Tutoring Tucker. Debrah Morris
Brindon looked even more masculine among the dried hydrangeas, the blue-and-white porcelain plates, the antique furniture and the chintz fabrics than he had in Malcolm’s office.
“On our way to where?” His curiosity was mild for a man about to embark on a life-altering adventure.
“Our first stop is Neiman’s to pick you up a few casual things from the racks.” She eyed the toned, hard-muscled length of his legs encased in tight denim. His turn around the apartment had provided her a nerve-jangling view of his body. He might have a little too much hair, but he possessed a physique male underwear models would envy.
“What are you? A forty-two long?” she asked. He nodded. “I made an appointment with a tailor for later in the week. Having your measurements taken will save time when we visit the designers for suits and tuxedos.”
“Tuxedos? As in more than one?”
“You’ll need a variety of evening wear for different occasions. I assume you don’t own formal clothes.”
“A corduroy sports coat is about as formal as I ever got. And that was just for weddings and funerals.”
“You’ll need black tie, white tie.” She surveyed him with a critical eye that quickly turned appreciative. With his wide chest, broad shoulders and trim hips and waist, he was the kind of man designers had in mind when they sat down to create. He’d look so good when she got through with him, rich bored women would close in on him like sharks on chum.
An image she found particularly disturbing. “Yes, you’ll definitely do justice to designer clothes.”
“I don’t really need specially made stuff. Do I? Can’t we just go to the mall and pick up some duds?”
Her gaze swept over his snug, faded-to-white-in-all-the-right-places jeans and plain cotton shirt, stiffly starched by the hotel laundry. Tucker looked comfortable in those clothes, so who was she to try and change him? Oh, right. She was his highly paid image consultant.
“Lesson number two. Clothes make the man. Buying from chain stores may be what you’re accustomed to, but millionaires do not shop in malls. Walking the walk and talking the talk are not enough. You have to look the part.” He had to sound the part, too, but they’d work on the drawl later.
His piercing blue gaze met and held hers. “So what you’re saying is, wearing fancy clothes will make people take me more seriously?”
Put that way, the idea sounded absurd. But Brindon’s raw, what-you-see-is-what-you-get honesty went against everything Dorian believed in. “Of course.”
“Whatever you say.” He cocked his head to one side like a curious cocker spaniel, and his bright eyes widened as if he’d just noticed she was naked under the thin robe. A chivalrous blush tinged his tan cheeks, which only made Dorian more conscious of her careless state of dishabille. She shivered and her nipples hardened as she turned away. She should have grabbed her thick, chenille robe. Unless he had superpowers, he couldn’t see through that.
“What else you got planned for me today?” His words rolled over her like warm honey. An easy grin spread from his lips to his eyes. How could a grown man look both innocent and provocative at the same time?
Or maybe she had imagined the provocative part. Dorian swallowed hard, unnerved by a fleeting fantasy of luring the newly christened Brindon’s blushing, work-hardened, testosterone-riddled body into her four-poster canopy bed and having her way with him on cool Egyptian cotton sheets.
Repeatedly.
Lord! Where had that come from? She shook her head, hoping to banish the lascivious thoughts from her mind. This was ridiculous and not like her at all. Nothing, no one, had excited her for a very long time.
“You do have plans for me, don’t you?”
His question snapped her back to the moment, but she couldn’t look him in the eye after that steamy little scenario. “After a quick stop at the mall, we’re off to Emilio’s.”
She’d called the exclusive suburban day spa and salon the day before, alerting the talented staff to clear their schedules and man the battle stations. She was bringing them a challenge, a client to sorely test their professional makeover skills.
“Emilio’s, huh? What’s that? A Mexican restaurant?” Brindon settled among the cushions on one of the overstuffed sunshine-colored sofas. He stretched both arms along the back and braced a booted foot across his knee. “’Cause I could sure go for some chili relleños.”
Right. Dorian expelled a deep breath. What in heaven’s name had she gotten herself into? How was she going to survive ninety days with this man? “Sorry, but Emilio’s is not a restaurant.”
“What is it, then?” He looked up, his blue eyes so trusting she wanted to urge him to flee before she succeeded at her job and changed him, and his life, forever.
“A surprise.” Dorian dashed for the relative safety of her dressing room and ducked inside before she could blurt out the warning screaming in her mind.
How could she explain a day spa to an innocent like Tucker? She’d thought the hard part would be getting him to sit still for his first manicure. But justifying the transformation of a rare, sweetly honorable man into another rich, jaded playboy was worse.
Obviously, when she’d signed the devil’s contract, she’d underestimated the consequences.
For both of them.
Chapter Three
Emilio’s was definitely not a restaurant. The fancy sign out front proclaimed Luxury Day Spa and Urban Retreat. Briny wasn’t sure what that meant, but instinct warned this was not a place he cared to visit.
Even for a day.
He bit back his protests. What did he know? Dorian was the expert in these matters. He should shut up and let her do her job, just as he had at the ritzy department store, where she’d turned out to be a regular force of nature. Without ever looking at a price tag, she’d ripped through racks of menswear like a Texas tornado through a trailer park, tossing one of these and two of those into the arms of a shell-shocked sales clerk who’d had to run to keep up with her. Having never seen shopping turned into an Olympic event, Briny had watched in dazed admiration. Of course, Dorian had assumed he was practicing his knot-on-a-fence-post routine.
He followed her inside the spa, lugging shopping bags filled with clothes he never would have bought on his own. He tried not to gawk, but the place was a marvel of sunshine and glass. There were enough plants under the domed skylight to put a rain forest out of business. It even sounded like a jungle. A gurgling brook, spanned by a wooden bridge and stocked with spotted koi, wound through the lobby.
Exotic birdcalls cackled and cawed from speakers hidden among the vegetation. Real parrots and cockatoos would have been too authentic, too messy for this perfect, fake environment.
“What is this place?” he asked.
Dorian didn’t bother checking in with the girl at the desk. She set her purse strap firmly on her shoulder and took off down a long corridor, seeming to know exactly where she was going. Briny had no choice but to follow, which allowed him to admire the feminine sway of her determined, stay-out-of-my-way walk. “This is the first stop on your journey toward self-actualization,” she said over her shoulder.
“Humph.” He didn’t believe in that self-actualization mumbo jumbo. He might not be Mr. Suave, but he wasn’t Mr. Stupid. He knew exactly who he was and what he wanted. Not only that, he usually knew what other people wanted, too. Growing up in a rough-and-tumble home for “troubled youths” had put a fine point on his character-judgment skills.
This time his instincts had let him down. He couldn’t quite get a handle on Ms. Dorian Burrell. Who was she? And what did she want besides the thirty thousand dollars he’d agreed to pay her? Perplexed, he watched the heir apparent of Chaco Oil traipse