More Naughty Than Nice

“You look like you just tumbled out of bed,” Owen murmured

Stevie froze at the image. Tumbling out of bed… Owen Dasher half-naked amidst tangled sheets, extending a hand to reel her back in. Heat suffused her cheeks.

“No… I just need to get dressed.” She pulled the skimpy robe tighter around her.

“I see.” But his eyes were glued on her hair now.

“Is there a reason you’re staring?”

“No…it’s just that—” He moved closer, winding a few tendrils around his fingers.

Stevie held her breath. Her breasts rose and fell against the cool silk, her nipples peaking in the chilly room. She knew he wanted to kiss her, wanted to slip his hands inside her robe.

But instead he said, “It’s very strange. Your hair seems to be, uh, bent….”

Bent? Batting his hand away, she glanced in the nearby mirror. Oh, hell.

Just when Stevie thought she was operating with confidence and pizzazz, he pointed out she had Hee Haw hair. And she was back to square one.

She was past that stage, wasn’t she? Stephanie no more!

With a determined air, Stevie turned to Owen and fluffed her hair. “Let me tell you how much fun it is being…blissfully single.”

Dear Reader,

There’s just something about Christmas. When the snow starts to fall, when you start to hear the carols and see the lights and the trees…and in Chicago, when the Marshall Field’s department store unveils its magical windows, there’s romance in the air right along with the snowflakes.

I hope you’ll enjoy my look at life and love in Chicago during the holidays as much as I enjoyed dreaming it up. I admit it—I was totally smitten with the idea of an irresistible force like Stevie Bliss, author of a sizzling book about using men for a romp or two while never giving your heart, smacking right up against an immovable object like Owen Dasher, a reporter who thinks she’s a total hottie and a total fake. Any other time of the year, Stevie might have been able to resist Owen’s devastating charms, to stay true to her “Blissfully Single” principles. But there’s just something about Christmas….

I hope you’ll pull up your comfiest chair, sit back with a cup of cocoa and enjoy this naughty little ride through the holidays!

Merry Christmas!

Julie Kistler

Books by Julie Kistler

HARLEQUIN TEMPTATION

808—JUST A LITTLE FLING

HARLEQUIN DUETS

19—CALLING MR. RIGHT

30—IN BED WITH THE WILD ONE

73—STAND-IN BRIDE

THE SISTER SWITCH

More Naughty Than Nice

Julie Kistler

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Dedicated to Scott, my best Christmas present ever.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Epilogue

Prologue

ONE WEEK BEFORE CHRISTMAS. Santa on his way. And Stephanie Blanton already knew what she was going to find in her stocking. A big, fat nothing.

“Gonna find out who’s naughty and nice. Yeah, right,” she said in an aggrieved tone. “I have always been so nice. And what did it get me?”

No promotion. Not even a hint of a boyfriend or husband with whom to spend the holidays. Sitting in a crummy, noisy, smoke-filled bar a lousy week before Christmas. And if all that weren’t bad enough, there were these nasty red and green lights dangling over the table, giving her a terrible headache.

“It’s all about expectations,” her best friend Anna put in. “We expect too much from men.”

Stephanie nodded, doing her best to look wise, which wasn’t easy when she’d just slurped down three or four big ol’ cosmopolitans. They were cheery and red, and she and Anna had ordered them to feel more Christmasy. Maybe if their drinks had been carried in by a gorgeous man wearing nothing but a sprig of mistletoe. Maybe then she’d feel more festive.

Or maybe not.

“Men,” she muttered. “Who needs ’em?”

“Y’see, Steph, when Findlay called you into his office, you thought he would ask you to the Christmas party.” Anna hiccuped loudly, but it didn’t stop her lecture. “And that’s where you went wrong. Because guys like Mr. Findlay don’t ask out girls like us. We’re too boring, too dull, too nicey-nicey, too—”

“No, no. That’s not right.” Stephanie sat up straighter on her bar stool, almost falling off but catching herself just in time.

“Which part?”

“I didn’t expect Findlay to ask me to the party.” She shook her head to clear away the cosmopolitan fog. Concentrate, Stephanie. “Okay, Anna, I know you were angling for a date to the office party. But I never…”

Anna sent her a cynical look.

“Okay, so maybe, maybe I had a tiny, little, baby-size kernel of hope that Findlay would ask me,” she said, waving a hand, trying to forget the whole misty fantasy she’d spun for herself, all about gorgeous Mr. Findlay, who everyone knew was being promoted out of the cosmetics group, which meant he would no longer be her direct supervisor and therefore could ask her out with carefree abandon.

And what better time than Christmas? Mistletoe, snowflakes, picking out a tree together, eggnog by candlelight…

It just begged for a relationship. Somehow, in her heart of hearts, she had clung to this myth, this fairy tale, that the reason her boss was calling her into his office was to ask her to accompany him not just to the office party, but home next week to meet Mom and Pop Findlay for Christmas dinner. Something right out of It’s a Wonderful Life.

But the fantasy was gone. Banished. No more. Shaking her head, she finished, “I knew that was way out of the realm of possibility. What I expected—”

“Wait, wait, I know!” Her friend’s eyes widened and she actually giggled, which was not something Anna did very often. “You thought he would knock everything off his desk and then make mad, passionate love to you right then and there, on his desk.”

That sobered her up. “On his desk? Eeeeuww.”

“That’s not it, huh?”

“No way. I have a little more self-respect than that.” Stephanie tightened the holly-flecked scrunchie on her plain brown ponytail, forcing herself to return to her senses. It wasn’t hot sex she’d wanted from Mr. Findlay. No, it was love and affection and companionship, someone to look at her and think she was special and beautiful, worthy of spending his holidays with. All the things that now felt shabby and stupid. Thank goodness she’d never said any of it out loud. Then she might have to jump off a bridge. This way she just had to drown herself in cosmopolitans.

“What I expected,” she explained, “was for him to offer me the promotion to head of the cosmetics group. Because I deserve it. I know it and he knows it.”

“I know it, too,” Anna offered loyally.

Stephanie shook her head. “But, hon, if it wasn’t going to be me, it should’ve been you. You deserve it, too. I’m pretty good when it comes to having a finger on the pulse of our demographic. You, you’re even better.”

“Maybe. But you do a better presentation. Together we’re unbeatable.”

“Except for the fact that we’ve been beaten. By Missy, of all people. Missy.” Her voice filled with contempt as she went on, “At our last meeting for the Glam line, Missy actually proposed strawberry as a flavor for lip gloss. Like strawberry hasn’t been overdone to death. Like strawberry didn’t score in the low twenties with the focus group. Strawberry! It would be funny if it weren’t so sad. You’d think we were marketing to six-year-olds. When he told me he was giving her the promotion, my jaw just dropped. I told him about the strawberry fiasco. And he didn’t even care.”

“That’s the whole reason he likes her,” Anna argued. “Think about it. She’s stupid enough that she will never threaten his job.”

Stephanie shook her head. “Nope. It’s that he wants to boink her.”

“Findlay? He would never do that.”

“Blond, boobs, boinkability. The whole package,” she said gloomily. “It’s so unfair.”

“I still don’t think he would do that,” Anna persisted.

“Oh, I don’t think he would, either. But he wants to. As long as he wants her but doesn’t have her, he’ll keep her around.” Staring into space, she kept a firm grip as she sloshed her wide martini glass back and forth. “See, that’s our problem, Anna. No one wants to boink us. What’s wrong with them, anyway? We’re perfectly boinkable.”

“Perfectly,” Anna agreed.

“Men are such dolts.”

“Totally. Dolt-o-rama.”

“And I just don’t get why a man like Mr. Findlay, who actually has a brain, would be thinking with his…” She trailed off. It was the curse of being a nice girl. She didn’t use words like that in public, even under the influence of alcohol. Missy did, of course. Missy. It was just pathetic. “I still can’t believe he gave her my promotion. Do you know what he said to me? He said, ‘If you want promotions, you need goals, Stephanie. A five-year plan. Marriage—that’s your five-year plan, isn’t it? Ha ha.’ It’s insulting.”

“But you’re as into your career as anyone. Why would he say that?”

She shrugged. “Because I don’t push myself forward, waving my hand, going, me, me, me! I don’t demand promotions or raises or perks or…anything.” Exasperated, she added, “We’re the same, Anna, you and me. We’re not flashy. We’re more in the background. And what’s wrong with being in the background? What’s wrong with being support staff instead of stars?”

“You’re expendable,” Anna said flatly. “Not only do you not get promoted, you get fired.”

“Oh, Anna, I’m so sorry!” Stephanie said quickly. She couldn’t believe she’d been rattling on about her stupid nonpromotion when Anna had it a lot worse. “What they did is so unfair. Goons like Missy make bad choices, the company bleeds accounts right and left, and you get laid off. It makes me want to quit, too.”

“It’s depressing. Especially at Christmas. I don’t mind leaving so much—it’s always bothered me that I didn’t feel really respected, you know? But still…a job’s a job.”

Stephanie leaned closer, trying to exude sympathy. “You’ll find something else in the New Year. You’re too good!”

“I don’t care about getting laid off. I’d have to leave, anyway, after what happened today. It was so humiliating.” Anna exhaled a long breath. “I made a fool of myself over Fred in Accounting.”

“Well, I know you made him a turkey for Thanksgiving, but what’s wrong with that?”

But Anna wasn’t listening. Staring into the depths of her drink, she muttered, “It was after they sent out the layoff e-mails. I was cleaning out my desk, and Fred stopped by. And suddenly I’m thinking, well, okay, I got laid off, but I wasn’t that crazy about working here, anyway, and this could brighten things up. Balance things out, you know? So I’m sitting there, grinning up at him like a goon, with my chubby little fingers crossed. Is he going to ask me? Is he going to ask me? Oh, goodie. He’s opening with the Christmas party. That must mean he’s going to ask me!”

Stephanie leaned in. “So what did he say?”

“He asked me whether I knew any cute girls I could fix him up with at the last minute because he was desperate to have a date for tonight,” Anna said darkly. “Like he never thought, for one second, he could ask me. I made him a turkey for Thanksgiving. With trimmings! And yet even when he’s dying for a date, I’m not good enough. Like what am I, turkey-girl of the Western Hemisphere?”

“Of course not,” Stephanie shot back. “You’re adorable. And wonderful. And much too good for that jerk.”

“Jerk is right. He probably ran right down the hall and asked Missy.”

“Missy,” Stephanie said with a sneer. She was starting to feel outraged all over again. “It’s a joke. We are so much more in tune with the Glam demographic. I mean, you and I, Anna, we know where the 18-to-25-year-old woman eats and drinks, her favorite colors, what CDs and videos she buys, who she wants her hair cut like and what celeb she wants to sleep with and why.”

“We’ve got our demographic cold,” Anna said sadly. “And nobody cares.”

“I care. I care about our demographic. I care about all those poor 18-to-25-year-olds who are going to be pushed into buying the wrong cosmetics because stupid Missy is in charge.” Resolute, Stephanie raised her glass. “I promise you this, Anna. I will not let my demographic down. I will do what I can to combat the Missies of this world, so that the 18-to-25-year-olds coming up will not be forced to wear strawberry lip gloss in the pursuit of the Glam lifestyle.”

“You go, girl!” Anna stopped. “But how are you going to do that?”

Stephanie thought for a long moment, but nothing came to her. Finally, she set her cocktail glass back down on the table. “I don’t know yet.”

Narrowing her eyes, Anna chewed on the end of a maraschino cherry stem. “There has to be some way we can use what we know. We’ve worked so hard.”

“Exactly. And I know we can think of something. We’re smart, we’re committed and we have a lot to say.” Warming to her topic, Stephanie declared, “The women of the twenty-first century need to know what we have to tell them.”

“Like how to turn the tables.” Her friend smiled gleefully. “Like, what are you thinking, girls? You do not need to get hooked up with some loser and let him bring you down.”

“Exactly,” Stephanie said firmly. “Like you should never sit around waiting for a man to call. Better yet, you should sleep with whoever you want and then not take his calls or return his messages. Better the dumper then the dumpee, you know?”

“This is good, Steph!”

“The women of tomorrow should do what they want, when they want. Forget marriage. Forget all those nasty bonds that only benefit the men.” Marriage—that’s your five-year plan, isn’t it, Stephanie? Mr. Findlay’s mocking words played back in her mind, spurring her on. “We’ll come right out and say, hey, bucko, I want to sleep with you, but you can darn well do your own laundry and pick out your own ties and, and—”

“And make your own Thanksgiving turkey!”

“And trimmings! We should never share our money, our closets or our bathrooms—”

“Oooh. Bathrooms. Excellent one,” Anna chimed in. “No fighting over seats up, seats down, which way the toilet paper roll goes, any of that.”

“Because we don’t need them or any of their baggage!”

Anna’s volume rose as she came in with, “You are so right! Not in my bathroom! Not with your baggage! But lots of sex. Everywhere, anywhere, all the time! Sex!”

Stephanie suddenly noticed all the attention they were getting in the crowded bar. Anna went on, blithely indifferent, bouncing on her barstool and slamming a fist into the air, as her voice grew increasingly louder.

“Boink ’em and throw ’em away! Woo-hoo!”

“Anna, maybe you should—”

“No, listen, Steph. We should so do this! A new message for a new century. Gloria Steinem meets Britney Spears. Independence. The bad girl. The independent bad girl! It’s perfect!”

“Okay, well, let’s not run away with ourselves.”

“No, no, you don’t see.” Anna leaned closer. “I don’t have a job, and you’ll be working for Missy. They don’t respect either of us, and we don’t have to put up with that. So you’re going to go back to work on the Monday after New Year’s and tell Findlay that you quit.”

“I am?”

“Yes, you are. And then we’ll have the time. We already have the brains. And we have you.”

“Me?” Stephanie asked dimly. “What does that mean?”

“Well, we can’t go revolutionizing women without a spokesmodel.” Anna crossed her arms over her chest. “Face it. No matter what we do to me, I’m still going to be too short and too square. But you…You’ve got real possibilities. You could be really hot if we put some Tae Bo and a few Glam products where our mouth is. Besides, you’re great at presentations, remember? You pitch like nobody else. This is like one big pitch.”

“But, Anna…” Stephanie peered at her friend. “How did we get from ‘boink ’em and dump ’em’ to me being a spokesmodel? I am so not the type. I’m way too nice!”

“But that’s just it. Inside, I think there is definitely a naughty girl itching to get out.”

“Out of me?”

“You bet! Babe, you and me, we know women ages 18 to 25 like the back of our hand,” Anna argued. “We know exactly who they want to be. So we provide the who. You! I do the marketing, you write the results, you live the results. This is so perfect.”

“Are you talking a how-to?” Stephanie asked. “Or something more like a like a video or a magazine?”

“We’ll figure that out later. Put some focus groups together and see what plays the best.”

“But what’s our message?”

“We’ve already got it. The independent bad girl. Spike your stiletto heel through his heart!”

“That’s a tad violent, isn’t it?”

“Okay, then—sassy sisters doing it for themselves. Guys are for fun, but not for forever.” Anna beamed with satisfaction. “We make up for every Fred in Accounting, for every Mr. Findlay who ever picked a bimbo over the smart girl. We show them all who knows what about marketing. And our demographic eats it up with a spoon.”

Stephanie blinked. She couldn’t quite believe it, but this all made sense. Cold, hard, perfect sense.

“So?” Anna prompted, raising her cosmopolitan in a half toast. “Do we show them what we’re made of?”

Sassy sisters doing it for themselves. She loved it! She could already see the marketing plan, the product tie-ins, the PR possibilities dancing before her eyes.

No more Ms. Nice Girl… Letting out the naughty girl inside…Stephanie smiled with grim satisfaction as she lifted her own glass. “Let’s do it, Anna. Let’s show the world.”

1

A few days before Thanksgiving, three years later

“STEVIE, DO YOU THINK we should ice down your nipples before you go out?”

Stevie Bliss, aka Stephanie Blanton, author of the fabulously successful new book, Blissfully Single, whipped around so fast she almost knocked her assistant over. “Anna, are you nuts?” she whispered. “Ice down my…? You’re kidding, right?”

“Of course I’m not kidding.” Anna fixed her with a stubborn stare. “Nipples happen to be big right now. Our focus group went off the charts when they saw video of J. Lo at the—”

“I’m not doing it,” Stevie interrupted. “Besides, I’m wearing a jacket. Nobody would see them, anyway.”

“Are you sure?” Anna persisted. “We’ve gotten as much play as we’re going to get off the rest of our out-there elements. Maybe one more is just what we need for a new round of press. We’re coming up on the biggest shopping day of the year. We’ve got to keep you in the public eye.”

Stevie almost smacked her. Anna was her best friend, her confidante and her partner in this crazy plot to put them and Blissfully Single on the map, but sometimes she really went too far.

“I’ve done everything you’ve asked, Anna, including the no underwear thing, which I personally think is ridiculous—”

“It killed on the surveys and you know it,” Anna returned. She began to tick items off on her fingers. “For our last element, we gave them a choice of tattoo, various piercings, magenta or blue hair, exposed midriff, exposed thong and even carrying a snake. Nothing scored like going commando.”

“I know, I know.”

“It makes you naughty, outrageous, but not too far over the line. And it gives us an advantage over most men, who are so distracted by what may be going on under there that they forget to feel threatened by the message.”

“I know, I know.”

Sounding just a tad testy, Anna said, “I don’t make this stuff up, Stevie. It’s all in the hard data.”

“And I have done everything so far that skewed right with that data,” Stevie explained patiently. “But the whole thing, the whole Stevie Bliss persona, it’s set now. Set. In stone. Or at least in leather.”

She took a deep breath, looking down at the slick black leather miniskirt and zip jacket, both scandalously expensive, the deeply plunging neckline on the silk camisole underneath, the knee-high boots with three-inch heels… She had never imagined herself strutting around in an outfit like this. And whether you called it a hottie or a ’ho, it certainly made an impact.

She’d tried hard to own this new brazen person she had become. Day in and day out, she continued to try. And she was doing pretty well, if she did say so herself. For the past month, ever since they’d launched this leg of the official media tour for Blissfully Single, she and Anna and their PR machine had been blitzing the East Coast markets. Everyone from Letterman to Liz Smith had bought into Stevie Bliss, champion of the single, sexy, independent woman, confident in her own sizzling womanhood.

And now they’d brought their act to Chicago for the holidays. They had a month of appearances and signings designed to saturate the Midwest from their base in the Windy City, where there was fabulous shopping and exactly the right demographic of shoppers.

Meanwhile, every piece of her persona, from the streaks in her hair to the shape of her “smart girl” glasses and the precise amount of cleavage she showed, had been carefully selected, based on hours of marketing research. She looked terrific. She didn’t need iced nipples to sell this package.

“But Stevie—”

She held up a hand. “Anna, give it up.”

The bookstore manager peeked around the corner into the office, cutting off further discussion. “Ms. Bliss? We have everything set up. Are you ready?”

Stevie raised her chin. “Absolutely,” she said, with the lazy drawl that was her trademark. Soft and sexy, with a hint of a growl, this was the voice that played best with her public.

From recent experience, Stevie knew she would be fine as long as she stuck with the program and played the role to the hilt, safe behind the disguise. Reminding herself—as some psychological consultant or other had recommended—that she was a cool jungle cat, she strode out behind the man from the bookstore, sliding carefully and yet easily into the chair next to the podium, perched at the front of her seat with her knees down so as not to show off anything she didn’t want to. Instead, she offered a polished smile and more than a hint of décolletage to the eager fans in the front row.

I’m a tiger, they’re hyenas, and I will eat them all alive.

Whoa. They were really crammed in here today, weren’t they? Anna would be pleased—every seat was filled, with more fans standing around the sides and in the back, all clutching hardcover copies of Blissfully Single. There were also two TV cameras shooting across the crowd from different sides, but it didn’t faze her. Stations frequently sent someone out to her appearances to get some footage for the evening news, maybe collect a sound bite or two. As constructed, the Stevie Bliss persona was telegenic, so getting on camera was the whole idea.

On the sides, Stevie could see bookstore clerks trying to shove racks and shelves farther back to accommodate extra people. Such a big crowd. Butterflies flickered in her stomach, and she really had to clamp down. You’re a tiger, damn it!

The store manager was halfway through his introduction, playing to the closer camera as he told the assembled folks how lucky they were to get to see Stevie Bliss, author extraordinaire, up close and personal, how much her book had meant to so many, and on and on. Stevie tuned out, trying to judge the people in the crowd. Would they be receptive? Or would they throw tomatoes, with the TV cameras catching every splash?