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Alec had no idea what the bosses had been discussing. He’d intended to argue against Nigel’s idea that he should share his work space. Hell, Cleo Morgan had damned near won a Pulitzer. If she was that good, she shouldn’t need him to hold her hand. Let her sink or swim on her own merits.
Except he’d gotten distracted by her legs. They were so unbelievably long. He allowed his gaze to travel up from those sexy little shoes that were more strap than shoe, appreciating her slender feet, the toenails painted blood red, the shapely calf, the long expanse of tanned thigh. ¡Qué bonita! He backed up and looked again—the loooong expanse of thigh—all that bare flesh. It gave a man expectations. He wanted to weep when, after the long, delightful journey up her leg, he encountered her skirt.
She’d shifted in her chair, realigning her legs, and his gaze jumped to her face. He wasn’t surprised to discover she’d been watching him watch her. Her lack of embarrassment encouraged him, and he let the ghost of a smile pull at his lips. While she held his gaze, the world around them seemed to stop. Then her eyes lost focus, turning inward, and he wondered what thoughts had pulled her away from him. Her lips parted ever so slightly. Alec’s cock stiffened as his body recognized the signals.
Then his brain caught up.
Was she . . . ? Could she really be . . . ? But his body knew. She was fantasizing right there in front of Nigel and Mr. Phillips. About him, if he wasn’t mistaken.
What was she imagining? The possibilities made him ache. Was she thinking about wrapping those never-ending legs around his torso? Maybe about him taking her on Phillips’s desk. Or was she sitting in that chair, her legs thrown over his shoulders while he delved deep with his tongue? Maybe she had an exhibitionist streak. Was she imagining their bosses still in the room as they went at it? Before he could decide whether that turned him on more or less, she whimpered—it was breathy and faint, but it was definitely a whimper—and caught Nigel’s attention.
Alec couldn’t tell if Nigel had an inkling of where her mind had been. Damn Brits. When Nigel chose to keep his thoughts to himself, he was a sphinx.
Alec’s heart sank when Mr. Phillips leaned forward to line through an item in his open day planner then tidily laid his pen beside it. If Alec hadn’t had a raging hard-on, he would have bolted for the door since, like everyone in the office, he knew Phillips was a compulsive list maker and the pen hitting the desk signaled the end of the meeting.
His erection kept him in his seat until Nigel rose. As they moved toward the door, Nigel said, “I want to see the rough on your afterlife story. We’ll talk about it in my office, so you’re not distracted. Then you can devote yourself to Cleo.”
He’d be happy to devote himself to Cleo if that meant she’d wrap those long legs around him.
~***~
After the meeting, Nigel escorted Cleo to her cubicle and asked if she had any questions. She shook her head, afraid whatever she asked would be one of the things she’d missed in the meeting. Why couldn’t she stay focused? And why in the hell was she having sexual fantasies about Alec Ramirez? Yes, he was attractive, but he wasn’t gorgeous. He was . . . exotic. Even without the surname, she’d have guessed he was Hispanic or Italian. He had the bedroom eyes, the smoldering looks, especially when he was doing something like checking out her legs.
“Since your first assignment is to familiarize yourself with the paper, this will do until we get the cubicle set up for you and Alec,” Nigel said.
It was a typical gray-walled cubicle. The latest edition of The Inside Word sat on the corner of the desk.
“I’ve got three months’ worth of back issues in my office,” Nigel said. “I’ll have my assistant bring them out to you. You don’t need to read them cover to cover, but you should peruse the lead stories closely.”
When he’d gone, she pulled her reading glasses from her purse and picked up the current issue to look again at the cover. A black-and-white totty shot of itsy-bitsy-bikinied Tanya Hwong, the beautiful twenty-five-year-old Hawaiian hula dancer who only eighteen months ago had married billionaire octogenarian Fred Denton, was superimposed over a photo of the hospital where her husband might be dying. The headline—properly lurid—screamed, Tanya Leaves Husband’s Deathbed to Party on the Beach!!!
She was supposed to get intimately familiar with this?
A headache was starting behind her right eye. She sat on the swivel chair and dropped her forehead to the desktop. What horrible thing had she done in her barely twenty-six years to deserve this?
A month ago, she’d had a great life. A job she’d worked like the devil to get, the respect of her peers, and a successful man who adored her.
Okay, so she’d discovered the hard way the adoration was really only shallow affection combined with the kind of fun that came from jetting off to the Bahamas for the weekend. The boyfriend had been a bust, but the job and respect had been real. Now she didn’t even have those.
“Contemplating suicide already?”
Startled, she jumped upright, nearly tipping her chair over backward. She grabbed the desktop with both hands to keep herself from going ass over teakettle. When she was sure she was no longer in danger of showing the world the color of her underwear, she discovered that, sitting in her chair, her eyes were level with Alec’s crotch.
He apparently found uncoordinated women a turn on, because he either had a hard-on that would choke a giraffe or he stuffed his pants with rolled-up socks. Given their environment, her money was on the socks.
She forced her gaze up and found herself staring into his dark eyes. He looked as if he halfway expected her to reach into her handbag, pull out a gun, and shoot herself in the head. “No, I’m not suicidal. Not yet anyway.”
“Good.”
He was her tour guide in this waking nightmare. Her own personal Welcome Wagon. She wasn’t dumb enough she couldn’t guess they were all speculating about why she’d leave a respectable paper for this . . . this hellhole. It would be easy for them to resent her. And if Alec resented her, it would be a walk in the park for him to torpedo her chances here.
She couldn’t imagine what it would take to get fired from a place that ran alien abduction stories and Elvis sightings as though they were news, but if there was one thing more embarrassing than working at a tabloid, it would be getting fired from a tabloid. She hated it, but the simple fact was she needed Alec to like her. She needed someone on her side, so she forced herself to sound chipper. “Are you ready to start?”
He took his time answering. About the time she started feeling like a butterfly mounted for display, he said, “I’ve got to run this”—he held up a sheaf of papers—“into Nigel’s office. As soon as he’s done telling me what crap it is, I’m all yours.” Around them, phones rang, keyboards clattered, and a voice asked a buddy to check his copy, but Alec merely stood there, his last three words hanging in the air between them like a promise.
Before it could get too weird, she cleared her throat. “Great.”
“Great,” he echoed. “Well . . . I’ll be back.”
"Promises, promises," she muttered as he walked away. The partition walls were short enough she could easily see over them if she stood. Maybe the air wasn’t really rotting her brain. She slid her glasses down her nose and looked over the top of them to get a clearer view.
He had a nice, tight ass. Great shoulders, too. Broad. Solid. At six-foot-two, or maybe three, he was tall enough even a tall girl, say five-ten, could wear heels and still feel girly.
Suddenly realizing anyone who looked her way could see her staring after him, she dropped into her chair. Hoping no one had noticed, she threw her glasses onto the desktop and covered her face with her hands.
What’s wrong with me? My life is spinning out of control, and I’m checking out the ass of some guy I just met.
But it was such a nice ass.
And why did the voice of her inner devil have to sound so much like her mother?
It was time to get a grip. She was a competent person, wasn’t she? A functional adult who had come within heartbreaking distance of a Pulitzer. So her life was on a downhill slide. There had to be a way to get it back on track. She just had to survive this first.
Someone cleared their throat.
Please God, no.
She opened her hands like they were church doors and peered out. The pretty, petite brunette in the stylish black dress who sat outside Nigel’s office stood in her cubicle’s doorway, her arms full of back issues of The Word.
“Nigel said to give you these. Where do you want them?”
Cleo rolled her chair back to make space. “There’s fine.”
The tabloids hit her desk with a whomp.
“Thanks.”
“I’m Linny, by the way. If you need anything, you come see me.”
“Thanks. I’ll do that.” Was she really so pathetic a simple kindness offered in a nonjudgmental tone felt as if she’d been thrown a lifesaver as she was going down for the third time?
“Nigel wants you to have the sales figures by issue as well, so you can see what sells best. I’ll dig those out for you.” Linny smiled encouragingly. “They’re going to haze you, you know. Just grit your teeth and smile, and you’ll come through okay.”
Cleo took a deep breath. “Thanks.” Linny’s kindness pumped a shot of courage into her veins. Yup, she really was that pathetic.
After Linny left, Cleo faced the stack of papers on her desk. Leafing through the top one, her momentary optimism faded. Cancer Cure Suppressed!!! was printed so large she could have read it twenty feet away.
Her headache got a little worse. She shoved The Word aside, crossed her arms on her desktop, and laid her head down.
Gotta get a grip. Gotta get a grip. She repeated it like a mantra. I’d like to get a grip on Alec’s ass, she thought in her mother’s voice. Stop it!
She could do this. She just couldn’t do it all at once. Start small. Pick one thing, one little corner of your life, and get it under control.
The rest would have to wait. One thing at a time was the best she could do. The headache receded and she took it as a sign she was on the right path.
Her time at The Tucson Sun had inured her to the noises around her. The phones, keyboards, and voices were the sounds of a newsroom breathing. Cleo forced her mind to go blank and listened to all the things she normally filtered out. Surprised, she realized that, if she ignored Jackson telling someone how to spot an alien, they were the same sounds that filled the bullpen at The Sun.
Maybe it would be all right after all. No place that produced those reassuring noises could be so bad, could it?
When she felt eyes on her, she feared Alec had returned and caught her deep in her pity party. Slowly, she lifted her head and looked up.
“Hi!”
It wasn’t Alec, she was grateful to see. “Hi,” she said back to the woman who stood in the doorway of her cubicle.
“I’m Marge.” The woman held out a square, serviceable hand.
Cleo stood and smoothed her skirt—what little of it there was—in an attempt to recover some dignity, and shook Marge’s hand. “I’m Cleo.”
“I know. The guys have been talking about you coming for the last week.” Marge held onto Cleo’s hand while she checked her out. Cleo peered back much more discreetly.
Marge looked close to thirty and was about five-foot-six but built out of rectangles without a feminine curve anywhere to be seen. Her hair was cut short but was unstyled as though fussing with it was too much trouble. Makeup, too, apparently was something she didn’t have an inclination for. She wore a t-shirt tucked into belted jeans.
“Hey!”—Jackson’s voice intruded from another cubicle—“I just heard from that woman who thinks her husband’s been taken over by pod people.”
“Did you tell her to call the FBI?” someone asked.
“Are you kidding?” Jackson said. “They’re not getting my story.”
“Grrreat suit!” Marge said, pulling Cleo’s attention back. Her eyes were scanning Cleo’s form-fitting suit jacket, short skirt, and her open heels with the ankle straps that Cleo loved.
That settled it. She was burning the suit as soon as she got home.
Marge grinned. “I’ll bet you’re having to fight the boys off already.”
Jackson’s voice intruded again. “She thinks her daughter’s one of them now, too, and the mother’s afraid they’re planning to roast and eat her for their alien version of Christmas.”
Cleo pulled her attention back to Marge, but it was a struggle. “Uhm . . . Does an offer to set me up to have an alien baby count?”
Marge tittered.
Cleo blinked hard and looked again. Marge didn’t seem like the type to titter. Cleo decided she was going to have to take the initiative to get her hand back. Marge let it go without a fight.
“Did she call to invite you to dinner?” someone asked Jackson. “Maybe she’s hoping they’ll think you look tastier.”
“Har-har!” Jackson said.
The surreal sensation that she was surrounded by a pod-people newsroom swept over her. It was like a nightmare she couldn’t wake up from.
“That would have to be Jackson,” Marge said.
Cleo looked at her blankly, so distracted by the nightmare around her she’d lost the thread of the conversation.
Marge seemed to recognize the look. “The alien baby thing. That’s Jackson’s idea of a come-on. You want to be careful of him. He’s a hound dog. If you’ve ever even brushed up against a skirt, he can smell it. He’s got no discernment.”
Cleo pulled herself together enough to say, “Somehow I’m not surprised.”
Marge crossed her arms on top of the partition and rested her chin on her wrist. On a feminine girl, the move might have come across as coy or flirty. “Oh, I hope you didn’t take that wrong.” Her eyes flicked down Cleo’s body before resting again on her face. “You could be considered as evidence he actually has standards.”
Marge’s voice left no doubt that talking about Jackson put a bad taste in her mouth. Cleo wondered if he’d ever hit on her. If he had, it had obviously ended badly—and quickly, she would bet. Jackson seemed like the type who’d chew off an arm to get away from an unattractive woman after the testosterone poisoning faded.
“Since he’s not my type”—he was so far beyond her type, a pod-person version could only be an improvement—“I’m not too worried about his standards.”
Marge’s eyes lit up. Her smile was almost shy. “I’m glad he’s not your type.” Then she dropped her gaze and, to Cleo’s amazement, blushed. “He’s not my type either.”
“What do you think pod people eat for Christmas dinner?” someone asked.
A swift answer, “Brains, of course.”
“They’re not zombies, you moron,” the first voice responded.
They sounded serious, as if they were having a real conversation about real things. It was breathtakingly appalling.
Marge had lifted her gaze to meet Cleo’s. “Look. Sometimes the guys go to Dante’s after work for a few drinks. If you’d like to go sometime . . . I mean, it’s kind of a dive, but . . .”
The hopefulness in the woman’s face touched Cleo. Marge obviously felt like an outsider here, just as Cleo did. Before she could accept the invitation, Linny’s shocked voice interrupted them.
“Marge!”
She stood five feet away, the file she’d promised Cleo in her hand. Marge shrank under her blazing eyes.
“Aw, Mierda.” Alec stood behind Linny, taking in the tableau in front of him. He took a deep breath as though he were about to plunge into shark-infested waters and nudged Linny aside. “’Scuse me, Linny.”
Linny moved just enough to keep from being knocked over, her accusing eyes never leaving Marge’s face.
“Grab your stuff, Cleo,” Alec said. “We got to go.”
Cleo wasn’t sure exactly what was happening, but elsewhere seemed like a good place to be about now. She pulled her purse out of the drawer where she’d stashed it. “Where are we going?”
He didn’t answer, but when she stood, he put his hand on the small of her back and gave her a push to get her moving. In spite of all the distractions, she felt a zap sizzle up her spine. Her breath deserted her the way it did when she jumped into unexpectedly cold water on a hot day.
The zap left her with no attention to spare for Marge and Linny as she moved past them. Within a few steps, she reached the end of the block of cubicles. Unsure of their destination, she slowed and looked over her shoulder.
Alec’s mouth was drawn into a grim line. “Keep going.” The pressure from his hand steered her left.
So she walked, trying to sort out all the things that were contributing to her building confusion. Where was Alec hustling her off to? Why was everyone overreacting to Marge inviting her to the local watering hole? Why in the hell did Alec’s touch sizzle through her as though she’d been tasered?
She’d just figured out they were headed toward the elevators when Nigel stepped out of his office. “Where are you going?” he asked as they sailed past.
“I’m getting Cleo out of here for a while.”
“But it’s only her first day and she hasn’t―”
“You’ve got other problems.” Alec’s hand on her back didn’t let Cleo slow down. “Linny caught Marge flirting with Cleo.”
Flirting?
“She was what?”
Cleo glanced over her shoulder. Nigel looked like he didn’t want to believe it, then his shoulders slumped. “Oh, bugger!”
Flirting?
At the elevator bank, Alec hit the call button. Seconds later, the doors swished open and he propelled her inside and hit the button for the parking garage.
She backed up against the side wall. The spot on her back where his hand had rested, prodding her on, felt chilled, but the brain fog his touch caused had lifted as well. She wanted to ask about his claim that Marge was flirting with her, but he was leaning against the opposite wall, his appraising gaze pushing her question right out of her head. That look made her feel almost effervescent, as though she’d tossed back a magnum of champagne. The elevator doors swished open before she could sober up.
He led her to a late-model Corvette. She’d noticed an inordinate number of cars in the garage sported bumper stickers. The one on his rear bumper read: Not perfect—just very very good. It hit her like a dash of reality. He was a reporter—no, not a reporter. How could anyone who wrote about Elvis sightings claim to be a reporter? He was a writer for a tabloid, and if the bumper sticker was any gauge, he thought that made him someone.
It did make him someone, she reminded herself before all her frustrations built up and made her lash out at him. He was someone she needed on her side. She had to be careful. She forced a smile as he held the passenger door for her.
For all its sleek looks, the car was a nightmare to get into gracefully. It was slung so low her narrow skirt nearly rose to her waist. She grabbed the hem and still barely managed to avoid giving Alec a free crotch shot.
When he started the car, the pounding guitar riffs of Aerosmith’s “Train Kept a-Rollin’” erupted from the sound system. He turned it down to background volume before backing out of the parking spot.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I just needed to get you out of there.”
Reminded of their hasty exit, she had to ask, “Marge wasn’t really flirting with me. Was she?”
He shot her a disbelieving look as he shifted into first and headed for the exit. “Are you kidding me? You didn’t notice her practically drooling all over you?”
“No. I mean, I thought . . .” She should have known. Her only excuse was that the bizarreness of the conversation going on around her had overloaded her synapses. She wasn’t sure he’d understand even if she explained—this was after all his natural habitat. He’d probably heard far stranger conversations.
She decided looking like an oblivious ditz was the easier choice. “Okay, so I misread the signals. I don’t know why everyone overreacted. I could have handled it.”
He laughed. “It’s not that simple, honey.”
Honey? She opened her mouth to tell him she wasn’t his honey, but he forestalled her.
“Marge is not the problem; it’s Linny you can’t afford to piss off.”
“But why would Linny care if Mar― Oh. Oh, no.” She really was a ditz for missing that.
“Oh, yes.” He mimicked her tone as he eased into the street, careful not to scrape the undercarriage as the car cleared the exit. “Marge is Linny’s main squeeze. And Linny doesn’t share worth shit.”
“But . . . But Linny’s so . . .”
“Attractive? Sexy? Feminine? Yeah. She’s a lipstick lesbian. They’re harder to spot than the dykes. You’re not homophobic, are you?” He sounded as though he hoped the answer was yes.
“No, of course not. I . . . well, I . . .”
“Come from a heterosexual world?”
“Actually, no.” Not even close. She knew enough to be able to distinguish a lesbian who really meant it from the ones she’d known in college or met in places like the Bahamas and Cabo, who were just playing at it and had every intention of going back to men when they were done with their illicit flings. She even knew a few who were bisexual. A little too well, thanks to the Vegas Strip and her mother’s avant-garde lifestyle. But beyond occasional half-hearted, just-in-case come-ons, she’d never been hit on by a woman before. She’d always assumed they didn’t bother because she redlined the hetero end of their gaydar. “But I don’t swing that way.”
“Glad to hear it.” He grinned at the road, and she could practically see the thought bubble over his head as he wondered if there was some other way she did “swing.”
It wouldn’t matter how she swung, she wanted to tell him, because she was never swinging with him.