More Naughty Than Nice. Julie Kistler

She was sure of that. Quickly skipping back to Anna, she asked, “What do you think he wants?”

      “A column, obviously,” Anna said impatiently. “Maybe if you really make an impression, he’ll do more than one. I told you about him. The Tribune and the Sun-Times dissed us, but the Chronicle sent him. I looked up some of his columns, just to check him out. He’s good. Seems to champion causes a lot, although he does some satirical stuff, too. Not exactly who I’d pick to write about you, but he has a following. He may have an agenda, I don’t know. And I don’t really care.” She smiled. “I have no doubt you can turn him around.”

      “Right.” Owen Dasher of the Chronicle, huh? She frowned.

      “Don’t frown. And quit chewing off your lipstick. Smile,” Anna ordered. “Look happy and in charge.”

      “Yeah, yeah.”

      “Stevie? Uh, Ms. Bliss?”

      She glanced over at the bookstore manager, who was speaking in a stage whisper and beckoning with one hand. “Yes?”

      “I’m done with my… I mean, you’re on. Now.”

      “Oh.” Damn it, anyway. All caught up in the irritating man in the back row, she’d missed her cue. And now she felt flustered and off balance. You’re a tiger and they’re hyenas, she reminded herself quickly as she swept up to the podium, facing down her audience. She focused on a smiling young woman in the front row, exactly the right age and attitude to be receptive.

      But it was that damn man in the back row she was thinking about. She was going to have to be at the top of her game to sell her message with him staring at her.

      You’re Stevie Bliss, she told herself. You can do it.

      Deliberately, she swung her head around, she found him in the crowd, and she began to speak right to him.

      “Definitely single,” she purred. “And totally satisfied. Let me tell you all about it.”

      OWEN DASHER felt himself fall neatly into the palm of her hot little hand.

      And how exactly had she done that? He’d come prepared to be unimpressed. Bored, cynical, a little annoyed his editor had made him do this, he’d sat there as the crowd filled in, making a quick first draft of the column he intended to write.

      Yet another attempt to hijack women’s brains and send them to Never Never Land, he scribbled into his notebook. Stevie Bliss—who is as fake as her Power-puff name—takes up where the Spice Girls and Ally McBeal thankfully left off….

      He smiled. An excellent turn of phrase. That one just might make the final cut and end up in his column.

      He might’ve thought he was being unfair, but he couldn’t miss the fact that there were other people here who didn’t care for her, either, what with the guy standing behind him who kept muttering, “Crazy broad,” and the ladies clustered around the baby carriage on the other side, all prim and proper in their disapproval. Good. He was looking forward to some fireworks.

      And then she was late. As the bookstore got fuller and fuller, Owen grew more annoyed. It didn’t help that he didn’t want to be there in the first place, pretending he cared about the Blissfully Single crowd. He’d read the book. He knew how slick, shallow and maybe even dangerous her message was.

      All that stuff about women who refused to get married and used men as sex objects struck him as pretty ridiculous. He’d had plenty of one-nighters in his twenty-nine years on the planet, and he’d learned from hard experience that being involved with someone purely for the sex always turned out ugly. He didn’t think there had to be love involved, necessarily, but he didn’t think you should be sleeping with someone if you couldn’t bear to wake up with them, either. Okay, so he was opinionated. He was a columnist. It came with the territory.

      As he’d waited, he’d mused on why she came up with this stuff. What had made Stevie Bliss so cynical about love and relationships?

      His first thought was that she must be some dried-up crone who couldn’t get a guy in the first place. He checked her picture. No dried-up crone there. But, hey, digital touch-ups were amazing. So who knew?

      Or maybe she was no more than another fast-buck artist, mouthing whatever phony baloney self-help platitudes she thought were most likely to net her some easy cash. The crude, rude flavor of the month, clad in leather, sporting no undies just to get some attention.

      As he was mulling the question one more time, the real Stevie Bliss walked out. No, she sauntered out, all long legs and saucy attitude. He noted the streaked blond hair, cut kind of wispy and choppy on the ends where it brushed her shoulders, the striking blue eyes behind snappy little tortoiseshell glasses, the creamy, pale skin curving down into that daring camisole, the skirt that was barely long enough to cover her assets… Wow.

      If this was a dried-up crone, he was Methuselah. And far from vulgar, she seemed to have found the place where sex met class and lived happily ever after.

      Letting his gaze linger on her spectacular legs, he wondered whether those boots were made for walking. And on whom. He had to admit it. She was hot.

      He could see she was impatient as the introduction limped on, as her eyes scanned the room, taking the measure of the crowd, checking for pockets of negativity she might have to combat later. Smart girl.

      And then her electric gaze hit him. Pow. One glance from media creation Stevie Bliss and he was sautéed in his seat. Where in the hell did that come from?

      At first he wondered if this smoky glance thing was some tactic she tried on all the men in her audience. But no, she seemed to be as thunderstruck as he was. And she was gazing directly at him, no one else.

      He steeled himself against his own overheated reaction. Owen Dasher was no neophyte when it came to dazzling women, after all. He’d interviewed a heap of stars as they hit Chicago to promote their movies, and if Julia Roberts couldn’t reduce him to a pile of goo, there was no way he was going to melt after one glance from Stevie Bliss.

      So they did a little visual tango, eye to eye, with him hanging on to a sense of journalistic detachment by his fingernails. She’s shallow and plastic and this is all a scam, he reminded himself. And he was pleased—no, relieved—when she broke first to talk to one of her handlers. She seemed rattled, and he enjoyed that, too.

      Relaxing for the first time since their gazes intersected, he managed to collect himself, taking himself sternly to task for losing it like that. But, yeah, he could handle her. He’d just proved that. She’d looked away first, hadn’t she?

      Then she sidled up to the podium to begin her speech, and he felt his palms start to sweat. Okay, so her long, lovely legs and those wicked boots were hidden behind the podium. That helped. But the rest of her, still on display, was a lot to deal with. A lot of warm, delicious woman. His fingers began to clench and unclench, and he realized he hadn’t taken a single note. Hell.

      As she spoke, purring about sassy sisters who knew their personal value and took no prisoners, she was staring right at him, giving him the full benefit of this little performance. Although his brain couldn’t seem to process a word she was saying, he was actually starting to believe her.

      “I love men,” she confided, in a naughty tone of voice that sent sparks of heat licking up from the bottom of his spine. He stretched his legs, pretending to be bored, adjusting his position. Still burning.

      “People call me a man-hater,” she continued, lifting a dismissive hand in the air. “Isn’t that silly? It couldn’t be farther from the truth. I love men. I mean, I love them.”

      As she drew out the word “love” to make her implication clear, she was met by a flurry of giggles, and she turned her focus to the gaggle of teens in the front row, the ones doing the giggling. Which distracted her from keeping him pinned to his seat. Thank God.

      “And why not? Men have been taking the cake and eating it, too, forever. Now it’s time for my cake.” Her smile widened, and she had a mischievous gleam in