Georgie's Heart (9 page)

“Uh-oh.” Georgeanne bent her head a little, and a small smile curved her lovely mouth. “We might have an impasse here. If you did something outrageous, I'd have to retaliate.”

“If the retaliation involves kissing me into submission, I can live with it.” Zane grinned. “So long as you think you can live with the fact that I would have to respond to your retaliation.”

Georgeanne looked up and smiled back. “In that case, we have a deal. I get to ignore your orders, and I get to kiss you into submission in retaliation for your reaction to my flouting of your orders.”

“What?” He wondered what on earth that meant. “Never mind. So long as it involves getting kissed into submission by you, I'll sign anything.” Zane lowered his mouth to hers again. Georgeanne had the most kissable mouth he'd ever seen, and he intended to take advantage of that fact at every chance he got.

Headlights appeared far down the road and came steadily closer. Zane reluctantly loosened his hold on Georgeanne while she peered at her watch, holding it toward the headlights.

“It's time for the pizza delivery.” Georgeanne sounded disappointed, which delighted him. “We'd better go back inside.”

For a moment he debated kissing her again, but the pizza driver was almost upon them, so they walked back to the clinic. He managed to keep her hand in his. He wanted everyone inside the clinic to know Georgeanne belonged to him, whether she knew it yet or not.

Zane let go her hand and draped his arm across her shoulders as she stepped in the door. She headed back toward the old laboratory, and he remained beside her, so close his body brushed against hers.

“There you are, Georgie,” Denise said.

Zane saw that Dr. Gant, Dr. Baghri, Denise, Angela, and Sandra's husband, Bobby Whitney, stood in a semicircle, paintbrushes in hand, obviously in the midst of an important discussion.

“Georgie.” Denise sounded insistent. “Didn't Fritzi Field say it's almost impossible for a man to tell whether or not a woman is faking an orgasm? She's a psychologist, and she should know, right?”

To Zane's intense interest, Georgeanne turned the color of a boiled lobster. Her face spoke eloquently of a desire to vanish into the woodwork.

She said in choked tones, “Really?”

“You're a psychologist, too,” Denise reminded her. “You know as much as Fritzi Field does. What do you say, Georgie?”

Georgeanne felt Zane's hand tighten on her shoulder. Where were lightning bolts and quicksand floors when you needed them?

“Why are you asking Georgie when there is a roomful of doctors standing here just dying to give you a technical opinion on the matter?” Zane asked.

Denise looked scornful. “Anyone who works for doctors knows they don't know anything about sex. I want somebody's opinion who's qualified. Georgie, what do you say?”

There was a moment of stunned silence, then everyone burst into laughter.

Georgeanne laughed with them in spite of her strong urge to bolt from the room. “I may be qualified as a psychologist, but I think that particular question ought to be answered by someone with a lot of training in anatomy and physiology.”

“You're just trying to get out of answering,” Denise accused. “You've been taking evasive action ever since I started talking about Fritzi Field's book. Well, you aren't getting out of it this time. Speak, oracle. Tell us the truth about men's much-vaunted perspicacity when it comes to reading women.”

All too conscious of the many pairs of male eyes upon her, Georgeanne produced a great, universal truth. “I think it depends on the particular man involved.”

Denise, joined by Angela, groaned in loud disgust.

“Talk about a cop-out,” Angela said, snickering.

“I don't want another one of your evasions,” Denise said. “I want an answer. What do you say about most men? Do they, or don't they, know when a woman is faking it?”

Georgeanne wished in vain for an earthquake. Or better yet, a meteor. Anything spectacular that would make everyone forget about Fritzi Field's sexual advice to women and Georgeanne Hartfield's psychology degree.

When nothing spectacular happened to save her, Georgeanne cleared her throat. “I … Well, since I haven't personally — er — tested a viable sample of men, I can't speak with any authority.”

“No one's asking you to,” Denise pointed out. “All I want is a psychologist's learned opinion on the subject. Now speak up, Georgie. Do they or don't they know?”

“They don't,” Georgeanne said and wished she'd answered the opposite. She broke free of Zane's grasp and snatched up her purse. “Excuse me, please. The pizza delivery is here.”

“That's a lot of bull.” Bobby Whitney looked through the doors toward the waiting room, where his wife, Sandra, painted a wall. “I'd sure know if my wife faked it. There's no way I could help knowing.”

“Now you just hold it right there, Georgie Hartfield.” Denise grabbed for her. “You've got to explain that answer.”

“Not me.” Georgeanne made a break for the door. “The mark of a truly learned psychologist is that she knows when to flee the scene.”

“Making love is an obsessive American topic,” Dr. Baghri observed. “Everyone has an opinion. Everyone wants to go on television and talk about his opinion. When do they have time to actually make love?”

Georgeanne heard this with relief as she fled toward the waiting room and the front entrance. Dr. Baghri was sure to favor the group with an Indian male's position on America's idea of sex as public recreation. If that didn't put everyone back to work, nothing would.

“Here, Georgie, let me get that,” Zane said from just behind her. “Since I've usurped your position as official slave driver, I may as well pay for the slaves' food as well.” He produced his wallet before she could fumble through her purse and received the four large pizza boxes and the cardboard caddy of soft drinks. “Are you, by any chance, running out on the discussion back there?” He indicated the laboratory, where loud voices issued forth in passionate disagreement.

“Of course I am. Aren't you?” Georgeanne managed a weak smile. “Denise has been reading pieces of that book to us all week. If I hear one more word about it, I'll go nuts.”

She'd go more than nuts. She'd go ballistic. She'd suffer a core meltdown. She might just flat die.

“It sounds like an interesting book.” Zane handed the cardboard holder of soft drinks to her, his smoky eyes warm with amusement. “I'll have to buy a copy. From what I heard on TV last night, it's got every talk show and every psychologist and sex therapist in the country up in arms.”

“That's what I tried to tell Denise.” Georgeanne knew she must resemble the bottom end of a thermometer. “Authors make their money by writing controversial books that give talk show hosts something titillating to talk about. Fritzi Field probably researched the market for two years before she conceived a sufficiently controversial idea and sat down to write the actual book.”

“I don't think so,” Sandra chimed in.

Georgeanne started. She had forgotten Sandra's presence.

Sandra shoved back the paint-splattered blue cap on her soft blonde hair. “I read the foreword of Denise's copy this afternoon, and my impression is that Fritzi Field is a woman who has suffered personally. It's the only way she can write the way she does.”

“That's how authors always write.” Georgeanne knew she ought to shut up, but somehow she found it impossible. “If they can't connect with their audience on a very personal level, they don't sell many books. It's that simple.”

Sandra laid her brush aside and came toward them to lift a couple of pizza boxes off the stack in Zane's arms. “Well, you would probably know more than I would about that. You're an author yourself, aren't you? Dr. Gant said you've sold lots of magazine articles.”

Georgeanne wished yet again for a laser-targeted meteor, one that would zip right through the roof and land on her head. She had to stop talking. The more she spoke, no matter how innocuous her statements, the damning evidence added up. Already, Zane gazed at her in a fascinated way now that he had learned the one thing she'd rather have kept a secret from him — that she was a writer who knew the rudiments of selling her writing. If he should put two and two together, the expression on his face when he looked at her would alter radically.

“Magazine articles are vastly different from books,” Georgeanne stated and hoped she sounded like an authority. “That particular book probably had an agent hyping it to all the publishers, and it probably garnered a huge advance when it sold. The author is very likely well-known within the publishing industry, even though she — or he — is remaining anonymous to the public at large.”

“But the principle is still the same.” Zane smiled warmly at her. “The best writers have a very personal style. From what I'm told, Fritzi Field has a style somewhere between a mother and Dr. Marcus Welby.”

Georgeanne paled and hurried to speak, but it was too late.

“That's what we all agreed this afternoon.” Denise appeared beside Zane. She sniffed the air enthusiastically and lifted a pizza box from Sandra's hands. “Fritzi writes exactly the way Georgie speaks. One minute, she sounds like your doctor and the next minute, she's your mother. You feel like you're being personally instructed.”

“Is that right?” Zane's interested gaze rested on Georgeanne's burning cheeks. “In that case, I'll definitely have to buy a copy of that book. I'll read anything that sounds as if Georgie could have written it.”

These words would have sent Georgeanne's heart into a pleasant flutter if they'd referred to anything she had written other than
Faking It
. “I hardly think — ”

“You'd better buy a copy then,” Denise said, “because
Faking It
sounds exactly like something Georgie could write.”

Georgeanne considered quitting her job and moving someplace where she had no friends to embarrass her. Say, the North Pole. Or better yet, the South Pole. It was further away. “Thanks a lot, Denise. If I get a call next week from Oprah Winfrey, I'm handing it over to you.”

“I wish you would.” Denise sat down on the newspaper-covered floor and popped the lid off a cup of soft drink. “I'll say I'm Fritzi's manager, and that I simply must meet Oprah personally before I can allow Fritzi to come on the show.”

The cheesy smell of pizza permeated the clinic, overriding the odor of paint and enticing the workers into the waiting room. Soon, people sat all over the floor eating pizza, sipping soft drinks, and arguing about Fritzi Field.

“You can mark my words,” Bobby Whitney said. “She's a feminist-man-hater with hairy legs. She's probably ugly on top of that.”

“You should read the foreword of her book,” Sandra smiled fondly at Bobby. “I think she must have suffered a lot in her own marriage. She sounded like she was speaking from experience.”

“That's exactly what I think,” Denise proclaimed. As the only person present who had actually read the book, Denise's opinion carried weight. “The whole time I was reading, I was just crying for her. You could tell her poor little heart had been broken, and that she was lamenting that she hadn't known then what she knows now.”

Georgeanne stared at the floor. Lord, why hadn't she realized how exposed she'd feel with that book in print?

Because she had never really expected anyone to publish her book, much less read it — that was why. Writing it had been wonderful therapy, but the problem with being a writer was that said writer didn't know when to let well enough alone.

She'd just had to query an agent after doing all that work. When the agent showed interest, she'd been stupid enough to submit the manuscript. When she received an offer, she'd been so surprised, she automatically said yes to everything.

The whole thing just went to prove what she had suspected for some time. The only fate around was a thing of evil that had it in for Georgeanne Hartfield.

Georgeanne looked up and discovered Zane's interested gaze resting on her cheeks. She was probably changing colors like a strobe light. She just hoped she could think of some believable reason for it. Something told her he wouldn't buy the idea that talking about sex embarrassed her.

“Georgie, I want you to read it next,” Denise said. “When you get through, I want to know what you think about what Fritzi has to say. You're the only one of us who has the same training Fritzi has.”

Georgeanne lost what was left of her appetite. The more likenesses of her opinions to those of Fritzi Field her friends spotted, the more tenuous her position. What if Zane should realize who Fritzi Field really was?

Georgeanne sucked in her breath. Surely she wasn't expecting a man like Zane Bryant to remain interested in her for long just because he'd kissed her and said he wanted her.

She let her breath out slowly. In spite of her training in psychology and her personal experience, she was just like any other woman. She wanted happily-ever-after every time a good-looking man made a mild pass at her.

“I'll be glad to,” she said, with credible calm. “As soon as things settle down with the clinic — ”

“Oh, no, you don't. You're going to read this book, or I'll come sit on you personally.” Denise sounded determined on that much. “I'm going to hear some intelligent discussion of the ideas in here if I have to go on a talk show myself.”

To Georgeanne's relief, attention shifted from her to Denise as a possible guest for an Oprah Winfrey interview. She nibbled a slice of pizza with a total lack of appetite.

“In that case, I'll be a gentleman and buy a copy of the book myself,” Zane said. “If Georgie's going to read it, I'll read it along with her. What do you say, Georgie?”