A smile tilted at the corner of his mouth. Until this minute, he hadn’t paid any attention to the advertisement itself. If pressed, he’d have said it was for perfume, or cosmetics. Perhaps furs.
Now he saw just how wrong he’d have been. Laurel was offering the siren song to customers in the market for laptop computers. And the company was one that Skouras International had bought only a couple of months ago.
Damian reached for the phone.
Luck was with him. Ten minutes later, he was in his car, his luncheon appointment canceled, forging through midday traffic on his way to a studio in Soho, where the next in the series of ads was being shot.
“Darling Laurel,” Haskell said, “that’s not a good angle. Turn your head to the right, please.”
Laurel did.
“Now tilt toward me. Good.”
What was good about it? she wondered. Not the day, surely. Not what she was doing. Why did everything, from toothpaste to tugboats, have to be advertised with sex?
“A little more. Yes, like that. Could you make it a bigger smile, please?”
She couldn’t. Smiling didn’t suit her mood.
“Laurel, baby, you’ve got to get into the swing of things. You look utterly, totally bored.”
She was bored. But that was better than being angry. Don’t think about it anymore, she told herself, just don’t think about it.
Or him.
“Ah, Laurel, you’re starting to scowl. Bad for the face, darling. Relax. Think about the scene. You’re on the deck of a private yacht in, I don’t know, the Aegean.”
“The Caribbean,” she snapped.
“What’s the matter, you got something against the Greeks? Sure. The Caribbean. Whatever does it for you. Just get into it, darling. There you are, on a ship off the coast of Madagascar.”
“Madagascar’s in Africa.”
“Jeez, give me a break, will you? Forget geography, okay? You’re on a ship wherever you want, you’re stretched out in the hot sun, using your Redwood laptop to write postcards to all your pals back home.”
“That’s ridiculous, Haskell. You don’t write postcards on a computer.”
Haskell glared at her. “Frankly, Laurel, I don’t give a flying fig what you’re using that thing for. Maybe you’re writing your memoirs. Or tallying up the millions in your Swiss bank account. Whatever. Just get that imagination working and give us a smile.”
Laurel sighed. He was right. She was a pro, this was her job, and that was all there was to it. Unfortunately she’d slept badly and awakened in a foul mood. It didn’t help that she felt like a ninny, posing in a bikini in front of a silly backdrop that simulated sea and sky. What did bikinis, sea and sky have to do with selling computers?
“Laurel, for heaven’s sake, I’m losing you again. Concentrate, darling. Think of something pleasant and hang on to it. Where you’re going to have supper tonight, for instance. How you spent your weekend. I know it’s Monday, but there’s got to be something you can imagine that’s a turn-on.”
Where she was having supper tonight? Laurel almost laughed. At the kitchen counter, that was where, and on the menu was cottage cheese, a green salad and, as a special treat, a new mystery novel with her coffee.
As for how she’d spent the weekend—if Haskell only knew. That was the last thing he’d want her to think about.
To think she’d let Damian Skouras humiliate her like that!
“Hey, what’s happening? Laurel, babe, you’ve gone from glum to grim in the blink of an eye. Come on, girl. Grab a happy thought and hang on.”
A happy thought? A right cross, straight to Damian Skouras’s jaw.
“Good!”
A knee, right where it would do the most good.
“Great!” Haskell began moving around her, his camera at his eye. “Hold that image, whatever it is, because it’s working.”
A nice, stiff-armed jab into his solar plexus.
“Wonderful stuff, Laurel. That’s my girl!”
Why hadn’t she done it? Because there’d already been too many eyes on them, that was why. Because if she’d done what she’d wanted to do, she’d have drawn the attention of everyone in the room, to say nothing of ruining Dawn’s day.
“Look up, darling. That’s it. Tilt your head. Good. This time, I want something that smolders. A smile that says your wonderful computer’s what’s made it possible for you to be out here instead of in your office, that in a couple of minutes you’ll leave behind this glorious sun and sea, traipse down to the cabin and tumble into the arms of a gorgeous man.” Haskell leaned toward her, camera whirring. “You do know a gorgeous man, don’t you?”
Damian Skouras.
Laurel stiffened. Had she said the words aloud? No, thank goodness. Haskell was still dancing around her, his eye glued to his camera.
Damian Skouras, gorgeous? Don’t be silly. Men weren’t “gorgeous.”
But he was. That masculine body. That incredible face, with the features seemingly hewn out of granite. The eyes that were a blue she’d never seen before. And that mouth, looking as if it had been chiseled from a cold slab of marble but instead feeling warm and soft and exciting as it took hers.
“Now you’ve got it!” Haskell’s camera whirred and clicked until the roll of film was done. Then he dumped the camera on his worktable and held out his hand. “Baby, that was great. The look on your face...” He sighed dramatically. “All I can say is, wow!”
Laurel put the computer on the floor, took Haskell’s hand, rose to her feet and reached for the terry-cloth robe she’d left over the back of a chair.
“Are we finished?”
“We are, thanks to whatever flashed through your head just now.” Haskell chuckled. “I don’t suppose you’d like to tell me who he was?”
“It wasn’t a ‘he’ at all,” Laurel said, forcing a smile to her lips. “It was just what you suggested. I thought about what I was having for dinner tonight.”
“No steak ever made a woman look like that,” Haskell said with a lecherous grin. “Who’s the lucky man, and why isn’t it me?”
“Perhaps Miss Bennett’s telling you the truth.”
Laurel spun around. The slightly amused male voice had come from a corner of the cavernous loft, but where? The brightly lit set only deepened the darkness that lurked in the corners.
“After all, it’s well past lunchtime.”
Laurel’s heart skipped a beat. No. No, it couldn’t be...
Damian Skouras emerged from the shadows like a man stepping out of the mist.
“Hello, Miss Bennett.”
For a minute, she could only gape at this man she’d hoped never to see again. Then she straightened, drew the robe more closely around her and narrowed her eyes.
“This isn’t funny, Mr. Skouras.”
“I’m glad to hear it, Miss Bennett, since comedy’s not my forte.”
“Laurel?” Haskell turned toward her. “You know this guy? I mean, you asked him to meet you here?”
“I do not know him,” Laurel said coldly.
Damian smiled. “Of course she knows me. You