Her eyes sparkled with excitement as he shared his thoughts.

“I love it,” she said.

“Can you work on it while I’m in California? I fly out in two days.”

She shook her head. “You didn’t hear?”

“Hear what?”

“She went into labor. Danielle Paige. You were meeting with Danielle, right?”

“Yes.”

“I was talking to her marketing VP earlier today. She said all of Danielle’s meetings this week are being postponed.”

“That does sound like a reasonable excuse,” Jack said dryly.

After Casey left a few minutes later, his cell phone buzzed, and it was Michelle on the other line. His damn heart thundered just from hearing her voice. Her sexy, pretty voice that he loved to listen to.

“Hey. I have a session in a few minutes,” she said. “But I just wanted to tell you I’m going to miss you a lot when you’re in California and I’m in Paris, and you better be able to handle that nine-hour time-zone difference because I’m going to require a lot of phone sex with you.”

Lust swamped his body, and he was hard instantly. This woman affected him like no one ever had. A dirty word, a sexy line, and he was at attention. “It’ll only be a six-hour time difference. My trip to California was cancelled,” he said, and then the rational part of his brain bounded forward, knocking on his skull. His schedule was clear. But just as he was about to speak and suggest they not have phone sex, she beat him to the punch.

“Jack, do you want to spend the night with me? Or really, five nights?”

It went against everything they were supposed to be. But then, his time with her was already turning into more than he’d bargained for. He said the only thing he could say. The only thing that was completely true. No questions, no concerns, no second-guessing. Besides, it was everything he wanted from her.

“Yes. God, yes. So fucking much.”

19

Illusions

“Are you going to tell the truth now?” he asked, as he ran his finger against the top of Michelle’s hand. The plane soared away from New York, the sparkling lights of the city he called home growing more distant. He wouldn’t miss it one bit, since he was with her.

She pulled her gaze away from the window and raised an eyebrow. “The truth about what?

“You might not even have to tell me. I guess I might see when we land at seven a.m.”

She shot him another confused look. “What are you talking about?”

“Well, this is the first time I’ll have seen you in the morning. You turn into a monster, right? You have dragon breath, or seven toes?”

She turned her fingers into claws, then bared her pretend fangs. “Thirteen toes, actually.”

“I knew it. That’s why you’ve been afraid of spending the night.”

“Absolutely. I’m hideous, and you’ll go running for the hills when you see me when the sun is all the way up.”