brothers. No one except Anne fought with her now.
“Look, I’m not asking that man to sleep with me.”
“Fine. But call him. It can’t hurt to tell him your story, see if he has any advice.”
Karyn swayed. Sure, she’d considered calling before. The only thing that had stopped her was an absolute certainty that it wouldn’t do any good.
Crossing the room, Anne laid a hand on her shoulder. “You’ve tried everything else. What do you have to lose?”
She gave up with an exasperated groan. “What am I supposed to say to him? Hi, my name is Karyn and I’m a victim of rape?”
“Well, that depends on what you’re looking for. I’d suggest you start with the fact you haven’t had sex in five years and go from there.”
Plopping down onto her sofa, Karyn dialed the number for Dr. Desire’s hot line, 1-800-4DESIRE and cringed. It sounded a little too close to a phone-sex line for her peace of mind. But if this would get Anne off her back for a while it’d be worth any discomfort. She’d call, tell him her problem and just see if he had any suggestions.
What she wouldn’t do was ask him for sex.
Her heartbeat quickened as the line connected and rang. The bundle of nerves in the pit of her stomach seemed to tighten and churn as she explained to the show’s producer why she was calling.
After being placed on hold, Karyn breathed deeply in a vain attempt to dispel the emotions jittering through her. She’d explain her situation—leaving out most of the details—and then when he couldn’t offer her anything constructive would hang up and forget she’d ever dialed the number.
She felt better, until she looked up into her friend’s expectant eyes.
“I still think you should ask him for sex. I’m telling you, that man knows his way around a woman’s body. The only thing you’d be thinking with him touching you is more, more, more.”
The breathless way Anne moaned the words was not helping. “I am not going—”
“You’re on the air with Dr. Desire. Let’s find the spark in your relationship.”
Karyn’s eyes flew wide as she leaped to her feet, standing uselessly in the center of her living room. His voice slid down her spine, not from her strategically placed speakers, but from the phone pressed tightly to her ear. Her hand flexed around the curved plastic in a bid to hold on to something tight. She certainly didn’t have hold of her sanity at the moment.
A vision of Dr. Desire, a carbon copy of the billboard she passed at least twice a day, jumped easily to her mind.
With a wide, white smile and rumpled, dark brown hair that always looked as if some woman had just run her fingers through it, the man was gorgeous. No red-blooded, breathing woman could argue that. But it wasn’t just his rugged jaw or kissable lips that held her attention. Something deep inside those smoldering blue-gray eyes made her insides clench and melt whenever she drove past.
Even now, just the memory of that picture had her body heating. Heating more than it had for any flesh-and-blood man in the past five years.
“Now, don’t be shy. I won’t bite. Unless you want me to.”
Karyn heard his laugh. Like his voice, it was deep and sexy and somehow soothing. She relaxed the muscles that had bunched at her back and sank blindly onto the sofa.
Her mouth opened and words tumbled out before she could stop them.
“I need you to sleep with me.”
CHRISTOPHER FAULKNER nearly fell off his chair. He did bobble the microphone in front of him.
Considering the timid way this woman had started her phone call, that last statement had been a shocker.
Jerking up, he mouthed, “What the hell,” to Michael, his forty-two-year-old producer. The man supposedly screening his calls just shrugged and went back to playing with switches.
Chris fought down the urge to strangle him. He’d wrangled with that sensation often over their five-year friendship. There was something about the other man’s laid-back attitude that tended to grate against his nerves. Especially during the past few months.
Michael knew he didn’t like to deal with this sort of thing on air. Hell, he could barely walk out his door without being accosted by some primped-up prima donna looking for him to rock her world. All they ever really wanted was an instant catapult to notoriety. Or money.
The novelty of fame had long since lost its shine. He really enjoyed helping people, but could have done without some of the headaches that went with the job.
Pasting a smile on his face—because the listeners really could hear when it wasn’t there—he put every ounce of experience he’d gained over the past five years into handling the thorny situation Michael had dropped in his lap.
At least he’d learned something on his journey from ordinary nighttime DJ to megastar.
“Well, gee, I’m flattered.” He forced out a laugh that fell as flat as the lie he’d just told. He was nowhere close to being flattered. In fact, he was much closer to annoyed.
“That’s not…I didn’t mean…Let me explain.”
The young woman’s voice floated into his ears through the headphones he wore. He heard desperation, which scared him, but also something underneath that caught his attention. Something sweet with a tinge of the same uneasiness he was trying to ignore. In a strange way it stirred a connection, a sense of kinship with the woman on the other end.
“I know this must sound crazy to you and, frankly, I wouldn’t blame you if you cut me off, but please just hear me out. Honestly, I didn’t mean what I said before. Really.”
Her admission took a bit of the edge off. Barely.
She paused, sucking in air. The broken sound reverberated through his brain. When she started again her voice trembled and he wondered what had made her take this step. Whatever she was trying to say, it was obviously difficult.
“My name is Katy.” Her voice faltered and drifted away for a moment before beginning again. “This is hard for me to talk about.”
“Well, I can’t say I’ll sleep with you, Katy.” He forced out another laugh, but even he could hear the brittle edge. “But I’d like to help. Tell me what’s going on.”
“About five years ago I was date raped. I knew the guy. Not very well, but enough to think I’d be safe with him. I wasn’t.”
A tight knot dropped into his stomach, punching straight through to his toes.
How had this girl gotten through? She’d already hit two of the auto-dump buttons—propositioning him and having a serious sexual issue, one that required professional help. He was no professional.
His unfinished business-management degree didn’t really qualify him to deal with severe sexual hang-ups. And if, in the silence of his own mind, he’d thought once or twice
