“Avert your eyes!” She thrust the blade under the taut nylon lashes and jerked. The pain stopped, but the laddering shot to her knee. “Wite-Out!”
Jeanne hooked the bottle out of her desk organizer with the efficiency of a surgical nurse and lobbed it across the room. “Cam, hurry,” she said, glancing down the hal ,
“Packard and Bal are on their way to the stairs.”
“Crap. Since when is noon ‘early afternoon’?” Wood-son Bal was the Mount Everest of potential donors, and according to his email to her, he shouldn’t have been here until at least one. Cam had planned to use her lunch hour to gobble a hot dog and scour reference books for the one detail about Anthony Van Dyck that would make her long-overdue manuscript spark to life. Spark sourcing at noon.
Mountain climbing at one. Why can’t we stick to the schedule, folks? I got a promotion I’m after here.
She whipped the top off the Wite-Out and pul ed the brush free, sending a fine spray of white across the year-end pledge report and most of the front of her pencil skirt.
Moaning, she applied the ooze to the hole now eating past her knee, then leaned in and blew for al she was worth.
“You haven’t seen Anastasia, have you?”
“I thought she traveled in a cloud of black smoke. That’s quite an image, by the way. It could definitely get you the spotlight on officesluts-dot-com.”
“Does it pay anything?” Cam wondered if she’d have time to eat the hot dog as she was racing down to the first floor.
“Hey, it covers the rent.”
Now Cam had a gummy clot of white at the end of a long, pale rectangle of exposed flesh. Actual y what she had was a gummy clot of white, an unfinished manuscript, a big donor who seemed to be working on Greenland time, a cutthroat rival with a pick ax and zip line where you’d expect her heart to be and a desk that smel ed like the game room of a Chuck E. Cheese’s.
No time now. She jumped to her feet and turned. “Does anything show?”
Jeanne frowned. “Depends what you mean by ‘anything.’
Officesluts would take a pass, but the folks at Hil bil y Hose are gonna love you.”
Cam looked down. Panic was seeping in. The hole in her panty hose was enormous. She looked like her thigh had been attacked by a meat grinder. What could she do?
She looked around the room for potential fixes. A scarf?
Too weird. A Sharpie? Too black. Her yoga pants? Too weird and too black. “Jeeeaaaaaannnnnne!” she wailed.
“Help!”
Jeanne sprang into action. She pul ed a spray can out of her purse and pul ed off the cap. Cam’s hands flew up instinctively to cover her eyes. “Mace!”
“Not Mace,” Jeanne said. “I used it before my date last night. He liked it.”
Cam spread her fingers. “It’s foundation,” Jeanne said.
“Spray-on.”
“It says ‘Spray-On Tan.’”
“Half the price.” Jeanne put the can in Cam’s hand.
“Here.”
Cam gazed down uncertainly. That run ran real y high.
“Er …”
“Just point and shoot. Like a camera.”
“I know you’re going to find this hard to believe, but I don’t actual y point a lot of cameras down there.” She lifted her leg tentatively and gave the canister a squeeze. “There.
How’s that?”
“Great. So long as you’re tanning your desk.”
Cam looked. The spray had made a happy sunflower shape on the wood. “Oh, man.”
“Gimme, gimme, gimme.” Jeanne took the can and bent.
“I’m expecting to see this reflected in my performance review, by the way.”
“Ooh! Felt that one.”
“C’mon, you. That’s right, that’s right. Oh yeah. Beautiful.”
“Er,” someone said. “Am I interrupting?”
It was Jacket, Cam’s ex-fiancé, in dark jeans and a worn leather jacket, looking as sexy as someone could whom she’d kicked out of her bed six months ago. Sexier, actual y, which was not a good sign.
Cam closed her leg, then immediately flung it open. “Stil wet.”
“I’l bet.” He slouched against the door and smiled.
Jeanne gave Cam a private eye rol . “Steady, girl,” she said under her breath.
“Jeanne was helping me with a run in my panty hose.”
“Mm.”
God, what was it about that gritty London growl? Even an mm sounded like the whirr of some fantastic sex toy. Cam had to be careful. This was how she’d gotten in trouble in the first place.
“I came by to pick up the spare keys.”
Jeanne whipped her
