Striptease

“Batteries?” The newest partner and current vice president of cosmetics and accessories, Annabel “Poe” Lee, toyed with the white ribbon she’d yet to pull from her gift. “A month alone with Anton Neville and you packed batteries? What is wrong with this picture?”

Melanie worked the paper loose from her present, holding her breath and hoping no one would mention the fact that when Lauren and Anton split up last year, he’d spent those few weeks dating Poe.

And though Melanie hadn’t been along on the group vacation where the two feuding lovers got their act back together, she’d heard through the grapevine that Poe had laid her intentions to pursue Anton on the line—the very wake-up call Lauren had needed.

“Poe, we really are going to have to find you a man.” Still dealing with the initial craziness of launching the gUIDANCE gIRL mentoring program, Chloe Zuniga diffused the bomb. “You’ve clearly been too long without or you would remember how much fun you can have with a man and a vibrator at the same time.”

“Speaking from personal experience, Chloe dear?” Poe’s bow-shaped mouth remained unsmiling even as her dark, almond-shaped eyes glittered brightly.

“Yes, Eric and I have a great sex life, thanks for asking.” Chloe gave her one-time nemesis, now very good friend, a withering look, then blew Lauren a thank-you kiss and fastened a pink quartz bracelet around her wrist. “But I’m talking about Lauren and Anton.”

“Hey, now.” Lauren frowned. “I’m not sure everyone needs to know the details of my married sex life.”

“As if it’s any different than your single sex life,” Macy teased, looping the slender silver chain around her ankle.

“You might want to be careful there, Ms. Webb.” Lauren leaned across the conference room table and arched both shapely brows. “I doubt there’s a ladies’ room in the city that hasn’t witnessed your Mr. Redding dropping his pants.”

From the head of the room, Sydney groaned. “Must we talk about Leo’s…pants?”

“Or his lack thereof?” Melanie pushed her glasses up her nose and laughed. “You need to learn to knock, Syd. That’ll save you from any future, uh, exposure should Macy and Leo decide they can’t wait till they get home.”

“Last year’s open house incident was enough, Mel. I really didn’t need the reminder.” Sydney cringed while draping her new hand-painted silk scarf over one shoulder. “Now, I hate to be the bad guy here, but are we almost finished?”

“C’mon, Syd. How often do we get to marry off a partner?” Chloe asked.

“That’s the first thing I want to talk about. These last few months have been insane with the never-ending showers and the bachelorette party and the wedding and Lauren out for a month-long honeymoon. So…” Sydney paused, made sure she had everyone’s attention “…no more weddings allowed. With, of course, the exception of my marriage to Ray.”

“Sydney!”

“Oh my gawd! Ray proposed!”

“When?”

Sydney waved off the burst of rapid-fire comments. “No date. No date. Just…eventually. But the rest of you can forget it. The company can’t afford but one or two of these extended vacations.”

“Hear, hear,” Melanie seconded.

She pulled the last of the wrapping from her box as, with a twist of her mouth, Sydney went on to add, “And now that Ray has popped the question, I’m calling dibs on the second—”

“Lauren! This is absolutely gorgeous! Oh, Syd, I’m sorry. But this…” Melanie really hadn’t meant to shriek, or to cut off the boss, but she’d opened Lauren’s gift and…and…this was totally unreal! “I can’t believe it. I know this sculptor, and you spent way too much money.”

“No, I didn’t,” Lauren stated, as Melanie turned the frosted-glass figurine over and around in her hands. “I found it in a tiny antique shop. A secondhand place. I don’t think they knew what they had. But I knew you had to have it.”

The female nude was sculpted in the style of Lalique. The piece was absolutely exquisite, the woman kneeling with her hands spread over her belly beneath her bare breasts, her head tossed back and her eyes closed.

Yet it fit in the palm of Melanie’s hand. “You know I’m going to kill myself if I break this before I get it home.”

Lauren grinned. “If it made it safely all the way from Ireland, I imagine you can make it from here to Midtown.”

The rest of the women got up to see the delicate piece of glasswork, oohing and aahing in appreciation, though no one could possibly value the representation the way Melanie did. “This is going to look so good in my shadow box.”

“Do you have nude men in your shadow box?” Poe pinned her black-marble-and-marcasite brooch to the collar of her jade-green silk blazer. “Or do you prefer women?”

Melanie refused to jump at Poe’s bait. “I know this may come as a shock, but I really do know what to do with a penis.”

“I don’t know, Mel.” Chloe got in line behind Poe to give Lauren a hug. “Things might’ve changed since last time you had one. Evolution moves faster than you do when it comes to the mating process. You’re putting in way too many hours at the office to have a love life.”

“Chloe’s right,” Poe unexpectedly added. “All work and no foreplay leads to burnout.”

“Very funny,” Melanie said, though it wasn’t funny at all because the conversation had brought Jacob Faulkner and his, uh, attributes to mind, and she’d thought about him too many times already since the wedding. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll wait for Sydney to get married before I go postal on all of you.”

Her joke fell curiously flat. Looking at the serious faces all around, Melanie realized her friends were truly concerned. How ridiculous! She was fine, though a bit disillusioned.

Her partners seemed to have forgotten the percentages of perspiration and inspiration demanded by success. Besides, someone had to sweat out the declining e-tail market. She, for one, had financial obligations to meet.

Sydney broke the strained silence first. “All right, ladies.” She glanced around the room. “Now that everyone has thanked Lauren properly and been brought up to date on Mel’s familiarity with the male anatomy, I need to give you an update on the documentary in which we’ve been selected to participate. I’ve had the lawyers go over all the release forms, contracts, yadda, yadda, and the ball is finally in motion.”

Kinsey groaned. “Please, Syd. Do we really have to go through with this? I’m not the least bit photogenic and would really prefer not to share that fact with all of America.”

“All of America?” Chloe shook her head. “Sugar, you are way too optimistic. It’s a series on female entrepreneurs, remember? We’ll be lucky to show up on PBS.”

Sydney waited for the silliness to subside. “The producers have contracted a local production company to work with the show’s host, Ann Russell. She’ll be meeting with each of us over the next few days and setting up her schedule for interviews in the office and for the at-home segments, as well. Any questions?”

Sigh. A local production company. Yes, there was more than one. But there was only one best. And even that one had more than one cameraman. But once again only one best. And Melanie knew that when it came to gIRL-gEAR, Sydney Ford never settled for less.

Melanie’s good-mood balloon deflated. She’d known two months ago that the man was destined to cause her grief. She just hadn’t thought the probability of working with Jacob Faulkner again would come so soon. And what had Sydney said? At-home segments?

She rubbed her thumb over the smooth, frosted glass in her hand. “Who’s contracted to do the filming?”

“Avatare Productions.”

Lauren jumped to the edge of her seat. “Hey, they did my wedding video. Excellent choice, Syd. Anton and I finally watched the tape Sunday afternoon and the edits were amazing. Brought tears to my eyes, seeing it all as if it was happening again.”

“I didn’t choose them but after witnessing the crew in action at the wedding and reception, I did suggest to the producers that they request the same cameraman who ran the show.” Sydney frowned. “I never did catch his name.”

“Jacob Faulkner,” Melanie said, and all eyes turned her way.

2

SITTING BEHIND THE DESK in her black-and-white office and feeling uncharacteristically frustrated, Melanie flipped through the catalog of gift items left by the sales rep who’d stopped by the office this morning. The list of possibilities she’d jotted on her legal pad was decidedly short.

She’d promised to get back to him within the week, but knew it wasn’t going to happen. Just like last year, her gOODIE gIRL gift line wasn’t hurting for product. What she was desperate to find was merchandise for gIZMO gIRL’s electronic stock.

Affordable, practical and, yes, admittedly trendy items. So many of the gIRL-gEAR Web site visitors were teens with no source of income save for an allowance or baby-sitting money or, at the most, what they earned working after school for minimum wage.

And Melanie was having the worst time pinning down workable inventory. Her target price bracket meant sales reps offered her cutesy with no substance or functional with no style. She wanted it all. Her customers, no matter their age or earnings, deserved it all. And, she admitted, the challenge of providing it was one of her favorite parts of the job.

Not every girl was completely appearance or fashion conscious, yet plenty were—and were turned off by any design that hinted at boring practicality. And even if there was no consensus on what constituted cool, the pressure to conform was still hard to escape.

Melanie had been lucky in that her own early ventures into geekhood had met with moderate peer acceptance. Though she’d promised her two best friends that she was just as excited as they were about cheerleading, she’d ended up blowing off too many practices and had been kicked off the squad.

Her girlfriends had thought she was out of her mind, preferring to spend her time in the career center’s computer lab, but the guys she’d hung with thought she was cool, if a little bit weird. Most were fairly weird themselves, outcasts and loners, but smart as hell. Ambitious, too. She’d liked that about them. Liked it a lot.

She’d enjoyed reaping the experience of their knowledge and sharing her own, as well as showing them up whenever possible—a good little feminist in the making. One as secure in her ability to write a batch file as her cheerleading buds had been in their tumbling skills.

And she owed that confidence to her mother and her grandmother, the two women who’d raised her. They’d taught her not to believe anyone who tried to convince her that it was a man’s world, after all. Taught her that a smart woman never let on that she held the upper hand. Keeping the true balance of power under lock and key made for a much more…satisfying outcome.

Melanie leaned back in her office chair and used the eraser end of her pencil to push her glasses back into place. Grinning solely for her own benefit, she admitted to loving the idea of leading a guy around by the…nose and having him clueless that he wasn’t in charge.

Then she grimaced. To accomplish that feat she’d need a major personality makeover, because she didn’t have whatever that thing was that turned men into mindless mush. She was too in-your-face, and their face wasn’t where most guys wanted a woman to be.

Swiveling her chair to the left, she studied the frosted-glass figurine that had yet to make it to the shadow box in her bedroom. For the moment, it sat on a shelf of the bookcase built into her office wall. The statuette epitomized what guys wanted.

The stylish elegance of Sydney Ford. The sweet femininity of Lauren Neville. The uninhibited nature of Macy Webb. The curvaceous sort of earth-mother figure with which Chloe Zuniga had been blessed.

The very same one Melanie would love to have had if genetics hadn’t predetermined she be built like a board. Well, not a board, exactly. She did have all the requisite spheres and orbs. But where Chloe was lush, Melanie was simply…spare.

She supposed her boyish figure, her left-brain thinking and her reputation for saying what needed to be said made a perfect combination. And if a certain arrogant cameramen had a problem with a woman who knew her own mind, that was too damn bad.

Stabbing the pencil’s eraser at the tip of her nose, she swore she would not sign any of Sydney’s release forms or contracts if Avatare honored her request and assigned the documentary shoot to that annoying Jacob Faulkner.

Uh-uh. No way. Melanie had no desire to spend the next few weeks working in close quarters with a man who had nothing more going for him than the fact that he revved her up, making her want to take his, uh, stick shift for a spin—

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to play with sharp objects? Might poke your eye out, pierce your jugular, jam it up your nose and into your brain. Stuff like that.”

Well, well, well. Nightmares did come true. She swiveled her chair around to face the doorway, where he was standing. No, not standing. Slouching. Lazy as a slug. Gorgeous as a summer afternoon with nothing to do.

Her chest grew tight as she struggled to breathe normally. He wore another black T-shirt today, this one more structured, designer quality, tucked into a pair of khakis that fit him even better than had the dark indigo jeans. His abs were absolutely incredible.

Oh, but life was unfair. He had his arms crossed over his chest, his shoulder against the doorjamb, one ankle over the other and the toe of that black biker boot braced on the floor. She wanted to slam the door in his face only slightly less than she wanted to run her tongue down the center of his torso.

“Don’t move,” she ordered, taking aim with one eye and throwing the pencil dartlike toward him. The point caught him on a downward arc and barely even grazed his chest. “Damn. I was hoping that would fly up your nose and into your brain.”

A videotape held in one hand, Jacob bent to pick up the pencil, straightened and gave Melanie a look that was half smirk and half smile. “I wasn’t sure you credited me with having a brain.”

Slowly, she closed the useless gift catalog. Her concentration had been shot before he showed up. Now it lay gasping on the ground. Even so. He might have been put on this earth to ruin her life, but he was not going to ruin what was left of her day.

Now, now. It’s hardly his fault you can’t get him out of your mind. It wasn’t even his fault for having gotten under her skin, and that was the crux of her problem. She was the one at fault here—a fact she hated facing, a weakness she wanted to deny. She knew better than to be taken in by a cocky, bad boy attitude and a body to make a woman weep.

What had they been talking about, anyway? His total lack of brains?

“Brains I can’t speak to,” she said. “But I can credit you with having a good eye. Perception, placement, nuances of lighting that most people miss. Stuff like that.” She shrugged, figuring she’d just appeased his ego, though she’d only been speaking the truth.

“A rather backhanded compliment, but I’ll take it.” He crossed the office’s trademark deep purple carpet to return the pencil. “Here. In case you want to give it another shot.”

She twirled the pencil between her thumbs and index fingers while pretending to consider, then shook her head. “Bad idea. Might poke an eye out this time. And you need both, considering you’ve apparently been assigned to tape our documentary.”

“I wondered how you’d feel about that.” He balanced the video cassette on its side along the front edge of her desk. “You weren’t too thrilled last time you came face-to-face with my camera. Guess I can’t expect that to have changed.”

“Except for one crucial thing.” She nodded toward the cassette. “Now that I’ve seen Lauren’s wedding video I can’t argue with your skill.” Which was a shame, really, since a verbal set down might get him out of her personal space so she could think. He was way too close, too masculine, too…everything that made him who he was.

Confident. Competent. In total control, she admitted, forcing herself not to sigh. If only he’d shown an inkling of respect for her opinion, her input. But no. Things had to go one hundred percent his way. She stared at him and his ridiculously beautiful eyes—a hazelnut sort of brown hiding behind that dark fringe of coffee-bean-colored lashes. She suddenly wanted a latte in a very bad way.

Melanie blinked, then stiffened her melting spine, noticing how strangely he was staring at her. As if she were an oddity to be studied, or a prospective subject for one of his documentary scenes. Any second he’d discount her skin-and-bones body as a waste of good videotape, her mouthiness as abuse of the audio….

She shoved back her chair, stood and headed for the bookcase, where she slipped the gift catalog into the first in a row of magazine holders. Nerves hummed beneath the nubby taupe sweater she wore bunched at the waist over slim black pants. Nerves solely related to the strain of having to work with this man in a professional capacity when he didn’t know the meaning of the word.

Yes, he got the job done. But the way he went about it—slouching and shrugging on one hand, issuing bossy orders on the other—was going to drive her mad. Madder than the struggle to keep her hands off and her clothes on was making her.

Striving for nonchalance, she turned and waited for his gaze to lift and meet hers. “Why are you here? To deliver an advance warning that you’re back to boss me around?”

“And horn in on your power trip?” He carelessly hitched one shoulder. “Hardly. I’m just doing some preliminary fieldwork.”

“That’s odd.” She leaned back against the bookcase, her hands flat behind her on a hip-high shelf. “You told me you never worked hard at much of anything.”

“So I did.” Jacob left the video on her desk and made his way to stand beside her, leaning one shoulder against the bookcase and tucking his hands into khaki pockets. “Didn’t realize I’d made such an impression.”

And she would make sure he continued in that uninformed state for the next however many weeks he was in and out of the office. “Don’t flatter yourself, Faulkner. I rarely forget much of anything people tell me.”

For a long, drawn-out moment he studied her intently. His expression, brilliantly cutting and sharp, possessed a life of its own, as if he was considering whether or not a response was required. Finally, he reached out, and she thought for a moment he was reaching for her. A ridiculous notion, because he obviously wasn’t, and because that one thought spawned others. And she found herself wondering what she would do if he did.

If he touched her.

If he moved closer, into her space, breathed her air and brushed the curve of her jaw with his lips.

But he didn’t. He picked up the frosted glass figurine behind her instead. He turned it over and around, balanced it on his palm, used his thumb to test the smooth curving surface of the woman’s glass bottom, her breasts, her face lifted to the sky.

Melanie’s fingers itched to take it from him, to return the sculpture to the shelf and move his hands to her body, but she didn’t do the first and certainly wasn’t about to do the second, no matter how quickly her heart tripped or how hot and itchy her skin felt beneath her summer-weight sweater.

She nodded toward the figure. “Lauren brought that back from Ireland. I keep forgetting to take it home.”

“Nice,” he said, before returning it to the shelf. “Why take it home? Why not enjoy it from here?”

“I do,” she admitted, surprising herself and moving her gaze from Jacob’s face to the figurine. “It’s just that I have a collection of this artist’s pieces at home. Keeping the lot of them together seems logical.”

“Do you like his work? Or do you like the work that he does?”

She frowned, shook her head as she looked back at him. “I’m not sure I understand the difference. Or is the redundancy meant to trip me up?”

Jacob took a step closer. “Do you like his eye, his style, maybe the way he interprets emotion in the figures? Or do you just have a thing for naked bodies?”

The way he asked the question, the timbre of his voice, the flash of teasing fire in his eyes made it easy to imagine that his query was more leading and more personal than he’d intended it to be. Then again, he was a guy. What was she thinking? Leading and personal was the name of the game.

Common sense told her to blow him off, but too much time together loomed in their future, and she was loath to give him any inkling of advantage. “Yes, actually, to both. I like his style, the way he portrays the human form. And, as far as having a thing for naked bodies, I can’t think of anything as compelling as a beautiful nude.”

He didn’t even blink. Didn’t even smirk. Did nothing but ask, “Are you talking art here?”

“Doesn’t the best art imitate life?”

He took a minute to consider the scope of her reply, a minute during which he picked up and fondled the figurine. Yes, fondled, because there was no other word to describe the silky glide of his fingers over the lush glass curves.

Melanie told herself to look away; the words fell on her own deaf ears. And she admitted to the almost painful need to know if he would touch her with half as much awe.

“Is your collection gender specific?”

Melanie’s gaze snapped from his beautifully made hands to his face, which was equally compelling in a purely masculine way. “You mean do I only collect females?” When he gave a single nod, she lifted her chin and answered with a simple, “No.”

“Interesting,” he said, and once again shelved the sculpture.

Now that was curious. “Why is my equal opportunity collection interesting?”

It took Jacob a moment to drag his attention to her. Once he did, however, his focus was complete, and the look in his eyes unnerving. Unsettling. And stirring beyond belief.

“I can’t see many women I know collecting male nudes. Most don’t think a man’s body is much to write home about,” he finally said, and while she couldn’t help but wonder what woman had given him that impression, she wondered more what he’d look like out of his clothes.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“About men’s bodies?” He looked thunderstruck…and that tickled her.

“About bodies in general. You have to appreciate what your camera lens captures, or what you see on a video display.” She ran her fingers through the hair at her nape and nervously fluffed. “I can’t believe that you don’t pay attention to bone structure…muscle tone…angles and contours and curves.”

He shoved his hands back into his pockets, an expression of what seemed to be genuine confusion on his face, as if he had never before evaluated what went into his art. “I don’t pull a shot apart like that. For me it’s more about what the overall concept captures.”

“Hmm.” That surprised her. “I would think you’d take all of those individual things into consideration to get the result you want.”

“Nah.” He grimaced playfully. “Too much work.”

How quickly she forgot. “That’s right. And you don’t work hard at much of anything.”

His nod was a perfect and teasing touché. “And you, Miss Steel-Trap Mind, work much too hard at everything. Am I right?”

First her partners, and now this man who didn’t know a thing about her? “Depends on your point of view. I like to think I have ambition. Commitment. Self-discipline.”

He laughed, a deep rumbling sound as attractive as it was annoying. “Self-discipline,” he repeated, as if savoring a secret joke.

“You find that funny?”

“Yeah. Hilarious.”

Right. Hilarious. She was so glad she hadn’t dipped a toe into the sexual waters and said anything she’d look back on and regret.

“Loosen up, Melanie. If you analyze every detail, take everything so seriously, you’ll end up with an ulcer.”

“Or get where I want to go,” she said. His gaze sharpened. She forced an indifferent shrug. “You said yourself we focus on different things, Faulkner. Different strokes for different folks, and all that. I prefer to steer rather than drift through life. What’s it to you?”