Chapter Eight

By Monday morning Nicole had arrived at the conclusion that she had acted half her age with Wil on Saturday night. If she insisted on having a professional relationship with him, then she needed to act like a professional. She had gotten caught up in a hormonal rush. After all, he was a good-looking guy with a great body. Throw rich and successful into the equation, and one would have to be in a coma not to be at least a little turned on. If nothing else, the experience showed her that she was still able to be stirred by a man.

“So how’s your love life coming along?” Sienna asked, plopping into the leather chair opposite Nicole’s desk. She wore a black tank top with the words I feel a SIN coming on punctuated with a devil’s tail. She also wore a deep raspberry lipstick and some blush on her usually pale skin, which she never did, so Nicole knew something must be up. “Because I met someone this weekend,” she went on excitedly, “and I’m convinced it’s because of the spell I did for us. It’s very powerful.”

Nicole busied herself with straightening some papers on her desk. “Nope. Nothing.”

Sienna gave her a shocked look. “You haven’t met anyone special or taken up with someone you know?”

She sat up straighter. “Taken up with someone I know?”

“It happens. Sometimes a person can be right under your nose the whole time before you realize you have feelings for them.”

That sounded eerily like the psychic’s prediction for Annie. She hadn’t said it was a person specifically, but maybe that’s what she had meant. It was possible that the man Annie was supposed to wind up with was right under her nose.

“Actually, I had a pretty uneventful weekend,” Nicole said, hoping Sienna wasn’t witchy enough to know she was full of it, “but I’ll let you know if I do suddenly fall head over heels and fly to Vegas on a whim to get married.”

Sienna stood up, still looking dumbfounded. “How about going online to find someone? You can search for exactly what you want in a man. I have a friend who found the love of her life online.”

“I don’t think—” she started to say, but Sienna was already behind Nicole’s desk, her quick fingers typing in an address for a Web site.

“Humor me,” she said, waiting for the website to come up. “Okay, here it is.” She clicked on Men Seeking Women. “Keep scrolling down until you find someone who interests you.”

Nicole sighed, slightly irritated, yet strangely touched that Sienna apparently cared so much that she not wind up old and alone.

“How about this one? ‘Handsome, sense of humor, down-to-earth.’” Nicole clicked on it, and she and Sienna silently read the text to themselves. Are you a bored office lady who’s all work and no play? A soccer mom who needs a break, or a lonely housewife? Would you like a luxurious bubble-bath massage or a sensual oily rubdown?

“Three hundred bucks an hour! Is he kidding?” Nicole said.

“Keep going,” Sienna said.

“Hmm, ‘Unemployed parolee seeks woman;’ ‘Closet bi married guy.’ Hey, what about this one?” she said, scrolling down. “‘Strap-on fun!’”

“Keep going.”

“How about ‘I have a Tiny Little Penis’?”

“Open it,” she said. “Let’s see what it says.”

Nicole read, “‘I have a tiny little penis. Fully erect it is one-and-a-half inches.’”

Sienna gasped. “Wow! That is tiny.”

“Wait, we haven’t gotten to the good part yet. ‘I’m looking for a woman who is willing to make fun of me and my small penis, especially in front of her girlfriends, and in the company of other more well-endowed men.’” She threw up her hands. “That’s it. I’m done.”

“Hang on, you haven’t even made it through one page yet.”

She stared at Sienna. “You’re having fun with this, aren’t you?”

“Just finish looking through one page, that’s all I ask.”

Nicole scrolled down some more. “Let’s see. ‘Sit on my face;’ ‘Virgin seeking MILF.’”

Sienna pointed to the last entry on the screen. “Try this one. ‘A unique man seeks unique woman.’”

She opened it up and read aloud. “‘Have you been a naughty girl? Do you need Daddy to spank you? Daddy doesn’t want you to be bad anymore. He wants you to be good for him. Very, very good.’”

Nicole closed the Web site, and they looked at each other without saying anything. Finally she said, “If nothing else, at least it lets me know what’s out there, waiting for me.”

Sienna attempted a laugh. “Maybe Eric had better luck.”

As if on cue, Eric strolled in with Pez right behind him. They were both wearing matching Hawaiian shirts.

“Better luck with what?” he asked.

“With love,” Nicole said.

Eric’s face lit up like a Christmas bulb. “As a matter of fact, I happen to have a date tomorrow with a lady I met online.”

“Thank the goddess! I was beginning to think my powers were failing me,” Sienna said, on her way out of the office.

Eric looked at her, clearly confused. Nicole explained, “She did a love spell for the three of us.”

“Great! It worked.”

“Not for me.”

“Give it time,” Eric said.

“I don’t think so.”

Eve came in, her head obscured by a huge vase of deep pink peonies. “These came for Nicole,” she said, placing them on the desk in front of her.

“They must be a mistake. Nobody ever sends me flowers.” She reached for the attached card.

It read: Meet me at Julienne’s Ice Cream. 3 p.m. today. My cell will be turned off.

“They’re beautiful,” Eve said. “Someone must really like you.”

“Well, well,” Sienna said, marching back into Nicole’s office. “Imagine my surprise when I saw Eve bringing flowers your way. And peonies no less which, by the way, represent love. Imagine that.”

Nicole stuck out her tongue at Sienna. “They’re from Wil Blanco,” she said, quickly shoving the card in her desk drawer. “Here’s to a great working relationship and all that.”

“Fantastic!” Eric said. “Keep him happy, Nic, and they’ll be more where that came from. Speaking of which, when are you meeting him next?”

“Uh, this afternoon.”

“Great! Give me an update later.” Eric looked around the floor of her office. “Pez! Where’s Pez?”

“Snoring on my foot,” she told him.

Eric clapped his hands and Pez shot up. “Morning stretch in ten minutes,” he announced in his loudspeaker voice on his way out of her office.

Sienna stared at her with a knowing, raised eyebrow.

“What?” she snapped.

“You made me doubt my powers,” Sienna said.

“All right.” Nicole went over to shut her office door. “I’ll admit Wil and I have gotten…personal, but I am keeping the relationship between us strictly business. I can’t jeopardize this account.”

“You don’t have to try and convince me. I just want you to admit that my spell worked.”

“It worked a little too well. Can you reverse it?”

“Why would you want me to do that?”

She started to pace her office. “Because I don’t want to fall in love. I don’t have the time or energy. It’ll complicate my life.”

“Will you listen to yourself? You’re getting all worked up for nothing. You know, you do still have free will. Nothing is set in stone.”

Nicole sat, defeated, in her chair, staring at the peonies and breathing in their intoxicating scent. “Wil has this way of wearing down my resistance.”

“You like him.”

“I’m intrigued by him.”

“That’s a start,” Sienna said. “Who knows where it may lead?”

She thought about it for a moment. “Can you switch the spell from love to sexual fulfillment without attachment?”

Sienna chuckled and shook her head. “Sorry. What’s done is done.”

Nicole frowned. “No more spells, please.”

“I promise,” she said. “Come on. Let’s stretch some of our tension out.”

She followed her out. “So do peonies really represent love?”

****

Nicole liked Wil’s choice of location for meeting. Even though Julienne’s Ice Cream was in a strip mall, it had some character, unlike other typical southern California establishments that possessed generic names, such as Donuts, Drycleaners, or Laundromat.

Inside Julienne’s were tiny round tables with swirly backed chairs and counter stools that spun around. Rows and rows of colorful candies, chocolates, and taffy filled their cases. Green apples coated with rock-hard red jelly or gooey caramel topped with nuts stood at attention, tempting one’s fillings right out of one’s teeth.

Josh loved coming here. Nicole was able to get him to do just about anything if she bribed him with a visit to Julienne’s, as long as he promised to thoroughly brush his teeth afterward. She always got the same thing: one scoop of strawberry cheesecake ice cream in a sugar cone, which is what she was devouring when Wil walked in waving his cell phone with a piece of white fabric tied around it. He sat down in a chair on the opposite side of the table.

“Truce?” he said, looking as gorgeous and sexy as always.

“I wasn’t aware we were fighting.”

“Look, I’ll admit that sometimes…” His voice trailed off as he watched her lick the edges of her ice cream.

She stopped licking. “That sometimes, what?”

“Huh?”

“You started to say something.”

“Right.” Wil ran both hands through his hair, which in turn, emphasized both his biceps. “My cell phone takes over my life at times. Unfortunately, it’s a necessary evil, because I do most of my business on it.”

“Does business ever stop for you?”

“My phone’s off right now, isn’t it?”

“And I’ll bet it’s killing you.”

“You can’t imagine how much.”

She laughed. “The peonies were beautiful. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“You were right about Sammy. He shed his skin late last night.”

Nicole had heard movement in Sammy’s cage before going up to bed. When she went in to check on him, he was circling the bottom of his tank while virtually sliding out of the top layer of his skin. It was the most unbelievable thing she had ever seen. The upper portion of Sammy’s body gleamed with brand-spanking-new skin, while the old skin gathered in messy rolls toward the lower half of his body. Around and around the floor of the tank Sammy went, diligently working his way out of his skin until the entirety of it lay crumpled in the corner like a used condom.

She took a few more licks of her ice cream. Wil continued to watch her with an unwavering gaze.

Nicole cleared her throat. “Can I get you something before we talk shop?”

He finally blinked. “Stay here. I’ll go and get a scoop of something.”

He came back to the table with a giant banana split and two spoons.

“Oh no, not again,” she groaned. “Are you trying to fatten me up?”

“I figured you might want a taste,” he said, swinging his chair around next to hers. “Besides, I hate eating alone.”

“You’re not. I have ice cream.”

“Yeah, but watching you lick it is filling my head with ideas that are not related to business.”

It took her a few seconds to understand the sexual reference, but as soon as she did, she went and dumped her cone in the trash.

“Happy now?”

“I will be when you take a bite of this.” He gathered every ingredient in his split into an overflowing spoonful and aimed it for her mouth. Nicole opened wide and almost managed to get it all in.

“You have some whipped cream on the side of your mouth,” he said, reaching for a napkin. Instead of wiping her face, he leaned into her and kissed her very softly on the lips, barely brushing them with his.

She instinctively opened her mouth to him. The tip of his tongue was cold from the ice cream and tasted like chocolate. Wil pulled back and again kissed her gently, almost chastely, leaving her wanting more. Which, she was sure, was his intention all along.

Why did she keep kissing this man? Was the stop mechanism in her brain jammed, or did it only malfunction when Wil came around her?

“I can’t keep doing this,” she told him. “I have a job to do and I’m not able to do it if you keep kissing me.”

His expression soured, obviously not liking the direction of the conversation. “So we’ll work now and play later.”

“No, that’s not it,” she said, trying to scoot her chair farther away from his. “I can’t concentrate at all. My mind is not where it needs to be with this campaign. I need to be clearheaded in order to come up with ideas, and I’m not.”

“So you admit you have feelings for me?”

Her eyes narrowed. “‘Feelings’ is a pretty broad term.”

Wil leaned back and crossed his arms. “How about admitting I stir something?”

“I’ll give you that. You definitely stir up a lot of things. There, does your ego feel better now?”

“Much. I was beginning to get a complex.” He went back to eating his now-melted split.

“So where does this leave us?” she wanted to know.

“Tell you what,” he said. “I promise to keep things all business, if you promise to go out with me once this campaign is over.”

“Deal,” she answered without even thinking. Whatever it took to get her focused on business right now she would do, because once this campaign was over Josh would be home and everything would be back to normal. She’d go out with Wil one time because she had promised to, but once Josh started school there would be no time to go out again. Wil would realize that and move on.