The Love Laws (3 page)

“Thirty-six.”
Jamie pretended not to notice Cathy’s gulp of surprise.

“Thirty-six?
In two years? Are you jerking my tail?” Clay’s green eyes wide with shock.

Jamie
just shrugged and looked down at the floor in embarrassment.

“Okay,
you actually kept track so don’t pretend you didn’t enjoy playing the game with
them. You and I both know it’s what you used to get off on. Torturing those
poor hetero bastards.”

“Well,
I’m not that woman anymore,” Jamie said in a hard, determined tone. She
gestured around at her store. “I'm a respectable business woman now and I’m
really not interested in whipping anyone into a frenzy of any kind, unless it’s
a shopping frenzy.”

“You
don’t miss it at all?” Clay asked slyly. “You don’t miss the way they used to
look at you like you were the last M&M on Earth? How they used to call you
and pursue you like you were Vancouver’s answer to Marilyn Monroe or
something?”

Jamie
couldn’t help herself, she grinned at Clay’s blatantly exaggerated description.
“Hardly. Besides those guys didn’t even know me. All that adoration wasn’t
real. It was about my being a dancer—how I used to look.” She looked down at
her navy pinstriped suit and skyscraper high heels—conservative dress compared
to her old exhibitionist style. “No one adored me. They just liked the idea of
me. I was just a living, breathing fantasy to them. Not a real person.”

Clay
rolled his eyes in exasperation and held up a hand to ward off anymore of her
words. “Oh poor you. Spare me the Oprah-speak, please. I know you, James, and you
reveled in the attention you used to get from men. Now, what I can’t figure out
is why you don’t want to use that God-given talent to save your store. I
thought you were desperate.”

She
came extremely close to stamping her foot in exasperation but restrained
herself. “I am,” she wailed. “But telling women how to manipulate men doesn’t
seem very ethical. Do I really want to save my store that way?”

“Dumpling,
what choice do you have?” Clay asked softly. He was completely serious for a
change. “This might actually work and no one will actually get hurt. You’ll
mostly be spouting good sense. You’ll be like the Dr. Oz of romance.”

“I
don’t know…” Jamie said, looking around at Hidden Treasures and admiring the
gleam of highly polished wood and crystal chandeliers. She loved this
place—loved what she’d accomplished in making it a reality, and then managing
to keep it alive. For a while anyway. She couldn’t give up on it, could she?
Not if there was even a chance she could save it?

Cathy’s
timid voice interrupted her thoughts. “I know this sounds kind of crazy, but
maybe you could actually help some women, Jamie. There are lots of single girls
out there who might actually benefit from your advice.”

Jamie
sighed. She didn’t actually believe she had the secret to attracting men, but
would it really harm anyone to pretend she did? Could she turn her back on this
opportunity if there was even the slightest chance she might be able to save
her dream? She didn’t think she could live with that.

“Okay,”
she said, quietly. “I’ll give it a try.”

Moments
later Clay and Cathy were both hugging her. “This is going to be so great,”
Clay said, giving Jamie’s ribs an extra tight squeeze. “Hey, maybe you’ll
actually meet your own true love. Or at least get some hot and slippery loving
from a local stud-muffin. You’ve been off the market so long I was starting to
get worried about you growing cobwebs on your lady parts.”

Jamie
laughed and gently disentangled herself. “No danger of that, but this is purely
an experiment—a publicity stunt. The True Love and Happily Ever After thing is
not an option and never will be.” As she said this, the image of a certain
muscular blond wanna-be surfer came to mind, but she ignored it.

As
far as she was concerned true love was for dreamers like her sister. But romance,
well, that was something Jamie could really get into. She felt a burst of
adrenaline at the idea of getting out there and pursuing this new
challenge—something she had control over and had been successful with in the
past was exactly what her poor deprived ego needed. As an added bonus, it would
also give her something to focus on other than her own uncertain future.

Now
if she could just come up with some fun but practical advice for the
romantically challenged she’d be on her way to becoming a Love Guru. Hopefully
the attention from her new venture would prevent Hidden Treasures from becoming
buried under a mountain of debt. She only hoped there were desperate singles
out there who were interested in what she had to say. Otherwise, she'd lose her
store and what little dignity she'd gained since retiring her pasties and G-strings.
And that was something she just wasn’t ready to lose.

Chapter Two

Kevin
Hall was trapped. Usually waking up in a strange woman’s bed was exactly how he
liked to start his day, but this time he felt like he’d fallen into a pit of
quicksand. He would gladly give up beer, hockey, and his entire comic book
collection to be anywhere else on the planet right then.

The
woman lying on his arm wasn’t unattractive, crazy or even married, but she
might as well have been all three. Gently, he tried to ease his arm out from
under her sleeping form, but it was no use. She wasn’t budging, and the only
thing that would make this situation worse would be if she woke up—then he’d really
have to face the reality of his impaired judgment.

He
settled back on the pillows for a moment and his poor head spun with vague
memories from the night before. He had no idea how he’d ended up here. He
didn’t even like this woman—in fact; he’d known her since high school and had
avoided her like the Ebola virus whenever possible. How the hell had he ended
up in her bed?

She’d
bought him a drink—that’s how it had started. He’d wanted to refuse, but good
manners had won out and he’d accepted the shooter of Tequila she’d placed
before him. It would have been churlish to refuse her. At least that’s what
he’d told himself at the time. Several drinks later he’d found himself dancing
with her. Well, he’d mostly just stood there watching her dance—the sway of her
hips, directness of her gaze, and soft touches on his chest and arms had told
him she wanted him. He should have walked away. He knew this woman was trouble,
but instead he’d just stared blankly at the show she put on.

When
she’d wrapped her arms around him and told him in no uncertain terms exactly
what she wanted from him in crude, guttural language, he’d been unable to
resist. Everything in him had told him that being with this woman was wrong,
but he’d gone to her room anyway. Had made love to her most of the night,
despite the vague whispers of his conscience.

Now,
finally sober, he was disgusted with himself. He’d woken up with strange women
before, but this was definitely a low point. Never in his life had he felt like
such a complete douchebag—waking up next to his best friend’s vindictive
ex-wife had a way of revealing how far he’d sunk over the past few months.

He’d
come back from Maui three months ago planning on getting his life in order. The
image of Duncan’s new sister-in-law striding away from him across the sand
seemed to have imprinted itself on his mind and he really wanted to get to know
her better. No matter how he tried he couldn’t get the sexy redhead out of his
mind.

Being
best man at the Duncan’s wedding had shown him exactly how empty and shallow
his life had become, and he’d really wanted to turn things around. Settle down,
do the whole picket fence and rug-rat thing, but instead the exact opposite had
occurred. He’d become even more out of control than ever.

He
knew what Dr. Phil and the rest of his ilk would say—he feared commitment and
was compensating, blah, blah, blah. But that wasn’t it. He really did want to
give up his wild ways.

The
problem was that he couldn’t write anymore. Well, he could write, but he
couldn’t think about what he wrote anymore, which made it difficult to write
anything in-depth or remotely interesting. The subject matter he dealt with—bad
men doing horrible things was getting to him. When he’d come back from Duncan’s
honeymoon, he’d foolishly taken on a very lucrative book deal detailing the
life and activities of serial killer Harold Richard Rawlings, and he had been
spiraling downward ever since.

He’d
known before he took on the Rawlings book that his days as a crime writer were
numbered. Interviewing monsters had once fascinated him, but lately he’d been
unable to sleep. Nightmares plagued him and a few drinks—eventually many
drinks—had been his only way of deadening his reaction to the horrors he heard
and wrote about every day.

Kevin
had been a cop for five years before leaving the force to become a writer.
After that, he’d interviewed countless psychopaths, child molesters, and
rapists. He knew exactly what men were capable of, but there was something
different about Rawlings—something Kevin could only describe as evil.

With
Rawlings, the nightmares, the insomnia, and especially the drinking had all
escalated at an alarming rate. His dreams of settling down were forgotten as he
attempted to distract himself from what was going on in his head. Now, he
finally had to accept that he’d hit rock bottom.

Looking
around Kerry’s luxury suite at the Vancouver Fairmont Hotel, Kevin knew there
wasn’t any excuse for his poor judgment. No matter how crazy his job was making
him, he had no business being here and with this woman especially. Or any woman,
for that matter, at least until he straightened himself out.

Gently,
he attempted to disentangle his arm again. Kerry sighed and shifted against his
side reminding him that she’d made the same kind of satisfied exhalations many
times during the night.

He
gulped in reaction and noted that both of them were completely naked. The
off-white Egyptian cotton sheets had been kicked to the floor in the wee hours
of the morning and now her warmth and nudity had a predictable effect on his
anatomy. He looked down at himself and scowled. His hardening dick had even
worse judgment than he did.

Her
breath puffed against his chest and his condition worsened. No matter how much
his body would like to continue the activities of last night, there was no way
he could live with himself if he gave in and had sex with her while his mind
was clear.

As
if sensing his thoughts, Kerry curled closer into Kevin’s side and trailed her
finely manicured hand down his taut stomach, past his navel, and to his groin
where it rested on his inner thigh for a long moment before tracing the head of
his traitorous erection.

“Hmmm…”
Kerry purred, grasping him more firmly and pressing a hot, open-mouthed kiss
against his shoulder. “I see some things haven’t changed since high school.”

Kevin
stiffened, but not in a good way. He couldn’t believe he’d forgotten what Kerry
was like. In high school she’d faked a pregnancy to trick his best friend,
Duncan, into marrying her because she’d wanted to get her hands on his friend’s
family fortune. Her plan had worked until Duncan had decided to follow his
dream of becoming a police officer and they’d moved from Toronto to Vancouver
to get away from Duncan’s overbearing grandmother. Being a cop’s wife wasn’t
the life Kerry had planned so she’d spent the next seven years making Duncan
miserable for not taking his place in the family business.

Kevin
grasped Kerry’s shoulders tightly to prevent her from kissing her way down his
chest. She was lying on top of him now, tracing his left nipple with her
tongue. “Stop,” he groaned. “This is wrong.”

Kerry
gave him a small bite and then looked up at him, smiling, and flipped a long,
silky strand of her waist-length black hair back over her shoulder. “It
certainly doesn’t feel wrong. And your dick seems to approve,” she said,
reaching down to tweak his erection lightly.

“Well,
my dick isn’t in charge here,” Kevin said as he attempted to roll her gently to
the side.

Instead
of complying she wrapped one slim thigh around his hip and laughed. “Are you
sure about that?” She asked, pumping her fist down his straining shaft. When he
gasped, she threw her head back and looked at him with velvety dark eyes,
daring him to deny his attraction to her.

Her
exotic beauty disarmed him for a moment. Everything in him called him a fool
for denying the opportunity to enjoy what she offered so willingly and
apparently without strings. He thought seriously about ignoring his conscience
completely. After all, he’d already been with her countless times during the
night. What difference would one more indiscretion make? But with Kerry there
were always strings attached—very unpleasant, sticky, web-like strings. If he
gave in now, when his wits were about him, he would eventually regret giving
into his libido.

“Absolutely
sure,” he said through gritted teeth as he unceremoniously dumped her off his
chest. “He's only an advisor. I make all the final decisions.”

Kerry
recovered quickly and stretched out across the mattress, admiring herself in
the mirrored headboard for a moment before shifting her attention back to
Kevin. Her eyes narrowed as she watched him climb off the bed and look for his
clothing. She couldn’t believe he was ignoring her like this. No matter. She
knew how to get his attention.