Mother card, and Nick would do whatever he had to in order to protect his mother. Nick wasn’t the only one Ron could play and, though Nick had tried for years, he still hadn’t been able to get his mother to protect her retirement funds, shelter them out of Ron’s reach. If she couldn’t earn absolution for her husband’s shortcomings, she’d buy it. Nick sighed. He couldn’t let her do it again. It was that simple, and that complicated.
Furthermore, after Ron’s last so-called loan—a substantial sum Nick had never seen a penny of returned—Nick had vowed not to lend him any more money. He would help Ron any other way he could, but the days of simply handing money over to him to help assuage his own guilt for being the favorite son were a thing of the past. It hadn’t been his fault that their father had showered Nick with attention and praise and that Ron had essentially been a forgotten child. No, not forgotten, Nick realized. More like ignored. But no matter how many times Nick tried to tell himself that his father’s partiality wasn’t his fault, there still remained a little part of him that couldn’t be convinced, that held on to the guilt.
So here he sat in the hotel lobby of one of Atlanta’s premiere hotels to attend a sex-toy trade show and charm Desiree Moon, the Howard Stern of the online sex-toy world. The woman who, with her acid-tongued reviews of Ron’s products, had slowly but surely run his brother’s first semi-lucrative business into the ground. The only way to save the business was to discredit her as a critic. For reasons which escaped Nick, Ron suspected her of being a fraud, of lying about her expertise.
That’s where Nick came in. He would spy on her, gather the necessary information to prove Ron’s theory, and Ron would out her to the adult-toy world. Ron’s business would rebound, thus—since Nick had absolutely refused to bail him out of another deal gone sour—Ron wouldn’t approach their mother for help.
Though pride would never allow Abigail Devereau to admit it, her funds were in serious trouble from previous Ron-bail-outs and they simply couldn’t withstand another handout of this magnitude. Nick knew that she’d do it anyway. She always had. That had been her way of dealing with their father’s lack of attention to his youngest son. His mother had overcompensated, showering Ron with love, with gifts, with whatever she could in order to fill the void of his father’s inattention. Sadly, the money would be gone before she’d run out of guilt.
So Nick had stepped in to prevent that from happening—he owed his mother too much. Though she wouldn’t allow him to manage her funds—the result of Ron’s interference—he still couldn’t permit her to essentially commit financial suicide.
Nick wasn’t absolutely certain that Ron would go to their mother, but the threat had been enough to keep Nick from calling Ron’s bluff. Had been enough to propel Nick to help him. Furthermore, though he didn’t always understand him, Nick loved Ron and longed for a closer relationship with him.
Besides, there was something distinctly distasteful about his mother’s retirement money being used to produce and market sex toys. It was unnatural.
Just like the damned toys.
Nick suppressed a shudder. Males and females were created with conjoining parts, made to come together in a perfectly natural way. Nick was sure alkaline batteries were never meant to be a part of it.
Besides, any man who couldn’t pleasure a woman without the aid of some new-age latex, battery-operated gadget should forget the business altogether and let his pecker petrify from disuse. He’d use his own rod, thank you very much, and if for some reason he left a woman unsatisfied—which had never happened—then there were other more creative methods to accomplish the same end.
In Nick’s opinion, every man owed it to his partner to become a competent lover. He could personally draw an orgasm from a woman in under ninety seconds. No brag, just fact. And he used his own equipment.
“Hey, she’s pretty hot,” Ron whispered roughly. “Now you can quit complaining. This should be a walk in the park for you.”
Nick scowled. “This is not going to be a walk in the park. It’s a deceitful, underhanded course of action that surely could have been avoided with a little—”
“Yeah, yeah. Save your lawyer talk, Nick. She’s ruining me,” Ron reminded him hotly. “Are you going to help me or not?”
Did he really have a choice? Nick wondered futilely. He sighed. “I said I would.”
Ron grunted in response.
Nick snuck another peek at his target. As for her being hot, how could Ron even tell? The woman wore a trench coat, a big floppy hat and sunglasses that would have dwarfed Mike Ditka’s big head. Hell, she could be hiding all sorts of imperfections underneath that getup.
The garb nevertheless drew a reluctant grin from Nick. Her blatant attempt at incognito had definitely backfired. Almost every person in the hotel lobby had swiveled a double take at the ridiculous outfit.
Like everyone else in the room, the only part of her anatomy Nick could truly see was her mouth.
And what a mouth.
Ripe, curved to perfection, naturally pink, not globbed up with thick, pasty lipstick and just a fraction over-full. It was the most carnal mouth Nick had ever seen and instantly redeemed whatever imperfections she might or might not have. Kissing her would be a treat.
“She’s headed for the elevators,” Ron muttered needlessly. “It’s show time, big brother. The check-in clerk and I worked out a little deal. Your rooms have connecting doors.”
Nick shuddered to think what sort of deal Ron and the hotel employee had “worked out.” The connecting door would definitely be a perk, though. He’d be able to monitor her comings and goings and the proximity would work to his advantage. It would be easier to nurture a relationship. Though he hated to admit it, Ron had managed not to completely bungle this.
“Keep me updated,” Ron said. “I’m in nine-oh-nine.” He paused, looking momentarily sheepish. “Uh…thanks, Nick. You won’t regret this. This one is going to work.”
Famous last words, Nick thought, hoping that, for his brother’s sake, that would be true. Reluctantly, he stood and leisurely strolled to the bank of elevators where Desiree Moon waited. This was it. For better or for worse, he’d agreed to spend the next five days charming everything but the pants off Desiree Moon. Five days with a self-proclaimed professional. A sex-toy critic. Arguably any red-blooded man’s fantasy and yet Nick had never dreaded a woman’s company more. More, hell. He’d never dreaded it at all.
MEG SUGARBAKER, aka Desiree Moon, depressed the call button for the elevator and silently prayed again that she wouldn’t see anyone she knew at this hotel while attending this damned trade show. None of her co-workers at Atlanta’s renowned Chez Renauld’s knew about her other job and she had to keep it that way. Despite her excellent reputation and years of service to her employer, Meg knew that she’d be fired faster than she could say soufflé if the ultra-conservative Renauld ever learned about her second job.
As far as the rest of the world was concerned, she was only a pastry chef. Not a pastry chef who moonlighted as an online sex-toy critic for Foreplay, one of the hottest online e-magazines on the World Wide Web.
Meg still couldn’t believe that things had escalated to this degree. Six months ago, in the throes of one of her many bouts of unrelieved sexual frustration, she’d gotten cocktailed and gone online in search of a BOB—a Battery Operated Boyfriend.
She’d gotten more than she bargained for.
She’d gotten the BOB and a job.
Though events from that night were still pretty foggy, Meg remembered jokingly applying for a position with Foreplay as a critic, vaguely remembered dreaming up the pseudonym Desiree Moon. After that night, she hadn’t given it another thought—until her first box of toys arrived with instructions on how to use and critique them, then upload her reviews onto the Web site.
Morbid fascination, blatant curiosity and a woefully neglected, highly motivated libido had propelled her to explore