LITMIR.BIZ

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He just always looks so…slick. You know?”

      “I know,” Tess said gloomily as she sank back into her chair.

      “Listen, I appreciate this, I really do,” Gina said, her words tumbling out in a nervous rush, “but I can’t go to this thing with you. I’d die, I really would.”

      “No, you won’t. I’ll be with you. Besides, you need this. You want a husband, you’re going to get one. This place will be crawling with rich guys. One of them might be nice. If nothing else, you’ll get a whole weekend of free food.”

      “I don’t need food that much.”

      “Besides, it’s just Park,” Tess said. “He has the brains of a kumquat. You’ll do fine.”

      “I don’t know,” Gina said.

      “I’ll give his secretary your number,” Tess said. “This is going to be great for you.”

      “Gee, thanks,” Gina said. “I don’t know about this, Tess.”

      “Trust me,” Tess said. “This is going to be the best thing that ever happened to you.”

      Three

      For the next two days Tess tutored at the Foundation, researched the backgrounds and interests of everyone on the board of the Decker Academy and tried to forget Nick and the upcoming weekend. Forgetting Nick was not easy. She reminded herself that he had patted Gina on the head and made her nervous enough to chew gum. But then she reminded herself that he’d rushed Angela to the vet when she’d been hit by a car even though she’d scratched him and bled all over his leather jacket and he’d never said a word to her in reproach. And then she remembered that he had the greatest arms she’d ever seen on a man. And then her mind wandered and she was in trouble again. In fact, her mind wandered a lot, and it always wandered to Nick, and her thoughts were always eventually more than warm no matter how she tried to talk herself out of them, and they often led to her lying curled in the fetal position on her couch contemplating hotly inappropriate acts in excitingly inappropriate places with a consenting conservative lawyer.

      By Thursday, she was regretting she’d ever met him and counting the hours until she saw him again.

      NICK WOULD HAVE understood perfectly.

      “This may have been a mistake,” he told Christine Thursday morning when she brought the mail into his office and dropped it on his massive ebony desk.

      “Probably,” Christine agreed. “Park left a message. He has a date for tomorrow night with someone who can read. He said to tell you thank-you.”

      “What do you mean ‘probably’?” Nick demanded, tipping his leather desk chair back so he could meet her eyes. “You don’t even know what I’m talking about.”

      “You’re not sure about Tess,” Christine said.

      “How’d you know that?” Nick narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “You know, sometimes you’re a little creepy, Christine.”

      “I live to serve,” she said.

      Nick stared at her for a moment, biting his lip, tapping his pen on the desktop. “It’s not just her mouth,” he said finally. “It’s her clothes. She’s completely capable of wrapping herself in a thrift-store tablecloth and calling it a Victorian sarong.”

      Christine waited, staring into space as if mentally doing her nails.

      “Christine…” Nick began, smiling at her with all the charm in his possession.

      Christine buffed another mental cuticle.

      “Yo, Christine,” Nick said, snapping his fingers.

      “I’m here,” Christine said. “Waiting for orders. Any orders.”

      “You know, Christine,” Nick said, “the life of a secretary is a…varied one.”

      “What do you want me to do?” Christine said flatly.

      Nick gave up on the charm. “I know this isn’t in your job description, but go get Tess a dress and have it delivered to her. Then take the rest of the afternoon off so I don’t feel guilty about making you shop instead of type. I’m not going to get a damn thing done until this party is over, anyway.”

      Christine stood patiently. “Where, what size, what color?”

      Nick took a card out of his desk and began to write. “I don’t care where. I don’t know what size. Black. Conservative.” He finished writing and handed her the card. “Put that with it.”

      Christine read the card. “I need to know the size.”

      Nick frowned. “Sort of medium.”

      Christine looked at him with contempt, which Nick saw as a move in the right direction, given Christine’s general detachment from human interaction.

      “How tall is she?” Christine asked.

      “Oh…about here,” Nick said, slicing his hand at chin level.

      “About five eight,” Christine guessed. “How much does she weigh?”

      “I don’t know,” Nick said. “She’s not fat, but she’s upholstered. You know, soft not bony.” He looked confused. “She’s medium.”

      “Breasts?” Christine asked.

      “Yes.”

      “No, how big are they?”

      Nick frowned up at her, trying not to think about Tess’s breasts. He had two whole days to get through, and he was distracted enough already. “They’re, uh, sort of more than medium, I guess. Do we have to talk about this?”

      “She’s a ten, a twelve or a fourteen.”

      “Split the difference—go for the twelve.”

      “Fine,” Christine said, and drifted toward the door, the card in her hand.

      “Hey,” Nick said. “Would you like some money to pay for this?”

      “No,” Christine said at the door. “I’ll put it on your Visa.”

      Nick blinked. “Can you do that?”

      Christine smiled at him serenely and left.

      “Hey, Christine,” Nick called after her. “If you ever turn to a life of crime, remember I was good to you. Christine?”

      Nothing but silence answered him, so he returned to the problem at hand. How much of a liability was Tess going to be at this party? The more he thought about it, the more depressed he got. Asking Tess had been dumb, and sticking her in an expensive black dress was not going to help things much. Not unless he got her an expensive black gag to go with it. This is what happens when you let your emotions take over, he railed at himself. Just because he wanted to see her again—only all of her this time—he’d asked her to a career-making weekend. The career comes first, he reminded himself. Don’t forget that again.

      Then he went back to worrying.

      LATER THAT AFTERNOON, the glitziest department store in town delivered a package to Tess.

      The underfed messenger pumped his Adam’s apple nervously as he stood in the hall outside her apartment. “Jeez, lady,” he said. “You really live here?”

      “Don’t be a wimp,” Tess told him, but she tipped him more than she could afford anyway, resisting the impulse to offer him food instead. Then she took the box into the apartment and opened it.

      Nick had sent her a black crepe dress. It came below her knee and laced at the sides with black crepe laces that blended so well with the fabric that they were practically invisible. The dress was beautifully if conservatively cut, and Tess hated it on sight. When she tried it on, she hated it even more. It fit perfectly when the laces

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