Striptease Page 20

  It would totally devastate their image.

  Especially the next scene, of Sydney in the conference room studying quotes from wedding caterers, honeymoon resorts and bridal magazines. If viewers realized that even gIRL-gEAR’s CEO rarely had a head for business anymore…Melanie couldn’t begin to fathom the imminent damage to their example as pioneering entrepreneurs.

  She pressed her forehead into the X of her arms crossed on her desk. A strangled moan originated in the depths of her anguished heart. This couldn’t happen. Wouldn’t happen. She had to make certain no one ever saw this footage. The partners were scheduled to visit the Avatare screening room as a group tomorrow. Jacob was going to show them a portion of the completed project.

  Melanie wondered if that was the reason he and his buddy were sharing this little preview party, getting a good laugh out of the partners gullibility and preparing defenses against certain shock and accusations of betrayal.

  She’d trusted him with confidences and concerns never before entrusted to a man, yet he was going to reduce everything they’d shared down to a career move that would leave her and her best friends if not ruined, then revealed by a cruel spotlight. Was this what career obsession did to a man?

  Or to a woman?

  The thought left her reeling. She never would’ve believed this possible of Jacob if she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes. She’d fallen in love with his artistic integrity, his sense of honesty in his work. He never compromised, making sure the work he did was real and faithful to the truth. He didn’t use or manipulate people for his own gain.

  Or so she’d thought until now….

  You were right, Mama. I won’t make the same mistake again. So much for honor and integrity. Sniffling, she sat back up, then pushed herself out of her chair to pace. She had to think of a solution and fast. Her personal feelings she would deal with later.

  She would not stand back and let Jacob destroy her friends. Before anyone else got a look at what she’d just seen, she and Jacob Faulkner needed to have a little talk.

  JACOB SAT IN FRONT of the editing equipment in the Avatare studio and wondered how in the world he was going to deal with this fight between his heart and his head. Dealing with his dick was so much easier. Then again, dicks had a history of getting men and governments into a whole lot of trouble.

  This was the very reason he found it so much easier to do his work on film. He could express himself precisely, exactly, and not have to figure out if he was making his point, if he’d screwed up, if he’d hurt feelings, if he’d forgotten to say something he should have. His heart and his head got along so much better that way.

  Thing was, he’d become so intent on getting his vision perfected that he’d totally overlooked the need he really did have for including personal relationships in his life. Instead, he’d fallen victim to the very single-minded career obsession he’d sworn to steer clear of.

  Hard not to when opportunities such as the one offered by Equity Beat were the result of his dedication.

  He had no idea yet what he was going to say should they offer him a place on their production team. He didn’t want to borrow that trouble since he’d yet to meet with them. It was easier to think they might not want him for more than contract assignments, or that they might not want him at all.

  That way he didn’t have to wonder what he was going to do without having Melanie in his life.

  Ask him a month ago, and he’d have never thought it possible to reach an even higher level of excellence in his work. But he had, claiming on more than one occasion that it was the documentary making it happen.

  Wrong-o, buddy.

  It had happened because of Melanie Craine—not the same thing at all.

  This wasn’t about Melanie as vice president of whatever kooky divisions she headed up. This was about Melanie as the woman who’d treated him as if he didn’t have any potential. He’d felt compelled to prove her wrong, and in doing so had opened a window his career’s forward motion had soundly closed at his back.

  Never before had he captured such subtle nuances, such provocative images. And here he’d always thought a woman would hinder him and hold him down. The very opposite had happened. His focus hadn’t narrowed, his world hadn’t been reduced to limited choices.

  It was as if she had opened his eyes to all that he could do, all that he could be. Then she’d fed his confidence by respecting what she’d expected of him all along.

  And it wasn’t about what they did in bed. Sure, that was part of it. But it was about her incredible commitment and strength of purpose. Watching her at work, seeing how she calmed Kinsey’s panic over a vendor going belly-up, seeing the way she talked Chloe out of throttling more than a few of the girls who’d signed up for the new mentoring deal, inspired him to live up to the same standards for himself.

  Humanity. She had it in spades. Hell, she’d even tucked Renata under her wing—as if his sister needed nurturing. He stopped, thought. What if she did, and had all this time? Maybe he’d never seen what Melanie’s brilliant female intuition allowed her to see.

  “Hey, Faulkner,” Harry called from the editing room doorway. “Your girlfriends are here.”

  “Be right there.” The documentary was nowhere near being finished, but Sydney Ford had asked if she and her partners could see an early cut. Jacob didn’t mind, since gauging their reactions would give him a better feel for how the project was coming together.

  He shut down his work in progress and turned toward the door, stopping dead in his tracks when he looked up to see Melanie standing there. Get a grip. It’s not as if she’d had her ear to a glass pressed to his head, listening to his thoughts.

  “Hey, sweetheart.” He grinned because his heart made him do it. “Had to get a few minutes alone with me before the big show?”

  She didn’t stay a word, just stood in the shadowed doorway wearing black pumps, black pants and a sleeveless black top that came all the way to her hips. Her glasses were black, her jewelry onyx. Even her mood was dark.

  Jacob walked toward her. Once in the hallway, he turned out the light, intending to lock the door behind him. But Melanie had other plans. She placed her hand in the center of his chest and pushed him back into the editing room, closing the door once they were both inside the space, now lit only by colored electronic lights beaming off various machines.

  “I have something I need to say to you.”

  And she didn’t sound as if it was something he was going to enjoy having her say. She was practically spitting, like a black cat with its hackles up. As much as he loved seeing her in red, he’d be hard-pressed to deny she did amazing things to all-black.

  He stepped toward her; she stepped back. He continued, as did she until she had no farther to go. He, on the other hand, wasn’t finished, and wouldn’t be until his body was pressed into hers. And he was just about there, just about ready to lean into her from knees to cheeks, when she put up a halting hand between them.

  “I said I have something to say to you, not that I’ve come here for sex. This may be hard for you to believe, but I really do have a mind for something other than getting you into bed.”

  In the dimly surreal light, he watched as she pressed her lips together in that way she did when she wasn’t sure what he was thinking. He didn’t want her to know. Not right now. Mostly because he wasn’t sure where she was coming from, and that meant he didn’t know how to react.

  So he leaned to one side instead of into her body, bracing his weight on the hand he placed above her shoulder, flat on the door. The movement brought him close enough to kiss her, to catch a hint of her subtly smoky perfume, to see her eyes hidden as they were behind the armor of her glasses.

  He wanted to reach his fingers down and play with her wonderfully soft hair. But instead he brought his other hand up to touch her lips. “Can’t say much of anything with your mouth all smashed up like that.”

  And she obviously wasn’t going to say anything at all until he moved his hand aw
ay. So he did, only to have her turn her face from him, as well.

  Clutching her purse tightly in front of her, she stared toward the editing console. “I don’t want you showing the video tonight. I don’t want my friends hurt.”

  He frowned. “Mel, I think they all know it’s not a finished project. Knowledge being power, and all that, I’m pretty sure no one is going to get hurt by seeing what’s been done.”

  “I’ve seen what’s been done.” Still, she didn’t look at him. “And I beg to differ.”

  “Wait a minute.” He shook his head, feeling as if he needed to shake off some sort of fog. “What are you talking about? When did you see any of the footage? Do you mean what you saw on the DVD I brought to the cookout?”

  Her head whipped back in his direction so fast he marveled they both didn’t suffer from whiplash. “No. I mean what I saw last night.”

  “Last night?” When would she have seen anything last night? Where had he been last night? He thought, thought, remembered. He and Asa in the office, working through the kinks that had to be cut. The office was the only place he’d run the tape. How had Melanie…

  “The Webcam.” He slammed his hand against the door.

  Melanie jumped. “It wasn’t a perfect screening, but I saw enough to know I’m not going to let you show that garbage to my friends.”

  Jacob shoved away from the door and headed for the windows on the opposite wall—as far away from Melanie as he could get. It wasn’t garbage. Goddammit, it wasn’t garbage. What she’d seen were outtakes he wasn’t going to use. He’d run the lot of them by Asa first, making sure the other man shared his intuition.

  But none of it was garbage. It was an honest look at the hardest working, sexiest bunch of women he’d even had the pleasure to know. And the fact that they blew off steam the way they did and with the men they loved, made him jealous as hell of their partners. He’d been thinking he wanted the same with Melanie, but if she didn’t trust him…

  This time he slammed his hand against the supporting column. How the hell could she think that what she’d seen was what he intended to show today? Even knowing the documentary was far from being finished, she couldn’t possibly believe what she’d seen would be anything he’d include in the final product.

  So much for respect and humanity. His heart twisting, he hung his head and sighed. Headlights cut through the gaps in the miniblinds, sharply slicing his black T-shirt and his hand at his hip into what might as well be prison stripes.

  Finally, he turned around and faced her across the immense expanse of the average-size room. “I’m not going to show garbage to anyone.”

  “This isn’t your call to make,” she said priggishly.

  “Yeah, it is. It’s my show. My call.”

  “Wrong, Faulkner. I may have been out of line the day of Lauren’s wedding, getting in your face and not letting you do your job. But this isn’t a wedding.” She paused; he could hear her pull in a huge breath. “This is about my best friends and their reputations. It has nothing to do with me being a control freak or your artistic integrity. This is about you being wrong. And about me being right.”

  “No, sweetheart. It has to do with a lot more than that.” He started his long walk across the room, wondering if she had any idea how absolutely furious he was. “It has to do with trust.”

  “Trust?”

  “Trust.” He drew even closer, one step, another, watching the widening white of her eyes. “I could tell you that I’m not going to show you and your friends the footage you saw me going over with Asa. But I’m not going to tell you anything except that it’s time for you to get your sweet little butt into the screening room. The show is about to go on.”

  WHEN SHE WALKED INTO her living room at the ridiculously late-for-her weeknight hour of 1:00 a.m., Melanie kicked off her shoes, sending them flying in the direction of her entryway table. Her keys and tote followed. She’d never been the party-girl type, needing instead a decent seven hours of sleep to recharge for the following day.

  But tonight she just hadn’t been able to face going home alone. Not after her confrontation with Jacob and the exorbitant amount of emotion involved. So she’d gone out with her girlfriends, who all wanted to celebrate, each of them drinking way too much while at Paddington’s Ford. Nolan Ford had actually been in the bar, and had picked up the tab after hearing Sydney rave about the documentary success.

  Melanie hadn’t raved at all. She’d wanted to crawl under the table and die.

  Success hardly covered the excellence of what Jacob had shown. And she’d had to sit there in the bar and listen to each of her partners wax enthusiastic while the voices she heard in her head were those of her and Jacob arguing. No. Not arguing. She had accused, and Jacob had neither defended nor denied. He’d simply told her to mind her own business.

  She’d thought that was what she’d been doing. Minding the business of gIRL-gEAR. But from first frame to last, his documentary proved that she’d had no need. That she’d been borrowing trouble instead of giving Jacob the only thing he’d ever asked her to give.

  Trust. The stuff on which true relationships were built, of which she’d shown a pitiable lack. She’d reacted on what she had seen rather than on what she should’ve known. Jacob’s integrity would never have allowed him to cast his subjects in such a cruel light.

  Instead of the bimbos she thought she would witness on screen, she’d seen Jacob’s portrayal of the partners as competent businesswomen who were also unabashedly female. Yes, Sydney sat at the conference room table poring over bridal magazines, but it was all part of a clip showing a gIRL-gEAR feature on weddings.

  Yes, Lauren doodled while chatting on the phone, but the doodles were graphic design ideas for new Web site pages. Yes, Chloe dug into pots of lip color and eye shadow like a little girl at her mother’s dressing table, but on the other side of her desk sat a group of girls from the mentoring program intent on learning makeup techniques.

  Everything Melanie had seen via the Webcam had been the truth, yet she’d accused Jacob of putting together a lie. She’d shown him nothing resembling trust, believing her eyes instead of her heart, which knew him so much better. She’d sat there in the darkened minitheater, listening to her partners giggle and chuckle and laugh until they cried.

  She’d cried along with them, but for reasons that had nothing to do with being tickled by seeing herself on the big screen. She’d cried for all she’d ruined because she’d lost sight of what mattered—believing in the man she’d come to love so very much. And she’d never had the chance to tell him. Not even when she’d told him goodbye.

  She’d been the last one to walk out the door. It had been so hard to hold her head as high as she had, knowing what she was walking away from. Jacob had stood there in the hallway outside of the screening room. He hadn’t said “I told you so” as she’d expected him to. He’d simply looked determined to let her stew, to figure things out for herself.

  The one thing that had made her departure even more brutal was that he hadn’t let her go until she’d taken the videotape he’d forced into her hand. Outtakes from the documentary that he’d put together just for her, he’d said, his voice quiet when she’d expected a storm.

  The calm had nearly killed her, and she couldn’t bear the thought of going home alone to her condo, which seemed so empty when he wasn’t there. She’d gotten used to having him around. So instead, she’d gone back to the office, where she could’ve easily watched the tape in private. Except she hadn’t been sure she wanted to see it.

  Though the minute she’d arrived home, having exited the city bus on the corner where she lived, she’d shoved the tape into the VCR, she still wasn’t sure she wanted to watch. Why subject herself to further torture, except that maybe seeing this final kiss-off would at least finish breaking her heart? She would much rather completely kill her emotions and rise up again from the ashes. A phoenix and all that.

  Except she doubted any man would ever again make her
fly.

  Melanie sighed. So she’d fly on her own. And she’d do it by making gIRL-gEAR the best it could be. Stronger and better than the documentary had depicted. Come tomorrow morning she’d be in the office kicking ass and taking names. No more man-mooning and lunch hour quickies. It was time for this ship to shape up.

  She wondered if anyone would listen.

  She wondered if she’d ever sounded so arrogant.

  She wondered when she’d finally get it through her head that the changes to the company had done nothing but make it stronger—exactly what Jacob’s work had so brilliantly revealed. gIRL-gEAR and the partners were exactly the sort of role models for young women they’d always strived to be.

  And she had screwed everything up by being so ridiculously obsessive over work instead of trusting the man she loved.

  Sitting in total darkness, she reached for the remote control on her side table and hit Play. No more than three minutes into the tape, she pulled her legs onto the sofa and hugged her knees to her chest. She tucked her chin down, as well, hoping if she curled up into a tight enough ball she could contain the threatening sobs.

  If Jacob’s outtakes were meant to teach her a lesson, it was a lesson in the ways that he loved her. The clips were of her doing the things that captured his attention, that caused him to do a double-take, that caught him by the throat and wouldn’t let him go. And she knew this because he was telling her. There on the tape.

  He talked about no other woman being able to turn black into his favorite color, about how when she finally let herself go and laughed as she’d never laughed before, he heard the music of her voice for days to follow. He talked about loving her eyes even behind her glasses, loving her body even underneath her clothes.

  And then he talked about seeing her at work, about how her aspirations to be her very best gave him the push he’d been needing to make a difference. Finally, with tears trickling down her cheeks and her nose a runny mess and her heart aching so fiercely that she had trouble drawing one even breath, he talked about making her a permanent part of his future because he couldn’t imagine a day without having her in his life.