No Strings Attached

He hung his head and did his best to look puppy-dog pitiful instead of guilty as hell. “After all that talk about friends being there for each other? You’ve gone and hurt my feelings, Chloe.”

“You’re saying your deal-making efforts aren’t intended to get me into bed?”

He looked up in time to catch the imperial lift of her brow. “What? And ruin this beautiful friendship?”

He wasn’t about to admit what the picture of her tousled hair was doing for his imagination. Just get her out of her shoes and shorts and, yeah, he could see Chloe Zuniga in his bed, wearing nothing but her socks and that jersey hanging over her thighs and curvy bare ass.

“Okay.” Her chin went up. She shook back her hair. “What three nonsexual things do you want in exchange for your escort services?”

“We’re going to do this, then?”

“Well, it depends on what you want.”

Nope. He wasn’t going anywhere near that one, either; there wasn’t a long enough pole. “Don’t worry. I’ll think of something.”

“So, you don’t even know what you want? This is just an open-ended deal? I’m expected to be at your beck and call while you get off on stringing me along?” At each question asked, her voice had risen. Her final query was nothing if not a screech.

“I suppose we can set a time limit.”

“Damn straight we’re going to set a time limit. I’d be a thousand kinds of a fool to leave myself open to the warped workings of your imagination.”

Ah. Now this was the Chloe he knew and…hmm. Definitely didn’t love. Admittedly had the hots for. “Okay, then. What? A month? Six weeks?”

She’d pulled a mini diary from her mini knapsack. “The Wild Winter Woman fashion show is my third event, and it’s in the middle of May, so let’s wrap up this deal by Memorial Day.”

He thought of everything he had on his calendar between now and then. A huge grin started at the edge of his mouth and spread until he thought his face would split.

“What the hell are you so happy about?” Chloe groused, hoisting her small leather backpack onto one shoulder.

“Just thinking how I’ve always wanted a genie to grant me three wishes. And here you are.”

SETTLED IN THE SADDLE of her exercise bike, Chloe wished her legs were longer so she could give herself a good swift kick in the pants.

Instead, she pedaled harder, faster, her legs pumping like pistons, and all the spent energy getting her abso-friggin’-lutely nowhere. She released the bike’s handlebar just long enough to swipe a towel over her forehead.

Her sweatband had long since passed the point of saturation, but she wasn’t about to stop spinning to switch it for a dry one. Not when she had an unstoppable rhythm going and hours of frustration to burn.

The television mounted in the corner of the spare bedroom she’d converted into her own personal exercise-slash-torture chamber was running a tape of Shakespeare in Love. But even Will’s desperately romantic pursuit of Viola was not enough to distract Chloe from yesterday’s fiasco.

Damn that cocky Eric Haydon, sweet-talking her into doing exactly what he’d wanted. Granting him three wishes. And how stupid of her to agree. No, not stupid. Just desperate enough to act like she didn’t have an ounce of common sense…or much of a memory for details.

He was wrong.

Yesterday afternoon, once she’d gotten out of Haydon’s and arrived home, she’d headed straight for her diary. And Eric was wrong. Sixteen. Not twenty.

She’d gone out with sixteen different men so far this year. Eight of them had been one-nighters, not deserving of the time of day much less any more than her cell phone number. Caller ID was a girl’s best friend.

Puffing through the aggravation of realizing she needed a new strategy for finding that elusive happily ever after, she tried to sort out the entire dating process—or at least her personal lack of dating success.

She was not unreasonably selective, yet she didn’t go out with just anyone who asked. Somehow, though, she had gained a reputation for doing just that. Which guaranteed she was asked out a lot.

By everyone, it seemed, but Cary Grant.

Her dating rules were flexible, her only demand that a man treat her like a woman. Too many took that to mean trying to get into her pants. Others assumed she wanted to be coddled and pampered and saved from herself.

She never went into a date with her rules spelled out on a cue card. But men asked, and she answered, and then all hell would break loose, depending on the man and what conclusions he’d drawn about women.

It was always one extreme or the other. The virgin or the slut. The whore or the lady.

What had happened to the middle ground?

Her looks were one problem, her vocabulary another, but she was who she was. Her upbringing had defined her; the pedestal on which she’d been forced to sit had towered miles above reality.

So she’d countered her father’s insistence that she rise above the rabble by getting down and getting dirty. To her sheltered and rebellious young mind that had meant a coarse vocabulary, a take-no-prisoners personality, an unapologetic enjoyment of life’s earthier delights, as well as the power afforded by passion.

Perhaps not the most straightforward approach to life or to love, but a method that had served its purpose. She’d learned that being good wasn’t going to get her anything she wanted. She’d also learned that what most men gave her she wanted to give back.

At the crook of her finger, they came running, bringing flowers and chocolates and baubles, and declarations of love so profusely poetic she wanted to barf. She had attention, affection, the things of female fantasy…and all of it was bogus as hell.

No man had ever taken the time or made the effort to learn that she read Tom Clancy for fun. That she’d take lemon over chocolate any day of the week. That she grew her own tomatoes in whiskey barrels kept on the patio, but killed every flower she planted.

Men. Ruled by their dicks. Every one of them.

What she wanted was chivalry.

Was the word really that anachronistic? The concept that out-of-date? And what about respect? Not only for her person, but for her ideas and opinions.

She was blond. She was built. She was not about to apologize for her love of makeup. She had a brain. She was not a bimbo. She liked men. She was not an easy score.

Why was that so hard to understand? she wondered, and pedaled even harder, faster, closing her eyes and pushing beyond the burn. She doubted her reputation or her mouth truly crossed Sydney’s line in the sand.

But Chloe loved gIRL-gEAR, her vice-presidential perks and position, the cyclical industry of fashion and her partners, the five women who’d been her best friends since their days in Austin at University of Texas.

Hell, she even had a soft spot for Poe, though the other woman’s ambition irritated Chloe more than a broken underwire on a brand-new bra. Poe needed the air released from her inflated self-opinion. She might have five years on Chloe, but Chloe had the heart Ms. Annabel Lee was missing.

The ringing of the phone in her bedroom slowed Chloe’s cathartic pace, but she didn’t stop pedaling until the machine picked up and she heard Eric Haydon’s voice.

“Yo, Chloe. About that first wish.”

Chloe sat up straight on the bike and listened to the recording being broadcast from across the hall.

“Be at Haydon’s. Saturday morning. Nine on the nose. Oh, and the outfit you had on yesterday? Wear it.”

The line went dead, then came the dial tone, followed closely by Chloe’s disbelief. That was it? Orders he assumed she’d follow left on an answering machine?

And what was up with the dress code? He knew she wouldn’t wear those clothes again on a dare. She certainly wouldn’t wear them because he’d told her to. Or would she? After all, she’d been stupid enough to grant him three wishes.

She’d had enough exercise, and her fill of that bossy Eric Haydon. Hopping from the bike, she headed for the shower, flinging pink Lycra and spandex all over the bathroom. Once the hot water started melting her balled up muscles, she was better able to think.

Other than removing sex from the equation, she and Eric had set no boundaries for this granting-of-three-wishes business. She supposed it was a fair enough trade-off.

Eric knew he’d be accompanying her to gIRL-gEAR business affairs. She knew she’d be doing anything Eric wanted her to do…except crawl naked into his bed. Chloe sighed.

How terribly disappointing.

3

HAVING ARRIVED at Haydon’s only minutes before Chloe, Eric leaned against the back end of his car, legs crossed at the ankle, arms crossed over his chest, and watched her pull her lime-green VW Beetle into the parking lot.

If he was a betting man, he wouldn’t take better than fifty-fifty odds that she’d worn the outfit he’d wanted her to wear. Still, she was here. And that was saying something.

He continued to watch as she jerked her sunglasses from her face, the keys from the ignition. With a look between a frown and a glare, she climbed from the car, her eyes never breaking contact with his.

“Well, blow my mind. A woman who can follow orders.” He grinned. He winked. Because seeing her in play clothes had just become the highlight of his day. “I think I’m in love.”

“I see your mouth is making promises you don’t have the backbone to keep,” she said, tucking both her shades and her car keys into her knapsack and slinging it over one shoulder.

“Not promises as much as observations,” he said, ignoring her dig. He pushed himself erect and headed for the passenger door, then added a dig of his own. “Unless you want me to see what I can do about paying up.”

Chloe, of course, ignored him. He’d opened the car door and now stood with both wrists draped over the frame. Chloe waited, one hand wrapped around her knapsack’s shoulder strap, the other at her hip, feet unmoving and eyes cutting from Eric’s to the Mustang and back again.

“I take it that you want me to get in?”

“You got it.”

“Do you mind telling me where we’re going? Or what we’re going to do? And, most of all, why you wanted me to wear this ridiculous getup yet again?”

Ah, yes. The Chloe he still didn’t love…but was starting to appreciate way too much. “How ’bout you get in the car and trust that all will be revealed in good time?”

“In your good time, you mean,” she groused, but she did slide down into the car’s bucket seat.

Eric closed the door behind her and skirted the rear of the car, slapping his hand on the trunk on his way to the driver’s side. Talk about your bad mood. He couldn’t believe Chloe could really be that worried about her position at gIRL-gEAR, worried enough to bite his head off when he was the one she’d come to for help.

She’d been one of the original girls. To his mind that made Chloe irreplaceable, the same way Ted Williams would always be a Boston Red Sox, Michael Jordan a Chicago Bull, Joe Namath a New York Jet. No. There was something else going on here. But Eric wasn’t going to ask her yet.

He slid into the driver’s seat, slammed the door and turned over the two hundred sixty horses beneath the Mustang’s hood. He shoved the five speed into reverse and whipped the car around, squealing his tires out of the parking lot and onto westbound Richmond Drive.

Chloe slid him a sideways glance. “Is the length of the skid mark a guy lays in direct proportion to his opinion of himself?”

“Nope.” Eric grinned. He wouldn’t be able to afford retreads if that were the case. “That’s just me giving the horses their head. Gotta put the sweethearts through their paces.”

“Humph. Typical man. Your car gets treated better than your date.”

Eric downshifted for the traffic light a half block ahead. “How do you figure?”

“‘Give the horses their head.’ ‘Put the sweethearts through their paces,”’ Chloe mimicked, digging for her sunglasses. The sun was at their backs, but glared off the approaching cars’ glass. “Your date doesn’t even get a straight answer when she asks where you’re taking her.”

Women. Couldn’t even give a guy a chance to spring a surprise. Had to be all distrusting and suspicious…though, in this case, suspicion was not unwarranted, Eric had to admit. “Trust me, princess. I know how to treat a date. And if we were dating, I’d be more than happy to show you what you’ve been missing.”

“I know exactly what I’ve been missing,” she mumbled. And he swore he heard her add, “Cary Grant.”

Eric frowned. The girl needed help. “Tell me something, Chloe. If you can’t find a man you’d like to keep company with, why don’t you quit dating instead of setting yourself up for disappointment?”

She was quiet for a long minute, staring straight ahead through the windshield. He was about to give up and turn the conversation to the weather when she finally said, “I don’t set myself up for disappointment. I mean, it’s not like I go into a date hoping the evening will crash and burn.” She gave a careless shrug. “It just happens.”

No one crashed and burned every single time. No matter what Chloe said, it just didn’t happen. “How open is your mind then? Because I gotta say, you’re not exactly little Mary Sunshine.”

“How would you know?” she snarled. “We’re not dating, remember?”

“We don’t have to be dating for me to see that you have a hell of a negative attitude.”

Chloe closed the front pouch of her knapsack; the jerk of the zipper sounded like she’d ripped a jagged hole in the air. “You can let me out anytime. I can get myself back to my car, thank you very much.”

Eric hated to do it. He really did, but he whipped the car in a U-turn and headed back to Haydon’s. He wanted her company, the company she usually offered, or had offered before she’d hit this personal downhill slide.

She was smart and she was funny. Her sharp tongue could slice a man into shreds. Her eyes could throw daggers at any part of him left standing. Her mouth could grind the fallen pieces into the ground.

But, oh, could she kiss and make it all better.

Which told Eric that part of what drove her was passion, and passion was one mother of a two-edged sword.

What he wanted from Chloe was to see the shine of the blade without feeling the sting of the razor. He had trouble enough with his own morning shave.

He shot up into the sports bar’s parking lot, coming to an amazingly gentle stop.

Chloe reached for the door handle. Eric stopped her with nothing more than an exaggerated clearing of his throat.

“You have something to say?”

“Just a reminder of our deal. And turnabout being fair play and all. You don’t grant my first wish, I don’t feel I have to attend your first function.” He frowned, paused for effect and added, “When was that, anyway?”

“Tomorrow. gIRL-gEAR is hosting an open house.”

“Tomorrow? Well, I’m not sure I’m going to be available. You hardly gave me any notice.”

“That’s because I’ve almost decided not to go,” she said softly, slumping down into the seat, closing her eyes and letting her head hit the window.

Uh-oh. “Did you tell Sydney you were bailing?”

“I haven’t bailed yet. I’ve just been wondering if any of this effort is going to make any difference.”

Not if you don’t change your attitude, he wanted to say, but instead he offered, “I still don’t get why you think you have to go to all this trouble.”

She shook her head, waved him off with the flutter of one hand. “Forget it. I’m just in a lousy mood. Chalk it up to a crappy Friday.”

“Another bad date last night?”

“No, actually. Last night was great. I stayed home, no one but myself for company, and watched old videos. Six hours of my favorite love stories and you’d think I’d be in a better mood, wouldn’t you?”

“If you like love stories. I’d be in a coma.”

“I suppose you spent all night watching a ball game or a fight or whatever sport is in season.” She made the accusation, then pulled off her sunglasses.

Eric had trouble keeping a straight face. “Actually, no. I had a date.”

She opened one eye, slid him a glance, opened the other eye and turned her head enough to look at him straight on. “Do tell.”

“What’s to tell? It was a date.”

“Dinner? A movie? Back to the bedroom?”

This time Eric shifted in his seat and did his best to face her. “That’s your idea of a date?”

“Not mine, no. But that’s what I’m usually offered.”

No wonder she went through men like he went through running shoes, if that was the height of her dating expectations. “And you’re going out with losers, why?”

She studied him for a minute, frowning slightly, her eyes that amazingly cool shade of sunset purple. Her lashes were long; he only noticed because of the way she blinked like that, so lazy and slow.

He didn’t think he’d ever seen her face in the buff, and wondered what she’d look like with her skin scrubbed clean. If she’d look as innocent as she did in his imagination. The same imagination that was making hard work of the lower half of his body.

She wore her makeup well, considering she used more than a lot of women. And he wasn’t sure he’d noticed until now how perfect she looked in the colors. Soft and feminine…like the bunches of wildflowers that had popped up all over the field at Stratton Park, where they were headed.

Or had been headed until Chloe got a bad-mood burr up her butt.

It probably wasn’t fair of him to hijack her this way, but she’d agreed to the terms of the deal and he was looking forward to seeing her sweat. It would do her good to get rid of those built-up stress toxins.

It would do him good as well to see her get all huffy and insulted at having to play ball. He needed the reminder that they would never get along as a couple. She stirred his blood wildly, but dinner and a movie and back to the bedroom was not his idea of a good time.

He loved it when a woman understood his passion for getting out and getting physical. The ones who shared his idea of having fun were the ones he enjoyed most in bed. They didn’t worry about wrinkles and tangles and makeup running in the sun and the heat.

And they brought that same energy and stamina, not to mention their strong warrior-woman thighs, to bed. He wondered about Chloe’s stamina. He wondered about her thighs.

Finally, he snapped to the fact that she still had her gaze trained fully his way. “Well?”

“I’m not intentionally going out with losers. You can take my word on that.”

“I thought all women had some kind of—” Eric waved one hand “—hormonal radar thing going. To lessen the chance of winding up with a jerk.”

“Do all men have one? Or, if they do, does the one they have work one hundred percent of the time?”

Eric ran cupped fingers back and forth over the curve of the steering wheel. “I guess that’s the better question, isn’t it? My gaydar never fails me. I’m not as lucky with my laydar.”

Shifting into a more comfortable, the-better-to-see-you-with position, she repeated, “Laydar?”

“Sure,” he said, and grinned. “The wiggly little stick that tells me if I’m going to get laid.”

Chloe rolled her eyes. “That is about the most sexist thing I’ve ever heard.”

“C’mon, princess,” he said with a wink. “Don’t tell me you don’t wish you had one.”

She answered with a careless shrug. “I don’t need one. I can get laid anytime I want.”

“Now who’s being sexist?”

“I’m being a realist. You want me to lie about it? Deny that men find me sexy? Well, I won’t.” A self-deprecating smile lifted both corners of her mouth. “I’ll also admit that I can be an unadulterated bitch. But that hasn’t yet stopped a guy from begging to show me heaven.”

“And that would be right about the time you tell him to go to hell?”

“For all the good it does.” She gave a quick shake of her head, scooping flyaway hair behind her ear, before adding, “I so don’t get it. I mean, I understand the concept of coming back for more. But it’s not like I’m giving out candy here. I can’t decide if their egos are that resilient or if they have some sort of rejection fetish.”

Eric considered her dilemma, considered, too, the shell of her ear and the tiny little Spock-like point now exposed. He gripped the steering wheel tighter. “Kick me, beat me, make me beg? Yeah. It can happen with some guys.”

“But never with you.” The tone of her comeback asked the question she’d stated as fact.

Time to get a few things straight. “Chloe. I never say never because life offers too few sure things. But I can say this. You will never know what I do or do not enjoy in bed until you’re there to find out firsthand. Then, trust me. I won’t hesitate to show you what I like, where and how.”

And then he bit his tongue before inviting her to take a trip into his fantasy. Because his imagination had taken on epic proportions, and all she needed to know he could teach her with a quick zip of his fly.

For the next few moments she remained unmoving and silent, the only sound in the car the muffled noise of the engine and that of Chloe’s breathing, ragged and more than a little bit out of control.

Eric could only imagine the matching pulse beating in her wrist, her chest, the base of her throat. He could only imagine because he had no intention of looking away from her eyes. He could see her considering the possibilities. How would they fit together? Would he like her best on the bottom or on the top? Would he prefer she take control or surrender? Would he get his first? Would he even be able to make her come?

He smiled at that, not because he was a miraculous, all-powerful lover, but because he was surprised how many women had given up on orgasms. And how many men weren’t man enough to take the time and figure out what a woman needed.

They weren’t all built on the same assembly line, which meant where one woman needed a tweak, another needed a nudge and still another needed a nice little squeeze. All a man had to do was ask. Then figure out how to coax her to answer. Women were such amazing beings.

Finally, Chloe cleared her throat. “Well, Eric. Sugar. I’m not sure I know what to say. I would love to know what you’re like in bed, but since I’ll never be there to find out firsthand, I guess I’ll die an unfulfilled woman.”

She was so damn good at busting his chops. Why did she have to be so damn good?

He didn’t know another woman who’d ever been able to get his hopes up when he wasn’t even looking, only to crush him into line chalk by the time he got up to speed.

“Remember what I said. Never say never.”

She waved a hand in front of her face. “It’s getting rather stuffy in here. Think you could turn on the AC?”

Eric tossed his head back and laughed, adjusting the flow of refrigerated air. “I would’ve turned it on a long time ago if I’d known you’d be sticking around to need it. But you were so gung ho to get back to your car.”

“I know. I was.”

“But you’re not now? What’s with the change of heart?”

She turned her head, returned her sunglasses to her face. But not before a hint of grudging respect flashed in her eyes. “Nothing but that little ol’ promise I made to grant you three wishes. A deal is a deal.”

Eric rubbed his hands together. “My own personal genie in a bottle.”

“Just keep that rub-a-dub-dub business to yourself,” she said, slicing him with a sharp sideways glance.

“So, we’re ready to hit the road here again?”

She sighed. “I suppose I don’t have much choice.”

“What’re you talking about? You have all kinds of choices.” But he put the car into gear anyway, exited Haydon’s parking lot and headed again for Stratton Field.

“Sure. Like choosing between saving my job or giving it up to Poe without a fight.”

Poe. Eric’s first problem to tackle. Or to let Chloe talk herself into tackling. Women liked to talk. All those lips movin’ and jaws flappin’ seemed to jar loose whatever it was keeping their brains from calling the right play.