Page 2 of Making Over Maris

He peered at her through his thick glasses and fondled his beard. “The Eiffel Tower?”

“Yes.”

“In Vegas?” He nibbled on his fingernails.

Sara smacked his hand away from his mouth and glowered at him. Vegas? Seriously? Was that were his brain went? Apparently it was. To top it off, he was completely unaware he was proving her point. No woman—with even one romantic molecule in her body—would want him.

Even if she could do this.

Even if she pulled off a miracle.

You could give a guy a haircut. You could trim his Mentat eyebrows. You could even dress him in a suit. But you couldn’t change his core nature.

Experience had taught her that.

Experience had tried to teach her that.

Like any red-blooded woman, Sara responded to a hot, hard, muscular, well-maintained man. But in truth it was a man’s soul, his spirit, that indefinable something that was his most alluring aspect. How he treated a woman. Spoke to her. Seduced her. If a guy was drop-dead gorgeous but didn’t have a romantic side, he was only good for a fuck. Most women wanted more than that.

Sara wanted more than that.

She hadn’t found it.

Well, she had found it. He simply hadn’t called her back.

Damn it all anyway.

And Jack? Jack’s core nature was G-E-E-K. Chronic, incontrovertible, unadulterated geek with a bad case of social incompetence, especially when it came to the female of the species.

Jack would never have it. Like, ever.

His ears went pink at her glare. “Oh.” He mangled his napkin. “You mean Paris, France.”

“Yes, Jack. Paris. France. Not Paris, Las Vegas or Paris, Arkansas.”

He sucked in a breath through his teeth. “Okay. If you do this, I’ll send you to Paris, France for your birthday.”

Her heart ker-chunked. He couldn’t be serious. Surely he wasn’t serious. She decided to push it. “For a week.”

“A week?”

“A week. And you’ll hire me a dreamy male escort as well?” She was joking but that faraway look meant he was doing the math.

“How much does a male escort cost?”

She bit back a laugh and shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never hired one before.” It hardly mattered. It wasn’t as though any of this was actually going to happen…

“All right.”

Sara’s head snapped up. “What?”

“I’ll do it. Paris for a week and a male escort for your birthday.”

“Jack, I was joking.”

A muscle in his jaw worked. His gaze glittered. “I’m not. I’m not joking.”

“That’s ridiculous. Do you have any idea how much it would cost for airfare alone?”