Beyond Daring

“Don’t get all Darwin on me, Sheldon. Keep the clothes on. Keep the box closed.”

Her mouth snapped together in a tight line. “You think I’m a slut, don’t you? You don’t approve. Are you a virgin, Jeff?”

He shot her a look. “You know I’m not. Don’t you?” he reminded her, because the absentee memory of the night had eaten at him over the last few weeks. He didn’t forget sex. Ever. Even in the deepest lapses of alcohol. Ever.

And with the one woman who had kept his cock throbbing in painful agony for what seemed like forever?

No way.

“Why does it matter if I have some fun?” she asked, which on the surface was a perfectly logical, rational question. However, Sheldon was neither logical, nor rational.

“I have a job to do, sweetheart. Your father is paying my firm large amounts of cash to keep you out of the papers. Nothing more. I’m going to do it, too.”

She crossed her arms around her chest, not that he looked, and slumped back in the seat. “It always comes down to money, doesn’t it?”

“Not always.”

“Ha.”

There was an edge in her voice, a pain that he’d never heard before. “What happened to you, Sheldon?”

“I use whatever I can to fight whoever I need to,” she said, studying her nails.

The car slid to a screeching halt, smack in front of her building. Jeff paid the cabbie and told him to wait, he wasn’t done with the lecture. He still had a good hour of diatribe left inside him.

They walked to the awning of her building, mere inches separating them, but the huge chasm loomed like an eroding fault line in the earth, just waiting to be split asunder.

“Why don’t you stop fighting?” he asked, rubbing a hand over tired eyes. Playing bad-cop chaperone was exhausting and completely unrewarding.

She waved to her doorman, but stopped far enough away from the public eye. An unexpected moment of discretion. He was surprised. And pleased. “You want me. Why don’t you stop fighting it?”

“I don’t want you.”

“Lying, much?”

“Keep the sex out of it.”

Her eyes warmed, and then heated. “Kiss me, then. Just kiss me. No tongues, no bodies. Just two mouths touching.”

He didn’t want to kiss her, but she had laid down the challenge, and he would look spineless if he didn’t comply.

So he kissed her. No tongues. No bodies. Just two mouths touching. Her lips were soft and pliable, and so was the look in her eyes. There wasn’t the usual vacancy in her gaze. Shockingly, there was innocence there. Vulnerability. Qualities he couldn’t pin on Sheldon if he tried. But there they were. Staring him in the face.

His first instinct was to run. He even turned to go.

“You shouldn’t fight it,” she whispered.

“Go inside.”

She started to argue, but maybe she saw the pleading in his eyes, maybe she saw the battered animal that lurked inside him, maybe she was just tired. It didn’t matter, she smiled at the doorman, and blithely went on her way.

And Jeff felt himself breathe again.

He returned to the curb, only to find his cabbie had disappeared, probably hoping to find an even bigger sucker than Jeff.

Even cabbies had their dreams.

COLUMBIA-STARR COMMUNICATIONS OCCUPIED a sophisticated floor of offices near Midtown. Lots of red and black and polka dots and flash. It was the hottest PR firm in New York—at least it was right now, and Jeff considered it quite the achievement that he’d landed the job all on his own.

He pulled open the glass doors and was immediately greeted by a strange man sitting behind what used to be his secretary’s desk.

“Mr. Summerville called. He’ll be here in ten.”

“Who are you?” asked Jeff.

“Phil Carter. Rent-a-temp. Nice tie, by the way,” he said, a glint in his eye.

Oh, joy. Jeff had a very modern attitude toward alternative lifestyles, but it was nine-thirty in the morning, and he didn’t like men who dressed better than he did. “Let me begin with, you’re fired.”

“Hello, Mr. Ego has arrived! They warned me about you.”

“Are you always like this?”

Phil balanced his face on his hands, smiling like an imp. A very gay imp, but an imp. Then he began to sing. “I gotta be me. I gotta be me.”

“Enough. You know the software we use?”

“You betcha.”

“Good speller, impeccable grammar?”

“Philistine. P-h-i-l-i-s-t-i-n-e. Participle phrases are used chiefly to modify nouns, but a dangling participle is confusing to the reader. For example, ‘Sitting on his ass, the bird flew by the window.’”

Just then the phone rang.

“Phone manners?” barked Jeff.

Phil pushed a button on the phone and started speaking into his headset. “Columbia-Starr Communications. Mr. Jeff Brooks’s office. How may I help you?” Phil frowned ominously. “Mr. Brooks did what? And then the cops told him what? And now the Smoking Gun wrote what? No comment. And that’s my final comment. Thank you for calling Columbia-Starr Communications. Shaping The World, A Million Minds At A Time. Have a nice day.”

Phil hung up and gave Jeff an expectant look.

Okay, the guy was good, better than the last four temps he’d had. Jeff looked down at the phone. “Who was that?”

“Your mother. Baked ziti at her apartment Wednesday at eight.”

It was too much to comprehend after four hours of restless sleep, and a hard-on that was now mummified permanently. “What about all the other stuff you were saying? With the cops?” The last thing he needed was more Sheldon-fodder for the rags.

Phil wiggled his index finger. “Fastest mute finger in the West.”