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“I’ll do my best, but if he isn’t available, I’ll have to hire someone. Jack is important. People love dogs. It will cast you in a more favorable light.”
“How did you know I have a dog anyway?”
She cleared her throat. “I asked your assistant.”
She had a roundabout answer for everything. He’d never endure an entire weekend of talking in circles. “What if I didn’t already have a dog? What would you do then? Rent one?”
“I do whatever is needed to make my clients look good.”
“But it’s all a lie. Lies catch up with you eventually.”
Dropping her pen down onto the notebook, Melanie took a deep breath. She rolled up the sleeves of her silky blouse with a determination that made him wonder if she wanted to flatten him.
“The home stager is a waste of time,” he added. “My apartment is perfect.”
“We need it to look like a home in the photographs, not a bachelor pad.”
He saw his chance. She knew what his apartment looked like, but only because he’d seduced her in it. “So I have to get rid of my neon beer sign collection? Those things are everywhere.” He hadn’t owned one of those since college, but he wouldn’t hesitate to fabricate absurdities to get her to spill it.
She twisted her lips. “We can work around that.”
He had to up the bachelor-pad ante. “Now, what about the stuffed moose head above the mantel? Does that scream single guy or does that just say that I’m manly?” That was hardly his taste either, and she knew it.
“I don’t know.” She rubbed her temple. “This isn’t really my area of expertise. Can we come back to this later?” Melanie clenched a fist, waves of frustration radiating from her.
“No. I want to get this straightened out now.” His mind raced. His goal in sight, he was prepared to crank out crazy ideas for hours. “There are the beer taps in the kitchen, and I need to know if they’ll photograph my bedroom. I have a round bed, like in James Bond movies.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Why? Lots of men have moose heads and James Bond beds.”
“But you don’t,” she blurted.
The color drained from her face, but that gorgeous mouth of hers was just as rosy pink as he’d remembered. Just thinking about her lips traveling down the centerline of his chest charged every atom in his body. She didn’t say another thing, but he swore he could hear her heartbeat, drumming between her heavy breaths.
“How would you know?” he asked, wishing he felt more triumphant at having caught her.
She straightened in her seat, struggling to compose herself. “Uh...”
“I’m waiting.”
“Waiting for what, exactly?”
“Waiting to hear the real reason why you know I have a dog and what my apartment looks like. I’m waiting for you to just say it, Mel.”
* * *
Melanie’s shoulders drooped under the burden of her own idiocy. Her mother had always been emphatic that a lady never lies. Melanie had already skirted the truth, and she didn’t want to be that person. “You remember me.”
“Of course I do. Did you honestly think that I wouldn’t?”
His disbelief made her want to shrink into nothingness. How could she have been so foolish? “Considering your reputation with women, I figured I was a blip on the map.”
“I never forget a woman.”
His response might have prompted extreme skepticism if he hadn’t said it with such conviction. He hadn’t forgotten her. She knew for a fact that she hadn’t forgotten him. Of course, there were probably lots of other women he hadn’t forgotten, too.
“You changed your hair,” he said.
Her pulse chose a tempo like free-form jazz—stopping and starting. He really did notice everything. “Yes, I cut it.”
“The color’s different. See, I still remember what it looked like splayed across the pillows of my bed.” He rose from his seat and stalked back around the kitchen island, refilling his wineglass. Plainly still angry, he didn’t offer her more. “Did you really not see a problem with taking this job even though we’d slept together? I’m assuming you didn’t reveal that little tidbit to my father. Because if you had, he never would’ve hired you.”
Adam was absolutely right. She’d stepped into a gray area a mile wide, but she needed the payday that came with this job. Her former business partner had crippled her company by leaving and sticking her with an astronomical office lease. The crushing part was that he’d also been her boyfriend—nearly her fiancé—and he’d left because he’d fallen in love with one of their clients.
