All Tied Up

He should’ve gone home, but his car was parked at Anton’s Galleria office, and the thought of taking a cab, only to reheat Chinese take-out or order fresh once he arrived, held little appeal. He usually didn’t hang with the guys away from the soccer field. But tonight he’d thought, why not?

Emptying the longneck he’d spent the last ten minutes nursing, Leo leaned back on a tall green pillar half as wide in the center as it was on either end. His vantage point near the kitchen kept him out of the way, but gave him a very clear view of Macy’s goings-on.

He’d overheard fragments of her post-kiss conversation with Lauren, and apparently his arrival had complicated her plans. He couldn’t say he was overly concerned. But, after hearing that, he’d thought about skipping the rest of the evening.

He’d even pulled out his phone to dial Yellow Cab until he’d realized exactly how far out of her way Macy was going to avoid him. When he’d brushed up behind her to reach for this beer, she’d stiffened, then scurried off to organize the game that was apparently the purpose of the evening’s get-together.

Interesting, for a woman not attracted to his…challenge.

“Don’t sweat it. She always wins, you know.”

Leo spared Anton a brief glance before returning to his study of Macy. Why was everyone so sure she had won? It wasn’t as if Leo had cried uncle. “She’s done that to you?”

“Not the smile thing, but, yeah. She convinced me I had a mosquito buzzing around my face. Her deal was that I’d scratch this one spot at the corner of my nose. By the time she was finished, I’d damn near clawed my eyes out.”

Leo chuckled under his breath. “She does have…something, doesn’t she?”

Shoving both hands down in his pockets, Anton nodded. “Most of that something never gets noticed until she climbs up into your lap, if you know what I mean.”

Leo knew exactly. He cleared his throat. “Yeah, well, it’s been fun, but I’ve got a load of work waiting at the office. I think I’ll get the hell outta here.”

“Think again. Stick around here and you may get a second chance to give Macy Webb a taste of her own medicine.”

“Isn’t that what I just did?”

Anton laughed and leaned one shoulder into the same green pillar. “I wouldn’t go that far. But I gotta say, you’re the first one to shut her up using your own mouth.”

“Hmm.” A murmur was all Leo could manage without Anton’s comment bringing to mind the taste of Macy’s lips and tongue, the smooth edge of her teeth, the warmth of her body in his lap.

“Yeah, Lauren was freaking out. I don’t think she’s ever seen Macy kiss anyone quite like that.”

“Like what?” Leo absently asked, then wished he hadn’t.

“The woman looked like she wanted to swallow you whole, man.” Anton lifted a brow as the conversation took a turn for the prurient. “And I don’t think she planned to stop with your tongue.”

“Hmm.” This time Leo’s reticence to respond was rooted in an irritation he had no reason to feel. The kiss had been public; Anton had been a witness. The other man had every right to his curiosity.

It was Leo’s strange desire to retain his privacy that gave significance to an act that had none.

None. The kiss had been nothing but part of a game.

“I gotta say, seeing Macy come unglued like that…” Anton shook his head. “That was some serious shit.”

Leo’s beer bottle was empty. He needed to make up his mind. Should he stay or go? He glanced toward Macy, watched her expression, the childlike enchantment as she joked with Sydney and Lauren. “She doesn’t look old enough for serious.”

“I think that’s a big part of the problem.”

“Her looks?” Leo frowned. Until tonight, until he’d seen her up close and gotten personal, he would’ve agreed. She’d been just another face, one he’d never noticed because he’d always gone for striking instead of subtle, obvious instead of rare.

“No, man. Not her looks. Well, yeah. I guess it is her looks.” Anton shrugged off the quandary. “She’s cute and all that, but she doesn’t look like she’s older than eighteen.”

Leo nodded in agreement and forgave himself the silent lie. After all, he’d just looked into the wild child’s eyes, and what he’d seen was as old as the Garden of Eden, as seductive as the serpent, as ripe as the forbidden fruit.

He made his decision. He wasn’t going anywhere.

Not just yet.

3

WHILE LAUREN ADJUSTED one row of track lighting to spotlight the loft’s hardwood floor, Macy prepared to distribute the sheets of pink and blue paper she’d printed earlier today.

Five for the girls, five for the boys. Ten unique lists for her newest gIRL gAMES adventure.

A scavenger hunt.

An after-hours, adults-only, you-find-mine-I’ll-find-yours kind of contest.

Macy was certain she’d never conceived a more brilliant idea. And if all went according to plan, this month’s edition of gIRL gAMES might possibly be the best yet.

Which would mean more reader feedback. More assignments from Sydney. More input from Lauren on column design.

Hmm. Hoist with her own petard.

Well, she couldn’t worry overly much at the moment. Her focus group had to first pull off this game without killing each other. And she had to remember that tumbling Leo Redding was not the point of play.

It didn’t matter that his hands were the hands of her fantasy. Or that she’d never been more thoroughly kissed. Physical attraction wasn’t the problem. She was still trying to decide if she liked the man. A decision that would have to wait, because it was time to get on with the evening’s main game.

Careers left all of her crew, herself included, little time to party. Her column, gIRL gAMES, was meant to provide the Web site’s readers with social alternatives to bars and clubs.

Yet none of her previous game ideas had offered her scavenger hunt’s possibilities for girl-meets-boy, up-close-and-personal, one-on-one contact.

From a ticklish spot to an erogenous zone to a kinky fetish, the lists for the hunt included additional items equally intimate and more intense.

And the list she’d be assigning herself held a grouping of search items as random as those to be chosen by everyone else in the room.

Well, almost everyone else in the room.

Only Lauren and Anton’s items had been specifically designed. Which made sense, since it was Lauren and Anton’s interaction of late that had sparked the idea for the game.

As much as Macy’s best friend adored her boyfriend and vice versa, elements of the seemingly perfect relationship struck Macy as anything but. And she was doing what any best friend should do under the circumstances. Butting in.

She’d put together two fiercely personal lists, the purpose of which was to put both Lauren and Anton through, well, through hell if the couple truly gave the game their all.

Macy would just have to keep her fingers crossed that she’d be forgiven the sabotage should the plan blow up in her face.

Lists in hand, she wound her way through the center of the loft. She slapped a blue list against Jess Morgan’s reluctantly offered palm, then climbed over Anton’s long legs, looking up to in time catch Jess unfolding his folded blue paper.

“You! Stop!” She first pinned Jess, then Anton, with the sharpest eye daggers she could throw. “Don’t even think about looking until I say so.”

Jess slowly closed his half-opened sheet and, holding the list behind his head in laced fingers, began to whistle.

Anton, guilty until proven innocent, his list in his lap, held up both empty hands. “Don’t think about looking where? At what? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Good.” Macy leaned down and dropped a kiss on the top of his head of unruly, sun-bleached curls. “I’ll explain everything in a minute. And don’t think that just because I have my back turned I’m not keeping an eye on you two.”

With that, she moved on, scrambling over feet and furniture to reach the three women whose fate she didn’t already know. Sydney tentatively accepted the pink list Macy offered. Melanie was more wary, finally choosing one of the last two sheets. Chloe scooted to the far side of the plaid chair and had to be coerced.

“Hey.” Macy nudged her hip into Chloe’s shoulder. “We’re all in this girl business together, remember? You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours?”

Tapping the folded edge of her list on her pink-denim-clad knee, Chloe eyed Macy thoroughly from head to toe.

“Let’s see. My departments are cosmetics and accessories. I don’t see where you’re scratching much of my anything, sugar. You have a great natural look, but it’s not helping my numbers.”

“For your information, Miss Cosmetics and Accessories, this natural look costs me a fortune. Your moisturizers and oils and exfoliators and cleansers do not come cheap.”

With a tilt of her head, Chloe acquiesced. “Okay. I’ll give you the cosmetics. But you’re still short-changing me on the accessories.”

Macy stood, stuck out her tongue. “What can I say? It’s hard to accessorize perfection.”

“Before you go?” Ignoring the groans, Macy looked back at Sydney, who held up her folded list. “We do what with this?”

“Oh, right. Just hold on to it. Don’t look. I’ll give instructions to everyone at the same time.”

And with that she glanced across the main room where, circled like a wagon train around the washtub of longnecks, stood the last of her three confirmed bachelors. Blowing out a long breath, she headed that way, presenting the three remaining sheets of blue paper to Eric, Leo and Ray.

“C’mon, guys. Pick a card. Any card.” There were no takers the first time out, so she tried again. “I’m only offering three options here. That means the man brave enough to pick first has close to a fifty-fifty chance of winding up with the female partner of his choice.”

Eric backed up to sit on the arm of the sofa, lifting one brow, but making no further move. Rolling her eyes, Macy took matters into her own hands, folding one of the lists over the neckband of his shirt.

Definitely time to look for a new line of work, she thought, handing one list to Ray and, to Leo, the last.

He took his time slipping it from her fingers. Way too much time, because it was a simple piece of paper and nothing as intimate or suggestive as his slow-motion withdrawal would indicate.

It wasn’t like his long strong fingers were reaching for hers, though she hadn’t yet forgotten their texture or the trail of warmth his touch left behind on her skin.

It wasn’t like the paper held a private invitation, an indecent proposal, a back-alley proposition.

It wasn’t like he was taking anything she hadn’t offered him freely. Was there anything she wouldn’t offer him freely?

She shook off the thought, found what remained of her brain. “Sorry, Leo. Looks like you’re stuck with long odds.”

He looked down at his hands instead of her way, folded the list and tucked the sheet of blue paper into the breast pocket of his crisp white shirt. “Guess I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up.”

“Hopes up?”

“About playing with you again.” This time he met her gaze, a calculated move, his eyes seeking hers and delving deep, beyond the surface of the game and into territory that was personal and intimate, a part of herself she rarely shared.

Oh, the way he looked at her. Oh, the way he said “again.” A five-letter, two-syllable word that sounded like too much of a good time to turn down now that she knew how he kissed.

She heaved a regretful sigh, part sound effects, part honest bafflement over what he was making her feel. “If that’s the case, you have no one to blame but yourself.”

“How so?”

“This is my game, remember? I could’ve made sure we ended up on the same team if I’d known you were so anxious for my company.”

“Not above cheating?”

“A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.” She shrugged, then nodded toward the list he’d stashed away. “Good luck.”

“Thanks,” Leo replied. “But I can hold my own.”

“Against these women?” Macy glanced briefly around the room. Leo truly had no idea who he was up against. “I wouldn’t congratulate myself just yet.”

She left him with a wink and then addressed the room, pulling her numbered pink list from the waistband of her capris. “Okay. Here’s how this month’s game works. The sheets of paper each of you hold are numbered from one to five. Inside you’ll find an itemized list you’ll need for the game.”

“What kind of list?” asked Melanie.

“What kind of game?” asked Ray.

“Patience, my children. Patience. Now, as I’m sure you’ve already guessed by my not so subtle color scheme, tonight’s game involves pairing all of us into five male-and-female teams.

“Okay, this is how we play.” Taking a reluctant Eric’s hand, she guided him to the spotlighted foyer, opened the first fold of his list and pointed to the number printed at the top.

“Two. Which means you stand in the second circle and wait for the female half of your team. Now, if I happen to have number two—” she lifted one edge of her sheet “—which I do not, you and I would be partners. I have number three, so I’ll stand here in the third circle.”

Anton pushed up from his usual place on the sofa. “C’mon, Macy. This spotlight business is too over the top.”

A spoilsport in every bunch. “Of course it is. That’s what makes this so much fun.”

“Fun in whose opinion?” grumbled Eric.

Having cheated and checked his number early, Anton moved into the fifth spotlight. “So, what happens once we all pair off? Uh, team up,” he corrected when Eric let out a pained, hand-to-throat choking groan. “Sorry, Eric.”

Macy glanced at Eric, glared at Anton, blew out a breath to bolster her rapidly dwindling patience with the male species.

“If you two are through? Thank you. Now, on each sheet of paper is a list. A list for my gIRL gAMES…scavenger hunt!” The groans barely got off the ground before Macy hurried to squash them. “A kinky, suggestive, sexy and one-hundred-percent adult scavenger hunt.”

“I’m not sure what you have in mind here, Macy, but I don’t plan to visit any sex shops to find whatever it is you’ve come up with for these lists. I don’t care how popular your columns are.” That said, Sydney crossed her arms.

“Give me a little credit, Sydney. This game may be more daring than most, but sex shops? I think we can all flex our imagination beyond the obvious. After all, the brain is the body’s true sex organ.”

“Maybe your true sex organ,” said the holder of blue number two. “Mine’s a few feet lower on my body.”

Macy groaned. “Only a man could made such a crass point.”

“I’ll show you a crass point.”

Chloe diffused the ticking bomb of Macy’s sanity by flashing a pink number two and moving into Eric’s spotlight. “You very well may be showing me, sugar, since it looks like I have your number.”

Eric all but rubbed his hands together with glee. “Sexy and kinky in the flesh. We’re either going to kick ass as a team or else…” His hand-rubbing slowed.

“Or else?” Chloe prompted.

“Or else you’ll be busting my chops.”

Macy felt the corners of her mouth pull into a blossoming grin. Petard or not, she was definitely brilliant. Or maybe just marginally brilliant, she amended, catching Leo Redding’s eye as he watched her watch her number two couple.

Eric and Chloe were already shooting off the first round of sparks due to her cleverly designed plan. But with the match-up of the pink and blue number twos, and Anton and Lauren making up couple number five…Oh, please.

Surely she hadn’t done what she’d just done. What Leo’s expression was confirming she’d done. “I hope none of the rest of you have stooped so low as to cheat. And peek at your numbers before it’s your turn.”

“I did! I did!” Lauren practically hopped into Anton’s circle, interweaving her feet and her legs with his and wrapping both arms around his neck. Anton hugged her back, and a shadow could not have slipped between the two lovers’ bodies.

“This isn’t Twister, you know,” Macy chided. “You don’t have to keep all four of your feet in the circle.”

“But it’s so much more fun this way.” Lauren giggled, snuggling closer to the man who’d already managed to get his hands beneath the flowing fabric of her blouse.

Oh, well, Macy thought. The pair might as well enjoy the calm before the storm. She sighed, remembered Leo, sighed again. “Since no one is paying any attention to my directions, we can do this one of two ways. We either all cheat and peek, or I finish telling you how this works and we go from there.”

“I vote to cheat and peek.” Melanie cast her ballot with one raised hand.

“I second that,” said Sydney.

“Ditto,” Ray chimed in.

Jess nodded. “Let’s do it.”

Macy turned to Leo and waited. “I suppose you share their lemming mind-set?”

“Share? No. Take advantage of? Sure.” He slowly lifted his beer, took a drink, lowered the bottle, maintaining eye contact through the entire slow-motion process.

Did every move he made have to draw her gaze until she hovered on the verge of drooling? She narrowed her eyes. “Bet you don’t know the difference between a lawyer and a vulture.”

“A vulture can’t take off his wing tips.”

Eric laughed before Chloe could stop him. “Give it up, Macy. He’s got you beat.”

Macy ignored Eric’s outburst as Leo once again downed a swallow of beer, calling her attention to his bare forearms and the elegantly expensive, chrome-cased watch fastened to his wrist with a glossy, black leather band.

Fashioned from the hide of a courtroom opponent, no doubt. “You’ve rolled up your sleeves, I see. Ready to sling mud?”

“Ready to get as dirty as I have to.”

Grr, but he was good. Too damn good for her damn good. “Okay, then. If everyone’s in agreement, let’s see who ends up with whom.”

“I like the end of my whom.” Eric leaned down and nuzzled Chloe’s nape.

She glanced back over her shoulder. “I may be standing here with my ass in your lap, but that doesn’t mean you’ll be ending up with anything that belongs to me.”

Eric straightened and squirmed. “How long do we have to stand here anyway, Macy? I’m afraid my backup singers are in danger.”

Reaching up to pat his cheek, Chloe answered, “Don’t ask me to adjust your microphone, and we’ll get along just fine.”

For a minute, Macy felt sorry for Eric. Then her sympathies switched to Chloe. The two were proof positive of that thinly drawn line between love and hate.

Sydney chose that moment to move into circle one. And, not wanting to be the only woman left standing with the boys, Melanie stepped beneath the fourth spotlight.

Ray, Jess and Leo exchanged glances of shared male misery. Ray bit the first bullet, glanced at the number on his sheet and took his place beside Sydney.

His rugged olive-hued brawn and broad shoulders created an interesting backdrop for Sydney’s classic elegance. The two made a perfect couple, and Macy felt a giddy twinge. At least until, in the next second, she registered the remaining odds.

She wouldn’t think about it. She wouldn’t panic. Not until she knew for sure…Okay, it was time to panic. Because as Jess stepped in beside Melanie, Leo took up his position at Macy’s back.

The man whose eyes she wanted to gouge out, whose feathers she wanted to ruffle and pluck, whose clothes she wanted to strip from his body in order to learn the scent of his intimate skin, was going to be her partner.

“Okay,” she said, and her voice squeaked, so she started again. “Okay. This is how this works. The first rule is that you never show your partner the items on your list. Guard it with your life.”

“Got it,” Jess stated.

And Melanie, not to be outmaneuvered by her mate, added, “That’s easy.”

So far, so good. Macy opened her mouth to start again—only to have her next words cut off by Eric’s loud, “Wait a minute here. This doesn’t make any sense. What’s the point of working in teams if this isn’t about teamwork?”

Leave it to the sports fanatic to overanalyze the rules of her game. “What’s the point of a game of chess? A game of racquetball? A one-on-one game of hoops?”

The stadium lights dawned in Eric’s bright blue eyes. “One-on-one, eh? Well, why didn’t you say so earlier?”

Definitely the wrong comeback to make when surrounded by five of the six gIRL-gEAR women, starting with Macy on his left.

Her hands found a perch on her hips. “Because you didn’t stop with the smart-ass interruptions long enough for me to explain?”

Melanie chimed in next. “Because you didn’t trust a woman to come up with a game that would interest a man?”

“Because you didn’t give a woman credit for having an original thought?” Lauren. Always one to support her best friend.

And Sydney. “Because you didn’t think a woman’s competitive streak could really be a mile wide?”

“Because, when it comes to sports, you don’t listen to anyone who doesn’t have a penis?”

The potshot volley, having begun in the third circle, continued down the line—the final salvo too close for Eric’s comfort. At Chloe’s question, he took a step back and raised both hands in surrender.

“Okay, okay. I give. Macy, you’re brilliant.” He offered her a deferential bow. “Abso-friggin-lutely brilliant.”

“And here I thought you’d never notice.” She was beginning to think no one would notice. That she’d been imagining her brilliance alone all this time. The way things had been going this evening, in fact, she felt positively unbrilliant.

So, of course, Leo chose that moment to move in closer, nudging his hip to her backside, reminding her of the pickle her unbrilliance had gotten her into. Here she was, stuck playing a game of her own making with a partner more foe than friend—a petard of an entirely different nature.

His breath brushed the hairs at Macy’s nape. She ignored the sensation, chalked up the contact to his proximity and not to any underhanded attempt to move his first pawn—though she did reserve the right to change her mind and retract the benefit of the doubt.

She exhaled and regained her train of thought. “Okay. Where was I?”

“Guarding our lists with our lives,” he reminded her.

“Right. It’s also important that once you start finding the items on your lists, you keep your findings to yourself. This is not a team effort. One-on-one, remember? The prize goes to only one of you. One of us. Whatever.”

“Anyway, when we get together next month, the one who has found the most items on his or her individual list will be off sailing the Seven Seas. Or at least the Caribbean.” Sensing a cheater at her back, she crushed her paper to her chest.

“Now, I don’t expect it will take anyone the entire thirty days to finish. There might even be some of you who finish up tonight.” She sent a pointed glance down the row toward Anton and Lauren. “But Sydney won’t be awarding the prize until next month’s game night.”

“And I suppose we have to be present to win?”

Macy winked at Ray. “I like the way you think.”

Eric had finally had enough. “Can we look now or what?”

“In a minute.” The crucial moment had arrived. Her players were pumped and primed. Now not to lose them in the details. She pinched together the pads of her index finger and thumb. “Just one more little itty-bitty thing to mention.”

“Uh-oh,” echoed in tones from soprano to bass.

“The items on your list? The kinky, suggestive, sexy and one-hundred-percent-adult items?”

“I told you, Macy. No sex shops.”

Macy was definitely going to have to introduce Sydney to the joys of a certain store she’d discovered on lower Westheimer.

“Actually, Syd, none of the things on your list could be purchased even if you wanted to buy them. Well, I suppose that’s not exactly true, but I’m not going to go there.”

Macy waved away the thought of offering payment to Leo Redding, and dropped the bomb. “You see, the source of every item you’ll need to find to win the scavenger hunt belongs to the member of the opposite sex in your spotlight.”