Pink Satin

hair and myopic brown eyes, but he was one of the most confirmed misogynists Greer had ever met…until she’d discovered he was a sucker for doughnuts in the morning. The way to some men’s hearts was still through their stomachs.

In the back of the room sat Grant, the boss, a small, spare man with thinning hair, a wisp of a mustache, a gentle voice and the business instincts of a shark. Throughout the meeting, his face remained expressionless, except for the faintest of smiles as he watched his ad psychologist in action.

One of Grant’s favorite management strategies was never to conduct a staff meeting himself. Actually, few of his business methods followed a standard set of rules-they just worked, and woe to any competitor who misjudged his gentle look as weakness. Greer thought affectionately that the man had only one major flaw: He couldn’t stand arguing with his French wife.

Today he didn’t have to, because Marie had stayed home with a cold. Volatile and brilliantly creative, Marie was their chief designer. On the rare occasions when Grant didn’t feel that one of his wife’s designs would sell, he expected Greer to be his hatchet woman. And the cream lace on pink satin was Marie’s choice for their fall catalog cover, or someone’s life was going to be miserable.

Probably Greer’s, though she doubted Grant would escape the flying shrapnel when his wife returned to work.

Regardless, Grant had warned her when she started with Love Lace that there were areas in which she’d have to sink or swim. Because of her looks, she was better prepared than some to deal with sexism. She’d managed Barney and Tim, but Ray was her last holdout, and it was Ray who followed her to her office once the staff meeting was over.

He paused in the doorway while she tossed her glasses on her desk and unloaded the mound of paperwork in her arms. “You won again,” he remarked idly.

“Hmm.” Greer scanned the messages next to the phone before glancing up. Ray was their resident feudal baron, she thought whimsically. Black hair, black eyes, a subtle smile, broad shoulders in meticulous dress. He only needed a castle with moat to complete the picture. And an estate populated by women who bowed to him.

Ray could market oceanfront property in Kansas successfully, and Greer respected him for that. But at times his salesmanship didn’t make him any easier to work with. Ray generally backed down just before a clash, but he and Greer inevitably circled each other in conversation like wary combatants.

Leaning against her office door, he lazily crossed his ankles. “Marie will have your hide.”

“You’re telling me something I don’t know?”

Ray chuckled and moved in to slouch comfortably in the pale gray chair next to her desk. “It would have made a good cover.”

“For Frederick’s of Hollywood.” Greer sat down and slipped off her shoes. The others were used to her padding around in stocking feet; she wasn’t about to change her habits for Ray. As she waited for him to speak, she was aware that his eyes were roving over her mint-green suit, slowly removing that suit, and just as slowly continuing to talk with her stark naked-in his imagination. Used to his mode of operation, she paid little attention.

“You’re one of the few women who could wear that nightgown to absolute perfection,” Ray drawled.

“Yup,” Greer agreed smoothly. “Unfortunately, pink makes my face break out in spots.”

Annoyance flamed in his dark eyes, but only for an instant before he let out a low chuckle. “I still think I caught just a glint of lust in your eyes when you looked at that nightgown. Don’t tell me we’ve found a rare weakness in you, Greer?”

Something sharp pricked her finger, and she glanced down in surprise. The paper clip in her hand was completely bent out of shape, unusable now. Had she really just done that? Tossing the thing in the wastebasket, she let her eyes return to Ray. “I know you’re ticked because you were backing Marie on this one, but rationally you know better. Cost margins were part of it-the nightgown is too much higher than our regular lines. And style is part of it-the style simply has limited appeal; too few women would look good in it.”

“You want me to listen to your whole lecture again?” he asked dryly.

Greer leaned forward, resting her chin in her cupped hands, wondering why some men remained uneducable. “We’re selling fantasies,” she said patiently. “The whole business of lingerie is based on people’s fondness for make-believe. We sell sinfully delicious fantasies-daydreams that don’t threaten. A woman is going to buy what makes her feel good about herself. What feels good next to her skin. Clothes that give her confidence because she does feel sexy in them. And that’s entirely different from a nightgown that shouts-”

“Sex object. ‘Promoting sexuality is inherent to the field, but it doesn’t have to be on a sex-object basis,’” Ray quoted with another of his subtle smiles, mimicking her earlier words in the staff meeting. “One of the staff can be very, very picky on that infinitesimal difference between sexy and sex object.”

“A huge difference,” Greer corrected.

“You’re full of peanuts, darling.”

Control your temper, Greer. “You voted with me in the end,” she reminded him.

“That was business. Business is a different game from life.” He stood up and stretched lazily, his opaque, hypnotic eyes fastened on her. “I really only came in to say I was shocked you didn’t have a little feminine temper tantrum over going with me to the trade show.”

“Why on earth should I?”

He shrugged. “You’ve backed out of attending every other trade show before this.”

It was true-she had. Because lingerie conventions were just like other conventions. A lone woman was a prize lamb in a meat market, something Greer would never willingly let herself in for. And the minute she’d yielded to Grant’s suggestion at the end of the staff meeting that she go, she knew Ray would offer a suggestive comment. “Love Lace always sends two representatives,” she said smoothly, “and since Marie can’t go with you this time, I don’t mind.”

“Somehow I thought you would.”

“Why?”

“You and I rather rub each other the wrong way, don’t we? On the other hand, we could probably solve that rather quickly if we took a double room at the convention.”

Greer frowned innocently, as if considering. “Sex does solve everything,” she said cheerfully, “but I doubt it would work in this instance. I snore-loudly, I’m told. You’d get crabby from lack of sleep, and then we’d never stop bickering.”

“I didn’t have in mind getting all that much sleep, anyway.”

“Would you kindly get your bedroom eyes out of here so I can get some work done?”

Ray chuckled, pausing only for another second at the door. “Are you that sassy with the men in your life, Greer?”

“Worse,” she said absently, and deliberately opened a folder on her desk. He was gone a few seconds later. Her pulse slowed down a few moments afterward. Ray inevitably ruffled the figurative fur on the back of her neck. She didn’t know why she let him do it. There was a psychological label for men who didn’t feel sexually secure about themselves unless they were aggressive with the females of the species. Whatever the term, it was her own problem that she let him continue to bother her.

She worked for an hour and accomplished precisely nothing. When the clock struck twelve, she put on her shoes, grabbed her purse and sauntered to the front door.

On the street, a soft breeze fluttered through the leaves in restless surges. The day was warm, bright with the North Carolina sun. Settling her sunglasses on her nose, she slid her hands into the pockets of her suit and simply strolled, taking in the springtime mood and relaxing.

The offices near Love Lace were well landscaped; gay rows of colorful flowers danced in the faint breeze, neat and confined within their borders and as new as the season. The smell of freshly mown grass filled her nostrils, and birds were rocking on the branches overhead, most of them in pairs. Another sign of spring.

The sun’s touch on her face felt as sensual as a caress. Her mood half lazy, half oddly wistful, Greer strolled through the business district and window-shopped. She paused before a display showing a rose-colored evening gown, and thought helplessly of the pink satin negligee. The damn thing, she was well aware, was starting to haunt her, but not because she hadn’t been right about the catalog cover.

Cream lace on pink satin…maybe every woman had a secret fantasy about color and texture and whatever it was that made her feel sultry and sexy and exotic. That negligee was Greer’s. She wasn’t the type to wear it; even the thought of wearing it raised a fleeting feeling of nameless anxiety, but she couldn’t get the thing out of her