He sat back and crossed his arms, studying her, a small smile growing on his lips as she spoke.
Suddenly, as if she only started hearing herself halfway through the paragraph, she snapped her mouth shut and cut her words off abruptly. Her cheeks reddened and he laughed.
“Really?” he teased. “Tell me more about my press coverage. And, more to the point, how you know about it.”
She pressed her lips together to try to stem the tide of the embarrassed smile that was spreading across her face, but it was no use. Finally, she cracked and laughed. “Fine! Fine. You got me. I googled you, okay? I googled you long and I googled you hard.”
“Did you google me deep?”
“Oh, yeah, baby. So deep.”
His voice grew husky in spite of the fact that the whole exchange was a joke. “How deep?”
She leaned forward seductively and made her voice low and sensual. “Ten or eleven pages, lover.”
He nodded. “Wow. That’s deep, all right.”
“And…I went way beyond a regular search.”
“Don’t stop, baby. Tell me about it.”
Her voice dropped to a sultry whisper. “I used the news tool. And…”
“Yeah?”
“Images.”
“Oh, yeah. That’s the spot, girl. Images. That’s where the money shots are.”
She leaned back in her chair, cracking up. “Thank you for making me laugh. That’s what I needed. A little perspective.”
He nodded. She was laughing, and that’s what he’d wanted, but, damn. Now he was turned on as hell, and with what she was dealing with in the moment, it didn’t feel like this was a good time to suggest running off for a quickie.
“So, how’d you find out about this, anyway?” He grinned. “Don’t tell me you have your own Google alert set up for your own name?”
She shook her head. “No. That would seriously drive me crazy. My publicist has one, though. And she texted me these.”
Alison’s phone chimed again and she continued, “In fact, that’s probably her right now.”
She picked up her phone and tapped into the messaging program. Her eyes widened. “Yep. It is.” She put the phone down and looked up at him. “And she’s flying out here to see me.”
He waited a moment to see if she was going to continue. When she didn’t, he said, “So, is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
She raised her eyebrows and laughed. “Oh, God. Remains to be seen.”