The Sexiest Man Alive (The Romanos 1)

Joe sighed and looked at Susannah. “Sorry,” he said, “but when Matt’s right—”

“Sex,” she blurted.

There was a sudden silence in their vicinity. Matthew glared around him, glared at Susannah and sat down again.

“I should have expected this,” he growled. “Listen, lady, whatever happened in that boardroom—”

“Wow,” Joe said, and grinned. “In the boardroom?”

Matthew shot him a withering glance. “One more word, you can walk back to L.A.”

“Sex sells,” Susannah said, hurrying the words, wondering if she’d manage to get through this before the Romano brothers went for each other’s throats. “It sells cars and toothpaste and beer. It sells everything.”

The men looked from each other to her. “So?” Matthew said.

“So,” Susannah said, folding her hands in her lap to keep them from shaking, “so, it can sell CHIC.”

“How?” Matthew offered a pitying smile. “All the women’s magazines are pushing sex. There’s nothing new about that.”

A smile curved across her mouth, one so smug it made him want to haul her to her feet and—

“You’re getting ahead of me,” she said. “What do you know about magazine publishing, Mr Romano?”

“Not much. But I know enough about balance sheets to tell you that you’re wasting my time.”

“Do you read any? Magazines, I mean.”

Matthew’s eyes narrowed. Susannah had to concentrate on not leaping to her feet and racing for the door.

“I know this will astound you,” he said gently, “but I can, with some effort, manage to recite the alphabet all the way from A to Z.”

Bastard! Did he think this was amusing? Susannah took a breath.

“Then I’ll rephrase my question, since I doubt you expend all the energy it must take to decode periodicals that would be of interest to our target reader.”

Joe laughed. Matthew looked at him.

“Joe?” The single word seemed to float above the table, shimmering with meaning.

“Yes?”

“I’ll meet you at La Guardia.”

Joe shrugged, smiled lazily and got to his feet. “Good idea. Actually, bro, I think you need to handle this, ah, this situation on your own.” He smiled, reached for Susannah’s hand and, when she gave it to him, brought it to his lips. “It’s been a pleasure, Susannah. And an education. I certainly hope we’ll see each other again.”

“Not in this lifetime,” Matthew muttered as his brother strolled away. He caught the eye of the worried-looking waiter and signaled for coffee. After it had been poured, he moved his chair closer to the table. “All right, Miss Madison.” His tone and his expression were grim. “You seem determined to have some sort of showdown, so let’s get to it.”

“No showdown,” Susannah said quickly. She leaned forward, her eyes on his. “Picture this. A woman—let’s call her Mary Anne—works hard all day, comes home at night to an empty apartment, pulls a TV dinner from the freezer, curls up on the sofa, watches TV…”

“I fail to see what this hypothetical Mary Lou has to do with—”

“Mary Anne. Mary Lou’s her sister. Mary Lou spends the day doing laundry and running after the kids. At night, she stirs up some leftovers for dinner, cleans up the kitchen, then joins her husband in front of the television set. It’s Monday night. He’s watching football. She watches for a little while and then she yawns and goes to—”

“Bed,” Matthew said impatiently. “So?”

“What’s the common factor missing from both their lives, Mr. Romano?”

“How in hell should I know?” Matthew asked irritably. Was that what Susannah Madison did with her nights? Go home, eat a frozen dinner, curl up on the sofa and watch TV? No. He’d left something out of the equation Susannah ate her dinner with a man named Peter. She curled up on the sofa with him, watched TV with him, went to bed with him…

“Romance,” Susannah said, and gave him that same smug smile again.

Matthew blinked away the red haze that had formed in front of his eyes. “I beg your pardon?”

“Don’t you see?” Her voice rose with excitement. “Both those women—those potential readers—are desperate for some romance in their lives. Fantasy, remember? CHIC can give it to them and, once it does, the advertisers of everything from soap to soup will be clamoring for space in the magazine.”

“Is this a new takeoff on those perfume-strip inserts they put into magazines nowadays, Miss Madison? You know—open CHIC, turn to page thirty-seven and there’s a strip labeled Moonlight and Flowers?”

“Turn to page thirty-seven,” Susannah said eagerly, “and there’s a recipe for Lobster bisque a deux.”

“Lobster bisque for—”

“For two.”

“I know what the phrase means, dammit! I just don’t see—”

“And two pages later, there’s a feature article on the language of perfume.”

Lobster? The language of perfume? And what had she meant about him being ahead of her when he’d made that crack about sexy magazines? If she had a plan, he couldn’t see it. Not that it mattered. Nothing she could say would change his mind about the folly of throwing good money after bad.

But, dammit, she was even more lovely to look at now, with her cheeks pink and rosy and her eyes glittering with excitement.

Matthew frowned and cleared his throat “I’m, ah, I’m afraid I’ve never heard of the language of—”

“Perfume What scents are sexier to a man? Florals? Greens? Orientals?”

He blinked. “Well, I—I—” Whatever it is you’re wearing, he thought, and he knew suddenly that it was time to put this conversation to rest. “Miss Madison.” He spoke gently. He could see, after all, that she’d put some effort into this. It wasn’t her fault her plan wasn’t any good. “Susannah,” he said, in an even more kindly fashion, “I’m sure you’ve put a lot of thought into these suggestions, but—”

“There’ll be a contest each month, and wonderful prizes.”

“Contest?” Matthew frowned. “W

hat kind of contest? I’ve seen the contests women’s magazines run. Best dessert recipe. Best main course. I thought you said—”

“And I thought you said you didn’t read women’s magazines.”

“I don’t. Read women’s magazines, I mean. But I’m not dead. I see the covers on the stands.”

“Then you know that there are enough contests like that to last a lifetime.” Susannah lifted her chin. “Our contests will ooze romance. Well, we won’t say ‘romance,’ we’ll say ‘sexiest.’ Because sex—”

“Sells. So you’ve already pointed out. Sexiest what, then? Meat loaf?”

Damn the man! Was he being deliberately dense? His smile was so condescending it made her want to slug him. Instead, she gave a trilling laugh, as if to show him she knew he was joking.

“Sexiest movie, Mr. Romano. Or—or sexiest way to spend an afternoon.” She saw the first faint glimmer of interest in his blue eyes. Her heart lifted because she’d caught his attention—and her palms grew damp because the worst was yet to come. “The possibilities are endless,” she said. “Sexiest city in America, sexiest restaurant in New York…”

“Why limit it? Take a global approach, appeal to a wide cross-section of women. Sexiest city in the world. Sexiest restaurant in the world. Don’t you agree that would be better?”

“Yes,” she said, trying not to bounce up and down in her seat because now she had him.

“No.”

Susannah jerked back in shock. “No?”

“That’s what I said. No.”

“But you said…you just said…”

“It’s an idea. An interesting idea, but a monthly feature like the one you’re describing wouldn’t have sustained appeal. It has no real focus. One month, two, three, and readers would start to drift.”

He was right, of course, and she did have a focus. She was about to lay it out for him—which was definitely a poor choice of words, all things considered. All she had to do was make him see the logic to her plan. Perhaps he would. Perhaps she hadn’t given him enough credit for creative thinking. Actually—actually, the way he was looking at her, with all his attention focused on her and his blue eyes narrowed and thoughtful, she could see that some people might get the idea Matthew Romano was an intelligent, capable man. An intelligent, capable man who was rising to his feet and smiling in polite dismissal.