Hot and Bothered. Serena Bell

stopped right there, perfectly innocent, but his dirty brain knew exactly what it wanted to say back.

       Nah. I’d rather have you undress me.

      The thought got a grip on his dick. Nice work, schmo. Make this even worse on yourself.

      “So, they can replace you. That must be weird.” She leaned across the table. Keep your eyes on her face. And it was no hardship. Her nose was long and elegant with a slight upturn at the very tip. Her eyes were greenish, her skin pale and creamy. He wanted to taste it. His tongue tingled.

      He needed another beer as soon as humanly possible, but the waiter was nowhere in sight.

      He’d lost the thread of their conversation. “What’d you say?”

      “I said it must be weird to feel like you’re replaceable.”

      Now she sounded like a shrink again.

      The truth was, it pissed him off how easily they could drop another man into his slot. Which was stupid because he’d known that pop groups like Sliding Up were just pretty illusions that presented the music some producer dreamed up. And there was nothing—nothing—about the job that he wanted, except the money.

      Or so he told himself. But if he didn’t want the job, why was he so pissed? He hated to think he still had the same old craving for fame and fortune that had gotten him in trouble in the first place. The desire to have an arena full of people telling him with their applause and their screaming that his music was worth something...when he knew all too well it wasn’t.

      “Whatever,” he said, because she was too much—too pretty, too sympathetic, too easy to talk to. Because he had this feeling that she wouldn’t want to stop with messing with his hair, his clothes, his nightlife. She’d want to open him up and make him over from the inside out. And there was no way she was getting in there. “It’s fine. I need the money, I’ll do the tour, I’ll live with their stipulations.”

      He would let the exquisite Haven Hoyt put her hands all over him (metaphorically) and turn him—but only the external him—into some version of himself he wouldn’t recognize.

      She was still looking at him as if she could see right through him. He wondered what the hell she saw.

      Maybe the truth. How much it sucked that he needed the tour, sucked that the only way to help his dad was to sell himself out—again.

      Or maybe she saw what he saw most of the time when he looked inside.

      Failure.

       2

      “NO MORE HEDGE-FUND MANAGERS.”

      Haven leaned over Elisa Henderson’s broad desk and smacked its surface for emphasis. She had to find a blank space between all the photos Elisa kept of the couples she’d match-made over the years. Brides in white, husbands and wives romping across tropical beaches on their honeymoons and even a few couples mooning over swaddled-up newborns and fat-cheeked infants. Haven had plenty of satisfied clients, but even she had to admit that you couldn’t beat Elisa’s job for visible results.

      Her dating coach frowned at her. “You’ve already said no more lawyers, no more surgeons and no one who’s involved in any way in film. You stipulated up front you wanted a successful, independent, professional man who dresses well. That right there makes the field pretty narrow. You can’t keep eliminating whole categories of men. Next you’ll be saying no chest hair.”

      The thought had crossed Haven’s mind, but she kept her mouth shut. She did like things smooth, metaphorically and literally.

      She had a quick flash of Mark Webster’s decidedly un-smooth face. Probably only because she’d spent so much time staring at it, trying to picture how it would look clean shaven. The last time he’d been photographed without stubble, he’d been considerably younger.

      “Haven.”

      “Sorry, just thinking about work.”

      “Can we agree? No more eliminating whole categories of men?”

      “No one in finance,” Haven amended.

      “That’s even worse. That’s half the professional, well-dressed men in the city.”

      “And no musicians,” Haven said, thinking of Mark again. He was not going to be an easy project. He hated the idea of the tour. Money was forcing his hand, and that never made for a good situation.

      “I’d already eliminated musicians. They don’t tend to be well dressed, at least not according to your vision of what well dressed entails.”

      For Haven, that involved a suit, or at least pressed slacks and a dress shirt hanging on broad shoulders. An expensive leather belt around a narrow waist. It was possible she was salivating slightly at the thought. She’d been sex deprived too long for her own good.

      Haven had hired Elisa after Elisa had pulled a surprise two-match victory out of a tricky dating–boot camp weekend. Both Haven and Elisa had briefly looked like fools as their shared client, Celine Carr, tromped all over a Caribbean island sucking face with a paparazzo, while her two handlers chased after her and failed to catch up. But just when it had seemed that nothing good could come out of the weekend, Elisa had realized that Celine and her paparazzo, Steve Flynn, were head over heels for each other, and she’d managed to make a splash of it on national television. On top of that, she’d found true love herself with a former friend-turned-lover on the trip.

      Haven had been so impressed that she’d signed up for Elisa’s Love Match package, which included both advice and actual matches. Elisa didn’t always make matches. Sometimes she just poked and prodded from behind the scenes. But Haven felt as though she’d exhausted enough possibilities on the island of Manhattan that she’d better seek new blood. She wanted access to Elisa’s top secret, intensely coveted, expensive database.

      Elisa tucked her auburn hair behind her ears. “I think you might need to adjust your criteria.”

      “What’s wrong with my criteria?”

      “You say you want all these things—educated, polished, well dressed, well spoken, a good earner—but then you go out with the guys I pick and say they’re leaving you cold. What if you opened up the field a little? Tried someone a little different?” Elisa tapped a few keys and brushed the trackpad, then turned the laptop around so Haven could see. “Check this guy out. Teaches rock climbing, former Navy.” Elisa ticked off his claims to fame. “Does have a fondness for wool socks and hiking boots, so as you might imagine he’s kinda outdoorsy—”

      “Stop.” Haven held up her hand and noticed that she’d somehow chipped one Screaming Pink fingernail. She had the color in her drawer at work—she’d patch it when she got back to the office. “Outdoorsy? Seriously? Look. At. Me.”

      Elisa did as Haven asked, an appraisal as coldly clinical as a doctor’s exam. Not at all the way Mark’s gaze had felt yesterday. His scrutiny had melted over her skin like warm butter. She thought of saying something about that, but she suspected Elisa would take altogether too much glee in it. She might even cite it as proof that Haven was barking up the wrong dating tree. But Haven wasn’t. She knew what mattered, and for better or for worse, image was a big part of it. It was what she’d made her career on. It was who she was. And she needed a guy who could appreciate its importance.

      “Like seeks like,” Haven told Elisa.

      She could picture him. At least six feet. Dark hair, close-cropped but not so short she couldn’t run her fingers through it. Dark eyes. Tailored clothes. Athletic. Professional—maybe a CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Or, she wasn’t that picky—he could be a small business owner, too. Just—successful. Refined. At ease with social events and people.

      “Okay, I admit, you’re not terribly outdoorsy. But I don’t think like always seeks like. Look at me and Brett.”

      “But