Girl Gear 4: Striptease (11 page)

An e-mail from jf@avatareproductions? It wasn’t marked priority but still it caught her eye.

Why would Jacob be e-mailing her when they took care of business at the office during the day and took care of pleasure at night? In her bed. Beneath her new comforter of Moroccan red and gold, and Egyptian cotton sheets.

Still, the fact that it
was
from Jacob brought a moment of indecision, not to mention nails tapping on her desktop as she stared at the screen.

The part of her that was a savvy professional and wise to the ways of distraction told her to ignore him until she’d finished the more pressing matters of work. Dessert was always best savored as a reward for a job well done.

Except when it was eaten first because it was irresistible, and the thrill of indulging in being bad beckoned. She couldn’t wait to see what he wanted, and that was the very reason she wished she could hate him.

He’d totally destroyed her ability to focus on anything. She’d worked so hard for so long to get to this point, and she certainly knew better than to let herself
fall prey to a cocky bad boy—no matter how good he was in bed.

And that was the thought that fueled her decision. In addition to being a lovesick cow, she was now officially an unrepentant and insatiable horndog. Work could wait because Pavlov had whistled.

She double-clicked on Jacob’s e-mail, only to bring it up and see that he’d simply sent her two hyperlinks. She tapped her finger on her mouse and debated on whether or not she had any interest in what he wanted her to see.

But it wasn’t much of a debate because she had never been much of a debater.

She clicked the first link, which took her to a Web page into which opened a Webcam feed. She rolled her eyes, started to close the window, but realized the feed she was seeing was familiar…. She frowned. What the hell?

It wasn’t just familiar. It was her office! She was looking at herself sitting behind her own desk.

Again she started to close the window, but remembered the second link in Jacob’s e-mail. A quick click on that one and she found herself looking into another office, one she didn’t recognize but had no trouble guessing to whom it belonged. Or at least who crashed there when he wasn’t busy harassing female entrepreneurs with his camera,
grrr.

The man should be shot on general principle—not to mention for being a spy,
and
for worming his way into her bed and her life so completely that she was less angry than amused by his invasion into her privacy. So what, exactly, did he expect to see? And where, exactly, was the camera?

After a brief study of the Webcam’s angle, she
glanced up into the corner of her bookcase, ran her gaze along the top shelf to the center partition. There it was, the sneaky bastard. Wired in unobtrusively beside her television and the cables for the office satellite feed.

Spy boy had been busy, hadn’t he? Obviously tapping into the Internet via the office’s dedicated service line. Taking full advantage of the run of the office Sydney had given the documentary team. At the very least, the bastard was way too sure of himself. At the very most…

That
most
was what intrigued Melanie, what had her sitting here in her chair instead of climbing up to tear the camera out of the wall. She supposed it was his turn to throw down a gauntlet in this strange battle of wills they called an affair. But she wondered. How far would he actually go?

Before she decided what sort of show she would offer up for his viewing pleasure, she needed to know more specifics on the setup—primarily, how secure was his connection. He obviously had the camera’s feed streaming to his capture software. Still, until she knew for sure, she had no intention of doing the wild girl party thing for an audience like some sort of coed on a locker room cam.

Using the eraser end of her pencil to push her glasses back up her nose, she looked back at her monitor and hit Refresh. Then hit Refresh again. The software wasn’t broadcasting the live feed, but seemed to be taking a snapshot every five seconds or so.

And that was when her plan began to come together. He seemed to have forgotten whom he was dealing with here. Or maybe he just didn’t know. Melanie
Craine was not an easy conquest, no matter that
easy
was exactly what she’d been with Jacob thus far.

She needed to remind herself of that fact, as well as show Jacob Faulkner a thing or two about the imaginative use of technology. She hadn’t spent all these years keeping her nose to the motherboard, keeping company with geeks instead of bad boys, for nothing.

F
RIDAY MORNING
, Jacob tossed his satchel at the base of the coatrack in his office before collapsing into his chair, and rubbed both hands across his face. He was dog-tired. Just plain beat. This invincibility thing was obviously all in his mind because his body was dragging ass in a very big way.

Sleep. He needed sleep. Tonight he would go home to his own bed and catch up. Then again, sleeping in his own bed would mean missing out on
not
sleeping in Melanie’s. He wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t regret giving up a night of sex more than another night of sleep.

What was a few hours, anyway? They were nearing the end of August and the shoot was scheduled to wrap next month. Once he finished with the documentary, he doubted they’d be seeing one another as often since he’d pretty much booked up October with interviews and photography showings in NYC.

He’d worry about making up the deficit in his shut-eye quota then—the same way he was spending this morning making up for the time he’d missed in the Avatare office while working at gIRL-gEAR. He had paperwork to process and more than a few calls to return, not to mention dodging a couple of his work buds who were going to kick his butt the minute they saw him.

Since hooking up with Melanie this past week, he’d cut out on a couple of the Astros baseball games he and his friends had made plans to attend. Neither Asa nor Harry would let him off the hook easily.

Again he scrubbed both hands down his weary face. Yeah, well, the suckers could just bring it on. He was young and hale and hearty and could stand up to a little bit of ass-whupping.

Or he could have if he wasn’t so friggin’ beat!

Legs spread wide, he swiveled his chair around, hooked up his PowerBook to the Avatare office network and booted it up, watching through bleary eyes as it came to life. First things first meant cleaning out his in-box, since this was the only day he’d been to the office all week.

He’d been scheduled to shoot Melanie’s interview yesterday afternoon, but she’d had to cancel due to a luncheon meeting that ran long. The documentary host had flown back to L.A. last night for the weekend, freeing up Jacob until Monday morning rolled around again.

He’d slept in this morning until he’d heard Mel’s keys jangling as she was leaving for the office, then he’d decided what the hell. Tomorrow was Saturday. He’d get up and get going before she got that look in her eye that called him lazy.

He wasn’t, really. He had money for everything he wanted and needed, and he’d gotten there without giving himself an ulcer in the process. He wondered whether or not Melanie had one—or if her body had grown used to the years of uptight living and figured, why go to the effort?

This last week, though, he had to admit that she had loosened up a bit. Full credit in his court, of course.
He still hadn’t quite figured out where her uppity attitude came from, and doubted he would in their limited time together. Her interests weren’t like those of most females he’d known; she even thought about things more like a guy than a girl.

The fact that sex was a big part of that equation made him a very happy and satisfied man. So much so that he found himself wondering once or twice what it would be like to stick with her for the long haul. A totally stupid thing to think, because it wasn’t going to happen.

Homer Simpson’s announcement of, “The mail is here! The mail is here!” brought Jacob back to the present. He glanced up and blinked to clear the clouds from his vision as his in-box filters magically screened out the junk and the spam. All that was left were the notes needing his attention.

Oh, yeah. He’d sent himself the same links to the Webcam feeds he’d sent to Melanie. He wondered if she’d ripped the camera off her bookshelf yet or if she was going to be a sport and go along with the fun they could have watching each other. He clicked on the link to her feed, returning to his in-box while waiting for the page to load.

Yes, cool! A response from one of the New York companies he’d queried. But just as he opened the e-mail and before he saw more of the content than the word
interest,
a knock on his door brought an immediate invasion of his office.

Asa Brennan and Harry Schott. Jacob closed the e-mail and leaned back in his chair as the two thugs barged in. “You know, most people wait for an invitation after they knock before waltzing in.”

Asa glanced at Harry. Harry glanced back. Both
men dropped into Jacob’s visitors’ chairs, ignoring him completely. “I dunno, Harry,” Asa began, crossing an ankle over a knee and lacing his hands behind his head as he leaned back. “Looks like Faulkner.” Nose up, he sniffed the air. “Smells like Faulkner.” Mouth in a grim line, Asa shook his head. “But sounds like some prissy-assed puss who’s been hanging around a bunch of women.”

“Very funny,” Jacob said with a snort, though he was having a hell of a time keeping a straight face.

Asa wasn’t through, giving a girlie singsong lilt to his voice as he repeated mockingly, “‘Most people wait for an invitation after they knock before waltzing in.’ Waltzing. Shit.”

Harry nodded in agreement. “Yeah, Faulkner. If that’s who you really are. Who’d you sleep with to get that gIRL-gEAR gig, anyway?” His dark slash of a brow went up on the left side. “Or who’ve you been sleeping with since getting it?”

Jacob only shook his head. “You guys can’t stand it, can you? You know management only gives the sweet assignments to the best of the best.”

“More like to whoever happens to be in the right place at the right time,” Harry said, slumping back onto his tailbone. “You lucked out and you know it.”

“What can I say?” Jacob shrugged. “Some guys have it all. And some?” He offered up both empty palms. “Some of you schmucks got nothing.”

“You wish you had my nothing,” Asa said, a grin of cosmically cocky proportions widening the mouth that his last girlfriend had called her own private rock ’n roll show. “My nothing just got me invited to Milwaukee to accept an award for that short I shot last year.”

“Hey, man. That’s excellent.” Jacob leaned forward, extending his hand across the expanse of his desk to shake Asa’s. “The one about the dart tournament, right?”

Asa nodded as Jacob sat back, and that was when the trouble began. He caught site of the browser window he’d left open on his screen—the URL where he’d set up his system to show the feed from Melanie’s office Webcam.

Holy crap! He sure as hell hoped she’d locked her office door. She’d obviously moved the camera because the shot wasn’t angled down as far as it had been originally. It was more…straight on.

And straight ahead in the center of the frame, Melanie stood wearing a classic black business suit with a hip-length jacket and a skirt that fell beneath her knees. She’d leaned back against her desk, her palms on the surface at her hips, one ankle crossed over the other there where he could not look away from her feet.

No doubt about it. He was gonna need paddles to jump start his heart. Because in addition to the suit, she wore a Mardi Gras-type mask, with long ribbons of pink, red and white and plumed feathers to match. She also wore the sexiest pair of shoes he’d ever seen. Yep. Even better than the ones she’d been wearing that day in the church, because these heels were stiletto and bright cherry-red.

But that was only the first stretch in the torturous route up her body, because her legs—at least what he could see of them between her ankle and the middle of her calves—her legs were wrapped in matching fishnet stockings.

Jacob groaned, deciding he was going to die.

“You okay, man?” Asa asked, reminding Jacob that he wasn’t alone in the room.

And then he groaned because he wasn’t alone in the room. “Yeah. I was just thinking that I’m going to have to cover your ass while you’re gone. And that is seriously going to cut into my downtime.”

Harry laughed. “Dude, your entire life is downtime. What’re you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the fact that you had damn well better keep your cell charged because I refuse to take up all this man’s slack on my own,” Jacob said, jerking a thumb in Asa’s direction.

Harry frowned, turned to discuss scheduling with Asa, giving Jacob the distraction he needed. His Powerbook sat open in the center of his desk, meaning he had to look over the screen to make eye contact with either of his buds.

It also meant he could pretty much continue to check out Melanie without rousing either man’s suspicions. But one look back at the screen and he knew checking her out would be better done in private.

Ha! As if he could look away now that she’d turned her back to the camera and stood bent over her desk ninety degrees, balancing first on one foot then the other as if doing a slow-motion dance.

She had the most fantastic ass. And those heels and what they did to the whole picture…well, now his cock was talking to him, reminding him exactly how it felt to slide between her sweet cheeks. He was about to be in a hard-on of trouble here.

And as much as he was enjoying the view, he said a silent thank-you when Melanie finally stopped shakin’ her booty and stood up straight. Except then
she turned back around and went to work on the long row of buttons fastening the front of her black blazer.

He just barely managed to bite down on his next groan, and glanced briefly at the other two photographers to make sure they hadn’t overheard the sound of grinding teeth. But Asa and Harry were busy coordinating schedules on the PDAs both had pulled from cases at their waist.