Hot and Bothered Read online

  He cast the closest thing he had to prayer skyward. If there were a remote possibility that he’d ever get to sleep with her, he wanted her to wear those shoes in bed.

  “Haven, honestly? You should be glad to wash your hands of me.”

  She glared at him. “Can you let me be the judge of what I should be glad about? I wanted this job. I’ve been trying to show Jimmy what I can do for years. I need referrals from him.”

  “Well, then, I’m sorry. But I can’t work with Pete Sovereign.”

  Even before the words were all the way out of his mouth, in the sober, hungover, head-splittingly bright light of day, he remembered that he had very few choices. And he didn’t like the pitying way Haven was looking at him, head tilted to one side. As if he was too pathetic to be believed.

  “What happened between you and that guy?”

  There was no way he was going to tell her. He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall.

  She sighed. “Fine. Don’t tell me. I’ll just take your word that it was a big enough deal that you can let your dad rot because you’re too proud to issue some meaningless apology.”

  He closed his eyes.

  He could hear her breathing. Fast. Maybe the walk from the 40th Street station, maybe anger. With his eyes closed, he could imagine that was what her breathing would sound like if he got her worked up. If he licked around the rim of her ear, along the line of her neck, and down the curve of a breast.

  Now he was breathing fast.

  “You’re going to have to find a way to work with Pete Sovereign.”

  His eyes flew open. Apparently, she was steel under all that satin. He could see it in her shoulders, in the hardness of her eyes. “It’s none of your business.”

  “Too bad. I want this gig, and you’re the gig. I begged Jimmy to give you one more chance. I begged on your behalf. You owe me this.” Her eyes were challenging, her hands on her hips now.

  “No. No way. I didn’t ask you for anything and I don’t owe you anything. I don’t even know you.” Even if I have undressed you in my mind several times since the first time I laid eyes on you.

  “This isn’t negotiable.”

  “There’s no negotiation, Haven.”

  “There’s me, standing here and telling you, you have to do this. Also, there’s your dad. You said he needs a lot of physical therapy.”

  “Tons,” Mark admitted. “Every day.”

  “And the nurse.” She said it matter-of-factly, with the same sympathy that always undid him.

  He couldn’t speak. He just nodded.

  “Mark. It doesn’t have to be the world’s most heartfelt apology. It just has to be an apology. This time I’ll be there when you deliver it.”

  She’d moved from steel to supplication, and he could already tell it would destroy his resolve—that, and the implacable reality of his father’s debt. Mark was crumbling inside, and there were no inner reserves with which to shore himself up. Haven’s compassion had started his undoing, somehow, on Thursday. It was always the urge to let down your guard that killed you in the end.

  “I don’t want you there when I deliver it.” As good as surrender.

  “Well, tough luck,” she said. “After last night’s fiasco, I promised Jimmy I’d stick close to you for anything that might attract public attention until the tour.”

  Stick. Close. To. You. His pulse kicked up. “You agreed to follow me around for six months?”

  “If that’s what it takes.”

  “You really want this gig. You begged Jimmy Jeffers. You came all the way out here and—” He wasn’t sure what to call what she’d done to him. Bossed. Pleaded. Unleashed something he wished she’d left pent up.

  She didn’t quite meet his eyes. “Yes.” She scuffed the toe of her shoe lightly along the floor, and his eye followed the line of her leg. Today’s skirt was more standard issue, black and midthigh length. Nice, lean, strong thighs he’d like wrapped around his waist.

  “I like a good challenge, and you want to do this because you love your dad. And maybe because you’ve done nothing for the last ten years but play wedding gigs and make cameo appearances for screaming groupies. I can’t imagine you find that very satisfying.”

  You forgot something, he wanted to say, with the same fervor that urged him to put his hands in her hair. I want to do it because you’re going to follow me around for the next six months. And even though I shouldn’t want that, even though it’s suicidally stupid for me to want that, even though you will never mean those looks you give me, I do. I want that.

  “No,” he said instead, because she was right. “It’s not very satisfying.”

  “So let me help you apologize to Pete Sovereign, okay?”

  He understood defeat well. It was his friend. “Okay.”

  “And let me help you clean up your act, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  She eyed him suspiciously. Smart woman. His motives were about as impure as it was possible for them to be. They were dirty and male and all about the dark secrets her body was keeping from him, the ones he wanted to unfurl, one sweet mystery at a time.

  “Why are you suddenly so agreeable?”

  You.

  “Free haircut,” he said, and she laughed, a real, open, musical laugh, and his heart pounded almost out of his chest.

  * * *

  HUNKS OF MARK WEBSTER’S hair were hitting the floor, and Haven wasn’t feeling as satisfied by that as she’d expected to.

  They were in Caruso’s, a high-end barbershop where Haven liked to take straight male clients. The chairs were covered in black leather, the rest of the furniture espresso and ebony. The sage-green walls displayed vintage photos of female movie stars, classy and sexy at the same time. These were the women Haven had modeled herself after when she’d realized that, as much as she admired them, she didn’t want to be like her mother or her sisters.

  Actually, she hated the way Mark’s hair looked on the wide-plank wood floor, the softness of the pieces curled around nothing. The shorn look he had now revealed a pretty-boy quality he’d been hiding from the world for a long time. She wanted it to go back into hiding, because clean-cut Mark was doing something to her insides she didn’t like at all.

  The barber, Derek, had shaved Mark first. She’d watched the straight razor scrape over his skin. The blade moved like a caress, highlighting the strength of his jaw, his high cheekbones. Crazy-deep dimples flashed now when he smiled at her in the mirror, just often enough to keep her attention. She was standing there waiting for him to smile at her again. That couldn’t be good, right?

  “My hair hasn’t been this short in, like, a decade. I didn’t cut it for almost two years after the breakup.”

  Now the look he shot her in the mirror was more the usual Mark. Hard jaw, angry eyes. A little easier to take. She caught her breath, which made her realize she’d lost it, somewhere along the line.

  “What made you cut it after two years?”

  Just a flick of the smile, one corner. “I decided it was probably time to get laid again.”

  His eyes held hers. Too long. She looked away. She was uncomfortably hot in the pale blue suit jacket, but if she took it off, he’d see the sweat stains under her arms.

  Her panties were damp, too, and she couldn’t blame that on overdressing for the superheated barbershop.

  “Did it work?”

  Wait, why had she said that? She was flirting with him, prolonging the conversation. But she shouldn’t. He was her client. He was—

  Mark Webster, C.D. Certified Disaster.

  He laughed, a rough, lovely sound, like something rusty from disuse. “Yup. The haircut worked the way it was supposed to. All the parts worked, too.”

  She didn’t want to ask any more questions. Talking to Mark Webster
about sex, with his eyes so big, long-lashed and luminous, his teeth so starkly white, was a bad idea. Removing all that hair should have made him more vulnerable, but she was the one rocked back on her heels.

  She cast about for another topic. “I made an appointment for Pete to come see me next Tuesday morning in my office at ten.”

  He looked down at his lap, and she was sorry she’d gone there. Bad enough she was making him grovel without making him think about it today.

  “It’s not going to be so bad,” she said. “Wham, bam—”

  Whoops, that sounded like sex again, and the one-sided quirk of his mouth told her he hadn’t missed that.

  “I’ll do most of the talking. You just deliver the line.”

  “I regret any lasting damage my temper has caused you,” Mark intoned.

  She was proud of the non-apology she’d crafted for him.

  He frowned. “I don’t think he’s going to let me get away with it.”

  “Trust me.”

  Their eyes met in the mirror again, and he gave a short, hard laugh. “If I didn’t trust you, do you think I’d let this guy put a straight razor on my throat? And cut my hair off? I feel like—Samson, right? Don’t you sap my strength or something?”

  He didn’t look sapped. He looked...potent. She had to turn away from the mirror because his gaze kept catching hers and not letting go properly.

  Mark Webster had a reputation in the media for saying and doing the wrong things, but he seemed to know the right way to get under Haven’s skin. She was having a difficult time remembering why she shouldn’t exchange smiles, meaningful glances and double entendres with him.

  Right. Right.

  Mark Webster was her client, and her job was not to land them both in the press as a seedy example of how to become his next castoff. He was a serial womanizer. By definition, that meant he was not interested in anything serious with her. And her job was to clean him up, not let herself be dragged into the mud.

  “What do you think?” Derek asked her, warming some kind of expensive styling product between his palms and smoothing it through Mark’s hair, which was now short enough to be “not long,” but still had a lot of wave. He had really great hair, thick and coppery brown with streaks of lighter and darker colors. Women paid fortunes for hair like that.

  She was not secretly envying Derek for being allowed to run his fingers through Mark’s hair. Not at all.

  Oh, she was such a liar.

  “It looks great,” she said.

  That, at least, was the truth.

  “What do you think of the new, improved Mark Webster?”

  It didn’t matter how she answered, because she couldn’t not meet the ferocity of his unblinking challenge in the mirror. So he knew. He knew he looked good, and he knew he was having an effect on her.

  Derek very politely did not roll his eyes at them.

  She wrenched her gaze away, but she couldn’t stop herself from putting her fingers to her wrist to feel the way her pulse raced under the hot skin there, and when she looked up again, Mark’s eyes were on her.

  * * *

  JUDY, HAVEN’S FAVORITE personal shopper, kept touching Mark.

  She brushed her fingertips briskly over his collarbone, tapped them thoughtfully on his muscled shoulders. “Hmm. Too tight through here. You’re nice and broad.”

  He was nice and broad. Haven’s fingers tingled sympathetically as Judy’s moved. Haven wanted to check out exactly where that seam fell on those excellent shoulders, but she sat on her hands instead, lest they start dancing through the air with vicarious excitement.

  They were in the large fitting area in the personal shoppers’ suite, and Mark stood on a carpeted platform facing a three-way mirror. Today had included altogether too many mirrors, and she wished she didn’t have to see Mark’s reflection or her own flushed face anymore. He kept looking above the button of the suit jacket that restrained her breasts and meeting her glances with his intense gray-blue stare.

  Her own clothes felt limp with heat and damp. Strands of her hair had come loose from her updo and now clung to her forehead and cheeks.

  Haven Hoyt was not feeling very put together at the moment.

  Judy tugged on the shirt to check the fit over Mark’s pecs, brushing the cotton-silk blend across his chest as if there were a speck of dust she needed to remove. “Tough to fit you for a shirt when you’re so big through here. That’s a good thing.” Judy looked up at Mark through her eyelashes.

  Haven had never really thought about it before today, but Judy was attractive, for an older woman. She had platinum-blond hair and strong bones, and she looked great in her silver tunic, indigo jeggings and knee-high black boots. She seemed to be having fun.

  Of course she was having fun, because she had her hands on Mark’s chest. Haven had noticed his size the other day at lunch, but there was something about this particular blue dress shirt that emphasized his strength and bulk. Maybe it was just Haven’s fond feelings for dress shirts, but more likely it was Mark. Judy kept messing with the buttons, as if making adjustments, but Haven was pretty sure her motives were baser.

  Still, if Mark needed his buttons checked, Haven would be willing to help out. In fact, she might be willing to go to the mud pit with Judy for the privilege. And Haven didn’t do muddy, any more than she did outdoorsy or sleep-in-a-big-T-shirt or just have a few people over and I’m sorry I didn’t have time to clean the house.

  Judy shamelessly ran her hand over Mark’s butt—was that really necessary?—to emphasize the clean fit of the charcoal-gray dress pants. That butt was a mighty fine specimen, Haven mused, giving up on not having an opinion. It was firm and high and tight and round and she bet he knew how to use it to great advantage as leverage for—

  “Nice line in front, too.” All three of them stared at Mark’s crotch in the mirror. Whatever Mark was packing under there was evident even under the “nice line” of expensive dress slacks. She briefly wondered whether it was arousing to have them both staring at his endowment like that. It would be pretty embarrassing to get an erection right now. Wouldn’t it?

  She raised her gaze from the front of his pants and found herself staring into Mark’s eyes. He raised an eyebrow at her, and she watched her own face turn the same flaming pink as her nail polish. Heat swept through her, tightening her nipples and pooling between her legs. Mark’s dimples deepened, even though his mouth didn’t quite break into a full smile.

  She wasn’t going to make it. She was going to die of frustrated desire before the shopping session was over.

  As much as she wanted to deny it, her body had decided this was foreplay.

  She’d never been attracted to a client before. Never. She’d done image makeovers on male clients, and she’d sat in Judy’s upholstered seat while Judy ran her hands over different sets of equally impressive shoulders, pecs and abs. Mark Webster should not have been any different, should not have been turning Haven’s excellent brain to mush.

  “I’m going to get some water,” she said, and for that, she got a full-on Mark grin. It was a startling, marvelous thing, bright and white and all the way into his eyes, and she ran the hell out of that dressing area.

  For the rest of the fitting, she stood at the far edge of the room, out of his sight in the mirror. He went through plain white T-shirts, a new, unscuffed leather bomber and several blazers and jackets. He tried on baseball jerseys and printed T’s, fine-gauge sweaters and casual button-down shirts, ties, a pair of suspenders, new gym clothes.

  He looked good in all of them. He looked as though they’d been made for him, as though he’d been sculpted to fill them perfectly.

  Haven was fatigued from the effort of watching as Judy checked the fit of a raglan sleeve over Mark’s substantial biceps, knelt at his feet to make sure the trousers broke over expensive
Italian leather shoes the way she wanted them to and—this was the final insult—ruffled his hair as she placed a fedora in a ridiculously sexy tilt over one gray-blue eye.

  Haven’s only hope was that Saturday night with Jewelry Marketing Guy would turn out better than the last six or eight dates. Maybe Jewelry Marketing Guy would be so smart, so thoughtful, so interesting, so brimming with pheromones that she would want to sleep with him on the first date. Then she wouldn’t need to imagine stripping Mark out of his formfitting new wardrobe, thrusting her fingers into his thick, scrumptious hair and pressing her mouth—actually, her whole freaking naked body—against his.

  “Do I have to wear this stuff all the time?” Mark turned to ask her the question. Sullenly.

  It was probably a good thing that he was still a pain in the ass. A hot, trouble-making, pain in the ass.

  “Not when you’re locked in your own apartment.”

  He sighed. “I hate you.”

  His eyes told her he didn’t.

  “I’ll wear this home,” he told Judy. He was in a gorgeous fine-knit striped V-neck sweater and butt-snugging jeans. Haven wanted to beg him not to wear those clothes out of the store. To have mercy.

  He went to the men’s room while Haven paid for his things. She’d bill the whole lot back to Jimmy, and Jimmy would take it out of Mark’s tour earnings. God forbid Mark screw up again, because Haven had no idea who’d foot the bill if he torpedoed his chance to be part of the tour.

  Judy handed Haven Mark’s shopping bags, plus an unmarked plastic bag. “The clothes he wore in here,” Judy said. “Unless you want me to just throw them in the trash right now. Or burn them.”

  Haven took the bags. She felt a peculiar tenderness for the ratty jeans and the tortured jacket, and on top of that she had a totally perverted desire to pull out the T-shirt and see if she could detect Mark’s scent in it. Not the expensive hair-care products and fabric sizing from today, but the real Mark smell of coconut, leather and clean male sweat.

  “Nah,” she told Judy. “I’ll give it to Goodwill.”

  “They might not want it. That jacket—”