More Naughty Than Nice

“Broken marriages?” she echoed, stung by how easily he could switch gears. “Me personally? Or the book?”

He arched one dark eyebrow. “The book, of course. I was wondering if anyone who was already married had decided to throw it over and join the Blissfully Single movement.”

“Don’t you think a marriage that can be broken up over a book deserves to fail?” Stevie returned, with more than a hint of acid. “Or do you think all marriages should stay glued together, no matter how terrible?”

“It doesn’t matter what I think. It matters what you think. And what do you think, Stevie?”

He regarded her as if she were a rather dull exhibit at the zoo, mildly interesting, but nothing to write home about.

Okay, Mr. Smarty Pants. “You know what I think. You read the book.”

“The book strikes me as superficial and not all that well thought-out.”

“And once again, you don’t have a question, just a sermon.” Stevie stood up, ready to spit nails at him.

Superficial and not all that well thought-out. He had a lot of nerve coming to her signing, staring at her, witnessing her fans and their devotion, pawing her, teasing her with kisses that didn’t happen and then, after all that, calling her book superficial. If she’d had a copy of Blissfully Single handy, she would’ve clobbered him with it.

“Is something wrong, Ms. Bliss?” he asked, feigning surprise, which only made her madder. He knew very well what reaction he was going to get. He was goading her into it. And she hated the idea that he could do that. She was supposed to be in control here, damn it.

“What exactly do you have against the ideas in Blissfully Single?” she demanded. “Are you that threatened by the notion that women can control their own lives?”

“You’re getting off track.”

“You pushed me there,” she shot back.

“I don’t think anyone pushes you anywhere,” he said with what looked to her like a small sneer.

She came up with a sneer of her own. “That bothers you, does it?”

“Not in the least.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. Just for the record, I am not threatened by you, your book or the idea that women can control their own lives,” he said evenly. “But I happen to be a big believer in truth, honesty, integrity. All those old-fashioned things that seem to have eluded you as you created this Stevie Bliss myth.”

He was practically accusing her of being a fraud. And the best she could come up with was the most immature kind of “nyah, nyah” argument. Attempting to damp down her anger, losing the battle, she snapped, “I think we’re done here, don’t you, Mr. Dasher?”

“Stevie, can I speak to you, alone, for a second?” Anna broke in, plucking at her sleeve. “You wouldn’t mind if we took a time-out, would you, Mr. Dasher?”

“Call me Owen,” he said, once again doing a charm school routine for Anna. “No, I don’t mind. Take your time.”

Forcing a smile, Anna dragged Stevie over to the corner, about ten feet away. “Are you nuts?” she hissed. “You were yelling at the man. He is a reporter. We don’t yell at reporters, okay?”

“He’s a jerk. Accusing me of being a fake. And of breaking up marriages. Ha!” Turning herself firmly away from any position where she might have to see Owen Dasher, Stevie ground one spiked heel into the parquet floor. “First he’s got his hand on my leg, like total sexual harassment…”

Anna lifted an eyebrow.

“Okay, so it wasn’t sexual harassment,” she admitted. She was a fair person. She could allow that much. “I let it happen. I encouraged it to happen. But I still think it’s wrong that one minute he’s all touchy-feely on my thigh and the next he’s saying the book is shallow and a home-wrecker. That’s pretty nervy, don’t you think?”

“I think you can handle him.” Anna pressed her lips together in a frown. “Stevie, you’ve had a thousand guys come on to you, and another thousand tell you your book was all wet, but you shot every one of them down without a problem. Why can’t you do that this time?”

“He’s different,” she bit out. “He plays one way and then the other. He tried to seduce me just to distract me long enough to get a zinger in. The old bait and switch.”

“Oh, my. A baiter and switcher. Call the cops,” Anna responded, rolling her eyes.

“He’s getting to me,” she argued. “And not in a good way!”

“Calm down, okay? He’s just trying to mess with your head.” Anna continued in a soothing tone, “I told you, it doesn’t matter. Whatever he writes, it’s publicity, and it’s for the good. You know the two big rules of media interaction—accessibility and quotability. Have you hit the target on either of those?”

She had certainly been accessible, given the fingers under her skirt, although she knew very well that was not the kind of accessibility Anna meant. And she was handing out quotes on the order of, “Oh, yeah?” Swallowing around a dry throat, Stevie allowed, “I am not hitting the target, no.”

“So you’re going to go back over there and give the sassy, quotable answers you want to give no matter what he asks, and then he’ll write whatever he wants to write and we will go on from there. All right?”

“Yeah, yeah, I suppose.”

Except Owen Dasher didn’t wait for them to come back. He’d picked up his notes and his pen and whatever else he had hiding on his annoying body, and he came tromping over to interrupt their conversation.

“Sorry,” he offered, acting all rushed and distracted. “My column’s going to run on Wednesday this week, because of Thanksgiving, so I have an early deadline and I need to get out of here. Anyway, I think I have enough to put this one to bed….”

At which point Stevie began to choke and Anna had to pinch her arm hard to make her stop.

“Are you okay over there?” he asked solicitously.

“I’m fine.”

“Right.” He smiled. It was a humdinger of a smile, all toothy and wonderful and bright, and it made her want to strangle him. “Well, anyway, I’m okay with what I’ve got for Wednesday’s column.”

“Are you sure you don’t need a few more quotes?” Anna asked anxiously. “We want to make your column as complete as it can be and for you to cover the whole range of ideas represented in Stevie’s book. We don’t want you to go away unsatisfied.”

Stevie choked again.

“I’m satisfied,” he said calmly, giving her and her obvious discomfort an amused glance. “But I’m thinking it might be fun to explore the Blissfully Single phenomenon in more depth. See it in action, so to speak.”

“In action. Uh-huh,” Stevie echoed, her mind filling with images of him and her and the kind of “action” the two of them could get into. Fighting. Kissing. Touching.

It was horrifying. Maybe strangling was too good for him.

“I’m thinking of the, uh, proposition you made before, Stevie.”

“When was that?” she asked, not remembering anything remotely resembling a proposition except telling him it wasn’t that hard to get into her pants. Was that a proposition? Or just temporary insanity?

“What are we talking about?” Anna interrupted briskly. “More interviews? Or maybe you’d like to observe the Blissfully Single lifestyle on its feet?”

“On its feet, off its feet, whatever.” He smiled. She decided she hated him. “But nothing new planned for me. I wouldn’t want to disrupt your schedule.”

Right. He just wanted to disrupt everything, including her mental health.

He continued, “I think what would work best for me would be to follow Stevie around, on a typical day, maybe some time next week. If we’re lucky, maybe we can stretch this into two or three columns. What do you say?”