Cringing at the mention of her rival's name, Christine sat down on one of the plush chairs in her room and reached for the pair of black, suede Manolo Blahnik boots she'd left nearby. She'd known Leanne for years since they'd grown up in the same social circles. Christine had learned very quickly that while Leanne had perfected a sugar-sweet persona on the outside, beneath that I-want-to-be-your-best-friend facade lurked a bitter, spiteful woman who had mastered the fine art of backstabbing or sabotaging anyone who threatened her standing as one of Chicago's premier night club event promoters.
Leanne currently had Christine in her evil sights.
Christine didn't consider herself, or her flourishing business, a direct threat to Leanne's chosen profession, but the other woman clearly did. Christine had heard through the ever-present grapevine that Leanne resented the fact that Craig had taken Christine under his wings in terms of supplying her with all the right contacts to help build her business, when Leanne had been attempting for years to get Craig's attention, along with his support-with only a few second-rate referrals to show for her efforts.
'Speaking of Leanne, she'll be at Envy tonight,' Craig said. 'She's hosting a bachelorette gig at the club.'
'Thanks for the heads-up,' she replied ruefully as she pushed her foot into one of the soft suede boots, then zipped up the side all the way to just below her knee. 'I'll be sure to keep my distance.'
He laughed again, obviously amused by the rift and clash of personalities between herself and Leanne. 'By the way, since you'll be at the club tonight I was hoping to steal a few moments alone with you to discuss some of the details for your birthday bash here at Envy.'
His request to meet with her alone caused her to hesitate before answering, because when it was just the two of them, without anyone else around, that's when he poured on all the charm and tried to finagle a date out of her- even if it was in the guise of having a drink together.
Tucking the phone between her ear and shoulder, she pulled on the other heeled boot. Since Craig was hosting her twenty-seventh birthday party at Envy the day after the election, and he was inviting a few high-profile contacts for her to meet, she couldn't very well tell him no. 'Umm, sure.'
'Great,' he said enthusiastically. 'I'll see you tonight, then.'
After saying good-bye, she disconnected the call and sighed, not quite sure what to do about Craig. He really was a nice guy and he'd been a great friend over the past few months, but she had no idea how to handle his growing interest in her, especially when he'd been so integral to making her event planning business such a quick success. At forty-one years old, not only was Craig much older than her, but she just wasn't attracted to him in that sort of way.
Most important, she wasn't looking to jump into another serious relationship after what had happened with Jason. She was experiencing her first taste of real freedom and independence, and enjoying both-she wasn't ready to give up the life that was finally her own for any man.
Standing, she walked back to the bed and dropped her BlackBerry into her purse, then headed over to the vanity and selected a rosy pink lip gloss to use for the evening. Dealing with Craig would be so much simpler and easier if she was casually dating someone, a guy who could accompany her to Envy, and one she could use as a decoy to make Craig believe she was involved with someone else so he wouldn't continue to ask her out.
She swiped the shimmering gloss across her lips, her mind immediately thinking of the gorgeous, sexy man sitting out in her living room who was all hers for the next three weeks. Sure, he'd been hired as her bodyguard, but she couldn't think of a better guy to act as her boyfriend, which would also eliminate him trailing beside her and
She lightly spritzed her neck and shoulders with her favorite vanilla fragrance, then gave her appearance one last check in the long mirror on the wall.
Using Ben to put an end to Craig's pursuit was the perfect plan. Now she just had to convince her bodyguard to play along.
FIGURING he had time to kill while Christine was getting ready, Ben set up his laptop computer on her coffee table in the living room and decided to get a head start on typing up his daily security report, which would then be uploaded to the Delacroix case file for Nathan, or any of Elite's partners, to review at any time. Today's report was all basic information so far, mainly outlining his meeting with Nathan, what the assignment entailed, and later he'd follow up with anything interesting or pertinent that happened tonight at Envy.
There was no reason to mention this afternoon's basketball game where Christine showed off her impressive skills and kicked his ass, or the discussion they'd had at his place about his parents and his fiancee, Kim. None of that mattered in the context of his security report, yet it was the too-personal conversations at his place that he couldn't get out of his head.
Out of the handful of women he'd been with since moving to Chicago a few years ago, he'd never brought any of them to his apartment, and now he knew why-because women were inquisitive, emotional creatures who needed too many explanations on why he lived his life the way he did. They wanted to know about his family and his past and everything else in between, and he'd made it a point since leaving the military to keep his private life private, and that meant keeping his place off-limits.
His personal tactics worked well for him and he managed to keep his own emotions untouched. He'd purposefully kept his affairs with women brief and all about physical pleasure. He never let them get close enough to care, to ask about his parents, his mother, or the fiancee he hadn't been able to save from a roadside ambush in Iraq.
Ben scrubbed a hand along his jaw and exhaled a deep breath. Four years after Kim's death, the pain of losing her had dulled, but the guilt had not abated one bit. No, he feared that deep, painful remorse would be something he'd bear on his conscience for the rest of his life.
How was it that in just the span of half an hour Christine had hit on all those hot topics that no other woman had even come close to realizing about him? And why had he given up as much information as he had to Christine? True, he'd kept much of the ugly truths to himself, but she'd still managed to extract way too much out of him.
He had no answers that made sense, and he refused to dwell on that conversation with Christine any longer. Saving the security report in his Word file, he shut down the laptop computer and leaned back on the wide, comfortable couch. Clasping his hands behind his head, he forced himself to relax and rerouted his thoughts to something more mundane, like the contrast of his basic, barely furnished apartment with Christine's beautifully decorated house.
When they'd arrived at her place, he'd been pleasantly surprised by the modest size of the house in an upscale neighborhood that boasted two-story monstrosities and enormous, custom-built homes. In comparison, Christine's house was a small, three-bedroom structure that was perfect for someone who was single and lived alone.
Since he needed to know the exact layout of the place for security reasons, she'd given him a tour of each and every room, as well as showing him the guest bedroom where he'd be staying for the next several weeks. Her master bedroom, he noted, was just down the hall from where he'd be sleeping.
In the two years he'd lived in his apartment, he hadn't bothered to do anything to really make the place his own. To him, it was just a place to eat and sleep and shower, and occasionally on the weekends enjoy a few games on the big-screen TV. Christine, on the other hand, had completely transformed her new house in just the few months since moving in. Decorated in neutral tones and accented with brighter shades of deep reds, burnished oranges, and forest greens, the place was warm and inviting in every way, and so opposite her parents' lavish home.
He found himself smiling as he recalled the proud way in which she'd told him that she'd bought the place on her own, without her father consigning on the loan. She'd used part of a trust fund left to her by her grandparents on her mother's side to make a deposit that would leave her with a monthly payment she could afford, and kept the rest of that money untouched. She was determined to do it all on her own for the first time in her life, without depending on anyone to help her out, and he couldn't help but be impressed by her fortitude.
'Okay, so I'm not nearly as quick as you when it comes to getting ready,' he heard Christine say. 'But I did get a phone call that put me about ten minutes behind schedule, if that counts for anything.'
Ben shifted his gaze from the contemporary framed art that he'd been staring at to the woman walking toward him, looking like a temptress in the purest form of the word. Stunned by the transformation, and unable to help himself because he was a man, after all, he took in her jaw-dropping outfit, along with that sensual gleam in her bluer than blue eyes and the blond hair that now fell to her shoulders in a sexy, disheveled mass of curls, and felt
