Living the Fantasy. Kathy Lyons

he said. “We’re covering all expenses.”

      She nodded.

      He waited. There was nothing more to say, but God he wanted to. He wanted to beg her to say yes. And as he sat there watching her, seeing the curve of her face, the fullness of her breasts and the feminine arch to her back, he started wanting other things, too.

      She flipped through the pages and started reading the contract, her lips pursed as she concentrated. He looked at her lips and starting thinking of other things. What she might also do with those lips. Of what he could do to her to erase the furrows on her forehead. Of what they might do together that had nothing to do with contracts and everything to do with a whole lot of naked wonderfulness in bed.

      That’s where his mind went and it was wrong, wrong, wrong! He was her employer—or he wanted to be. So he forced his thoughts down a more professional track.

      It took him a while.

      “So,” he finally asked. “Is this enough to make you quit your job at the hospital?”

      She shook her head slowly. “No.”

      His heart sank.

      “But for a summer leave of absence? Yes.”

       4

      THE NEXT FEW WEEKS PASSED in a blur for Ali. The first worry was that she couldn’t get a leave of absence from her job. That turned out to be the easiest task on her list. Depressingly so. It’s not that her boss tossed her out the door. The man just sighed, asked her if she was sure—she was—and then approved it. It was a measure of how underappreciated she was there.

      At least her coworkers were sad. Especially as she passed off one project after another into their hands. Ali consoled herself with the thought that in her absence, her boss would realize just how much she did around there. She couldn’t bear thinking about the opposite possibility: that no one would even notice she was gone. That was just too depressing for words.

      Then there was passing off her plants, getting Elisa to check in on the apartment, and lastly to convince her family she wasn’t insane. She failed in that last task. Her mother rolled her eyes and asked who could possibly want Ali as a model. Not the most supportive attitude, but Ali was committed now. And even if she wasn’t, there was something that kept her headed toward her bizarre summer:

      She’d started fantasizing. About her multi-cabillionaire boss. She’d always had a rich fantasy life. After all, she’d started out as a latchkey kid to a single mom. Plenty of alone time, plenty of time to lose herself in her imagination. That habit had continued well into adulthood where her imagination took on a decidedly mature aspect. And it was no different when she started dreaming about Ken.

      It started out simply enough. As long as she was going to be working for the man, she decided to look him up on Google. There weren’t a lot of news items on him, but there was a ton about his games. The man apparently was more interested in getting press for his product than for himself. Her kind of guy.

      There was nothing in the news stories about him being megarich, but that didn’t seem to matter to her libido. In her fantasies, he was über-rich, über-awesome and über into her. It all built off his smile. He smiled just like she did—a little nervous, a little happy, a little puppy dog. It was cute as hell. And the fact that he talked with her—his attention fully focused on her—well, that was an aphrodisiac all by itself.

      Most people were kind enough to start by looking at her during the conversation, but all too soon, they were looking away. She didn’t know if she was just too boring to hold anyone’s attention or if people just didn’t have that long of an attention span. She’d learned to keep everything she said to short sound bites. She delivered her information, and then let whoever wander away. But that hadn’t happened with Ken. His attention had been like a laser light. At first it had been a little uncomfortable. But now, in retrospect, she really got off on it.

      She wondered what it would be like to have him look at her like that during a date. Or better yet in bed. Yeah, her libido didn’t work by half measures. She wanted her guy to have that kind of intensity with her as he did everything to her.

      She’d spent many a happy night picturing his eyes. But then she belatedly realized the man was going to be her boss. Oops. But even knowing that, she couldn’t stop herself. Didn’t matter what she did to distract herself, Johnny Depp morphed into Ken, Orlando Bloom…same thing. Two kisses into her fantasy, and he became Ken. Even Brendan Fraser, who had his own laser gaze, soon became Ken.

      She would just have to remember that Ken could be her fantasy man at night, but during the day, he was strictly professional. Which worked great until they had their first face-to-face a couple of weeks prior to the promo tour.

      It was a simple evening get-together at the offices of QG. Everyone involved in the tour was there—Ken, looking slightly harassed; his marketing VP, Paul; and five others. Ali arrived late, of course. She was still wrapping things up at work and had been caught in a meeting. So when she walked in the door she was feeling flushed and very not together. She hated being late.

      That was bad enough, but then she got a look at her coworkers. They were all gorgeous. Every single one of them. Even Ken who—objectively speaking—was the most averagelooking of them all. Even he was oozing sexiness thanks to her nighttime fantasies, especially as his face lit up the moment she walked in the door.

      “Ali! Great! I was getting worried something had happened to you.”

      She swallowed, reminding herself that this was not fantasy playtime. He was her boss, and she should not be wondering what he looked like undressed. “Sorry. Got caught up in a meeting.”

      “Bad one, huh?” he asked. Lord, there were six other people in the room, but he just talked right to her. Which, naturally, made her libido do a little happy dance, making the rest of her all soft and liquidy.

      “N-not bad,” she stammered. “Just awkward. I’m unloading all my work off onto other people, and they don’t like it.”

      “I get that,” laughed a honey-warm voice behind her.

      Ali spun around and came face to chin with a blond god of a man. Holy moly, she’d known he was gorgeous the moment she walked into the room, but up close he was downright intimidating.

      “Hi,” the god said in a steadily deepening voice. “I’m Blake, aka Lancelot, on a quest for gold that, thanks to your influence, becomes a noble mission for good.” Then he waggled his eyebrows. “I think you get to knight me!”

      “Um…hi,” she said.

      “Yeah,” said Ken, tugging her toward a seat. “Everybody, this is Ali Flores, our Guinevere. Blake, you want to grab those folders and pass them out? Thanks. Then we’ll go around the table and introduce ourselves. We’re going to be living in close quarters this summer, so I hope we can all be friends.”

      Everyone took a seat. Because Blake was handing out folders, he was the last to find a chair and ended up being the farthest away. That, actually, was a good thing for Ali. He was too beautiful to be real, and she felt a little uncomfortable next to a man who was so much better-looking than she was. Sadly, everyone there was better-looking, or so it felt to her.

      Blake was the only male actor. The others were girls of the bouncy, perky type. Blonde, brunette and redhead, they were clearly chosen because they were both beautiful and friendly. Except as the introductions went around, she realized that the blonde was Tina, Paul’s assistant and troupe costumer. The brunette was Ashley, aka Morgan le Fey. And the redhead was Samantha, who would be a tavern wench. Ali just nodded, pretending she knew what that meant.

      She’d already met Paul, the marketing VP who would double as Mordred, betrayer of King Arthur. And naturally, Ken would play the king.

      Obviously, the others were well used to this type of thing. They introduced themselves easily, talked about their acting experiences and the parts they would play, then gushed a