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Greg swallowed as he took in the exposed tops of her breasts, thrust up high by an outfit that had to be too small for this generously endowed creature. The only place she seemed to have any breathing room was around her waist, a tiny curve that nipped in substantially from her rounded hips.
Who knew how long his eyes lingered over those hips. Why was it the furry black getup looked sexier than any showy combination of lace and satin?
Maybe it was the tail that wound around one hip and settled along her thigh, all the way down to her…tennis shoes. Hell, he saw Nike stock in his future. The long rope of black fur seemed to stroke and caress her leg with every breath the woman took.
Meow.
Perhaps he’d taken too long admiring her…outfit. Before he could introduce himself, the cat woman stuck out her hand.
“Hi.” She squeezed his fingers in a cool, professional grip. “I’m Jackie, the entertainment. This is your party?”
Her voice slithered over him, reminding him of smoky blues cafés and sultry jazz singers.
He nodded. He’d hired her after all. “I’m Greg.” Technically, it was Mike’s party. But her bill no doubt had Greg’s name on it. Besides, he wasn’t quite ready to turn her over to Mike’s friends just yet.
There was something compelling about Jackie the cat woman-stripper. Some classy, complex edge that her whiskers and kitty ears couldn’t diminish.
She frowned for a moment. “I see. Zing-O-Gram has been a bit overloaded this week. Sorry about the confusion.”
“Not a problem,” Greg assured her, honestly. Her late arrival hadn’t thrown off his schedule too much. “You’re here now and that’s all that matters. Can I get you a drink or anything else before you get started?”
Why did he find himself wanting to delay her show? Sure he was wildly curious about the body she was hiding underneath that kitten costume. But the notion of her being so completely revealed in a bar with all of Mike’s horny friends looking on suddenly disturbed him.
He’d heard of college students earning money for their tuition this way. Is that what had convinced Jackie to don the cat suit?
Jackie licked her lips, a gesture that seemed to suit her feline garb.
Greg tracked the progress of that small, pink tongue and found his own mouth had gone dry as dust.
“I wouldn’t mind a glass of water.” She glanced longingly at the bar.
Twenty guys shouted to the bartender for water.
Jackie shuffled on her tennis shoes as if nervous. Her tail seemed to twitch in response, drawing his attention unerringly to her long legs.
If Greg didn’t know better, he’d swear he was drunk. Since when did a stripper in a two-bit cat costume turn him on to this extreme? He was twisted in knots before she’d shed so much as a glove.
He rolled his shoulders in an attempt to work out one of those knots. Maybe he’d just been working too hard lately. He hadn’t been out on a date since his disastrous break up with the lady meteorologist…three months ago?
Obviously he was sex-starved. He just hadn’t realized it until Jackie had strutted her way into his life.
But he had no intention of acting on an impulsive attraction to a seductive pussycat.
Poor choice of images.
He tried in vain to staunch the blatantly sexual thoughts bombarding his senses. He needed to give Jackie her water and then allow her free rein to do her show.
Surely once she launched into her practiced routine of seduction, Greg would lose interest. Then he could get his mind off her…tail, and back on business.
JACKIE TUCKED HER TAIL closer to her body and gulped down her water gratefully.
The cat costume had never felt blatantly erotic until Greg De Costa had looked at her in it.
The man had her overheating, inside and out, and the soaring temperature didn’t have anything to do with being embarrassed at her birthday party snafu.
No. Jackie didn’t care that a bunch of overgrown boys had hired her to sing at their friend’s birthday party. She was used to being the center of attention and their ogling stares didn’t ruffle her fur in the least.
But Greg De Costa was another story.
One look at the man had her hyperventilating—not a good thing in a costume held together with duct tape.
He was handsome in a Tom Cruise sort of way—he had the look of a cocky Boston business exec, all charm and smooth talk and control. He wore a crisp white shirt tucked into navy-blue trousers with burgundy-striped suspenders. A matching wine-colored tie hung around his neck, but he’d loosened the knot at his throat and unbuttoned the collar.
Jackie had to admire the way his suntanned skin and dark-brown hair contrasted with that pristine white shirt. He probably summered on Martha’s Vineyard and wintered at Vale. She knew the type well. Heck, she’d grown up surrounded by overprivileged men and couldn’t find all that much to recommend them.
But those guys hadn’t possessed Greg De Costa’s penetrating brown eyes.
The charismatic birthday boy didn’t look at her with the standard I-know-what-you-look-like-underneath-that-cat-costume stare. His frank gaze was at once more respectful and more intimate. He peered at her like he knew she’d rather be at home writing stanzas.
And like he’d rather be there with her.
The notion unsettled her far more than any obvious, meaningless ogling from the other twenty-some guys in Flanagan’s.
She needed to shake Greg’s mesmerizing stare, sing her song, and flee the bar before she did something stupid like wrap herself around him and start purring.
“I’m ready,” she announced, taking the situation in hand. She’d already spent too long soaking up the heated vibes of attraction zipping between her and Greg. “Shall I set up over here?” She walked to a small dance floor in the corner of Flanagan’s back room.
She could perform most anywhere, but she’d learned to take charge of her environment in this business. She liked a wall behind her, her audience in front of her. Besides, she felt more in control when she named her parameters.
The throng of men attending the party moved as one into the back room, dutifully situating themselves right where she wanted them.
She could do this. They really were as well behaved as the six-year-olds she usually performed for, even if they had greeted her with wolf whistles. At least they hadn’t tried pulling her tail.
Greg was the last man to fall in line. He prowled the perimeter of the crowd, his eyes never leaving her.
“Do you need us to set up some music?” he called over the heads of his friends as they seated themselves at cocktail tables all around her.
“I’m the music,” she announced, allowing her artistic pride to get the best of her for a moment.
She was no lip-synching performer, after all. Jackie wasn’t here to dance around in a cat costume. She was here to sing.
No room full of overgrown boys was going to make her forget it. Though heaven knew, Greg De Costa was doing a damnably good job of trying.
She closed her eyes for a moment, willing away the sensual magnetism of Greg’s eyes. She took a deep breath and quickly regretted it as the duct tape along her seam shifted under the pressure of expanding lungs.
Panic welled up in her at the thought of flashing a room full of men. She hadn’t even been able to stuff a bra underneath her too-tight costume. If the duct tape gave, her audience would be in for an eyeful.
Jackie hummed out a middle “C,” allowing the pure musical note to center her.
Three minutes and she’d be out of here. She could make it another three minutes without bursting out of her costume.
The musical note grew, reverberating through her. She relaxed and breathed, nearly forgetting about the duct tape, but not quite forgetting about Greg De Costa.
“Happy birthday to you…” Jackie launched into her song, a slightly revamped version of the birthday classic.
Was it her imagination, or did the room still once her voice hit the airwaves? Her audience grew less leering, more attentive as she belted out her song in perfect pitch.
Nothing like a good performance to soothe her nerves.
She vocalized her way into the last refrain, more confident with every note that she was going to make it out of Flanagan’s back room with kitty costume and her dignity intact.
Then her eyes collided with Greg’s.
His warm-coffee gaze wasn’t offering up heated glances anymore. Unless you could call his intense, enraptured stare heated.
He liked her voice.
She knew it as surely as if he’d spoken the words aloud. Her vocal chords were her one and only vanity, the lone genetic gift from her prodigy parents.
Men—being such visual creatures—rarely recognized her single outstanding quality. But Greg De Costa knew it, heard it, admired it.
Her heart started pounding in a way that threatened her furry shrink-wrap. Blood pulsed through her, flushing every last inch of her body with liquid heat.
Oh no.
Desire swamped her along with the closing notes of her birthday song.
“Happy birthday, dear Gregory…” Dear God, had she just called him Gregory again? She’d meant to sing it as Greg.
Nervous embarrassment joined the swirl of musical notes and sensual hunger building in her veins.
“Happy birthday to…” Her chest hammered against fuzzy black fur as her song reached its final crescendo. The duct tape strained and stretched to hold the material of her costume together.
If she had any sense she would have risked singing off-key to save her outfit.
Damn her musical pride.
“…you!” Arms flung wide, she belted out the last note like a certified opera diva.
And froze in horror as her kitty costume slid all the way to her knees.
2
GREG HAD BLOWN OUT LOTS of candles in his day, but he’d never had a birthday wish come true so fast as tonight.
Sure, he’d wanted to see Jackie naked, but he’d been so hypnotized by her phenomenal voice, it took him a minute to realize she’d ditched her whole outfit in a bolder move than he’d ever seen any stripper attempt. No one else sang their way out of their outfit, of that much he was certain.
She’d stunned the crowd so much the guys around him forgot to whistle for one long moment. Hell, Greg forgot there was even anyone else in the room as he took in her completely bared breasts. Taut pink nipples tipped slightly upward, free from any bra or those little tasseled cups some strippers wore.
The only garment she sported underneath the fallen cat clothes were flame-red panties so small they could have served double duty as a postage stamp.
Despite the panties, she couldn’t have looked any less like a stripper. She had curves in all the right places, but they probably weren’t as generous as most women in her profession. Every inch of her creamy skin was perfect, without a beauty mark or false eyelash anywhere to detract from it.
But most unstripper-like of all—she appeared absolutely mortified to be on display in front of thirty salivating men.
One lone wolf whistle pierced through the crowd and shattered the silence along with Greg’s greedy catalog of her every feature.
The sound seemed to jar the mostly naked cat woman as much as it startled Greg. Jackie folded her arms over herself to shield her body from her audience, giving Greg all the proof he needed that she didn’t want to go through with her striptease.
Screw the audience approval ratings.
Ignoring the rapidly multiplying catcalls and whistles, Greg yanked a fresh tablecloth off of a nearby busboy’s cart, disrupting at least ten glasses of champagne. With the flick of his wrist, he unfurled the white linen and cloaked Jackie’s body in a crisp blanket.
A chorus of boos echoed through the crowd of Mike’s half-baked friends.
Jackie turned grateful eyes toward Greg, cinching the makeshift cape around herself with slightly fumbling hands.
Some moron shouted from the back of the private room. “Take it off!”
An even bolder moron pushed his way to the front of the group, crunching broken glass under his feet from the disrupted bus boy’s cart. “What the hell kind of striptease was that?”
“Show’s over.” Greg kept his body between Jackie and the inebriated masses, wishing like hell he had the option of just cutting to a commercial.
He reached for Jackie, figuring the best thing to do would be to whisk her out the back entrance.
“That was not a striptease,” Jackie announced, standing on her toes to look over Greg’s shoulder at her accuser. She was obviously recovering from her bout of stage fright. “ That was an accident.”
The vehemence in her voice seemed to catch the guy off guard as much as Greg.
“I’ll say it was an accident.” The guy turned his bleary-eyed attention toward Greg, lucky for his sorry butt. “You’re trying to tell me that’s all we get from the stripper?”
“I am not a stripper.” Tennis shoes squeaked in a flurry of restless movement as Jackie fairly bristled right out of her tablecloth.
An unwelcome sense of relief washed over Greg. Why should he care whether she was or wasn’t a stripper?
“Who are you?” Greg prompted, wondering what woman in her right mind would walk into a bachelor party clad as a cat.
She drew her compact self up to her full height. Her kitty ears just reached his nose but she packed a powerful glare with intense green eyes.
“I am the Zing-O-Gram.” She enunciated every word with slow precision.
Greg bit his tongue to staunch the automatic laughter rising in his throat. He doubted anyone could make a Zing-O-Gram sound like a force to be reckoned with, but Jackie was doing a damn good job.
Even the drunken guy looked cowed before he stalked off toward the pool table, muttering under his breath until they couldn’t hear him anymore.
The rest of the crowd had failed to disperse however, and Greg didn’t like the rumblings of discontent. He needed to get Jackie out of here, fast.
“Are you okay?”
