Best Of Makeovers Bundle Part 40

"Danny, all he's after is s.e.x."

"Which is so offensive when all you want to do is play tic-tac-toe with him," Danny said wryly. "Just think about it for a second, Anna. Let yourself go there. You're an adult, he's an adult. You both want the same thing. What's stopping you?"

Anna tried to do what Danny was suggesting, tried to push aside a lifetime's conditioning to open herself up to a new experience.

Problem was, all her life she'd believed that the only thing that made it okay to want to sleep with a man was the fact that you were lining him up for the long haul-s.e.x came with commitment in her book, always had. But she'd just ruled out a relations.h.i.+p, hadn't she?

The leaden weight returned to her belly as she considered the possibility of entering into a long-term relations.h.i.+p. No, definitely no commitment. So it was an affair or nothing. The question was, could she go there?

Having a relations.h.i.+p with someone just for s.e.x-it was such a revolutionary, decadent, amazing concept. She couldn't quite get her head around it. No strings. No thoughts of tomorrow. No commitment. Just s.e.x. Lots of it. In interesting positions, and exotic places. With a man like Marc, who oozed arrogance and power and heat.

Thinking about it made her squirm in her seat.

"I'm a gay man, and not completely tuned into Radio Woman, but I'm going to read that little wriggle as a good sign," Danny said.

For a second Anna allowed herself to indulge the fantasy that she could be the kind of woman who would take what Marc was offering and make hay while the sun shone. She could just stand up, sashay across to his table, then lean down and whisper in his ear. Something like, "Let's skip dinner, and go straight to dessert."

And then he would- But her brain refused to go there. She couldn't imagine what he would do next, because she'd never been in a situation like that in her life. She'd never said anything so blatant to a man, let alone a man as experienced and knowing as Marc so obviously was.

Sighing heavily, she shook her head. "It's a great theory, Danny, but not for me. I'm just not cut out for that kind of thing," she said. "I think I should concentrate on the skydiving and the motorbike riding."

"Let me get this straight-you'd rather throw yourself out of a plane than let a man know you want to have s.e.x with him?" Danny asked lightly.

"That seems to sum it up," Anna said. She felt a little sick inside. She was disappointed in herself, she realized. Checking her watch, she pushed back her chair and stood. "We'd better go in."

Danny followed her as she headed for the door. Drawing alongside her and taking her arm, he leaned across to whisper in her ear.

"Can't take his eyes off you, darling. Think about it, at least."

And despite everything that she'd just said, Anna felt an illicit thrill race up her spine.

SHE SHOULD HAVE KNOWN that once she'd involved Danny he wouldn't take no for an answer. He let her stew until the following Thursday, then turned up on her doorstep just after nine o'clock.

She was in her pyjamas, and she stared at him and then double-checked the time.

"Don't you normally go to the movies with Dad on Thursdays?" she asked, stepping aside to let him into her apartment.

"Early show," Danny said dismissively as he breezed past her. "I've brought you some inspiration."

He held up a shopping bag and moved to her kitchen table. "You're my new project," he said as he unpacked the bag. "I'm going to turn you into a vixen if it kills me."

"What if I don't want to be a vixen?" Anna challenged, wrapping her arms around her torso. She'd had plenty of time to fully and completely regret being so frank with her brother that night. What mad impulse had made her bare her soul to him? Like he needed to know his sister was a hard-up, s.e.x-starved neurotic on a self-help mission.

"Too late, you already wrote it on your 'things to do before I die' list. You're committed."

He held up a DVD. "Top Gun. Tom Cruise with his s.h.i.+rt off. Val Kilmer with his s.h.i.+rt off. Anthony Edwards with his s.h.i.+rt off. If that's not enough to get you going, I don't know what is. Plus there's that great love scene with Tom and Kelly McGillis."

"You are the straightest gay man I know," she said as she accepted the proffered DVD.

"I can appreciate good work. I'm a connoisseur." He held up a blank-labeled CD. "Music to inspire and motivate. Danny's special mix-Nina Simone, Sade, Tone-Loc-"

"Tone-Loc? How is a rapper supposed to inspire me?"

"'Wild Thing.' Tone-Loc has some very wise things to say about doing the wild thing." He slapped the CD into her hand.

"This is all really lovely, Danny, but it doesn't change anything. Except perhaps for making me even more frustrated than I already am," she said, eyeing the pictures of buff bodies on the back of the Top Gun DVD.

"Exactly. Frustration leads to desperation. Desperation leads to desperate measures...like calling Marc Lewis up and asking him out."

She rolled her eyes. "Never going to happen. The man would eat me alive."

"With a bit of luck," Danny said, winking.

Even though she was a grown, adult woman, Anna blushed from the tips of her toes to the roots of her hair. "Danny!"

"Yes?" he responded, the picture of innocence.

She shook her head. "You're hopeless."

Danny spent the rest of the evening expounding on his theory on casual s.e.x.

"If you had a sore shoulder, you'd get a ma.s.sage, right?"

"Sure."

"And if you had a toothache you'd go to the dentist, yeah?"

"I have a bad feeling about where this is going."

"I'm just saying that if you have an itch, and you're not in a relations.h.i.+p, what's wrong with finding someone to scratch it? It's just human nature to want to have s.e.x. What's the big deal?"

She didn't have a ready answer for him. She'd been thinking about this a lot since their conversation in the bar. She didn't object to casual s.e.x on moral grounds. If two consenting adults wanted to go for it, who was she to have an opinion? But she struggled to imagine herself being that intimate with a complete stranger, then getting up, putting her clothes on and walking out the door to never see them again.

When she said as much to Danny, he slapped his palm to his forehead.

"D'oh! I'm not suggesting you suddenly turn into Looking for Mr. Goodbar. Just live a little. Have a fling with an unsuitable man. You'll love it!"

Then Danny slid a manila folder across the table toward her.

"He's thirty-five, separated from his wife of ten years just six months ago. Mover and shaker in the IT industry thanks to some ground-breaking software he launched ten years ago, millionaire at thirty, hot, hot for you and just waiting for your phone call."

She stared at a newspaper photograph of Marc leaving a charity movie premiere on the weekend. He was wearing a dark suit, and he looked tall and powerful and predatory.

"I can't believe you researched him," she said lamely. He'd been married. Technically, was still married. But in her experience, people who'd been separated for six months had no intention of getting back together. She wondered if that accounted for the cynical gleam in his eye.

"You're a novice. I'm just doing the groundwork so you know what you're getting into."

"I'm not getting into anything. Good G.o.d, Danny-I feel like you're trying to pimp me out!"

As soon as she said it, she knew she'd hurt him. His face went blank and he reached for the folder.

"Sorry. I didn't realize. I thought this was what you wanted, that all you needed was a little push."

She watched as he stacked all his offerings together, ready to put them back into the carrier bag. What was she really afraid of here? Rejection? Getting in over her head? Her own desires? What did she have to lose, after all?

Nothing. She had absolutely nothing to lose-except her inhibitions and her stodgy old viewpoint. What it came down to was one thing: did she really want to change her life or not?

She squeezed her eyes shut tight. Brutal honesty time-she found Marc Lewis sensationally attractive. There, it was out. She'd thought it, even if she hadn't said it out loud.

"Maybe you could leave the DVD. And the CD. And...the folder," she said slowly.

Danny flashed her a big smile. "I knew it!"

"It doesn't mean anything, Danny. Except that I'll be climbing the walls if I actually watch this DVD."

He laughed at her lame joke, and later, after he'd left, she stared at the photograph of Marc for a good five minutes.

What would he be like in bed? There was so much heat in those dark eyes of his, so much strength coiled in his lean body. She wondered if he put as much focus and attention into making love as he did into his business. What would it be like to have his body poised above hers, all his hardness pressed against her softness?

Belatedly she became aware that she was panting. Sitting alone in her kitchen on a Thursday night, panting over a black-and-white picture of an arrogant entrepreneur. She took a cold shower, put on another pair of freshly laundered cotton pyjamas and finally fell asleep, no thanks to Danny's bag of inspiration.

The next day, she stared at Marc's name on her daily call sheet. It was almost as if she'd conjured him out of the ether with her X-rated fantasies. And now she was going to come face-to-face with him again this afternoon.

It doesn't mean anything, her lawyer self rationalized. He's a client. He gets in the car, you drive him to wherever he wants to go, he gets out, it's over. No biggie.

Except that she knew that the whole trip she'd be thinking about what Danny had said to her, and about those moments of forbidden fantasy when she'd imagined what it would be like to make love to a man like Marc, and whether she had the courage to do anything about it now that she was being given a second chance.

IN BUSINESS, there were bad days, and then there were Bad Days. At around four o'clock Marc decided he was definitely having one of the latter. Nothing had gone to plan. Important contracts had gone missing with a courier, he couldn't get his U.S. manager on the phone, the accountants had turned up more irregularities while going through due diligence on the Sum Systems accounts and an unavoidable holdup at his lunchtime meeting meant he'd been running half an hour behind time for the rest of the day.

Now he felt the dull throb of a headache starting as he and Gary exited his corporate headquarters and headed for the waiting car.

"...I think we should drop it. That's my advice," Gary said as they slid into the back of the black Mercedes.

"I'm not backing off from this deal, Gary," he said, frustration making the words clipped and terse.

Veteran campaigner that he was, Gary didn't bat an eyelid at Marc's tone.

"That audit is pulling up big black holes at Sum. Has it ever occurred to you that the reason they were so keen to share the obvious bad stuff was to stop you from finding the really, really bad stuff that they'd hidden?"

"Read my lips-I am not backing off. I want that new data platform," Marc said. "It'll save us twelve months of development, and we can get our new database software out before Christmas."

"But at what price?" Gary asked bluntly.

"That's my decision, not yours," Marc said, irritation getting the better of him.

Gary sank back into his seat, lips firmly pressed together, and Marc felt a stab of guilt. He hadn't been the easiest man to manage since Tara's betrayal. He sighed heavily and glanced out the window as the car raced past the thick steel crossbeams of the Harbour Bridge. He didn't like being the kind of boss that everyone tiptoed around, but there was no doubting the fact that that was the man he'd become recently. He had to get a grip on the frustration and anger that seemed to be growing inside him day by day. He wasn't an angry man, usually. In fact, he used to be kind of a fun guy. His firm had the reputation of being a good employer, a great place to work. He prided himself on his corporate culture.

The truth was, he was letting his disappointment and hurt over the breakdown of his marriage leak into the other parts of his life. He knew it, but he just couldn't seem to control it. He felt so baffled and ripped off and angry. Hadn't he been a good husband? Hadn't he given Tara everything she ever wanted? Hadn't he been loyal and faithful?

His lips twisted as he thought of the shambles his parents had called a marriage-his father in and out as though the house had a revolving door, the other women, the backbreaking work his mother had had to undertake to keep him and his sister, Alison, clothed and fed. And still there had been times of extreme poverty, weeks of breakfast cereal for dinner, of living with candles for light because the electricity had been cut off.

He'd ensured he didn't make the same mistakes as his father. He'd done everything, d.a.m.n it. And still his marriage had exploded in his face. The realization left him feeling lost, adrift, confused. And very b.l.o.o.d.y determined to never let it happen again.

The sudden screech of tires drew his attention to the front winds.h.i.+eld and he saw that the car in front of them was braking and fishtailing wildly. Even as his own muscles tensed, instinctively wanting to do something to avert what looked like imminent disaster, their driver smoothly changed lanes with a practiced flick of the wrists. For the first time since he got in the car, Marc glanced toward the driver's seat.

His pulse immediately kicked up a notch. Warm brown eyes met his in the rearview mirror-deja vu of the best kind. Anna Jackson, she of the s.e.xy dress and the full b.r.e.a.s.t.s. He'd been thinking about her off and on all week. The one who got away. Or, more accurately, the one he'd decided he didn't want.

Yet he hadn't told his secretary to use a different car service.

She cut her eyes away from his, returning her attention to the road. He stared at her profile, remembering the man who'd kissed her on the opera house steps. His jaw hardened. He would not partic.i.p.ate in the kind of betrayal that had destroyed his own marriage, no matter what the temptation.

"Okay, how about this? Let me handle the Sum audit personally," Gary said with the air of a man who had been doing some fast thinking. "Give me a week, and I'll go through the company like a dose of the salts. If I still think it won't work, you listen to me. If there's nothing too sinister, we close the sale. What do you think?"

Marc deliberately cleared his mind of the platinum-blond distraction in the front seat.

"What about the McPherson project? Can you hand it over at this stage?"

Gary shrugged. "I'll palm some of it off, and keep the hard stuff. A couple of weeks of late nights won't kill me."

For some reason, Marc found himself glancing toward the rearview mirror again. She was watching him intently, a small frown pleating the skin between her eyebrows.

"If you want it, it's yours," he said, shrugging. Beside him, he felt Gary relax. It was one of the reasons why Gary made such a good wingman-he was a worrier, a real perfectionist, with great instincts and a healthy dose of caution. A good foil for Marc's own sometimes reckless risk-taking.

Reaching for his briefcase, he pulled some papers out and shuffled through them until he found what he was looking for.

"I'll need you to get onto legal about these contracts, too, get them to extend the due diligence period. Sum put a clause in limiting our audit period to just two weeks, but we're going to need longer."

Gary nodded and pulled out his mobile phone, speed dialing through to the office. Marc leafed through the papers in his case, running his eye over the figures for his next meeting as Gary wrangled with legal. After five minutes, Gary ended the call and sighed heavily.

"They're saying they can try, but that Sum are within their rights to insist on the time limit. That way we have to make our decision at the end of next week, or we walk. You gotta admit, there's no reason for them to agree to the extension unless they're suicidal."

"I don't care what it takes, we need that time. These b.a.s.t.a.r.ds are not going to slip through our fingers. Tell legal to do whatever it takes."

Gary rubbed his eyes wearily and pulled out his phone again. "We could always go public with some of the audit stuff, smoke them out."

Marc nodded slowly. "Not bad. Give them no choice but to deal with us. Play them at their own game."

"And leave yourselves open to a suit for breach of confidentiality," a cool voice interjected.

He shot his gaze to the front seat, capturing Anna's toffee eyes in the mirror.

"I beg your pardon?" he asked.

"You can't use information uncovered during due diligence to leverage a company into a sale. It's against the law, and would be immediate grounds for investigation under the Australian Security Commission's charter," she said.

"Who the h.e.l.l are you, Perry Mason?" he asked, astounded that the chauffeur was sticking her oar into his business.

"Until recently, I was a lawyer," she said crisply.