Striptease Page 14

  “True,” Melanie acquiesced, laughing. “But you haven’t spent time with her for a while. You have to admit she has settled down this last year.”

  Adjusting the folds of her long, flowing skirt, Rennie smiled; the lift of her lips seemed to be driven by a private thought, as much for her own sake as for Melanie’s. “The love of a good man, I wonder?”

  “Must be.” And here we go. Melanie prayed the inquisition would be swift and painless. “Nothing else has ever seemed to work.”

  Sighing, Jacob’s sister crossed one leg over the other and jiggled her foot. “It gives a girl hope, you know? To believe there are others out there like Eric.”

  Melanie’s thoughts went immediately to Jacob, as Rennie had no doubt intended with her probing. Yes? No? Did she suspect any of what was going on? Was she here to finish the job of driving Melanie insane?

  Or was Rennie simply musing over men, as single women were wont to do?

  Surreptitiously, Melanie ran fingertips along her nape, where perspiration had blossomed. “Well, except for one or two perennial holdouts, the ones that have crossed my path this last year have been snagged by my best girlfriends.”

  “Then that should give both of us even more hope. Now the odds are in our favor.” Rennie chuckled, then released a long sigh and shook her head. “Notice how I’m already including myself in the group with you and Kinsey and Poe.”

  “And why not?” Melanie marginally began to relax. Maybe this wasn’t about Jacob at all. “We’re all in this man-hunting gIRL-gEAR business together.”

  “My thoughts exactly. With the lucky partners already attached, when the next man comes along…” Rennie let the thought trail off.

  And Melanie picked it up with a laugh. “…the competition pool won’t be quite as crowded.”

  The other woman followed suit. “You know, it’s good to be able to laugh about it. Especially since that didn’t exactly come out sounding very charitable.”

  “How so?”

  “I only meant that good women obviously attract good men, and you girls are the absolute best. I finally did tell Chloe that I’d decided to work with her, but I swear I didn’t base my decision on the hopes of finding a date.” A self-amused expression crossed her face. “Though I have to admit I’ve never met so many amazingly gorgeous guys as I have since being here.”

  “It’s like flies to honey. Our own personal matchmaking reality show,” Melanie said, glad to see Rennie was really no different than the rest of the gIRL-gEAR women. “We do have our raging bitch moments, but I think you’ll love it here.”

  “Oh, I’m sure I’ll fit right in,” Rennie stated. “Jacob reminds me every time he sees me that my attitude could use an adjustment.”

  “He called you bossy,” Melanie said, before she stopped to think to whom she was speaking. “I mean—”

  Rennie waved off the remark. “He tells me the same thing all the time. About myself. Not about you.”

  “Oh, I’m sure next time you two talk, he’ll come up with something much worse than ‘bossy’ to say about me.” Again with the runaway mouth. “Anyway—”

  “No. Hold on a minute.” Rennie tilted her head to one side, giving Melanie one of those omniscient sisterly smiles. “That’s right. Jacob told me he’d worked with you at Lauren’s wedding.”

  Melanie suppressed a snort. “I’m not sure he worked with me, but I was there. I wanted to make sure he knew what he was doing.”

  Rennie tossed back her head and laughed. “Oh my. I would’ve paid to sit in the audience for that. Jacob is the biggest control freak when it comes to his work. I can’t imagine him letting anyone keep an eye on him.”

  Melanie started to sputter out a contradiction, then realized she would be giving away too much. Besides, Jacob was so good at being the bum he was that she forgot how much of his attitude was for show.

  For the first time since she’d known him, it came to her that she didn’t know why. She wondered if his sister could offer any insight. Then she wondered how best to ask without spilling the details of their involvement.

  “He didn’t exactly let me. I just didn’t give him any choice. It was Lauren’s wedding, after all.” Melanie thought for a moment, then said, “And, yes. He did seem rather dictatorial about having his way.”

  Rennie nodded knowingly. “Without listening to any of your input.”

  “He listened. He even told me he considered what I had to offer. But in the end—”

  “Let me guess. All Jacob, all the time.”

  Melanie shrugged, grabbed for her pencil. “It was, but he ended up being right.”

  “That’s the problem.” The other woman sighed, reached up to push back her long fall of chestnut-red hair. “For once I would really love to see him have to admit that he doesn’t have all the answers.”

  Hmm. This was getting interesting. “Why would you say that?”

  “Oh…” Rennie waved an expressive hand. “He thinks he can do no wrong. And, unfortunately, he rarely does. I’m not sure that’s good for him.”

  “I don’t get it.” Melanie frowned and adjusted her glasses. “Having that sort of success and confidence in his work? How can that be a bad thing?”

  “Oh, my fault for not explaining. You’re right. His skill is going to take him far, and his Superman attitude will see him go all the way.”

  “Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound?”

  “Exactly. Career-wise he’s quite indestructible. But in his personal life? I don’t think he’s quite the man of steel he thinks he is.” She glanced down at her hands while rubbing her thumb across each of her fingernails in turn. “So, yes. I’m a bossy, interfering sister. It’s just that with all that attitude, I’m afraid one day he’ll crack.”

  Biting her tongue on the man of steel comment, because this was his sister, after all, Melanie gave a small shrug. “He really doesn’t seem the crackable sort.”

  “They never do,” Rennie said bluntly. “Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think Jacob’s a danger to himself or to anyone else. And I’m probably just borrowing trouble. But he makes me crazy that way.”

  Now, to that Melanie could certainly relate. “I don’t know anything about his life outside of work. Not that it matters,” she hurried to add when she suddenly realized how much it bothered her not to have learned more about Jacob. “But it is a little strange. People usually do spill details in the course of normal conversation.”

  Rennie shook her head. “Not my brother. Without divulging family secrets that need to remain old and buried, let’s just say he’s let his work eclipse his personal life. Work he can control, down to the very last frame. Editing in what he likes, editing out what he doesn’t.” She sighed. “I’ve quit trying to figure him out.”

  Melanie scrambled for something to say, her thoughts racing to incorporate what Rennie had just revealed and what few details about his life Jacob himself had put on the table. “He’s definitely an enigma,” she murmured.

  “He is. And he shouldn’t be. Not to me, anyway. Not after the way we grew up parenting one another. Latchkey kids of the first order,” Rennie said, then gave a little disgusted grunt. “Or of the worst order, since more often than not our parents tucked us in via a long-distance phone call.” She sighed and seemed to slump deeper into the chair. “I’m sorry. Here I am dragging up all those family ghosts I swore not to bore you with.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Captivated was a much more apt description than bored. Melanie thought about being tucked in most every night by both her mother and grandmother, almost up until the time she’d left for the University of Texas. She’d taken for granted the very security Jacob had never had.

  Yet here she was, with everything in its place and a place for everything. Never wanting to lose the control over her life the two women who’d reared her insisted she’d need to survive in a male-dominated world. Afraid if she didn’t rule her emotions as well as her financial portfolio she’d lose the independenc
e that protected them all.

  Instead, she’d tightened up into a protected old prune who felt nothing and tempted no one. At least not until Jacob had come along. Oh, God. No. After all this time and all these years, had she actually let a man’s influence challenge her way of thinking?

  She thought she’d known it all. Now she thought she was going to be sick. “I suppose it’s no better than a platitude to say that at least you had each other.”

  “Platitude or not, it’s the truth.” Rennie’s eyes and smile grew misty. And then she laughed. “You wouldn’t believe how one minute we were tattling on one another and the next watching the other’s back.”

  Melanie tried to picture Jacob as a seven-year-old with scraped knees and bandaged elbows. “I don’t have siblings, but that doesn’t sound much different than most I did know as a kid.”

  “Oh, it’s not. Except that Jacob swore then—we both swore, actually—that neither of us would ever develop such a case of career tunnel vision that we forgot how much more there is to life.”

  “The way your parents had,” Melanie guessed.

  “Exactly.”

  Well, that explained Jacob’s struggle to appear nonchalant about his work. It probably fooled most people but him, poor man. “What did your parents do?”

  “They were, they are, historians. Truthfully, I think they’re perfectly suited to one another. They read each other’s mind, finish sentences the other has started. They can sit for hours pouring over ancient documents in any number of languages and never say a word. They just never should’ve had children.”

  “As is the case with more than a few couples I’ve known.”

  “Oh, it’s definitely not a unique situation. It just feels that way, being the children involved.”

  Melanie really wasn’t sure what to say. She only knew compassion had joined the tumultuous emotions expanding her heart.

  She rolled her pencil the length of her legal pad and back. “I guess it would be a challenge to analyze your own situation objectively. But you both seem to have learned how to cope. I’m not sure his way is healthy….”

  “How so?”

  Way to go, big mouth. “He’s incredibly talented, gifted even. But he acts like he doesn’t give a damn. It’s got to tear him up inside when you think about it.”

  “Or when you think about it?”

  So much for secret affairs. Melanie glanced down at the yellow pad on her desk. “I guess it’s more obvious than I thought.”

  “Not really. I was just guessing.” A tentative smile passed over Rennie’s face. “I’ve seen the way Jacob looks at you, and so I wondered.”

  Jacob looked at her? How did Jacob look at her? “Wondered?”

  “If anything was going on between the two of you.”

  Oh, why not? Melanie sighed. “Something is, though I’m not sure I can give it a name.”

  “Don’t. Not for my sake, anyway.” Rennie’s probing gaze grew concerned. “Hey, I’m glad you got past his attitude and under his skin. Not many women do. He’s a great guy, but he doesn’t let many people see that.”

  “Yeah. I’ve noticed.”

  “So, ask him about it,” Rennie urged. “I’m curious to know what he’d use as his defense.”

  “You mean if he knows himself as well as you do?”

  Rennie shook her head. “He knows. Deep down, where guys don’t like to hang out. I just wonder if you’re the woman who can get him to spend time there, because I sure can’t. He’s basically told me to mind my own business.”

  Melanie chuckled. “And he called you bossy.”

  “Well, there ya go. He has told you something personal.”

  “I suppose so. Though it’s not much.”

  “No, but it’s a start. Now, see what else you can get him to give you. Er, get him to reveal.” Rennie’s face flushed. “I’m sorry. Usually I love a good double entendre. Just not when my brother is playing a starring role.”

  In that case, Melanie decided, she’d be better off not sharing anything else about her relationship with Jacob. Time to change the subject. “Thanks for the advice. But surely you didn’t come by just to talk about your brother.”

  “Actually, no. I was wanting to talk to you about possibly setting up a database for gUIDANCE gIRL.”

  Finally, something safe. Something familiar. Something well within Melanie’s ability to handle. “Not a problem,” she told Rennie, wishing the same were true of the other woman’s brother.

  JACOB LEANED BACK in his chair and stared at the e-mail on his screen. The one he’d forgotten about earlier when faced with Melanie taking off her clothes. No. Not now. Don’t go back there, buddy.

  He didn’t have time to replay or even revisit the show because he was looking at his entire future in black type on a white screen. Equity Beat in New York wanted to see him earlier than originally planned, and for an extra day or two—if he could manage.

  What a question! He’d manage as much time as they wanted. He’d have to get together with Asa to cover what couldn’t be rescheduled. The way Jacob figured, the other man would be back from Milwaukee by then, and it would be payback time. Such was the beauty of having seniority at Avatare.

  Too bad he wouldn’t be able to take Melanie along. The two of them could have some kind of party in the Big Apple together. He wondered if the Mets would be in town. He wondered if Melanie even liked baseball….

  Damn, what was he thinking? He was making the trip for business, not for a piece of out-of-town nooky. If he couldn’t keep it in his pants for a couple of weeks, he was in serious need of therapy. The thing was, he knew that wasn’t the case.

  He’d kept it in his pants for months at a time, most recently for almost a year. Not that he planned to share that fact with his buds. Well, maybe with Melanie. Eventually. When they got closer to having that sexual history conversation. That sharing of test results they’d need to do before ditching the condoms for sweet skin-on-skin love.

  Whoa! Wait just a hell of a minute. He held up both hands, rolled his chair back from his desk. This was getting out of control, this thinking that sounded as if he was headed for commitment. He had no intention of permanently tying himself down.

  It was a known fact that a guy couldn’t have both a woman and a career. Not the kind of career Jacob wanted. Free to hit the road when the muse and opportunity called. He couldn’t do that if he had obligations, a family, a woman, waiting for him at home.

  He hadn’t been lying the day he’d told Melanie that he didn’t do whipped. He was his own man, and he wasn’t a slave to anyone or anything. He’d learned a long time ago to rely solely on himself.

  Once in a while he leaned on Renata. But never on their parents, neither of whom had managed to be home enough during his early years for him to form an attachment. He was closer to Asa and Harry than good ol’ Mom or Dad.

  And, yeah, lately he’d gotten pretty overinvolved with his work, but film had always been his passion. And now it was his future. This gIRL-gEAR documentary was shaping up to be the very ticket he’d been hoping for.

  The work he’d done so far had kicked major ass. He’d impressed the hell out of himself—a mighty feat indeed. He couldn’t say whether it was the subject material, or if he’d just hit some sort of unconscious stride.

  Whatever it was, getting paid to keep his eye on seven gorgeous women was definitely sweet. He’d be hard-pressed to ever draw another assignment to match this plum. What he had going on with Melanie was a perk he’d never expected. If he’d started seeing beyond the big picture into the individual frames…so what?

  He refused to start thinking she’d had any impact on his work. If he thought that, he might as well hang up his cameras for good. Another week and she wouldn’t even be around. And where would that leave him? Where it would leave him would be on his way to New York. Exactly where he wanted to be.

  He’d just finished composing a reply to Equity Beat when his phone rang a second time. He saved the draft to
read through again and glanced distractedly at his caller ID on the third ring. Shit. Full alert. He’d almost missed her. Jacob quickly grabbed the receiver.

  “Faulkner.”

  “Jacob? It’s Melanie.”

  “I know.”

  “You do? Oh. Caller ID, duh.”

  “Well, yeah. But actually, I recognize your voice.”

  “Oh, sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

  He felt the beginnings of a grin. “Or maybe you weren’t giving me credit?”

  “No. That’s not it.”

  “You sure?” he asked, picturing her frown. He loved giving her a hard time. She was so easy to rile, and so cute when she finally caught on that he was pulling her leg. “I mean, being the bum I am and all, you probably figured I hadn’t been paying attention.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  He laughed, because she was. Funny. He liked that about her. Liked it a lot. “You’re right. I’m being an ass. What’s up?”

  She hesitated for a minute before he heard her sigh. “Do you have plans for tonight?”

  “Plans with you? Or just plans period?” He thought about all those missed baseball games. Then he thought about all of that amazing sex. Harry and Asa might just have to hit Minute Maid Park without him. Again.

  “Either one. I was thinking if you don’t have anything set up, maybe we could get a drink?”

  Jacob blinked, frowned, wondered if he’d mistaken her voice, after all. This was the woman he was sleeping with, and she was asking him out for a drink? “Sure. Should I come to your office? You want to come here? Or were you wanting me to pick up a bottle and meet you at your place?”

  “None of the above. I was thinking I’d meet you later. Maybe at a club. Or downtown at one of the bars in the theater district. Would that be inconvenient?”

  “What? To meet you downtown?”

  “Yeah. Sydney’s dad owns a wine bar on Main. Paddington’s Ford. It’s quiet. And dark. And he sells a mean cigar.”

  “So, this isn’t about going dancing then.”