All Work And No Play...
Julie Cohen
She’s got mail! But who’s it from? Jane Miller is great at her job. That’s the best she can say about her life, seeing as her fiancé left her five days ago. Jonny Cole is a blast from Jane’s past. Since he came back to England from California, they’ve been emailing. But they’ve not met face to face…They’re about to hook up for a business lunch with his agent and he needs her not to recognise him – he needn’t have worried, Jane simply doesn’t associate her skinny, nerdy childhood friend with the beautiful male model in front of her! What she does see is the perfect antidote to her crushed heart.Can she allow herself a little playful flirtation? Who better to email for advice than her geeky childhood friend (the one who, unbeknownst to her, has been trying to get her to love him for years!) Jonny/ Jay has to decide which is more important: the truth or the girl?
About the Author
JULIE COHEN was born in the USA and brought up in the mountains of western Maine. There wasn’t much going on in Maine, so she made stuff up. She spent most of her childhood with her nose in a book. After gaining her first degree in English literature, she moved to England and researched fairies in children’s literature for a postgraduate degree. She started writing her first romance on a blueberry farm in Maine, and finished it on a beach in Greece. Shortly after finalling in the Romance Writers of America’s Golden Heart contest, she sold her novel Featured Attraction to Mills & Boon.
Julie lives in the south of England with her husband, who works in the music industry, and still reads everything in sight. Her other hobbies include walking, travelling, listening to loud music, watching films and eating far too much popcorn. She teaches secondary school English and is teased daily about her American accent. Visit her website at www.julie-cohen.com, and write to her at julie-cohen@ntlworld.com.
Dear Reader,
I love geeks.
Hold on, let’s put that another way. I love a man in glasses, who has the strength of intelligence as well as strength in body. I love a man who is passionate about his work, maybe even a bit obsessive. I love a man who is sensitive, competent, a little shy; a man who can keep a secret crush on a childhood friend like a treasure for years.
I love Superman—who wouldn’t?—but even more than that I love Clark Kent.
All of this is a roundabout way to say that I am totally in love with Jonny Cole, also known as Jay, the hero of All Work and No Play …
I also love mistaken identity stories. I scour the blurbs of romance novels looking for them, and when I find one I buy it immediately. Especially sexy mistaken identity stories, where the hero and heroine make wild, passionate love, and then discover that their partner isn’t who they thought it was … or, in the case with Jonny and Jane, that it was exactly who they thought it was, but in a sort of different way.
I also love the internet and how it lets us connect with people, become closer to them even when we can’t see them in real life. There are so many ways of falling in love … why not start with an e-mail? Or a fantasy described online?
A gorgeous geek, mistaken identities, the internet, cyber sex, a male model, and a little ironing board surfing. Wow, I had fun writing this book. I hope you enjoy reading it, too.
I love to hear from readers. Please visit my website, www.julie-cohen.com, and write to me on julie@julie-cohen.com.
Julie Cohen
All work and no Play
Julie Cohen
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
For Kathy Love, who helped me make up this story on a train from New York to Washington DC. I laughed so hard, I don’t think I breathed from Pennsylvania to Delaware.
CHAPTER ONE
I AM absolutely fine, I am very good at my job, and you are never going to see me cry again.
It was Jane’s inner monologue, her mantra for the morning, so strong that she had to choose her words carefully to avoid speaking it out loud as she finished up her slide presentation and answered questions on behalf of her creative team.
Particularly because the person who was asking the most questions was Gary Kaplan, the senior account manager, whom she had believed she was going to marry next June, and who had seen her crying five days before.
‘Fortunately for our time schedules,’ she continued, clicking off her slide show and shutting down her laptop, ‘the model we’ve selected for the Franco cologne campaign is available this week, so we’re starting production straight away. I’ll be seeing him and his agent for lunch after I have my design team briefing.’
‘Excellent.’ Allen Pearce, one of the advertising agency’s partners, smiled as he rose from his chair. ‘I have every confidence that my team will do the firm proud while Michael and I are in New York. Good work, Jane, Gary, and everyone.’
She’d pulled it off. She thanked Allen Pearce, thanked her team, and packed up her laptop to go back to her office. Five minutes would be enough to take a few deep breaths, compose herself, enjoy her success.
‘Jane.’
Jane stopped on her way out of the boardroom. It was Gary who’d called her back, so she made sure her expression was cheerful before she turned around.
‘Yes, Gary?’
‘Are you all right?’
Stephen and Hasan were still gathering their things from the boardroom table, so she pretended that Gary’s question was a casual enquiry.
‘Fine, thanks, Gary. And you?’
She hadn’t thought that her voice betrayed any of her emotions, but she did notice that Stephen and Hasan pulled together their papers and pens more quickly and headed for the door. Hasan caught her eye as he left and gave her half a smile, which, she thought, sickeningly, was probably sympathetic.
Once the other members of the team were gone, she stepped all the way back into the room and closed the door. The boardroom was, like every room in Pearce Grey Advertising Agency, ultra-modern and minimalist, with white walls and grey streamlined furniture. Sometimes she found the blank space conducive to creativity, but right now she found it cold.
Gary was still sitting in one of the sleek chairs. His creaseless grey suit fitted right into the room. She wondered if Gary was doing his own ironing, or if Kathleen lived up to his exacting standards in that department, too.
‘Gary, I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t ask me personal questions in front of our colleagues.’ She stayed standing.
‘It wasn’t a personal question. I just asked you how you were doing.’
Jane used to admire Gary’s calm demeanour. Now it made her hands curl up into fists. She did it behind her back, though, because one entire wall of the boardroom was glass, looking out into the main office area of Pearce Grey.
‘In this context, it was a personal question,’ she said.
‘I asked the bloke in the newsagent the same thing this morning.’
Yes, but you didn’t leave the bloke in the newsagent for another woman. ‘I’m fine, Gary, thank you. How are you?’
‘I’m concerned that you’re not well. You look tired.’
‘Isn’t it odd, Gary, that when we were together you never noticed when I was tired and not well?’
He had the good sense to look uncomfortable at that question. ‘Well, we weren’t working so closely before your promotion.’
Which also reminded her that he had seniority. How considerate of him.
‘We need you on top form,’ he continued. ‘The Giovanni Franco cologne campaign is vital to the agency—’
‘And Giovanni Franco himself is edgy and difficult, and has sacked their last three agencies, and wants everything done yesterday,’ she finished for him. ‘I know. I’m on top of it.’
But then she thought about Hasan’s half-smile, and how he and Stephen had hustled it out of the boardroom. Maybe she wasn’t hiding her feelings as well as she’d thought.
Gary rested his arms on the desk in front of him. He was handsome enough, with light brown hair and regular features and a body that saw a gym regularly. Once upon a time he’d been a great catch for her.
‘I’m wondering if it’s time we let people know about our—you know.’ A flicker of guilt passed across Gary’s face.
She crossed her arms. ‘You said it would be up to me when we told the rest of Pearce Grey we’d split up.’
‘Yes, but … I think it might be easier for you if we made it public sooner rather than later. We wouldn’t have to worry about how it appeared to other people.’
Jane glanced through the boardroom window at the busy office outside. It wasn’t as if she and Gary had ever been demonstrative at work. But their engagement was common knowledge, and people did, she supposed, expect them to have a certain familiarity and intimacy in the way they behaved with each other.
‘You mean it would be easier for you,’ she said. ‘You could talk about your new relationship all you liked.’
While she would be regarded with pity as the scorned fiancée. The woman who’d landed a promotion and promptly been dumped on her backside.
‘It’s not time yet,’ she said. ‘Excuse me, I have work to do.’
She left the boardroom and headed for her office, avoiding the glances of the other people who worked for the agency. She really could have used those five minutes before she had to go to her lunch meeting. Even three minutes would have been enough, a breath of time where she could look in her email inbox, see the message that Jonny had probably sent her this morning from up in the Lake District. A message from Jonny would make her smile for real.
But the design team were already gathering outside her office door. Which meant she’d be lucky to have thirty seconds to herself before she had to leave for her lunch meeting.
Jane put on a bright expression. Her email, and a real smile, would have to wait. ‘Is everyone ready?’ she asked.
‘Jonny. Yo, Jonny.’
Jonny pushed his glasses up his nose and narrowed his eyes, forcing himself to concentrate on the HTML code on the laptop screen in front of him. Thom’s voice wasn’t easy to ignore. It was loud, vibrant, and unabashedly Californian. Jonny typed in a line of code anyway.
‘Jonathan Richard Cole Junior!’ Thom leaned across the first-class railway carriage table and waved his hand in Jonny’s face.
Jonny gave up and looked at his friend. ‘In case you hadn’t noticed, I was ignoring you. I gave you one condition for this trip when you kidnapped me, remember?’
‘I didn’t kidnap you, dude!’ Thom put on his fake-innocent grin. ‘I let you go get your computer and a toothbrush before I dragged you to the Penrith train station. And I only came up to get you in person because I know what you’re like when you’re writing a book.’
Jonny smiled, because it was impossible to stay annoyed with Thom Erikson. The man was incredibly rich, incredibly generous, and he talked as if he had a surfboard permanently attached to his person. And he’d stayed close to Jonny, even when Jonny had left California to go back to England.
In a world full of transitions and disillusion, Jonny had learned to appreciate loyalty, even when the loyalty was also accompanied by unrelenting persistence.
‘You also agreed not to call me by my real name,’ Jonny reminded him. ‘When I’m working with you I’m not Jonny Cole, I’m Jay Richard.’
‘Oh, yeah. I forgot because you had your Clark Kent glasses on. Sorry.’
Clark Kent. Jonny took off his glasses and rubbed his nose, thinking that comparison wasn’t so far-fetched. He didn’t become a Superman when he took his glasses off, but his life certainly got different.
He’d prefer leaping tall buildings to posing in front of cameras, though.
‘I wish you’d change your mind about the pseudonym,’ Thom continued. ‘Your double life would make great publicity: computer how-to guru moonlights as one of Britain’s most up-and-coming male models. From geek to gorgeous. Dweeb to dude. Nerd to—’
‘Enough.’ Jonny laughed, holding up his hands. ‘I’m not going to use my real job to get myself publicity, because as soon as I make enough money I’m quitting modelling. I told you that when I started.’
‘You are so deluded, my man. You’re a natural and the camera loves you. You could have a very, very good career in modelling. And this new job is a real triumph. The face of Giovanni Franco’s new cologne.’ Thom whistled.
Jonny did have to concede that Thom should know what he was talking about. The man ran one of the most successful modelling agencies on the west coast of the USA, so successful he’d started to branch into Europe.
And Jonny also had to admit that, much as he disliked the idea of being a model, it was a godsend right now.
‘I didn’t have an easy time of it as a teenager,’ he told Thom. ‘I really was a computer geek then. I only started working out so I could fight back against the guys who used to beat me up on a regular basis.’
‘And success is the best revenge, right?’
Jonny shook his head. ‘The situation hasn’t changed. I’m still being judged by my appearance. Ultimately, it’s not honest. I’m not a body, I’m a … bloke. I’m a writer. I’m me. That’s why I want to keep my modelling life and my real life separate. And then when I’ve made enough money, it’s back to the writing.’
‘Dude.’ Thom leaned forward again. ‘If you need money, I’ll write you a cheque. You don’t need to face a single camera. You know that.’
‘No,’ Jonny said, and then realised he’d said it violently enough to make his friend blink. ‘I mean, thank you, Thom. But I’ll earn my money.’
‘What do you need so much money for, anyway? If you’re in trouble—’
‘I’ll be all right,’ Jonny said, and, although he didn’t want to hurt Thom’s feelings, he said it crisply enough to stop the discussion.
Thom was a Californian, and Californians talked about everything. Despite Jonny’s own years on the west coast of America, he was still English, and he still knew that some things were best kept private.
A woman came down the train aisle with a trolley of coffee and tea. They gave it to you free in first class, a fact Jonny never would have discovered without Thom and his insistence on travelling the best way possible. ‘Coffee, thanks,’ Jonny said when she stopped at their seats, and his eyes wandered back to his laptop. When the coffee didn’t arrive, he looked up.
The woman was staring at him, half a smile on her face. She was cute, with blonde hair scraped back into a pony-tail. Her cheeks flushed slightly as she said, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t usually ask things like this, but haven’t I seen you somewhere before?’
‘Now that you ask, Jay’s been in—’
Jonny interrupted before Thom could start on the list of magazines and advertisements he’d got Jonny jobs modelling for. ‘I don’t think we’ve met, no. Sorry.’
The woman looked from Jonny’s polite smile to Thom’s grin, and then back to Jonny. ‘Oh. Well, here’s your coffee, and if I can get you anything else …’ Her voice, though shy, was unmistakably flirtatious.
‘Just the coffee is fine, thank you.’
Thom snagged a can of cola as the trolley passed, and settled back in his seat, shaking his head sadly. ‘You disappoint me, my friend. That was your perfect chance. Stewardesses are hot.’
‘She wasn’t a stewardess. This is a train, not a plane.’
Thom leaned out into the aisle and looked after the woman. ‘Uniform is still pretty cute from behind, though.’ He turned back to Jonny. ‘Do you know how many women are hot for models? And how many of those models are actually straight? You’re a rarity and you should be shagging everything in sight.’
‘Thom, I want to hook up with a woman because I have something in common with her, not because she’s seen me in some magazine.’
‘You mean you want a female computer geek.’ Thom took a long drink of his cola. ‘That’s fortunate, because, with the amount of time you spend on a computer, I bet the only sex you’re getting is virtual.’
‘You know, Thom, I’d be much more offended by what you’re saying if I didn’t personally know that you haven’t had sex since the last leap year.’
‘We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you. You’re living up in the middle of nowhere and you spend all your time online. When we get to London, how about I set you up with somebody?’
‘That won’t be necessary. I’m meeting somebody already.’
Like his evasion of Thom’s questions about his financial situation, this wasn’t quite the whole truth, and Jonny felt a stab of guilt. It was a measure of how much the circumstances of the past few months had affected him that he was being deliberately misleading.
‘I mean, I’m going to try to meet a friend,’ he corrected himself. ‘You didn’t give me a whole lot of notice that I was coming to London.’
‘A friend.’ Thom looked interested. ‘Is this a sex friend?’
‘No. She’s a friend. I’ve known her since I was a kid, but we fell out of touch, and we only started emailing each other a few months ago when I got back to England and found her on the web. She lives in London.’
‘A virtual girlfriend. How do you do that whole cybersex thing? I never really understood it. Do you, like, describe what you’re doing to each other, and then use toys, or—?’
Jonny had to laugh at Thom’s single-mindedness. ‘We’re not having cyber sex. I used to have a huge crush on her, but that was when we were kids. I haven’t seen her since we were about eleven years old. And she’s engaged. She’s just—’
He tried to think of how to describe it. Jane was his friend, but it was more than that. Even though they’d never met up, over the past few months Jane’s emails had been just about the only thing that kept him sane.
‘She’s got a great sense of humour, and we seem to have a lot in common. We email four or five times a day.’
‘Oh.’ Thom’s playful interest had been replaced by something more serious. ‘She’s the one you tell things to, huh?’
The one you tell things to. Yeah, he wished. How many times had he sat down and written to Jane, typed all of his problems and worries and disillusion into the computer to send to her … and then deleted the whole thing before he sent it?
It was too painful to say. Even not out loud, even to someone he didn’t see in person. Even to someone he cared about.
‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘she’s got a fiancé, so there’s never going to be anything between us.’
‘Man, you’ve got to be crazy. There is no way her fiancé is as good-looking as you. You just snap your fingers, she’ll drop at your feet.’
‘Thom,’ Jonny said warningly.
‘Okay, okay. I was just saying. I get it, you’re deeper than that and you’re a decent guy who doesn’t break up relationships. I think you’re insane, but that’s nothing new. You do like her despite the fiancé, though, right? Tell Uncle Thom.’
‘I’ve wanted to marry her since I was nine,’ Jonny admitted. ‘But I’ll settle for dinner—if you give me any time off from posing for a camera.’
Thom pulled out his palm organiser and began tapping through it. ‘Well, we’ve got shoots scheduled for most of the day on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, but you should have some time free in the evening to meet your lady friend.’
‘And to do my real work. I’ve got a deadline for a book in three weeks. HTML for Utter Beginners.’
‘And to play. There are some mega parties you need to go to, especially mine on Friday. First, though, you and I are having lunch with the creative director from Pearce Grey, the advertising agency who’s hired you for the Franco campaign. Her name’s Jane Miller. You’ll like her.’
At the name, Jonny sat up straighter and smothered a chuckle.
He knew Jane Miller. And he definitely liked her.
In fact, he’d wanted to marry her since he was nine.
‘Sounds perfect,’ he said, pushing his glasses back on and clicking open his email program on his laptop. He’d already emailed Jane once today, this morning before he’d caught the train, but this called for another message.
‘Just one thing, Jonny?’
‘Mmm?’
‘Put in your contact lenses before we get to London, or I’ll call you Clark Kent by mistake.’
‘No problem,’ said Jonny, and started to type.
Subject: Today
Hey Jane, remember I said I was coming to London if you wanted to meet up? Turns out we’re meeting after all. I have something to confess to you: I’m moonlighting as a model, and you’ve got a lunch date today with my agent Thom Erikson and me.
He smiled. It felt good to come clean about his double life to someone else.
He glanced over at Thom, who was absorbed in his organiser again.
Jonny remembered Jane as a kid. She’d been vibrant, exciting and full of adventure, as outgoing as her four older brothers. She’d looked like a naughty porcelain doll, with her long wavy hair and her sparkling grey eyes.
Jane was up for a little bit of intrigue. She could keep this secret; in fact, she’d probably think it was fun.
Thing is, when I’m modelling, I’m known as Jay Richard instead of Jonny Cole. When we’re with other people, would you mind calling me Jay? It sounds weird, but I’ll explain it to you when we get a minute by ourselves. Looking forward to seeing you again. Love, Jonny.
As he hit the send button, he wondered if Jane Miller was still as adventurous as she used to be.
He hoped so.
Jane walked into the Covent Garden bistro and glanced around its trendy interior. She didn’t see Thom Erikson, or the model she’d hired through him to be the face of Giovanni Franco’s new cologne. Then again, of the two of them, she’d only met Thom in person—she’d seen the model in glossy photographs she’d gone through with her art director, so she might not recognise him in real life. From seven years of working in advertising, she knew very well that appearances didn’t always reflect reality.
It was a lesson she’d been wrestling with constantly for the past week.
At least lunch would be enjoyable, she thought as the hostess led her to the table she’d reserved. She liked Thom, and it was always interesting to meet models, as long as they weren’t chain smokers. They had odd quirks and they were good to look at, and Thom’s models tended to have a sense of humour.
Wouldn’t it just show Gary if I ended up dating a model? she thought, and snorted. She came up with crazy ideas all the time for her job, but this was probably one of the craziest. As if a model would ever notice her enough to ask her out.
Jane pulled her BlackBerry out of her briefcase, figuring she might as well use the time as she waited for Thom and Jay Richard. This morning had been hard work; she deserved a minute or two to look for an email from Jonny.
Her machine took a moment to connect, and when she looked up a man was smiling at her.
He had dark hair and he wore a loose white shirt, unbuttoned at the cuffs. His hands were in the pockets of his faded jeans. He stood casually, comfortably, looking straight at her, and his eyes were dark blue. Even across the room she could see it.
Jane’s fingers gripped her BlackBerry hard. This was her model. It must be, he looked so familiar. But, somehow, in a different way than she’d expected. It wasn’t like recognising someone from a photo. The sight of him connected inside her stomach, making her joints ache and her breasts tighten. Her tailored suit stifled her, felt too tight across her chest.
He had perfect teeth, sculpted lips, high cheekbones, and he wasn’t just smiling at her, he was beaming.
Jane couldn’t help it. She flicked her head to the side, looking over her shoulder to see who was behind her, because men this gorgeous did not beam at her.
When she looked back he was striding across the restaurant, nearly at her table, his hand outstretched.
And then he was there. In front of her, holding her hand in his, though she didn’t remember offering it.
‘Jane,’ he said, his head tilted slightly to the side, his smile digging creases into the side of his mouth. His voice was deep, soft, and friendly.
The sound of her name in his mouth did something to her blood because she felt as if she had too much of it, heating her skin, pumping her heart harder, tingling in her fingertips and chest.
‘Yes.’ She stood on weak legs, hearing her voice shaky and realising, somewhere in the back of her boiling brain, that she should really try to control her behaviour before she made herself look like an idiot. But this man …
‘You look different from your photographs,’ she said.
‘I really hope so,’ he said, and the warmth in his eyes and his hand made her swallow, hard.
‘Dude, you found her!’
A man in a white linen suit burst out of nowhere. He clapped the gorgeous man on the shoulder and kissed Jane on both of her cheeks. ‘Hey, Jane, great to see you, babe. I see you know Jay already.’
‘Thom,’ she said, in confusion, and then realised that she was still holding the model’s hand. ‘It’s great to meet you, Jay,’ she said, giving his hand a shake, trying to inject some professionalism into the gesture that was, for her, quite frankly sensual.
His hand enfolded hers, warm and dry, and it was as if she could feel every line of his palm, every print of his fingertips against her. It was more than a handshake. She felt as if she knew him.
She met his eyes again and he was smiling as if he shared a secret with her.
He knew. He knew he made her feel this way.
‘I’m glad to meet you too, Jane,’ he said, and his voice was knowing, too. ‘It looks as if we interrupted your emailing.’ He glanced down at her BlackBerry, where her emails had loaded.
‘Oh, not at all,’ she said, dropping his hand at last and scooping up her BlackBerry to close it down. She couldn’t help glance back up at his face, though, and when she did, he winked at her.
Winked. As if they were already friends, as if he were flirting with her. He stepped behind her and pulled out her seat for her—not that she needed it, she had just stood up—and before she could sink into it, he whispered, ‘You look even better than I thought you would.’
Oh-h-h. She got it, now. He was a charmer, someone who thought that his good looks gave him the right to flatter and flirt with every woman.
‘Thank you,’ she said, and if her attraction to him meant that she couldn’t quite inject her reply with the requisite coolness, he seemed to understand some of it, because he retreated to the other side of the table and sat down next to Thom.
Her body was disappointed. Her body, traitor that it was, wanted Jay to sit next to her and stay close to her. Her mind, however, registered that if she was sitting across from him, she’d be able to look at him for the entire meal, which was quite bad enough.
‘Jay’s very excited to be working on the Franco campaign with you,’ Thom was saying, and if it hadn’t been so weird she would have sworn that Thom dug an elbow into Jay’s side. ‘Aren’t you, Jay?’
‘Very,’ he said, and he caught Jane’s eye again. Jane couldn’t figure it out. It was as if he were trying to communicate some other message to her, something beyond the normal chit-chat of a professional meeting, something even beyond what must be, for him, routine flirting.
But what else would he be trying to say?
‘So how long have you been modelling, Jay?’ she asked brightly.
The look he gave her was wry, almost rueful, which didn’t make sense either, because if he was a charmer who relied on his looks, wouldn’t he be into his modelling career?
‘Not long,’ he answered. ‘Thom’s an old friend and he conned me into it.’
‘It’s not my fault if the camera loves you, dude,’ Thom said.
Jane dropped her gaze briefly to look at Jay’s body, what she could see of it across the table. She could see why the camera loved him. He was all lean, strong lines. His clothes were comfortably loose on his body, but she could tell from the bit of chest exposed in the V of his shirt and his dark-haired forearms that he was slim, but packed with muscle.
Some models, even the male ones, were too skinny, but Jay had a body that looked good in real life, too. They’d chosen him partly because Giovanni Franco wanted somebody masculine, who looked more like a man than some of the boyish models on the catwalks.
‘I’m not so sure I love the camera,’ Jay was saying to Thom. ‘And you only think modelling is a great profession because you haven’t been forced to look brooding under hot lights for hours on end.’
She dragged her eyes away from that V of tanned skin at the base of his neck, and sat back in her seat, trying for a semblance of ease. ‘Don’t you think that’s a fair turnaround for the years that women have been objectified by the media?’ she said.
‘Ha!’ cried Thom. ‘She’s got you there, bud. You’re striking a blow for feminism by being a sex object. Think of that next time you’re posing in your underwear.’
Jay threw back his head and laughed, and she could see the texture of his skin. He was tanned and he hadn’t shaved this morning, so a slight rough stubble shadowed his well-formed jaw and around his beautiful mouth.
She wondered what it would feel like on her neck. Under her lips.
A menu appeared in front of her and she took it without looking at the waitress who offered it. Instead, she looked at Jay’s hands as they accepted the menu. They were as lean and strong as the rest of him.
He smiled at her over the menu and the pulse of desire that ripped through her was so strong that she nearly gasped.
‘Would you like something to drink, some wine?’ she heard a female voice say, and Jane tore her gaze away from Jay to look up at the waitress, ask for the wine menu, take charge of this situation instead of letting her libido do it for her.
And this time, she did gasp, as her body temperature went from overheated to zero.
‘Oh, crap,’ she said.
CHAPTER TWO
IT WAS Kathleen. Big-breasted, tousle-haired, full-lipped Kathleen.
‘You’re a waitress?’ Jane said.
‘Oh.’ Kathleen stood stock-still, the wine list in her hand. ‘This—is awkward.’
‘Thom,’ Jane said, her voice much calmer than she would have thought possible, ‘would you mind choosing the wine? I’ll be right back.’
‘Sure,’ she heard Thom reply, but she didn’t wait to see what he thought of her behaviour. Instead she walked straight across the restaurant and into the ladies’ room.
It was empty. Jane kicked the marble base of the sink. She didn’t know what to do, so she washed her hands. She wished she could wash out her mouth, too. Or wash the last five minutes away.
‘He left me for a waitress,’ she said to her reflection, and then turned the water back on to wash her hands again.
She heard a soft knock on the door. ‘Jane?’
She went around the sink to the door. It was open a crack, and she could see a hand and half a face. Blue-eyed, jaw rough with brown stubble. Jay.
‘Jane? Are you all right?’
She sighed and opened the door all the way. Fortunately the ladies’ room was in a corridor off the main dining room, so the entire restaurant couldn’t witness her conversation with a male model through the lavatory door.
‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry I said “crap”.’
Jay shrugged. ‘I’ve said worse, and so has Thom. I can be quite an inventive swearer, actually. What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing. It’s—everything is fine.’ She smiled.
The expression on his face let her know she wasn’t being convincing. ‘Okay. Listen, Thom’s sorting out the bill and getting us a table at the restaurant next door. Do you like Italian?’
Her cheeks flushed hot. Some professional she was—she was meant to be the host. ‘That’s not necessary, I’ll be—’
‘It’s necessary,’ Jay interrupted her. ‘And don’t say the word “fine” any more. I know you’ve got a better vocabulary than that, even when you’re lying.’
His words surprised a laugh out of her. ‘Okay.’
Jay rested his shoulder against the wall beside him, the same sort of casual, comfortable stance he’d had when she’d first seen him. It brought him a little bit closer to her. She’d expect a model to wear some sort of cologne, especially as he was advertising it, but he smelled of warm cotton.
‘Do you want to tell me what’s wrong, Jane?’
For a split second, she was tempted.
It would be a relief to tell someone what was going on. She’d kept it in and kept it in and sometimes she felt as if she were going to explode. Jay was looking at her with concern in his blue eyes, a slight furrow between his eyebrows. And he looked so damn familiar, as if she’d known this stranger all her life.
But she didn’t know him.
‘Did you see her shoes?’ she asked instead. ‘The waitress’s?’
He nodded, seemingly not put off by the change in topic at all.
‘Were they cheap, or expensive?’ A model would know these things, she was sure.
‘Cheap,’ he said without hesitation. ‘Needed resoling. If she stands in those all day she’s headed for corns.’
Her laughter this time wasn’t quite so unexpected, and it relaxed her a little bit.
‘Jane,’ he said, leaning closer to her, his voice lower and sincere, ‘I don’t know who that waitress is, but if it helps you to know this, you are about a million times prettier than she is. And you have a better job, and I’m certain you have a better personality.’ His gaze dropped downward, taking her in. ‘And you have much better shoes.’
Jane’s skin heated, because, although he was discussing her shoes, he hadn’t just looked at her feet. He’d looked at her body on the way down. Just a look, but she was pretty much melting.
Wouldn’t it show Gary if I went out with a model? she thought again, and then again brushed the thought aside. She’d already mixed up her personal and her professional life, and it was a very bad idea.
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I guess we’d better get back to—’
Jay touched her arm, the bare skin of her wrist, and she stopped, arrested by the feeling of his flesh on hers again.
‘You’re doing wonderfully, by the way,’ he said. ‘I appreciate it.’
That was an odd thing to say, but she supposed it was meant as some sort of encouragement. ‘Thank you. I’m usually a very professional person.’
‘I know.’
His fingers were still wrapped around her wrist. He could probably feel every beat of her heart. As if he were touching, somehow, her life force.
Everything about him felt as if she’d known him for so, so long, maybe in a neglected corner of her mind where she paid attention to dreams and desires.
‘Will you have dinner with me tonight?’ she blurted out.
She could see the mild surprise in his eyes. ‘I would love to. Do you mean just the two of us, or—?’
‘Just the two of us,’ she replied, before she could think through what it was she had just done, or the probability that he would reject her. When she’d first started out in advertising, she’d learned to let her impulses loose, even the crazy ones, even the ones that would never work in a million years. Because sometimes they did work.
But she hadn’t let her impulses loose for some time, now.
‘I mean, don’t worry if you don’t want to, I know you’re busy, and—’
‘I would love to.’
That brought her up short. ‘Oh.’ She swallowed, put some more poise into her voice, and said, ‘Well, that’s wonderful. How about eight o’clock?’
‘Fantastic.’ His smile was both genuine and perfect. He nodded back towards the restaurant. ‘Shall we go and be professional now?’
‘Definitely.’ She stepped through the ladies’ room door and joined him, walking back across the restaurant, wondering with every step what the hell she had just got herself into.
Four and a half hours later, she was still wondering. Except this time she was pacing the living room of her high-ceilinged, brick-walled loft, wringing her hands.
Half of her was remembering Jay at lunch that afternoon. How he’d smiled when he’d said yes to her date, his hand curled intimately around her wrist. And then the rest of the meal, where they’d stuck safely to talk about modelling and the campaign and more general chat, and Jane had felt more like herself.
Except for the moments when she’d watched him eat. Knife and fork, held in his long-fingered hands. It was silly to be aroused by watching somebody cut his food. But she was. His movements were economical, the tendons on the back of his hand flexing, his fingers agile.
Whenever he took a bite of his risotto, she had to consider his mouth. How his bottom lip was fuller than the top. How both lips curved upwards at the corners, in a sexy near-smile. How white and even his teeth were.
At one point he’d licked his bottom lip and she’d almost dropped her water glass because all she could think of was his mouth on her, his tongue in her mouth, how his hair would feel under her hands as she kissed him.
And then he’d looked at her and smiled, with that somehow warm and intimate look, as if he and she shared a secret from the rest of the world.
The man was the most beautiful human being she had ever seen in her entire life and she could not work out what he thought was going on between them. Unless he gave every woman this feeling, unless he had charm down to such an art that he appeared to be sincere in the most unusual way she’d ever encountered.
And what on earth was she going to do with him tonight?
Jane stopped pacing, sat down at her desk and opened her laptop, going straight to the Giovanni Franco cologne campaign files. She clicked on the notes her art director, Amy, had made for her when they were in the process of choosing Jay Richard as the model for the campaign. Maybe they would tell her something more about this man.
She skimmed the notes, picking up phrases as she went. ‘Client wants an easygoing attitude.’ ‘Warm face, which customers can relate to.’ Well, that was correct, and went some way to showing her that she hadn’t lost her mind. ‘Model not perfect, but appealing, likely to conform to image consumers would like for themselves.’ Jane snorted at that one. He looked perfect enough to her.
She called up one of his portfolio photos. He was leaning with one hand on a doorframe, wearing a slim-fitting long-sleeved T-shirt that emphasised the lean lines of his body. He was smiling just enough to dig a crease in his left cheek. He looked as if he was about to start a conversation, or reach out and touch the observer.
He looked nearly exactly as he’d looked when he’d stood outside the ladies’ room, talking with her.
Rationally, she knew it meant he’d been acting. But the familiar pose still made her warm, made her breath come faster.
‘Oh, crap,’ she moaned. ‘Why did I decide it would be a good thing to date a model?’
Her laptop made a ‘whishht’ sound and a little box popped up in the corner of the screen to tell her that Jonny Cole had logged into the chat program they sometimes used.
He’d probably emailed her earlier; he emailed her just about every day. But she’d been so busy this morning and this afternoon after lunch that she hadn’t had time to check any personal stuff, and whatever he’d sent was most likely buried in her inbox. And of course since she’d got home she’d been angsting.
But Jonny would calm her down. She opened her email application and began to scroll through messages, looking for his return address. Most of the stuff she had that wasn’t work-related was spam about stock tips and enlarging her penis. How she was supposed to find the single message that actually meant something …
Her laptop chimed. A glance told her it was Jonny hailing her. She abandoned her inbox and clicked on the chat icon.
Hello gorgeous! How are you?
She could see Jonny’s message appearing as he typed. Jane hadn’t seen Jonny in person for fifteen years, but she could remember well what he used to look like when they were kids and he would come over to her house nearly every day to play. He’d been a skinny boy with a brown bowl cut, knobbly knees, and round glasses. He was a lot more fragile than her four older, boisterous brothers; at times, his shyness had made him seem even more fragile than Jane was herself. Jane was used to being around bigger boys, but Jonny always liked hanging around with her more than with her brothers.
Whenever she pictured him now, at twenty-seven, she thought of him as a skinny man with the same bowl cut and round glasses, sort of like a grown-up Harry Potter. He was a self-described computer geek, but she bet he was cute.
It was typical of him that he called her ‘gorgeous’. Of course, he hadn’t seen her in fifteen years, either.
Before she replied, Jane glanced down at herself. She wore the skirt of her brown suit, and a shell top. Her light daily make-up had probably worn off, and her plain brown hair was pulled back into a clip, as usual.
She looked businesslike. She wasn’t gorgeous. She typed back:
Hey Jonny. I’m fine.
Liar.
The reply came back lightning-fast, so quickly it made her gasp in the empty room.
Jay had said nearly the same thing.
Suddenly Jane was blinking back tears. She’d fought and fought for the past few days to act as if everything was okay, as if she had no worries. She was sick of it. Surrounded all day, every day, by people who wanted her at peak efficiency, who didn’t want to know how she felt, and when she came home, she was all alone. She didn’t even have anywhere comfortable to sit because Gary had taken his couch.
Gary and I broke up.
She typed and sent it before she could think better of it. And then she did think better of it, and wrote the more honest truth:
Gary left me for another woman.
It was a moment before Jonny replied.
I understand. I’m sorry, Jane.
He’s a bastard.
Well, that goes without saying.
And she’s a waitress with bad shoes.
Again, a slight pause before Jonny wrote back.
Why does her job make a difference?
Because I’ve worked so hard to be a success, to be good at my job, and Gary was proud of me. Hesaid he was proud of me. And then he leaves me for somebody who comes home every night smelling of other people’s food?
As soon as she typed it, the answer felt inadequate, but she didn’t think she was going to get much closer to the truth typing into a silly little box, so she sent it.
I was wondering about the shoes, but now I think I get it. You’re saying she doesn’t even have good taste and it feels unfair.
It’s mostly because Gary wears these Italian shoes and I had some comfortable slippers I used to wear around the house and he kept on commenting about them until I had to throw them away. I’ve never found another pair that was so comfortable. How come it’s okay for her to wear crappy shoes and I can’t even keep my slippers?
Her fingers were flying over the keyboard and Jane didn’t feel like crying any more. Instead, she felt lighter. It was a huge relief to say what she was thinking to somebody who wouldn’t judge her and who tried to understand, even if it was via a computer and a network, even if it was to someone whom she never saw in person. She hit ‘send’ and started typing again immediately, without even taking a breath.
So now I’ve got this date tonight with this gorgeous model person and I don’t know what to do.
It’s a date?
Jonny’s reply came back fast as thought.
Yes. And I don’t know what to do.
Excuse me for a moment, while I run around the room whooping in joy.
Jane laughed out loud. She loved Jonny’s sense of humour, and it was typical of him that he was so happy for her that she had a date.
Okay, I’m back. I think I scared the neighbours. So what do you mean, you don’t know what to do?
Jane sighed.
I haven’t dated for ages. I’m not sure how you behave. Even with Gary, we didn’t really date … wewere working together and we just sort of got together. I’m not sure I know what to do with a man.
I’m sure you know perfectly well.
She glanced down at herself again. Plain Jane, career woman with no social life. She couldn’t even keep a man faithful to her when she was engaged to him.
She understood men, she thought. She’d grown up with four brothers, after all. Most of her colleagues at work were male. She’d always thought that men were refreshing, because they usually said what they meant, and the motivations for their actions were usually pretty clear.
But when it came to relationships, she obviously didn’t have a clue. Because she’d thought that everything with Gary was fine, right up until the minute he’d introduced her to his new girlfriend. She wrote:
I don’t know what men like in a woman. I’m not sure what they think is sexy, or what they’d like a woman to do on a date.
She pressed ‘send’, and then, in one of her impulses, her second today, she typed:
Tell me what to do, Jonny. Tell me what you would like.
Jonny stared at the screen and swallowed.
Had he stepped into some strange virtual world, or was this one of his fantasies coming true?
Jane Miller was wonderful, beautiful, intriguing. It had been fifteen years and she was all grown up, and he’d recognised her the minute he’d walked into the restaurant. Even though her hair was pulled back neatly into a clip, the strands that escaped were still as thick and soft and wavy as he remembered. Her eyes were big and grey, her lips were a perfect bow, and her skin was as delicate as the petal of an orchid.
He hadn’t just recognised her with his eyes and his mind; he’d recognised her with his heart, as the girl he’d followed around and adored for years when he was a kid. She’d been a crush, yeah, the untouchable girl he’d dreamed unformed pre-adolescent dreams about, but she’d also been his friend. She was still his friend.
And he’d recognised her with his body, too. Because Jane had grown from a tomboy into a very attractive woman.
He’d barely been able to keep his hands off her. His first instinct when he’d seen her had been to sweep her into his arms and plant an enormous kiss on those doll-like lips. It was attraction, it was affection, and it was also a primitive urge to grab this woman and mark her as his, because he’d always wanted her to be.
But there had been her fiancé to consider, and Thom, and the charade he’d asked her to play.
And now …
This was a real date. Just the two of them. Two grownups, both of them single.
And she was asking him what he would like to happen. He replied carefully.
What do you mean?
I mean everything. What should I wear, for example?
Jonny closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
She’d been wearing a suit at lunch this afternoon, and it had been pretty modest, nondescript in colour, conservative in cut. It was probably designed to minimise her femininity, but Jonny wasn’t fooled by it. He’d looked closely enough to see the slender curve of her waist under her jacket, the wave of her hips under her skirt, the slight bounce of her breasts under her silky top.
And the graceful line of her neck, and the delicacy of her wrists, slim and throbbing with warmth under his palm when he’d touched her.
And her shoes. Her suit had been nondescript, but her shoes had been fine leather, high-heeled, and had made her legs go on for ever. He typed:
You have good shoes. You should wear heels. They’re very sexy.
I should definitely wear good shoes. What else?
A dress. Something that doesn’t hide your body.
High heels and a clingy dress. Got it. Should I wear fancy underwear? Forget it, don’t answer that, of course I should.
Jonny nearly fell off his chair.
‘What colour?’ he asked aloud, his voice hoarse, but didn’t type it. Instead, he pictured it. White lace on that porcelain skin. Black satin hugging the curves of her buttocks. Pink silk pushing up her sweet breasts, barely covering her nipples.
He didn’t care what colour, actually. His blood had rushed to his crotch and he was sporting a hard-on of epic proportions.
If he spent the entire date knowing Jane was wearing fancy underwear just for him, he was going to have difficulty standing up and walking without attracting attention.
Okay, so how should I behave?
The ding of Jane’s message broke him out of his reverie, though it couldn’t distract him completely.
Just be yourself, Jane. No man could ask for more.
You’re very sweet, Jonny, but I need more information. Should I be flirtatious? Seductive? How do I do it?
The thoughts about Jane’s underwear didn’t go away, but he also remembered her at lunch today. He hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her. Jane had tried to act normally, talking with Thom, pretending to study the menu and appreciate her food—but he’d caught her attention wandering back to him, again and again. She’d looked in his eyes just a little too long when they’d spoken to each other; she’d cast quick, fluttering glances at his body.
Since he’d started modelling he’d become used to glances like that from women, but Jane was different. Every glance from her had heated his skin with desire—and, more than that, her eyes on him had made him feel like laughing out loud with happiness.
The mutual attraction between them was the best thing that had happened to him for a very long time. He typed:
I mean it. Just be yourself. You’re seductive without any help.
And you’re not BEING any help, Jonny. I need to know how to be sexy. What would you think if a woman did something like leaning forward on the table to mistakenly/deliberately show you her cleavage? Or is that too tacky?
Jonny swallowed. Jane Miller, the girl of his dreams, deliberately leaning forward in her clingy dress, showing him her cleavage in her ‘fancy underwear’ …
That would work.
What else? I’m bad at this, remember. Tell me what you like.
Oh, dear Lord. Jonny took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and typed without looking at the laptop, because his inner vision behind his eyelids was showing Jane, doing every little thing she could do to turn him on.
Cross your legs, let your skirt ride up a little, laugh, lean back in your chair. Wear your hair loose and twist a strand of it around your finger. Reach out, with small touches, a stroke on my arm or hand. Throw back your head in that adventurous way thatyou have. Get close, let us breathe the same air. Let your eyes show how you feel.
He opened his eyes only to press ‘send’, and he watched his words appear in the dialogue box.
In black-and-white, the words looked different than they had in his head. Starker. More like orders, rather than fantasy.
His heart rate sped up, partly with anxiety, but mostly with excitement. His blood pounded through his body and heated his limbs and made his erection pulse in his trousers.
His adventurous Jane, the fearless girl who climbed trees and jumped into pools of water without looking first. Was she playing with him, teasing him? Was she really as uncertain as she said?
She’d made the first move by asking him out, and now she was taking it further before they even met again, and either motivation appealed to him. He could play with her or he could reassure her. Or he could do both. He could tell her what he wanted from her, as he’d never done with any other woman before, because what he wanted most from her was that she be herself.
Unless, of course, she didn’t like what he’d written.
The seconds stretched into minutes. Jonny shifted in his seat, adjusting the fit of his trousers. The hotel-room chair wasn’t all that comfortable, especially for a desperately turned on man glued to his laptop. He pictured Jane sitting in her flat, reading the words he’d written, picturing the two of them together, maybe her brow furrowed a little, thinking about what she would do.
He raised his hands to the keyboard to ask if she was still there, but then saw that she was typing, and her answer appeared.
Okay. I can do that. But I have another question. What do you think about kissing?
A sound escaped Jonny’s throat, half a laugh, half a gasp of surprise.
I like it a lot.
His mouth was in a wide smile as he typed, his head shaking in disbelief that he was having this conversation online.
But what about a first kiss? What should it be like? Should it be all chaste and sweet, or should there be tongues involved? Do you just promise something, or do you really get into it and get all passionate? What do you think?
I rather think it might depend on the circumstances.
Jonny was actually breathless as he typed, he noticed with the part of his brain that was still rational. He continued:
You know, what feels right at the time.
He hit ‘send’, and then couldn’t help typing:
Personally I like passion. What do you want out of a first kiss, Jane?
The answer came back in seconds.
I want it all.
He had to stand up and walk around the room, because those four words on his screen made him feel as if he wanted to explode, as if he didn’t want to wait for eight o’clock and seeing Jane in the restaurant, but instead get a cab straight to her address and when she answered the door grab her and give her a kiss that had all the passion she could ever want.
When he typed, his hands were shaking slightly.
You can have it all, Jane.
And do you think we should have sex with each other?
He could barely respond.
Do you want to?
You know, I think I do.
Jonny didn’t move or breathe. He was normally a visual person, but the fantasy that filled his mind wasn’t just a picture. It was a full-body imagining of what it would feel like to have Jane’s smooth, bare skin against his. How her breasts and hips would feel under his hands, the gasp she would make as he touched her. The weight of her leg twined around his as they lay together. A soft giggle in his ear. Her mouth, soft as petals, her little hands stroking up his back. And the wet, tight heat inside her.
He groaned aloud.
Tell me one more thing, Jonny, just for information, and then I’ll leave you in peace for now. What’s your wildest fantasy?
He was being driven insane by desire and he typed furiously, without slowing down to let his brain think about what he was communicating.
We can’t wait for dinner to be over. We get up and leave together and when we’re outside, in the cool spring air, we immediately touch each other. We slide our hands inside each other’s clothing and we touch whatever skin we can, kissing and exploring and not caring about the other people walking past us in the evening. Our clothes are in the way but that’s exciting, too, because every touch promises even more.
He pressed ‘send’ and kept on typing without a break.
And we’re laughing, Jane, and we hail a taxi and go to the closest possible place where we fall through the door and pull our clothes aside, don’t even bother to take them off, and have the hottest sex in the world up against the nearest wall.
As he typed he felt it. Jane’s impatient hands on his belt, pushing aside his trousers and taking hold of his erection. Him pressing her against the wall, holding her there while she wrapped her legs around his waist and he nudged aside her dress and suckled her breast, hard. Her strangled cry of pleasure. How their bodies would thrust together and how they would climax with a noise half of ecstasy, half of amazed amusement.
And then we would spend the rest of the night taking it slow, exploring, talking. Sharing and getting to know each other again.
He took a long, shaky breath, and looked back at what he had typed.
It took a moment for his eyes to focus, and then the impact of his words registered in his brain.
He’d just had cyber sex with Jane.
He lifted his hand to his mouth and bit the side of his finger. His heartbeat throbbed almost painfully even in this little piece of him. Inside his boxers, his penis was like a rod of red-hot iron, pulsing and insistent and wanting to rob him of every single bit of his intellect and conscience and modesty.
What had he just done?
She’d asked for his fantasy. Not what he’d actually planned on doing this evening, which was having a terrific date and seeing how they felt about each other. Not what he thought was probably best for them to do, which was talk about how she felt about her break-up and decide to take it easy until she very definitely wasn’t on the rebound.
No. She’d asked for his wildest fantasy and he’d given it to her, including groping in public and sex up against a wall.
And she was probably about to give him the internet equivalent of a slap in the face.
He shifted in his seat again, intensely uncomfortable. She wasn’t replying. Maybe she was too disgusted. Maybe she was so angry she was waiting to meet him in person before she slapped him.
Maybe she was as turned on as he was.
His laptop dinged.
Thanks, Jonny. Talk to you soon.
Jonny jumped up and paced the hotel room. He couldn’t walk quite as he normally did because his hard-on was becoming distinctly bothersome.
Thanks? What did that mean? Thanks, but no thanks? Thanks for showing me what you’re really like, you lech? Thanks for giving me evidence I can take to the police?
Thanks for the fantasy, you hot stud, it was exactly what I was thinking myself, and I’ll be ripping my clothes off as soon as we get to that wall?
Jonny had always liked the internet and the freedom it gave you to meet new people, discover things, and make contact in a way that had never been possible before.
Now, he could see its downside. What was the point of a mode of communication that didn’t allow you to see the person you were talking to? That relied on words rather than tone of voice, electronic representations rather than bodies?
He checked his watch. Half an hour, and he’d know what Jane meant by ‘Thanks’.
CHAPTER THREE
JANE asked the cab to stop at the end of the street so she could walk to the restaurant and cool down a little bit.
As she walked Jane plucked at the neckline of her dress, lower than she was used to. She’d bought it for a Pearce Grey cocktail party a year ago, and never worn it because at the last minute she’d decided that a suit would be more professional. But tonight she’d dug it out, on Jonny’s advice.
Jonny’s advice. Her stomach spiralled as she thought about following it. Imagine grabbing Jay and pulling him into a cab, with the full intention of having frantic sex with him as soon as they got to her flat. This beautiful, perfect man.
Her legs swished against each other as she walked in her high heels, arousing her even more. Meeting Jay this afternoon, and then Jonny’s unexpected words on the laptop, had conjured up images in her head that were almost shockingly explicit. She wouldn’t quite have expected it of Jonny, not something so blatantly sexy. But then again, in the past, their online relationship had been a little flirty, but mostly friendly. She’d made it clear she had a fiancé.
For all she knew, Jonathan Cole was a sex god in real life, or at least he had the imagination of one. Maybe he had a steady stream of women who were turned on by computer geniuses in glasses, and he was doing them all up against a variety of walls all over the north of England.
The thought made her smile, and it also made a twinge of jealousy tickle deep in her chest. Because Jonny’s words had struck something in her, had interested her more than just anybody’s sexual fantasy would’ve done.
It was an insight into Jonny she’d never had before … and also an insight into her own desires. Every single thing he had described had sounded exciting and perfect and right, even though she’d never done anything like that before.
And it bothered her a little bit that he might be describing his experience with someone else. Even though she fully intended to experience it with someone else, too.
Jane paused at the door of the wine bar where she’d arranged to meet Jay before dinner, and took a deep breath. It was very difficult to believe she had a date with a male model, and even more difficult to believe that she planned to seduce him, if she could.
She pushed open the door. The bar was crowded, but she spotted him immediately, as if she had been programmed to find him.
He wore a stylish dark suit and a patterned white shirt, open at the collar. His brown hair was short and casually styled. He’d shaved and without a shadow of a beard his jaw was even stronger and more defined, emphasising his cheekbones.
She bit her lip, and then remembered she would ruin her lipstick.
He checked his watch; his expression looked a little anxious, and that gave Jane a boost of confidence. He was waiting for her. When he looked around the room she stepped forward and approached the table.
Jay stood when he saw her and strode to meet her, and his smile took her breath away.
‘You came,’ he said, and his voice sounded almost comically relieved. He kissed her on her cheek, and she could smell the subtle scent of his shaving lotion. His lips were gentle and welcoming and they made a shiver run through her.
He stood back and looked her over, from head to foot. She’d been aroused walking in here, but under his gaze she felt her nipples hardening inside her silk bra, and felt a bolt of warmth between her legs.
‘You look fantastic,’ he said.
‘Thank you.’ With him looking at her like that, she could almost believe it. He was a charmer, she knew, but she could use all the confidence she could get, especially when in the company of a physically perfect male who was wearing a suit that fitted as if it were made for him.
‘You look great,’ she told him, because he really did, though she was also sure he heard that all the time.
She was a little surprised when his cheeks flushed slightly with pleasure. ‘Thanks,’ he said, and took her hand to lead her to the table, where he pulled out a chair for her.
He’d done that twice today, she remembered. She worked with men all the time and they rarely did anything like that. It was a totally unnecessary courtesy, a little bit of gender conditioning that she would normally laugh at, but just this minute it felt nice.
She sat in her chair and crossed her legs, letting her skirt slide up her bare thighs. She saw Jay notice, and saw him swallow.
Thank you, Jonny, she thought.
‘I was worried you wouldn’t show up,’ he said as he sat down. ‘I thought you’d decide I was coming on too strong and run in the opposite direction.’
‘I’m the one who invited you out, remember?’
A waitress appeared. ‘Do you fancy a glass of champagne?’ Jay asked Jane. ‘I feel that we’ve got a lot to celebrate.’
She nodded, and the waitress disappeared. ‘I don’t usually drink champagne,’ Jay said, with a short laugh. ‘Then again, I don’t normally wear suits, either. One of the few perks of the modelling job is that I get to keep some of the clothes, but I don’t get much call to dress up in my day-to-day life.’
‘I’m not really a dress person, either,’ Jane admitted.
‘I’m glad you wore it, though.’ His voice was quiet, intense, and Jane wanted to bite her lip and melt into a puddle. Instead, she remembered Jonny’s advice and twisted a strand of her hair loosely around her finger.
He noticed, and moistened his lips with his tongue. ‘Jane, that is really working,’ he said. He reached his hand out as if he were about to touch her, and then the waitress came back with their drinks.
They lifted their glasses, and touched the rims together. ‘Here’s to seeing you,’ Jay said.
‘You too.’ Jane took a sip of champagne, wondering if it would give her a bit more courage. ‘I never thought I’d be out on a date with a male model.’
‘Ah. Well, yes.’ Jay put down his glass, and leaned forward on the table. ‘I want to tell you about that. It’s strictly temporary.’
‘Really?’ She suppressed dismay that he wanted to discuss business. ‘Does this mean you wouldn’t be available for a follow-up Giovanni Franco campaign?’
He raised his hands. ‘I’m—it depends. I wouldn’t leave you in the lurch, Jane. But it’s not the campaign I’m talking about, it’s me. I want to be honest with you and tell you why I’m modelling in the first place. It’s not a career I would’ve ever chosen for myself.’
‘Okay,’ she said, wondering why he was talking about this, and leaning back in her chair with her glass of champagne.
‘Okay,’ he repeated after her. He took a deep breath and laid his hands on the table, gazing at them, and Jane was surprised that his expression was apprehensive, as if he were gearing himself up to say something difficult to her.
He raised his head and looked straight at her. ‘I loved my dad,’ he said.
Jay said the four words with such clarity and vehemence that Jane blinked. ‘All right,’ she said, slowly, wondering why Jay, a near stranger, was telling her this on their first date.
‘He was my hero,’ Jay continued. ‘I thought he was everything a man should be. He seemed so honourable, so upright. He worked hard and he always had time to give me advice, and he adored my mother, I was sure he did. You could tell it by the way he looked at her, how he spoke to her. I thought he never wanted anything but to protect her.’
He met her eyes again, as if testing whether she understood what he was trying to say. Jane nodded, and, although she was still wondering why he was telling her this, his dark blue eyes were so full of sincerity and emotion that she couldn’t question him too much. This was important to Jay, and for some reason it was also important to him that he told her about it.
It was unusual, but it was a kind of trust.
‘I was devastated when he died. Not as much as my mother was. As she is.’
He lapsed into thought for a moment, and then shook his head and ran his hand through his short hair. ‘Anyway, she was in no state to go through his affairs, so I did it for her when I got back. And, Jane—’ he rumpled his hair again, looking at Jane with pain in his features ‘—he’d left nothing. Everything was gone. The business, the property, all of it was mortgaged up to the hilt, and he had debts and loans adding up to thousands and thousands of pounds.’
Jane put down her drink and stared at Jay.
He was being totally sincere. Every word he said told her how hurt he was. She could tell, not only from the content of what he was saying, but also from his expression, how he spoke, the timbre of his voice. This man wasn’t just worried about his parents’ financial situation; he felt betrayed, disillusioned, bitterly disappointed.
‘How did it happen?’ she asked.
‘A combination of things, though I’m not sure of all of it. Some of it was risky investment. Some of it was business losses that he borrowed more money to cover. A lot of it was gambling. Online poker, among other things. He must have been doing it in secret for years.’
She put her hand on his. ‘That’s awful. I’m so sorry.’
Jay nodded. ‘I haven’t told my mother. I couldn’t bear to destroy her image of him. And I know he didn’t mean to leave her in such debt; he’d had heart problems but his death was sudden. But I’ve had to do some scrambling to buy some time to repay the loans, and I need to do everything I possibly can to make money. I’ve done some extra consultancy work, and taken on some extra projects, and then when Thom started bugging me again to do some modelling for him, I said yes, even though it was something I never really wanted to do.’
‘So you’re modelling just to pay your father’s debts.’
‘Yes.’ He let out a long breath, and smiled at her. Not the million-watt model smile, but a dimmer, sadder one. ‘It feels good to tell you about it. Thom doesn’t know. Nobody knows. My mother thinks I’ve suddenly developed a love of having my photograph taken.’
She squeezed his hand. ‘I know what it’s like to keep a secret,’ she said. ‘It shouldn’t be hard, because all you have to do is keep your mouth shut and act normal. But it is.’
She thought about the past few days at work, seeing Gary, knowing what had happened between them, and pretending that everything was all right.
‘It feels better once you’ve told somebody,’ she said, remembering the relief she’d felt typing her problems to Jonny.
He turned his hand over so he was clasping hers. ‘It feels better now I’ve told you.’
Why me? she was about to ask, and then she looked from their clasped hands to his face. There was warmth in his eyes, gentleness and earnestness in his mouth, and every line was familiar in that unexpected way.
This intimacy had been between them since they’d first seen each other, and although Jane couldn’t explain it, she couldn’t deny it, either.
Instead she bit her lip and nodded.
‘You’re so beautiful, Jane,’ Jay murmured, his dark blue eyes still looking into hers. The air around them thickened, time seemed to slow even though her pulse sped up. He was so close, she was sharing every breath he took.
Jonny’s words swam into her mind. He’d described this moment. And then he’d described what could happen afterwards.
She could have her mouth on this man’s mouth, his hands on her, lifting her up so she could wrap her legs around his waist, pushing her clothing aside so he could enter her. Fast and hard and breathless.
The idea, the imagined feeling, throbbed inside her.
She didn’t know Jay. And she didn’t know if the way he made her feel was just part of his natural charm, a normal reaction of every female to his looks and his behaviour.
But she did know she wanted him. And he appeared to want her, too.
She had been engaged for eight months and had never felt even remotely this turned on. And after the hell of the past few days, after the habit and hard work of the past few years, this seemed too miraculous not to seize with both hands.
Jane lifted her free hand to Jay’s face. She touched his left cheekbone and ran her fingertips down over his skin, over the place where his smile dug grooves in his cheek, close to the side of his mouth. His skin was smooth and almost shockingly warm. He tilted his head slightly, as if to press her fingers closer.
‘I don’t think I want dinner,’ she said, and heard that her voice had become husky.
‘Me neither.’
They stood at the same time, their hands still clasped. Jay dropped a note on the table and they walked out of the bar together, saying nothing. Jane was aware of every part of her body: the way her high heels made her hips sway, the brushing of her bare thighs together under her dress, the soft material of her skirt against her legs, the way her breasts moved slightly as she walked. Her fingers, twined with Jay’s, which were long and strong and sinewy.
She was aware of his body, too. He moved easily but she sensed urgency in his movements. He held her hand tight and kept her close so that her shoulder and hip grazed against him two or three times as they threaded through the tables. She could even sense his breathing, rapid and shallow.
He was about six inches taller than she was, even while she was wearing heels. She would have to stand on her tiptoes to kiss him.
Jay pushed open the bar door and as soon as they were outside on the pavement Jane tugged him to one side, turned, and grabbed the lapel of his suit with her free hand to pull him towards her.
‘Great idea,’ he murmured, and she felt his strong arm curl around her waist and hold her close against him while she was standing up on her tiptoes, reaching with her mouth for his.
It was like no other kiss she had ever had in her life. His lips were warm and fitted against her mouth perfectly and they felt so new, strange and right. For a moment their mouths just pressed together and Jane felt as if she had taken a giant leap forward into a whole different world.
And then it was hunger. Jane tore her hands from his grip and his suit and grasped his head with both hands, burying her fingers in his soft, short hair and pulling him closer. Her mouth moved with his and the kiss changed from static to frantic. He nudged her lips open and she touched the hot, slippery tip of his tongue. She heard herself groan in her throat and that seemed to urge Jay on because he pulled her tighter and kissed her harder.
She slid her hands down his neck and gripped his broad shoulders. Somewhere in the back of her mind she remembered Jonny’s description of kissing on the pavement, touching every bit of flesh that was possible, and she slipped the fingers of one hand between the buttons of his shirt. His chest was smooth and firm and his heartbeat hammered under his ribs and muscle.
It wasn’t enough. With her other hand she pulled at his shirt at the back under his jacket. She tugged it out of his suit waistband and spread her hand against the small of his back, moulding it to his muscle and feeling the strength of his spine.
‘Jane,’ Jay muttered roughly into her mouth, closing his teeth gently on her top lip and then kissing it before he dipped his head to kiss her neck. He still held her up against him with one arm, but the other hand stroked up her back and came round to rest on her throat and collar-bone. The tips of his fingers just edged beneath the neckline of her dress and she felt his chin and mouth underneath her ear, downwards onto the base of her neck. She could feel everywhere that he wasn’t touching, the inches of skin between his hand and where her breast began. His tongue tasted her and she shuddered and let her head fall back to give him better access.
People were walking past, they were in the centre of Chelsea, but she didn’t care, because she had never felt this free before. Jane closed her eyes and shut out London. She concentrated on this man, who knew just how to touch her and what she wanted, who seemed more full of passion than any man she had ever met.
Strength and sinew. Her body was pressed full-length against him; his leg between her thighs, his arm wrapped round her. The rigid length of his erection against her belly told her he wanted her as much as she did him.
But beneath his ardent kisses, the clasp of his hands and the rapid pace of his breathing she could sense a tenderness in his embrace. His hands were careful. His lips were gentle even when devouring her. Quite unexpectedly, she thought of the words he had used to describe how his father had treated his mother: he adored her.
She felt sexy, and adored.
Jane opened her eyes, suddenly desperate to look at Jay and see the expression on his face as he kissed her. She straightened her head, and blinked as she realised she was looking straight into the lens of a camera.
Click.
‘Um—we’re being watched,’ she said, her voice unsteady. Jay stopped kissing her and straightened, still holding her tight.
The camera clicked again. It was held by a man dressed in an anorak and shorts, wearing a floppy hat and carrying an orange backpack. Jane took in the street for the first time and noticed a group of people just past them, all carrying identical backpacks and cameras.
Tourists. And it seemed that she and Jay were suddenly a major attraction.
‘Excuse me, mate,’ Jay said, ‘but do you mind?’
The man lowered his camera. ‘You don’t see that in Oklahoma City,’ he said, apparently by way of explanation, and walked off after the rest of his group.
Jane tilted back her head to look at Jay’s face. He was watching the man retreat, incredulity in his features. He glanced down at Jane and then both of them were laughing, holding onto each other, sharing breath again.
‘I’d have thought you were used to cameras by now.’ Jane giggled.
‘I’m a model, not a porn star,’ Jay said, and then he smiled down into her face. ‘You’re incredible, Jane. What next?’
She tucked his shirt back in and smoothed her other hand over the wrinkles she had made in the front of it. ‘I think we need to go somewhere more private,’ she said. ‘Let’s get a cab.’
‘How private?’ His expression became less playful, more serious. ‘It turns out I’m only staying a few streets from here, but if you’d rather go somewhere else—’
‘We don’t need a cab, then.’ Swiftly Jane bent down and removed her high heels. She took his hand, dangling her shoes from the other. ‘Come on, let’s run to your hotel.’
Jay didn’t hesitate. He took off down the pavement, with Jane running beside him as fast as she could. Her bare feet slapped on the asphalt and her hair flew out behind her and she wondered, When was the last time I ran like this?
With Jay’s hand in hers, she flew over the kerbs, ducked between pedestrians, rounded corners like a Formula One racer and heard her breath coming out in sure, rapid pants of laughter.
They were at the door of the hotel almost before she was ready and they spilled through it laughing and gasping for breath. It was a boutique hotel, newly renovated, modern and airy. Jay brought her straight to the lift.
‘I assume you want to go to my room,’ he said, stroking her hair back from her flushed face and combing through its tangled waves with his fingers.
She stood on her toes and whispered into his ear. ‘I can think of some things we can get up to in the lift.’
He raised his eyebrows at her and seemed to be opening his mouth to say something when they were joined by a man in tweed. The door dinged and the man came into the lift with them.
Jane held Jay’s hand and nestled close into his side. Curses, she mouthed at him while the other passenger was pressing his floor button, and she was rewarded with Jay’s sexy smile.
First floor. Second floor. Jane watched the numbers on top of the lift door, felt Jay’s thumb circling the inside of her wrist, and tried not to go insane with anticipation. At the third floor the doors slid open and Jay led her out into the hallway.
‘Not far, I hope,’ she said.
‘Just here.’ He removed a card key from the inside pocket of his suit jacket and opened the door. Without a single iota of hesitation Jane walked into this near-stranger’s hotel room and felt as free and young as she had ten minutes before when she’d been sprinting full-tilt with him down the King’s Road.
The room was high-ceilinged and painted in light colours, furnished in sleek modern pieces. She spotted a pair of jeans over a chair, a laptop on the desk, and a big, smooth bed.
Jay closed the door behind her and she faced him.
Aside from his breathing, the rustle of his suit, and her heartbeat in her ears, the room was absolutely silent. Jane realised, with a twist of her heart, that for the first time she and this man were alone together. Actually acting out the intimacy they’d adopted from the start.
Jay reached out with a hand and pushed a lock of her hair back with his finger. Then, slowly, he dropped his arm to his own side.
‘So, Jane,’ he said quietly, ‘what do you want to do?’
CHAPTER FOUR
THIS was it. Jane’s chance to say no, to go back to her normal life, back to thinking about nothing but work, back to playing it safe.
She didn’t hesitate. ‘I want you,’ she said and stepped back into Jay’s arms.
Their kiss was, if anything, more passionate, although Jane wouldn’t have believed that was possible. But this time they were alone and there was an inevitability about what was going to happen that fuelled her desire. They kissed in hungry bites. Jane’s hands clutched Jay’s clothing, pulling his lithe, muscular body as tight as she could. He held her with one broad hand spread across the small of her back, and his erection pressed into her, even more insistent than before.
She had to break her mouth from his for a moment to catch her breath. When she did he stepped back, just a little bit, his hands still on her, and looked her up and down. His dark blue gaze felt like hands on her body.
‘Jane, you are beautiful,’ he said.
Silly as it was, honesty compelled her to shake her head. ‘You’re the beautiful one.’
He had a face that looked both sensual and intelligent, and a body made to wear clothes, tall and lean and hard. Although she was sure he would look even better out of his clothes. She licked her lips in anticipation and tasted him on them.
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