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‘Oh,’ the driver said before focussing more fully on the road ahead. Obviously hot tubs and bikinis were much more his scene.
He soon pulled up outside the old concrete building that housed the television studios. Cara hopped out and handed the cash through the driver’s side window.
‘Good luck,’ the driver said. ‘And I’ll look out for you on the small screen.’
He gave her the once-over and Cara knew he didn’t believe her for a second and was happily measuring her up for a bikini. Knowing she looked more like a ballet dancer than a Baywatch babe didn’t stop her from blushing in humiliation as he gave a little shrug as if to say he’d seen better.
Cara tugged at her born-again dress, patted down her curls, took a deep breath, and headed inside.
Adam sat upstairs in the top-floor foyer of the television station, cracking his knuckles.
He could have waited in the car. He could have browsed in the shop windows near the television station. He could have taken advantage of the heretofore unheard-of spare time and chosen to stop and smell the flowers in the park nearby. But he hadn’t. He wanted to be where Chris was. And since Chris had been taken into a closed-door meeting, the foyer was as close as he was going to get.
After a good hour spent counting tiles on the ceiling of the open-plan waiting room Adam was itching to leave. And to take Chris with him. If there was even the slightest hint that Chris might change his mind, Adam wanted to be there to snap him up and take him back to the real world of stock prices and innovative technologies. A quantifiable world that never pretended to be anything other than what it was.
So Adam waited close to the source, his knuckles cracking, his eyes seeking out any movement that passed his way.
Cara checked her reflection in the lift doors.
She lifted a hand to pat down her hair. She was pleased to see the new caramel highlights in her curly chestnut bob gave her the exact hint of sophistication she was after. The huge red flower that held her hair back was securely fastened but still she dug it in deeper. It would be just like her to have the thing fall out of her hair and dangle at an illogical angle down her back for the whole day without her knowing, her intelligence and talent and new caramel highlights becoming blurred behind her often clumsy exterior.
Her best friends called her ‘classy Cara’ because she was always so put together, but it was also half a joke since they knew what it took for her to be that way.
She looked down at her unforgettable shoes for moral support. It took almost all of her concentration to remain upright, they were so high and delicate. And she was someone who had to lift her feet so as not to trip even when walking in bare feet.
The lift grumbled to a halt on the top floor and her stomach dropped away. At the last minute she closed her eyes, tapped the heels of her red shoes together and made a wish to whichever good fairies might have been listening.
‘Let me have this job and I will never want anything else again.’
The lift doors opened, as did her eyes, and she stepped ahead, unforgettable red shoes leading the way.
Adam looked up at the whir of the lift.
A woman exited, walking like a ballerina: head held high, shoulders back, deliberate, as if she had a book on her head and had no intention of letting that book fall.
This woman had enough going for her that Adam stopped cracking his knuckles and let his hands drift to rest casually across the back of the couch.
She stopped outside the lift and checked the staff listings, bending slightly from the waist and affording Adam a nice view of…a very nice view. Seeming satisfied she was in the right place, she walked his way.
Only when she came closer did he notice evidence of nerves. She swallowed too many times, her eyes flitting about the place as if she was cataloguing everything in the room, and her knuckles showed white against the sleek black portfolio she clutched in her hands like a lifeline.
Finally her fluttery gaze cut his way.
She managed half a smile, her smooth full lips kicking up at one side, highlighting the sexiest little smile line along one pale cheek.
‘Excuse me,’ she said in a charmingly husky voice, ‘but is this the place to wait for the guys from…?’ She paused, her mouth closing in an adorable little pout as she found the words she was looking for. ‘I don’t even know what it’s called. The new TV dating show?’ A concerned crease appeared above her dainty nose as she awaited his answer.
‘This is the place,’ he said, drawing his eyes from the crease to her blinking eyes. Green, they were, and magnetic. Like a cat’s eyes.
‘Oh, thank goodness,’ she said, a slim hand moving to her chest while her cat’s eyes went back to their dazzled flickering. ‘I’ve had one heck of a time finding where to go. Seems it’s all so secretive most of the staff in the building knew nothing about it. But after my bumbling efforts I’m sure the whole place knows by now.’
She took a seat on the opposite couch, sitting upright, with her portfolio still clutched in her hands.
‘Are you here to be interviewed?’ he asked.
‘That I am. And I can’t believe how nervous I feel. I’ve never done anything like this before.’
Ready to ask, Like what exactly? Adam suddenly realised that this woman could be one of Chris’s dates. And his first uncensored thought was that Chris was a lucky guy. Adam shifted in his seat, suddenly feeling a mite uncomfortable in the woman’s sparkling presence.
Then he also remembered that none of the women was to know whom they were going to be meeting on the show. Just some guy, some poor slob hankering for a woman. Not his friend Chris; sweet guy and a billionaire.
But the funny thing was this woman seemed like a sweet girl too. A sweet girl with eyes that deserved a double take and a mouth that begged to be kissed.
Adam shook his head to clear the muddy thoughts. What did it matter that she was seriously attractive? He was only finding himself so quickly riveted by her because of any possible harm she might bring to Chris.
It was a defence mechanism. That was all.
Chris was too nice to know what was best for him and it was Adam’s job to look out for the guy. He owed him that much. If not everything.
The door to the offices beyond opened, and a young, hip television-exec type, with unironed clothes and too much gel in his hair, popped his head out.
‘Cara Marlowe?’
Adam’s lady friend stood up.
‘That’s me.’
‘Great,’ the guy said with an encouraging smile. ‘Come on through.’
The woman shot Adam a parting grin that included the sexy smile line once more. ‘Wish me luck.’
Luck meant that within days this fresh-faced, sweet and seriously compelling woman could be dating his best friend. And he found that all he could say was, ‘Go get ’em.’
Cara followed the young guy, whose name was Jeff, through a maze of corridors and cubicles to his office within the bowels of the top floor of the television station.
‘Take a seat,’ he ordered.
She did.
‘Coffee?’
‘Ah, no, thanks.’ With caffeine in her veins she’d be bouncing off the walls in no time.
‘I’m not so good as you,’ Jeff said, waving his empty mug at her. ‘I’ll be back in a sec.’
Cara sat upright on the plain simple chair as she waited for Jeff to return. She stared down at her red shoes, which glistened prettily back at her. And she winced. Jeff had walked ahead of her the whole time and she was sure he had not even glanced at her feet once.
But the guy in the foyer had. She was sure of that. In fact she was sure he had compiled an internal data file of every inch of her, so intense had been his gaze. It was all she had been able to do to keep her footing. New shoes or no new shoes. A guy like that would make any rational woman’s knees go weak without even trying.
He had dark wavy hair, intense blue eyes, a solid build, hands that looked as though they could play the piano and change a light bulb. He was a hunk and a half. She wondered briefly what he was doing there, waiting in the foyer where those involved with the new secret show had been told to wait.
What if he was the single guy? The one she might have to style? She pictured him in his immaculate suit with his glossy shoes and his expensive haircut. If he was the one, her job would be redundant. She would have nothing more to do than straighten his tie and run her hands through his hair just before the cameras rolled.
The thought of getting so up close and personal with that particular gentleman made her suddenly uncomfortable. She shifted in her seat, then gave a little laugh out loud. What need would a guy like that have to go on a dating show? He was gorgeous. The strong, silent type. She imagined a wave of horror rolling across those deep blue eyes at the mere suggestion.
An alarm went off somewhere in the building and Cara clicked back to the present and remembered she was meant to be preparing for the most important job interview of her life. That was what she should have been focussed on, not daydreaming about the exact shade of some stranger’s blue eyes. But of course she was only thinking about him so much because of the possible boost he could provide her financial status.
It was a survival mechanism. That was all.
Her focus cleared and she saw her red shoes still gleaming up at her. She had more important things to think about then and there than some chance acquaintance with Mr Handsome out there. She had to make a grand impression on Jeff.
She crossed her legs one way but the shoes were still hidden, so she crossed them the other way instead.
She hadn’t even heard Jeff return so as she swung her right leg over her left she connected fully with the poor guy’s upper thigh. His coffee-cup did a triple back somersault over his desk, trailing steaming milky coffee over everything in its path. The accompanying ‘Oof’ that sprang from Jeff’s mouth told her that the connection had not been a light one. She leapt to her feet, disentangling herself as she went.
‘Jeff, I am so sorry! Here, sit down, please.’
She manoeuvred Jeff into her chair, then reached over to place his tilted empty cup upright, as though it made any difference.
‘Are you OK?’ she asked, her attention zeroing in on the guy who held her financial stability in his hands. Hands which were currently stuffed between his legs.
‘Did I hurt you a great deal? What can I do to help?’
He took a few moments to gather his breath before he finally said, ‘When can you start?’
‘Start what?’ she asked, suddenly worried what she might be called upon to do to help.
‘The job. The gig. The show.’
‘I’m hired?’ Cara asked, her squeaky voice showcasing her scepticism.
‘That you are,’ Jeff promised, his breathing returning to normal.
‘Don’t you want to see my portfolio?’
‘No need. We’ve seen what you can do and you come highly recommended by those who’ve worked with you, including Maya Rampling of Fresh magazine, who seems to think you are, and I quote, “a gift from the heavens”, and whose help we will certainly need for marketing the show later on. And that’s enough for us.’
Cara spun about on the spot but had to right herself against the table when her dainty shoes threatened to give way beneath her.
‘So, are you ours for the having?’
‘I am all yours, Jeff. You can have me now.’
The young guy glanced up at her with the beginnings of a smile on his face. Cara snapped her mouth shut and waited for the perfectly reasonable response to her unfortunate phrasing, but instead his kind glance hit the floor once more. He shook his head.
‘Those are some shoes you’re wearing there, Ms Marlowe. And it pains me to imagine what they might have done to me had we not given you the job.’
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_33403bb6-335f-56f1-8bb6-47d764eab022)
‘ADAM TYLER, right?’ a husky voice called from behind Adam.
Adam turned to find the lovely lady he had met half an hour before. He blinked. It was a delaying tactic. It gave him a moment to size up the opposition or the problem before he spoke. But whereas before the woman was all elegant nerves, now she was all big smiles and gorgeous dimples. And those were qualities in a woman that he had never seen as a problem.
‘That’s right,’ he said, many years of practice masking everything but nonchalance in his laconic voice.
‘Well, now, you see I got the job.’ She gave him a little curtsy before continuing. ‘And I was told that you were the man I needed to see.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘To get the dirt on our man of the hour.’
He stood up straight, his hands clasped behind his back, and watched as she shifted from one foot to the other, all but dancing on those high red shoes of hers. Then all of a sudden she stopped fidgeting, piercing him with a stare so sharp he couldn’t move. He couldn’t even blink. He just stood there and waited for the acute green gaze to give him a reprieve.
‘Adam Tyler,’ she repeated, her bright eyes flashing as the unexpectedly sharp mind behind them whirred to life. ‘Head of Marketing for Revolution Wireless?’
He watched her carefully as the cogs and wheels clicked in her mind. Revolution Wireless. Billionaire. Chris. She would have the whole deal figured out in no time. So much for them recruiting ignoramuses.
It slammed into his mind that nobody was meant to know anything about Chris. That was the whole point, the beauty of the idea, that Chris would be an unknown, just a guy meeting a girl. But suddenly that was all disintegrating before him.
And disintegration was just what Adam wanted.
Her gaze drifted away from him as, like a good girl, she put two and two together. ‘Chris Geyer. The name was familiar but I couldn’t place it before. He’s one of your partners, right?’
He decided to keep his mouth shut. Maybe the fates had put her here just for him. Maybe he didn’t need to convince Chris. She could be the spanner in the works all on her own.
‘So it’s not a joke,’ she said. ‘The Billionaire Bachelor is not some hook to get a bunch of poor girls all excited only to have the fake Persian rug whipped out from under them. The Billionaire Bachelor is the real deal.’
Adam cringed on the inside. If that was to be the title of the show, Chris was dead meat.
But instead of venting his infuriation with internal screams behind closed eyes, Adam paid close attention to the woman before him, anticipating the inevitable moment when those eyes of hers would skitter back his way, lit all the brighter by the glitter of dollar signs. He braced himself, willing her to get it over with. Willing her to show herself as nothing special, as one of the countless many.
Her glance landed upon him, their eyes clashed, and he took in a short anticipatory breath as he looked for the sly smile that would no doubt touch at the corner of that luscious mouth. The tension inside him grew by the second as he waited for her to feed his disenchantment with womankind.
But the moment never came. Instead of a sly smile, there was a furrowed brow and what he guessed were teeth biting at her inner cheek. She wasn’t looking at him as the answer to all her hopes and dreams, she was looking at him as though she felt sorry for him. And where he had been prepared to be disenchanted, instead he was stunned.
She finally collected herself and smiled, but her expression was infinitesimally cooler than when she had first burst from the inner room, all coltish legs and curtsies.
‘So, anyway,’ she said, her tone pleasant but no longer perky, almost as though she preferred to pretend the past two minutes hadn’t existed. ‘I have been told that the TV station has an account at a lovely little bistro around the corner and I was hoping that I could take you there for lunch.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Adam said, gathering his wits after being befuddled by her strange response, ‘but I don’t think that’s in the rules of the game.’
Her confusion was evident. She took in a short breath as though ready to question his comment, before she obviously figured it out for herself, her eyes brightening again with the realisation.
‘Please! I am not a contestant! The last thing I want or need is some brazen, bawdy billionaire breathing down my neck. Funny, though. You’re the second man today to think that. What is it about me that screams bikinis and hot tubs, I wonder?’ She said it more to herself than to him, but he still took a brief moment to consider the image.
Her conservative outfit did little to hide the long, lean curves and those unbelievable red shoes did things to her legs and her posture that made his mind turn easily to bikinis and hot tubs.
She moved over to the couch and sat down, patting the seat beside her, beckoning him to join her.
