Into the Fire. Leslie Kelly

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СКАЧАТЬ he did. No, it was his obvious boredom that caught her attention. His looks merely kept it.

      He was taller than average, long and lean. His dark blond hair was thick and wavy, and she imagined his wife or girlfriend would be unable to keep her fingers out of it. The way he held his body screamed self-confidence.

      She wasn’t the only one who noticed him. Lacey watched a curvy redhead approach the bar, try to strike up a conversation, then walk away in a pique. The man shrugged and kept talking to the bartender. His boredom radiated toward her from across the room. He barely looked at the crowd surrounding him, instead giving all his attention to the guy making drinks.

      The lean, strong line of his jaw made her wonder, suddenly, what color his eyes were. And whether his mouth was really as impossibly gorgeous as it appeared to be from over here. When he laughed in response to something the bartender said, Lacey sucked in a breath. Yes, the man had one heck of a mouth.

      “The guy at the bar?” Raul asked, narrowing his eyes as he noticed her interest. “Not your type, Lace.”

      “So, you do know him?”

      “In passing. And I’m afraid he wouldn’t do for you.”

      “Why not? What’s wrong with him?”

      “He’s a bonehead, Lacey. A jock with a Jaguar. Not a brain in his head. Got where he is on his looks.”

      “Oh, great.” She sighed. “A Nate Logan type, you mean?”

      Raul snorted a laugh. “Well, he’s maybe not that bad. But definitely not someone you’d be interested in.”

      Too bad. It had been a long time since Lacey had looked at a man and felt such a sudden, overwhelming attraction. When she thought about it, she didn’t think she’d ever gone breathless and jittery just from spying a stranger across a room.

      Of course, she was a woman and she could appreciate a good-looking man. This one had looks to spare. But as her eyes kept returning to him, she knew it was more than looks. There was such power in his masculinity, such magnetism in his self-confidence. It was damned unfair for a creature so breathtakingly male not to have the brains to go with the rest of the package. “What a shame,” she murmured as she forced herself to look away.

      “True,” Raul replied.

      Raul chuckled again, and Lacey wondered if he was up to something. She didn’t quite trust the humor in his eyes. “What?”

      “I’m thinking how fortunate it is,” he said with a Raulish smirk, “that beauty isn’t always wasted on the stupid.” He pointed to himself.

      Lacey laughed. Despite the arrogance and oozy charm, Raul was loyal, smart and a real friend. “Thanks for the tip, Raul.”

      “Logan’s response to the prepubescent boy remark was…”

      “I don’t want to know,” she said as she turned to leave. Hearing Raul’s chuckle behind her, she knew he’d get around to telling her sooner or later.

      As she walked toward the door, she did pause once to glance over her shoulder toward the bar. Though she told herself she was merely looking over the crowd, she still felt a pang of disappointment that the gorgeous blond hunk was no longer standing there. She looked around the room, but didn’t spot him anywhere. “Just as well,” she said with a sigh.

      Lacey managed to fend off conversational gambits from several people as she eased across the room toward the exit. Some didn’t try to talk to her, obviously seeing by the glint in her eye she was in no mood to chat. “Frigid virgin, indeed,” she muttered, remembering what Raul had told her before she’d been so thoroughly distracted by the blond man.

      She shouldn’t have been surprised by the latest insult. Ever since the first shot in this war had been fired, nearly a year ago, she and that brainless, oversexed Animal House reject Nate Logan had traded barely veiled insults on the pages of For Her Eyes Only and Men’s World every single month.

      As the featured love-and-relationships columnists for their respective magazines, they should have had a lot in common, particularly since both magazines were owned by the same publisher, J.T. Birmingham. But they obviously had about as much in common as dirt and ice cream.

      Nate Logan touted flirtation, sexual freedom, openness and exploration. He also liked to blame women for everything wrong with the male-female relationship. Lacey, on the other hand, knew darn right well it was usually the man who screwed things up on the romance front.

      She also favored true love, soul mates and sexual responsibility. Hadn’t her childhood, her entire life, been a never-ending lesson in that regard? With her mother’s past and her stepfather’s attitudes, Lacey had learned at a very young age that sexual mistakes could shatter lives. Heaven knew her stepfather had never let any of her family forget that lesson. She’d also decided—more out of a need for it to be true than anything else—that true love had to exist and was worth waiting for. She would settle for nothing else.

      “Having a nice time, Lacey?” someone asked as she finally made it to the foyer of the mansion.

      Seeing a colleague from work, Lacey forced a smile. “Yes. My favorite way to spend an evening.” Second only to having my bikini line waxed or my nails ripped out with hot pincers.

      “I hear you’re going to receive some kind of award tonight,” the woman continued.

      Ah, yes, the award. The reason everyone thought they were at this party. If that were the only reason for tonight’s gathering, Lacey would probably be able to relax and at least make a small effort to enjoy herself.

      “And Nate Logan is, too,” the woman continued, a note of maliciousness obvious in her tight smile.

      “So I hear,” Lacey muttered. She moved away, as if going to the powder room down the hall. If one more person stopped her and mentioned Nate Logan’s name, she might have to throw up.

      Lacey couldn’t recall how her war with the other journalist had started. Who had lobbed the first insult? All she knew was last year she’d heard J.T. had hired a new columnist to spice up Men’s World. Within three months, the magazine’s formerly health-conscious, “strong mind, strong body” image had changed. It now appealed to the man who would rather be reading Playboy but had to mollify his wife or girlfriend by picking up a health magazine. So the centerfolds were somewhat clothed and usually reclining on exercise equipment or the hoods of automobiles.

      She had to assume Nate’s column, which had gained instant popularity, was part of the reason circulation had skyrocketed.

      Seeing no one waiting outside the powder room, Lacey walked right past it, down a long corridor. When she heard voices in a nearby room, she ducked behind a piece of pricey statuary. Hearing the voices recede, she dashed by the doorway, trying to stay on her toes to avoid letting her heels click on the floor.

      “Hide and seek,” she whispered, knowing she was probably being juvenile and not really caring.

      It wasn’t just the aura of sex appeal on every page of Men’s World that bothered her. She also didn’t like Nate Logan’s smart-ass tone, his flirtatious, irreverent writing style. She certainly didn’t like his advice. But his readers obviously adored him. He’d even been given an unprecedented second column, “Nate’s Notes on the Nice and the Naughty.”

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