“Name?”
David Tallis’ velvet-over-steel voice made Kyra’s stomach do a little flip that had nothing to do with nerves. Her reply was throaty, laced with all the pent-up need she’d intended to hide.
“Kyra. With a y.”
She licked her lips and stared as his strong, long-fingered hand made a flourish across the liner notes and flipped the CD case shut. He held it out to her in a graceful motion, rough-cut onyx cufflinks twinkling in the ambient lights.
She flicked a glance at the CD then met his cobalt eyes and promptly forgot she was here for professional research purposes only.
The next words out of her mouth shocked them both.
“Mr. Tallis, I’m Kyra Martin.”
“Bloody hell,” he muttered under his breath, placing his hands, palms down, on the linen-covered table.
She straightened her shoulders and fought not to close her eyes at the blunder she’d kick herself for later. She’d planned to introduce herself tonight when she “accidentally” bumped into him at the bar, not at Danny Owens’ music store opening, but there was no going back now. In for a penny, in for a pound.
“I realize this is unusual, but I was in London and I haven’t been able to get your publicist to show you—”
“Out!”
His voice rang through the upscale store, and out of the corner of her eye she saw the paid event photographer lower his camera rather than taking the perfect paparazzi shot.
Kyra felt all eyes upon her as a hush fell over the gaggle of women who had been let past the ropes for the publicity event. She calculated she had about ten seconds before Tallis’ infamous private goon-squad threw her out the door, but persisted nonetheless. Award-winning music journalism didn’t happen without a little chutzpah, after all.
Leaning forward she played the sex card, letting her cleavage peek above the sweetheart neck of her black cashmere sweater, her pearls swinging forward in a rhythmic arc.
“I’m sure we can find something to talk about that would be mutually agreeable.”
He held up a hand to stay the bodyguard who’d appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, and his eyes made a disdainful dip to the offered view.
“I’m sure we could. I doubt you’d be writing about it in Rolling Stone, however. Hustler, perhaps?” His crisp accent made the jibe more pointed than it otherwise would have been.
Kyra smiled slowly. “Touché.”
Opening her purse, she took out a business card and slid it into the breast pocket of his suit jacket. With a breathless “Call me” that would bring most men to their knees, she turned and sashayed past the line of gaping women out into the early summer rain to hail a taxi.
“The Ritz,” she directed as she slid into the gleaming black car.
Stretching, catlike, she smiled at her bit of brilliance. It might not have gone off exactly as she had planned, but it was a first step. Yes, there was always a way around a publicist.
As for David Tallis, he might not have given an interview in the better part of a decade, but she refused to be cowed by the likes of him. Rather, he was an irresistible puzzle. A man, who, no matter what strings the press pulled, seemed to have no past before age thirteen. No parents. No history. All they could uncover was a prep school education in a remote area of Scotland, and an improbably quick rise to international music stardom.
Even before he’d begun refusing to talk to the press, they’d all been prepped not to mention his childhood. Anyone who deviated from the script had received the famous Tallis glare and an abrupt end to the interview.
He had another think coming if he thought he could brush her off so easily. She could tolerate living naked on an iceberg—as long as she got her story. And she would get it. She might have blown the advantage of surprise, but she hadn’t failed yet in an assignment. It was something her editors counted on, and something on which she had staked her reputation and built her career thus far.
She would be the go-to name for the music industry glossies by the time she was finished, and no one would stand in her way. Her editor had assured her that if she got this story she could write her own ticket. If she didn’t… Well, failure was something she refused to contemplate.
Leaning her head back against the seat, she rested her eyes as the cabbie made his way to The Ritz where she—and David Tallis—would be spending the next week. Behind her closed lids she remembered his eyes. They had been even more stunning than on the cover of his latest CD. When they shot his picture for the story she’d have the set draped in fabric dyed to match their Mediterranean blue.
She pictured him naked from the waist up, in a casual pose that showed readers the sensual man behind the music. His covers were far too reserved for her taste. He needed more smoke, like his voice. Something that screamed sex.
Feeling a flush spread through her veins, Kyra wondered if the cabbie had turned up the heat. She shifted in her seat and blew out a breath. It was probably jet lag combined with the stress of her opening salvo with David that had affected her. It certainly couldn’t be his famous sex appeal. She was too jaded to be taken in by someone as pampered, pompous and self-interested as a musician—especially one with a pour-down-your-spine accent and hands that looked like they could caress the clothing off her body with one deft flick of his fingers.
Her purse rested between her thighs and she rocked forward to let the leather bite into her, imagining the heel of David Tallis’ palm in its place, picturing sitting on the edge of the autograph table in front of him at the signing. He’d have her thighs splayed wide, her skirt bunched so that her bottom rested against the cool linen.
He’d grind his hand harder into her folds, giving rough little slaps as he found a rhythm that reminded her of one of his Latin-inspired numbers. She’d arch her back and he’d hold her up with his other hand to grip her shoulder.
“Come for me, baby,” he’d growl, and she’d widen her thighs.
Her cell phone rang and her eyes flew open to meet the cabbie’s stare in the rearview mirror. They must have been sitting curbside for a full minute. Had the man been watching her? Did he know what she’d been doing? A twinkle in his brown eyes told her he did.
“Martin,” she snapped into the phone.
“That’ll be thirty quid, miss,” the driver interrupted.
Digging two twenty pound notes from her purse, she forgot about her budget and shoved them in a wad at the driver.
“How’s it coming?”
“Gil! I only just got here!” she breathed, still a tad disoriented from the abrupt end to her fantasy.
She’d known Gil for what seemed like forever, and had been beyond pleased when he’d garnered the position at Voice and Vibe. He was the reason the magazine’s senior editors had been willing to bring her on for the Tallis piece in the first place.
“I know, but I’ve got corporate breathing down my neck. Slater’s on the warpath about all the money they’re laying out. Both of our necks are on the line if you don’t get something. Fast.”
She looked up at the hotel’s warm lights, letting the light drizzle cool her cheeks. Picturing David’s face when he figured out she had managed to get the room next to his, she smiled.
“No worries. I’ll get it,” she said, and she meant it.
She wasn’t a little girl anymore. She learned a long time ago that big boys played rough, and if they didn’t fight fair, neither would she. Yes, she would get the interview, and she would let herself enjoy every moment of the pursuit.
* * * * *
David rolled his head to ease the tension in his neck. The afternoon’s promotional event had taken its toll on his body. He’d have to see about a massage before tomorrow’s recording session. Every time he released the little kink in his muscles he visualized that jezebel Kyra Martin’s twitching behind in a cream-colored crepe skirt as she sashayed away from him, and the ache returned.
She’d said his publicist hadn’t forwarded her proposal, but she was wrong. He knew all about her quest for a cover story for some international magazine that had taken off like wildfire just last year. He probably should be flattered, but he wasn’t.
He’d never trusted the press, and he wasn’t about to start with this woman. Her willingness to do anything for a story, her she-wolf attitude, was common knowledge to his manager and friend, Brent Weber. He had enough reasons to shy away from the spotlight, without putting himself in the way of a viper like that. Especially not after Jessica.
Jessica Landon had been his everything on the way up the ladder to success. He thought she put up with his late nights, painful lengths of time away from home, the hangers-on and generally outrageous lifestyle during those early years because she loved him.
He’d discovered two things after a string of Top 40 hits—money bought you a lot of friends, and your wife could buy herself a very good lawyer to take that money away from you. He didn’t really begrudge her the settlement. It was the lies she had spread to the circus-like media to get the money that had hurt him the most. That he couldn’t even defend against the lies and insinuations about his past without risking some necks, including his own, had made him feel beyond helpless. It had made him feel like a penned animal being led to the slaughter.
After seeing their artificially torn wedding photo on the cover of an American entertainment magazine with the headline “Tallis’ Ex Tells All”, he vowed to never give another interview to a bloodsucking journalist. Publicity be damned.
Kyra Martin probably thought he didn’t know she had booked the room next to his. Oh, he knew a lot more about her than she’d like to believe. One of those things was that she wasn’t going to get her coveted interview no matter what it cost him to deny her. The other was that her sweet, swinging backside had given him an idea. He was beginning to think of it as his revenge upon the paparazzi.
If she pursued him, he would let her woo him into thinking about the interview. He would seduce and bed her. Then, promptly at 4:30 a.m. on Thursday he would check out of the hotel and out of her life. He would call in some favors from his previous life—a life he tried daily to forget. But it would be worth it to see the tables turned on the paparazzi, because when she followed, Kyra Martin would be the subject of a restraining order and front page news. A crazed reporter whose obsession with David Tallis had ruined her career.
David tightened his jaw as his chauffeur opened his door in front of The Ritz and steeled himself for the charade to come. If that woman wanted to play cat and mouse with him she was going to get much more than she had bargained for. After seven years of brushing reporters off like relentless flies he was more than ready to let the games begin again.