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“No, you can’t make any permanent alterations. The island woman who sold it to Torrie said that might interfere with the skirt’s power.”
Daryl’s brows shot up. “I thought you didn’t believe in all that moonlight and magic mumbo jumbo?”
“I don’t. I mean, I don’t really believe it, but I’ve just been offered a three article contract with Metropolitan magazine, and it would be nice if something happened when I wear this skirt.”
“You sold your idea!” Daryl gave her a quick, hard hug. “Hooray for you!”
Keeping one eye on his watch, Ramón gave her a thumbs-up salute. “Way to go, Chels! Thirty seconds.”
“Lighten up, Ramón. We should be opening a bottle of champagne.”
“No, he’s right, Daryl. You both have to get back to work, and I’m on my way over to Metropolitan to sign the contract right now. I just thought before I did, I should try the skirt on—” Pausing, she glanced around the restaurant again. The couple the maître d’ had seated were totally engrossed in their conversation, and the only people even looking at the skirt were her two roommates. She breathed a small sigh of relief. “What do you think?”
“I think it’s a bust,” Ramón said. “If that skirt has any special power, wouldn’t Daryl and I be affected by it?”
“Heavens no,” Daryl said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I’m not attracted to women and you’re her cousin, Ramón. I’m sure that makes a difference.”
“The secret to any successful endeavor is planning. Perhaps you should have tried the skirt out before you sold the idea, Chels.”
The sympathetic look that Daryl shot her nearly made her smile. Ramón’s little planning lecture was one they’d both heard before. Frequently. And it certainly had merit. If she ever found the time to follow Ramón’s advice, she wouldn’t have to go through life improvising her way out of scrapes. Like the one she was almost in right now.
“Torrie said it didn’t have the same effect on all men.” She glanced down at the skirt again. “Right now, I’d be happy if it could elicit something other than raucous laughter. I look pathetic in this.”
“Not to worry,” Daryl said as he slipped his hands beneath her sweater. “We’ll just use a runway model trick. Hand me the stapler, Ramón.”
Ramón grabbed the stapler from its position near the computer and slapped it into Daryl’s hand. “Twenty seconds.”
“A little tuck here…now one on this side…and one in the back. The trick is to make sure the tucks are small so they’re not so noticeable. There.” Daryl passed the stapler back to Ramón. “Now the tape.”
Ramón slapped the tape dispenser into Daryl’s hand. “Ten seconds.”
“This part would be easier if you could slip the skirt off,” Daryl said to Chelsea.
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
With a shrug, Daryl dropped to his knees and reached up under her skirt.
“Enemy approaching at three o’clock,” Ramón said in a stage whisper.
Chelsea and Daryl turned in unison to see the maître d’ bearing down on them. He was a short man with a receding hairline and a mustache that curled up at the ends even when he was frowning. He reminded Chelsea of Hercule Poirot.
“What is going on here?” he asked in an accent that Chelsea pegged as wannabe French.
“Just a little fashion emergency, Pete,” Daryl said.
“The name is Pierre. How many times do I have to tell you that?”
“We’ll be done in a sec.” Ripping off a piece of tape, Daryl folded up a section of Chelsea’s skirt and secured it.
“Stop that right now. First you’re fondling her under her sweater, and now you have your hand up her skirt! What will the customers think?” Pierre asked, then raised his eyes to pin Chelsea with a glare. “Miss, I’ll have to ask you to…”
Even as his sentence trailed off, Chelsea glanced past him to the couple seated just beyond the entrance to the bar. The woman wasn’t staring at her. But the man was. On second thought, he was scowling. She felt Daryl’s hands reach under her skirt again.
“Daryl, I think you’d better—”
“Miss,” Pierre paused to clear his throat. “I’d like to apologize for the behavior of our bartender. If you would allow me the pleasure of seating you at one of our best tables, I can offer you a complimentary lunch.”
Chelsea stared at the maître d’. A moment ago, he’d been frowning. Now he was beaming a smile at her and offering her a free lunch.
“Turn,” Daryl said as he ripped off another strip of tape.
“Customers are looking at us. I don’t want you to get fired,” Chelsea said in a low tone. She didn’t want him to get hurt either. The scowling man was beginning to look dangerous.
“I just have one more section to fix. Turn.”
Even after she did as she was told, Chelsea felt the scowling man’s eyes boring into the back of her neck. Her skin had started to prickle. She could have sworn she felt that gaze move right down her body to where Daryl was fastening the last bit of tape to her hem.
“YOU HAVEN’T HEARD a word I’ve said.”
Zach tore his gaze from the woman at the bar and fastened it on his favorite aunt. He was sure that Miranda McDaniels would have been his favorite hands down, even if she hadn’t been his only aunt. From the time he was a child, she had personified the word flamboyant to him. She was also one of the kindest and most generous people he knew. “Yes, I have. You’re trying to convince me that—”
The rest of his reply was cut off by the arrival of a waiter to take their drink orders. Zach managed to suppress a smile when his aunt ordered a martini straight up with a cherry. The waiter never missed a beat as he scribbled it on his pad.
“And you, sir?”
“I’ll have bottled water.”
As soon as the waiter had moved away, Zach grinned at Miranda. “Let me guess. The cherry will go with your outfit.”
“Exactly,” Miranda said. “Not to mention my nails.”
Not many women could carry off the bright red wool suit and the wide-brimmed hat, but his aunt could. On impulse, he took her hand and raised it to his lips.
“You’re trying to distract me.”
“Am I succeeding?”
Miranda sighed. “Have you heard anything I’ve said?”
“You’re trying to make me believe that my father really intended for me to run Metropolitan magazine. But it’s not going to work. The bottom line is that he left it to you in his will because he was sure that I couldn’t be trusted with it.”
Miranda McDaniels sighed and shook her head. “You’re a lot like him, you know. Stubborn, opinionated—” She broke off her sentence to follow the direction of her nephew’s gaze. “Well, well. No wonder you aren’t paying two cents worth of attention to anything I’ve said. She’s very pretty.”
“The bartender would agree with you,” Zach said. “He hasn’t been able to keep his hands off her since she took her coat off. Of course, that skirt hides nothing. She might as well be naked.”
Miranda’s eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about? She’s fully clothed. In fact, that skirt is too long.”
“Can’t you see her legs?” Zach asked. They were much longer than he’d imagined and he’d been thinking about them quite a bit since she’d taken off her coat and stepped toward the window. With the light behind it, he could see right through the thin material of the skirt. She wasn’t very tall, but below her waist she was all legs. A little fantasy of just how those legs might feel wrapped around him had begun to play and replay itself in his mind. He couldn’t seem to shake it loose. He felt exactly the way he had several times as a teen, totally paralyzed by a hormone surge.
“I’ve heard of men undressing women with their eyes, but this is the first time I’ve actually witnessed it taking place,” Miranda said.
Zach tore his gaze away from the woman at the bar to find his aunt laughing at him. He felt the heat rise in his cheeks. That hadn’t happened since he was a teenager, either.
She leaned closer to him. “If you’d like I could make a quiet exit stage left and you could go introduce yourself to that young lady.”
Zach frowned but he couldn’t prevent his eyes from returning to the woman in the bar. “A lady would hardly be wearing a skirt like that. Nor would she allow a man to fondle her in a public place.”
Miranda’s eyes widened. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you speak about a woman in quite that judgmental way before. You sound like your brother.”
“Ouch!” The corners of his mouth curved as he pantomimed pulling an arrow out of his heart. “Way to hurt a guy.”
“Drastic measures were called for. One stuffy prude for a nephew is all I can handle.”
“Speaking of Jerry, how does our esteemed congressman feel about your decision to put me in charge at Metropolitan magazine?” Zach was sure it must have come as an unpleasant shock to his older brother that Miranda was going to do what his father had failed to do—hand the publishing part of his empire over to the black sheep of the family. “He must have given you a hard time at the board meeting.”
“On the contrary. He had no choice but to support my recommendation. If he’d made any strenuous objection, it might have looked as if he was stabbing his brother in the back.” Miranda’s lips curved. “You have to be very careful not to do that when your campaign for public office is based on restoring family values.”
“And they all agreed to let me break the news to the editorial staff?”
“Absolutely. It’s your magazine now. You call the shots.”
My magazine. He played the phrase over in his mind, liking the sound of it. Running Metropolitan had been a dream of his since he’d been a child. Unfortunately, it had not been part of his father’s dream for him. Jeremiah McDaniels, Sr. had wanted his sons to run for public office. He could train people to run his businesses, he said. He wanted his sons in positions of power. Zach’s brother had gone along with the plan. He hadn’t. “Jerry can’t be happy.”
Miranda shrugged and smiled. “He didn’t like it much when you made Harvard Law Review either. That was one distinction that eluded him. Your father was proud of you that day.”
“One day in thirty years.” Zach shook his head. “But he wasn’t proud enough of me to give me a job at Metropolitan after I graduated. And he definitely wasn’t proud of me when I turned down the position he’d lined up for me at that prestigious law firm.” He could still recall his father’s exact words, ones that he’d heard over and over as he’d been growing up. Can’t you do anything right? “Let’s face it, Aunt Miranda, there just isn’t enough evidence for you to win your case here. My father did not want me at Metropolitan.”
“All right.” She threw up her hands in surrender. “I give up. Serves me right for trying to argue with a Harvard law man. From now on, I’m just going to enjoy having lunch with my favorite nephew.”
Zach reached for her hands. “I don’t want you to think I’m not grateful, Aunt Miranda. I know that you really had to go to bat for me with the board. They can’t have liked all the job-hopping I’ve done since law school.”
“You don’t need to thank me. What might look like job-hopping to some looks entirely different to me. I’m sure that while you were consulting for those newspapers in San Francisco, Chicago and Atlanta, you were gaining experience and making contacts that will prove very valuable to Metropolitan.”
Zach’s eyes narrowed as he studied her. “What makes you think that?”
Miranda squeezed his fingers before releasing them. “I’ve known you since you were a little boy. Even then you were a planner—never making a move until you weighed all the options. I can’t wait to hear what you’ve planned for the magazine. It’s been going downhill since your father became ill, I’m afraid.”
“I’m going to make changes—in the focus, even in the intended audience.”
Miranda threw back her head and laughed. “Why am I not surprised?”
Zach leaned toward her. “It’s what I’ve always wanted to do, but Dad would never have allowed it. He always thought power lay in the hands of the government. But the real power is in ideas. I want Metropolitan to become a forum where the respected writers and thinkers of our time can discuss ideas.”
Miranda lifted her water glass in a toast. “Then go to it. And see if you can catch the eye of our waiter. We should be toasting this with the drinks we ordered.”
Zach shifted his gaze to the bar and stared. The bartender had his hand up the woman’s skirt again. “Look at that. Someone should put a stop to it.”
“TURN ONCE MORE,” Daryl said, fastening a final piece of tape in place. “There. That should do it.”
Taking a step back, Chelsea glanced from Daryl to Ramón. “What do you think?”
“I need to get back to my soufflé,” Ramón said.
“I think I’m falling in love,” Daryl said.
Chelsea stared at him. “Don’t be ridiculous. You can’t.”
“Not with you, sweetie. It’s this fabric. It’s quite unique. It looks black at first, but there’s a thread running through it that reflects the light.” He rubbed the material between his fingers.
Chelsea heard someone draw in a deep breath. Raising her eyes, she saw that Pierre, the maître d’, had raised his hand to his chest as if he’d just taken a blow. He was still staring at her with a bemused expression on his face. “Miss, I…”
Just then, she felt Daryl lift her skirt again. Glancing down, she saw that his head had disappeared beneath it.
“Daryl! What are you doing?”
“I have to know what material this is.” Daryl’s voice was muffled. “There has to be a tag somewhere with care instructions.”
“Enemy approaching at one o’clock,” Ramón announced.
Chelsea glanced up to see that Pierre was still staring at her. Beyond him, the scowling man was doing more than stare. He was striding across the bar toward them.
Quickly, she reached out and grabbed her coat from the stool. “Get up, Daryl. I don’t want to get you and Ramón in trouble.”
Daryl pulled his head out from beneath her skirt and made a quick assessment of the situation. “I think I’ll stay right here. It’s harder to hit a man when he’s already on his knees.”
Daryl had it right. The tall stranger certainly looked as if he wanted to hit someone. Quickly, she tried to shrug into her coat.
“Are you crazy?” Daryl said under his breath. “Don’t cover up that skirt.”
“What do you mean?” Chelsea asked.
“Take a look at Pierre. He’s clearly smitten. Let’s hope it works its spell on the white knight who is riding to your rescue.” Picking up the edge of the skirt, Daryl waved it in the approaching stranger’s direction.
“Stop that,” Chelsea hissed.
When Daryl didn’t drop her skirt, the man said, “The lady asked you to stop that.”
2
CHELSEA FELT the soft brush of the skirt against her leg as Daryl released it, but the rest of her attention was totally focused on the man who stood three feet away. Though she was aware of the rugged good looks—the dark hair that grew past his collar and the nearly faded scar on his chin—her eyes never once left his.
They were the dark blue color of sapphires and right now there was a look in them that spelled danger. Beneath the sleek lines of that designer suit, this was a man poised for a fight.
The other men sensed it, too. Daryl shifted on his knees, Ramón swung around the end of the bar and Pierre cleared his throat. “Sir…”
“Come here.”
Chelsea took a step forward, responding to the command in the stranger’s voice before the words even fully registered in her mind. Immediately, a nightmare began to unfold before her. Rising to his feet in one smooth movement, Daryl assumed an attack stance.
