“Maybe. But before that.”
Maybe? “Before, after, I don’t care. The answer is yes, I’d love to go out. When should I pick you up?”
“Would you listen?” Her voice trembled with laughter. “I’m talking business, here.”
“You said what would make me happy, not the network. Okay, what happened between now and one-fifteen, when we said goodbye in the park?”
“I met with my team and presented our options to them. I told them we could make no changes…stay in Atlanta and go with CWB…or move to New York and go with one of the big networks.”
“And which did they choose?” He dragged his mind off where he might take her tonight-besides his hotel room, that is. He was really in fine shape when seeing her had become more important than the outcome of the deal. And speaking of that, he’d been inches away from packing it in and going back to headquarters to take his lumps. With the arrival of Mackenzie Roussos and Chad Everard and their bottomless pockets, he’d figured CWB wouldn’t have a chance at succeeding.
Money always won. Always.
“They want to stay in Atlanta and become a CWB affiliate,” she told him, triumph in her tone. “It may not get us as big a reach as SBN or CBS, but all of us know that reaching sometimes means overreaching, and that just makes you fall on your face. The ‘enthusiastically conservative’ approach to business has served us well so far. We figure we should just keep doing it that way.”
“I’m…delighted,” he managed from under his amazement. They’d chosen CWB. He’d won. After two failed deals in his immediate history, he didn’t have to go back to New York and face Nelson Berg’s derision. He was going to be able to keep his job-and meet the man’s damn deadline to boot. It was a miracle. “Amazed. Happy. Thank you.”
“There’s one caveat, though,” she said. “I want a guarantee that I can keep my team together. They’ve all agreed in principle to coming on board, and I realize we’ll have to negotiate compensation and all that. But what I don’t want is for the network to lay them off as soon as we sign the contract, and plug its own people in.”
“Fair enough,” he allowed, trying to breathe through the tight feeling in his chest. That feeling that meant he was holding back a shout of triumph. “I’ll present that as part of the deal.”
“I think the fact that we got an agreement at all calls for a celebration,” she said, “and I’m not talking about a walk in the park, either.”
“I can take your whole team to dinner. We’ll max out the network credit card in a show of good faith.”
“I hope you will, but not tonight. Tonight I want it to be just you and me. You’ve helped me so much this week. I wish there were some way to thank you.”
“You already found it,” he said fervently. “But sure. I’d love that. I usually spend the evenings watching the competition and thinking about you anyway.”
This time she laughed. “You know, you really should find a more romantic way to phrase these things.”
He had to smile, too. “Ah, but if I think about you and romance together, I get into trouble. Look what happened the last time, at your uncle’s. And at the Ashmere mansion.”
In his mind’s eye, for the thousandth time, he saw her silhouetted against that ivy-covered wall, her skin pale in the moonlight, her gown hugging the curves he still hungered to touch and taste. And then later, in the car, when she-
His body throbbed at the thought.
She had no idea how difficult it was to see her every day in the park and not beg her to come back to the hotel with him. To sit next to her on the bench and talk about the television business, when all he wanted to do was to lay her down in the grass. To explore the splendid curves revealed by her beaded, sometimes plunging necklines while with each inch of discovery, the chemistry all but ignited between them.
“I remember every second of what happened at the Ashmere mansion.” Her tone dropped to almost a whisper.
“Is your office door closed?” His own voice dropped, too, though there was no one within four walls of him.
“Yes.”
“I remember how silky your skin is. How sexy your mouth is when you talk. When I’m not with you, I fantasize about you. Basically, I’m hooked on you twenty-four seven.”
“You fantasize about me?” Her whisper had become downright breathless.
“Oh, yeah. In my mind, we’ve been on your desk, on my desk, at my hotel, in the park, on carpets of those pink flowers, you name it. We have an amazing love life for two people who have never seen each other naked.”
She giggled. “You’ve seen me nearly naked.”
His body stiffened with appreciation. “One of my fondest memories. I could write entire sonnets to that moment, I swear. Have I told you how much I like that red gauze top you had on yesterday? That was good for a real dream about you last night, not just your standard daytime fantasy.”
“I was wearing a bra, you bad boy,” she whispered.
“Mmm,” he rumbled. “A push-up. And a fine example of its kind. I and a couple of million male viewers thank you.”
“It didn’t show anything!” she squeaked. “I had the director and the guys in the control booth double-check. Both backlighting and spots.”
“I bet they enjoyed that. No, you only showed enough to run my concentration right off the rails. It was more the total effect. The jeans were great, too. Have I told you what a pretty rear view you have?”
“No, poor thing. With you, it gets no attention.”
“I am pretty consistent,” he admitted. “I hope you know what this conversation is doing to me, even as we speak.”
“If it’s anything like what it’s doing to me, it’s going to be difficult to get out of here without someone suspecting I have a very hot date.”
“You do. How soon can I pick you up?”
“Um, as soon as the swelling goes down?”
“Well, yes, that’s a given. Say, seven-thirty? That gives you seventy-five minutes.”
“We’re going to dinner, right?” she asked. “Just checking.”
“Dinner,” he promised. “And now that negotiations are over, after the champagne, I really, really, want you for dessert.”
It took ten minutes of steady concentration before Mitch could turn off the sensual images blending into one another in his head, and reduce his hard-on to manageable proportions. He had to call Nelson and tell him the good news, and he simply couldn’t do that when Eve filled his mind and affected his body in such an unbusinesslike fashion.
All he wanted to do was think about her and what was to come this evening. And he would-after he called in to report.
Mitch walked back into the bathroom and took his shower, with the water a little cooler than usual. Once he was shaved and dressed, he picked up his cell and hit Autodial.
Nelson Berg answered on the first ring.
“It’s Mitch.”
“Just how long do you plan to spend down there enjoying Southern hospitality?” Nelson barked. “You got some kind of Scarlett O’Hara complex says you’ll think about doing the deal tomorrow, or what? Let me tell you, tomorrow never-”
“The deal’s done, Nelson.”
That stopped him. For all of two seconds.
“When did this happen?”
“Just now. Consider your deadline met. It’s done for all intents and purposes, anyway. Eve Best called me to say she’d reached an agreement in principle with her staff, and then I called you.”
“Did she, now? How about that.”
Mitch’s forehead creased. “You sound surprised. Didn’t you think I could pull it off?”
“Oh, I knew you’d give it everything you had. It was that or the job postings on Craigslist.”
“Your confidence humbles me, Nelson.”
“It keeps you young bucks on your toes. So how soon will they be coming over? I’ve got a lot of logistics to handle once the process starts.”
“We have to iron that out, but I can’t see it going longer than six months. We may not make the November sweeps, but we’ll definitely get May.”