Indecent Suggestion - By Elizabeth Bevarly Page 0,24
he thought. What a racket. By day’s end yesterday, he and Becca had both succumbed to their need to smoke, a half-dozen times at least. Whatever the Amazing Dorcaso had said to them while they were under, it hadn’t worked worth a damn. Not that he was surprised. Yeah, looked like it was going to be an early, stinky grave for the two of them, after all.
“We just need a catchier slogan,” she was saying now from her seat behind her desk.
Her cubicle, like his, was a perfect square, eight feet by eight feet, which was by no means large, but was larger than most of the Englund Advertising employees had. That was because Turner and Becca were next in line for promotion to account managers, something that would net them an honest-to-God office. Interior, without windows, at first, but eventually, if enough of their colleagues quit or retired—or, you know, died—they’d have the breathtaking view of the Indianapolis skyline visible from the best offices and the boardroom.
In the meantime, Becca, at least, had created her own view for her cubicle. Among the requisite calendar and phone list attached to the beige fabric walls, she’d tacked up pages pulled from magazines of print ads that the two of them had worked on together. There were glossy shots of everything from a local microbrewery and its assorted ales, to a local vineyard and its assorted wines, to a local five-star restaurant, to an exclusive condominium high-rise recently added to that breathtaking view of the Indianapolis skyline. Only in the past couple of years had Englund Advertising expanded into markets beyond Indianapolis, but in that short time, they’d won a number of high-visibility national accounts. Turner and Becca, however, had continued to work with local clients.
Until now.
Bluestocking Lingerie would be Englund Advertising’s biggest client yet, if—no, when, Turner immediately corrected himself—they landed it, since the underwear company was fast becoming synonymous with expensive, expertly fashioned, very sexy female underthings. It was Turner and Becca’s job to create a campaign that would turn that fast becoming into a fait accompli. If they had their way, any woman worth her weight in Belgian lace would want to own Bluestocking products, and every woman would know to head to a Bluestocking boutique when it came to shopping for her wedding night. Or any other night when an enormous amount of gratuitous, unbridled sex was on the agenda.
Because most of the pieces Bluestocking had sent over to Englund Advertising for Turner and Becca to inspect weren’t exactly the sort of thing a woman would wear for comfort and-or function. Even Turner could see that. When Becca had dumped the box of lingerie onto her desk, there had been things in the lacy, silky—and in a few instances, leather-studded—mélange that Turner had never seen before. And he’d always considered himself a connoisseur of what women wore under their clothes, so that was saying something.
Inescapably, though, as he’d picked through the assortment of barely there attire, he had found himself wondering if Becca owned any of Bluestocking’s products herself, and if so, which ones? At the moment, however, he was trying very hard not to wonder about that. Unfortunately, it was with dubious success.
He had wheeled his own chair into her cubicle for the after-hours conference, and now sat wedged between the cubicle’s wall and the side of her desk, his khaki-covered legs propped negligently on its surface as he leaned back. He loosened his psychedelically colored Jerry Garcia necktie and rolled the sleeves of his white oxford shirt up to his elbows, not so much because he wanted to get down to work, but because it was a little stuffy in the tiny space.
Becca seemed restless, too, because she leaned impatiently back in her chair, then reached up to undo her tortoiseshell barrette. She scrubbed her hands absently through her hair, then gathered it together again in a tidier ponytail than before and clipped it back into place.
Turner watched her with veiled interest, noting the way her breasts surged against the creamy fabric of her blouse as she completed the task, and how that blouse gaped open just enough for him to glimpse the champagne-colored lace of her bra beneath. He bit back a groan and forced himself to glance away. But that left him looking at the slender length of leg encased in smoky black silk that extended from the hem of a brief black skirt.
At least she’d kicked off her spiky high heels, he tried