Lucky 7 Bad Boys Contemporary Romance Boxed Set (49 page)

“Look at the crowd. We’ll definitely make things happen this week,” Lanie proclaimed, bouncing in her vintage Candies. She looked like a redheaded sprite stuck in a time warp.

Lanie owned a retro-wear shop and Natasha often joked that she had vintage ADD. The woman couldn’t stick with a single time period in any one outfit. Today, her dress was forties couture, accented with love beads from the sixties and her feet were shod in eighties glory. But Lanie made it work. As she regularly lectured Natasha, it was all about the attitude.

Natasha’s clothes screamed just as much attitude as Lanie’s. But in the opposite direction. Lanie threw clothes together for fun. Natasha carefully chose everything she wore with an eye to accentuate, in a good way, her bountiful curves. A D cup woman had to dress her body just right or she’d come across as either hootchie or hefty.

To avoid that, Natasha went for soft fabrics, cool shades to complement her coloring and fit her admittedly restrictive and cold upbringing. But underneath, she indulged her favorite vice. Lingerie. Wearing it, designing it and most recently while she helped her aunt, selling it.

“Who knew there were so many kinds of lingerie and...” Lanie’s voice dropped to an excited whisper. “Sex things, around?”

It wasn’t like they were innocents. Natasha and Lanie both lived just outside of San Francisco, where sex was hardly a secret. But here, it was like everyone took it to the extreme.

Natasha scanned the convention hall. Voices echoed in a muted roar through the cavernous space. The hall might be filled with an exotic clash of colognes, perfumes and the overlying scent of strawberries and cream bath products, but sex was definitely in the air. From the scantily clad mannequins and even more scantily clad booth models to the sweetly displayed virginal honeymoon wear, the convention screamed S-E-X. In all its varied flavors.

Businessmen brushed shoulders with guys in leather, and convention models paraded around in sexy lingerie carrying placards advertising booth numbers. Her eyes widened as a woman wearing more tattoo ink than fabric handed her a brochure for body jewelry and adventurous sexual aids.

Dog collars, whips, nipple rings and...

Natasha swallowed a gasp and heat crept up her neck.  She spent a lot of time fantasizing about incredible sex. But some of the offerings in the brochure were wild.  "Oh my..."

"What?" Lanie asked, trying to see over her shoulder.

She handed her friend the pamphlet.

“Yowza.” Lanie winced, pointing to a set of spiked nipple clips.

“Yeah, I’ll bet that’s hell on the lingerie.” Natasha tilted her head to one side and considered.
Among other things.

She glanced up from ogling the brochure to see a pair of models in bridal styled lingerie—a tiny teddy, white stockings and a veil. Very sweet. She nudged Lanie with her elbow and nodded in their direction with a grin. “It’s like the
Ben & Jerry’s
of sex. There’s something for everyone.”

“Or like that place with thirty-nine flavors. You can sample a little of everything.”

“Not me. I’ll stick with the tried and true,” Natasha insisted with a grimace.

“Think of what you’re missing. I mean, sure, if you know you hate fruit flavors, don’t go there. But how do you know you won’t like something new unless you give it a taste?”

“I’m better off with vanilla. Every time I indulge in Karamel Sutra, I end up with another episode to add to my
most embarrassing moments
collection.”

“Oh, please, I wouldn’t wish vanilla on my grandmother. Live a little, Tasha.”

“I think not. Whenever I give in to my sensual side, things end up a mess.”

“Or a four-alarm disaster.”

“That fire wasn’t my fault,” she defended with a sniff.

“It was
your
dress that went up in flames,” Lanie pointed out smugly.

“Yeah, well that bonfire was huge. I didn’t realize Tad and I’d rolled so close to it.” Natasha sighed. She usually kept a better grip on her sexual yearnings, but that night had reminded her so much of her college days. And a certain hot guy... A bonfire, wine, the surf and a full moon. She’d just lost her head. And then, right afterward, her Michael Kors sheath to fire damage.

“He must’ve been damn good for you to let loose that tight grip you keep on your control.”

Natasha grimaced. No. He hadn’t been. Definitely not worth the loss of one of her favorite dresses.

“I’m cursed.”

“You know, there has to be a reason for that.” The petite redhead leaned against the table, her chin resting on her fist as she considered. “Some deep psychological warning device that’s triggered every time you get a little sexually adventurous. Probably something to do with your parents and all those rules they drilled into you.”

“Believe me, sexual adventures, acceptable and otherwise, are not something that’s discussed in my family,” Natasha said with a laugh that was only a little bitter. Maybe if sex had been discussed, she wouldn’t feel like she had to hide her needs.

And that probably proved Lanie’s point. Natasha’s family was old-money rich and founding fathers snooty. Which pretty much made them more uptight than a virgin gripping her promise ring at a bisexual strip club.

Her parents had gone into deep freeze when she’d told them she was taking a leave of absence from her job as an engineer in the family firm to temporarily run Aunt Sharon’s lingerie boutique. Capitalism was all well and good in the Stover’s mind, until it came to their youngest daughter hawking undies on Main Street. But given Aunt Sharon’s recent multiple sclerosis diagnosis, they couldn’t bitch too much without—God forbid—looking churlish.

It was a damn good thing they were clueless that Natasha had been secretly designing lingerie the last few years for her aunt. They might actually lower themselves to yell, curse and, quite possibly, throw a vase or two.

Some people, namely Lanie, had suggested that Natasha was doing the whole lingerie thing as a form of rebellion against her uptight upbringing.

It really wasn’t though. She loved the art of creating sexy lingerie that supported a full figure and made the most of a woman’s lush curves. Colors, textures, fabrics, trims. All aimed at making a woman,
any
woman, feel sensual and sexually empowered.

It wasn’t rebellion, Natasha sighed. It was her only sexual outlet.

“I think Tad was right. I’m more cool and contained than hot and wild.” But dammit, she craved hot and wild. She’d had it once and felt like she’d been running from the memory of it ever since. The only place she found any excitement these days was in her design work.

“Tad was an idiot. That’s what you get for dating someone your mom picked out. You’re better off without him.”

Probably. She always seemed to attract the same kind of men. Ones who were drawn to her cool ladylike demeanor and classic blond looks, only to be shocked when she got comfortable enough in the relationship to suggest getting a little wild. Sadly, with most of the men she’d dated, the woman-on-top position was wilder than they could handle.

“It doesn’t matter right now,” Natasha sidestepped, not wanting to discuss her parents or her latest disaster of a relationship. “I need to focus all my energy on helping keep Aunt Sharon’s business afloat while she’s in the hospital, and modifying things so she can keep it going after she’s home.”

She made a show of tucking away the brochure. There, all the crazy sex stuff was nice and hidden.

“I’ll take
Sensual Supports
over sex at this point. At least that isn’t cursed. All I need are a few solid contracts, something big enough to make it possible for Aunt Sharon to continue designing, but retire from the boutique. From what the doctors said, she’ll need to cut back even after she’s well enough to work again.”

“She’s lucky to have you.”

Natasha was the lucky one. Without her aunt’s influence over the years, she’d likely have turned out exactly the way her parents wanted. Uptight, upright, boring as hell. She’d be popping pills for breakfast, washing them down with scotch at lunch and doing the pool boy before dinner. Just like her sister. Instead, Sharon had encouraged Natasha to think outside the box, even if she hadn’t been ready to step outside of it. She’d been the most positive influence in Natasha’s life. Now it was up to Natasha to make sure the rest of Sharon’s was comfortable.

Frustrated with the stagnant traffic in the booth—and the topic at hand—Natasha started rearranging lingerie.

“Aunt Sharon’s done her research. If she gets the
Perfect Passion Lingerie
account, she can keep her business going and only have to do half as much work. Not to be redundant, but
Perfect Passion
really is perfect. They’ll handle everything from manufacturing to distribution to sales. All she’d have to do is provide the designs.”

“But wouldn’t she have been more successful, and pull in bigger money if she’d handled the manufacturing herself, keeping control of the sales, distribution and such?”

“Maybe,” Natasha acknowledged. That’s how she’d do it. Actually, if the business was hers, she’d take a lot more risks, push the envelope on design a little wider and focus more advertising on the full-figured range of lingerie she’d designed. Instead of playing it safe and going the same route as so many other lingerie companies, she’d drop the storefront, go open an online store and scream out the differences.

But who was she to talk? She was still hiding the fact that she drew undies on the side from her parents.

And, in this case, it didn’t matter. Clutching a satin cami so tight she left wrinkles, Natasha tried to shrug it off.
Sensual Supports
wasn’t hers and how to handle it wasn’t her decision.

Aunt Sharon had been specific on what she wanted her niece to accomplish during this convention. At sixty, the older woman should be thinking about retiring, but the economy and her lifestyle didn’t make that an option.

“You want that Passion account, you’ll get it,” Lanie vowed, her words as fervent as Natasha’s thoughts.

“I hope so.”

“It’ll work out, Tasha. Don’t doubt yourself.”

“Lanie, I’m a fourth-generation engineer. Aunt Sharon is the only person in my family who would ever think I could step out of my glorified cage and embrace—” She waved her hand to indicate the sexually charged atmosphere. “—all of this.”

“And you’ve embraced it well. Now that you’re helping, the boutique is doing better than ever. You’ve got a knack for selling lingerie.”

Yet another secret. Thank God nobody in her family ever lowered themselves to visit Sharon’s boutique on weekends when Natasha helped out.

She
did
have a knack for it, though. After all, she was the perfect lingerie customer. She recognized a woman’s sexual fantasies and knew how to dress for them. And she was damned good at it—probably because she had so many of her own locked down tight.

That knack for selling wasn’t going to be enough, though. Natasha had been racking her brain for a solution to help save
Sensual Supports
when a friend had raved about how the
SEMA
auto convention had launched his little side business selling vintage auto-parts into a full-time enterprise. She’s figured it couldn’t hurt to give the lingerie version a shot.

Rufus Randall, the CEO of
Perfect Passion Lingerie
, was going to be at the convention. The guy was reputedly as eccentric as he was savvy and refused to do business with anyone he hadn’t met face to face.

So, here she was.

Before Natasha could worry aloud just how eccentric Rufus might be given everything they’d seen at the convention so far, there was a crash across the aisle. They both turned just as a mannequin fell to the floor in a tangle of plastic arms and legs.

“Uh oh,” murmured Lanie.

“I barely touched them,” Natasha defended as guilt surged. The booth had been empty at noon, so she’d written the vendor off as a no-show, and snuck over to swap mannequins. Her full-figured bra design looked so much better on the curvy plastic shapes instead of the stick figures that had come with her booth—the ones that were now a jumbled mess on the floor.

“Maybe I should go over and see if they need help,” she murmured. She’d assuage her guilt over the swap and scope out the competition all in one fell swoop. She was nothing if not efficient.

Leaving Lanie to handle things, Natasha slid around the table and brushed her hands over the paisley silk covering her hips. The fabric swished sensually against her calves as she made her way through the crowd.

Halfway across the aisle, her feet stuck to the floor as if magnetized. Her breath lodged in her chest while her pulse did a little shimmy. Oh, my.

The last time she’d seen a butt that sweet, she’d been in college. While this prime specimen was covered in well-worn denim instead of mouth-wateringly bare flesh, it definitely brought back a rush of memories. And lust.

Hot, sticky lust.

Stop, she scolded herself. The sexually charged atmosphere was obviously getting to her. Unable to resist the tug of desire, she stepped a little closer. Her mouth went dry. The wide swimmer’s-shoulders above that sweet butt were just as sexy. And eerily familiar.