Irresistible?. Stephanie Bond

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СКАЧАТЬ me,” Ellie yelled as she walked in. She could hear Manny in the kitchen. Dumping the cat on the couch, she said, “Esmerelda must have gotten out when I left this morning.” She headed in the direction of enticing aromas, her pet pouncing off the sofa to follow her.

      “Naughty puss,” Manny chided, shaking a long finger at the cat. “Bad day?” he asked when Ellie flung her purse on the table.

      Ellie suddenly felt close to tears. “Would being fired and having my new skirt ruined qualify?”

      Her roommate clucked and came over to give her a hug. “You’ll find another job,” he said soothingly. “And that skirt—” he examined it with a thoughtful eye “—we’ll dye it black and no one will ever know.”

      Ellie laughed. “You’re an incurable optimist. Can’t you let me be depressed for even a little while?”

      He shook his blond head. “No. Now go change. I’m trying something new for dinner.”

      Ellie stopped long enough to unwrap her uneaten egg-salad sandwich for Esmerelda, then walked the few steps through the living room and down the hall to her bedroom. Manny Oliver was a gem. They’d been friends for three years—in fact, his friendship with Joan Wright had landed Ellie the job at the arts center in the first place.

      He made his living doing cabaret shows in drag. Ellie had seen him perform many times, and stood in awe of his singing, dancing and his killer legs. Her male roommate looked better in stockings and heels than she did. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the man could cook, too.

      After Ellie had changed, and joined Manny in the kitchen, she recounted her day over a scrumptious meal of Italian potato dumplings.

      “Men are dogs,” he supplied when she described the deli disaster.

      “He gave me seventy-five bucks,” she said, grinning.

      “But rich dogs can be housebroken,” he amended, and they both laughed. “Was he divine?”

      She nodded, the image of the man’s face forming in her mind. “Definite model material.”

      “Nice dresser?”

      “Immaculate.”

      “Straight?”

      Ellie shrugged. “I think so, but who knows these days?”

      “Tell me you got his name,” Manny pleaded.

      “No, he offered me his card, but I smacked it away.”

      He shook his head. “Ellie, how many times do I have to remind you, the game is hard to get, not impossible.”

      She laughed. “He wasn’t my type at all, Manny. A real stuffed shirt. I’ll bet you couldn’t get a toothpick up his—”

      “Ellie!”

      “Well, you know what I mean. Except for his obviously better taste in suits, he reminded me of the way my dad used to be—a corporate robot.”

      “People change, Ellie. Look at your dad. The man sees more naked people than a doctor.”

      “Yeah,” she said with a short laugh. “Imagine my mom and dad retiring next to a nudist colony. It was by accident, you know.”

      “Oh, sure, Ellie, what would you expect them to tell their daughter? If they didn’t know about the nudist colony when they moved there, why haven’t they posted a For Sale sign in the two years since?”

      “I don’t want to think about it. The whole situation brings to mind pictures I’d rather not see.”

      “The point is, your dad finally mellowed out.”

      Ellie snorted. “After thirty years of missing family dinners and undergoing two bypass surgeries.” She stabbed another dumpling. “My mom should have left him decades ago.”

      “He’s a good man, Ellie, you said so yourself.”

      “He neglected his family.”

      “But your mom was always there for you.”

      Angry tears welled in her eyes. “But who was there for her?”

      Manny reached over and laid a hand on her shoulder, giving her a light shake. “They’re happy now, Ellie. Save it for your therapist.” He took a sip of wine, then asked, “So what are you going to do about rent money?”

      Leave it to Manny not to mince words. “I called about an ad for participants in a clinical study. The money sounds good—I’m going to find out more about it tomorrow night.” She told him about her conversation with the screener. Manny laughed and agreed it sounded promising.

      “You’ve got a guardian angel on your shoulder, Ellie. How else can you explain losing a job, then finding a want ad for desperate women on the same day? A toast!” He lifted his wineglass to hers.

      Ellie stuck out her tongue at him, then good-naturedly clinked her glass to his.

      THE MEETING ROOM WAS more crowded than Ellie had expected. Based on the cramped accommodations, the crowd had apparently surpassed the clinic’s expectations, as well. The room resembled a college classroom: no windows except the tiny one in the door, fairly new, dense low-grade carpet in a speckled gray, and filled with more folding chairs than the fire marshal would probably care to know about. A large blackboard covered the entire front wall. The side walls were adorned with various-size corkboards bearing dozens of multicolored sheets on topics ranging from sleep disorders to impotence.

      Ellie lowered her dark glasses and, as inconspicuously as possible, peered at the other women in the room. She judged her appearance to be somewhat better than the room’s average, and the observation depressed her even more. She pulled down her floppy hat and slumped in the hard metal chair.

      Opening her pocket sketchbook, Ellie flipped through to find a clean page, always ready to draw the face of the person nearest her for a few minutes’ practice. Her hands stilled at the page where she had sketched a caricature last night. Mr. Italian Suit with the gooey dark eyebrows smirked back at her, a cellular phone clutched in his cartoon hand. His athletic body strained at the savvy suit, miniature in comparison to his big, good-looking head. Ellie studied the rendition of his eyebrows and nose and wondered how close she’d come to capturing his true expression. If she remembered when she got home, she’d add a smudge of green to highlight those brooding eyes.

      At that moment, a bespectacled, lab-coated woman walked to the front of the room and raised her arms to hush the chatter.

      “My name is Dr. Cheryl Larkin. I’m a medical doctor, and a professor of human behavior, and it is my privilege to oversee this clinical study. Each of you has been prescreened to a certain extent to qualify for a four-week experiment using pheromones, chemicals produced in animals which attract other animals of the same species.”

      Ellie sat up. Her own experiments in perfume making had overlapped into the area of aromatherapy. She had become intrigued with the idea that certain scents could be aphrodisiacs. Supposedly, pheromones went even further.

      The doctor continued. “Pheromones СКАЧАТЬ