By the time she was able to stand again and had found her way out of the cubicle to freshen her make-up she had convinced herself that being Tess Delaney for Garrett Thorne might be the best thing that could happen to her right now. It would be interesting work, challenging work, work that might be very healing. She could help Garrett keep Tess’s identity secret while at the same time helping herself back into a world that was a little less neurotic.
Yes, she was disappointed there would be no wildly feminine romance author flouncing around her lush Victorian house, laughing wickedly at Kendra’s dry wit and sharp questions. But how could she not be intrigued? All of those stories that gripped her, all of those stories that seemed to come straight from the core of everything that was powerful and vulnerable and mysterious and wild and female, all of those stories about the magnetic draw between the sexes had actually been written by a man, and one who was pretty much a jerk at that. It was the kind of challenge K. Ryde could never resist. By the time she got to the parking lot and was securely belted into the Mustang, she was already making a list in her head of things that had to be done to prepare both Tess Delaney and her bad boy date for the glitz and the glam, and for the subterfuge of the Golden Kiss Awards.
Chapter Six
Garrett went straight home from the Pneuma Annex. His head was reeling. How could anyone as explosive and impulsive as Kendra Davis be the queen of PR, and how the hell could she possibly pull off what had to happen to make sure Tess didn’t get outed?
By the time he got home, just as she’d promised, he found an email address, a cell phone number, and a list of questions for him to answer that would help her determine the best way to approach her representation of Tess Delaney. He found the whole professional demeanor of the email to be irritating. This was the woman who had pushed him in the lake at his brother’s engagement party. This was the woman whose powerful right arm, he was convinced, could knock out a bull moose if she was angry enough. She was volatile, unpredictable and, from all outward appearances, just as unemployed as he was. And if she held a grudge over what he and Stacie had inadvertently done to Ellis and Dee that had nearly ruined their relationship and their careers, then he was so fucked. Yet what choice did he have? Don believed this woman was his only hope, and the email he’d received from him even before he left the Pneuma Annex was just more evidence of his faith in Kendra Davis – er – K. Ryde.
The emails to Garrett weren’t signed K. Ryde. They were signed Kay Lake. God it was all so confusing. What was he supposed to call her? Who the hell was she really? He changed into jeans and a T-shirt, opened a beer, and settled in at the computer. He’d barely thought about the deadline for Texas Fire. The stress of Tess’s imminent outage weighed so heavily that writing anything serious had been next to impossible. And that wasn’t likely to change until after the Golden Kiss Awards were safely behind him, and he and Tess could go back to their quiet life.
With a start, he realized the always nebulous picture of Tess Delaney he held in his head wasn’t so nebulous any more. The face smiling back at him was now Kendra Davis’s face. And the woman standing beside his desk in his mind’s eye, whispering the story in his ear, was dripping wet. Baby blue bikini top and satin shorts clung revealingly to curves that were athletic and muscular but outrageously feminine. Her nipples beaded heavily beneath the wet top and the shorts hugged the rounded hillocks of her bottom. There were no panty lines. Oh yes, he’d noticed that when she’d turned to walk away from him the other day at the lake. By that time he was doing his best to hide the rise of his cock that had been so stunning and had happened so fast it had completely taken him by surprise. The woman was a bitch, he reminded himself. And whatever else she might be, she was most definitely not his Tess Delaney. Well, at least for no longer than it took her to play the role, for no longer than it took her to make sure that Tess’s true identity was protected. And if she betrayed him, if this was her way of getting revenge … He didn’t want to think about that. He couldn’t. He had no choice, and frankly the woman in his imagination, the luscious wet Kendra Davis, offering him a full-lipped pout, had his complete attention. The longer she stood there, in his imagination, watching him work, the more transparent her clothing became, and the more transparent her clothing became, the more uncomfortable the front of his jeans became.
He couldn’t recall his thoughts of Tess ever being truly sexual. She was him, for chrissake! He’d never wanted to date her. He’d never wanted to fuck her. And if Tess Delaney had Kendra Davis’s face – not to mention her body – and he started really seeing her that way in his head, he was so screwed!