When He Was Bad.... Jane Sullivan

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СКАЧАТЬ left the room and slipped back into the glassed-in booth that looked into the studio. “Thirty seconds, Nick.”

      She sat down, and Nick handed her a set of headphones. After putting them on, she folded her hands on the desk in front of her. Then realizing how uptight that looked, she stuck them in her lap instead.

      “Nervous?” Nick asked.

      She whipped around. “No. Not at all.”

      “Ever do radio before?”

      “No. This is my first time.”

      “Ah. A radio virgin.” He smiled reassuringly. “Don’t worry. I’ll be gentle.”

      Her heart jolted at the mental image that created. “It’s okay. I’ve done a lot of interviews.” She forced a look of indifference on her face. “This is just one more, right?”

      He nodded, still smiling. “Right.”

      Pleasant tone of voice. Agreeable expression. Nonconfrontational body language. Everything about him said, You can trust me. So why was she still so terrified?

      Because she’d heard his show before. She knew his point of view. A copy of her book lay on the desk beside him, and she wondered if he’d read anything more than the inside flap copy.

      A few seconds later, Nick hit a button and leaned into the microphone. “Next in the hot seat is Doctor Sara Davenport, author of a book called Chasing the Bad Boy. Hi, Sara. Glad you could join us today. You don’t mind if I call you Sara, do you? We’re pretty informal around here.”

      She wished she could keep her doctorate wedged between them, along with the title that came with it, but she didn’t want to look stuffy. Just have fun with it, Karen had told her.

      “Of course you can call me Sara. If I can call you Nick.”

      “Sweetheart,” he said with a dazzling smile, “you can call me anything you want to.”

      Little prickles of awareness danced across the back of her neck. Stay on your toes.

      “Why don’t you give us your book in a nutshell?” Nick said. “Then we’ll chat about it.”

      She took a deep, silent breath. Here we go.

      “Well, the premise of my book is that there are certain men who some women have a hard time resisting. They’re the guys they meet at the gym with the incredible bodies who want them for their bodies and nothing else. The mystery men who are here today and gone tomorrow. The amazingly handsome men who sweep women off their feet, then hit on their sisters the moment they leave the room. These men are all very enticing on the outside, but in reality, most of them are immature, reckless and irresponsible, offering nothing to the women who fall for them.”

      “Wow,” Nick said. “So how many men do you think are out there who fit that description?”

      Sara blinked with surprise. As if she had an actual number? “Well, I don’t know exactly. But obviously not all men are like that.”

      “So some of them are pretty good guys.”

      “Of course.”

      “So it’s really just a select few who are causing a whole bunch of problems.”

      Her heart skipped. “I didn’t say there were a lot of problems, just—”

      “Sara. You wrote an entire book on the subject. Of course there must be a lot of problems. In this country we don’t fell trees just for the heck of it, you know.”

      Sara just stared at him, her heart thumping. What was she supposed to do now? Defend the logger who’d cut the trees to make the materials that the printer had bought so he could commit her words to paper?

      “Okay, so let’s narrow it down a little,” Nick said. “What’s the biggest problem you see with this situation between good girls and bad boys?”

      “Women think they’re going to change men’s thought processes. Make them into something they’re not.”

      “So men are inflexible.”

      “Some of them are.”

      “But women aren’t.”

      “Well, some women are—”

      “But they’re inflexible about the right things.”

      This man was turning her mind to mush. “We’re talking about men here. Men who have no intention of ever committing, yet women chase them, anyway.”

      “Because they like the challenge?”

      “Yes. Exactly.”

      “But you don’t?”

      “What?”

      “Like a man who’s a challenge.”

      Sara’s nervousness escalated. “This isn’t about me.”

      “Of course it is. You’re a woman, aren’t you?”

      “Well, yes, but—”

      “Are you telling me you’ve never fallen for one of those bad boys?”

      “Of course not.”

      “Hmm,” he said. “Maybe you’ve just never had the opportunity.”

      The words fell from his lips like warm honey in a slow drip. In spite of the fact that Sara knew exactly what kind of man he was, still her heart beat with a primal kind of attraction she just couldn’t quell.

      Get it together, or he’s going to tear you apart.

      “The basis of the problem lies in women’s physiological reactions,” she explained. “Some women feel a heightened sense of excitement when they’re with a man who they know is bad for them. It’s a kind of thrill-seeking behavior, and they’re physically drawn to it.”

      “Physically?” Nick said, as his gaze took a slow trip down Sara’s body and back up again. “Hmm. I’m not quite sure I’m following you.”

      That was a lie. He was following every word she spoke, every breath she took, every blink of an eyelash, and she knew why. He was the charming kind of bad boy who seemed innocuous on the surface, even as he used that charm to disarm his victims so he could control every situation. Intellectually, she knew what he was up to. So why was he making her so nervous?

      “It’s a physical reaction,” she said. “They feel a heightened awareness, and there’s an increase in heart rate.”

      Nick nodded, but he looked a little puzzled.

      “And an accelerated neurotransmitter response.”

      His brows pulled together with confusion.

      “And a dilation of blood vessels. That causes the skin to flush. СКАЧАТЬ