Kissing Under The Mistletoe: The Sullivans (Contemporary Romance) (3 page)

“How are we supposed to give the Pocket
Planner sex appeal?” Howie asked, clearly frustrated.

“If we could have gotten it out two years
ago, before the economy started to tank, the retailers would have
taken it on without blinking.” Larry’s mouth was turned down at the
corners as he spoke. He was a genius, but more than once he’d
reminded Jack of Eeyore, the morose donkey from the children’s
books his mother had read to him when he was a young boy. “But now?
It will take a miracle to convince them to stock it.”

Howie was the realist. Larry was the
pessimist. And Jack was the energy that kept their inventive and
brilliant motors running, no matter what.

“The three of us are going to grab a cup of
coffee and start brainstorming.”

They’d been planning to pop open champagne
right now, not down more java. Jack pushed the thought away to
focus on the problem at hand: making their device “sexy,” not only
for men but for women, too.

Of all the problems Jack had faced over the
past decade, worrying about sex hadn’t been one of them. He had a
great appreciation for women. He liked to watch them move, liked to
feel them soft and warm beneath him and enjoyed the way their minds
worked. And yet, just as eating and sleeping had always played
second fiddle to his work, so had women and sex.

Larry sighed as they got off the trolley and
rounded the corner into Union Square, which was fully decorated
with lights in every store window and huge green wreaths hanging
from the lampposts. “If we can’t convince the retailers to carry
our product this Christmas, we’ll officially be out of money. And
I’m getting too old to keep living on the edge of completely broke
like this, guys.”

Howie gestured toward the center of Union
Square, where there was a portable trailer on the corner. Several
large lighting rigs had been set up around the area to shine down
on the snow that had been brought in for the scene. Flakes of fresh
snow fell from another rig positioned above the brightly lit
stage.

“Imagine having the funds to put something
like this together to sell our invention.”

Their usual coffee place was just ahead but,
instead of heading inside, Jack detoured toward the crosswalk.

“Where are you going?” Howie asked.

“To take a closer look.”

Larry was right. They’d need a miracle in the
next twenty-four hours to keep their dream alive. Jack knew it
wouldn’t be the end of the world if they didn’t make this deal.
He’d easily be able to get a job working for one of the high-tech
companies in Silicon Valley. But he’d never wanted to work for
anyone else. And just as this snowy scene in the middle of San
Francisco had been some director’s impossible vision, Jack wanted
to see his own impossible vision come to life, too.

A sixth sense had him moving quickly toward
the Union Square set. He didn’t know exactly what he was going to
learn by watching the filming of a movie or commercial. It was just
that today he needed to witness fantasy become reality.

Turning up the collars of their suit jackets,
and shoving their hands deep into their pockets to try to keep warm
against the strong Bay breeze that whipped between the tall
buildings, the three men crossed at a busy corner. They had just
stepped up onto the sidewalk when the door to the trailer
opened.

And the most beautiful woman in the world
stepped out.

Jack stopped so suddenly that Howie and Larry
both barreled hard into his back and a car rounding the corner
nearly knocked them down.

Glossy, straight dark brown hair moved over
shoulders covered in red velvet. Soft fabric clung to a perfect
hourglass figure and swirled seductively around an incredible pair
of legs, made even sleeker by extremely high heels. Long, elegant
fingers were tipped with nails painted red to match the dress and
the full lips that were curving up into a smile.

The woman on the Union Square set wasn’t only
the most beautiful woman Jack had ever seen, she was also the most
vibrant. As she took her place on the set beneath the lights the
photographer began taking pictures of her. Though Jack didn’t know
what it was she was selling, he wanted it anyway.

And
her
.

He wanted her, too.

“My girlfriend is never going to believe it
when I tell her I saw Mary Ferrer live and in the flesh.” Howie’s
expression was starstruck.

Larry’s eyebrows went up. “You know her
name?”

“She’s on the covers of a bunch of magazines
Layla has lying around in the living room. Hard to believe it, but
Mary Ferrer is actually better looking in person.”

Men, women and kids of all ages stopped what
they were doing in the middle of downtown San Francisco to watch
the beautiful model pose for pictures. As she smiled, flirted and
laughed for the camera, she was sexy without being too sexy, sweet
without being too sweet.

A little girl broke free from her mother’s
hand and barreled onto the set with a squeal of joy. The model
scooped the girl up into her arms with a laugh, and the two of them
chatted cheerfully until her mother rushed up to take her daughter
back. Jack couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he could see
that Mary was waving away the woman’s apologies without a second
thought.

That was when something inside Jack’s chest
clenched tight…and he immediately knew why.

“She’s the answer to our problems.”

But what he felt when he looked at the
beautiful stranger didn’t just come from thinking she could be the
perfect spokesperson for their invention. Jack was a scientist who
believed in what he could prove with numbers and calculations and
wires and chips hooked together. At the same time, he’d been
following a dream long enough to understand that passion lay
beneath it all.

Suddenly, he had to ask himself, was love at
first sight actually possible?

Larry and Howie had turned to stare at him as
if he’d lost his mind. “How on earth could that gorgeous creature
have anything to do with our problems?”

“Our device needs sex appeal. She’s got
plenty of that. But we also need someone to represent it who will
appeal to the broadest possible market.” He could see it all so
clearly, just as clear as his first vision had been ten years ago.
They would need both still shots and live commercials of her
holding the Pocket Planner. Because people wouldn’t be able to take
their eyes off her, they also wouldn’t miss the product she was
selling. He gestured at the large crowd of men and women, boys and
girls, of all ages. “Everyone is clearly mesmerized. Even
two-year-olds can’t resist her.”

“Okay,” Howie said slowly, “you’re making
some good points. But how are you going to convince Mary Ferrer to
work with us? Especially since she has to be one of the most
expensive models in the world, and our budget at this point barely
covers our coffee.”

“Don’t worry,” Jack said. “I’ll convince
her.”

Howie and Larry looked at each other with
raised eyebrows, but neither of them expressed another doubt. Both
of them knew that when Jack Sullivan decided to make something
happen, it always did.

Mary Ferrer could hardly believe this was her
final photo shoot.

During a brief break when Gerry, the
photographer, changed film and the hairstylist touched up her hair,
she looked around at the set that had been created in Union Square
for the shoot.

How many bright lights had she sat beneath in
the past thirteen years? How many makeup artists and stylists had
she worked with? How many high-fashion looks had she sold? How many
beautiful pairs of shoes had she worn that had felt as if she’d
been walking on nails? How many big cities had she flown to for
fashion shows then departed from as soon as the curtain fell so
that she could get to her next booking on time?

Though Mary never took her good fortune for
granted, the truth was that she’d started to lose interest in all
those fabulous trappings somewhere in her mid-twenties. She had
been discovered at nineteen by a very well dressed young modeling
scout who had passed through Mary’s small village looking for a cup
of coffee while he was on vacation in Italy. The man had given Mary
his card and had begged her to let him represent her as a model.
She’d reached out for her big chance with both hands.

All her childhood friends had been either
married or engaged by eighteen. Just like the other women in her
village, Mary knew her girlfriends would have a handful of children
by their mid-twenties…and they would stay in the same place their
whole lives.

But Mary had always dreamed of more.

Of bigger.

And better.

She had always wanted to travel the world,
had been filled with a deep need to see what else was out there.
She’d read everything she could get her hands on in the library
about other countries, from compelling travel journals to somewhat
dry atlases. She’d also made sure to learn English so well that she
could read it fluently by the time she’d graduated from school.
Alone in her bedroom as a child, she would read her English
language books out loud and try to mimic the tones of the actresses
starring in the subtitled American movies at the theater in
Rome.

Unfortunately, all Mary’s mother had wanted
was for her to settle down with a nice man who was up to the job of
“taming” her wild urges and giving her babies. If Mary closed her
eyes and blocked out the sounds and activity around her, she could
still remember their final conversation as if it had happened
yesterday.

“I will not allow you to leave,” Lucia Ferrer
had declared.

But Mary had not only inherited her mother’s
dark hair, flashing blue eyes, and olive complexion, she’d
inherited her stubbornness as well.

“This is my chance to finally get out of this
small town,” she’d retorted in rapid-fire Italian. The two of them
were so similar that the years since Mary had hit adolescence had
been fraught with tension. Her father had done his best to try to
smooth things out between mother and daughter, and she could see
the alarm in his eyes at their exchange.

“That man you met at the coffee shop wants to
take you to New York so that you can bare your skin to strangers in
flashy clothes after they’ve painted your face with makeup like a
tramp.”

Terribly frustrated with the way her mother
was automatically assuming the worst—and the fact that she wasn’t
giving Mary any credit at all for knowing right from wrong—she
explained again. “Randy is a scout who works with a very successful
agency. He says he can get me work as a model with famous designers
in Paris and London and New York City.” Lifting her chin, she
declared, “There’s nothing you can say or do that will stop me from
going.”

But her mother refused to see things Mary’s
way. “If you leave today, don’t bother ever coming back. You will
no longer be my daughter.”

In that moment, one she’d never forget, Mary
had let her mother’s absolute refusal to see reason—and her own
flaring temper—push her all the way out the door and away from
their small country village.

But Mary had never believed her mother would
stand by her threat.

She’d been wrong.

As Mary opened her eyes, she was glad of the
chance to focus on the lights and excitement of downtown San
Francisco at Christmastime rather than giving in to the gnawing
pain in her heart that had grown bigger and bigger over the years
that she'd been estranged from her parents.

But though she dearly wished she and her
mother could have seen eye to eye over her career opportunities,
Mary couldn’t imagine giving up the experiences she’d had all over
the world or having had the chance to work with so many talented
and passionate people. The past thirteen years had been exciting,
lucrative and challenging. Despite the long hours and working in
conditions like today, when the winter wind blew straight through
the thin velvet of her dress and chilled her from the inside out,
she would never complain about her career.

Gerry, one of her favorite photographers,
moved to where she was standing at the side of the set with an
apologetic smile on his face. “Sorry for the delay, Mary. I know
it’s cold out here. Are you ready to get started again so we can
finish up and then go get warm?”

Shaking off her thoughts of the past, she
smiled back at him. “Absolutely.”

But instead of picking up where they’d left
off, he put his hand on her arm. “I still can’t believe this is the
last time I’ll get to photograph you. Please tell me you’ve changed
your mind.”

Mary would have hugged him if it didn’t mean
sending all of the stylists into a panic and losing another fifteen
minutes to more touch-ups to her hair and makeup and clothes.

She’d had an amazing career and was still in
high demand around the world for both print campaigns and runway
shows, but after seeing what happened to models when they kept
working past their prime, and how bitter they became when they were
inevitably passed over for younger women, she’d made the decision
to step into the next phase of her life.

“I’ve loved working with you, Gerry.
Hopefully, we’ll work together again in a different way in the
future.”

“Have you decided what you’re going to do
next?”

As soon as she’d announced her retirement
from modeling, Mary had been offered plenty of opportunities to
consider: fashion editor for a major magazine, working with Randy
at the agency, taking on an advisory role for a makeup company. As
a teenager, she’d known becoming a fashion model was exactly the
right choice. Now, after thirteen nonstop years, she knew she
needed to take as much time as necessary to think through her next
steps. And she would start by settling into the beautiful attached
house she had rented last month on Nob Hill, just a few blocks from
Union Square.