It Had to Be You (Chicago Stars #1)(95)

Phoebe was tapping the toe of one of her high heels while her sparkly earrings swung back and forth through her hair. “Why did Ron want you here? He didn’t say anything to me about it.”

“You’ll have to ask him that.”

“Take a guess.”

“Well, he did say something about maybe needing a backup quarterback. In case you went off the deep end or something.”

“Is that so.”

“You have a habit of doing that occasionally, you know.”

“I do not!”

She yanked open her coat button, and as he saw what she was wearing beneath it, his amusement faded.

“Something wrong?” With a maddening smile, she allowed the coat to slip off her bare shoulders.

He felt as if he’d been poleaxed. How could she do something like this? He’d been strung tight for too long, and now he exploded.

“Dammit! Just when I start to think you might be learning a little common sense, you prove me wrong! Here I was actually believing you might be getting a faint glimmer of what this business is all about, but now I realize that you aren’t even close!”

“My, my. Somebody certainly is grouchy this evening. Maybe you should mind your own business and go home.” She finished removing her coat and carried it over to be checked, her hips swaying from side to side. As she turned back to him, he felt a pulse hammering in his temple. Just moments ago, he’d been thinking about how much he enjoyed Phoebe’s exhibitionist clothes, but that was before he’d seen her current getup.

She was dressed like the head hooker in a bondage house. He took in the long, clingy black dress that looked more like an S&M harness than an article of clothing. The top half was made up of fishnet and black straps. One of the straps wrapped her neck like a collar, with a fan-shaped arrangement spreading down to a slightly wider strap that encircled the midpoint of her breasts and didn’t do much more than cover her nipples. Through some black fishnet with holes the size of nickles he could see both the upper and lower swells straining against that narrow black strap.

At her waist the fishnet gave way to a slinky fabric that stuck like body paint to every curve of her hips. Near her thighs, the dress was ornamented with gold hardware that looked almost like garters, except garters should have been tucked away instead of hanging out where everybody could see. Adding insult to injury, the garment had a side slit that traveled all the way from here to kingdom come.

He yearned to bundle her up in his jacket and hide her from the world because he didn’t want other people seeing so much of her body, which was a damned ridiculous notion considering her fondness for taking off her clothes. He grabbed her arm and led her toward an alcove off to the side of the lobby where he could hide her from public view and go at her in earnest.

“Is this your idea of how to dress for a business meeting? Is this your idea of what to wear when you want to negotiate a contract? Don’t you understand that the only thing you’re going to negotiate dressed like that is how much you can charge to crack a whip on some man’s bare butt.”

“What did you pay the last time?”

Before he could recover from that piece of impudence, she slipped right past him. Whirling around, he saw Ron walk in, and it was obvious from the stunned expression on his face that he was equally taken aback by Phoebe’s getup. The men’s eyes met, and Dan wondered if he looked as helpless as Ron did. Didn’t she realize this was DuPage County? Women didn’t dress like this in DuPage County, for chrissake. They went to church and voted Republican, just as their husbands told them.

He stalked toward her with a vague idea of executing a low tackle and then carrying her out over his shoulder when one of Keane’s lackeys appeared. Before Dan could stop her, she had set off with him.

He didn’t have much choice but to follow. By unspoken agreement, he and Ron quickened their steps until they had pushed the lackey out of the way and positioned themselves on opposite sides of her. At the end of the mirrored hallway, they passed through the doorway into Jason Keane’s private dining room.

Dan had known Keane for nearly ten years. They’d partied together a few times, played some golf. Once they’d spent a liquored-up weekend deep-sea fishing in the Grand Caymans with a couple of lingerie models. Keane had always attracted women and, from what Dan had heard, turning forty hadn’t made him want to settle down.

The small dining room looked like the library of an English manor house, with Oriental rugs, leather club chairs, and dark wooden paneling. Heavy crown moldings framed an ornate ceiling of plasterwork medallions and vines that flickered with shadows cast by the burning logs in the fireplace. Heavy velvet draperies had been pulled shut at the window, hiding a view of the ninth green beyond. The damask-covered oblong table was set for six with ornate silver and china banded in deep burgundy and gold.

Jason Keane, along with two of his cronies, stood next to the fireplace with heavy crystal tumblers in their hands. The atmosphere was decidedly masculine, and as Dan entered the room with Phoebe dressed in her bondage clothes, the uncomfortable memory of one of Valerie’s favorite pornographic books came back to him. He shied away from the ugly feeling that Phoebe was O, and that he was about to offer her up to the brotherhood.

Keane came toward them, hand extended. The multimillionaire developer was a cool customer, but he couldn’t quite hide his astonishment at Phoebe’s dress. That astonishment quickly changed to something more intimate, and Dan had all he could do not to shove himself in front of Phoebe and tell Jason to set his sights on somebody else’s bimbo.