Velvet, Leather & Lace Read online

  PRAISE FOR THESE BESTSELLING AUTHORS

  SUZANNE FORSTER

  “Absolutely delicious…”

  —Philadelphia Inquirer

  “Thrillingly suspenseful…”

  —Publishers Weekly

  DONNA KAUFFMAN

  “Donna Kauffman writes smart and sexy, with sizzle to spare!”

  —New York Times bestselling author Janet Evanovich

  “For pure fun served piping hot, get yourself a book by Donna Kauffman!”

  —New York Times bestselling author Vicki Lewis Thompson

  JILL SHALVIS

  “Jill Shalvis delivers the goods.”

  —Affaire de Coeur

  “For those of you who haven’t read Jill Shalvis, you are really missing out.”

  —In the Library Reviews

  Suzanne Forster

  Donna Kauffman & Jill Shalvis

  Velvet, Leather & Lace

  CONTENTS

  A MAN’S GOTTA DO

  Suzanne Forster

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  EPILOGUE

  CALLING THE SHOTS

  Donna Kauffman

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  EPILOGUE

  BARING IT ALL

  Jill Shalvis

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  EPILOGUE

  Bonus Features

  A MAN’S GOTTA DO

  Suzanne Forster

  CHAPTER ONE

  WHEN A MAN STARTED flipping through his black book as if it was the Yellow Pages, he was either desperately in need of a date for some do-or-die social event, or horny. Jamie Baird was neither. All right, maybe that second thing. His workload hadn’t allowed him time to date in months, so he was pretty much always horny. But that wasn’t what had sent him searching through the black book today. He needed a woman to pose as him. Not for him. As him.

  Jamie was the CFO of a catalog lingerie company that had stumbled onto a promotional gold mine. Velvet, Leather & Lace was run by women for women, and their slogan was Hot At Any Age, Sexy At Any Size. Jamie had been coaxed into taking the job two years ago by two women friends from college. They’d needed someone with his business background, and his androgynous name had turned out to be a bonus, too. Everyone outside the company had assumed he was a woman, and that impression had never been corrected by anyone at VLL, including Jamie.

  He hadn’t expected to stay once the company was launched, but he’d been challenged by the seemingly insurmountable odds. Recently he’d secured two wealthy investors, and now everything had changed. VLL was less than two weeks away from their first global satellite fashion show, and their little white lie had caught up with them. The media was closing in.

  The press wanted to meet publicity-shy Jamie Baird, the third woman on VLL’s rags-to-riches dream team, and his two partners couldn’t cover for him this time.

  Jamie clicked through the steps to bring up his personal address book. His computer system housed what amounted to an electronic black book, an automatic speed-dialer and a speaker phone. Everything needed for instant contact, and Jamie had never needed instant contact the way he did tonight. He had less than seventy-two hours to create a female Jamie Baird, one who could convince the press and the world at large that she was the real thing.

  “I need a quick study, a snappy dresser and a math whiz,” he told the screen. “That’s not asking too much, is it?”

  It was dark in his office except for the glow of the monitor, but he was used to being bathed in pale light as he worked late into the midsummer night. You could call him a workaholic, although he preferred to think of himself as a problem solver. Tonight, you could also call him a desperate man.

  His partners, Samantha Wallace and Mia Tennario, had already done both television and radio interviews for the show, but now the L.A. Times wanted to do an in-depth feature of Jamie in “her” home. Everyone wanted to meet the “brains behind the beauties of VLL,” and Jamie had a hunch the story would create even greater demand. Good news, and bad.

  His home was a waterfront bungalow on one of the canals in Venice Beach, California, and he’d probably dated half the single women in the area before he’d gone into work-enforced celibacy. Lovely creatures, all of them, but there hadn’t been any clicks of the long-term commitment kind, which was totally his fault. He’d been sowing oats, not searching for a relationship. And then the VLL situation had taken him out of circulation entirely. Now he was reduced to making what amounted to cold calls. A couple of the women might even be a little miffed at him for various reasons, but he didn’t think so. It had been months. It was now July. Who held a grudge that long over a missed phone call?

  He scrolled through the prospects, noting names and wondering what had happened to several of the women since he’d last seen them.

  A lovely blonde named Sandy caught his eye. It had been over a year, but he remembered her as lively, fun and well…buxom. His notes confirmed that.

  Jamie found himself smiling. A stacked Jamie Baird? The boys at the health club would appreciate that. Not that he’d ever actually told them what he did, and he was hoping Jamie Baird was a common enough name and L.A. a big enough place that they’d never put it together.

  They would go nuts if they knew that he not only worked for a lingerie company, but had secretly designed some of the sexiest pieces. They thought he was a money manager.

  He highlighted Sandy’s name and moved on to Frances. Tall, slender and pretty, but apparently, it was her slight overbite that had impressed him the most. His notes said she’d accidentally bitten him, but it didn’t say how or why. He did remember where. Still, he had to get better at details.

  He highlighted a couple more, and then he saw Lorna’s name. She was the last woman he dated before submerging into celibacy. Oddly enough he’d met her in the produce section of the grocery store. She’d helped him pick out a breakfast melon, and by the time they’d found a ripe one, he was wondering why he needed a melon. He’d rather have her for breakfast.

  He’d written only three things by her name: 1) smart, 2) a sex goddess and 3) unapologetically voluptuous.

  Voluptuous. Everywhere. Lorna.

  He wasn’t likely to forget her. They’d had volcanic sex on their second date, but even if they hadn’t, she would have more than qualified as a sex goddess. She was flame haired and green eyed with luscious curves. Perfect for VLL. His two business partners were beautiful women, but they were petite in frame, and VLL was supposed to be dedicated to women of all shapes and sizes. It couldn’t hurt for them to have a plus-size partner, especially going into the publicity blitz for the fashion show.

  He found a few more names and decided he had enough to start. Moments later he’d cut and pasted all the women’s phone numbers to his speed-dialer program. The computer would now dial the numbers for him, and when the women answered, he could talk to them through the speaker phone system.

 
; Jamie clicked the buttons and sat back, waiting for the computer to find him the perfect match. Look, Ma, no hands. Technology did have its benefits, although except for the demands of his work, he tended to avoid it. He didn’t have a cell phone, a Palm Pilot or a GPS system in his car. He’d developed an aversion to having conversations with people who weren’t there. And probably weren’t even people.

  “Hello?”

  It was Sandy’s sweet voice. He should have noted that she had a voice like crystal bells. Details again.

  “Hi, Sandy, it’s Jamie Baird. Remember me?”

  “Jamie Baird?” Her breath sucked in. “The Jamie Baird who got an emergency call from one of his partners and left me in a hotel room, never to return? I was naked, Jamie!”

  “Well, Sandy, I tried to call, but you kept hanging up on me—”

  CLICK

  …just like that.

  Jamie winced. If he’d been holding a receiver to his ear, he’d be deaf. That was Sandy with the sweet voice? Maybe his program had dialed the wrong number. Or something had taken possession of her body, like a demon from the bowels of hell.

  The automatic dialer didn’t give Jamie a chance to recover. It went right to the next number.

  “Hello?”

  “Frances, it’s been too long. How are you? This is Jamie Baird.”

  “Jamie who?”

  “Jamie Baird, Frances. I know it’s been a while, but—”

  “A while? Nine months is a while? I cooked a beautiful meal and invited my parents, and what did you do? You stood me up, you lousy good for nothing—!”

  Jamie could hear the click coming. He hit the function key to lower the volume, but she landed the receiver before he could bring up the gauge. It sounded like a car crash. Possibly he needed to check his settings. Or possibly this wasn’t a good idea.

  He turned off the automatic dialer before it got to Lorna Sutton. His eardrums weren’t up to it. He fell back in the chair and stared at the computer screen, but nothing registered as he contemplated the utter failure of his plan. “I didn’t remember the dates being that bad,” he murmured.

  He was thirty-four years old and yet still fascinated and baffled by the opposite sex. Maybe he knew something about women on an intuitive level because they seemed to love his lingerie, but when it came to the complexities of their thinking, he was working without a safety net. He’d always figured that at some point Cupid would get him with that arrow, and all would become clear. He would understand the mysteries of love and the secret desires of a woman’s heart, but Cupid seemed to have pretty bad aim where Jamie Baird was concerned.

  “Women trouble?”

  Jamie swiveled to see who’d asked the question. A small wiry man stood in the doorway, a red bandanna wrapped around his spiky gray hair, and a floor mop in his hand. It was the night janitor, and Jamie had spent many an evening with Frank Natori in the last several months. Too many. Natori considered himself something of a philosopher. He loved to be obscure, but every once in a while, he said something that reminded Jamie of Mr. Miyagi of Karate Kid fame. It almost made sense.

  “Eavesdropping again?” Jamie pretended to sound gruff.

  Natori’s grin stretched. “Getting rejected again?”

  Jamie shrugged. “It must have been something I said.”

  “Or didn’t say. Women need words.”

  “Words?” Jamie gave him a skeptical look. “If women needed words, I’d be home free. I’m Webster’s, my man. I’m good at words.”

  “But not the right ones.”

  “And what are those?”

  Natori’s dark eyes twinkled. He propped his mop against the door frame and pulled a feather duster out of his back pocket. “Only you know, and when you say them, you’ll get the answer you want.”

  Jamie cocked a brow. “Are we talking about the word that starts with L? Like l-o-v-e?”

  Natori carefully dusted the breasts and wings of a marble nude. The statue was a Greek goddess, and Jamie had picked her up at an art auction, thinking she symbolized the VLL philosophy of creating your own sensual reality. Jamie took his inspiration wherever he could find it, even picking up ideas from the guys at the gym, whose male fantasies had inadvertently given him the idea for StripLoc, a line of lingerie with breakaway seams.

  “Could be a word that starts with L,” Natori said, “but not necessarily the one you’re thinking. Could be a word that starts with F. Only you can know what the right words are, and only if you listen long enough and deep enough.”

  “To her?”

  “To yourself.”

  “I wish you’d listen to yourself for once. You’re not making any sense at all. And I don’t have time for words, right or wrong. I need a woman tonight.”

  Natori blinked down his nose at Jamie. “Try the corner of Second and Main.”

  “Not a hooker! This is a business proposition.”

  “No difference. If she hears the magic words, you will get what you need.”

  “And what the hell are these magic words? And don’t say—”

  “Only you know.” Natori tipped his head and headed for the door where he picked up his mop and tilted it over his shoulder.

  “Stop and listen,” he said, glancing back at Jamie. “You might hear something. Until then, offer her money.”

  “Money? Wouldn’t that be insulting?”

  “Not if you do it right. It all comes back to words.”

  Jamie gave him a look of disgust, which the janitor never saw because he’d already left.

  Words. Money. Hookers. The old guy was losing it.

  But Jamie turned back to his computer and reached for the mouse, scrolling down the list of names. He had made a decision. He was going to call Lorna Sutton, and he was going to make her an offer. All she could do was hang up on him. But he didn’t think she would. At one point, she’d embarrassed herself by revealing a secret childhood dream, and now, the way things were breaking, he just might be able to help her make it come true.

  LORNA SUTTON put a few drops of her favorite aromatherapy oil in the vaporizer and breathed in the scent. Her eyelids fluttered in appreciation. An Enya CD played softly in the background, soothing her even further. For the first time in months, Lorna was in a good place, both physically and emotionally, and her bedtime ritual of cleansing her face with strawberry essence while listening to the sweet strains of a harp was one of the reasons.

  She’d worked hard to achieve order and balance in her life, and finally, things were falling into place. As of this morning, she was taking a couple weeks off from her paralegal job, with nothing planned but relaxation. She’d long dreamed of visiting an island in the tropics, any island famous for its trade winds would do, but that was on hold for now. She’d decided on something more practical. She would eliminate the major stressors from her life, which meant men, dating, the L.A. freeways and caffeine. Not cold turkey, mind you. She’d been working up to this for a while. She’d played with the idea of giving up carbs, too, but without men, chocolate was an absolute necessity.

  Inner peace was her goal. Inner acceptance. All those warm, fuzzy things that went with the I word—but she also wanted to be on more than a nodding acquaintance with the bold side of her personality—her inner vixen, of course. And maybe even her inner B word?

  Obviously, she needed to work on it if she couldn’t even say it.

  “My inner bitch.” There, she’d done it.

  Too much of her life she’d bent over backward for others, and what had it gotten her? Three appointments a week with her chiropractor, and telemarketers calling her every thirty seconds because she was the only one on the planet who wouldn’t hang up on them. If she didn’t straighten up soon, she would have to join the circus as a contortionist.

  She gave herself a sharp nod in the mirror. “Stand tall, girl.”

  She’d had it with girlfriends who insisted that she would be beautiful if she lost another fifteen pounds, and guys who swept her off her feet and dropped he
r on her butt. She was beautiful now.

  She applied her revitalizing night cream, peering at her ultrafair skin and trying to see the visible difference the cream promised. The fine lines around her eyes had smoothed out, but she still had an unsightly blotch on her chin. The spot was probably hormonal, and she might even miss the lines if they disappeared. They warmed up her green eyes considerably.

  She turned off the vaporizer and drew on a sexy black lace negligee. She’d ordered the formfitting gown from a catalog company she’d just discovered called VLL. Their lingerie was wickedly gorgeous and came in larger sizes. There was no law that said she couldn’t feel sensual and womanly without a man. In fact, who needed them? The phone book had listings for handy-men and sperm donors.

  She admired the gown’s empire lines in the mirror, especially the narrow satin straps and the way the ruched bodice cupped her breasts. The black lace also gave provocative glimpses of nude skin. Very sexy. Enough to make a guy’s eyes bug, should he be so lucky as to get a look.

  She was just about to apply some oil of wild strawberry to her décolletage when the phone rang. She glanced through the doorway into the bedroom. Who was calling her now? She’d planned to curl up in bed and watch DVDs. Maybe munch on an apple, or if a mood-altering drug became necessary, then chocolate.

  By the time she got to the night table by the bed, her phone machine was already taking a message. When she heard the caller’s voice, she stopped so quickly the room seemed to tilt like a carnival ride.

  “Lorna, it’s Jamie Baird, the guy who can’t tell a ripe melon from a green one.”