Excerpt of At the Playboy's Pleasure by Kim Lawrence

FOR the first twenty minutes of the phone call Lucy's total contribution consisted of a series of admiring grunts and the occasionally awed "Really…!"

Her sister Annie was in love, which Lucy knew meant you had to make the sort of allowances you would for anyone suffering from temporary insanity. No problem, Lucy could do that, but there were limits to her endurance and even had she been a card-carrying member of the hopeless- romantic society this conversation might have put her off her lunch.

Lucy Foster wasn't a hopeless romantic, and she had resorted to biting her tongue to stop herself blurting out something caustic that would most likely alienate her big sister forever.

She'd never met Connor Fitzgerald, but she already hated the sound of his name.

Like Annie, Lucy had once imagined there was some special man out there for her, she had even thought that she had found him! A lot more than two years separated the person who was having to bite back cynical retorts from the pathetically trusting creature she had been back then.

Nowadays Lucy worked on the assumption that men were for the most part shallow creatures not to be trusted with a grocery list let alone a girl's heart. This philosophy served her pretty well…two years and no emotional entanglements and all the angst that inevitably accompanied them.

Though it had a lot of bad press, celibacy had a lot to recommend it.

It would clearly have been useless at the moment to attempt to sell this successful formula to her sister; human nature being what it was, some things you just had to learn the hard way, Lucy admitted to herself regretfully. No, she'd just have to be there to pick up the pieces when the man of the moment, this Connor, broke poor Annie's heart. Even if the man sounded like a total pain.

As far as Lucy was concerned it was not so much of a case of if but when.

It wasn't as if she had a closed mind on the subject — she was prepared to concede there might be some rare exceptions to her grocery-list rule — but the chances of Annie striking lucky seemed pretty remote to her.

It was some relief when Annie, having presumably used up her daily quota of clichés, finally stopped waxing lyrical about the length of Connor's eyelashes, his incredible sense of humour and his general all-round superiority to every other man that had ever been born, and got on to the actual reason for her call.

"I just called to say knock them dead, Luce." 'I'll do my best," Lucy promised. "So, are you nervous?" 'I wouldn't say that." She also wouldn't say she was exactly wildly confident either, in fact there had been several occasions during the past few days when she regretted letting her sister wangle her an interview for a job she was patently unqualified for. "Well, actually, yes, I think I am slightly nervous…"

Running her tongue across her dry lips, she encountered the unexpected subtle taste of the expensive lipstick that had tinged her lips a fashionable shade of red — or so she'd been told by Marcus.

Lucy, in her total ignorance of this great man's fame, had created a minor furore in the salon frequented by numerous celebrities when she had asked him his surname. Well, his single name might be synonymous with excellence in the world of hairstyling and fashion but Lucy still felt doubtful about accepting style tips from a man the wrong side of forty who wore skin-tight black leather from head to toe!

"Well, adrenaline is good." Lucy wondered if she was the only one to find Annie's inexhaustible supply of optimism irritating. "Even if it reduces me to a gibbering wreck?"

Lucy heard her sister give a sigh of exasperation. "You remember that positive attitude we discussed?"

"I'm positive…honestly, I'm oozing confidence. I'll dazzle the interview panel with my wit, good looks and the sheer force of my stunning personality…" Which will make them overlook the fact a degree in modern history and working my way around Europe on a shoestring hardly qualifies me for a position as a PA in advertising.

"Now, that is just the sort of remark you want to avoid." 'I was joking?" 'It's safer to assume that the people interviewing you don't have a sense of humour, dry or otherwise," her sister advised. "I'm beginning to think you're not taking this seriously. You do want a proper job?" Annie added, a note of critical doubt entering her voice.

"Proper?" Lucy yelped indignantly. "What do you think I've been doing up until now?"

"Let me see, where shall I start? How about putting your life on hold for three years to act as an unpaid researcher for your boyfriend who then dumps you and takes the credit for all your work?" Lucy winced. That hadn't been her finest hour but she was older and wiser now. "Or," Annie continued warming to her theme, "do you mean picking grapes in Burgundy? Or maybe looking after rich people's spoilt brats at Lucerne, and then there was the waitressing; now, that was a great career move…"

Lucy pulled a face down the receiver. "They were lovely kids, and I got to see Europe."

"I know, you saw the bits the tourists never see; call me superficial, love, but I like my authentic experience to involve authentic five-star hotels. And before you get all sniffy and superior think on…is it so bad of me wanting to see my little sister doing a decent job with some sort of prospects? It's such a waste — you were always the clever one…"

Too clever, Rupert had said when he had broken the news he had found a less clever and much prettier replacement. Lucy blinked away the painful memory.

"But you were the one with focus and drive." It worried her slightly that the only thing her sister seemed driven to do at the moment was worship Connor Fitzgerald. "Listen, I do appreciate what you're trying to do."

"Good; so tell me, what are you wearing — the cream?" 'I don't have your cleavage to carry it off." 'No, I don't suppose you do," conceded the owner of a very superior cleavage.

"I'm wearing your black suit." With typical generosity her sister had given Lucy the pick of her extensive wardrobe and the use of her flat for the duration of her stay in the capital.

"Well, I suppose anything's an improvement on your own clothes," conceded Annie, who frequently despaired of getting her sister out of jeans. "You did keep that appointment with Marcus?"

"I hardly recognise myself," Lucy replied, lifting her eyes to the unfamiliar reflection in the mirror. "If this is the natural look I dread to think what an unnatural one would look like!"

To achieve natural all minor trace of her freckles had been ruthlessly hidden behind several layers of pale matt foundation. In addition her choppily cut shoulder-length blonde hair been slicked back into a smooth chignon and her almond-shaped eyes dramatically outlined with dark liner that gave her an air of mystery.

"Looking as though you're not wearing any make-up takes time."

"You're telling me, if I wanted to do this every day I'd have to get up at four a.m."

"I thought you were a morning person." 'But I'm not an exfoliating, moisturising and eyebrow-plucking person."

Annie laughed at the piteous complaint. "You just need practice. I told Marcus to give you the full works — hair, make-up, nails…not that you have any…"

"I do now," Lucy replied with a dubious glance at the red talons where her short, unpolished nails had been earlier. "And he gave me a doggy bag to take home with a bewildering selection of goodies."

"A present from me for your new job." 'I don't have the job yet…" Lucy felt impelled to remind her sister. She couldn't rid herself of the feeling she was going to be an awful disappointment.

"Oh, take it from me, you'll walk it. Now, are you feeding the cats? And you're not over-watering my plants? Oh, and if Derek from upstairs offers you a coffee don't say yes… he likes to pretend he's single when his wife goes to visit her mother."

"The cats are fine, your plants are fine and I can promise I'll resist any of Derek's offers of coffee — especially if he is the one with the sloping shoulders, over-gelled hair and loud voice…or, for that matter even if he's not. Listen, Annie, there's someone at the door — I've got to go…"

"All right, but I'll ring later and you can tell me how you got on."

"I will."

It wasn't until Lucy had replaced the receiver that she remembered she had forgotten to ask for a contact number in case anything came up. Annie had mentioned the romantic ambience of the hotel but not the name — so all Lucy knew was that she was staying somewhere in the Lake District that had four-poster beds.

The door finally opened and Finn Fitzgerald saw that his worst fears had been more than realized. She was everything he'd been hoping not to find.

It seemed that when it came to a certain sort of blonde his kid brother was incapable of learning from his mistakes, even ones as emotionally and financially painful as two failed marriages — quite some record when you considered Con was still six months short of his thirtieth birthday!

Not only had his dismal experiences not put the romantically inclined Connor off the institute of marriage, but he was also still falling for the wrong sort of woman.

Not long out of college, Con had married Mia, a silvery ash-blonde eight years his senior with legs that went on forever. After twelve months Mia had left him for the job as head designer for a prestigious French fashion house without a backward glance.

Four years later Jasmine had come along. Another ash- blonde, Jasmine had been almost as fanatical about keeping her cellulite at bay as she had been at getting to the top and staying there even if it involved sleeping with the odd influential person on the way there. Which had proved problematic when her loving husband had come home to find her in bed with one, her boss of the moment.

Enough to put any sane man off marriage — but not his insanely optimistic brother!

This one certainly had everything his brother went for — long, shapely legs, a great body, cut-glass features and that inevitable untouchable aura. Finn didn't doubt for a moment she was as ruthless and self-centred as the previous two Mrs Fitzgeralds.

He sometimes wondered if Con's desire to thaw the ice and reveal the warm, vibrant woman beneath — it hadn't sunk in yet that you couldn't discover something that wasn't there to begin with! — went beyond the challenge and the legs?

A firm believer that a man made his own destiny and that you took responsibility for your own actions, Finn was normally highly resistant to the popular modern tendency to blame your character defects on a traumatic childhood incident. But when he considered his brother's history he couldn't help but wonder if there wasn't something in it.

Their parents had split up when he'd been ten and Con two years younger. The responsible adults had come up with the insane idea of dividing up the children along with the property, furniture and record collection.

He'd ended up with their mother, a tall blonde… coincidence? You didn't have to be Freud to see there was a theme here…a young kid felt rejected by his mother and in adult life tried to gain the love of women who bore more than a passing resemblance to her…self-centred… selfish… shallow…

He loved his mother dearly but he wasn't blind to the deficiencies in her character.

"Can I help you?" Lucy gave a smile, not her usual wide, warm smile, the one that lit up her face and wrinkled her eyes at the corners and would, according to Annie, lead to premature crow's feet, but a stiff little twitch of the lips.

It made her look worried and she was — worried that if she didn't leave soon she'd be late for her interview. Worried that when she got there she'd make a total fool of herself and worried that the innumerable layers that constituted her natural-looking make-up would develop irrep-arable cracks if she allowed herself the full range of facial expressions. The fear she would fall off the three-inch heels she hadn't quite got the hang of yet at a crucial moment was more a certainty than a worry. The highest heel Lucy wore as a rule was on her trainers.

The man who had been leaning with his hand pressed to the doorbell straightened upright. Lucy was forced to tilt her head back to make eye contact — she blinked as she encountered a pair of the bluest eyes she had ever seen.

The bewildering hostility she was seeing in those ceru- lean depths twitched her freshly tweaked eyebrows into a straight line — this was not the reaction her expensive make-over was supposed to have on the opposite sex.

Not that Lucy could imagine ever thinking it desirable to excite the admiration of a man like the one before her, who was everything she instinctively distrusted and disliked in a man.