Free Indecent Suggestion by Elizabeth Bevarly Page A

they’d both been under the influence of either raging hormones or holiday spirits of the alcoholic variety. But he had tasted and touched Becca once upon a time. And he remembered every single moment of every single time.
    Someday, he hoped, he would touch and taste her again. Only the next time it happened, the sole influence they’d be under would be their feelings for each other. And their need for each other. Someday, he told himself again. He just had to be patient, that was all. But it would happen again.
    Someday.
    “Look, we have the whole day off from work,” she reminded him. “Let’s do something fun. Something that will distract us from smoking. Let’s go to a movie. I’ll even let you pick which one. And then I’ll cook dinner for you at my place.”
    “We should probably talk about the new account at some point,” Turner told her, deliberately replacing thoughts of their personal relationship with thoughts of their professional one, since that was so much easier to think about. “We may have taken the day off from work, but we still have a lot to do on our presentation before Saturday.”
    “We’ll do it tomorrow,” she told him. “We have the rest of the week before we have to present it, and we don’t have that much more to do. And, all modesty aside, I think we both realize how brilliant our pitch is. If we don’t land that account for Englund Advertising, nobody can.” She smiled with much satisfaction as she looped her arm through his and began to walk leisurely up the street. “By Monday morning, Turner, you and I will be working on the ad campaign for real. I just know it. By Monday morning, the account for Bluestocking Lingerie is going to be all ours.”

5
    H IS AND B ECCA’S PITCH might be brilliant, Turner thought the following evening when everyone else at Englund Advertising was packing up to go home, but it wasn’t finished yet. Which was why everyone else at Englund Advertising was packing up to go home, and he and Becca were still seated in her cubicle working on their pitch. Yeah, they still had two more days to perfect it, but he knew they’d both feel a lot better if it was perfect now . And since neither of them had any plans for the evening, neither had seen any problem with hanging around a little longer to do some more work on it.
    Except for the fact that he, for one, was craving a cigarette something awful.
    Damn hypnotherapy anyway, he thought. What a racket. By day’s end yesterday, he and Becca had both succumbed to their need to smoke, a half-dozen times at least. Whatever the Amazing Dorcaso had said to them while they were under, it hadn’t worked worth a damn. Not that he was surprised. Yeah, looked like it was going to be an early, stinky grave for the two of them, after all.
    “We just need a catchier slogan,” she was saying now from her seat behind her desk.
    Her cubicle, like his, was a perfect square, eight feet byeight feet, which was by no means large, but was larger than most of the Englund Advertising employees had. That was because Turner and Becca were next in line for promotion to account managers, something that would net them an honest-to-God office. Interior, without windows, at first, but eventually, if enough of their colleagues quit or retired—or, you know, died—they’d have the breathtaking view of the Indianapolis skyline visible from the best offices and the boardroom.
    In the meantime, Becca, at least, had created her own view for her cubicle. Among the requisite calendar and phone list attached to the beige fabric walls, she’d tacked up pages pulled from magazines of print ads that the two of them had worked on together. There were glossy shots of everything from a local microbrewery and its assorted ales, to a local vineyard and its assorted wines, to a local five-star restaurant, to an exclusive condominium high-rise recently added to that breathtaking view of the Indianapolis skyline. Only in the past couple of years