chapter 1

For the first time in her thirty-three-year-old life, Shelley Schwartz faked an orgasm. On principle she was opposed to this idea and had, in debates with her friends, been very smug about always hanging in there even if the payoff was more like a blip on the Richter scale than a full-scale movement of the earth.

A woman should never be cruel or unsympathetic in bed, she'd argued, but pretending that something she didn't like might actually lead to an orgasm had potentially dangerous ramifications; how could a woman go into paroxysms of ecstasy over something one day and then fail to get off on it the next? It was Pavlovian training at its most dysfunctional—and most men didn't need any help or encouragement in failing to satisfy.

But today she'd gotten stuck between a rock and a hard place. Well, actually it had been a mattress and Trey Davenport's superbly sculpted chest.

Faking it had turned out to be her only viable option.

Because although her body had been pinned beneath Trey's very studly one, her mind had been trained on her two-thirty meeting—the one at which she intended to show her father and everyone else at the advertising agency that she was not the cream puff they believed her to be. The meeting she'd spent months preparing for, and which she was now racing to at the speed of sound.

Shelley coasted through a four-way stop then mashed down the accelerator, still trying to figure out how an innocent lunch had turned into such a sexual Waterloo.

She'd invited Trey to the Ritz for his birthday, certain they'd have plenty of time for a celebratory lunch before her meeting. Things had been going swimmingly until he dangled the room key in front of her.

She'd felt the smile freeze on her lips, but Trey was a truly sweet and very hunky guy and it was his birthday; she simply couldn't tell him she'd rather go back to the office and pitch a feminine hygiene account. "This is my chance to be taken seriously at work" wasn't going to cut it with a man who'd just turned thirty-five, consumed most of a bottle of Cristal, and was looking at her like she was the icing on his cake.

Unsure what to do, she'd acted pleased and figured if they got right to it, she'd be showered and dressed in plenty of time.

This might have worked except that Trey, ever the gentleman, kept waiting for her to go first. Only Shelley wasn't going anywhere anytime soon and Trey, who ran marathons and climbed mountains, could go for hours if properly motivated. This had never seemed like a bad thing. Until today.

But even as she'd stared at the ceiling and admitted defeat she'd realized it wasn't fair to penalize Trey just because she was throwing in the sexual towel. Surely all God's children deserved an orgasm on their birthday.

So she'd kicked up their rhythm, whispered things in his ear that actually made her blush, and urged him on, giving an Oscar-worthy performance of turned-on womanhood.

And then when she could tell he was hanging on by the very slimmest of threads she'd done it, the thing she'd argued so vehemently against. She'd impersonated herself at her free-falling, head-banging best and forced Trey Davenport to follow suit.

Despite the compromising of her sexual principles, the meeting was already under way by the time Shelley arrived. The Easy To Be Me people sat with their backs to the conference room door; the Schwartz and Associates team aligned across from them. Her father sat at the head of the table with the indispensable Ross Morgan at his left.

Both men turned as she skidded to a halt in the doorway. Her father sighed. Ross Morgan looked at her as if she were a car wreck he couldn't bear to watch. The conversation sputtered to a stop and everyone else turned to see what they were looking at.

"This is my daughter Shelley," her father announced to the now-silent room.

She swallowed and nodded then forced a smile to her lips. It was only as she moved toward the empty seat at the foot of the table that she noticed the huge run in her stocking. Her heart stopped as she realized that the jacket of her lilac Donna Karan suit, the one she'd bought specifically for this presentation, was misbuttoned, and that the contrasting aqua shell was inside out, the label clearly visible.

She might as well be wearing a sign that read "Delayed due to sex, doesn't know how to dress herself."

Shit, shit, shit. She'd showered in under two minutes, thrown on her clothes, then touched up her makeup in the rearview mirror as she raced to the office. Obviously she should have taken that extra ten seconds in the hotel room for a full-length glimpse.

Copyright © 2005 by Wendy Wax