An Offer He Cant Refuse - By Christie Ridgway Page 0,13
was made for the simple, clean lines of mid-century modern. But now, instead of Eames sofas and sunburst clocks, she'd have...
"Maybe a beanbag sofa in an Andy Warhol-inspired fabric," she mentioned aloud, trying to picture red-and-white can after red-and-white can of Campbell's soup without cringing. It made her squirm instead, setting her slime-stained dress to sliding against the slime-covered rock again.
"What's that?" a voice prompted.
"Bean bag furniture. Maybe a Twister-inspired area rug. What do you think of a lava lamp or two?"
"Personally? I'm not inspired by any of them, except, perhaps, the interesting possibilities of that Twister area rug."
The voice to her left was deeper now, sexier, more like it had sounded on the phone. Wait - the voice to her left? The man she sat beside was on her right. Her eyes popped open.
And there he was, another man, a different man, standing to her slight left, one polished loafer propped on the rock beside her. A man approaching his mid-thirties. With broad shoulders, lean hips, and dark blond hair, he was an adult version of the public high school boys who had forever fascinated her as a parochial prep school teenager.
Speechless, she let her gaze wander over him. His navy blue slacks had a knife-edge pleat and his sports jacket was a tiny blue-and-white check. Beneath it he wore an open-collared shirt in goldenrod that matched his impeccably cut hair. His eyes were sea-blue.
A natural athlete, he would have headed the varsity squad, Tea thought. She could tell, because he had the same look of every boy that Eve had dated, every boy that Joey had palled around with, every boy that Tea had lusted for from the safe distance of a party-size bag of potato chips.
His eyes narrowed when he looked amused and now they cut from her face to the man seated beside her. "Were you planning on bringing me my designer anytime soon, Cal?"
Cal. She'd been wrong. The glasses guy was Cal. And this... this... All-American god of a man was - had to be - Johnny Magee.
His designer, he'd said. His. The word danced down her spine, and if she didn't know full well that scary men came dark-haired, dark-eyed, and Italian, then she would consider him dangerous.
His focus switched back as his hand extended toward her. "Tea Caruso?" He smiled.
Okay. Here she is, and more beautiful than I bargained for.
The voice in her head and the outstretched hand had her rising from her seat without thinking, her palm shooting out as quickly as the goose bumps that his white smile sent speeding along her skin. The computer on her lap slipped, and Cal grabbed for it, Johnny grabbed for it, and probably she would have grabbed for it too, except that she recalled the stain on her dress and instead made a hasty drop back to the rocks.
But she'd forgotten the slimy moss. Her thighs slid, her feet found no purchase on the slick grass, and in her belated efforts to save the computer, she tumbled into the murky pond behind her with an ugly, undignified, bad-first-impression big splash.
The laptop suffered mere drops.
Her ego suffered much worse.
Not that she hadn't experienced a similar sort of humiliation - self-sabotage? - before. At fifteen, she'd been delegated family photographer when basketball star Rick Richardson had invited her younger sister Eve to the big public high school's senior prom. Trying to appear invisible behind the tiny Kodak camera, Tea had backed farther away from the posing couple and then farther, and then backed right into the sofa... and over it.
Rick Richardson hadn't known what to do.
Johnny Magee did. Though when her handsome varsity captain of a client hauled her out of the shallow depths - she, whose only captain had heretofore been Captain Crunch - Tea found herself as tongue-tied and knock-kneed as only an overweight teen in a twenty-eight-year-old, dripping-wet body could be.
"I... well... uh... perhaps we should do this another..." Hyperaware of her sodden skirt and her soggy hair, she ran out of words. Then, because she still had all the savoir faire of fifteen, she mumbled an apology, grabbed her purse, and fled.
Chapter Five
"What'll I Do" Julie London Lonely Girl (1956)
Johnny followed the designer home. He didn't have much choice, not after promising himself that today he'd make progress on his plan. Once he'd pulled her from the water, she'd hightailed it for her car, leaving behind her briefcase and a portfolio. He wanted to return them to her.