The Sexiest Man Alive

Nevertheless, she was ready, and wasn’t it a good thing that CHIC was so casual, because if she’d had to put on panty hose and iron a blouse, pick out a suit, buff a pair of pumps, put on makeup and jewelry and fix her hair, it would be noon before she got herself out the door.

As it was, Mickey was already pointing his white-gloved hand at...

Oh, hell.

Susannah raced from the bedroom and nearly collided with Peter, who was waiting for her in the middle of the hall. He opened his mouth, but she didn’t give him the chance to say anything.

“I know, I know. You’re starved. You’re famished. And you’re incapable of doing a thing about it without my help.”

Peter sat down, his green eyes fixed on her as she banged open the cabinet over the stove.

“Sardine Soufflé,” she said. “How’s that sound?”

Peter yawned.

“Salmon Surprise? Bacon Bordelaise? Mmm, mmm, good.”

Peter scratched his ribs.

“Tuna,” Susannah said through her teeth. “You love tuna, Petey. You know you do.”

Peter looked toward the window. Susannah could have sworn she heard him whistling.

“All right,” she said grimly. “You win. Lobster and Shrimp Ragout, and you’d better remember this moment, Peter, because now you owe me one.”

Peter turned and looked at her “Meowr,” he said in the sweetest voice any Persian pussycat had ever possessed. He jumped gracefully onto the counter and butted his furry head against Susannah’s chin.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Susannah said wearily, but she smiled and kissed him right between his silky ears

Whatever else happened today, at least she had Peter to come home to.

The view from Matthew Romano’s suite in the new and elegant Manhattan Towers Hotel was, the concierge had assured him on checking in, spectacular.

“Spe-tac-u-lair, Monsieur Romano,” was actually what the guy had said, in a gurgling French accent Matthew suspected to be about as legitimate as the Rolex watches hawked on the sidewalk a couple of streets over, but Matthew had nodded politely and said he was delighted to hear it.

The truth was, he didn’t much care about the view. A man who’d built what the experts had taken to calling an empire in less than ten years was a man who spent a lot of time in hotel rooms. The rooms had improved as the Romano holdings had grown, but a hotel was still a hotel. Spe-tac-u-lair views, chilled Dom Pérignon, baskets of flowers and gold-plated bathroom fixtures couldn’t change that one whit

Whatever a whit might be, Matthew thought, as he stood gazing out the window of his sitting room. It was still early, just a little past seven, but traffic already clogged Fifth Avenue Back home in San Francisco, most people would still be asleep...most people, but not the ones who earned their living from the sea.

There were times he was still amazed that he wasn’t one of them. It was an honest way to make a buck but, even as a boy, he’d always suspected there was more to life. He hadn’t wanted to begin his day while the rest of San Francisco slept or to pull on clothes that smelled of crabs and fish and sweat no matter how many times you washed them And he sure as hell hadn’t wanted to work his butt off for barely enough money to pay the bills

It was what his father had done, and his grandfather. It was what he’d been expected to do, too.

The smile vanished. Matthew straightened, thrust his fingers through his dark hair and turned his back to the window and to the memories.

All that was years behind him. He worked his butt off, yes, but he loved every minute of what he did. Someday, maybe, he’d want more. A wife. A family.

But not yet.

When he was ready, he’d find himself a wife. He knew exactly the kind of woman she’d be. Beautiful, of course, and serene. Eager to please. He could see himself coming home to her at night, kissing her, leaving behind the rough-and-tumble of business as he settled into his easy chair.

His wife would be a calm haven in the stormy seas he sailed.

He’d said as much once, to his grandmother. Nonna had rolled her eyes and reminded him that even though he towered over her now, that wouldn’t stop her from whacking him across the backside if he needed it. A calm haven? Mama mia, what was he? A rowboat? Such a woman would bore him to tears in a month.

“A woman who can stand up to your Sicilian temper is what you need,” Nonna had said.

Matthew grinned at the memory. His Nonna was right about most things, but she was wrong about this. Who knew what kind of woman he needed better than the man himself?

“And you’re never going to meet the right woman if you don’t look for her,” Nonna had added, stamping her cane on the floor for good measure.

Well, he was looking. Slowly, maybe, but still, he was looking.

Matthew whistled as he strolled into the marble bathroom and turned on the shower.

Why rush something so pleasurable?

He shucked the boxer briefs he’d slept in, stepped into the stall, pressed his palms flat against the wall and bent his head. The water felt good, beating down on his neck and shoulders, and gave him time to think about the morning’s agenda.

He smiled thinly. And what an agenda it was.

He was really looking forward to his meeting with the definitely snide and probably incompetent Susan Something-or-other. Madison? Washington? Coolidge? A President’s name. Not that it mattered. Once it was on a severance check, Susan Whatever and her clever office memos would be history.

What sort of woman wrote stuff like that about a man she didn’t even know? What sort of woman played games with one man and sent love and kisses to another?

A woman who thought the sexual revolution meant she could have the best of both worlds. Susan Hoover figured she could make the kinds of cracks about men that she’d undoubtedly condemned men for making about women, but she saw nothing wrong with insisting on gender neutrality when the situation suited her.

Matthew shut off the shower and reached for a towel. Oh, yeah. He had this broad figured out right down to the dotted line.

He strode into the bedroom and put on a pair of white briefs and navy socks. Then he opened the wall-to-wall mirrored closet and reached for a pale blue shirt.

The woman had made the most incredibly sexist comments about him, then done a one-eighty and blithely assumed she’d been passed over for promotion because she was female. And that was wrong. Dead wrong. Matthew had done a little research into CHIC It had given him everything the company had about her, and from what he could see, Susan Whatever was about as qualified to head a magazine as she was to write material for a stand-up comic.

Which was why she had to go.

His eyes narrowed as he zipped the fly of his customtailored gray trousers and slipped on the matching jacket.

His decision had nothing to do with the stuff she’d said about him, that the women he dated were dumb or for calling him studly and brainless. Or for saying he figured he was the sexiest man alive.

He wasn’t a vindictive man. It didn’t mean a thing to him that half his team had read the woman’s comments, that he’d heard the choked-back laughter at the next couple of meetings, that even now somebody on his staff would look at him and bite back a grin.

“It doesn’t bother me in the slightest,” Matthew said briskly to his reflection.

He snatched up his black leather briefcase, marched to the door, opened it and stepped into the hotel corridor.

“Damned right, it doesn’t,” he muttered, and slammed the door after him, so hard that it rattled.

CHAPTER TWO

IN HER college days, before Susannah had centered her studies on English lit, she’d taken a very popular philosophy course.

Professor Wheeler had made the round of all the talk shows with his theory of how to achieve happiness. Your successes and failures in life, he said, were dependent upon unwritten rules. Not the rules of physics, he’d add, with a condescending little smile, the ones that kept the earth from flying off into the sun or the polar ice caps from draining into the seas. The rules he referred to were very personal. Once you identified them, you could go through life secure in the knowledge that you had a Direction and a Purpose.

The best part was that you didn’t have to wait, like Isaac Newton, and get conked on the head by an apple to discover them. Your Very Own Rules, according to Professor Wheeler, found you.

Six years had passed since then, and some of Susannah’s personal rules had, indeed, discovered her. Unfortunately, as far as she could see, they had nothing to do with either Direction or Purpose—unless she planned to star in a lowbudget sitcom.

Rule number one. White silk dresses worn to Italian restaurants meant the lasagna would fall into your lap. Rule number two. PMS was not an advertising gimmick dreamed up by Madison Avenue. Rule number three. Fat-free ice cream was.

Now, on a clear, chilly fall morning, she’d found not one more rule to add to her list but two.

Never trust an alarm clock on a day that could change your life.

Nobody but Superman could get from Greenwich Village to midtown Manhattan in less than twenty minutes during rush hour.

Sandwiched between an oversize woman who must have breakfasted on Garlic Krispies and a man who defended his eight inches of personal space with elbows that should have been classified as lethal weapons, Susannah rode the subway toward her destination

Sardines had it better than this.

The train, packed with humanity, rumbled, rolled and rocked from side to side. Metal wheels screeched against the tracks. It was the ride from hell, but her fellow travelers, New York stoics all, showed no reaction. Susannah didn’t, either. What was the point? She was trapped, she was late, she was going to make an entrance into the staff-filled boardroom with all the aplomb of a runaway tram.

Susannah winced. Talk about bad images. Still, it was accurate. Why hadn’t she planned the morning better? She should have set a backup alarm. She should have had extra shoelaces tucked away in the drawer. Forget the shoelaces. She had to set the standards now. She should have appeared at this meeting dressed in something that would have impressed everybody with her control and confidence.

If only she had a clever plan to toss on the table, maybe—just maybe—she could redeem herself. She’d spent the weekend on statistics. Why hadn’t she spent it on ideas?

The train jolted to a halt. Susannah glanced out the window. The next station was hers. Her heart thumped. One more stop, then a four-block walk, and she’d be there.

“I need an idea,” she whispered. “Just one idea.”

“You need a head doctor,” the fat woman said indignantly, through waves of garlic-scented breath.

Susannah nodded mournfully “Maybe so,” she said.

The train hurtled into the station. She fought her way to the door, across the platform and up the crowded stairs.

Out on the street, she began to run.

The taxi carrying Matthew Romano pulled to the curb outside the building that housed the CHIC offices.

Matthew paid the driver, collected his black leather briefcase from the seat beside him and stepped from the cab. A surprisingly cool wind sliced down the concrete canyon, and he turned up the collar of his raincoat as he took his first look at the CHIC building.

It was old, for New York. Matthew figured it dated back to the thirties, when Art Deco was all the rage. Grime coated the exterior and dulled the bronze doors, but he could still see the building’s handsome lines beneath the dirt He’d expected as much, considering that some of the brightest names in publishing had once been on the Elerbee Publications roster.

Matthew strode through the lobby to the elevators. He’d already decided to keep CHIC’s office space after he disposed of the magazine, but now he thought it might be worthwhile to check into the building itself. Elerbee owned it, didn’t he?

Matthew reached into the inside breast pocket of his suit, took out a computerized recorder the size of a credit card and brought it to his lips.

“CHIC building,” he said quietly. “Possible purchase?” The elevator doors whisked open. Matthew put the recorder into his pocket and stepped into the car.

After this morning, CHIC was finished. His accountants would breathe a deep sigh of relief. Normally, he’d have put the magazine out of its misery as quickly and humanely as possible, but Susan Lincoln had made that impossible.

Not that he was vindictive, Matthew reminded himself as the elevator doors shut.

Not in the slightest.

Susannah came pounding around the corner.

The office was just ahead. She was in the home stretch. A minute to the lobby, another in the elevator...five minutes, max, she’d be at her desk. And then all she’d need was another few seconds to make a quick note about the absolutely incredible idea she’d come up with as she raced down the street from the subway.

She really had to start carrying a notebook. Or one of those little recorders.

But not today.

Susannah darted into the lobby and pounded the elevator call button. Her reflection stared at her from the bronze doors, and she shuddered.

Lord, she was a mess!

The wind had not only dried her hair, it had churned it into what looked like finger-in-the-electric-outlet chic. There were two . . . three? Three buttons missing from the jacket she’d grabbed blindly on her way out the door. Her jeans, was that a paint smear from when she’d tried her hand at oils? And her sneakers. Susannah winced. Someplace between here and the subway, the safety pins had done a disappearing act. The sneaker had stayed on, though. All she had to do was remember not to make any quick moves with her right foot, and it would be fine.

She got into the elevator and punched the button for the fourteenth floor.

Okay. So she wasn’t going to score points for haute couture. And she wasn’t going to be on time or anywhere close to it. So what? It was silly to put too much emphasis on stuff like that. She had a new job title but she was still the same Susannah She was, admittedly, just a tiny bit disorganized. But she was creative. Even old Elerbee, who’d hired and then promoted her, had understood that.

The staff knew her. She didn’t have to impress anyone, she had to give them confidence and inspire them. And she was going to do exactly that with her fantastic new idea.

She could hardly wait to hear Claire’s response, because this would be her baby. Claire was, after all, the new features editor.

The elevator doors slid open. Susannah stepped from the car.

Strange The reception area was empty. Judy, the receptionist, was probably in the boardroom with the rest of the staff, but.. Susannah smiled.

“Good girl,” she murmured.

A fresh pot of coffee stood on a little sideboard, along with a platter heaped with doughnuts. Despite the hour, Judy had put out the refreshments that were a morning staple in reception.

Susannah hurried to her own office.

“Late, late, late,” she whispered, glancing at the clock.

But not too late. It was almost eight twenty-five. All things considered, that wasn’t too bad.

Quickly, she jotted some notes on a pad, grabbed her portable computer and her I Love Cape Cod souvenir mug and dashed to Judy’s desk. Her stomach rumbled as she filled the mug to the brim. How did a person carry a pad, a computer, a mug filled with hot coffee and a doughnut without growing a third arm?

Susannah snagged a jelly doughnut, stuck it between her teeth, collected all her other paraphernalia and headed for the boardroom.

The door was closed.

That was unusual. The room wasn’t all that big. Once everybody collected around the long cherry wood table, things generally seemed a bit crowded. It was better to leave the door open.

Never mind. Once they all heard her terrific idea for boosting CHIC’s sales and revamping its image, they’d be too busy smiling to worry about crowding.

Susannah hit the door with her elbow.

“Mmmf?” she said.

Nobody answered.

She gave it another try

The door swung open.

They were all there, crammed even more closely together than usual, their eyes wide, their faces pale. Claire. Judy. Eddie, the mail-room intern. The fiction editor, the fashion gurus, the assistants and associates and staff photographers.

Everyone looked her up, then looked her down, but no one said a word, not even good morning.

At last, Claire stepped forward. “Suze,” she whispered, and made a funny little motion with her head.

Did Claire have a crick in her neck? Susannah raised her eyebrows. “Mmmf?”

“Suze,” Claire hissed.

“What Miss Haines is trying to say,” a deep male voice said, “is that you’re late, Miss Clinton.”

Susannah stood absolutely still. She had never heard that voice before. She’d have remembered it if she had. Not many men could put a chill into the phrase, “You’re late, Miss...” Clinton? Who was Miss Clinton? And who was the man doing the talking?

Her gaze flew to Claire’s. Help me, Susannah pleaded silently

Claire grimaced, chewed on her lip, puffed out her breath, rolled her eyes. It was a performance that would have made Susannah giggle any other time. But now—now, Claire’s strange mannerisms were an entire speech made without words.

The implication, though, was absolutely clear.

Warning! Claire was saying, warning! Whoever the man was, he was trouble with a capital T. But Susannah had already figured that out. Who else could enter the CHIC offices and position himself at the head of the conference table in the boardroom but a man who was trouble?

But who was he? Who could he be?

Someone from Update. There was no other possibility

Susannah swallowed dryly. Of course! This was the bean counter she’d been expecting, the one she’d known would march in, demand access to all CHIC’s records, intimidate the staff and then, a few days later, take off his bifocals, clean them with the tip of his tie while he informed her that he was going to recommend that CHIC be shut down.

But the voice at the head of the table didn’t sound as if it went with a skinny little man who wore bifocals.

“Well, Miss Clinton? I’m waiting to hear your excuse for your lateness.” The deep voice took on a silken purr. Susannah had a sudden mental image of a big cat—a puma, maybe, or a jaguar—wearing a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. “We’re all waiting, Miss Clinton. Won’t you enlighten us? Tell us why you called your staff in for a meeting to be held promptly at eight o’clock when you yourself didn’t think it important enough to appear until—” there was a brief pause, as if the cat were peering through its horn-rims at its watch “—until twenty minutes of nine?”

Susannah threw one last, desperate look in Claire’s direction.

“Mmmf?” she breathed, past the doughnut, the damned stupid doughnut, still clutched between her teeth

Claire gave her a wan smile, lifted a hand and made a slicing motion across her throat.

Oh, God, Susannah thought, as everybody stepped back, parting like the Red Sea so the conference table, all twelve feet of it, came into view.

And so did the man seated at its head.

No, Susannah thought dizzily. He wasn’t a jaguar. He wasn’t a puma. He was a hawk A magnificent hawk, with the fierce look of the predator in his eyes. And those eyes... Her stomach clenched.

Those blue, blue eyes were fixed coldly on her.

She felt her knees wobble. This was no skinny, middleaged bean counter with bifocals. This was not the man from Update This was—

“Good morning, Miss Clinton,” Matthew Romano said.

Susannah’s mouth dropped open. The doughnut left a snowfall of sugar across Beethoven’s face as it tumbled to the shiny tile floor Bright red jelly oozed across the toe of the sneaker that had been held together by safety pins.

Romano smiled.

“Charming,” he said, almost purring, as his gaze swept over her. “Is this a new style, or what?”

A muffled sound, half laugh, half groan, broke the silence. Susannah glared at Claire, who clapped her hand over her mouth and shook her head in mute apology.

“Nothing to say?” His smile tilted, became as icy as his eyes. “What a pity, Miss Clinton. I didn’t expect you’d ever find yourself at a loss for words, particularly where I’m concerned.”

Susannah’s stricken gaze followed him as he rose lazily to his feet.

He looked as if he’d just stepped from the pages of Gentleman’s Quarterly. The dark, expertly cut hair. The hard, handsome face. The perfectly tailored suit, pale blue shirt and elegantly knotted tie. She couldn’t see his shoes, but she knew they’d be as polished as mirrors.

Quickly, she shifted her weight, trying to hide the jellycovered toe of the laceless sneaker.

Romano folded his arms and laughed.

Color flew into Susannah’s face. What was Romano doing here? Why was he trying to humiliate her? Well, he wouldn’t succeed. She’d act like a lady, even though it was obvious that he was no gentleman.

“How nice to meet you, Mr. Romano. Perhaps you’d be kind enough to explain your presence here”

Matthew arched one eyebrow. For a woman who looked as if she were dressed for the rag pickers ball, a woman who surely hadn’t expected to find him camped on CHIC’s doorstep, so to speak, Susan Whatever was certainly managing to seem cool and collected.

She wasn’t, of course. He could see it in the bright flush in her cheeks and in the almost imperceptible tremor that had gone through her body when she’d first seen him sitting at the conference table.

His gaze drifted over her again. This was the editor-in-chief of the magazine? The person Elerbee had entrusted with the formidable job of turning CHIC into a money-making property? The old man must have gone soft in the head. Nothing else could explain it. Susan .. Clinton? Truman? The woman looked as if she’d picked her clothes out of a bin at the nearest Goodwill, styled her hair by sticking a finger into an electrical outlet, and her sneakers...

Unless he was losing his mind, the one that had jelly on it had no laces.

“You are Matthew Romano, aren’t you?”

Matthew’s gaze met hers. She’d had time to gather herself, he could see The hot color had left her face. She was, in fact, pale—except for her eyes. They were so bright they looked almost feverish. Were they hazel? Green? Actually, he’d never seen a color quite like them, almost golden, but flecked with chips of jade and tourmaline.

“Claire?”

Susannah spoke without looking away from Romano. Her heart was banging in her chest, but her voice was clipped. Claire’s, on the other hand, was a paper-thin whisper.

“Y-yes?”

“Call security.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Call security. Tell them we have an intruder.”

“Susannah.” Claire moved quickly to her friend’s side. “Suze, listen—”

“If you won’t do it,” Susannah said, her eyes never leaving Romano’s face, “I will. Hand me the phone.”

“Oh, Suze. Suze, you’ve got to lis—”

Susannah snatched up the telephone “Last chance, Mr. Romano. Either you explain your unwanted, uninvited presence in these offices, or I’ll have you thrown out. Do I make myself clear?”

“Perfectly.”

“Well?”

He smiled, stepped from behind the table and leaned a hip against the wall. She’d been right, she thought, dazed You could probably use his shoes for mirrors.

“I own them.”

Susannah blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“These offices. This room” He lifted his hand and waved it nonchalantly through the air. “I own it all, Miss Clinton.”

“My name is—Own it how? Mr. Elerbee sold out to Update Publications.”

“Yes, that’s right. And I am Update.” He grinned, and she could see he was enjoying this. “What’s the matter, Miss Clinton? Don’t you like surprises?”