скачать книгу бесплатно
His attention dropped to her mouth again, and he fought the impulse to lean closer and kiss away the traces of hurt he heard in her voice. He’d always assumed she was such a hard and calculating woman, an imperious force with a steel spine and ice water running through her veins. But in truth, Nora Pierce wasn’t at all like Prudence Trueheart. Sure, she was a little uptight and overly concerned with propriety. But beneath the stuffy facade, she was soft and vulnerable and incredibly irresistible.
“Maybe I could take you out to lunch,” he said. “By way of an apology.”
She sat up straight and pulled the burrito from her eye, regarding him with a suspicious expression. “Lunch?”
“Yeah, why not? That’s not against the rules, is it? Or didn’t I ask the right way. Should I have called first? Or maybe written you a note? I suppose I could have sent an engraved invitation, but my engraver is broken.”
Nora shook her head, the barest hint of a smile touching her lips. “I—I don’t think lunch would be such a good idea. After all, we work together. People might talk.”
Though it was a reputation built more on rumor than fact, Pete was known at the Herald as the resident Casanova, a fact that obviously hadn’t escaped Prudence’s notice. He didn’t put much effort into attracting women, but he always seemed to have at least two or three beautiful ladies on a string. Yet, over the past year, he’d found himself increasingly disenchanted with the women he dated—and the reputation he’d cultivated. Unfortunately, the reputation seemed to stick, and his personal life had become tasty fodder for the office gossips.
It wasn’t that he didn’t like women anymore. He still had the occasional date, but maybe he was getting too old for the singles scene. At thirty-three, he wasn’t exactly over the hill, but he’d come to the conclusion that a good relationship wasn’t only about great sex and a centerfold body. He just wasn’t sure what it was about.
Pete sighed. At the moment, he found himself wanting lunch with Nora Pierce, odd as that seemed. “It’s just a simple lunch,” he said with a grin. “What could they possibly say about you and me having a burger together?” Though he meant the question rhetorically, he saw another trace of hurt in her expression, then realized how she’d taken it. Of course, a quiet lunch with Prudence Trueheart couldn’t possibly end in anything other than dessert and separate checks. She had her reputation, too, and it was spotless. But her reaction came out of left field, and he wasn’t sure if he should apologize or rephrase.
“I—I’m not hungry, but thank you, anyway,” Nora replied, her voice suddenly cold and distant. She held out the burrito. “Here, you better put this back in the freezer. I wouldn’t want anyone to miss it.”
Pete slowly shook his head and took the burrito. For a few minutes, he’d thought he’d managed a truce of sorts with Nora Pierce—maybe even the beginning of a friendship. But after sticking his foot in his mouth, not once but twice, he realized that the woman before him would be a tough sell. If discarding his reputation meant losing his touch with women, maybe he’d have to rethink his options.
“Fine,” he murmured. “But if you change your mind, just let me know.” He walked to the door, then turned around to take one last look. She watched him from behind her desk, her blue eyes wide. He should have insisted on lunch, or at least been insulted by her refusal. But something told him not to burn any more bridges with Nora. “I’ll…see you later.”
She nodded curtly, then picked up a file folder from her desk and efficiently spread the contents out in front of her. When she’d managed to ignore him for a full ten seconds, he silently walked out of her office, closing the door behind him.
The teams had reassembled in the Bullpen, and the game had started up again with Sam Kiley’s team at bat. As he walked back to his spot in the infield, he caught a foul ball and threw it to the first baseman.
“So? What happened?” Sam asked.
“The hell if I know,” Pete murmured. “I’m usually pretty good at figuring out women, but Prudence Trueheart is one confusing lady.” He took his place as shortstop, rubbing his palms on his thighs. His mind drifted back to the feel of her skin beneath his fingertips. It wasn’t going to be so easy to write off Prudence Trueheart—or Nora Pierce, for that matter. Besides confusing and capricious and condescending, he found her incredibly intriguing.
And it had been such a long time since Pete Beckett had found any woman intriguing.
Dear Prudence Trueheart,
My boyfriend and I have been doing the nasty from the night of our first date. The sex is fantastic, but now that our wedding date is approaching, I’d like to practice celibacy to make the wedding night special. How can I convince my horny fiancé of my decision?
Signed, Steadfast in San José
Nora Pierce read the letter over again and again, crossing out the word horny and replacing it with ardent, then trying to come up with a euphemism for the nasty. But the edit couldn’t possibly change the tone of the letter. This wasn’t etiquette! This was a country-and-western song. A bad talk show topic. Beauty parlor gossip. She sighed and rubbed her forehead. When she’d taken the job as Prudence three years ago, she’d been hired to answer questions about gracious living. But all that had changed on April Fool’s Day six months ago.
On a lark, she’d answered a silly question from a cross-dresser who wanted to know whether he should ask his wife’s permission first before borrowing her underwear or whether the lingerie was community property. Her answer dripped with sarcasm and disapproval, and she’d published it to illustrate the limits of true etiquette. “The only excuse a man has for not wearing proper underwear is if he’s not wearing any underwear at all!” she’d written. “And the only places where underwear can be considered an option is in the shower and the doctor’s office.”
That single, silly column had been the end of her noble life as an etiquette columnist. The phone lines lit up and the fan mail poured in to all the newspapers across the country that carried her column. Her readers wanted more—more dirt, more trash, more sleaze. And more of Prudence’s sharp-tongued reprimands and subtle put-downs.
“Great column yesterday!”
Nora glanced up. Her publisher, Arthur Sterling, leaned into the doorway of her office, a broad smile on his face. Though he rarely descended from the twelfth floor, he’d been seen more often lately in Prudence’s vicinity. Though a more naive columnist might believe they’d become friends, Nora knew that Arthur Sterling had no friends. He had assets and opportunities. And he wanted her to agree to syndicated television spots as “Prudence.”
He chuckled and nodded his head. “Sex, that’s what sells. I just got off the phone with Seattle. They want the column. And Biloxi and Buffalo are in negotiations as we speak.” Arthur gave her the thumbs-up. “Good work! And I’m still waiting for your answer on that television deal.”
“Thank you,” she murmured. But he was already gone, on to some other profit center, some other opportunity that was going to pad his already sizable bank account. To him, Prudence wasn’t a beacon in a sea of chaos, a behavioral standard. She’d become dollars and cents. More trash meant more readers. And that meant more money for her syndicated column. Etiquette is part of the past, he’d told her. It might have been all right for the first Prudence Trueheart in 1921, but the world was changing.
If only she’d never written that April Fool’s column. Since then, Sterling had insisted she devote at least three columns a week to “modern” problems—questions on morality and relationships. Her monthly appearance on Good Morning, San Francisco, a popular television show, had turned from table settings and wedding etiquette to advice for the lovelorn.
With her sudden rise to popularity, she had become a celebrity around town. For every moment that Nora felt as if she were prying into her readers’ personal lives, her readers seemed to intrude on hers. The grocery store, the dry cleaners, even the dentist’s office—all had become venues for advice sessions. And her readers seemed to cherish Prudence’s impeccable behavior even more than she did, always watching her, waiting to catch her in a manners misstep or a moral backslide! Prudence was supposed to be pure of heart and filled with virtue.
To ensure the purity of Prudence, her publisher had even included a morals clause in her contract. Prudence didn’t curse or chew tobacco. She didn’t wear revealing clothes or frequent biker bars. And she certainly didn’t sleep around! That final point hadn’t taken much effort on her part. She could barely remember the last time she’d been with a man, in the biblical sense.
Nora groaned and buried her face in her hands, shaking her head. Her lack of contact with the opposite sex had become painfully obvious in her unbidden reaction to Pete Beckett’s touch. And since she’d been beaned by that baseball, she’d been having a difficult time keeping her mind on work, preferring, instead, to dwell on the color of Pete Beckett’s eyes and the warmth of his smile.
She thought back to their conversation, to her disturbing reaction to his touch, to the feel of his gaze on her body. She replayed the incident, trying to remember every detail and every word spoken. “‘Prissy,”’ she murmured. Is that really what he thought of her?
She silently scolded herself and snatched up another letter. Nora had always found a certain comfort in Prudence’s world, a place where there were rules and obligations, where people behaved with propriety and decorum. And where scoundrels and rogues like Pete Beckett saw the error of their ways, settled down with one woman, and lived blissfully ever after in legal and loyal matrimony.
But Prudence wasn’t going to hold her breath on that front. The paper’s golden boy, Beckett, was charming and handsome and a confirmed reprobate. He was everything Prudence Trueheart preached against: a man practiced in the art of seduction and an expert in avoiding commitment, the typical bad boy that Prudence found so troubling—and other women found so irresistible.
Though she never deliberately listened to office gossip, what she did overhear was probably mere speculation. Or pure exaggeration. But from the soft moans and furtive giggles from the female members of the staff, she had to believe that some of what she’d overheard was true—enough to spend a small portion of each day wondering just what Pete Beckett did to a woman once he got her behind the bedroom door. Not that she’d ever find out. When they did bother to communicate, Nora regarded Pete Beckett with thinly disguised disdain, and Pete regarded Nora with mocking amusement.
Still, it wasn’t hard to imagine the power he could wield over women, considering her own reaction to his touch. He had beautiful hands, long fingers and a firm, but gentle, touch. A shiver skittered down her spine, and she thought about how those hands would look as they slowly undressed her, how they might feel on her flushed skin, all the improper things he might do to her body, given the chance.
She brushed her thumb over her bottom lip. This wasn’t the first physical contact they’d shared, she mused. He’d kissed her once, at the Herald’s Christmas party, right after she’d been promoted to the job as “Prudence.” Though he probably didn’t remember, a vivid image flashed in her mind…standing beneath the mistletoe, the feel of his hard mouth on hers, the gentle teasing of his tongue, and that exquisite and unbidden longing deep in her core.
It had happened so quickly, she couldn’t protest, but once Nora was caught up in the kiss, she recalled abandoning all resistance, defenseless beneath his touch. When he finally let her go, he gave her a teasing smile and made some comment about old maids and untried virgins before he moved on to other amusements. She’d gotten a lot of mileage out of that kiss in those moments when she was curled up in a lonely bed, when sleep just wouldn’t come.
Now she had another real-life encounter to add to her fantasies. She thought back to the instant that his hand had touched her ankle, to the warmth of his fingers sinking into her skin, the first physical contact from a man in oh-so long. She recalled the way he touched her face, his breath warm against her temple, the scent of his cologne so heady and—
Nora cursed softly. How did they do it? How did all those bad boys make good women lose all common sense? She’d railed at her readers time and time again, and yet, here she was, falling into the same trap, forgiving the man all his sins for just a simple touch of his hand, a brush of his lips against hers. She reached for her keyboard, her indignation rising with the spirit of all Prudences past.
Dearest Reader,
You opened the stable door on your first date and now it’s going to be difficult to herd that stallion back inside. Prudence believes you should stand firm in your decision. Celibacy is a virtue and your body a prize to be treasured. If this man can’t respect your feelings, then send him straight to the glue factory. And please, promise Prudence that you won’t go riding again until you’ve said “I do.”
The horse metaphor was a little trite, yet it was typical Prudence—smart, sassy, with just a touch of sarcasm. Nora reached out and typed in the command that would send her column to her copy editor. Though times had changed, the words could just as easily have belonged to the very first Prudence, a woman named Hortense Philpot who rode herd on etiquette problems in the roaring twenties.
Nora had been hired as an assistant by Prudence IV, right out of Stanford. With an undergraduate degree in medieval art, her job prospects had been slim. But she’d possessed something more valuable than a degree: a pedigree from a socially prominent San Francisco family that gave her a genetic predisposition to proper etiquette. She’d been born and raised in Sea Cliff, the bastion of social propriety.
Upon Prudence IV’s retirement, Nora had signed a five-year contract as the new Prudence. She’d taken the job because—well, because there wasn’t much call in San Francisco for an expert in medieval tapestries. But she also thought she might be able to inject a little class and propriety into the everyday life of her readers.
She pulled off her horn-rimmed glasses and rubbed her eyes, then reached for the stack of letters her assistant had selected for upcoming columns. Pushing up from her chair, she began to pace the office. “Infidelity,” she murmured, tossing the first letter onto the floor. “Deception.” As she flipped through the letters, she found new problems to replace the old problems she’d just solved. “Anger. Resentment. Dysfunctional families. Sexual fantasies.”
Nora stood and wandered by the window that overlooked the Bullpen. She peeked through the slats of the miniblinds. They were still playing their silly little game, and Pete Beckett was in the middle of it all. She watched as he stretched to catch the ball, his shirt pulled taut against his torso. Even from a distance, Nora could see the outline of his narrow waist and muscular chest. All thoughts of work slipped from her mind. “Sexual fantasies,” she murmured.
All right, maybe she did find Pete Beckett incredibly attractive. But that was just a physical reaction. It had nothing to do with the man, just the body. A flat belly and a cute butt certainly didn’t mitigate his bad qualities. Nor did chiseled features and a perfect profile…or his short-cropped dark hair, always so casually mussed, as if some woman had recently run her fingers through it. And maybe he did have a smile that was known to melt a girl’s heart, but he rarely turned it on her. Nora had heard that women found his devilish sense of humor quite irresistible, though when he bothered to toss a tiny bit of his charm in her direction she usually reciprocated with some shrewish reply.
“Any juicy letters today?”
Nora jumped away from the window, the slats snapping back into place. Ellen Kiley stood in the doorway of her office. Embarrassed to be caught spying, Nora sent her friend a disapproving frown, then handed her a letter. “You, too? Have you joined those at the Herald who believe sleaze sells?”
Ellie had started at the Herald the very same day Nora had, and they’d been inseparable friends, at least until Ellie had married Sam Kiley a year ago. “I’m the circulation manager. When the circulation goes up, I’m happy. So what’s got your knickers in a bundle, Prude?”
“Don’t call me that!” Nora sighed, surprised by her reaction to Ellie’s gentle teasing. She flopped down in her office chair and gazed up at her friend. “When you think of me, do you really think of me as Prudence Trueheart? Or as Nora Pierce?”
Ellie frowned and sat down across from her, her gaze fixed on the letter. “I don’t get it,” she murmured. “What’s the difference?”
“There is a difference!” Nora cried, leaning over her desk and snatching the letter from her friend’s hand. “Don’t you see?” She crumpled the paper and tossed it aside, then began to pace the width of her office. “I’m not Prudence Trueheart. I put words in her mouth, but she’s not me. And I’m not her.”
“Is something wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” Nora said, unwilling to explain further. But she couldn’t hold in her frustration any longer. “It’s just that sometimes I get sick of Prudence. She’s so…prissy!” Only after the word slipped from her lips did she realize it was Pete’s word again, his description of her. “People expect me to be her. And it’s getting awfully hard lately to figure out where she ends and I begin.”
“A lot of people have trouble separating work from their personal life,” Ellie offered.
“I—I just expected things to be different. When I first got a job at the Herald, I thought my life was going to change. I moved out of my parents’ house, away from my mother, and I found that little apartment in the Castro. I expected my life to be more exciting. Look at me now. I dress in these suits and ride around on my high horse all day long, looking down my nose at ordinary mortals and scolding them for falling short of their moral and ethical duties.” The last was said with a hysterical edge, and Nora took a deep breath to calm herself. “How can I advise people about passion when I have no passion in my life?”
The question caused Ellie to pause before answering. “You’re very passionate about your work…about etiquette.”
“A person can be passionate, but still have no passion in their life. Look at these letters.” She picked up a stack and tossed it across the desk. “These people have passion. They live by their hearts, not their heads. I’ve never had that. Sure, there have been men in my life. Lovers, even. But I’ve never felt passion so overwhelming that it dissolves common sense. That it makes me crazy. And the longer I’m Prudence, the worse it gets.”
Nora yanked open her desk drawer and pulled out a bag of peanut M&Ms. Shoving a handful into her mouth, she waited for the chocolate to soothe her. “I should just quit,” she mumbled, her mouth full. Prudence never talked while she ate, but Nora was past caring about good manners. “I could go back to school. Get my doctorate in art history. Find a job in Paris or Rome.”
“You can’t quit. You’re the heir apparent to both Dear Abby and Miss Manners. And you make more money than anyone at the Herald, except for maybe Pete Beckett. And someday, you’re going to be a multimedia goddess, just like Martha Stewart.”
“Don’t say that name in this office,” Nora said, popping another handful of candy into her mouth.
“Martha Stewart?”
“No, Pete Beckett. He is the antithesis of everything Prudence Trueheart values in a man. He’s fickle and shallow and unscrupulous and—and because of him, I have this black eye!”
Ellie squinted to examine Nora’s injury. “And how does Nora Pierce feel about him?” she asked pointedly.
Nora stopped cold, realization hitting her like a sharp slap to the face. She coughed slightly, an M&M lodged in her throat. “That—that is how I feel about him. The way he treats women is appalling. Promiscuity is a trait that both Prudence and I detest.”
“Now you sound like your mother!”
Nora groaned.
“You also sound a little jealous,” Ellie observed. “Just how much time do you spend thinking about Pete Beckett’s romantic life?”
“None at all,” Nora lied. She thought about evading the subject, but Ellie was her best friend, and they never held back anything from each other. “It just that after he hit me with the baseball, he—”
“He hit you with a baseball?”
“A whiffle ball. And it was an accident. He came into my office to apologize and he—he touched me. It was completely innocent, but I realized that I haven’t been touched by a man—I mean, not in that way—for three whole years. Exactly the same amount of time that I’ve been Prudence Trueheart.” She sighed. “I don’t think I could attract a man if I danced naked on Nob Hill.”
Ellie patted her on the shoulder. “That’s not true. You’re a very desirable woman! You could have any man you wanted, if you’d just put a little effort into it. When was the last time you went out?”
“Prudence Trueheart doesn’t frequent singles bars,” Nora said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
“Well, maybe it’s about time you got back into the swing of things,” Ellie said.
“How?”
“I don’t know,” Ellie said with a shrug. “You’re the advice columnist. Answer an ad, join a church group, take a class. Isn’t that what you tell your readers?”
“That will take too long. I need immediate gratification.”
Ellie gasped. “Don’t you think you’re taking this a little too fast?”
“Not that kind of gratification,” Nora replied. “I just need to know that I’m still attractive. That men find me alluring and intriguing.”
“Well, that’s easy, then. Tonight, you and I will go out. And we’ll stay out until you meet a man. You’ll flirt a little, maybe even kiss him. And if you really like him, you can give him your phone number.”
Presented with a real plan, Nora suddenly wasn’t sure she wanted to venture into such dangerous territory. What if she went out, and no one even bothered to look her way? “No man is going to want to date Prudence Trueheart.”
“You don’t have to tell him who you are. You could wear that disguise, that wig you bought a few months ago—the one you wear grocery shopping. You told me when you’re in disguise, people don’t recognize you.”
Nora blinked, the simple perfection of Ellie’s plan slowly sinking in. All the fun without any of the consequences. She could say and do whatever she wanted, become a completely different person if she wanted to. “I don’t know,” Nora said. “A disguise in this situation seems a little deceptive, don’t you think?”
“You’re going to flirt a little, not sell national secrets to the Russians. Who will you be hurting?”
Nora considered the plan for a moment. “I—I guess it could be like research. A little experiment. After all, if I’m expected to give advice, I should at least get out there and see what’s going on, don’t you think?” She looked up at Ellie expectantly. “So, are we on for tonight?”
Nora knew that if she gave herself even one more hour to think about this, she’d never go through with it. Her sense of propriety and good breeding would win out. It was time to stop thinking and rethinking every single aspect of her life. It was time to take action!
Ellie smiled and shook her head. “All right. Be dressed by eight.”
“What should I wear?”
“Something provocative, of course. If you wear that suit, you’ll be lucky if the bartender talks to you.”
Suddenly, Nora wasn’t sure action was the best plan. Maybe she should take some time to think about this. “I don’t own anything provocative. And where would we go?”
“You’ve got the whole afternoon. Go buy yourself a new dress. And I’ll ask Sam where we should go. He’ll know a good place with lots of available men.” She gave Nora a hug. “This is going to be so good for you.”
With that, Ellie hurried out, leaving Nora standing in the middle of her office. Nora drew in a shaky breath, then let it out slowly. The only way she’d feel really good tomorrow morning was if she woke up with a man in her bed: a long-limbed, hard-muscled male with nothing on his mind but multiple orgasms—her multiple orgasms.
Though Nora was determined to throw off the Prudence Trueheart persona, she wasn’t sure she could ever go that far. A one-night stand sounded so brazen, so impulsive, so far beyond anything she was capable of. She’d settle for something far less dangerous. Instead, she’d charm and bedazzle some stranger, perhaps even give him her phone number. She’d gather some real-life experience to pass on to her readers and reassure herself that she was still an attractive and desirable woman.
And at the end of the night, maybe she would feel a little more like Nora Pierce and a lot less like Prudence Trueheart.
2
A HAZE OF CIGARETTE SMOKE hung over the noisy crowd at Vic’s Sports Emporium, a popular watering hole near Fisherman’s Wharf. The blare of big-screen televisions, all tuned to different sporting events, mixed with the chatter of voices and occasional cheers. Distractions were plentiful at Vic’s. Even so, Pete noticed the woman the instant she walked in. Determined to keep his mind on the Giants’ game, he wrote off his interest as an instinctive reaction born of so many years on the make.
But his eyes were inexplicably drawn back to her, a slender, raven-haired beauty in a form-fitting black dress. Maybe it was the way she moved, the subtle sway of her hips, the gentle arch of her neck, the oh-so-cool expression. Something about her captured his attention, and he couldn’t help but stare. She didn’t belong in Vic’s, that much was certain. Vic’s was a beer-and-pretzel kind of place, and this woman was champagne and caviar all the way.
The clues were nearly imperceptible, at least to anyone who didn’t bother to look beneath the surface. But Pete had come across a lot of women in his dating days and he could tell real class when he saw it. Her dress—no doubt, designer labeled—fit her perfectly, hugging every curve of her body, yet coming nowhere near vulgar. It revealed only enough to tantalize: a glimpse of shoulder, a hint of cleavage, and just enough thigh to prove she had incredible legs beneath that skirt. No, she didn’t need to advertise her assets. For this woman, a guy could certainly use his imagination.
But there was more—the way her gaze drifted around the room, never resting on one subject for long. She’d caused a minor stir as she made her way to the bar—men turning to watch her pass, jaws slack, eyes slightly glazed—yet she didn’t notice her effect. Had her Mercedes broken down outside? Or had she somehow wandered out of a Nob Hill soiree and become lost in the fog? There wasn’t a guy in the place who wouldn’t give his right arm to help her. But they knew enough to keep their distance, not willing to risk an icy rebuff in front of friends.
