Getting It Good!

To her horror, she felt a blush creep up her neck. She swallowed and donned an exasperated expression. “Trust me, that won’t be necessary. My point is, you’ll be representing the magazine. You’ll need to be careful what sort of advice you dole out, otherwise you’ll make CHiC look bad. Which for obvious reasons isn’t the goal.” She snapped her napkin into her lap. “In short, you won’t be able to act like your typical obnoxious know-it-all self.”

Looking irritatingly unconcerned, Ross chuckled low and sprawled back into his seat. “Now that’s the pot calling the kettle black if I’ve ever heard one.”

Annoyed, Frankie picked up her spoon and chased a piece of sausage around the bowl. “Furthermore,” she added, “merely having sex does not make you an expert.”

Ross cast her a twinkling glance, washed a bite of his burger down with a deep drink of his iced tea. “Yeah…but having sex a lot does.”

Frankie’s fingers tightened around her utensil and she futilely wondered if it were possible to claw out her mind’s eye. “That’s more than I needed to know.” Way more. Hell, she knew he was experienced—from what she’d covertly gleaned from Zora, Ross was never without a date, had to practically beat the women off his sexy hide with a stick. Furthermore, she also instinctively knew he was the expert he claimed to be, but the reminder played havoc with her senses and she’d just as soon not hear it.

“Really?” he said, evidently enjoying this suggestive line of conversation. A droll smile rolled around his lips, and those sexy-as-hell kaleidoscope eyes crinkled at the corners. “I would have thought that I’d need to list my experience. That you might even need to call a few references for this job.” His voice dropped to a sensual purr. “Or, maybe you could interview me personally,” he suggested. “Check my job performance, make sure that I’m competent enough to be your Duke of Desire.”

The innuendo in that low, hazy voice conjured an image of her interviewing him until her eyes rolled back in her head. Cool sheets, hot naked bodies, candlelight and massage oil. Hot, hard and fast, then slow, easy and deliberate. Her feminine muscles clenched, forcing a shuddering breath from her lungs. “No,” she said tightly, blinking the vision from her mind. “That won’t be necessary. Dammit, Ross, you’re not taking this seriously.”

“Why should I?” he countered, seemingly oblivious to the fact that she’d just produced her own mental porn film, featuring them in the starring roles. “We both know I’ve been manipulated into this. I became a pawn in Zora and Tate’s poker game—and you’re deluding yourself if you think you aren’t as well.”

Frankie rolled her eyes. “You’re full of it, you know it, Ross?”

He laughed and gave her an odd expression, one that left her with the unhappy sensation that he was privy to something she was not. “Now this is new,” he said consideringly. “You’re usually a lot quicker on the uptake than this.”

Frankie scowled at him. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Zora lost the bet,” he said with exaggerated patience, “and yet she’s obviously very happy with the way things have turned out. If she lost, just what exactly had it been that she stood to win?”

Frankie paused. She hadn’t thought of it that way. “I don’t know,” Frankie said slowly. And it was an excellent question. In fact, it irritated her that he’d thought of it first.

Ross took up another fry and pointed it at her before popping it into his mouth. “I don’t know for sure, but you can bet your sweet little Italian ass that it had something to do with me and with you, otherwise, we wouldn’t be sitting here, and we damned sure wouldn’t be spending the next week together.” Ross snorted. “Duke of Desire, my ass. That was simply icing on somebody’s cake and if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say it was on your boss’s, not mine.”

Ross stood and tossed a few bills on the table. “If I’m going to be gone for the next week, I’ve got to get organized. Find someone to dog-sit, swing by my house every few days to collect the mail, and all that jazz. Come by my place tonight and we can go over whatever else I need to know then.”

“But—”

He leaned forward and lowered his voice. The combined proximity of that sexy gaze, that intimate rasp and his particular woodsy fragrance made her body sing like a tuning fork, her brain melt, ready to believe anything. “And just so you know, Ms. Sexpert, I’ll be one helluva Duke of Desire because I’ve forgotten more about sex than you’ll ever know…unless I develop a death wish and decide to teach you.”

Frankie blinked drunkenly for several seconds and by the time her sluggish brain had manufactured a comeback, Ross had already made it to the door. “Develop a death wish,” she muttered under her breath, silently cursing her roaring pulse. Her eyes narrowed and a low growl vibrated the back of her throat.

As though sleeping with her wouldn’t be the best thing to ever happen to him. Someone needed to teach him a lesson, Frankie thought. A good moral one like “pride goeth before the fall.”

Death wish, her ass. She smiled grimly. By the end of next week, he’d undoubtedly be wishing that he was dead.

3

AFTER COMING HOME to a bouquet of flowers on his front porch, two lengthy I-miss-you, this-can’t-be-over letters in his mail box and half a dozen hang-up calls on his answering machine, the idea of leaving town for a week—even with thorn-in-his-side Frankie—had gained considerable appeal.

Honestly, Ross thought with a disgusted grunt as he tossed the letters aside and systematically erased each of the messages, how much longer could this go on? He’d dodged calls from Amy—the ex who didn’t get the “ex” part—all morning and afternoon, and knew that the only reason she hadn’t “dropped by”—an irritatingly frequent occurrence—was because she was working. She’d shared that little tidbit in one of her many messages.

Ross had been dating since his early teens, knew the ins and outs of proper dating and break-up etiquette. He wasn’t a cheap date, did his best to be respectful and attentive and never tried to push things to an intimate level unless he was completely sure of two things—mutual consent and the understanding that sex wasn’t a precursor to a lasting relationship.

The moment he felt a woman change the rules, sensed that they were trying to move things beyond a purely recreational level, he very politely, very carefully bailed.

Dates one and two with Amy had been great. Date three she’d spent the night. Date four she’d asked for a key. He hadn’t given her one, of course, but that hadn’t stopped her from “surprising” him with dinner—at his house—on date five.

He’d come home to find his living room rearranged, a casserole in the oven, and her toothbrush, toiletries and a good portion of her wardrobe in his closet.

The minor note of alarm he’d heard when she asked for the key had been nothing compared to the deafening sound of mental warning he’d experienced then.

Rather than break things off by natural degrees, Ross had—as diplomatically as he could under the circumstances—ended their relationship. He’d speedily loaded her chicken pot pie, pantyhose and other belongings into her car and sent her on her way.

Then he’d changed the locks.

There’d been something…off about the entire exchange which had made him a little nervous.

For good reason, it now seemed. Though he’d repeatedly made his feelings plain—“This isn’t working for me, we’re finished, it’s over.”—short of shouting “Leave me alone, you psycho freak!”, Ross didn’t know what else to do.

He’d always considered freezing a woman out by avoiding phone calls the cowardly, disrespectful approach, but during the past week he’d had to resort to that tactic. Being tactful but honest—then brutally honest—hadn’t worked. Ross had figured that if he simply quit responding, she’d eventually give up and move on.

Not so.

If anything, she seemed to have redoubled her efforts to make him change his mind. Seemed more determined than ever to win him back. It was annoying, not to mention…creepy. In his opinion—or any right-thinking person’s opinion for that matter—they hadn’t known each other long enough for her to have developed such an attachment.

At any rate, he didn’t have the time to linger over the issue any longer. He had too much to do.

Like getting ready for this pointless week-long jaunt around the country with Frankie.

Her beautiful smug face instantly surfaced in his weary mind, causing a simultaneous rush of irritation and longing. An odd mix, for sure, but one that he’d grown accustomed to since their mutual friends tied the knot. He’d met Frankie—as well as the rest of Zora’s CHiC posse—at a cook-out shortly after Zora and Tate had taken their relationship public. That had been something, Ross remembered. When Tate—the man who’d written What Women Really Want—Reading between the Sighs, who the Times had dubbed “The Last True Bachelor” and Zora, the founding president of Chicks-In-Charge, the poster child for Girl Power—had paired up, the press had had a field day with it. An ordinary couple probably wouldn’t have been able to withstand the scrutiny, but Tate and Zora had been so committed to each other—so in love—that they’d pulled through without a hitch.

Though birthdays eluded him and he’d never managed to commit his social security number to memory, Ross could remember the exact moment he’d seen Frankie, the precise instant he’d felt her presence. He’d been keeping Tate company at the grill, had just lifted a bottle to his lips when he’d caught sight of her out of the corner of his eye. The strangest feeling had come over him, one that to this day he still couldn’t name, didn’t even attempt to try.

He’d stilled. Sound had receded, every sense had gone on point, the bottom dropped out of his stomach, and for all intents and purposes, he might as well have been a stallion catching the scent of a mare.

It wasn’t just that she was gorgeous—though, he thought with a broken laugh, God knows there was no denying that—or the fact that she was sexy as hell. Frankie had possessed some other indefinable something that made her, in particular, utterly fascinating to him. There was a gut-level, knee-jerk attraction he’d never experienced before and instinctively knew he’d never feel again.

Regrettably, five seconds beyond their introduction—the one he’d taken great pains to casually force—for reasons he’d never understood, she’d taken an instant dislike to him, given him one of those provoking superior looks, opened her mouth, and that keen fascination had become hopelessly tangled with equal parts of annoyance, irritation and, gallingly, lust.

Since then the attraction had worsened right along with their ability to get along. She never missed an opportunity to zing him—went out of her way, as a matter of fact—and rather than ignoring her or giving her the cold shoulder—the mature, not to mention sane approach—he’d upped the ante until they’d turned clever bickering into an Olympic sport.

He’d rather have Olympic sex with her, but knew he had a better chance of being plucked out of his office to play quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys than maneuvering her delectable bod into bed. Was she attracted to him? Yes. Hell, he had enough experience with the opposite sex to deduce when one wanted him. Like him, Ross imagined that Frankie purposely overcompensated with sarcasm to mask the attraction.

But unlike him, she’d never act on it—she was too damn stubborn, a fact he’d noted quite forcibly when they’d tangled over hosting the wedding reception.

He’d jokingly—jokingly, geez didn’t she have a sense of humor?—suggested Hooters and she’d exploded like a hot cola can, spewing her disgust and anger at him. Citing his lamentable lack of taste, she’d promptly taken over and only by sheer force of will was he able to inject a little of his own ideas into the final arrangements.

The minute he’d gotten back to the office after that shanghai lunch, Ross had gone directly to Tate’s office and hounded him until he’d called Zora and gathered further details about the upcoming trip. He’d just as soon not be dependent on Frankie for all the facts, thank you very much and, since his landing the Maxwell account depended on him pulling off this week-long stint, he thought it prudent to make sure that he was aware of everything they would be doing.

He’d gotten the schedule and, though some of the flights and appearances were a little tight, there was still a window of time between each city that would allow him to work on the Maxwell account. He had to keep that in mind, Ross told himself. Undoubtedly the only thing that would keep him sane on this trip was the opportunity to immerse himself in work. He felt a smile tug at the corner of his mouth.

Immersing himself in Frankie was certainly out of the question.

As though the mere thought of her had conjured her out of thin air, Ross heard a knock at his front door. His neck tightened with tension and he let go a short breath.