All Tied Up. Alison Kent

you would be?”

      Batting ingenuous eyes that said less about her innocence and more about her understanding of artful naiveté, she dispensed a frosted pink, candy-coated smile. “Why, your wildest dream, of course.”

      Eric grabbed her wrist, turned his cheek and nuzzled his lips to her skin. And he did it all without breaking eye contact. “Is that a promise I should be holding you to, Chloe?”

      Time to stop this conversation’s downhill slide, Macy decided, stepping into the standoff before either of her guests could strip to their skivvies. “Any sign of Anton yet?”

      Chloe extricated herself from Eric’s hold, leaving him with a pat on the cheek. She crossed the kitchen to pull a bottle of spring water from the fridge. “He’s here. Lauren sent me to tell you.”

      “It’s about damn time.”

      Macy breathed a sigh of relief, which Chloe interrupted by adding, “But Doug’s not coming. A bad blueprint on one of the condos, I think was the deal.”

      Chloe twisted the cap from her bottle and sipped. “Oh, and Kinsey just called. Her parents came into town this afternoon and insisted she join them for dinner.”

      Oh, good aggravating grief, Macy thought, and grimaced. The more feedback on the game, the better to gauge the column’s success. “Now what am I going to do? I planned this month’s game around five couples.”

      Eric, of course, found the news to his liking. “Looks like I’m off the matrimonial hook.”

      Chloe slid up against Eric’s side, gave him a look from beneath sultry lashes. “Speaking of a matrimonial hook, rumor has it, sugar, that Cathy cut you loose.”

      Eric blew out a long tolerant sigh and wrapped a brotherly arm around Chloe’s shoulders. “Chloe, Chloe, Chloe. Seeing as how this is Macy’s party and I’m working to be on my best behavior here, I’m going to let that one slide.”

      Macy wished she could slide. All the way into tomorrow, and forget tonight ever happened. “I’m not sure your behavior’s going to make any difference, since it looks like Macy’s party is now Macy’s bust.”

      “Actually,” Chloe began, cutting off Macy’s third-person soliloquy, “five couples won’t be a problem. As long as you play, too.”

      “Whoa. Wait. You’re not off any hook yet,” Macy said, but Eric had already scooted out of the kitchen. She turned to Chloe. “What do you mean, five couples? Who’s my extra man?”

      “Anton’s not alone. He’s got that lawyer with him.”

      The floor beneath Macy’s feet became a hungry black hole. “That lawyer?”

      “Uh-huh.” Chloe stepped back to follow Eric into the other room. “Are you coming?”

      “Yeah.” Macy turned on the kitchen faucet.

      Leo Redding. Here.

      In her loft.

      With her underthings the length of the building away.

      Of all times to be without cleavage. “Let me wash my hands. Tell Lauren I’ll be right there. And whatever you do, Chloe, don’t let Eric escape.”

      Chloe leaned around a stack of bright, glossy yellow spheres to watch Eric’s retreat. “He does have a cute butt. I suppose it wouldn’t be so bad to play Jane to his Tarzan act.”

      “His Tarzan isn’t an act, Chloe. He’s an alpha of the highest order. Head of the pack and all that psychobabble.”

      “Such a shame. Swinging from a vine is so uncivilized. Give me a chandelier any day.” Chloe sighed and, when Macy rolled her eyes, gave a quick flutter of her fingers. “I know, I’m going. And I promise no one will get away.”

      Macy shook her head and got back to the business of washing her hands. Chloe, the enigma. The bad girl body, the baby doll face. No wonder Eric had gotten all touchy-feely when Chloe walked into the kitchen.

      Men. They all had such one-track libidos. Macy could just imagine Leo Redding’s tongue lolling in Chloe’s direction like some expensive…What breed of dog would an uppity attorney own, anyway?

      Whatever the pedigree, because he was definitely pedigreed, he’d pant after Chloe’s cute-toy-poodle personality long before he’d share his bone with Macy, the scruffy rat terrier.

      She didn’t care. She didn’t care! Why should she care? It wasn’t like he’d ever offered her more than the time of day.

      Leo Redding III, Esquire, had first come into Macy’s life a year ago, during changes to the corporate structure of gIRL-gEAR. Having landed the account through Anton’s connection to Sydney via Lauren, Leo had drawn up the required documents for shareholding and ownership. He’d been a total automaton during the group’s corporate dealings.

      Sydney, who seemed his perfect female counterpart, declared him unsuitably career obsessed. Neither Kinsey nor Mel had managed to crack his focused composure. Even Chloe’s cotton-candy Chloe magic had only resulted in Leo removing his pewter-colored wire-rimmed glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. She’d declared him to be a big waste of time.

      Macy hadn’t known him well enough to disagree. Things hadn’t changed. One thing she did know was that, along with Eric Haydon, Ray Coffey and Jess Morgan—all gorging on fajitas in the loft’s central room—Leo played on the same adult soccer team as Anton. The soccer team meant Macy had a jackpot of single men to draft into service on game nights.

      But this was the first time Leo had come to play.

      Oh, and then there was his incredibly acute sense of hearing, and matching sarcastic streak, both traits she’d happened to discover when he’d stopped by the loft with Anton one Saturday morning last fall.

      The men had been on their way to a soccer game, and Anton had dropped by for Lauren. As much as Lauren loved cheering on her favorite forward, she hated pacing the sidelines alone, and had begged Macy to come along. And Macy had been tempted.

      Like any healthy twenty-five-year-old female, she more than enjoyed spectating when it came to a twenty-two-man testosterone tournament. She’d said as much to Lauren. Said as well that she was glad to be a child of the new millennium, where men were equal opportunity sex objects.

      And then she’d made the mistake of glancing across the loft in time to catch Leo’s indulgent expression turn to one of annoyance, insult even.

      Humph. Leo, obviously, still lived in the past.

      But then, after Macy had dodged Lauren’s bullying, walked the three to the freight elevator and reached for the switch to send the car to the ground, Leo had stepped back into the loft and done it for her.

      He’d looked at her, studied her, stared down at her, making one-on-one visual contact for the first time in their brief association.

      She hadn’t counted on his eyes. He wore wire-rimmed glasses when working, and Macy had to admit they added a je ne sais quoi to his smoothly urbane image.

      But he hadn’t been wearing them that morning. He’d been wearing clear contacts, if any at all, because there was no reproducing that shade of pale, translucent, dollar-bill green.

      The worry lines at the corners of his eyes had fanned out toward his temples, his expression one of a man enjoying a private, inside joke. He’d never smiled. To this day Macy didn’t think she’d seen him smile.

      But he had parted his lips. And she had responded in kind. His effect was like that, his appeal a powerful weapon. She might not like him much in her mind, but her body didn’t share her mental morals.

      Using the tip of one finger, he’d lifted her chin, made sure he had her attention, taken her frantic pulse with the stroke of his thumb. “Macy?”

      She’d managed a vague, “Hmm?”

      “I know about equal opportunity.