She really shouldn’t be drinking the night before her grievance meeting with the owner of the radio station where she worked as a DJ—a job that had, until recently, made her rise with excitement every morning—but she needed something to dull the growing panic that tomorrow could be her last day of work there.
‘Lula, snap out of it. It’s going to be okay,’ her friend Emily muttered into her ear, clicking her fingers in front of her face and dragging her out of her agitated funk and into the here and now of the dimly lit Covent Garden pub, where they were celebrating a friend’s birthday.
Lula gave her a tight-lipped smile. ‘Easy for you to say; you didn’t make the catastrophic mistake of sleeping with your Station Manager and scuppering your chances at career advancement when you refused to be his regular sex-puppet.’
Emily tried to keep a straight face, but failed spectacularly. ‘I have to say, Lu, it wasn’t one of your best moves.’
She shot her friend a no kidding grimace.
‘Lord knows what possessed you to sleep with him,’ Emily added.
Lula nodded solemnly into her empty glass.
Jeremy—or Jez as he preferred to be called—was an overconfident, self-absorbed philanderer and the exact opposite of what she was looking for in a long-term partner.
‘It was after a very long, very dry patch and he caught me at a moment of weakness,’ she muttered, her face hot with the ignominy of how it had cast a dark shadow over their working relationship when she’d told him in no uncertain terms that there wasn’t going to be a repeat performance.
Jez was not the type of man you said no to.
And she’d paid the price for it.
After a few weeks of stilted and antagonistic interaction, he’d blithely informed her that he would no longer be moving her onto the Breakfast Show—even though he’d been promising to for months. And, just to rub salt in the wound, he was giving her Drivetime Show to Darla—one of the other female DJs at the station—who apparently had no qualms about regularly bumping uglies with him.
So now she was just supposed to float around the station, covering for other presenters when they needed time off from their shows.
A major step backwards on her career path.
‘At least the owner’s taking your complaint seriously,’ Emily said, sprawling back in her chair and licking a bit of lemon off the rim of her glass of vodka and tonic.
Lula put her head in her hands and stared down at the table. ‘I didn’t tell you the worst bit. I found out today that Jez’s daddy is best buddies with the owner. There’s no way he’ll take my side on this. Not when the Old Boy Network is in play.’ She rubbed her eyes and groaned, ‘Nepotism sucks.’
The corner of her friend’s mouth twitched up into a consoling smile. ‘It’ll be okay. You’re the best DJ that station has; they’re not about to let you walk—have some faith in yourself.’
‘Hmph.’
Emily leaned forward and slapped an encouraging hand onto Lula’s leg. ‘You know what you need to do right now? Give yourself a confidence boost so you can stride in there tomorrow with your head held high.’
Lula flashed her friend a pained look. ‘How am I meant to do that, exactly?’
‘You could start by engaging in some power-flirting with a crazy-hot sex god.’ Emily gave one of the trademark saucy winks that had earned her legions of fans on her popular Treasure Trail TV show.
Lula spluttered in mirth. ‘Do they even exist? ’Coz I’ve never met one.’
Emily crossed her arms and shook her head sadly. ‘You know, if you took some time out from your tireless quest to find this mythical “perfect man” and just indulged in a bit of fun—with someone other than your boss, that is—perhaps you’d get your mojo back?’ She cocked a chastising eyebrow, before turning away to answer a question one of the other birthday guests called across to her.
Lula snorted at the back of her friend’s head, but accepted that Emily had a point. She probably should give herself a break and stop worrying about finding The One, but it had been one disappointing relationship after another recently and she was beginning to panic that she was destined to be single for ever.
Hence the foolish move of sleeping with her boss.
She’d just celebrated her thirty-first birthday—which both of her parents had managed to forget about this year—and Jez had been so attentive, so seemingly sympathetic, that she’d found herself succumbing to his determined advances.
And look what had happened.
She was never making that mistake again. Sleeping with colleagues was a fool’s game. It only ever ended in tears and awkwardness. And possibly unemployment.
If only she didn’t find it so nerve-racking talking to men she found attractive. It was much easier to connect with people when she was behind her microphone. If a conversation was going badly on-air and she was floundering, she could cut them off by playing a song or going to an ad break—snatching some time to pull herself together—and nobody was any the wiser. She’d also got into the habit of pre-recording interviews so she could edit them later and pushing her listeners to send a text or tweet to the show, instead of calling in.
Recently it had seemed as though her show on Flash FM was the only place she had a modicum of control. Out in the real world her deep-seated shyness, stemming from way back in her youth, often made her blurt out stupid things or induced one of her humiliating brain freezes and her mortification would show clearly on her face for all to see.
‘Rabbit caught in headlights’ was not a good look on her.
She glanced around the bar, her gaze snagging on a cosy-looking couple to her right. She experienced a sting of jealousy as they giggled at some private joke together.
Was it really too much to ask to meet someone who was genuinely interested in making her the centre of their universe, getting married some day and starting a family? Something she’d been dreaming about since her own dysfunctional family had come apart at the seams.
Her chest gave an uncomfortable lurch. No. This was not the time to start dwelling on her less than perfect childhood.
‘Hey, Lu, speaking of sex gods, check out the guy sitting behind us,’ Emily murmured into Lula’s ear, her hot, boozy breath tickling the hairs on her neck.
Intrigued, Lula swivelled round to get an eyeful of the guy Emily was talking about. She could only make out his broad back and a hint of his profile because he was turned away from her, but she could see exactly what had caught her friend’s interest.
The textbook triangular shape of his torso stretched his expensive-looking shirt to perfection, giving a tantalising suggestion of the ripped body concealed underneath.
Lula would bet her life he could be found sweating away in the gym every morning before setting off for some high-powered job. Something about his self-possessed posture made her think he was somebody big somewhere. You just got a feeling from people like him.
Power and control.
The skin on the back of his neck between the crisp collar of his shirt and the clean, razored cut of his dark, short back and sides haircut was tanned a warm honey colour, as if he’d just got back from a holiday in the sun. Lula could picture him, stretched out on the golden sand in just a tiny pair of swimmers, his body shimmering with perspiration in the intense midday sun.
Ooh.
The buzz from the glass of wine returned, only this time it washed a deep satisfying heat through a much more intimate part of her body.
Good grief, if just a flash of his skin could do that to her, imagine what would happen if she got to speak to him face to face.
Spontaneous combustion, probably.