скачать книгу бесплатно
“Wow. She’s gorgeous.” She traced the woman’s face with a long, tapered finger.
Looking at the design, he made a quick decision. “I’m changing the cover design. Blondes are overdone.”
She glanced at him but didn’t comment. So he took a deep breath and plunged into his pitch.
“Winning Guinevere is a take on the King Arthur legend turned video game. Players can be anyone in the legend they want—knights, fair maidens, Merlin, King Arthur or Lancelot. They can even be Mordred if they’re so inclined.”
“The betraying bad guy?”
Ken nodded. “He’s there to muck up the works, so to speak. But the core of the story is between Arthur and Lancelot. Who will Guinevere choose?” He lifted the page to show her another picture. “That’s you. Guinevere.”
She peered down at it. “I don’t look anything like her.”
“But you feel like her. And besides, I’m changing her look to reflect you.”
Her eyes widened. “You’re not serious.”
“I am serious. I can’t express how important it is to have the right Guinevere. She will make the campaign that should launch the product that—” He cut off his words. He probably shouldn’t tell her that this one product could make or break his whole company.
“And you think I’m Guinevere.”
“I know it.”
She looked back at the picture in front of her. Then taking a deep breath, she turned the page, looking deeper at the product specifications. “The point of the game is to win…me?”
“You. Your love. Your gifts.”
“Seriously?”
“That takes on very specific meanings depending on the player’s score. Plus, if they work very hard and do very well, then they get a discount on the purchase of Winning II.”
“And kids will do that? Spend hours on the game just to get a game bonus that isn’t even real?”
“And a sales pitch for the next game. Yes, they will.”
She looked skeptical.
“Trust me. They will because the game is that good. But I have to get them playing the game in the first place. I have to get them started, and I have to show them you.”
“Me.”
“Yes, you. Beautiful, sexy as hell, but approachable. Someone who would bestow royal gifts. Someone who understands them and is worth the time and money.”
“But I don’t understand them. I don’t—”
He waved that aside. “You do know them, you just don’t realize it yet.” He huffed out his breath on a sigh. “Look, I know this doesn’t make any kind of logical sense, but I know what I’m talking about.” At least he prayed he did. “You’re Guinevere, and I’d like to hire you to spend the summer with me.”
“With you?”
He flushed, his mind going to all the wrong things. “I mean, on tour with the whole crew. It’s an entire summer of buses and hotels. You’ll get time off, I swear, but it’ll be in a different city each week.”
He pulled out the schedule to show it to her. Not surprisingly, her eyes widened in surprise. “That’s a lot of dates.”
“Like I said, at least one every week. We do a different step in the story in every city. We start with Arthur and Guinevere getting married at the first stop, but with Lancelot in the wings. Then the next week there’s affection from Lancelot. Next Merlin plays a hand. After that, there’s Mordred causing problems. It builds throughout the summer until there’s a showdown between Arthur and Lancelot.”
“Who wins?”
“You’re Guinevere. You get to decide.” Then he flashed her a grin. “Well, actually we’ll see how the fan choices go. We’ll be blogging and getting fan commentary throughout the summer. In the end, the fans choose for you.”
She smiled up at him. “That sounds like a lot of fun.”
“It is. Exhausting but fun.” He pushed another page forward and prayed that she didn’t flinch. “This is the pay schedule. We cover all expenses and travel. I’m sorry, but my company is being cut to the bone to do this launch. I’m afraid I can’t offer more than this.” It was a lie. For her, he’d pay a lot more. He’d find the money somewhere, somehow. For her.
She nodded slowly, chewing on her lower lip as she looked at everything.
“And, um, I’m sorry, but I think the agency will take a cut of that. Marilyn will insist on that. Even if you don’t have a contract with her right now, I did meet you here.”
“Yeah,” she said softly. “I can’t see Marilyn giving up her piece of this.”
He sighed. After agency fees, the dollars weren’t great. Not bad for a summer actor. Good pay, actually. But he had no idea what she made at the hospital. He probably shouldn’t have reminded her about the agency fees. Let her think she was getting the whole amount so she had more incentive to say yes. But he didn’t want to lie to her, even by omission. Still, he was very aware that he might just have blown it.
“You understand that this is all take-home pay,” he said. “We’re covering all expenses.”
She nodded.
He waited. There was nothing more to say, but God he wanted to. He wanted to beg her to say yes. And as he sat there watching her, seeing the curve of her face, the fullness of her breasts and the feminine arch to her back, he started wanting other things, too.
She flipped through the pages and started reading the contract, her lips pursed as she concentrated. He looked at her lips and starting thinking of other things. What she might also do with those lips. Of what he could do to her to erase the furrows on her forehead. Of what they might do together that had nothing to do with contracts and everything to do with a whole lot of naked wonderfulness in bed.
That’s where his mind went and it was wrong, wrong, wrong! He was her employer—or he wanted to be. So he forced his thoughts down a more professional track.
It took him a while.
“So,” he finally asked. “Is this enough to make you quit your job at the hospital?”
She shook her head slowly. “No.”
His heart sank.
“But for a summer leave of absence? Yes.”
4
THE NEXT FEW WEEKS PASSED in a blur for Ali. The first worry was that she couldn’t get a leave of absence from her job. That turned out to be the easiest task on her list. Depressingly so. It’s not that her boss tossed her out the door. The man just sighed, asked her if she was sure—she was—and then approved it. It was a measure of how underappreciated she was there.
At least her coworkers were sad. Especially as she passed off one project after another into their hands. Ali consoled herself with the thought that in her absence, her boss would realize just how much she did around there. She couldn’t bear thinking about the opposite possibility: that no one would even notice she was gone. That was just too depressing for words.
Then there was passing off her plants, getting Elisa to check in on the apartment, and lastly to convince her family she wasn’t insane. She failed in that last task. Her mother rolled her eyes and asked who could possibly want Ali as a model. Not the most supportive attitude, but Ali was committed now. And even if she wasn’t, there was something that kept her headed toward her bizarre summer:
She’d started fantasizing. About her multi-cabillionaire boss. She’d always had a rich fantasy life. After all, she’d started out as a latchkey kid to a single mom. Plenty of alone time, plenty of time to lose herself in her imagination. That habit had continued well into adulthood where her imagination took on a decidedly mature aspect. And it was no different when she started dreaming about Ken.
It started out simply enough. As long as she was going to be working for the man, she decided to look him up on Google. There weren’t a lot of news items on him, but there was a ton about his games. The man apparently was more interested in getting press for his product than for himself. Her kind of guy.
There was nothing in the news stories about him being megarich, but that didn’t seem to matter to her libido. In her fantasies, he was über-rich, über-awesome and über into her. It all built off his smile. He smiled just like she did—a little nervous, a little happy, a little puppy dog. It was cute as hell. And the fact that he talked with her—his attention fully focused on her—well, that was an aphrodisiac all by itself.
Most people were kind enough to start by looking at her during the conversation, but all too soon, they were looking away. She didn’t know if she was just too boring to hold anyone’s attention or if people just didn’t have that long of an attention span. She’d learned to keep everything she said to short sound bites. She delivered her information, and then let whoever wander away. But that hadn’t happened with Ken. His attention had been like a laser light. At first it had been a little uncomfortable. But now, in retrospect, she really got off on it.
She wondered what it would be like to have him look at her like that during a date. Or better yet in bed. Yeah, her libido didn’t work by half measures. She wanted her guy to have that kind of intensity with her as he did everything to her.
She’d spent many a happy night picturing his eyes. But then she belatedly realized the man was going to be her boss. Oops. But even knowing that, she couldn’t stop herself. Didn’t matter what she did to distract herself, Johnny Depp morphed into Ken, Orlando Bloom…same thing. Two kisses into her fantasy, and he became Ken. Even Brendan Fraser, who had his own laser gaze, soon became Ken.
She would just have to remember that Ken could be her fantasy man at night, but during the day, he was strictly professional. Which worked great until they had their first face-to-face a couple of weeks prior to the promo tour.
It was a simple evening get-together at the offices of QG. Everyone involved in the tour was there—Ken, looking slightly harassed; his marketing VP, Paul; and five others. Ali arrived late, of course. She was still wrapping things up at work and had been caught in a meeting. So when she walked in the door she was feeling flushed and very not together. She hated being late.
That was bad enough, but then she got a look at her coworkers. They were all gorgeous. Every single one of them. Even Ken who—objectively speaking—was the most averagelooking of them all. Even he was oozing sexiness thanks to her nighttime fantasies, especially as his face lit up the moment she walked in the door.
“Ali! Great! I was getting worried something had happened to you.”
She swallowed, reminding herself that this was not fantasy playtime. He was her boss, and she should not be wondering what he looked like undressed. “Sorry. Got caught up in a meeting.”
“Bad one, huh?” he asked. Lord, there were six other people in the room, but he just talked right to her. Which, naturally, made her libido do a little happy dance, making the rest of her all soft and liquidy.
“N-not bad,” she stammered. “Just awkward. I’m unloading all my work off onto other people, and they don’t like it.”
“I get that,” laughed a honey-warm voice behind her.
Ali spun around and came face to chin with a blond god of a man. Holy moly, she’d known he was gorgeous the moment she walked into the room, but up close he was downright intimidating.
“Hi,” the god said in a steadily deepening voice. “I’m Blake, aka Lancelot, on a quest for gold that, thanks to your influence, becomes a noble mission for good.” Then he waggled his eyebrows. “I think you get to knight me!”
“Um…hi,” she said.
“Yeah,” said Ken, tugging her toward a seat. “Everybody, this is Ali Flores, our Guinevere. Blake, you want to grab those folders and pass them out? Thanks. Then we’ll go around the table and introduce ourselves. We’re going to be living in close quarters this summer, so I hope we can all be friends.”
Everyone took a seat. Because Blake was handing out folders, he was the last to find a chair and ended up being the farthest away. That, actually, was a good thing for Ali. He was too beautiful to be real, and she felt a little uncomfortable next to a man who was so much better-looking than she was. Sadly, everyone there was better-looking, or so it felt to her.
Blake was the only male actor. The others were girls of the bouncy, perky type. Blonde, brunette and redhead, they were clearly chosen because they were both beautiful and friendly. Except as the introductions went around, she realized that the blonde was Tina, Paul’s assistant and troupe costumer. The brunette was Ashley, aka Morgan le Fey. And the redhead was Samantha, who would be a tavern wench. Ali just nodded, pretending she knew what that meant.
She’d already met Paul, the marketing VP who would double as Mordred, betrayer of King Arthur. And naturally, Ken would play the king.
Obviously, the others were well used to this type of thing. They introduced themselves easily, talked about their acting experiences and the parts they would play, then gushed a little about how excited they were to be here. But when it came time for her to speak, Ali got flustered and tongue-tied. Unlike them, she had absolutely no experience whatsoever.
“Ali?”
“Um, right.” She felt her face heat to crimson. “I’m Ali Flores. I’m Guinevere. And…uh…I’m happy to be here.” It was a lie. At the moment, she wanted to be anywhere but here.
Then there was a long, awkward pause. Rationally, she figured it wasn’t really a long or awkward pause, but her imagination expanded it into something hideous. Good God, how was she ever going to learn how to do this in two weeks?
Fear started building inside her, but she kept it locked down tight. She’d already taken a leave of absence from her job, so she was totally committed. She’d just have to learn fast. So she paid extra attention all through the discussion of itinerary, accommodations, the game and costumes. Costumes were the most awkward because, apparently, the models/actors already had a lot of the things they’d need. The girls all had corsets, daggers and leather pants. Ashley had a neck chain that she’d been given as a joke. Blake even had his own sword and fur boots!
What did Ali have? Um…a blouse? Comfortable shoes?
“No problem,” Ken said with a warm smile. “That’s why Tina’s here. She’ll get together with you this weekend and get you all fitted.”
“Unless we can meet during the week?” asked Tina hopefully.
Ali shook her head. “My last day is next Wednesday.”
“That’s okay,” said Tina in a very perky voice. Was Ali going to have to learn perky? “How about we meet at Spiked Leather on Saturday morning? The owner knows me. He’ll give us a good deal.”
Ali could only smile and nod. Spiked leather? She didn’t remember Guinevere wearing anything that resembled spikes.
“That’s settled,” said Ken. Then he smiled at her. Lord, if it weren’t for that smile, she might have bolted right then. “We’ll need everyone to come next Thursday for the photo shoot. The address is in your folder.”
Photo shoot?
“And finally, we’re giving each one of you a copy of the game. Read the instructions. Memorize the product specs. And most of all, play it. A lot. Starting Thursday, you’re all on my dime. I expect you to spend all that extra time playing the game. When you’re not here, you should be trying to win Guinevere. Bring your friends over. Play with them, too. I expect every one of you to have gotten at least to Adept level by the time we leave.”
There were laughter and giggles all around. Apparently, for everyone else, finding playtime with the game wasn’t a problem. They all had gaming machines and friends who would fall over themselves to play. Samantha even giggled that she was so going to be queen with her brothers this weekend. They were dying to get their hands on this game.
The best Ali could do was paste on a smile. It had been a major accomplishment to hook up her DVR and connect up cable. She didn’t know an Xbox from a doorstop. Her brothers would know. They played enough video games, but they were more likely to play the game themselves and keep her out of it. No way did they have the patience to teach her. Besides, they both had jobs now and were busy with their own lives. Hell, what was she going to do? Then Ken touched her arm.
“Ali, do you think you could hang back for a bit? I’d like to talk with you if you’ve got the time.”
“Uh, sure.” She might have said more, but at that moment Paul came rushing up, camera in hand.
“I know you haven’t had time to have head shots taken, so I figured I’d just get this started here. If you could smile for me?”
Ali tried, but the sick feeling in her gut was getting worse. She obviously wasn’t doing it right because Paul dropped the camera and gave her an equally wan smile.
“Hmm, okay. Try this. Just lift your chin. Disdain. That’s good. Aloof? Yes.” He aimed the camera back to her face, and she belatedly realized it was shooting video, not taking still photos. Over to the side, the others were leaving, but Ali was still able to imagine their disdainful looks as she tried to show one emotion or another as Paul hopped around.
Then Ken stopped the man with a slight touch. “Do we really need to do those now?”
“Well, not normally,” Paul said with a slight grumble. “But somebody wants game Guinevere to look like Ms. Flores. The sooner we get some digitized images, the better.”
Ken shoved his hands in his pockets and looked awkward. “Oh. Right.” Then he glanced at Ali. “Sorry. This will only take a moment.”
“But—” she began. Too late. Paul had the camera rolling again.
“It’s best if I get all sorts of natural poses,” Paul said from behind the lens. “Hey, Ali, how do you feel about zombies?”
She blinked. “Um…bad?”
Paul chuckled. “Depends on the zombie, but okay. How about mass genocide? Republicans? Democrats? I’m looking for a strong emotion here.”
Ken stepped in. “Let’s go with the basics. Chocolate cheesecake.”
