the situation at the radio station instead, not wanting to waste any more time dwelling on his father’s irrepressible addiction to nuptials.

It seemed that one of the DJs, Tallulah something-or-other, claimed the Station Manager had reneged on a promise to promote her to Breakfast Show presenter and had also taken her off her current show when she refused to sleep with him. The manager, on the other hand, swore blind she was lying and angry with him after he’d disciplined her for turning up to work drunk.

The whole thing had a sickeningly sordid air about it.

Added into the mix was the fact that Jeremy, the Station Manager, was the son of a good friend of the family and his father wanted the DJ fired to keep relations cordial between them.

Tristan knew from past experience of working with his old man at the family business that he was often too quick to take the more convenient way out of a problem instead of taking time to look at the whole picture.

He needed to be careful here.

Sighing, he rubbed a hand over his face, trying to relieve his building frustration.

He really didn’t need this right now.

After taking the last couple of months to get his head together following a humiliating end to a four-year relationship, he just wanted to be left alone to settle back into what was left of his life in Edinburgh.

Fat chance of that.

One of the women from the table behind him sidled past, distracting him from his thoughts as her fresh floral scent hit his nose. He watched as she click-clicked away on ludicrously high heels, her shapely rear swaying provocatively from side to side as she headed towards the bar.

Despite his resolution to steer clear of women until he’d got his head straight again, he couldn’t help but be captivated by her petite, curvy figure. It made him think of an Amazonian woman in miniature—all delicious voluptuousness and sexual potency.

He watched idly as she waited for the barman to notice her, appearing to sink against the high, solid wood counter the longer she was ignored, until her previously upright posture had dipped down into a full-on slouch.

There was a particular kind of dejection to her body language that made him sit up and take notice.

It reminded him of the time right after Marcy told him she was throwing away what he now thought of as their joke of a relationship, and he’d felt as though someone had stripped the blood, guts and air out of him.

He’d bought her everything she’d ever wanted—designer clothes, a sports car, ludicrously expensive jewellery—but it still hadn’t been enough for her.

She’d taken it all with her when she’d left him, of course.

The heat of his humiliation washed through him for the thousandth time since she’d dropped the bombshell, leaving a jittery sense of unease. He’d known for a while that things hadn’t exactly been perfect between them, but he couldn’t forgive all the lying and sneaking around behind his back that she’d done.

The two of them must have thought he was a real chump.

As if the dark power of his thoughts had somehow penetrated through to her own, the woman at the bar seemed to pull herself together and she straightened her posture, giving a little jump in her heels as if to remind herself to stand tall—which, judging by her diminutive height, he guessed was something she’d probably done ever since she’d stopped growing.

He really should get back to the hotel, and get stuck into the mound of paperwork that waited for him there, but something kept his gaze fixed to the woman’s skinny-jeans-clad rear view.

She had very long light brown hair pulled back into a loose ponytail at the nape of her neck, which swung like a pendulum as she jiggled on the spot. He bet she had a cute little nose and huge, sensual eyes too, which would draw him into a world of what the hell the moment he looked into them.

Had he guessed right?

The thought of leaving now without at least catching a glimpse of what she actually looked like was curiously unthinkable. Suddenly, he really needed to know for sure, to reassure himself that he wasn’t totally ignorant when it came to reading women, as Marcy had so unsubtly suggested.

Getting up from his chair, he strode over to where she stood at the bar. Maybe he’d have one more drink before he went back to the hotel. After all, he was in for a pretty dull night on his own, so he might as well get his kicks where he could.

Rubbing a hand over his forehead, he sighed to himself. He must be feeling jaded if he was resorting to playing guess my face in a place like this.

Apparently she heard his sigh because she glanced round to look at him, surprise flaring in her deep-set cornflower-blue eyes.

It was as if he’d caught her out. Perhaps she’d been eyeing him up earlier too?

The thought warmed him.

As she opened her mouth to draw breath, something must have caught in her throat because she paused for a moment, her eyes widening in panic, before letting out a forcible choking cough. Tearing her distressed gaze from his, she clamped her hand around her mouth in mortification.

She was prettier than he’d imagined—in an endearing girl-next-door way that made him want to lean over and rub her back to stop the coughing fit. To take care of her.

That was what he did best, after all—took care of people. Until they turned around and stabbed him in the back, that was.

He shook the negative thought off and grinned at her, attempting to project concern with his expression.

She gave him a watery-eyed smile back and flapped a hand in his direction as if asking for his forgiveness.

‘You okay?’ he asked.

She nodded, her gaze not quite meeting his. ‘Fine,’ she rasped out finally. ‘Something went the wrong way.’ She gestured towards her throat and his gaze followed where her finger indicated.

She had beautifully creamy skin, with a smattering of small dark moles just west of the hollow of her throat. A strange impulse to stroke his fingers across them gripped him. He’d probably make her choke in shock again if he did. He almost tried it, just to see if his theory was borne out.

When his gaze returned to her face he noticed two spots of colour had appeared on her high-set cheekbones.

Cute.

He could see now why she favoured such high heels too; even with them on, the top of her head only just reached past his shoulders.

She was studying him warily, as if trying to decide whether to spend more of her precious time talking to him. Clearly she deemed him worthy because she said, ‘I’m Lu,’ and put out a small, delicately boned hand for him to shake.

He took it, his own looking obscenely monstrous in comparison. He was afraid for a second he might crush her if he wasn’t careful.

‘Short for Louise?’ he asked.

She smiled back and opened her mouth to speak but, before she could, a harried-looking barman came over and leaned in towards her, suddenly eager to take her order.

She asked for a glass of wine before turning to him and murmuring, ‘Buy you a drink...?’ She raised her eyebrows in a double question, asking for his name as well as his answer.

Whoa, that voice. It made him think all kinds of inappropriate thoughts as it lapped indecently through his head.

‘Tristan. Tristan Bamfield.’ He shook her a curt no thanks in response to her offer of a drink, reluctant to get into anything more than a passing conversation. The thought of being dragged over and introduced to the gaggle of women she’d been sitting with made him feel faintly woozy.

She nodded in an odd, knowing kind of way, but apparently had other ideas about what he actually wanted, adding a bottle of the beer he’d been drinking to her order.

He caught her eye when she glanced back at him. ‘You noticed what I was drinking?’

‘I’m good with details,’ she said, flashing him a coy smile.

‘That’s a useful skill.’

She shrugged. ‘It’s moderately useful. Not like having superior strength or the ability to see into the future or anything. Now that would be useful.’

Yeah. If he’d been able to see into the future he could have circumnavigated the total train wreck of his last relationship.

The barman returned with their drinks and he watched Lu hand over the cash in silence, feeling a niggling discomfort about her buying him a drink. She gestured towards his beer. ‘For coughing all over you.’

Tristan smiled. ‘Unnecessary, but thanks.’ Picking up the bottle, he took a long swig.

Lu did the same with her wine, the large glass looking enormous in her dinky hand.

‘I see they do wine by the pint here,’ he said, nodding towards the glass. ‘That drink’s almost as big as you are.’

He caught a flash of what looked like startled irritation before she converted it to wry amusement. ‘Yeah, well, you get quality with me, not quantity,’ she said, a steely edge creeping into her voice. ‘And I thought real men drank beer from pint glasses, not namby-pamby little bottles.’ She flashed him a disparaging grin.

He raised an amused eyebrow back. He’d annoyed her, he could tell, but she wasn’t making an excuse and moving away—she was taking him on.

The woman had grit by the truckload.

He liked that about her. He liked it a lot.

In fact, now he thought about it, she was the first woman to pique his interest since Marcy had left him.

Taking a step towards him, Lu looked up directly into his face, her gaze roaming over his hair, his eyes, snagging on his mouth.

There was something in her expression that made his libido sit up and take notice. He smiled, feeling the intensity of their attraction heat his blood.

Something akin to determination was playing across her face, as if she was having some sort of internal fight with herself.

Intriguing.

He narrowed his eyes. ‘Should I be worried here? Do you have an insanely jealous lover who’s about to storm over and demand I step outside or something? Only you seem to be arguing with yourself about the wisdom of speaking to me.’

She let out a deep guttural laugh, the dirty carnal suggestion of it playing along his senses, making something fizz and tickle deep in his throat.

He swallowed hard.

‘I’m freshly out of a disastrous fling with someone who couldn’t care less about me, actually. I seem to have a knack for choosing losers and users.’ She swayed in towards him. ‘What is it about me that screams sucker, do you think, Tristan?’

He knew he shouldn’t articulate what had just flitted through his mind, but there was something about her beleaguered expression that made it impossible to resist.

‘From where I’m standing, sucker is a word full of possibilities.’ His gaze dropped to that smooth, curvy pout of hers as it twisted into a smile and he saw her shift in her heels as she twigged exactly what he was insinuating.

Lu turned away from his gaze and took another hefty swig of her wine before placing the glass carefully back onto the bar, her fingertips catching the stem at the last second so that it spun and rocked for a moment before settling down to its former inanimate state. The spots of colour on her cheeks flared further outwards.

Was she nervous? Or excited by the idea?

He realised with uncomfortable certainty that he hoped it was the latter.

Whoa, boy. Put the brakes on that impulse.

Chatting to a woman in a bar was one thing, but taking it further wasn’t on the agenda right now.

Was it?

‘You celebrating something?’ he said, nodding towards the huddle of women at the table she’d just vacated in an attempt to take the charged atmosphere down a notch or two.

‘A friend’s birthday. We both work round the corner so this is our after-work local.’ Something troubling seemed to occur to her and she frowned and picked up her glass again, taking another large gulp of wine. After giving herself a little shake, she flashed him a wide smile.

‘How about you? What are you doing here all on your lonesome?’ She made another move towards him, drawing herself up to her full height and putting out an arm to casually lean on the bar, bringing her tantalising floral fragrance with her.

He drew in a deep lungful of her heady scent and smiled down at her. ‘I ducked in here to avoid being mauled by a woman with a hungry look in her eyes.’

She looked at him steadily. ‘She fancied a slice of you, did she?’

‘I got that impression, yes.’

‘And you didn’t feel like being her Tristan Topping tonight?’

He laughed. ‘Or any other night.’

She swallowed and stared somewhere to the left side of his head before flicking her gaze back to his. There was a flash of something he couldn’t quite pin down in those baby-blues.

She was one contrary lady. One minute cool and assertive, buying him a drink, the next uncertain and wary.

He’d not come across someone like Lu for a very long time. Since splitting with Marcy he’d only seemed to meet women who had formed hard, flawless shells around themselves, who gave him a perfectly polished response every time—who thought they were giving him what he wanted, when actually he was repelled by their phoniness.

But this woman had something about her that he couldn’t bear to step away from just yet.

She was too damn interesting.

* * *

Pull yourself together, you lunatic.

Lula turned away from the disconcertingly gorgeous man in front of her and glanced over to where her party sat laughing at something Emily had said. Her friend was standing and waving her arms around in an approximation of sexual fervour in her typical crowd-pleasing style.

Em would know exactly what to say to a guy like this, and she certainly wouldn’t have made a total fool of herself by coughing all over him.

He’d taken her by surprise, rocking up to the bar before she could formulate a plan about how best to approach him, and she’d been totally unprepared for the immediate visceral effect he’d had on her.

He wasn’t the type of man she’d usually go for—he was scarily charismatic and his powerful virility and snappy smartness gave her the jitters. He was just so chiselled and smooth-looking with his Roman nose and intelligent, rich brown eyes that sparked with amusement behind a pair of those trendy rectangular-framed ‘invisible’ glasses.

He was totally business.

She had a mad urge to mess with his neatly swept back hair, to ruffle him up a bit and see the raw side of the man concealed beneath the sharply tailored suit.

Blood throbbed through her veins as she entertained the impulse.

She felt slightly bad about not correcting him when he’d asked if her name was short for Louise, but it had occurred to her that she could pretend to be someone else entirely tonight and it wouldn’t matter a jot. She’d never see him again, so why not fully step into the persona she wanted to project? A fake name was a great way to do that, and it wasn’t as if anyone was going to get hurt.