Suddenly Sexy

Authors: Linda Francis Lee

Tags: #Women television journalists, #Man-woman relationships, #Single women, #Contemporary, #General, #Romance, #Adult, #Fiction, #Athletes, #Texas, #Love stories

Suddenly
Sexy
Linda Francis Lee

For Michael,
with love

To: Katherine Bloom
From: Julia Boudreaux
Subject: Project Reinventing Kate

Sugar,
isn't this exciting! The
first day of the brand-new you. You are going to be divine. I just know
it. All you have to do is follow the man's lead, act like you're
enjoying yourself, and most
of all, tell him
he's great no matter how badly it all
turns out. Do you understand, sweetie?!

xoxo, j

p.s. KTEXTV is depending on you

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To: Julia Boudreaux
From: Katherine Bloom
Subject: I can't believe you are making me do this

Don't
sugarcoat it, Julia. You're
asking me to be less than professional. You know how hard I
have worked to earn respect. But you are one of my dearest friends, not
to mention you now
own the
station, so I will do it. Though rest assured, I
will do it with the competent
professionalism with
which I do everything.

As ever,

Katherine C. Bloom

News Anchor, KTEX TV West Texas

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To: Katherine Bloom
From: Julia Boudreaux
Subject: Inflexible

Stop being
a stick in the mud.
This is for your own good and you know it. Competence and
respect don't keep you warm at nightâor get you a raise. Besides, I
have a surprise for you. See you at the station!

xoxo, j
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To: Julia Boudreaux
From: Katherine Bloom
Subject: Surprise?

What
surprise?! You know I don't
like surprises. Julia!!!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

One

Katherine Bloom told herself she could do this. She just needed to
focus and concentrate on getting the job done as quickly and as
efficiently as possible.
She refused to think about the fact that she didn't have much
experience. Though surely it was no different than riding a bike. Once
you'd done it, you never forgot how. And if this was what she had
to do to keep her job, so be it.
Nerves tried to break through her raised-chin bravado, and suddenly
keeping her incredibly great job
as an award-winning newswoman didn't seem all that important. If she
hurried, she realized, she
could walk out the door and be in Mexico by lunch. She could change her
name. Dye her hair. Find employment selling tacos on the street corner
in downtown Ciudad Juarez. Didn't everyone need a
career change at one time or another?
Groaning at herself, she shook the thought away. During the last week,
she had put her reporter's skills
to work. She had found magazine articles, online Web sites, and books
with titles like
Make It Sizzle
and
Spice Up Your Life
.
Not one to depend on a man to think of every eventuality, she'd had the
foresight to purchase a few things she thought they might need.
A bottle of wine.
Some painful-looking utensils.
Who
knew things had gotten so creative?
Condiments.
Honey.
Oil.
Plus, carrots and potatoes.
She still couldn't believe Julia expected her to cook on live
television with a man referred to as the
Naked Chef.
Kate took a deep calming breath, thought about the stress management
techniques she had learned in
the company-sponsored stress management courseâwhich she had
failedâthen smoothed her apron.
Seconds more ticked by before she finally settled on a smile, taking in
the pristine white-latticed window behind her, the perfect sink, the
shiny oven. Even a real refrigerator. She had thought of everything
when planning this kitchen.
Forget the fact that the refrigerator wasn't plugged in, the sunrise in
the window was painted, and the walls were fake. Only the stove top
actually worked. Regardless, the television set for
Getting Real
with Kate
couldn't have looked
more authentic if they had shot the segment from the cozy confines
of someone's very own home.
However, none of that mattered just then. With only three minutes until
airtime, the producer made
her heart go still when he spoke into her earpiece.
"Kate, we've got a problem. The chef isn't here yet."
Julia had sworn the cooking segment was going to be Kate's ticket to
better ratings. "
We won't have
just any old chef for the launch of
Getting Real,
we'll have a sexy
naked chef. Women will love it!
"
Kate wasn't so sure.
"What do you mean, he isn't here yet? He has to be here, Pete. I need
him here." Her voice tried to
rise, panic surging through her. "I can't do a cooking segment without
a cook."
Forcibly, Kate reined in her growing concern.
Fact One: She was not a worrier.
Fact Two: If she repeated something to herself often enough eventually
it became trueâor so they
said in stress management. Any minute now she fully expected Fact One
to come true.
And most important, as she had pointed out to Julia, Fact Three: She
was a competent woman who
had risen to the top of her field with hard-hitting news exposes.
Unfortunately, and a very heart-skewering Fact Four: The audience
thought she was too prim and too proper. The focus group had used words
like
stiff, rigid, inflexible
.
One person had gotten creative
and called her
doggedly unbendable
.
Now there was a description to warm a girl's heart.
Kate refused to give in and cringe with embarrassment. Who would have
thought that strangers not
liking her could make her feel so bad?
Which brought her to the mind-numbing and utterly terrifying Fact Five:
Julia's brainchild of moving
Kate off the morning news and putting her on
Getting Real with Kate
âan attempt
to show a different side of Katherine Bloom by having her interview and
get involved with "something real." This week
she was
getting real
in the
kitchen, her least favorite room in the house.
For years, her mother had had an on-again, off-again love affair with
cooking. Kate had never known
if Mary Beth Reynolds, Bloom, Fisher, Radley, Smythe, Lombardi would
prepare an extravagant five-course meal or none at all. Kate had
learned that it was easier to count on TV dinners and peanut butter
sandwiches. Which made her ill-prepared for today's segment without a
chef.
When Kate had balked at Julia's plan, she had been taken aside.
"Sugar," Julia had drawled in her thick Louisiana accent, despite the
fact that she had lived in Texas
since she was seven years old, "I have to tell you. In this day and age
of witty banter and anchors
acting like family, and now that my daddy has passed on, if you don't
let those walls of yours down
and show the audience that you know how to have fun, even I'll have
trouble convincing the new
auditors to keep you employed."
Kate's response that she didn't keep walls around herself had gotten
little more than an unladylike
snort from the very ladylike Julia.
The station was KTEX TV, founded and formerly operated by Philippe
Boudreaux, man of extreme wealth, father of Julia. Up until the day her
daddy died, Julia had meddled more than worked at the station, ensuring
that her two best friends had been hired straight out of college.
Now the three of them were twenty-seven, with Chloe Sinclair serving as
KTEX's ultra organized
station manager and Katherine as a news anchor. Julia did her best to
be there for anyone who needed her, as long as it didn't entail any
actual work. Not that she needed an income.
It was widely reported that Julia, as the only heir of Philippe
Boudreaux, was set for life.
With equal measures of resolve and determination, Kate swallowed back
panic. With or without a chef, she told herself, she was completely
ready. She had memorized the recipe so she could concentrate on asking
the whole slew of "light and fun" questions she had prepared, not to
mention reel off the spontaneous "witty banter" she had been working on
for a week. She'd just have to do the cooking herself,
eek!
, and chat with the camera.
"Two minutes, thirty seconds, and still no naked guy," Pete squawked in
her ear. "What are we going
to do?"
They both breathed a sigh of relief when they heard Julia's voice as
she entered the studio.
"Hello, darlings! Julia is here to save the day."
But saviors and chefs were forgotten when Kate turned around. She would
have sat down on the kitchen stool if her knees hadn't fused with shock
when it wasn't Julia in her high heels and short skirt whom she saw,
but a man whose dominating size and presence blocked out everything
else.
"Jesse," she whispered on a rush of breath.
Jesse Chapman, tall, dark, and more handsome than any one man had a
right to be.
"Surprise!" Julia called out, the simple word echoing inside the
cavernous studio.
Kate took him in, absorbing his height, the brown hair, almost black,
that brushed his collar, the dark
eyes that traveled the length of her in a way that made her breath
catch and her skin tingle. He looked
like a cowboy stepping out for the night, his white long-sleeved,
button-down shirt tailored perfectly
over broad shoulders, narrowing into lean hips and thighs encased in
tight, soft Wrangler jeans that cupped his crotch like a lover.
Heat scorched her cheeks when she realized where she was looking.
Quickly, she lifted her gaze, reminding herself to breathe.
"Hello, Katie."
He said her name with a deep rumble that skittered down her spine, his
smile tilting one corner of his mouth. If she had needed any proof, the
fact that he had called her Katie would have been enough to prove that
Jesse Chapman stood before her. No one called her Katie. No one but
Jesse.
"Aren't you going to welcome me home?" he asked, his smile sliding up
at one corner.
Julia hooked her arm through his. "Can you believe it? Our very own
Jesse has returned. I couldn't have been more surprised when I came
down the driveway this morning and I glanced over and there he was
standing at the curb in front of your house, Kate. Just standing. Just
looking." She laughed with the same abandon she always did. "Looking
like a cover model, I say. Doesn't he look great?"
Saying he looked great was like calling a blistering West Texas summer
day warm, but Kate hardly
heard. Jesse was here.
She had grown up next door to him since the day she was born. She was
four years younger, and her very first memories were of him. It was
Jesse who had always reminded her that it wasn't her fault after every
one of her mother's five divorces. Jesse who had never made her feel
embarrassed when a new "father" moved in. And Jesse who had let her
sleep in his bed after those new fathers inevitably moved out, leaving
her mother in despair.
Chloe and Julia had been her best friends, but Jesse had always made
her feel like she could survive.
Jesse was famous now. Golfer extraordinaire. More than that, her Jesse
had gone wild.
Jesse Chapman had become a notorious ladies' man. His bold teasing grin
gracing everything from the covers of popular magazines to weekly
sports shows, he was sought out as much for his dark good
looks and disreputable reputation as for his golf game. But three weeks
ago, all that had changed. Bad
boy Jesse Chapman had become a hero.
Pete's voice buzzed in her ear frantically. "Thirty seconds to
showtime."
The words barely registered.
"Hello, Jesse," she said softly.
Conversation swirled all around, but Jesse focused on her. His eyes
glittered with that famous devil-may-care attitude as he slid his hands
into the back pockets of his jeans. He seemed intrigued
and surprised, as if he didn't quite recognize who she had become.
The corner of his mouth hitched higher, making her heart do strange
things.
"You look . . . different," he announced.
Kate blinked, coming back to reality. "Different?" Not beautiful. Not
amazing.
"Different, but great," he added.
He thought she looked great!
Then she kicked herself. She didn't care what he thought. Not anymore.
Not since she had seen him at her sister's and his brother's wedding
five years ago, when he brought not one voluptuously beautiful
date, but two. Suzanne had rolled her eyes at yet another of Jesse's
wild escapades; Derek had been tight-lipped and grim. Of course, the
number of dates hardly registered with most of the guests in attendance
since Jesse hadn't been there all that long. As soon as the bride and
groom said I do, Jesse
had left.
Kate shouldn't have been surprised, or disappointed. Because that was
what Jesse did best. He left.
Katherine jerked her attention to the line of carrots and potatoes on
the faux countertop of her fake kitchen, to do who knew what without a
chef anywhere near. Then Julia laughed the kind of laugh
that didn't bode well.
"Oh, my," Julia enthused, "I have the perfect idea!"
"Fifteen seconds!"
"Jesse, you can cook with Kate."
"Me?"
"Him?"
"It will be wonderful, better than a chef," Julia exclaimed, then she
clasped her hands together.
"Though if you wanted to, you could get naked."
Alarm gasped through Kate, while Jesse's brows slammed together, every
inch of his devilishly wicked grin wiped from his too-handsome face.
"Fine, fine, keep your clothes on," Julia conceded with a wicked grin
of her own. "You know how our Kate is. I guarantee she knows the recipe
like she knows her middle name. It will be fun."
Kate swore she was going to hyperventilate. Where was a brown paper bag
when you needed one?
She glanced around, looking for Chloe, who would no doubt take her
side. Shy but levelheaded Chloe with her shoulder-length bob and
sensible shoes. Saving grace Chloe, Kate's other dearest friend, who
would understand that throwing her a curve ball would . . . well, throw
her for a curve. But the station manager was nowhere to be seen.
"Julia," Jesse stated tightly, "this isn't a goodâ"
The stage lights blinked on and Julia leaped off the set. Jesse and
Kate froze, staring like deer caught in headlights. It was clear that
Jesse didn't want this any more than Kate did. But if Julia was
concerned,
she didn't show it.
Just as the director came forward and started signaling the count with
his fingers, Julia whispered,
"Knock 'em dead, sugar. Show the world that deep down you're as fun and
sweet as I know you are."
Kate felt conflicting emotions swell in her throatâ none of which were
helped by the impressively inventive curses Jesse grumbled beneath his
breath.
Had she ever been fun?
Growing up with a mother who had been more child than adult, Kate had
learned to be responsible, competent. Organized. Her mother had been
all about passion and excitementâthe very opposite of
who Kate had become.
Regardless, she didn't see how anything she was added up to fun.
Boring, yes. And, as the audience
polls and focus groups had said,
unapproachable
,
even
prim
. Why did the world
have to change on
her and expect something new and different?
Selling tacos in Mexico was sounding better by the second.
"Kate!" Her name was bellowed in her ear. "You're live!"
In that instant, she swallowed back fear, nerves, and memories. She had
a show to do.
"Good morning, West Texas," she said to the camera, and smiled. "Today
we are going to cook up a storm. Plus, we have a special treat. And I'm
not talking about the food! Filling in for the suddenly indisposed
Naked Chef is none other than El Paso's very own prodigal son and
ladies' man, Jesse Chapman, who is here to show us if he knows how to
do more than swing his club."
Kate cringed inwardly at the unintended double entendre. Pete bleated
in her ear. Jesse pinned her
with a murderous look. And just to the side of the stage, Julia
chuckled.

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