Just About Sex (4 page)

Mary’s face went purple and she spewed something that sounded like a drunk speaking Russian. “DrSimoneIsAQuackdotcom.”

Simone cocked her head.
“Excuse me?”

Sighing, Mary leaned over her shoulder and typed something on Simone’s laptop. Simone watched, with dread, as a Web site she’d never seen before sprang up.
Dr. Simone Is A Quack
ran the heading. The words scrolled like Sanskrit through her brain. She couldn’t make the meaningless images register.

After a long minute she forced her gaze away from the heading and looked at the rest of the page. A picture of her—No! Not a picture! A caricature!—took up most of the screen. It was her, but not really. A way too big head on a tiny body. Her wispy hair, her big eyes, not her mouth. A big, gaping, screaming mouth. A hand raised, pointed index finger up, as if she thought she was so smart—a big, important know-itall spouting wisdom from a mountaintop.

And…and there. Underneath the heading. A bastardization of her brand, “Advice about sex, love, and everything in between.” It said…oh, this was too horrible to look! It said, “Nonsense about sex, love and everything in between.”

But there was more! Her chest heaving now, barely able to suck in a breath, she read the next little bit:

Welcome to my blog! I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of these faux experts spouting off on topics without any scientific basis whatsoever. And we listen to them! Why? What makes us think
they
know more than
we
do? Do we really need sex therapists to improve our sex lives? Are we
that
stupid? I don’t think so. But if we do need sexperts, shouldn’t we know a bit more about THEIR personal lives before we start taking their advice?

What do you think? Agree? Disagree?

—“Alexander”

Amazingly, the site had thirty-one comments, which she could not bring herself to read.

The other shoe had, officially, dropped.

Simone made a twisted, choked sound. The room swam out of focus and she pressed her hand to her heart to keep it from slipping into full cardiac arrest. This could not be happening. This was not real. She was not looking at a high-quality, professionally designed Web site created for the sole purpose of making her look like an idiot. But as much as she willed it away, the Web site did not disappear. Planting her elbows on the table, she lowered her head to her hands and moaned.

“Oh, Simone.” Mary’s hands fluttered down to pat Simone’s back and shoulders. “I’m so sorry. I thought for sure you’d seen it already. I was positive you’d have sued by now.”

Simone raised her head. A lawsuit? That was the last thing she’d ever do; she couldn’t think of a surer recipe for disaster than drawing more attention to this…this debacle.

The French doors opened again and several people—a Procter & Gamble exec, local TV anchorwoman and Cincinnati Bengal player among them—streamed in. Somehow Simone pulled herself together, stood and smiled. The show must go on. But when the new people saw her, they exchanged worried glances, murmured amongst themselves, and then smiled uncomfortably in her direction.

Nausea tightened the sides of her throat and she swallowed compulsively as a new fear grabbed her. They hadn’t seen the blog, had they? Were they laughing at her? Was the credibility she’d worked so hard for all her life ruined already?

“Don’t say anything about this,” she hissed out of the side of her mouth to Mary. Mary nodded and didn’t state the obvious—that it hardly mattered whether she said anything or not when the whole world could see it on the Internet.

Simone said pleasant hellos to everyone and pointed them to the buffet table even though she felt as if someone had just kicked out six or eight of her teeth. She’d almost convinced herself she could fake her way through the meeting when the unthinkable happened: the doors opened and Alex Greene walked in.

All her thoughts scattered.

Dressed in a beautiful khaki summer suit with yellow tie, his bright gaze swept the room as if he was looking for something—or someone. When their gazes locked, he froze.

So did she. She survived his discreet once-over even though she felt vulnerable and excruciatingly conscious of her bare arms, legs and stilettoed feet. When his gaze lingered on the vee in the bodice of her respectable sleeveless black linen shift, she gasped. Finally he looked her in the face again and the corners of those dark, mischievous eyes crinkled with unmistakable amusement.

Rage congealed in her breast and she forgot about the meeting and the chattering, jostling crowd helping themselves to lunch.
Him!
He had done this to her! This…this man, no, this…creature who walked upright amongst humans and disguised his black heart, horns and tail, was nothing but Satan incarnate, minus the sulfur smell.
He
wanted to ruin her life and he’d picked a darn effective way to do it.

Her chest heaved with frustrated anger. Narrowing her eyes, she glared impotently, thinking only that occasions like this were exactly why people shouldn’t be allowed to carry concealed weapons.

Greene didn’t seem to care. In fact, he radiated defiance. The raised chin, the square shoulders, the wide-legged stance, the suppressed laughter screamed he had not one iota of remorse in his whole body for what he’d done to her.

After a minute his gaze swept the room again until it landed on her open laptop at the head of the table. When he looked back at her, his raised eyebrow and smirk said, as clearly as the white Hollywood sign against the green hills of that city,
what are you going to do about it?

Chapter 3

L
ater,
Simone thought. Her slow and painful murder of Greene would have to wait until later. Choking with suppressed fury and determined to ignore him for now, Simone gave him her back, moved to the buffet table, snatched up a plate and reached for the egg salad spoon. To her annoyance, he immediately materialized at her elbow and, looming over her, picked up his own plate. “Hello, Simone,” he said in an awful, low bedroom voice. “How are you?”

“Oh, hello,” she said offhandedly, as if she hadn’t just spent the last ten seconds staring at him and had not, in fact, known he was there. “Mr. Gray, isn’t it?”

He smiled, the first spontaneous smile he’d ever given her. Deep grooves of dimples on both sides of his lush mouth framed even white teeth. Instantly his harsh looks turned boyish and intriguing.

Even in her frustrated misery, Simone could see the miraculous effect a smile had on this man’s face. He was
stunning.
Disconcerted by this unwelcome discovery, she turned away, determined not to stare.

“Greene, actually. Call me Alex. Here. Let me.” Reaching around, coming close enough for his sleeve to brush her bare arm and for her to catch a whiff of his fresh cologne—a little citrusy, a little woodsy—he grabbed several slices of wheat bread and put two on her plate before putting the rest on his.

Recoiling from the contact—my goodness, was there a bigger, more muscular man on the planet?—she forced a brittle smile. “Thanks, Mr. Greene, but I prefer rye,” she said, a complete lie. Cursing herself—why couldn’t she have said
white?
She hated rye!—she picked up a slice.

His smile deepened. “Sorry.” He helped himself to what looked like a cup each of tuna salad, chicken salad—heck, all the salads—as they moved down the table. “Are you okay? You looked a little…sick when I came in.”

Sudden comprehension paralyzed her hand midway to a chocolate chip cookie. Now she understood. Well, she’d understood before, of course, but now she
really
understood. Greene didn’t want just a pound of flesh, he wanted twenty. He wanted to rub her face in his revenge. He wanted to publicly humiliate her
and
make sure he had the pleasure of her reaction while he did it.

Well, he wouldn’t get it.

Somehow she swallowed the basketball-sized lump of anger wedged in her throat. Knitting her brows, she looked, wide-eyed, up into his face. “Sick? Why would you say that?”

He stared openly. His intense gaze crisscrossed her face and it took him an unaccountably long time to answer. A wave of warmth crept over her cheeks from her neck, but she didn’t look away.

“S-so you…don’t mind cochairing the auction with me?”

A shocked gasp slipped past her lips.
He
was her cochair? The man determined to ruin her career? For goodness’ sake, what kinds of horrendous crimes had she committed in her past lives?

Swallowing her frustrated anger she smiled brightly, a maneuver as painful as jamming shards of broken glass through her cheeks. “Of course not!”

His forehead wrinkled with obvious bemusement, but then he smiled too, apparently willing to play her game. “Good.”

To her immense relief, the doors swung open behind him and he finally looked away. Laurel Anderson, director of the clinic, came in with a man.

Simone put her plate down, rushed over and held out her hand. “Laurel! I was afraid they weren’t going to let you out of the office long enough to come to the meeting!”

Laughing, Laurel shook her hand. “They give me fifteen minutes for lunch every day, whether I need it or not.” She turned to Greene and angled her head in time for his peck on the cheek. “I see you’ve met my brother.”

Another surprise. Greene watched for Simone’s reaction, that same hateful half grin on his lips. She couldn’t believe Laurel, a perfectly lovely woman with whom she’d worked on several committees, shared bloodlines with the Prince of Darkness here. A manufactured smile—she was getting pretty good at them where Greene was concerned—rose to her lips.

“Your
brother,
” she said, her voice cooler than she’d intended. “Who’d have thought?”

Greene laughed and Laurel shot him a quizzical look before she turned to the man she’d brought with her. Nearly as tall as Greene, he wore a short-sleeved blue silk shirt and jeans. Quite handsome, clean-shaven with black hair, dark eyes and dark olive skin, he smiled at Simone, a warm, inviting, irresistible smile she couldn’t help but return.

“Do you know Juan Romero?” Laurel asked her. “He played—”

“Baseball, I know,” Simone said, although she couldn’t remember which team he’d played for before he retired. Yankees? Mets? Giants? “You’re from Puerto Rico. Nice to meet you.”

“And ju,” Juan said with a heavy Spanish accent. He held out his hand, his smile widening. “I wanted meet ju. Long time.”

As Simone took his hand, she saw Alex scowl, his narrowed gaze on her face.

Alex watched Simone from the other end of the conference table and seethed. Between them, on the long sides of the table, sat the other committee members. Romero, that muscle-bound walking vial of steroids, had embedded himself in the chair to Simone’s left, oozing charm the way a snail oozes slime. All the women in the room hung on his every word. Unbelievable.

Worse, Romero kept brushing Simone’s bare arm with his Popeye-sized forearm every chance he got. She just laughed and stared at him with those sparkling gray eyes in a way she’d surely never stare at Alex. Not that he wanted her to stare at him.

No wonder rumors of steroid use had dogged Romero for years. The guy was monstrous. Alex had seen smaller silverback gorillas at the Cincinnati Zoo. Romero always denied it by saying he ate healthy and worked hard in the weight room. Yeah, right. Like
that
was possible. Alex had half a mind to make an anonymous call to Major League Baseball’s corporate office and see if they couldn’t send someone over to give Romero a random urine test. Maybe revoke his World Series ring or something. How ironic. Simone was so worried about the size of
his
genitalia—someone should tell her before she got too attached to Romero that the side effects of steroid usage included shrunken testicles.

She’d ignored Alex the whole meeting, which was why he was so pissed off. Just ignored him. Like he—and his whole quadrant of the room—wasn’t even there. Well, she hadn’t
completely
ignored him. One time, when someone else was talking, he’d seen her turn to her laptop, scroll down the screen and read something. A purple flush had crept over her face and she’d started twisting the hair at her temple around her finger. Then she’d glared at him, shooting laser strikes from her eyes that reminded him of the weapons in the
Star Wars
movies.

So she’d seen the site. Good.

“So, to wrap it up,” Simone said, counting off on her fingers, “the subcommittees will give reports next week on sponsors, publicity, and items up for bid. Am I forgetting anything?” She looked down at her notes. “Oh, I almost forgot. I need someone to work with me on the site and the menu. Any volunteers?” Looking up, she smiled encouragingly.

“I’m happy to help,” Alex said, more from a desire to force her to acknowledge his existence than to assist.

“Anyone?” Ignoring him, Simone made eye contact with everyone else. “Anyone at all?”

“A-hem.” Alex raised his voice several notches. “I can help.”

Still Simone didn’t look at him. Some woman to his left looked uncomfortably back and forth between them. “Uh, Simone? I think Alex is volunteering.”

Alex gave Simone a little wave.

Cornered, Simone darted a fleeting murderous glance at him, then, her face now clean of all emotion, turned to the woman. “Oh, Alex will be too busy working on the budget.”

“No, really,” Alex said. “I want to work as closely as possible on this with you.” Simone’s face purpled again. “After all, it’s for the kids.”

Simone mustered a crooked, brittle smile. “You’re too much,” she told him.

Alex grinned, strangely satisfied, until Popeye spoke. “I help too.”

Simone beamed at the jerk. “Wonderful! Thank you, Juan. I appreciate your commitment.” They simpered at each other for a minute while Alex’s gut knotted with fury. Finally she waved a hand. “Well, that’s it for today! See you next week.”

Everyone stood and gathered their things to go. A couple of them, including a bemused Laurel, said goodbye to Alex. He grunted back, his attention riveted on Simone. Grinding his back teeth, he watched while Romero swallowed her in his hulking embrace and then kissed her smooth cheek. Simone laughed.