Читать книгу Living the Fantasy - Kathy Lyons - Страница 9

THE NEXT FEW WEEKS PASSED in a blur for Ali. The first worry was that she couldn’t get a leave of absence from her job. That turned out to be the easiest task on her list. Depressingly so. It’s not that her boss tossed her out the door. The man just sighed, asked her if she was sure—she was—and then approved it. It was a measure of how underappreciated she was there.

At least her coworkers were sad. Especially as she passed off one project after another into their hands. Ali consoled herself with the thought that in her absence, her boss would realize just how much she did around there. She couldn’t bear thinking about the opposite possibility: that no one would even notice she was gone. That was just too depressing for words.

Then there was passing off her plants, getting Elisa to check in on the apartment, and lastly to convince her family she wasn’t insane. She failed in that last task. Her mother rolled her eyes and asked who could possibly want Ali as a model. Not the most supportive attitude, but Ali was committed now. And even if she wasn’t, there was something that kept her headed toward her bizarre summer:

She’d started fantasizing. About her multi-cabillionaire boss. She’d always had a rich fantasy life. After all, she’d started out as a latchkey kid to a single mom. Plenty of alone time, plenty of time to lose herself in her imagination. That habit had continued well into adulthood where her imagination took on a decidedly mature aspect. And it was no different when she started dreaming about Ken.

It started out simply enough. As long as she was going to be working for the man, she decided to look him up on Google. There weren’t a lot of news items on him, but there was a ton about his games. The man apparently was more interested in getting press for his product than for himself. Her kind of guy.

There was nothing in the news stories about him being megarich, but that didn’t seem to matter to her libido. In her fantasies, he was über-rich, über-awesome and über into her. It all built off his smile. He smiled just like she did—a little nervous, a little happy, a little puppy dog. It was cute as hell. And the fact that he talked with her—his attention fully focused on her—well, that was an aphrodisiac all by itself.

Most people were kind enough to start by looking at her during the conversation, but all too soon, they were looking away. She didn’t know if she was just too boring to hold anyone’s attention or if people just didn’t have that long of an attention span. She’d learned to keep everything she said to short sound bites. She delivered her information, and then let whoever wander away. But that hadn’t happened with Ken. His attention had been like a laser light. At first it had been a little uncomfortable. But now, in retrospect, she really got off on it.

She wondered what it would be like to have him look at her like that during a date. Or better yet in bed. Yeah, her libido didn’t work by half measures. She wanted her guy to have that kind of intensity with her as he did everything to her.

She’d spent many a happy night picturing his eyes. But then she belatedly realized the man was going to be her boss. Oops. But even knowing that, she couldn’t stop herself. Didn’t matter what she did to distract herself, Johnny Depp morphed into Ken, Orlando Bloom…same thing. Two kisses into her fantasy, and he became Ken. Even Brendan Fraser, who had his own laser gaze, soon became Ken.

She would just have to remember that Ken could be her fantasy man at night, but during the day, he was strictly professional. Which worked great until they had their first face-to-face a couple of weeks prior to the promo tour.

It was a simple evening get-together at the offices of QG. Everyone involved in the tour was there—Ken, looking slightly harassed; his marketing VP, Paul; and five others. Ali arrived late, of course. She was still wrapping things up at work and had been caught in a meeting. So when she walked in the door she was feeling flushed and very not together. She hated being late.

That was bad enough, but then she got a look at her coworkers. They were all gorgeous. Every single one of them. Even Ken who—objectively speaking—was the most averagelooking of them all. Even he was oozing sexiness thanks to her nighttime fantasies, especially as his face lit up the moment she walked in the door.

“Ali! Great! I was getting worried something had happened to you.”

She swallowed, reminding herself that this was not fantasy playtime. He was her boss, and she should not be wondering what he looked like undressed. “Sorry. Got caught up in a meeting.”

“Bad one, huh?” he asked. Lord, there were six other people in the room, but he just talked right to her. Which, naturally, made her libido do a little happy dance, making the rest of her all soft and liquidy.

“N-not bad,” she stammered. “Just awkward. I’m unloading all my work off onto other people, and they don’t like it.”

“I get that,” laughed a honey-warm voice behind her.

Ali spun around and came face to chin with a blond god of a man. Holy moly, she’d known he was gorgeous the moment she walked into the room, but up close he was downright intimidating.

“Hi,” the god said in a steadily deepening voice. “I’m Blake, aka Lancelot, on a quest for gold that, thanks to your influence, becomes a noble mission for good.” Then he waggled his eyebrows. “I think you get to knight me!”

“Um…hi,” she said.

“Yeah,” said Ken, tugging her toward a seat. “Everybody, this is Ali Flores, our Guinevere. Blake, you want to grab those folders and pass them out? Thanks. Then we’ll go around the table and introduce ourselves. We’re going to be living in close quarters this summer, so I hope we can all be friends.”

Everyone took a seat. Because Blake was handing out folders, he was the last to find a chair and ended up being the farthest away. That, actually, was a good thing for Ali. He was too beautiful to be real, and she felt a little uncomfortable next to a man who was so much better-looking than she was. Sadly, everyone there was better-looking, or so it felt to her.

Blake was the only male actor. The others were girls of the bouncy, perky type. Blonde, brunette and redhead, they were clearly chosen because they were both beautiful and friendly. Except as the introductions went around, she realized that the blonde was Tina, Paul’s assistant and troupe costumer. The brunette was Ashley, aka Morgan le Fey. And the redhead was Samantha, who would be a tavern wench. Ali just nodded, pretending she knew what that meant.

She’d already met Paul, the marketing VP who would double as Mordred, betrayer of King Arthur. And naturally, Ken would play the king.

Obviously, the others were well used to this type of thing. They introduced themselves easily, talked about their acting experiences and the parts they would play, then gushed a little about how excited they were to be here. But when it came time for her to speak, Ali got flustered and tongue-tied. Unlike them, she had absolutely no experience whatsoever.

“Ali?”

“Um, right.” She felt her face heat to crimson. “I’m Ali Flores. I’m Guinevere. And…uh…I’m happy to be here.” It was a lie. At the moment, she wanted to be anywhere but here.

Then there was a long, awkward pause. Rationally, she figured it wasn’t really a long or awkward pause, but her imagination expanded it into something hideous. Good God, how was she ever going to learn how to do this in two weeks?

Fear started building inside her, but she kept it locked down tight. She’d already taken a leave of absence from her job, so she was totally committed. She’d just have to learn fast. So she paid extra attention all through the discussion of itinerary, accommodations, the game and costumes. Costumes were the most awkward because, apparently, the models/actors already had a lot of the things they’d need. The girls all had corsets, daggers and leather pants. Ashley had a neck chain that she’d been given as a joke. Blake even had his own sword and fur boots!

What did Ali have? Um…a blouse? Comfortable shoes?

“No problem,” Ken said with a warm smile. “That’s why Tina’s here. She’ll get together with you this weekend and get you all fitted.”

“Unless we can meet during the week?” asked Tina hopefully.

Ali shook her head. “My last day is next Wednesday.”

“That’s okay,” said Tina in a very perky voice. Was Ali going to have to learn perky? “How about we meet at Spiked Leather on Saturday morning? The owner knows me. He’ll give us a good deal.”

Ali could only smile and nod. Spiked leather? She didn’t remember Guinevere wearing anything that resembled spikes.

“That’s settled,” said Ken. Then he smiled at her. Lord, if it weren’t for that smile, she might have bolted right then. “We’ll need everyone to come next Thursday for the photo shoot. The address is in your folder.”

Photo shoot?

“And finally, we’re giving each one of you a copy of the game. Read the instructions. Memorize the product specs. And most of all, play it. A lot. Starting Thursday, you’re all on my dime. I expect you to spend all that extra time playing the game. When you’re not here, you should be trying to win Guinevere. Bring your friends over. Play with them, too. I expect every one of you to have gotten at least to Adept level by the time we leave.”

There were laughter and giggles all around. Apparently, for everyone else, finding playtime with the game wasn’t a problem. They all had gaming machines and friends who would fall over themselves to play. Samantha even giggled that she was so going to be queen with her brothers this weekend. They were dying to get their hands on this game.

The best Ali could do was paste on a smile. It had been a major accomplishment to hook up her DVR and connect up cable. She didn’t know an Xbox from a doorstop. Her brothers would know. They played enough video games, but they were more likely to play the game themselves and keep her out of it. No way did they have the patience to teach her. Besides, they both had jobs now and were busy with their own lives. Hell, what was she going to do? Then Ken touched her arm.

“Ali, do you think you could hang back for a bit? I’d like to talk with you if you’ve got the time.”

“Uh, sure.” She might have said more, but at that moment Paul came rushing up, camera in hand.

“I know you haven’t had time to have head shots taken, so I figured I’d just get this started here. If you could smile for me?”

Ali tried, but the sick feeling in her gut was getting worse. She obviously wasn’t doing it right because Paul dropped the camera and gave her an equally wan smile.

“Hmm, okay. Try this. Just lift your chin. Disdain. That’s good. Aloof? Yes.” He aimed the camera back to her face, and she belatedly realized it was shooting video, not taking still photos. Over to the side, the others were leaving, but Ali was still able to imagine their disdainful looks as she tried to show one emotion or another as Paul hopped around.

Then Ken stopped the man with a slight touch. “Do we really need to do those now?”

“Well, not normally,” Paul said with a slight grumble. “But somebody wants game Guinevere to look like Ms. Flores. The sooner we get some digitized images, the better.”

Ken shoved his hands in his pockets and looked awkward. “Oh. Right.” Then he glanced at Ali. “Sorry. This will only take a moment.”

“But—” she began. Too late. Paul had the camera rolling again.

“It’s best if I get all sorts of natural poses,” Paul said from behind the lens. “Hey, Ali, how do you feel about zombies?”

She blinked. “Um…bad?”

Paul chuckled. “Depends on the zombie, but okay. How about mass genocide? Republicans? Democrats? I’m looking for a strong emotion here.”

Ken stepped in. “Let’s go with the basics. Chocolate cheesecake.”

Ali gave him a grateful smile. That she could be passionate about. “I once offered to have sex with the next person who brought me a slice of black silk pie.” Then she immediately blushed. Had she said that aloud? “I was…um…I was in my apartment alone with my boyfriend at the time.”

Thankfully, Ken clearly thought it was funny. Paul flashed her a grin along with an eyebrow waggle. “And was it everything you hoped for?”

Ali shrugged. Might as well go with honesty. “Cheesecake, yes. Boyfriend, no.”

“Okay, last questions,” inserted Ken. “Ever seen someone kick a puppy? Trample flowers in the park?”

She frowned. “When I was a kid, we had a pet cat who was a huntress. I did everything I could to stop her, but she still caught things. Mice, bunnies, birds. It was awful the way she’d play with them. It was worse when she ate them.”

“Okay, that’s gross,” Ken agreed. “But it is their natural instinct.”

“I know. But it doesn’t mean I wanted to watch her do it. Or that I wanted her to gift me with her kills.”

Suddenly, Paul dropped the camera. “Perfect! That’s enough for the techies to get started with. Thanks, Ali!” Then with a wave, he moved over to the brunette who was just grabbing her coat.

Ali barely had time to remember he’d been filming her when bam, he was gone. It was rather disconcerting.

“He’s a high-energy kind of guy,” Ken said from where he stood beside her. “Especially right before a launch. He gets really jazzed on all the details and excitement.”

She watched as Paul simultaneously helped Ashley with her coat, passed Tina the camera while issuing instructions and still had time to flirt with Samantha.

“How many lattes a day does he drink?”

“Put it this way. I told him to just buy Starbucks. It’d be cheaper.”

Ali giggled, pressing her hand to her mouth as she did it.

“Don’t cover up,” Ken said as he gently pulled her hand down. “I like seeing you smile. Seeing you laugh is even better.”

Here it was. She’d been dreading it from the very beginning. It was one of those moments straight out of her fantasies where he had some reason to touch her and then they ended up just staring at each other. In her dreams, it took about two seconds for her to end up in his arms. Another ten before she was in his bed. But in real life, all she could do was look into his eyes and scream at her libido to shut up. No go. She just stood there looking while her nipples tightened and her belly trembled.

Hell.

Meanwhile, Ken seemed equally caught. He just looked at her, his eyes widening. She wondered if it was panic or terror. Part of her labeled it clear lust, but that came from her libido, which made up stuff all the time. She ignored it. And then suddenly, Paul was there, clapping his hands and completely breaking the moment. Ali jerked at the noise. So did Ken.

“Okay, Ken, I’ve got a zillion details to work out, but I’ve changed my mind about hanging around here eating dinner with you. I’m doing it at home with brandy and a cigar.”

“He doesn’t really drink brandy or smoke cigars,” Ken said in a low voice.

“I certainly do! But you’re right. Tonight is more likely to be hard lemonade. Can’t stand being in this building one more second and besides, there’s a Bulls game on tonight.”

Ali smiled. “That’s what my dad’s doing tonight. He’s a big fan.”

“Good man. Anyway, I’m outta here.” Tina rushed in with a big food sack and handed it to Paul, who promptly dug inside it. “Which means you get two subs.” He tossed the first wrapped foot-long sub at Ken, then the other.

“Hey!” cried Ken as he fumbled to catch the flying food. He got the first, but didn’t have a hand for the second. It caromed off his fingers and toward Ali. Thankfully, she had good reflexes. She managed to snatch it out of the air before disaster struck.

Fortunately, Paul had stopped throwing things. He just dropped the rest of the bag on the table. “I won’t toss the drinks at you. I know I’d be the one to clean up the mess.”

“Damn straight you would,” answered Ken, but Paul wasn’t listening. He’d already grabbed Tina’s arm and was asking her something about latex body paint. Two seconds later, Ken and Ali were the only people there. Not a problem, according to her libido. But Ali was working hard to be professional, so she firmly squelched the ideas running rampant through her brain.

“Um, you wanted to talk to me?”

“Oh. Um. Yeah. I noticed you got kind of a panicked look when playing the game came up.”

She swallowed. “Uh, yeah.”

“Not a big gamer?”

She shook her head.

“Ever played WOW? Warcrest? Legend of Zelda?”

She bit her lip and looked down.

“Okay,” he said slowly. “You understand, don’t you, that I need you to know this game inside and out? How to play, what to do—everything about it that you can learn in the next week.”

She nodded, feeling miserable. How the hell was she going to do that? But even as she was about ready to give up the job, her mind started playing out possibilities. Maybe she didn’t have a friend who was up on all the major games, but she knew where a game store was. She could talk to the guys there. Maybe they could teach her how to play. And while she was still thinking of ways around her problem, Ken pushed a sub sandwich into her hand. She looked at it then back up at him.

“Eat up,” he said. “Because right after this, you and I are going to party in the lounge.”

She stared at him, her lust doing a happy dance that was wholly inappropriate. Finally she managed, “Wh-what?”

“Adventure, mayhem, sex!” he quipped as he leaned across the table and snagged the food bag.

She swallowed, not knowing how to answer.

“Don’t worry. I’m really not that good at it. Not compared to the other guys. But at least I can make it fun.”

“What?”

He turned to her, his eyebrows raised. “We’re going to play the game. We’ve got it all set up in the lounge. I’ll walk you through the basics, then we can play it together.” He frowned. “What did you think I was talking about?”

“Um…nothing. The game. Of course.” Not like her libido was stuck on the word sex or anything.

“Trust me. I go easy on virgins.”

She had absolutely no response to that.