It’s In His Kiss

‘Come on, what’s the worst that could happen?’ he added.

Sephy swallowed and continued to stare at the century-old patina on the oak doors in front of her.

What was the worst that could happen?

The worst that could happen was that he would see her as needy.

As less than she wanted to be.

Then he would say ‘no’ anyway and it would be always there between them. She didn’t have time to then be worrying if he’d said ‘no’ because she had finally crossed that invisible line she’d so carefully carved into the sand between them.

‘Why is it you Kings have such a problem with asking for help?’ Luke said, stepping back and showing the first sign of impatience with her.

‘Just lucky, I guess,’ Sephy whispered and turned around to face him, still feeling that the only way to save her ad campaign was to have a proper shot at asking Luke to model for her.

‘Cursed, more like,’ Luke muttered and shoved his hands into the back pockets of his jeans.

He was right.

It was a curse of sorts.

The competitive streak that ran through the Kings bordered on the ridiculous. The fact that she and her siblings never wanted to appear like they couldn’t achieve whatever they set out to achieve was arrogant beyond belief, and the blame lay squarely at the feet of their father, Jeremy King.

Bracing automatically, she felt the wave of grief rise up to take a hefty swipe at her. The emotional maelstrom her father’s death had brought was in such opposition to the studied passivity she had strived for while he was alive that sometimes she wondered if he was up there just to punish her.

But because life was better when she wasn’t feeling angry or negative, she deliberately stepped away from her thoughts and concentrated on her current problem instead.

The difficulty in asking Luke for help really had little to do with wanting to achieve things herself and everything to do with how good he was at helping.

There was this remarkable generosity within him and Sephy was finding it harder and harder to keep the score of who helped who balanced.

He had already helped her develop a storefront for her website and made sure it could handle the extra traffic she hoped for. Now here she was, two weeks to the launch of Seraphic and he’d had to go and inspire her to come up with the perfect solution to her latest problem.

Trying to gather up her thoughts she side-stepped Luke, chose a chair at random, sat down and stared up at the banners.

‘What do you see when you look at these?’ she asked, gesturing to them.

Luke walked up to her and sat down on the chair next to hers, his head tipped up to the life-sized models staring back down at him.

‘I see underwear models.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Surely that’s the point,’ he said.

‘No. That is so not the point.’ Frustrated, Sephy twisted in her seat to look at him while she tried to explain. ‘I need you to see “I want you”.’

Luke went absolutely still.

The ballroom felt like it had shrunk to the size of a steam-room for two, and suddenly Sephy really wanted to play with her hair, or lick her lips, or meet Luke’s quiet and intense gaze with one of her own.

Wow. Okay. Of all the Freudian slip-ups, in all the world…

Dragging in a breath she tore her gaze away to face forward again and said, ‘I mean, if you were a woman looking at this banner,’ she opened her mouth to force in a little more oxygen, ‘nothing about this advert makes you drool or reach for your credit card, does it?’

For a moment, Sephy thought Luke wasn’t going to move, but then slowly he turned his head to look back at the banners.

‘Try to think about it from a female’s perspective,’ she urged. ‘And then think about all the other designer labels out there who sell lingerie.’

‘Okay,’ Luke conceded. ‘Maybe they don’t stand out as much as some of the big names, but those big names have a budget a quadrillion times larger than yours.’

‘You’re right about budget and I’m not looking to compete in that way yet, but tell me you don’t see that I could have made more of an impact with these banners.’

Luke frowned. ‘When the live models come down the catwalk–’

‘That’ll help, sure,’ she said, cutting him off. ‘But the guest list Nora helped me come up with would make London Fashion Week weep with jealousy and I need every single guest to be wowed from the moment they walk in.’

‘So where does sex come into play?’ Luke asked and Sephy tried not to blow her second chance by getting caught up in a game of how many times she could get him to say ‘sex’ and survive it.

‘You have to understand that achieving sales starts way before a buyer even gets their hands on the product. It starts with selling an experience. The most effective way to do that is to either tap into the lifestyle they already live and make the buyer associate your product with it, or, provide a snapshot of a lifestyle they want to aspire to. A lifestyle that they’ll fantasise about so much that they’ll buy my lingerie to get a step closer to it.’

Luke let out a low whistle. ‘You know, any lack of confidence you had about your ability to understand business and marketing is a crock. You have this stuff nailed.’

Sephy felt his quiet compliment warm her through. ‘Um, thank you.’

Luke shrugged like he was simply speaking the truth and cocked his head to the banners again. ‘So what is it you want these banners to sell to the women seeing them?’

‘Yeah, so, um…sex.’

‘O-kay.’

‘That’s putting it too basically.’ How could she explain that last night when she had seen him holding her bra it was as if the bra was saying ‘You want to buy me so that a guy with hands like the one holding me can take me off you,’ without, you know, having to actually say that to him?

‘Sex can be basic all the way through to advanced,’ Luke said drily, ‘I’m pretty sure I understand all the levels.’

Sephy’s stomach bounced up to meet her heart. ‘I know you do. I mean,’ she licked her lips and went for broke. ‘I can see that you could sell … that experience. That’s why, and here comes the left-field part, I really need you to be in these shots with the models.’

Silence while Luke’s eyes sought out, and then searched, hers.

Then, finally, ‘Look, I’m flattered that you feel that these,’ Luke held out his hands, ‘and this,’ he said, pointing to his upper body, ‘fit the bill, but this isn’t something you fix on the cheap. You need to hire a professional male model.’

Sephy winced. ‘I don’t have the money to do that.’

‘I’ll give you the money.’

Damn it, she didn’t want him to think this was some long-winded game of getting him to help her out with money. If she hadn’t accepted any from her brother or sister, there was absolutely, positively, no way, she was going to take it from Luke.

‘I don’t want your money, I want you.’