as she added, “And some mornings are harder than others.”
Since he seemed to be having one of those mornings, he couldn’t help but laugh. Damn, but she was going to be hard to say no to. But he was still going to do it.
“Look, about your auction—”
“When I asked you to think about it,” she put in, sounding amused, “I did mean for more than an hour.”
It did, now that she mentioned it, seem a bit churlish to turn her down after that short a time. His “No” died unspoken. “I…just needed to know when it is.”
“Ah. To see how much time you have to wiggle out of volunteering.”
Embarrassed that she’d called it so accurately, he said, “No.”
“Oh?”
“To see how much time I have to wiggle out of it gracefully.”
She laughed. He’d been right, it was a wonderful sound, full and rich in that low, sexy voice. “It’s much easier to simply give in gracefully, Mr. Winslow.”
This was odd, he thought. He’d been in high-pressure business negotiations where he hadn’t felt the least bit persuaded by any power tactics, yet he was feeling it here.
“And you don’t have to come up with your ‘Evening to Remember’ plans right now. I only need them a week ahead, so you have a few days.”
Ah, he thought, at last, the answer to his question. “So, it’s the weekend after next?”
“Yes, on Saturday evening. There are no real rules for the evening you plan, it can be fun or elegant or creative, so you can keep it safely impersonal. If you need any help, feel free to call. I always have suggestions.”
After her promise to call him back and her cheerful goodbye, he hung up and sat looking at his phone. The sound of her voice echoed in his mind, along with the sound of his own laughter. He didn’t know how much time had passed before he remembered.
He never had told her no.
He had the oddest feeling he’d just been flattened by a velvet steamroller.
Two
“Darlin’, for you, anything. Will you be there?”
Layla smothered a sigh. “I’m the event coordinator, so, yes, I’ll be there. I’ll be busy all evening.”
“But not all night, I hope.” If ever a man could leer over the phone, it was this one.
“I’ll put you down, then, Mr. Humbert. I’ll need your plan for your auction date by next Friday. And thank you.”
She hung up gratefully.
She pushed back an errant strand of blond hair, propped her elbows on her desk and let her head rest in her hands. Just for a moment, she thought. It couldn’t hurt.
It was always this way, she told herself, right before the annual fund-raiser. Crazy, endless and exhausting. No reason to feel any more tired than usual at this time of year. But she did.
It was Humbert and his lack of subtlety. It shouldn’t have gotten to her—she’d heard much worse before—but somehow this time it had been more wearing. Maybe the effect of all this verbal leering was cumulative. Or maybe she was just tired of hearing it, knowing how the tone would change when they saw her.
She knew why it happened. It had been the bane of her existence since she’d been old enough to notice. A name like Layla Laraway and a voice people likened to classic Lauren Bacall, and she was doomed. The combination of voice and name had been more curse than blessing. At least for her. For someone else, it might have been a boon. For someone else, someone the name and voice would fit.
“How’d it go?”
Layla leaned back and looked at her boss, who was standing in the doorway of her small office. “Mr. Humbert agreed to participate.”
“Layla, you are a wonder!” Harry Chandler shook his head. “You could get a freezing man to give you his last piece of firewood.”
“Now there’s a charming visual,” she said dryly.
“I never said you would, just that you could. You turn that voice on a guy and he’s helpless. Nice work.”
She knew that to some extent it was true, but it wasn’t something she was necessarily proud of. True, it produced well for her chosen work, and she wasn’t ashamed of using it for that purpose. But she knew that this was the only way she could justify it; anything less than a cause like this one would make what she could do distasteful.
“So, are we all set with the auction lineup?”
“Almost. Martina Jennings said yes, and Gloria Van Alden hasn’t called me back yet, but she gave a fairly definite yes earlier.”
“She’ll do it,” Harry said. “She loves getting up there in her finest diamonds and offering a package no one else can afford.”
“Yes,” Layla agreed, “but she bids as well, and generously.”
“Amen,” Harry said. “How about the men?”
“One holdout. Ethan Winslow.”
Harry’s brows furrowed. “Don’t know the name. Is he new?”
She nodded. “Since last year. He runs West Coast Technologies. He popped up on the list after the compilers discovered they were starting a research project on a computer chip that could be used to jump-start the memory center of the brain in Alzheimer’s patients.”
Harry’s brows went up. “I remember reading about that. It’d be a miracle, if they can do it.”
She nodded again. She’d been impressed by the information she’d read. Ethan Winslow had begun his project quietly, without fanfare, but with a determination to see it through. It could take years, but he’d said in the one brief interview he’d done that he was prepared for that. But what had impressed her more—and had made her make the call—was the mention at the end of the article that it appeared this was Winslow’s personal baby, and that he was providing a sizable part of the funding out of his own pocket. The reporter had dug a little deeper, learning from someone on staff that Winslow’s feeling was that since he and W.C.T. could afford to fund it, they did so, leaving grant money from the Alzheimer’s Association to go to other researchers who might not have his resources.
“Sounds like our kind of people. Do you think he’ll do it?”
“I don’t know. I’m going to call him back tomorrow.” And, surprisingly, she was looking forward to it. She’d enjoyed talking with him, bantering, hearing him laugh. Talk about sexy voices, she thought. Ethan Winslow had the kind of voice women saved on their answering machines, just so they could hear it again. The kind of voice that could read the phone book and set your pulse racing. The kind of voice that made lonely nights seem longer. And hotter. The kind of voice—
“You’ll reel him in, girl,” Harry said, derailing her rather reckless train of thought. “You always do.”
He went back to his own office—not much bigger than hers—leaving her pondering his last words.
“Dedicated, smart, dynamic…sounds like somebody trying to sell you on a blind date who’s a dog.” Bill Stanley laughed at his own joke as he and Ethan inspected the new skis Bill was considering.
Ethan grimaced wryly; it was true, if unkind. But then, Bill had never been the soul of sensitivity, even as a boy.
“If you heard her voice, you wouldn’t be saying that.”
His old friend’s brows rose. “She gives good phone, huh?”
“If you want to put it that way,” Ethan said, his tone wry, because Bill was more accurate than not. He wouldn’t