“OH, GOD, Dan!” Jessica pulled her hand away and buried her head in her pillow. She’d been so loud, she’d probably wakened him, and that would be a disaster. She shivered as an after-thrill took her, then squeezed her legs tight as she tried to slow her breathing.

The door was thick, he probably hadn’t heard. Or thought it was the TV. Or something. She couldn’t worry about it, not when it was so late and she had to get up so early.

She fluffed her pillow, straightened the blankets and closed her eyes. And immediately pictured Dan. Naked.

This wasn’t good. This wasn’t good at all. She reached over and grabbed the remote, turning the TV onto a late-night black-and-white movie. She turned down the sound so it was just loud enough that she’d have to struggle to make out the words. That should do it. She hoped.

MARLA LOOKED at the clock on her bedside table. It was almost four, and she wasn’t the least bit sleepy. She couldn’t stop thinking about the night. About Shawn.

Oh, God, he’d talked to her so much! Every time he wasn’t having his picture taken or doing some other work stuff, he’d come right back to her and just picked up the conversation as if it had never been interrupted.

It was simply too much. How she’d lived through it without doing something fatal was beyond her wildest imaginings. Shawn Foote. He’d laughed at her jokes, and most people didn’t because her humor was, well, different, but he’d gotten her jokes, and it turned out his humor was also odd, and even though they were different odds, they still kind of matched, which was…Better than anything.

They’d talked about his work, and how he wasn’t crazy about being a model, but they paid him so much money that he couldn’t turn it down, but now that he’d invested a good portion of it, he was going back to school to study animal husbandry because what he really wanted was to have a big ranch in Montana with lots of horses and great fishing. And he wanted to have a whole bunch of cabins on his property so he could invite all his writer and artist friends to come and visit and stay as long as they wanted, which was the most wonderful thing she’d ever heard.

He’d asked all about her, too, and she’d told him about college and how cool it was to work with Jessica, and that she wasn’t quite sure she wanted to stay in marketing, but she felt as if she had time to figure it out.

While she stood talking with him, a billion movie stars came to talk, and Shawn introduced her to each one as if she were the celebrity, which kind of made her nervous, but then it didn’t because he was so relaxed about the whole thing. She’d met Drew Barrymore, Josh Hartnett, Hugh Grant, Gwyneth Paltrow and so many more, they blurred in her mind. All of them were so good-looking it made her feel lumpish, except Shawn was by far the best-looking guy there. She could tell that people were wondering what he was doing sticking by her all night, but she didn’t care. Nothing could have been better than her night, not one thing.

Except perhaps the last few minutes, when Shawn had held her hand and had smiled that incredible smile that gave him dimples to die for, and this one lock of hair had been over his eye, and he’d said he had a really good time and he was glad the job wasn’t over.

With the memory shimmering in her mind, she turned over, punched her pillow and started all over again from the beginning.

DATING TIPS FOR MEN

There are lots of ways to ruin a date. Here are a few things NOT to say on a date…

1. I really don’t like this restaurant that much, but I wanted to use this two-for-one coupon before it expired.

2. I used to come here all the time with my ex.

3. Would you excuse me? My cat gets lonely if he doesn’t hear my voice on the answering machine every hour.

4. I really feel that I’ve grown in the past few years. Used to be I wouldn’t have given someone like you a second look.

Source: Thompson, Dave “Things Not to Say on Your Valentine’s Date”

http://www.ijmc.com/

JESSICA WOKE to the annoyance of the alarm after what felt like ten minutes of sleep. She’d had a dreadful night, filled with sexual dreams, all of them starring Dan Crawford. Today was going to be relatively calm, and she felt sure he was going to start questioning her in earnest, which made her downright nervous. She was already too intimate with him, and answering him truthfully was going to be tricky. Maybe he wouldn’t ask her anything that would betray her feelings toward him. Although, aside from wanting to sleep with him, she wasn’t sure at all what those feelings were.

It shouldn’t matter. She’d set her course and nothing was going to make her stray, not even a man as fascinating as Dan.

As she gathered her clothes, she thought about Carrie Elward, her roommate in college. Carrie had been a brilliant girl, top of her class. At graduation she’d already accepted a top-paying position at IBM, having had to choose among a host of equally enticing offers. That first year, she’d distinguished herself, saving the company several million dollars with a new program she’d developed, and her future seemed paved with gold. Then she’d met Alex, a stunning charmer from Canada who ran a small but successful dotcom. Within six months, Carrie had lost her luster, and at the end of the year she’d quit IBM to help Alex run his company. The bottom had fallen out shortly thereafter, and Carrie had been reduced to taking a position at American Standard for half the pay.

It was a lesson Jessica took to heart. Not that it was fair. Men didn’t seem to have the same difficulty mixing love and career. But no one had said life was fair. If she wanted to have the kind of security and power she dreamt of, there was no way she could get herself involved in a serious relationship. Later. All that was going to come, just not for a few years. Once she had a vice presidency, she’d be open to more, but until then, she’d be a fool to let her emotions ruin her future.

Maybe, if she was lucky, Dan would still be available, although that was a long shot. She was amazed he wasn’t already married. But, he’d said he hadn’t had much luck with women. She couldn’t see it, unless he was sabotaging himself in some way. That was an all-too-common problem, easy to see in others, invisible to the one most affected.

It did feel weird helping a man she found so attractive gain the skills necessary to find another woman. But she’d promised, and she was a woman of her word.

She had all her things together and she left the safety of her bedroom to head for the shower. Her gaze went immediately to the table by the wet bar. Dan was dressed handsomely in a gray oxford shirt with casual jeans. Her blush spoke as much for her troubled sleep as it did for her immediate and powerful reaction to seeing him. The man was a walking pheromone.

“I hope you like it,” he said.

She followed his gaze to the table, spread out with a large and abundant breakfast array. The plates were domed, so she couldn’t tell what he’d ordered, but she could see orange juice, coffee, toast and a syrup container. “What’s all this?”

“I figured we’d get a quiet meal in before we had to do the photo-shoot thing.”

She headed toward the table, touched at his thoughtfulness. “It looks great.”

“I wasn’t sure what you liked, so I got some of everything.”

She uncovered a plate of scrambled eggs, then another of pancakes. The scent reminded her of her hunger and she set her clothes on one of the chairs and sat in another. “This is very kind.”

“No sweat.” He sat opposite her and started to prepare his plate. Eggs Benedict, crisp bacon, hash browns. She took the scrambled eggs, sausage and the other half of the potatoes. For a while, they ate in silence, drank juice, prepared coffee. Then she noticed his silence, not of word but of gesture, and caught him looking at her with an expression she couldn’t quite name. “What?”