Getting It Good!. Rhonda Nelson

a fact, and can be authenticated if you require proof.”

      To her horror, she felt a blush creep up her neck. She swallowed and donned an exasperated expression. “Trust me, that won’t be necessary. My point is, you’ll be representing the magazine. You’ll need to be careful what sort of advice you dole out, otherwise you’ll make CHiC look bad. Which for obvious reasons isn’t the goal.” She snapped her napkin into her lap. “In short, you won’t be able to act like your typical obnoxious know-it-all self.”

      Looking irritatingly unconcerned, Ross chuckled low and sprawled back into his seat. “Now that’s the pot calling the kettle black if I’ve ever heard one.”

      Annoyed, Frankie picked up her spoon and chased a piece of sausage around the bowl. “Furthermore,” she added, “merely having sex does not make you an expert.”

      Ross cast her a twinkling glance, washed a bite of his burger down with a deep drink of his iced tea. “Yeah…but having sex a lot does.”

      Frankie’s fingers tightened around her utensil and she futilely wondered if it were possible to claw out her mind’s eye. “That’s more than I needed to know.” Way more. Hell, she knew he was experienced—from what she’d covertly gleaned from Zora, Ross was never without a date, had to practically beat the women off his sexy hide with a stick. Furthermore, she also instinctively knew he was the expert he claimed to be, but the reminder played havoc with her senses and she’d just as soon not hear it.

      “Really?” he said, evidently enjoying this suggestive line of conversation. A droll smile rolled around his lips, and those sexy-as-hell kaleidoscope eyes crinkled at the corners. “I would have thought that I’d need to list my experience. That you might even need to call a few references for this job.” His voice dropped to a sensual purr. “Or, maybe you could interview me personally,” he suggested. “Check my job performance, make sure that I’m competent enough to be your Duke of Desire.”

      The innuendo in that low, hazy voice conjured an image of her interviewing him until her eyes rolled back in her head. Cool sheets, hot naked bodies, candlelight and massage oil. Hot, hard and fast, then slow, easy and deliberate. Her feminine muscles clenched, forcing a shuddering breath from her lungs. “No,” she said tightly, blinking the vision from her mind. “That won’t be necessary. Dammit, Ross, you’re not taking this seriously.”

      “Why should I?” he countered, seemingly oblivious to the fact that she’d just produced her own mental porn film, featuring them in the starring roles. “We both know I’ve been manipulated into this. I became a pawn in Zora and Tate’s poker game—and you’re deluding yourself if you think you aren’t as well.”

      Frankie rolled her eyes. “You’re full of it, you know it, Ross?”

      He laughed and gave her an odd expression, one that left her with the unhappy sensation that he was privy to something she was not. “Now this is new,” he said consideringly. “You’re usually a lot quicker on the uptake than this.”

      Frankie scowled at him. “What the hell are you talking about?”

      “Zora lost the bet,” he said with exaggerated patience, “and yet she’s obviously very happy with the way things have turned out. If she lost, just what exactly had it been that she stood to win?”

      Frankie paused. She hadn’t thought of it that way. “I don’t know,” Frankie said slowly. And it was an excellent question. In fact, it irritated her that he’d thought of it first.

      Ross took up another fry and pointed it at her before popping it into his mouth. “I don’t know for sure, but you can bet your sweet little Italian ass that it had something to do with me and with you, otherwise, we wouldn’t be sitting here, and we damned sure wouldn’t be spending the next week together.” Ross snorted. “Duke of Desire, my ass. That was simply icing on somebody’s cake and if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say it was on your boss’s, not mine.”

      Ross stood and tossed a few bills on the table. “If I’m going to be gone for the next week, I’ve got to get organized. Find someone to dog-sit, swing by my house every few days to collect the mail, and all that jazz. Come by my place tonight and we can go over whatever else I need to know then.”

      “But—”

      He leaned forward and lowered his voice. The combined proximity of that sexy gaze, that intimate rasp and his particular woodsy fragrance made her body sing like a tuning fork, her brain melt, ready to believe anything. “And just so you know, Ms. Sexpert, I’ll be one helluva Duke of Desire because I’ve forgotten more about sex than you’ll ever know…unless I develop a death wish and decide to teach you.”

      Frankie blinked drunkenly for several seconds and by the time her sluggish brain had manufactured a comeback, Ross had already made it to the door. “Develop a death wish,” she muttered under her breath, silently cursing her roaring pulse. Her eyes narrowed and a low growl vibrated the back of her throat.

      As though sleeping with her wouldn’t be the best thing to ever happen to him. Someone needed to teach him a lesson, Frankie thought. A good moral one like “pride goeth before the fall.”

      Death wish, her ass. She smiled grimly. By the end of next week, he’d undoubtedly be wishing that he was dead.