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“Honestly,” she continued. “What could I do? Like I said, he’s a bastard.” She smiled grimly. “But that wasn’t the worst part.”
God, there was more, Zora thought. “What happened?”
“Turns out the bagel girl’s a new graduate in need of a better job. So guess which one she got?”
Zora felt her eyes widen. “No,” she breathed, aghast. It couldn’t be. Frankie’s dad couldn’t possibly have done that to her.
Frankie smiled grimly and sadness haunted her dark-brown eyes.
“The VP position?” Zora asked, her voice climbing. “Has he lost his mind?”
Frankie snorted. “I imagine he planted it in the bagel girl this afternoon,” she said bitterly, then released a pent-up breath and looked up. “At any rate, I’m unemployed. I walked out today and I’m not going back.”
“Then that makes two of us,” Zora told her. “We can look for a job together.”
Carrie’s eyes bugged, April’s jaw dropped and Frankie blinked. “What?”
“Unlike you, however,” Zora continued levelly, “I did not quit, but was fired.”
“Fired?” they shrieked in unison. “For what?”
Zora felt her lips form a brittle smile. “Officially? Insubordination. Unofficially? He’s boinking Carla the copy editor.”
April gasped. “He’s not!”
“Oh, but he is,” Zora insisted, comforted by their outrage.
“That scum-sucking bastard,” Frankie hissed vehemently. “After all you’ve done. How could he—but he can’t—” Her face reddened with anger. “You helped make that magazine! He couldn’t have done it without you!”
A balm and the truth, but there was nothing for it. Trent had always been her “boss.” It didn’t matter that as creative director she’d helped triple circulation, that she’d practically single-handedly turned Guy Talk around. The magazine had been struggling on the verge of extinction when she’d come on board and she’d managed to pull it away from the brink and make it thrive. All that mattered was that he had the authority to fire her, and he had.
But he would pay.
Zora didn’t know how or when, but at some point in the not-too-distant future he would pay.
Carrie shook her head. “This is simply outrageous. I just—I just can’t believe it. What are you going to do?”
Zora shrugged, resigned but not defeated. “Look for another job. In the meantime I’ve got enough in savings to get by for a while. I hate to spend it, but c’est la vie. That’s what it’s there for.”
“Zora, I just don’t know what to say.” April shot her a sympathetic look. “It’s…It’s surreal. I thought Trent was the genuine article.”
A painful lump formed in Zora’s throat, but she managed to swallow it before her eyes watered. “So did I.”
“There’s no such thing,” Frankie countered cynically. “See, this is precisely why I’ve begun to think that all men are pigs. They can’t think past their dicks. They’re too busy sticking it to the bagel girl or the copy editor.” She harrumphed under her breath. “This would have never happened to you—or to me, for that matter—if a chick had been in charge.”
Zora readied her mouth to agree, but a strange sort of tingle started in her chest, the kind that preluded creative genius, a brilliant inspired idea.
She stilled and her gaze drifted to Frankie. “Say that again,” Zora said faintly.
In the process of lifting her bottle to her mouth, Frankie paused and frowned. “This would have never happened if a chick had been in charge.”
If a chick had been in charge…
Frankie was right, Zora thought dimly as her mind spun with creative adrenaline. Women were bonders, nurturers, typically faithful and dependable. God knew she depended on her little group for everything from laughter to advice to therapy of sorts. They all needed the same thing—support. If she’d had a female boss—if they all had female bosses—then, with the exception of April, who owned her own business, none of this would have happened. They’d all be better off.
“What?” Frankie asked suspiciously. “I know that look. That’s the I’ve-got-an-idea look.” Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “What are you thinking?”
Zora didn’t purposely ignore her, but couldn’t focus on anything beyond her current train of thought. If a chick had been in charge, she pondered consideringly, liking the way the phrase sounded, the empowering message it implied. A chick in charge…An in-charge chick…No, Zora thought as inspiration struck.
Chicks-in-charge.
“Zora?” Frankie asked again. “What gives?”
Zora smiled. “You just gave me an idea, one that I think is going to change our lives.”
She spent the next three hours outlining her thoughts, brainstorming with the other three, who quickly recognized the potential, and by the time the bartender heralded the last call of the night, the concept of Chicks-In-Charge—an organized group created by women, for women—which promoted personal and professional happiness garnered through self-awareness, self-confidence and independence, was born. They would join forces, help each other. There was strength in numbers. They could change things, Zora decided. Knew it. The board was formed, the president elected and each member held a key role. They were on the cusp of something great, something monumental. Anew beginning, a better future. Zora could feel it. They all could.
Frankie slid her a look, grinned. “This is so going to kick ass.”
Mentally exhausted but curiously energized, Zora smiled and hoisted her beer for a toast. The clink of bottles bumping finalized the deal. “To Chicks-In-Charge,” she murmured softly and they each echoed the sentiment.
1
One year later…
“I JUST WANT TO GET LAID,” Zora muttered angrily as she made her way back to her hotel room. She stabbed the elevator call button and waited impatiently for a car. Honestly, she thought. It wasn’t too much to ask. It had been more than a year. A year, she silently wailed, since she’d felt the hard, thrilling weight of a man between her thighs.
Disgusted, embarrassed, thwarted, irritated, but most of all unsatisfied, Zora shook her head at her own stupidity. What the hell had she been thinking? Why had she thought it would be a good idea to get involved with a guy who was into abstinence? Had she lost her mind? Clearly she had. Otherwise she wouldn’t be prowling the halls of one of New Orleans’s most esteemed hotels—at her first ever Chicks-In-Charge conference, no less, a personal coup—in the middle of the night bemoaning her miserable sex life and her failed attempt at seduction.
That part stung.
On the rare occasions Zora had truly applied herself at seduction, she’d always been successful. In truth, she’d never really had to apply herself. She’d smile an intimate smile, put a little extra swing in her hips, crook her finger and that would be it.
Victory.
But not tonight—and not with Dex.
Annoyingly, Dex not only had principles, but adhered to them. Initially, the idea of being in an “uncluttered” relationship, avoiding the emotional snarls that never ceased to come up between sexual partners, had appealed to her. She’d just come out a bad relationship—one of the worst, in fact—and had needed the perspective.
She’d thought it would be a good thing.
Ha!
She’d thought wrong.
As the days slid into weeks and the weeks crawled into months, sexual tension had eroded her patience and her ever-weakening resolve to abstain. This extended weekend—this conference, in particular—had seemed like the perfect time to celebrate, and she couldn’t think of a better way than a few hours of hot, frantic, sweaty sex. She’d wanted a few melting, toe-curling orgasms and room service.
To that end, she’d booked connecting rooms for her and Dex, spent an ungodly amount of money on a see-through scrap of fabric that any right-thinking male should want to tear off of her and had waxed, exfoliated and perfumed all pertinent parts of her body.
For nothing.
Zora growled low in her throat, stepped into the elevator and jabbed the button for her floor. Dex had firmly—oh-so-embarrassingly—resisted her efforts and, to avoid shrieking at him—Zora didn’t shriek, scream, wail or whine because doing so meant she’d lost control of her person, which was completely intolerable—she’d decided to take a walk to cool off. To shut down, de-stress and refocus.
Unfortunately, the lengthy walk had only given her more time to think and the more she’d thought about it, the madder she’d become. She hadn’t cooled off at all. To the contrary, she was more pissed now than she had been when she left the room. Because, while she hadn’t had any form of sexual relief during their relationship, Dex had. She’d taken care of him, and he’d never once—though he had made a few halfhearted attempts—reciprocated the gesture.
In other words, she’d made him come and he’d made her crazy.
This was supposed to have been a fantastic long weekend. Just as she’d suspected when the idea of Chicks-In-Charge had first come to her, the organization had been a smashing success, even more so than what she’d originally anticipated. The idea had struck a chord with women all across America—women who needed advice and guidance wanted to join and become members, and women who had something to offer wanted to participate and share their expertise. The group offered support to women from all walks of life, had banded them together with the sort of single-minded tenacity that had quickly thrust them into the national scene.
They’d started with a local chapter and a Web site—designed by April, of course—and an e-zine that Zora herself had headed up. The e-zine, aptly entitled CHiC, had been phenomenally successful and plans were already in the works for a glossy format. As the magazine’s resident sex-pert—the Carnal Contessa—Frankie would play a significant role in that endeavor.
As word of the Chicks-In-Charge movement spread, local chapters had swiftly moved across America, and had garnered so much attention that several board members had landed guest spots on late-night TV and early morning shows as well. Zora was currently entertaining several book-deal offers. She’d been interested, of course—she’d be insane not to be—but hadn’t moved on anything because, frankly, she didn’t know when she’d have the time to write. Between the magazine and her Chicks-In-Charge duties, she didn’t have so much as a spare minute, much less the time required to undertake writing a book.
But something had happened recently that had made her come to the conclusion that she’d simply have to make the time. Some medieval-thinking yahoo with a too-handsome face and a witty turn of phrase—a fellow New Orleans resident, of all things—had recently written the most unflattering, provoking, ill-informed tome on the “bizarre workings of the female mind.” The book, entitled What Women Really Want, Reading Between the Sighs, had to be one of the most moronic pieces of so-called literature Zora had ever read.
To add insult to injury, ignorant men, believing they were now going to know how to properly “manage” their women, had abandoned their armchairs, lawn mowers, sporting events and bars and had speedily raced to the bookstores to purchase the damned thing, which had promptly catapulted it onto the bestseller list.
It was precisely this sort of prejudice—this testosterone mentality—that Chicks-In-Charge was fighting, and to have it originate here, in her own backyard, felt like a slap in the face. Zora couldn’t recall how many times she’d had Tate Hatcher’s little pearls of shit—not wisdom because there was nothing wise about his idiotic take on the fairer sex—quoted to her, or how many times she’d had to respond to one of his ignorant ideas. In light of Chicks-In-Charge’s success and Tate’s equally successful book, the media had paired them up as unwitting adversaries. It was provoking, to say the least.
Zora had read the damned book, several times in fact, because one needed to know one’s enemy, and she could see where some people might find it entertaining. The author—dubbed “the last true bachelor”—was unquestionably witty, wrote with a wry sort of humor that under ordinary circumstances would appeal to her. A lot, if truth be told. Unfortunately, being insulted didn’t appeal to her, which negated any positive thought she could form about the book, or even the author for that matter.
The first time she’d read it, she’d kept flipping the book over and staring at his picture on the back of the dust jacket. Marveling at his stupidity, she’d told herself. She’d marveled a lot since then—couldn’t seem to help herself. Despite the fact that she vehemently disagreed with every idiotic point made in his book, there was something in that picture—about him, specifically—that drew her.
Naturally, she’d rather be roasted alive than admit it.
But she saw humor and intelligence, a little too much confidence in his heavy-lidded aged-whiskey eyes, and there was something equally obstinate and sheepish about the angle of his jaw, the somewhat full curve of his sexy mouth. Zora paused, remembering, then jerked out of her stupor as the elevator doors slid open once more.
Good grief, she mentally chided. She had enough man trouble without romanticizing the literal author of recent misery. To retaliate, she’d personally written an article for Chicks-In-Charge to debunk each and every point of his ignorant, outdated opinions and had even used his book to showcase the continued stupidity of his own sex. In fact, she planned to deliver that very workshop at this conference.
A pity that such idiocy was packaged in such a handsome body though, Zora thought, unable to completely banish his gorgeous image from her mind. A true injustice.
Which reminded her of another injustice—her unsatisfied sex life. She wouldn’t be able to rectify that this weekend as she’d hoped, but she knew how to start.
By getting rid of Dex.
She’d essentially told him it was time to fish or cut bait. He hadn’t fished, so she’d cut bait. Though she was heartily annoyed, she couldn’t very well blame him. He’d maintained from the beginning of this ill-gotten relationship that he had no intention of spoiling it with sex. That he wanted a “true” relationship devoid of the drama of copulation. She was the one who’d changed her mind, not him, so if anyone was at fault, technically it was her.
Frankie, who’d thought Zora had lost her mind when she’d shared the parameters of her newest relationship, had correctly predicted this end. She should have listened to her, Zora thought now. Dex had seemed manageable—the only kind of man Zora allowed herself to become involved with. She had to be in control, had to have the dominant role in every aspect of the relationship, most especially the sexual aspect. A holdover mentality developed as the result of a relatively harmless, but nonetheless terrifying incident that had happened in her early teens.
One of the neighborhood boys—one she’d had the audacity to humiliate by being a better baseball player—had cornered her one afternoon behind the dugout and pinned her to the ground. Though being raped hadn’t been a real danger, the sexual menace underlying the act coupled with the horrifying fear of not being able to get him off her had marked her in a way that couldn’t be seen. For that one blinding moment, she’d been powerless and, after her brothers had dragged the brute off and beat the living hell out of him, she’d vowed she’d never feel that way again. Would never need another person to fight her battles. She’d been grateful, of course, but a secret part of her had envied them that strength, and she’d wanted it for herself. She thought she’d arrived, inasmuch as she was able.
Zora fished her key card from her robe pocket, planted it in the lock and let herself into her room. A glance at the bedside clock told her she’d been gone for more than two hours. A long time to stew, she decided, even by her standards. The idea of delaying the conversation until tomorrow held considerable appeal, but smacked of cowardice, so before she could think better of it, Zora gave the connecting door a hard push—it had a tendency to stick, she’d discovered earlier—and entered Dex’s room.
The light from the bedside lamp illuminated the room—the pile of discarded clothes, specifically—and the hum of the shower told her where she’d find him. Zora barely resisted the urge to snort. The bastard had already had a shower this evening, she knew. His hair had still been a little damp when she’d made her move. That he was in there again begged one of two assumptions. He’d either had to wash her unwanted advances from his pure unsullied body…or he was in there whacking off.
Her money was on the latter.
Her irritation renewed, Zora pulled in a deep breath and let it go as she strolled into the bathroom. “Dex, it’s Zora. I hate to interrupt you,” she said, purposely loading her voice with innuendo, “but I have something to say.”
His shadow behind the curtain momentarily stilled, then resumed movement. Ah, the silent treatment. That figured, she thought, the infantile jerk. Oh, well. The sooner she got this over with the better. She’d tell him what she thought, then go take a shower herself. Had to do something to relieve this infernal tension. Had he changed shower gels? Zora wondered absently, as a wholly masculine scent, one she didn’t readily associate with him, reached her nostrils.
Zora dropped the commode lid, sat down and sighed heavily. “Look, Dex. Things, uh…Things aren’t working out. Being abstinent is obviously a choice and a viable one for you, at that. But, as we discovered tonight, it’s not for me. I thought it was, but it’s not. I like sex. A lot,” Zora added meaningfully as her hollow womb echoed the sentiment, “and, frankly, I miss it.”
Zora paused, glared at the shower curtain—his unnaturally still form behind it, specifically—waiting for him to reply. He made a muffled noise, one that sounded ominously like a smothered laugh, but if there were any thoughts clanging around that empty head of his, he was evidently disinclined to share them with her. Still pouting, Zora surmised and expelled a quiet sigh of exasperation.
“I realize things might not have been so difficult for you,” she said, her voice somewhat tight, “because you at least have had a few orgasms. I, on the other hand, have not. I don’t mean to be cruel,” she hastened to add, which wasn’t altogether true. She hated a selfish lover and he hadn’t even been that—he’d been a selfish non-lover. “I’m just being honest with you. Like you were honest with me tonight,” she said pointedly. “You resented being seduced—or my attempt, rather,” she added with a bitter snort. “And I resent being perpetually…unsatisfied. So obviously this isn’t going to work. I’m horny. I want to get laid. And that puts us at cross-purposes because you don’t.”
She glared at the curtain again, waiting for some sort of response. Honestly, Zora thought, growing increasingly annoyed with his continued silence. Hell, she hadn’t expected him to break down and squall, but a tsk of regret, a token apology, would be nice. Hell, anything but this sulky silence.
She let go a perturbed breath, rolled her eyes. “Don’t you have anything to say?”
She watched him reach forward and cut off the tap. “Actually, yes.”
Zora frowned and the fine hairs on her nape prickled. The shower gel, that voice…Something didn’t—
The shower curtain sang across the rod as it was pulled back to reveal six and a half feet of hard, muscled, gloriously proportioned male anatomy. “Hand me a towel.”
An anatomy that didn’t belong to Dex.
Her gaze traveled from a pair of large, masculine feet up long muscular legs, lingered on the impressive, semi-aroused package located between those legs, then moved upward over six-pack abs and a chest that would make any hetero woman or non-hetero man pant and salivate. Rivulets of water streamed over every perfect part, and though it was completely insane, she was hit with the absurd notion to chase each and every one with her tongue. She wanted to lick him all over.
Until she saw his face—then she inhaled sharply and vainly wished for a hole she could fall into.
For the first time in her life Zora found herself in a situation where she didn’t have any idea how to proceed. She was hit with the simultaneous urge to sob, wail, laugh, scream and, most disturbingly, run. All of which were intolerable, but for the life of her she couldn’t make her brain assimilate any sort of a plan. All she could do was stare, mentally agape, at the naked figure before her. Naked figure, her mind repeated, and with a startled flash of insight, his request registered and she blindly handed him a towel. To her chagrin, he didn’t immediately fasten it around his hips as any decent man would do, but took his time toweling off instead.
Five o’clock shadow shaded an angular jaw and a faint smile curled one of the sexiest mouths she’d ever seen—but it was the eyes that got her. A pair of disturbingly familiar aged-whiskey eyes—eyes she’d recently studied too intently on the back of a book she wouldn’t name—stared back at her. Sweet mother of God, Zora thought faintly…it was Tate Hatcher.
THE LAST THING TATE HATCHER expected when he stepped into the hotel shower this evening was to be walked in on by a woman, then have that woman criticize him for not seeing to her “needs.”
Quite frankly, he’d been criticized for many things over the years—his cynicism, his inability to commit and various other offenses—but that had never been a problem.
He’d never been accused of being a lousy lover, and from the sounds of things, this woman had not only gotten involved with a man who was into abstinence—what kind of a man didn’t want to have sex? Tate wondered incredulously—but had also managed to hook up with one who didn’t…service her at all.
It was utterly mind-boggling.
The moment his startled brain recognized that she’d obviously mistaken him for someone else, Tate knew he should have spoken up and put a halt to her breakup speech, but blatant curiosity had kept him from exercising the courtesy. What sort of woman got involved with a guy who didn’t want to have sex? Tate had wondered, morbidly intrigued.
In his research and experience, most women controlled men by wielding sexual power over a guy. If she hadn’t used the Vagina Vice, just what sort of method had she attempted to employ to keep him in line? It was something to think about, Tate decided—definitely potential book fodder, which would please his agent—but not right now. He calmly toweled the back of his head. He had other things to attend to right now.
Her voice, when she spoke, was faint and thready. “You’re not—”
“Dex,” Tate finished helpfully. He finished drying his face. “I know.” He’d planned to elaborate, but was met with the second major shock of the night. He blinked, certain his eyes had deceived him.
Long, wavy red hair. Light green eyes. Little Dipper freckle pattern over her slim nose. Gorgeous body. And if she opened her mouth, a forked tongue.
Yep, Tate concluded. It was definitely her.
His mystery woman—the failed seductress—was none other than Zora Anderson.
