her breast.
Oh, great. She felt her face heating up and she squirmed on the leather seat.
"What's the matter?" he asked.
"Nothing." She'd be in hell before she gave away that she was any more affected by what had happened than Carlo "Kiss Me Then Forget Me" Milano. Still, she couldn't help herself from frowning at him. "I could handle this meeting by myself."
"I don't mind coming along."
Well, she minded. He'd given her the job and he should have left her alone to handle it. He probably regretted the assignment. He probably thought she was incompetent, which wouldn't surprise her since the rest of her family did, too.
She yanked on the hem of her suit skirt and ironed out imaginary wrinkles with the flat of her hand. Maybe that was why he'd backed away from her so quickly at the party the other night. He thought she was incompetent when it came to kissing, too.
Hah. She'd prove him wrong. She'd show him she could handle her Street Beat duties just fine.
And she was never going to kiss him again.
With those resolves in mind, she strode into the concert promoter's offices with her best all-business attitude, then halted in the reception area to stare around her as if she was a little kid.
While Carlo's company's offices were dominated by those picture-postcard views of the bay, this office was dominated by...colors. Sounds.
Each curved wall delineating the receptionist's space was painted a different shade: cinnamon, goldenrod, turquoise. There was an emerald-green sisal carpet covering most of the blond hardwood floor. The plush chairs were upholstered in fabric that was in a bright Mexican design. On each wall was a flat screen playing music videos, each one at a volume just loud enough to create a cacophony that had Carlo wincing.
Lucy could only think of the three places she used to work. By some coincidence, in each of them the walls had been painted the same pale cadaver-green of graph paper. By far the most colorful ornamentation in any of the places had to be the freebie calendars the insurance company's national office had distributed each holiday season. Yep, that eleven-by-eleven-inch photograph of the Citizen's Insurance float at the Rose Bowl Parade had provided a much-needed visual punch.
However, there were many, many more ocular knockouts at the concert promoter's office, only one of which was the receptionist. She wore chartreuse leggings under a floating skirt and a matching blouse, and when she looked up from the phones that were set on a clear Lucite desktop there was a tiny sapphire stud in her nose and the two piercings below her left eyebrow showed off matching jewelry.
"May I - " she started, but then Claudia strode around a corner.
Today, the older woman was dressed in another eye-catching outfit. No animal print this time, but a canary-yellow pants outfit accented with print scarf in Picasso colors.
Carlo pushed Lucy forward with a gentle hand at the small of her back. "You remember Lucy."
As they briefly shook hands, Claudia's eyes ran over her, making Lucy feel dowdy in her gray pinstripes, even though she knew her mother had spent a hefty chunk for it as her post-college graduation "interview" suit. Her palms dampened and she rubbed them together. Great, already her confidence was eroding.
As Claudia gestured them down a hallway painted in more vibrant shades, she slanted Lucy another glance. "Who did you last work for, a mortician?"
A startled laugh escaped Lucy's mouth and she tried hard to swallow it back down, even as she felt her cheeks burn. "As a matter of fact, my older brother once set me up with a job interview at a mortuary." The mortician, thank God, hadn't found her right for the job. "But most places dress a little more corporate than here."
Still, she was beginning to wonder if her family didn't have a point. Maybe Lucy wasn't right for anything.
It made her steps heavy as she followed Claudia's subtle wave of Chanel No. 5 down the hall. With Carlo at her back, Lucy took a quick peek into an office where a young man in dreadlocks was chattering away on a headset. In another, a woman in jeans and a baby tee was shaking her shoulders to something she was listening to through bagel-size headphones.
Claudia glanced over shoulder. "My brother wanted me to be his medical transcriptionist," she said. "And my first husband wanted me to be a double-D cup."
As Lucy digested these interesting tidbits, the older woman paused by an alcove that