Buch lesen: «Beyond Daring»

1

JEFF BROOKS STOOD in his kitchen, furiously chopping green peppers, trying to expend some of the sexual frustration that currently had his shorts tied up in knots. Making breakfast was infinitely preferable than fantasizing about the woman happily snoozing in his bed.

Sheldon Summerville. Party girl. Socialite. Professional shopper. She was off-limits, with a capital O, little f, little f. O-f-f. F-f-o. He recited the jingle in his head, while thinking about her father, who, three months ago, had hired Jeff’s firm to “redeem” her image. As if such a miracle could be performed by a mere mortal without the use of a padlocked chastity belt. Anything to shut down that perfect body, which she seemed determined to share with the world.

He selected an onion and began to hack, his eyes burning from the juices. Today he welcomed the discomfort. Sheldon Summerville left him frustrated professionally, sexually and mentally. He’d never met someone so determined to ignore what the world thought, especially her father, Wayne Summerville, the head of Summerville Consumer Products. They were the number two consumer product conglomerate in the world, proud maker of Toothbrite toothpaste, among other things.

Sheldon’s party-girl reputation didn’t sit well with Wayne’s stockholders. Apparently, people with whiter teeth and fresh breath could be real frumps. However, even Jeff thought she went to extremes, and he was no monk himself.

The bigger mystery was why? No matter how long Jeff racked his brain, he couldn’t figure Sheldon out, and she provided no hints. Always smiling in that vacant and clueless manner, which had ceased to fool him by Day Three. To make matters worse, she had no qualms about making lewd, yet majorly imaginative propositions—especially to him. He looked down at the mess he’d made of the onion and tossed the thing in the trash. Maybe shallots would be better.

Imaginative propositions he wanted to ignore. Propositions he should ignore. Okay, propositions that he didn’t want to ignore….

Last night had been a stupid idea, but every night with Sheldon was a stupid idea. She had conveniently left him a message that she was going to the notorious club, Crobar. Jeff, knowing her message was code for multiple doses of alcohol, had shown up at ten, hoping to play responsible chaperone. At ten-oh-nine, he’d pulled her off the bartender, at ten-thirteen, he’d pulled her off the New York Ranger’s goalie, and when he caught her kissing the bouncer, he knew it was past time for her to go home.

They’d argued until the cops came, threatening to arrest her, which would be exactly what she wanted. So Jeff had poured her into a taxi and taken her home. With him. It seemed like a good idea at the time. It had still seemed like a good idea six hours later when he woke up on his couch. In fact, it had seemed like such a great denouement, that he had congratulated himself on finally lassoing her into some sort of obedient servitude.

Everything had been fine until he opened the door to his bedroom, and saw her curled up, one hand cupped under her cheek like a child, sheets tangled between bare legs that were anything but childlike. Instantly his body moved to code red.

Jeff wasn’t a self-disciplined man, had never worried about consequences, but this…The quiet little devil on his shoulder began whispering in his ear, telling him to go wake up her up in the best possible way. She wouldn’t mind. Ah, there’s the rub. She wouldn’t mind. She would welcome him with arms wide open, those sea-blue eyes promising so many things. Glorious, wondrous things…

Thump. Thump. Thump. He whacked the shallots with his cleaver. Hard. Right now he needed to destroy something, and vegetables would be the victim of choice.

SLOWLY SHELDON SUMMERVILLE ROUSED herself from the fog of sleep into the fog that most people called life. She could smell him on the pillow, and she smiled, clutching it tighter to her. A persistent thump-thump echoed in the apartment, possibly the beating of her heart. Sunshine poured in through the window, and she stretched beneath the warm rays, her body sated…

Sated?

No, her body wasn’t sated at all. There had been no touching, no kissing, nothing remotely sate-like last night. She merely slept in his bed. By herself.

So if he wasn’t in his bed, where was he?

Sheldon threw back the covers, looked around, and then rubbed the sleep from her eyes. The mysterious thump-thump was consistent, and now that she knew it wasn’t someone’s heart, the sound was annoying.

Silently, she padded into the kitchen and watched him as he chopped, chef’s knife in hand. Thump. Thump. Thump. First the green peppers, then back to the red ones. He didn’t notice that she was standing, staring, ogling.

It was criminal that Jeff Brooks could be so tasty, so buff, yet still work in the stab-you-in-the-back-world of PR.

What was criminal was how badly she wanted him.

She pulled at her tank top and leaned back against the wall, adopting her patented vacant, though sexy stare. As soon as he felt the weight of her stare, he looked up, took a long eye-drinking of her skin, cocked one brow, and then went back to chopping peppers.

“Can you put some clothes on?”

Even his voice was sexy. Deep and rough, with that scuffed up mark of New York City, which he couldn’t hide no matter how hard he tried. He was tall and lean, with strong legs emerging from the loose boxers that did more framing than concealing.

She soaked up the sight of him, her nipples hardening under the thin material, and without cold air, artificial device, and or a drenching of water.

Did he notice? No. He was happily making breakfast as if she didn’t affect him at all.

Her mouth opened, so tempted to lash out at him, but it would ruin her image. Lashing out implied, passion, emotion, feeling. Instead, she leaned one hip against the edge of the granite counter, and let the full cascade of her platinum-blond hair fall over one well-formed breast.

From the time she was a kid, everything had been done for her. All her whims had been granted, all her wants fulfilled. When you were the porcelain doll in the glass case, there was no reason for ambition or dreams.

You would think someone with her life would be happy and at peace, and if she were normal, that would probably have been the case. But there was something wrong with Sheldon, some piece of her wiring that never connected because she only felt empty. A tinman without a heart, a scarecrow without a brain and a lion without courage—all rolled into one.

The only tangible assets that belonged to Sheldon were a classically sculpted face and a body that made dead men moan. Hall of Famers is what the tabloids termed her cleavage and Sheldon had learned to use it whenever necessary.

Like now.

“You’re complaining?” she drawled.

His strong, capable hands never stopped their mechanical chopping motion. For weeks, she’d had dreams of those hands on her. Steamy, vivid dreams that didn’t disappear when she’d woken up.

“Not complaining, just trying to be helpful.” He smiled at her, a toothy, advertising-type smile, possibly attributed to Toothbrite toothpaste. She suspected that he knew she hated it—both the toothpaste and the smile—which was why he did it.

“Is there something I can do?” she purred, her eyes gleaming when his hand stopped for a second.

He waved her off and continued working. “Hungover this morning?”

She pulled her hair into a ponytail, her chest lifting with the movement.

His gaze drifted down.

Her lips curved upward.

“Are you ever closed for business?” he asked.

Her eyes, normally vacuous and sultry, looked down meekly so that he wouldn’t see the rage. Rage implied a depth that she didn’t want to possess.

She backed away from the kitchen, the knife, and the man with the strong, capable hands, and padded barefoot across the room.

“I think I’ll take a shower,” she stated, slipping the tank over her head. It was a picture designed to freeze a man’s brain, but he wasn’t even watching. She was furious at herself for such an obvious act of desperation, but not so furious that she didn’t slide the signature red panties down over her long, tanned legs as well.

“You don’t mind do you?” she asked louder than necessary, her heart rapping inside her. He did this to her, reduced all her self-confidence to shreds.

Finally, his dark gaze lit over her, and she felt each and every white-hot touch. This time he didn’t smile, only lowered his head and continued the whap-whap-whap against the cutting board.

Dismissed.

She left her clothes in a messy heap in the middle of the floor, and retreated to the loneliness of his shower. She turned on the warm spray and let it wash over her body, slipping between her breasts and thighs like a lover with knowing, capable hands. She shouldn’t have been alone. He should be there, too.

Men didn’t ignore her—ever. Especially men like Jeff. He was no extraordinary example of humanity. He was nice looking, with a hot body. But those dark, devilish eyes weren’t supposed to be steely strong.

He should be weak.

Like her.

Men in the media business never had scruples. She was sure of it.

Life truly wasn’t fair.

JEFF CONTINUED CHOPPING UNTIL all eleven green peppers had been diced into precise triangles. When there were no more peppers left to chop, he exhaled slowly, wiping the sweat from his forehead. It was a good thing she hadn’t touched him because he knew in his heart, he would’ve jumped all over that.

He clicked on the television, letting the perky morning news shows dull the throbbing ache of his erection. An erection that needed to be inserted into the golden, shimmering skin that nestled beneath her thighs.

Brazilian. Why Brazilian?

Jeff groaned, loud, ragged. A rutting stag deprived of dinner. Would she notice if he spent the next thirty minutes jerking off? Probably. She’d want to help. That was her way.

He threw the peppers into the sauté pan and cranked up the gas burner, watching the thick skins pulse as the heat licked them into submission. Next he poured on the shallots, hacking off a chunk of butter, the butter sizzling from the burn. He took eight eggs from the refrigerator and kicked the door shut with extra force. It didn’t help ease the pain, but these were desperate times that called for dramatic gestures, meaningless or not.

One by one he cracked the eggs, stirring them into a fine glop before pouring over the tenderized vegetables. The heat of the flame melted the two mixtures into a fiery joining of culinary souls tasting the full extent of their passion.

Life really wasn’t fair. He didn’t want to want Sheldon. But there were parts of him that weren’t cooperating. Parts of him that longed to be acquainted with parts of her.

Reacquainted. Because according to Little Miss “I Put My Body Where I Want To,” said cock had already met said bare, naked nethers in a fiery joining of their own. Six weeks ago she’d claimed they’d had wild, untamed sex. Four times. And all he could remember was Sheldon trying to drink him under the table at Club Red. The rest of the night was a gut-rotting blank.

Expertly he flipped the omelet, shredding some Gouda over the smooth, golden body of the eggs.

Eventually, the cheese melted, sliding into each and every crevice of the sensual delicacy. Jeff flipped it onto a plate, ruthlessly sliced it into two halves, and then laid the plates on the bar.

When exposed to the sunlight, it looked liked nothing more than breakfast. His mind latched onto the commonplace thought, pushing aside visions of naked thighs and full breasts being drenched by the water from his shower. Damn it. He thought he was safe. Thought she’d given him a reprieve.

He was wrong.

Sheldon came into the living room, using a towel to dry the long lengths of her white-blond hair. The rest of her was still dripping wet. Nude—and dripping wet. His eyes noticed, his hands began to shake, and his cock…well, at the moment he really didn’t want to think about the tortured appendage that used to be functional.

She walked—walked being a very inadequate word to describe the sensual movement of her body—over to the small pile of underwear, picking up her bra and panties.

“Can’t believe I was such a slob,” she said, her eyes catching at the waistband of his boxers. “My, my, my…” she said, clicking her tongue against her teeth. He hated the celebration in her eyes, but he was a weakened piece of flesh. It was self-preservation alone that kept him motionless.

Her hand reached toward him, and he closed his eyes, steeling himself for her touch. He was strong. He was invincible. And mostly, there were ten million reasons that he could not touch her. Again.

“An omelet? You are talented,” she whispered, her hand flirting near his waist. Yet, she didn’t touch him.

He swallowed.

She noticed.

Her hand fell away, and he told himself that he was relieved, lying bastard that he was. But then, the gates of hell opened before him. She leaned down, the sweet angel of temptation, and touched the tip of her tongue to the engorged, pained, tortured while panting-like-a-happy-puppy tip of his cock.

She popped back up, wearing a smile of victory and nothing else. Then she wiggled her brows at him and strolled into the bathroom. He couldn’t suppress his groan.

“I heard that,” she yelled.

At the moment he didn’t care.

SHELDON’S APARTMENT WAS ON THE Upper West Side. Counting on the crosstown traffic, the trip would add an extra forty-five minutes to his Monday morning commute, but Jeff had no choice. It was time for a meeting of the minds, simple as she pretended hers to be. He hailed a cab and set her inside.

Firm and in control. He could handle it.

“New rules. No more nudity,” he said, sliding in beside her, keeping his voice low in case the cabbie had big ears. Then he sliced his hand across his throat, just in case she wasn’t grasping the simplicity of his request.

Oh, she understood. She batted her eyelashes at him, a gesture designed to hide the Einsteinian workings of her brain. The simpleton act had never tricked Jeff, due to the fact that he’d used it once or twice himself.

“What’s wrong with the purity of the human body? We’re only animals at heart, Jeff.”

“Don’t get all Darwin on me, Sheldon. Keep the clothes on. Keep the box closed.”

Her mouth snapped together in a tight line. “You think I’m a slut, don’t you? You don’t approve. Are you a virgin, Jeff?”

He shot her a look. “You know I’m not. Don’t you?” he reminded her, because the absentee memory of the night had eaten at him over the last few weeks. He didn’t forget sex. Ever. Even in the deepest lapses of alcohol. Ever.

And with the one woman who had kept his cock throbbing in painful agony for what seemed like forever?

No way.

“Why does it matter if I have some fun?” she asked, which on the surface was a perfectly logical, rational question. However, Sheldon was neither logical, nor rational.

“I have a job to do, sweetheart. Your father is paying my firm large amounts of cash to keep you out of the papers. Nothing more. I’m going to do it, too.”

She crossed her arms around her chest, not that he looked, and slumped back in the seat. “It always comes down to money, doesn’t it?”

“Not always.”

“Ha.”

There was an edge in her voice, a pain that he’d never heard before. “What happened to you, Sheldon?”

“I use whatever I can to fight whoever I need to,” she said, studying her nails.

The car slid to a screeching halt, smack in front of her building. Jeff paid the cabbie and told him to wait, he wasn’t done with the lecture. He still had a good hour of diatribe left inside him.

They walked to the awning of her building, mere inches separating them, but the huge chasm loomed like an eroding fault line in the earth, just waiting to be split asunder.

“Why don’t you stop fighting?” he asked, rubbing a hand over tired eyes. Playing bad-cop chaperone was exhausting and completely unrewarding.

She waved to her doorman, but stopped far enough away from the public eye. An unexpected moment of discretion. He was surprised. And pleased. “You want me. Why don’t you stop fighting it?”

“I don’t want you.”

“Lying, much?”

“Keep the sex out of it.”

Her eyes warmed, and then heated. “Kiss me, then. Just kiss me. No tongues, no bodies. Just two mouths touching.”

He didn’t want to kiss her, but she had laid down the challenge, and he would look spineless if he didn’t comply.

So he kissed her. No tongues. No bodies. Just two mouths touching. Her lips were soft and pliable, and so was the look in her eyes. There wasn’t the usual vacancy in her gaze. Shockingly, there was innocence there. Vulnerability. Qualities he couldn’t pin on Sheldon if he tried. But there they were. Staring him in the face.

His first instinct was to run. He even turned to go.

“You shouldn’t fight it,” she whispered.

“Go inside.”

She started to argue, but maybe she saw the pleading in his eyes, maybe she saw the battered animal that lurked inside him, maybe she was just tired. It didn’t matter, she smiled at the doorman, and blithely went on her way.

And Jeff felt himself breathe again.

He returned to the curb, only to find his cabbie had disappeared, probably hoping to find an even bigger sucker than Jeff.

Even cabbies had their dreams.

COLUMBIA-STARR COMMUNICATIONS OCCUPIED a sophisticated floor of offices near Midtown. Lots of red and black and polka dots and flash. It was the hottest PR firm in New York—at least it was right now, and Jeff considered it quite the achievement that he’d landed the job all on his own.

He pulled open the glass doors and was immediately greeted by a strange man sitting behind what used to be his secretary’s desk.

“Mr. Summerville called. He’ll be here in ten.”

“Who are you?” asked Jeff.

“Phil Carter. Rent-a-temp. Nice tie, by the way,” he said, a glint in his eye.

Oh, joy. Jeff had a very modern attitude toward alternative lifestyles, but it was nine-thirty in the morning, and he didn’t like men who dressed better than he did. “Let me begin with, you’re fired.”

“Hello, Mr. Ego has arrived! They warned me about you.”

“Are you always like this?”

Phil balanced his face on his hands, smiling like an imp. A very gay imp, but an imp. Then he began to sing. “I gotta be me. I gotta be me.”

“Enough. You know the software we use?”

“You betcha.”

“Good speller, impeccable grammar?”

“Philistine. P-h-i-l-i-s-t-i-n-e. Participle phrases are used chiefly to modify nouns, but a dangling participle is confusing to the reader. For example, ‘Sitting on his ass, the bird flew by the window.’”

Just then the phone rang.

“Phone manners?” barked Jeff.

Phil pushed a button on the phone and started speaking into his headset. “Columbia-Starr Communications. Mr. Jeff Brooks’s office. How may I help you?” Phil frowned ominously. “Mr. Brooks did what? And then the cops told him what? And now the Smoking Gun wrote what? No comment. And that’s my final comment. Thank you for calling Columbia-Starr Communications. Shaping The World, A Million Minds At A Time. Have a nice day.”

Phil hung up and gave Jeff an expectant look.

Okay, the guy was good, better than the last four temps he’d had. Jeff looked down at the phone. “Who was that?”

“Your mother. Baked ziti at her apartment Wednesday at eight.”

It was too much to comprehend after four hours of restless sleep, and a hard-on that was now mummified permanently. “What about all the other stuff you were saying? With the cops?” The last thing he needed was more Sheldon-fodder for the rags.

Phil wiggled his index finger. “Fastest mute finger in the West.”

Jeff nodded. “Okay, you pass. I like my coffee black,” he ordered, taking off for the zen-like quiet of his office.

“No sugar?” yelled Phil.

Jeff slammed the door.

“Savage!”

JEFF’S HEADACHE WAS JUST beginning to recede when the intercom buzzed.

“A Mr. Summerville is waiting for you, Mr. Brooks. Should I show him in?”

Sheldon’s dad. Quickly, Jeff flipped through the morning trade rags to see what sort of lies, half truths and full truths were being written about her.

The Post mentioned her makeout session with the goalie. The Daily News listed a Sheldon-sighting at Crobar, but it wasn’t too bad. All in all, they’d written tons worse about Sheldon before.

Only two items today. Maybe her father would be happy.

Thirty seconds later, Wayne Summerville was in his office.

“What the hell am I paying you for, boy?”

Okay, not happy. Jeff forced a smile. “There’s the blind item on Page Six about the wayward socialite that’s been giving large amounts of cash to the homeless.”

“That’s not my daughter,” he said, leaning over Jeff’s desk, probably so Jeff could feel the full force of his anger.

Check. Anger felt.

“It might not be, Wayne, but people could assume it is. That’s the beauty of blind items. We can plant something with the Daily Dish tomorrow.”

“Jeff, now listen. I like you, boy. Really do. But your firm is charging me an obscene amount of money to transform my daughter’s image into something more palatable to our stockholders. And do you know what’s happened to my daughter’s image since I hired you?”

Jeff stared into the dark dredges of his Columbia-Starr Communications coffee cup. “What, sir?”

“I didn’t think it could happen. Truly didn’t believe it could happen, but her image has gotten worse. Gone right in the toilet.”

“Your daughter’s a rather headstrong young lady.” It was an understatement from a man well-versed in overstatements.

“Then get tough, Jeff. I want to announce her engagement in three months, and when she’s off swapping spit and who knows what other bodily fluids with a bartender at some newfangled club in the Meatpacking District, it’s not going to happen.”

Jeff lifted his head and backtracked for a moment. “What engagement? A marriage engagement?”

“Sure. Sheldon’s marrying the heir to Con-Mason U.S.A. We’re signing all the papers in a few weeks.” Wayne rubbed his hands together. “It’ll be the biggest merger this side of the Mississip since Exxon-Mobil. Course that’d be west of the Mississip. Damn, it’d be the biggest merger in this whole gosh-darned country.”

“She knows this?”

“The merger?”

“The marriage?” asked Jeff, frowning.

“Sure. Joshua’s a presentable boy, Harvard grad, one of the cities most eligible bachelors, and we’ve had a long talk. Right proud of my little girl.”

“An engagement,” muttered Jeff. This wasn’t the Dark Ages where women were forced to submit to the whims of men. At least, in most cases.

“It’s a win-win for everybody. Sheldon gets more money than God and the devil combined. Summerville CP gets expansion into the Chinese markets that Con-Mason’s already has such a lock on. And best of all, there’ll be no taxes to pay on the stock swap because of the laws of this fine country that protect the sacred union between a man and his wife. God bless the USA.”

Jeff felt the urge to cross himself but refrained because he didn’t think Wayne would see the humor.

“I’ll do better, sir. Now that I have a full understanding of the situation, I’m sure Sheldon and I can work something out,” he said earnestly, all while subversive ideas were buzzing around in his head.

Yeah, he’d talk to her. He could rescue her. Explain to her the options she had. Jeff choreographed the entire scene, heroic orchestration playing in the background. Close up to her sea-blue eyes as she stared at him worshipfully.

Jeff smiled to himself.

“And I’ve got an incentive for you, Jeff. Sort of my way of insuring that we all succeed. When the merger happens between Con-Mason U.S.A. and Summerville CP, we’re going to need a firm to do all our public relations work. Never believed in trying to do that sort of thing in-house, better to let the pros handle it. And I think Columbia-Starr Communications would be right perfect. Course, then they’d have to call it Columbia-Starr-Brooks Communications. Sounds nice, don’t you think? Just like heavenly bells to a man’s ear.”

Then Wayne grinned at Jeff, his sea-blue eyes long faded to dollar-sign green.

And thus, Jeff was slapped back into the coffee-cup dregs of his reality. The world of Sheldon Summerville was a gold-studded planet, a monied universe. Wayne Summerville bought companies over breakfast and Jeff Brooks saved up eight long years for a boat. Tomorrow’s disillusions were today’s grand illusions. In his business, Jeff had to be careful not to believe his own spin.

He examined the Columbia-Starr logo, thinking that maybe there was a place for Brooks on the coffee cup, too.

The heroic orchestrations playing in his head screeched to a full stop, and the picture of Sheldon’s sea-blue eyes, once lit with heroic worship, faded to black.

Like that would ever happen anyway.