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This would be the turning point. Today, Harris was going to notice her.

Julia bent at the waist, stretching her back with the effort of overcoming the additional height of her four-inch heels. She’d chosen sheer stockings and her shortest black skirt when she’d prepared her offensive this morning. She would no longer remain invisible.

“What’d you drop?” Eric walked around Harris’s desk, his Gucci loafers shining with new polish. She ignored him. Pinching her pencil out of the thick carpet, she checked. Had Harris seen her flagrant come-on?

He didn’t even glance up from the pile of papers in his hands.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Eric smile. He’d missed nothing.

“I dropped my pencil.” She stood upright, rewarding Eric with a scowl.

Harris continued to rummage through the documents. “I need the marketing figures for McArthur. The numbers we put together must be in your files, Julia. Marsha needs them right away.”

Marsha, Marsha, Marsha. As much as Julia wanted the newest addition to the company to notice her, all Harris ever thought about was their boss and what she wanted.

“We’ll check on it.” Eric gripped Julia’s elbow and pulled her toward the door.

With a backward glance, Julia frowned as Harris continued searching his desk for the elusive information Marsha wanted. For the love of everything sacred—what had gone wrong?

“What in the hell are you doing?” Eric whispered as they walked down the long hallway of Masters & Masters Advertising toward her office. His gait was too long and quick for her unsteady perch on the ridiculously high heels, but she kept up as best she could. When they finally reached her office door, he ushered her inside and snapped the door closed behind him.

“What did I just see?”

“Me—passing flagrant and heading straight into inept.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” Julia shook her head and blew out a deep breath as she slunk around her desk and dropped into her chair. Kicking off the offensive shoes, she sighed again. Who could she talk to about this? Eric was the closest thing she had to a girlfriend, but this was too embarrassing to talk about even with him.

Unfortunately, he’d been a front-and-center witness, and he wasn’t big on letting things drop. Did gay men like Eric have the same problems finding Mr. Right women did? Or more specifically, than she did? No woman wanted to go unseen by a guy she was trying to seduce, and she’d become the Amazing Invisible Woman.

“I’ve known you a long time, Jules, but I can’t figure you out lately. Since when do you wear short skirts to work? And what was the move I saw back there? What’s gotten into you?”

“He’s hot. I want him to notice me. What’s to figure out?”

“Hot?” Eric demanded. “You gotta be kidding!”

“Don’t you think he’s hot?”

Eric cleared his throat and shoved his hands into the pockets of his slacks. “Maybe in some tinted-hair, tan-in-a-can way. Too plastic for someone like you, Jules.”

A bitter snort of defeat sprang up from her throat. “What would you know about it? When’s the last time you were on a date anyway?”

Eric’s laugh sounded more like a condemnation. “First of all, this isn’t about me, it’s about you. And second, I’ll seize the moment when the right person comes around. Now would you please tell me what in the hell you hope to accomplish by flashing your gorgeous legs at Mr. Plastic? He’s only interested in Marsha.”

“Well, he could get interested in me.”

Eric shook his head and dropped into one of the matching leather chairs in front of her desk. “How much longer do you intend to carry on this lame attempt at seduction?”

“I don’t know.” She put her elbows on the desk and dropped her head into her hands. How much longer indeed? If she had any ideas left, maybe later rather than sooner, but she was fresh out.

“I feel like an idiot. I don’t have a clue what I’m doing. Am I ugly? Come on—hit me with it, Eric. I need the truth.”

Eric trained his features to give away none of the thoughts burning inside him. Was she ugly? She was the most stunning creature he’d ever known, both on the outside and the inside. Her crazy smirk, those green eyes, her wild blond hair untrainable even with the multitude of decorative clasps she wore everyday to work—all combined with a sense of humor and adventure. Hell, she was everything he wanted in a friend, a woman—a lover.

Too bad she didn’t see anything comparable in him. They’d met five years ago, and not once had she treated him as anything other than a friend—she’d certainly never flashed those great legs at him. Now she had her eyes set on the most arrogant ass in the office. The world was not a reasonable place if jerks like Harris made women doubt their own beauty.

“Eric?” she asked. “Is my personal humiliation taking up too much of your time over there?”

“You’re not ugly,” he finally said as he watched her slender fingers fiddle with the Rock-Paper-Scissors paperweight he’d given her last Christmas. He imagined those hands wrapped around Harris but quickly shook his head to clear the thought away. Visions of her with Harris would not bolster his control. She could not end up with Harris.

“Okay, what is my problem then?” She dropped the paperweight in the midst of the piles of manila folders. “Doesn’t he like blonds? Am I too something for him, or not enough something? Why doesn’t he notice me?”

Eric couldn’t imagine why. She was all he could see, all he looked for when he came into the office every day. Hell, Harris was an idiot. He didn’t notice her because he wasn’t paying attention. He was too stupid or too intent on getting ahead with the boss to bother with Julia—an employee at his own pay scale. The man aimed higher up the corporate ladder when it came to seduction. Harris wasn’t interested in satisfying his heart, if he even had one. No, Eric decided, Harris was intent on a fast track to success, and his many unsuccessful attempts to get the boss to notice him had proven Marsha’s mind was elsewhere up the food chain, too.

“What else can I do? Strip naked and parade around in front of him? What is going to make him see me?”

His groin stirred as a vision of her dancing naked flashed through his mind. Eric forced his response through gritted teeth as he placed his hands on his lap. “Might be a little over-the-top.”

“You’ve helped me a lot since I got here.” Julia leaned forward and pointed to the bookshelf. “And you developed every piece of training material this company uses. Why can’t you create a training manual for this?”

Eric stared at her mouth as she spoke. The content of her message traveled to his brain a lot more slowly than the instant message of “luscious”. A training manual for seduction. Wasn’t that what she’d said? A training manual… The idea came to him like a gift. Yeah, why couldn’t he?

“Interesting.” His mind spun with the insane thought like a Ferris wheel rider high on cotton candy. Oh, that could work.

“What’s interesting?”

“I’ve got the training program you need.”