The Bedroom Business

Her voice trailed to silence. Why was she telling him all this? He was holding her foot in his hands, looking at it as if he’d never seen a foot before. And she was explaining why she was wearing wool socks, as if it mattered.

“Socks,” he murmured, and looked up at her again. He had such a strange look on his face. That darkness in his eyes.

Maybe he thought she was going to walk around the office in heavy wool socks all day.

“Yes. But I’ll take them off. I have panty hose underneath…”

Oh, good. Now she was telling him about her underwear. Emily colored and pulled her foot from Jake’s hands.

“Thank you again,” she said briskly. “I’ll get to the mail immediately.”

“Not without taking that other boot off.”

“I can manage.”

“I doubt it.”

“Honestly, Mr. McBride—”

Jake knew he could get the boot off with one quick tug but considering the condition she’d put him in, with that comment about her underwear, he figured it was best to take his time.

“There,” he said, when it was safe. He dropped the boot beside its mate and rose to his feet. “All done.”

Emily nodded. “Thank you,” she said again.

“You’re welcome.”

He looked as if he were going to say something more. A few words of apology, maybe, for the way he’d snapped at her before? No such luck. He gave her a quick nod, swung away and went back inside his office.

The door closed silently behind him.

Emily sat motionless. Her feet were tingling. Not the way they’d tingle if the circulation were coming back after they’d been freezing cold. She’d felt that, once, when she was a little girl and she’d missed the school bus and ended up walking home in the snow. No, they were tingling in a very strange way. As if they were still in McBride’s lap. As if his big hands were still holding them. As if he were still looking up at her with his eyes all dark and hungry…

The room seemed to tilt.

Emily dragged air into her lungs. Then she took off her socks, slipped her feet into the shoes she’d brought with her, and got to work.

Hours later, she sighed, blinked owlishly at her computer screen and pushed back from her desk. It was almost one o’clock. Time for lunch, she thought, and rose from her chair. She gave a ladylike stretch, opened the drawer to get her purse…and saw the copy of GOTHAM, still opened to the personal ads.

She made a face, picked up the magazine and dumped it into the wastebasket.

“Goodbye and good riddance,” she said, and dusted off her hands.

Last night had cured her of even thinking about going out for an evening with a man she didn’t know anything about.

On the other hand, choosing a date from the Personals would be different.

She might not really “know” the man, but she wouldn’t go into it blindfolded. At least, she’d have some information about her date beforehand. And she wouldn’t have to waste an entire evening. She could suggest they meet for lunch, or coffee, or for nothing more complicated than a walk in the park. She could control the character of this kind of date and not end up finding out, as she had last night, that the only thing the man in question wanted was to get into her pants.

Emily plucked the discarded magazine from the wastebasket, opened it and laid it on her desk.

Handsome, sexy, successful male, 40, D, Br & Br, ISO beautiful, sexy female, preferably br&br, too…

Handsome, successful, sexy, Romeo, 33, S, BL and bl, looking for his beautiful, sexy Juliet…

Sexy, handsome guy, 38, ND, blond and blue, very successful, ISO sexy, beautiful lady, preferably Br&B…

It was like reading a code. ISO for “in search of.” D for “divorced,” S for “single,” ND for “newly divorced.” B’s for hair and eye color. Unless you had red hair. Or gold. Or…

Oh, this was ridiculous. Advertisements by men for women. Reading them was a joke. They were so phony. If every guy who was dateless in New York was sexy, easy on the eyes and successful, why were they running these ads? She knew better than to fall for all those adjectives. In fact, if she had to come up with the name of a gorgeous, sexy, successful man, the only one she’d be able to muster was that of Jake Mc…

Emily’s heartbeat stumbled. Quickly, she grabbed the telephone, punched in the Personals number, listened impatiently as a recorded female voice offered available options.

To reply to a LoveNote, the voice said nasally, please enter the number of the LoveNote you’ve selected.

Emily entered a number. She waited, heard a husky male voice say “hello,” listened to what was, more or less, a repeat of the ad in the magazine, and waited for the ad to end and the tone to sound. At last, it did. It was time to leave a message for Mr. Handsome, Sexy and Successful, 40, D, brown and brown.

Her mouth was dry as sand. She thought, fleetingly, of the sad red geranium sitting at home on her kitchen table, which she kept forgetting to water…

Beeeep!

Emily swallowed, licked her lips and took a breath. Sound sexy, she told herself.

“Good afternoon.” Great. Just great. She sounded about as sexy as a Girl Scout trying to sell cookies. “Hi,” she said, trying for perky, if not sexy. “Uh, I’m calling to say—to say that I think I might be just the Brrr and Brrr—uh, the Brown and Brown you’re looking for.” She hesitated, checked the ad again. Sexy, it said. And beautiful. Emily chewed on her lip. “Well, maybe not. I mean, I have brown hair. And brown eyes. But I’m not exactly sexy. Or beautiful.” Her voice cracked. “But, really, is that so awful? ‘Beautiful’ means having qualities that delight the senses. I know that because I had to look it up once, in the dictionary. I wanted the exact meaning because I was writing a term paper on Shelley. The poet, you know? Anyway, I’m just saying that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and handsome probably is, too. So even if you’re not as handsome as you say you are, that’s okay because I’m not…” She groaned, put her hand to her forehead. “As for sexy, well, what does ‘sexy’ mean, anyway? Different things in different cultures. For example, when I was studying anthro, I learned that sexual attractiveness varies enormously from tribe to tribe in the Amazon. Some view nudity as the norm. Others, perhaps after they’ve had some contact with the outside world, disdain nudity but see nothing wrong with indulging in coitus with a variety of partners. There’s a particular pygmy tribe—”

A large male hand slammed down on the telephone cradle, breaking the connection. Emily jerked her head up. McBride was standing over her, looking down and glaring.

“Just what in the Sam Hill are you doing?”

Dear God, Emily thought, what was I doing? The telephone buzzed in her ear like an angry bee.

“Miss Taylor?”

“You’ve—you’ve always called me Emily.”

“A mistake,” Jake said coldly, “considering that I’m starting to realize I don’t know the first thing about you.”

He folded his arms over his chest. It was, she thought foolishly, a formidable chest. He’d taken off his suit jacket, loosened his tie, undone the top button of his white shirt and rolled back his sleeves. He did that often; he’d once said he felt choked in a suit and tie. Why was it she’d never before noticed that his arms were dusted with dark, silky-looking hair? That his chest was the width of The Great Wall of China?

“Well, Miss Taylor? What were you doing?”

Emily put the phone down, folded her hands in her lap and tried not to think about how long he might have been standing there.

“I was—I was making a call,” she said carefully.

“To whom?”

“To…” She frowned as she looked up at him again. “It was a personal call, Mr. McBride.”

“Yes.” Jake shot her a predatory smile. “I imagined it was. Somehow or other, I didn’t think you’d be discussing pygmy sex practices with any of my clients.”

She could feel the heat flash into her face. “I was not discussing pygmy sex practices.”

“What were you discussing, then?”

“Would you step back, please,” she said coolly, “so I can stand up?”

“Answer the question, Miss Taylor.”

“I don’t have to.” She could feel her courage rushing back, swirling through her blood in a wave of heat. “As I said, it was personal.”

“Did you ask me if you could make personal calls?”

She blinked. “No. No, I didn’t. But you never said—”

“You never asked.”

Emily glowered up at Jake. “I’ll pay for the call,” she snapped.

“I don’t want your money. I want to know why you were talking about pygmy sex practices, and with whom.”

“Dammit!” She shoved her chair back and shot to her feet, her flushed, angry face lifted to Jake’s. “I wasn’t talking about pygmy sex practices. I told you that. I was leaving a message on an answering machine.”

“An answering machine at the Museum of Natural History?”

God, that infuriating smirk on his face! How had she survived it, all this time?

“An answering machine at a man’s apartment,” she said tightly. Well, it wasn’t a lie. It wasn’t an apartment but Handsome, Sexy and Successful would probably phone in for his messages from his apartment.

“Well, well, well.” Jake’s dark green eyes narrowed. “You’re just full of surprises, Miss Taylor. No wonder ol’ Pete was so eager to take you to dinner last night. He read you just right.”

Emily flung her hands on her hips. “And what is that supposed to mean, Mr. McBride?”

“Never mind what it’s supposed to mean. I’m waiting to hear who you were phoning.”

“Oh, for goodness sake!” She swung away, grabbed the magazine and shoved it into Jake’s flat belly. “You won’t be satisfied until you wring the truth out of me, will you? Okay. Okay, here’s the truth, McBride, and I hope you enjoy getting the last laugh.”

She swung away from him, trembling with anger and humiliation. She could hear Jake reading the ads aloud in a soft, disbelieving voice. There was a long silence before he spoke again.

“You were answering an ad in the personals?”

“Yes.”

“You were telling one of these men you’d go out with him?”

“Yes.”

“You were going to meet a stranger, an asshole who identifies himself as sexy, successful and handsome with…What in hell is Brrr and Brrr? A description of the weather? A new liqueur?”

Emily spun around and faced Jake. Her eyes were huge, her face flushed, and he fought back the sudden, insane desire to take her in his arms and soothe her.

“It’s brown hair and brown eyes,” she snarled. “And for your information, lots of people meet through ads like this.”

“To do what?” Jake said, his eyes getting that narrowed, intense look again.

“To—to go out. On a date. To have dinner together. Take in a movie. Just—just spend a little time with another person…”

Her voice broke. Jake looked bewildered. She thought, for a second, he was reaching towards her and she shook her head and stepped back.

“I don’t expect you to understand. You’re never home alone, unless you want to be. You never have to look at the calendar and say, look at that, it’s the weekend and I don’t have a thing to do except clean my apartment and wash my hair.”

Holy hell, Jake thought.

“That’s what this is all about?” he said slowly. “That you don’t date?”

“That’s what I just said.”

“You don’t have any, uh, any men in your life?”

Emily’s chin lifted to a dangerous angle. “Are we going to have to go through this, line by line?”

“So, that’s why you accepted Archer’s invitation last night? Because you’re lonely?”

“I’m not lonely,” she said defiantly. “I have friends. Hobbies. I have a canary.”

“You’re lonely,” he said. “That’s why you went out with that snake.”

“Are you deaf, Mr. McBride? I am not…” Emily frowned. “You think he’s a snake?”

“Of course.”

“That’s what you’ve always thought?”

“Yes.” Well, it was true if you figured “always” referred to yesterday evening, when Archer had sneaked up on Emily. “I tried to tell you that, but you wouldn’t listen.”

“You didn’t try to tell me anything, except how to run my life.” She cocked her head. “Pete Archer said you and he are best friends.”

“Ha.”

“He said you’ve known each other forever.”

“Only if forever means a year working for the same brokerage firm, a long time back.”

Emily puffed out a breath. “He lied to me.” She looked at Jake. “You’re right, by the way. He is a snake.”

Jake’s face darkened. “Did he—”

“Oh, I can handle men like Pete Archer.” A smile ghosted across her lips. “When I was sixteen, one of my sisters dated a guy who was into karate. He taught me some great moves. I still remember them.”

“Ah.” Jake moistened his lips. “Let me get this straight. You, uh, you’d like to date. To meet some nice guys and go out. Is that it?”

What was the sense in trying to pretend otherwise? Jake McBride knew virtually everything about her now, from her shoe size to her sexless sex life.

“Yes.”

“Well.” He ran his hand through his hair again, turned away from her, paced back and forth, back and forth. “I’ve got it,” he said, and swung towards her. “I know a lot of people. Some of them are nice guys, too. I’ll introduce you.”

“Oh, no. I couldn’t ask you to—”

“You haven’t asked, I’ve volunteered. Look, it’s no big deal.”

Emily collapsed into her chair. “What are you going to do,” she said, with a nervous laugh, “go to a meeting and say, ‘oh, by the way, my personal assistant would like to have a date this weekend’?”

Jake grinned at her. “My executive assistant,” he said. “And I’ll be subtle, I promise. For instance…well, I go to lots of cocktail parties. Business stuff. From now on, you’ll go with me.”

“Mr. McBride, really—”

“I’ll introduce you as my good right hand, you’ll circulate, network…Emily, don’t look at me that way. It’ll work, I know it will.”

“It won’t. I’m—I’m not good at this male-female thing, Mr. McBride.”

“Jake.”

“Jake,” she said, because it was silly, really, to go on with such formality now. “Look, I appreciate your offer but it’s pointless. I’ll feel ridiculous.”

“More ridiculous than you’d have felt if you’d left your number on that answering machine?”

Emily bit her lip. “Even if something came of it…For one thing, I don’t know how to make small talk. ”

“There’s nothing to it. I’ll teach you.”

“Yes, but…” She waved a hand. “It’s more than that. I don’t dress right. My sisters used to tell me I had no idea of style.”

Jake took a step back, looked her over slowly from head to toe. “We can take care of that with ease.”

“I don’t even know how to—” she blushed “—how to handle the, uh, the end of the evening thing.”

“The…?” He colored. “Oh.”

“Exactly. I mean, it was simple enough, last night. When your friend—”

“Archer’s no friend of mine,” Jake said grimly.

“The point is, when he, uh, when he tried to, you know, kiss me, I just put my hands up, the way you do in karate—”

Jake began to laugh. “I’d have given anything to have seen that.”

“But—but if a man tried to kiss me and I wanted him to, I’d just mess it up. I’d—”

He felt his body tighten. “You mean you’ve never…” He cleared his throat, did a mental ten-count, reminded himself that Emily was a sparrow, not a thrush, and his lifelong preference was for songbirds. “Well,” he said briskly, “never mind. I’ll teach you everything you need to know. How to talk with a man. How to dress for him. How to make him want you, and only you.”

“I don’t know. It all seems to—so—”

“I’ll teach you all you need to know, Emily.” Jake’s voice roughened. “Including how to conduct yourself at the end of the evening.”

Color swept into her face. “I can’t believe I told you that,” she whispered. “I feel so foolish!”

“I’ll teach you,” Jake said gently. He reached down, clasped her shoulders and lifted her to her feet. “You’ll see. I’m an excellent teacher.”

So saying, he bent his head, took Emily’s face in his hands, and covered her mouth with his.

CHAPTER THREE

HIS mouth fit hers, perfectly.

His lips were warm, and dry, and pleasant. No tongue, Emily thought dazedly. None of that disgusting swapping spit stuff that the insufferable Pete Archer had tried last night.

Still, why was McBride kissing her? And why was she letting him? That was a better question.

Because he’d caught her by surprise. Why else? she told herself, and she put her hands against his chest and pulled back from his kiss.

“Mr. McBride,” she said, a little breathlessly, “I really don’t think—”

“Call me Jake,” he said hoarsely but before she could call him anything, he put his arms around her, drew her against him and kissed her again.

The kiss wasn’t the same.

She might have known it wouldn’t be. His lips nudged hers, tugged at hers, moved against hers. And, when she tried to protest, to tell him there was no reason for them to kiss and certainly no reason to kiss like this, he used the moment against her and parted her lips with his.

Emily’s hands came up, flattened against Jake’s chest again.

No, she thought, no, please. No tongue, no spit, no awful wet kiss…

He didn’t take the hint. He went right on with what he was doing, changing the rules, changing the kiss. What he was doing now—angling his mouth differently so that she had to tilt her head back as he slipped the tip of his tongue between her lips—what he was doing was—it was—

Oh, it was wonderful.

The feel of his arms around her. The hardness of his body against hers. The taste of his mouth. His hot mouth. His tongue. The glorious, mind-bending, mind-blowing heat and, yes, the wetness of his kiss…

Emily moaned. She curled her fingers into Jake’s shirt, rose on her toes and pressed herself against him.

Was this what a kiss, a real kiss, was like? Was a man supposed to be able to turn a woman into a mindless, breathless, boneless creature with a kiss? Or did Jake know something other men didn’t?

Not that Emily cared about any of the answers. She only knew that she wanted this feeling to go on forever.

Jake did, too.

It was crazy, to get so turned on by a kiss. But turned on, turned up, turned inside out was what he was, all right, and he was aching for more.

Emily wasn’t just kissing him back, she was making the soft little noises a woman made when she wanted more. Her sweet body was pressing against his—grinding against his. Yes, indeed; there were curves under that boxy tweed jacket and bulky skirt, curves and warm, eager flesh.

And then she moved, and moaned, and Jake gave up thinking. He slid one hand down her spine, cupped her bottom, lifted her into the hardness of his arousal, knotted his hand in her skirt, pushed it up, stroked his hand along her thigh, her hot, silken thigh…

Told you, Archer’s voice whispered smugly, way, way in the back of Jake’s mind. Didn’t I say still waters run deep?

Jake shoved Emily’s skirt down, clasped her arms, tore his mouth from hers and stepped back. She swayed unsteadily, her eyes still shut, her lips rosy and parted.

Desire burned hot in his blood.

She wanted him, desired him, as much as he wanted her. And he wanted to assuage that desire. He wanted to reach out for her again, drag her back into his arms, carry her into his office, kick the door shut and rip away the tweed that hid her from his mouth and from his eyes…

But sanity prevailed. The last thing he wanted was an affair with his P.A. Uh, with his E.A. Hell, the last thing, absolutely the last thing, he wanted was an affair with a little brown sparrow who’d undoubtedly confuse sex with love.

Jake tried to speak, cleared his throat and tried again.

“You see?”

Emily blinked and opened her eyes. They were dark with passion and he felt himself teeter on the brink of that upside-down, inside-out feeling all over again.

He took another step back, shoved his hands into his trouser pockets and knotted them so he wouldn’t be an idiot and reach for her.

“See what?” she croaked.

Jake tried for a nonchalant shrug. “I was just showing you that you don’t have anything to worry about. I can teach you everything you need to know. It’s not a problem.”

Emily touched her fingers to her mouth. The simple action almost brought him to his knees.

“Not a problem at all,” he said, and before she could respond, he went back into his office, fixed his tie and shirt, put on his jacket and coat, strode past her and headed out into the snowstorm for his lunch at the Oak Room…

And tried not to think about the kiss, or the fact that she’d been busy at her desk, fingers flying industriously over the keyboard as if the whole thing had never happened, as he went out the door.

Emily paused in her typing when Jake got back.

She looked up, greeted him politely and told him he’d find some faxes on his desk.

“Thank you,” he said, and went straight into his office.

The door swung shut, and she almost collapsed with relief.

He wasn’t going to mention what had happened. Thank God for that.

She’d worried that the kiss would affect their relationship. Foolish her. She should have known that it wouldn’t. The kiss had meant nothing. Jake had, as he’d explained, been establishing his credentials, that was all.

Evidently, that was the way he always kissed a woman.

No wonder the twit wanted to keep him.

Any woman would. Well, not any woman. She wouldn’t. Jake McBride wasn’t her type at all, no more than she was his, and a kiss wouldn’t change that. Not that he’d kissed her for that reason. To change her mind. To get her interested in him. No, it wasn’t like that and a good thing, too, because she wasn’t interested.

Emily looked at her computer screen. Her fingers had been busy but she’d been typing gibberish.

She took a breath, put her hands in her lap and folded them.

Okay. That was it. Enough. This was ridiculous, every bit of it, starting with Jake’s nonsensical idea of introducing her to eligible men. Eligible for what? Was he going to run a Date My Assistant bureau?

All she’d wanted was to know what it was like to look forward to an occasional date but using your employer as a dating service was totally unacceptable. In the seven years since she’d come to New York, she’d heard of some strange employer-employee arrangements. She knew a secretary who baby-sat for her boss’s golden retrievers on weekends, another who read all the books on the New York Times list, then wrote up one paragraph synopses for the man she worked for so he could sound as if he were well-read. She’d once met a P.A. whose boss baked him cookies. Awful cookies, but the poor guy had never worked up the courage to tell her so.

But a boss who got you dates?

No way.

That was what she’d tell Jake, if he brought up the subject again. There wasn’t a way in the world she was going to let her boss play matchmaker for…

“Emily?”

She looked up. Definitely, the kiss had meant nothing. Jake stood in the doorway between his office and hers. He looked the way he always did. Intense. Focused. Just a little bit forbidding.

The wings of hope fluttered in Emily’s breast. Maybe she wouldn’t have to tell him she was declining his offer. With luck, he might say it first.

“Yes, Mr. McBride?”

“Emily, I’ve given this some thought.”

“Yes?”

“And I’ve decided you should leave.”

The wings of hope faltered, folded and were still. “Leave?”

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