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times his salesmanship didn’t make him any easier to work with. Ray generally backed down just before a clash, but he and Greer inevitably circled each other in conversation like wary combatants.
    Leaning against her office door, he lazily crossed his ankles. “Marie will have your hide.”
    “You’re telling me something I don’t know?”
    Ray chuckled and moved in to slouch comfortably in the pale gray chair next to her desk. “It would have made a good cover.”
    “For Frederick’s of Hollywood.” Greer sat down and slipped off her shoes. The others were used to her padding around in stocking feet; she wasn’t about to change her habits for Ray. As she waited for him to speak, she was aware that his eyes were roving over her mint-green suit, slowly removing that suit, and just as slowly continuing to talk with her stark naked—in his imagination. Used to his mode of operation, she paid little attention.
    “You’re one of the few women who could wear that nightgown to absolute perfection,” Ray drawled.
    “Yup,” Greer agreed smoothly. “Unfortunately, pink makes my face break out in spots.”
    Annoyance flamed in his dark eyes, but only for an instant before he let out a low chuckle. “I still think I caught just a glint of lust in your eyes when you looked at that nightgown. Don’t tell me we’ve found a rare weakness in you, Greer?”
    Something sharp pricked her finger, and she glanced down in surprise. The paper clip in her hand was completely bent out of shape, unusable now. Had she really just done that? Tossing the thing in the wastebasket, she let her eyes return to Ray. “I know you’re ticked because you were backing Marie on this one, but rationally you know better. Cost margins were part of it—the nightgown is too much higher than our regular lines. And style is part of it—the style simply has limited appeal; too few women would look good in it.”
    “You want me to listen to your whole lecture again?” he asked dryly.
    Greer leaned forward, resting her chin in her cupped hands, wondering why some men remained uneducable. “We’re selling fantasies,” she said patiently. “The whole business of lingerie is based on people’s fondness for make-believe. We sell sinfully delicious fantasies—daydreams that don’t threaten. A woman is going to buy what makes her feel good about herself. What feels good next to her skin. Clothes that give her confidence because she does feel sexy in them. And that’s entirely different from a nightgown that shouts—”
    “Sex object. ‘Promoting sexuality is inherent to the field, but it doesn’t have to be on a sex-object basis,’” Ray quoted with another of his subtle smiles, mimicking her earlier words in the staff meeting. “One of the staff can be very, very picky on that infinitesimal difference between sexy and sex object.”
    “A huge difference,” Greer corrected.
    “You’re full of peanuts, darling.”
    Control your temper, Greer. “You voted with me in the end,” she reminded him.
    “That was business. Business is a different game from life.” He stood up and stretched lazily, his opaque, hypnotic eyes fastened on her. “I really only came in to say I was shocked you didn’t have a little feminine temper tantrum over going with me to the trade show.”
    “Why on earth should I?”
    He shrugged. “You’ve backed out of attending every other trade show before this.”
    It was true—she had. Because lingerie conventions were just like other conventions. A lone woman was a prize lamb in a meat market, something Greer would never willingly let herself in for. And the minute she’d yielded to Grant’s suggestion at the end of the staff meeting that she go, she knew Ray would offer a suggestive comment. “Love Lace always sends two representatives,” she said smoothly, “and since Marie can’t go with you this time, I don’t mind.”
    “Somehow I thought you would.”
    “Why?”
    “You and I rather rub each