She could handle a few measly hecklers. Besides, they provided good publicity, even if they did give her headaches. Tiger, tiger, she repeated under her breath, smiling brightly as she watched one of the TV guys shift for a different view. But when he moved to the side, her eyes were drawn to the man behind him, someone who had been hidden until now.
Hold on. Who was he? He didn’t fit the profile of either the wannabe wolf or the macho man. Chewing her lip, she ticked off the important details, trying to get a handle on Mr. Way Cute. Sitting by himself, dark hair, piercing gaze, very good-looking, cool and removed, carrying a small notebook flipped open to the first page….
Reporter, she decided. If there was such a thing as a really hot reporter who looked like George Clooney’s younger brother. Did reporters come like that? She’d been interviewed quite a few times, but never by anyone who looked like this one.
The mystery man paid no attention to the bookstore manager, who was still up at the podium, droning on through that endless introduction. Instead, he stared right through her. His gaze was frank, speculative, insolent, raking over her, judging her. He sat back in his chair, putting his pen aside. The challenge was palpable, crackling in the air between them. I don’t think you’re so special. You’re going to have to prove it, baby. Every word.
She swallowed. Okay, well, if he was going to be that way, she would just have to turn up her sex appeal another notch, past “ensnare” and right up to “torture.” She could do that. Right?
She looked at him. He looked at her. He narrowed that sharp gaze. And suddenly she felt a lot less like a tiger and a lot more like a hyena.
Breaking first, Stevie scooted to the side and sent a frantic glance Anna’s way, signaling that she needed help. Anna was excellent when it came to picking up on the “panic” vibe, and she rushed over, bending in. “What?” she whispered.
“Back row,” Stevie murmured. “Reporter. Who is he?”
“Oh.” Anna relaxed. “Owen Dasher, a columnist from the Chicago Chronicle. It’s the third-rated paper in town. But he’s a real up-and-comer.”
“I sense a certain…” She licked her lip. “Hostility.”
Anna spared him a quick glance. “I don’t think he looks hostile.”
“Very Cary Grant in Notorious. He needs Ingrid Bergman to sleep with Claude Rains as part of this spy thing, but then when she does, well, he thinks she’s a ’ho. Very hostile.”
Anna was steeled and ready to jump before Stevie got to the end of her thought. “What have I told you about the old movie thing? I know it’s a habit, but it’s not sexy. It makes you sound more like a geek on the trivia bowl team.”
They’d been through this a million times. Could she help it if she had once been a geek on the high school trivia bowl team? And she adored old movies. The flickering black-and-white images on the classic film channels had everything the real world did not.
Still, she knew Anna was right. Old movies might fit Stephanie Blanton, but not Stevie Bliss. And a hefty percentage of their target demographic hadn’t seen anything made before Titanic.
“Okay, okay. Nix on the movies. Back to the reporter.” She ventured a glance his direction. Cary Grant? Ha! Okay, so he had the dark hair, a penetrating gaze, a classic jawline, even a certain elegance in the way he held himself. But he was no Cary Grant. She was sure of that. Quickly skipping back to Anna, she asked, “What do you think he wants?”
“A column, obviously,” Anna said impatiently. “Maybe if you really make an impression, he’ll do more than one. I told you about him. The Tribune and the Sun-Times dissed us, but the Chronicle sent him. I looked up some of his columns, just to check him out. He’s good. Seems to champion causes a lot, although he does some satirical stuff, too. Not exactly who I’d pick to write about you, but he has a following. He may have an agenda, I don’t know. And I don’t really care.” She smiled. “I have no doubt you can turn him around.”
“Right.” Owen Dasher of the Chronicle, huh? She frowned.
“Don’t frown. And quit chewing off your lipstick. Smile,” Anna ordered. “Look happy and in charge.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Stevie? Uh, Ms. Bliss?”
She glanced over at the bookstore manager, who was speaking in a stage whisper and beckoning with one hand. “Yes?”
“I’m done with my… I mean, you’re on. Now.”
“Oh.” Damn it, anyway. All caught up in the irritating man in the back row, she’d missed her cue. And now she felt flustered and off balance. You’re a tiger and they’re hyenas, she reminded herself quickly as she swept up to the podium, facing down her audience. She focused on a smiling young woman in the front row, exactly the right age and attitude to be receptive.
But it was that damn man in the back row she was thinking about. She was going to have to be at the top of her game to sell her message with him staring at her.
You’re Stevie Bliss, she told herself. You can do it.
Deliberately, she swung her head around, she found him in the crowd, and she began to speak right to him.
“Definitely single,” she purred. “And totally satisfied. Let me tell you all about it.”
OWEN DASHER felt himself fall neatly into the palm of her hot little hand.
And how exactly had she done that? He’d come prepared to be unimpressed. Bored, cynical, a little annoyed his editor had made him do this, he’d sat there as the crowd filled in, making a quick first draft of the column he intended to write.
Yet another attempt to hijack women’s brains and send them to Never Never Land, he scribbled into his notebook. Stevie Bliss—who is as fake as her Power-puff name—takes up where the Spice Girls and Ally McBeal thankfully left off….
He smiled. An excellent turn of phrase. That one just might make the final cut and end up in his column.
He might’ve thought he was being unfair, but he couldn’t miss the fact that there were other people here who didn’t care for her, either, what with the guy standing behind him who kept muttering, “Crazy broad,” and the ladies clustered around the baby carriage on the other side, all prim and proper in their disapproval. Good. He was looking forward to some fireworks.
And then she was late. As the bookstore got fuller and fuller, Owen grew more annoyed. It didn’t help that he didn’t want to be there in the first place, pretending he cared about the Blissfully Single crowd. He’d read the book. He knew how slick, shallow and maybe even dangerous her message was.
All that stuff about women who refused to get married and used men as sex objects struck him as pretty ridiculous. He’d had plenty of one-nighters in his twenty-nine years on the planet, and he’d learned from hard experience that being involved with someone purely for the sex always turned out ugly. He didn’t think there had to be love involved, necessarily, but he didn’t think you should be sleeping with someone if you couldn’t bear to wake up with them, either. Okay, so he was opinionated. He was a columnist. It came with the territory.
As he’d waited, he’d mused on why she came up with this stuff. What had made Stevie Bliss so cynical
