LITMIR.BIZ

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course, she was a woman and she could appreciate a good-looking man. This one had looks to spare. But as her eyes kept returning to him, she knew it was more than looks. There was such power in his masculinity, such magnetism in his self-confidence. It was damned unfair for a creature so breathtakingly male not to have the brains to go with the rest of the package. “What a shame,” she murmured as she forced herself to look away.

      “True,” Raul replied.

      Raul chuckled again, and Lacey wondered if he was up to something. She didn’t quite trust the humor in his eyes. “What?”

      “I’m thinking how fortunate it is,” he said with a Raulish smirk, “that beauty isn’t always wasted on the stupid.” He pointed to himself.

      Lacey laughed. Despite the arrogance and oozy charm, Raul was loyal, smart and a real friend. “Thanks for the tip, Raul.”

      “Logan’s response to the prepubescent boy remark was…”

      “I don’t want to know,” she said as she turned to leave. Hearing Raul’s chuckle behind her, she knew he’d get around to telling her sooner or later.

      As she walked toward the door, she did pause once to glance over her shoulder toward the bar. Though she told herself she was merely looking over the crowd, she still felt a pang of disappointment that the gorgeous blond hunk was no longer standing there. She looked around the room, but didn’t spot him anywhere. “Just as well,” she said with a sigh.

      Lacey managed to fend off conversational gambits from several people as she eased across the room toward the exit. Some didn’t try to talk to her, obviously seeing by the glint in her eye she was in no mood to chat. “Frigid virgin, indeed,” she muttered, remembering what Raul had told her before she’d been so thoroughly distracted by the blond man.

      She shouldn’t have been surprised by the latest insult. Ever since the first shot in this war had been fired, nearly a year ago, she and that brainless, oversexed Animal House reject Nate Logan had traded barely veiled insults on the pages of For Her Eyes Only and Men’s World every single month.

      As the featured love-and-relationships columnists for their respective magazines, they should have had a lot in common, particularly since both magazines were owned by the same publisher, J.T. Birmingham. But they obviously had about as much in common as dirt and ice cream.

      Nate Logan touted flirtation, sexual freedom, openness and exploration. He also liked to blame women for everything wrong with the male-female relationship. Lacey, on the other hand, knew darn right well it was usually the man who screwed things up on the romance front.

      She also favored true love, soul mates and sexual responsibility. Hadn’t her childhood, her entire life, been a never-ending lesson in that regard? With her mother’s past and her stepfather’s attitudes, Lacey had learned at a very young age that sexual mistakes could shatter lives. Heaven knew her stepfather had never let any of her family forget that lesson. She’d also decided—more out of a need for it to be true than anything else—that true love had to exist and was worth waiting for. She would settle for nothing else.

      “Having a nice time, Lacey?” someone asked as she finally made it to the foyer of the mansion.

      Seeing a colleague from work, Lacey forced a smile. “Yes. My favorite way to spend an evening.” Second only to having my bikini line waxed or my nails ripped out with hot pincers.

      “I hear you’re going to receive some kind of award tonight,” the woman continued.

      Ah, yes, the award. The reason everyone thought they were at this party. If that were the only reason for tonight’s gathering, Lacey would probably be able to relax and at least make a small effort to enjoy herself.

      “And Nate Logan is, too,” the woman continued, a note of maliciousness obvious in her tight smile.

      “So I hear,” Lacey muttered. She moved away, as if going to the powder room down the hall. If one more person stopped her and mentioned Nate Logan’s name, she might have to throw up.

      Lacey couldn’t recall how her war with the other journalist had started. Who had lobbed the first insult? All she knew was last year she’d heard J.T. had hired a new columnist to spice up Men’s World. Within three months, the magazine’s formerly health-conscious, “strong mind, strong body” image had changed. It now appealed to the man who would rather be reading Playboy but had to mollify his wife or girlfriend by picking up a health magazine. So the centerfolds were somewhat clothed and usually reclining on exercise equipment or the hoods of automobiles.

      She had to assume Nate’s column, which had gained instant popularity, was part of the reason circulation had skyrocketed.

      Seeing no one waiting outside the powder room, Lacey walked right past it, down a long corridor. When she heard voices in a nearby room, she ducked behind a piece of pricey statuary. Hearing the voices recede, she dashed by the doorway, trying to stay on her toes to avoid letting her heels click on the floor.

      “Hide and seek,” she whispered, knowing she was probably being juvenile and not really caring.

      It wasn’t just the aura of sex appeal on every page of Men’s World that bothered her. She also didn’t like Nate Logan’s smart-ass tone, his flirtatious, irreverent writing style. She certainly didn’t like his advice. But his readers obviously adored him. He’d even been given an unprecedented second column, “Nate’s Notes on the Nice and the Naughty.”

      “Notes from Nate the Nitwit,” she muttered sourly.

      She had to admit that she’d been somewhat amused by his observations. But when he’d started getting a little too obnoxious, she’d reacted. She was only human, after all. Since he seemed to delight in targeting her sex, well, what else could a fair-minded woman do but defend herself?

      Once, he wrote a column about the way women couldn’t keep secrets. His theory was that a woman didn’t make a single decision regarding career, life, love or sex without consulting her gaggle of girlfriends. He went on to use as an example the way women went to the ladies’ room together at restaurants. His assertion? They were flipping a coin to see which one would sleep with her date and which would come down with a headache.

      That, probably, was the first time Lacey had responded on the pages of For Her Eyes Only. She’d fired a mild shot about the way men felt it necessary to touch each others’ butts during athletic events.

      The battle had gone on from there. He’d claimed women’s so-called emotional loyalty to each other disappeared whenever three females were together, since as soon as one left the other two dissed her awful shoes, tight dress or bad hairdo. Lacey retorted that the buddy syndrome was the way men got close to other men’s girlfriends in order to hit on them.

      He said women sent mixed signals, demanding equality yet having a fit and refusing sex if a man didn’t always pick up the check for dinner. She said women wanted to be treated with respect, courtesy and graciousness, not like walking sex toys.

      He said women drove men out with their demands. She said men walked out wide-eyed when a good set of legs happened along. He said women were untrustworthy. She said men were dogs.

      He said. She said.

      On and on the Ferris wheel turned in their undeclared war between the sexes. Their readers followed along in amusement, driving up circulation, ad revenues and publicity.

      Lacey and Nate Logan had been invited to appear together on a nationally televised morning show. Lacey had refused, as always being careful to guard her privacy. She wouldn’t have gone anyway. Sharing a magazine rack with Nate Logan was bad enough. Sharing a TV stage would be impossible.

      If Lacey hadn’t been too excited about her sudden notoriety, J.T. and the other higher-ups had been absolutely thrilled. So here they were, about to be toasted, together, by the publisher of both magazines they worked for.

      “Unfair,” she muttered as she made a few turns, passing J.T.’s private office and his wife’s art studio.

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