As You Like it

“And risk getting my face slapped?” He chuckled. “Not hardly.”

She ground her teeth. “Don’t tease.”

“Who’s teasing?”

He held her gaze. He wasn’t even sure what he was proposing, or even if he was proposing anything, but the jump of sexual electricity between them was undeniable. Why let the opportunity slip through his fingers? Especially when it was past time he learned how to enjoy good sex for its own sake and not as a prelude to commitment.

She sucked in her breath. “Listen, this project would help lots of sexually dysfunctional people improve their lives. Don’t you want to help people?”

“Not particularly.”

Her forehead wrinkled in shocked surprise. “What happened to you?”

“Life.”

She launched in again, arguing in circles, gesturing with her arms, talking faster and faster until he feared she was going to burn up all the oxygen in the room. Like a swivel-hipped running back, she was relying on her verbal speed and agility and commitment to her position to influence him.

Poor woman.

She had no idea she had selected exactly the wrong track with him. If she had only stuck with the sexual banter he might have been persuaded. But when those around him got excited and tried to force him into going along with them, Beau stubbornly dug into his position. He shook his head.

She kept talking, working first one angle and then another. The woman would have made a terrific filibuster or a kick-ass auctioneer.

“No,” he said calmly, dispassionately, when she stopped to take a breath.

Their gazes clashed. Her brown eyes flashed a challenge as clearly as if she’d drawn an épée from its sheath, readied her stance for a lunging round of thrust and parry and uttered “En garde.”

“Perhaps I wasn’t making myself clear enough. If you were to…”

“I said no.”

“I don’t take no for an answer.”

“Guess you’re going to have to this time, because I’m not changing my mind.”

“I don’t believe this. Offer a man a huge amount of money to do something he loves, something he’s the best at and he turns you down. Who does that?”

“I do.”

“You’re impossible.” In disgust, Marissa threw her arms into the air and the back of her rapidly moving hand struck his beer bottle.

Like a ten pin smacked by a twenty-pound bowling ball, the bottle rocketed against the wall and shattered, bathing them both in beer.

The brittle sound of unintentional violence snapped off the high ceiling like whiplash. Every patron in the place turned to rubberneck, and for the first time Beau noticed the bar was more than half-full and Leroy was no longer sitting at the back table.

“Oh, oh,” Marissa sputtered, her eyes widening at what her strong-chinned zeal had wrought.

“Wow,” Beau drawled then lazily licked beer foam from his lips. His words were light, but his chiding expression was not. “Impressive display of pique.”

“I’m sorry,” she apologized and took a deep breath. “I didn’t mean to lose control.”

“If you were trying to intimidate me, it’s not going to work.”

“I didn’t break the bottle on purpose.” Beer dripped from her bangs and she looked incongruously, impossibly cute. Sort of like a Tasmanian devil dressed up in fancy clothes.

“Maybe not consciously, but you were frustrated,” he pointed out.

“What are you accusing me of?” she demanded.

Remy rushed to the rescue with two towels and a broom. He handed them each a towel, then started sweeping up the glass.

“So,” Remy mused aloud as Beau and Marissa, still locked in a stare, wiped themselves off. “This is what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object.”

3

MARISSA HADN’T EXPECTED the guy to be so good-looking. Or so damn stubborn.

Dash warned you.

To hell with Dash. She wasn’t about to let his doom-and-gloom predictions affect her. She was a professional. The best. She didn’t give up easily. She had guaranteed Judd and Francine that she could deliver Beau Thibbedeaux and by hook or by crook she was determined to achieve her goal.

After knocking over Beau’s beer bottle, she’d left the bar in a fluster, disturbed by her body’s intense reaction to the man and unnerved by the fact she had lost her temper. She needed some distance and time to regroup before mentally wrestling with him again.

She just had to find out what made the guy tick. Obviously, it wasn’t money. This afternoon she had made a monster mistake in trying, by sheer will of her personality, to convince him to take the job. What she needed was a more subtle approach.

What she needed was an angle.

Ashamed that she hadn’t done more extensive research on Beau before showing up in New Orleans, Marissa crawled into bed in her jammies, whipped open her laptop and plugged it into the phone jack behind the nightstand in her hotel room.

Tackling the task with zeal, she logged on to the Internet. She did a Google search, keyboarding in the name Beau Thibbedeaux, and was rewarded when a string of references popped up. She read each entry with interest, searching for his history, his weaknesses, his appetites, anything and everything that might lend her an edge in dealing with the guy.

What she discovered dampened her enthusiasm. He was an eccentric computer genius. He was rich beyond her wildest imaginings. That explained his cavalier attitude toward money. He seemed to enjoy hiding out from the world, preferring to spend his time with a small but close-knit circle of family and friends.

Beau was a homebody and homebodies were harder to motivate. Absentmindedly, she toyed with a paper clip fished from her briefcase and pondered the situation.

Think. You can do this. You must do this, her internal taskmaster, who was the emotional equivalent of a chain-gang guard on Benzedrine, insisted. Everyone’s depending on you to sign him.

Well, except for Dash, he was counting on her to fail. She suppressed the fear wading around uncomfortably inside her stomach. She had a lot riding on this outcome. She could not afford to stumble. At the image of Dash’s smugness over her failure, fresh determination rose within her.

Albeit determination mingled with a tinge of guilt. Some people might say she was pushing too hard. If Beau wasn’t interested she should simply accept the fact and move on. But Marissa wasn’t a quitter, never had been, never would be. She wanted the account directorship, and by gum, she intended to do everything within her power to get it.

Fisting her hand around the paper clip, she closed her eyes and replayed the mental tape of her disastrous first encounter with Beau.

In her mind’s eyes she could see him, cocked back on the legs of that chair, a slow, mischievous I’m-up-to-no-good grin lighting up his lips the minute she’d marched into the bar. He exuded a sultry masculinity that called to her.

And turned her on.

Sighing, she opened her eyes and restlessly linked a second paper clip to the first.