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Mary glared up at Van. “You know perfectly well why I asked you to roll over on top of me. And before that, I thought, since our dogs met, and we met, I could grab the chance to make you a proposition.”
“You have … a proposition … for me.” His eyes turned to starless, moonless midnight.
“Akkk. No, no, no. That’s not what I meant. I just want to ask a favor.”
“But, Mary,” Mr. Kazinski said, “this rolling around and rolling over business — ”
“Mary, my dear,” Mrs. Kazinski interrupted, “you do seem to have chosen a rather strange way to ask a favor.”
“You’ve chosen,” Van said, “an interesting way to dress for presenting this … proposition too. Just what … proposition … would that be?”
“Okay, you caught me wearing lingerie. That does make it rather difficult to get what I want from you. I have to admit it’s not quite the professional image I want to project.”
“That depends on what profession you want to project,”Vansaid.“And,honey,Icanguaranteethat, looking the way you look and dressed the way you are, or should I say aren’t dressed, you could get just about anything you wanted from a man.”
Mary bristled. “Yeah, well, it’s my brain I want you to be interested in.”
“That’s unfortunate, dear,” Mrs. Kazinski said. “I cantellyoufrommanyyearsofexperiencethatsexy black lingerie is not the way to get a man thinking about what’s going on between your ears.”
“I couldn’t have said it better myself, Mrs. Koplunski,” Van said.
Was he messing up Mrs. Kazinski’s name deliberately? Or was Van really that discombobulated by this whole situation?
Mary groaned. She didn’t want him discombobulated. She wanted his business brain seeing the grandpossibilitiesofworkingwithheronabook.This really wasn’t going the way she had planned when she realized who he was.
Their dogs were supposed to be quietly making friends while she made sparkling, witty conversation with Van. Soon after, she’d go in for the kill, smiling up at Van, batting her eyelashes at him, so dazzling him with her MBA and her smarts he’d beg her to interview him.
Perhaps she could still manage the smile. There it was. Maybe. Nah, the smile felt about as dazzling as a soggy firecracker. Let’s try again. There, that felt a little better. Now she could inject intelligent perkiness into her voice. Couldn’t she?
“Let me tell you why you really want to do this interview. Let’s meet for coffee and I’ll go over it all with you.”
After she got out of her lingerie and into her power suit.
“But that would be a news feature, wouldn’t it?” Mrs. Kazinski asked. “Your first article in the new job you asked for. Is this young man important enough for that?”
Mary didn’t want to explain now that she didn’t have the new job, and in fact didn’t have a job at all. “He’s important enough for a whole book. Mr. and Mrs. Kazinski, I’d like you to meet Francis Van Deventer the Fifth.”
“Fifth of what? Bourbon?” Mr. Kazinski asked.
“Hush, now, Seymour. Mary, I didn’t know you wanted to do some real writing. Not that we don’t love your column. I was just saying to Seymour this morning — ”
“Yes, we were talking about it at breakfast. We wouldn’t miss a word of your column. Is Mrs. Speidel really going on that cruise with the pool boy?”
Mary chewed her lip. She’d hoped to downplay some aspects of her writing experience, although who wouldn’t want to know whether —
“You should be famous,” Mary hurried to tell Van. “Right up there with Sam Walton of Walmart, Bill Gates of Microsoft, Steve Jobs of Apple. If you’ll just give me an interview, I can start that ball rolling.”
Van snorted.
“Hmph,” Mr. Kazinski said. “You’ve got a tough row to hoe, making this young fellow famous. I’ve never heard of Francis Van Der Slamm.”
“Now, Seymour, just because the young man can’t get our name straight — ”
“You should know who he is,” Mary insisted. “Everybody should know who he is. And when I get through with my book … In fact, I bet Van’s story holds the kernel of a New York Times bestseller that would do the whole world a lot of good.”
Mr. Kazinski loosed a disbelieving grunt. Van’s sounded more like he couldn’t care less.
Mary ignored that and pinned Van with what she hoped was a persuasive gaze. “You’ve impressed a lot of people with what you accomplished at Van Deventer Ventures. People are used to seeing robber barons bust a company up, make an obscene profit, throw thousands of people out of work, destroy lives — ”
