Chapter 2
LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT? Marly couldn’t help herself. She rolled her eyes. “Come on, Governor. You can do better than that.”
He crossed his arms over his delectable chest and actually had the gall to look offended. “You think that’s just a bad come on.”
“I certainly don’t think it’s a good one!” Great, Marly. You couldn’t have played along, dodged the pinch to your ass, and added John Hammersmith’s name to the After Hours’ client roster? What’s wrong with you?
“So you wouldn’t believe me if I told you that the moment I saw your picture in the magazine, I knew you were The One?”
Marly gaped at him and was saved from having to answer by the arrival of room service and Ms. Turlington again. Marly poured herself some green tea and watched The Hammer drown his strawberry waffles in syrup and smother them with whipped cream, for all the world like a little kid. A demented little kid…a Republican one. Ugh.
Really, she should leave now, while there was someone else in the room to act as a buffer.
“Did you know that my great-great-grandmother was essentially a mail-order bride?” Hammersmith said around a mouthful of waffles. “The Italian one.”
“No.” Marly took a sip of her tea and tugged on her braid, which had grown tight. Her scalp prickled with discomfort and something like alarm.
“Great-great-gramps saw a cameo portrait of her, and that was it for him. He went to find her and bring her back to the States.”
The tiny hairs on the back of her neck jumped to attention. Then they parted to make way for a deep shiver. But she didn’t react visibly, just eyed him with a tolerance reserved for the insane.
“Isn’t that romantic?” the governor said, swallowing. He ate standing up, his plate in his left hand, sawing through the waffles with the edge of his fork.
She nodded for Ms. Turlington’s benefit. Marly might not have finished college, but how stupid did the man think she was? He figured he could feed her this pack of BS and she’d tumble into bed with him?
It was a lowering thought that she might have done so based on the recommendation of his bare chest alone. She could have just had a fling—to support morality and conscience and Republican values, of course. But there was no way she’d do it now, with this lame talk of love at first sight. How many women had he snowed with this stuff?
Ms. Turlington changed the subject, bless her bossy, crabby, proper little heart. “Mister Governor,” she announced, eyeing his plate with something like despair, “you’ll note that there is an egg-white omelet under that steel dome. Those waffles you’re consuming—with the entire udder of butter and bathtub of syrup—contain a minimum of 3,600 calories and—”
“Turls, you know I detest egg-white omelets, and you probably had them fill it with broccoli and onion, too.”
“—six hundred grams of carbohydrates, not to mention enough saturated fat to deep-fry a herd of buffalo.”
“But I do thank you for your continued concern about my health. It’s very sweet of you.”
Miss Turlington sniffed. Then she produced a bona fide white, lacy handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes.
“Turls…” the governor groaned. He cast her a look of long-suffering, set down his waffles on a stack of scary-looking legal documents sporting lots of little yellow flags and plucked the steel dome off the omelet plate.
Ms. Turlington stopped dabbing immediately and looked hopeful.
Marly thought the omelet looked and smelled fabulous, but the Hammer wrinkled his statesman-like nose. He poked at the mass of eggs with a knife and looked unimpressed. He set the dome back over the plate, and just then Marly’s stomach had the poor timing to growl. She hadn’t eaten anything before leaving her apartment.
He brightened. “You’re hungry!”
“No, no,” Marly stammered, under Ms. Turlington’s ominous gaze.
“Yes, you are. Isn’t it fortunate that we ordered some extra breakfast!” The gov grabbed a fork, cut a bite of omelet and made choo-choo noises, driving it toward her mouth.
Marly was so appalled that she opened it and he deposited the bite of eggs onto her tongue, emitting a long engineer’s whistle as he did so. Then the lunatic said, “Yum, yum!” and sent her a big ole shit-eating grin.
She almost spat the eggs onto the carpet at Ms. Turlington’s expression, but she managed not to. Instead she swallowed them.
“Now,” said the Hammer, advancing on her with a napkin, “you just be a good kid and eat the omelet. I’ll return to my breakfast of champions. Turls, where’s your oatmeal and prune juice?”
“I have already consumed my morning meal,” growled Ms. Turlington, and swept from the room, closing the French doors with a snap.
Marly blinked. “Governor, really, I’m only here to cut your hair.” She looked at her watch. “And I’ve got to get back. I have a client coming at ten….”
“It’ll take you all of five minutes to eat that omelet, sweetheart. C’mon, can’t you do it for the Ham?” He advanced toward her and put his hand at the small of her back.
His touch was casually intimate, for someone who’d just met her. Though she thought he was nuts, her body didn’t agree. Marly leaped forward as if burned and grabbed the plate of eggs. She held it in front of her like a shield and dodged around the serving cart. “Thanks.”
“Can’t have you all shaky when you’re snipping the gubernatorial locks, eh?” He grinned. “Gubernatorial—isn’t that the weirdest word? Sounds like all things relating to a goober.”
Marly laughed in spite of herself.
“Now, my family and friends know the truth—I am one, but do we need to advertise the fact?”
He didn’t look at all like a goober. He looked like blue-blooded sin in half of a thousand-dollar suit. And he was crazy. Obviously. Because he insisted on returning to their earlier topic of conversation.
“Now that I’ve found you, Marly Fine, I’m going to have to insist that we get to know each other. Are you free for dinner?”
Marly set down the omelet once again. “No, Governor, I’m not. We run a salon, which is open until midnight.”
“You work a sixteen-hour day?”
“Sometimes. Usually I work a twelve-hour one. I go in at noon. Miami is half-Latin, and Latins like to keep late hours.”
“Hmm. I’m asleep by eleven. This could be tough to work out….” He stuck another bite of waffle into his mouth.
Her sense of outrage rose. “Governor Hammersmith, while I am certainly, um, flattered by your interest, there is nothing to work out. I have a very full life and—”
“You married?”
“What? No.”
“Engaged?”
“No, but—”
“Boyfriend?”
She hesitated a split second too long.
“Then we can work something out.”
“Governor, maybe I don’t want to work something out!”
“I’ve been told I’m passably handsome. I floss regularly and use mouthwash. I can even be charming, when I want to be.” He cocked his head to one side and licked a bit of whipped cream out of the corner of his mouth. “What’s not to like?”
Marly closed her eyes. Then she opened them and took a deep breath. “Women don’t say no to you very often, do they?”
He looked a little sheepish. Then he shook his head.
“In fact, I’ll offer a guess that not many people say no to you.”
Hammersmith stuck the last bite of waffle into his mouth and chewed pensively. Then he shook his head again.
“Well,” Marly said brightly. “We all encounter new experiences, don’t we? Now give me that—” she took the plate from his hand and set it on the cart “—and come sit down in that rolling chair again so I can do my job.”
He blinked at her, then went and sat down. She unfolded the salon drape and threw it around him, covering him from the neck down. Thank God I don’t have to look at that chest any longer.
Then she handed him a mi
rror. “Now, you like a side part on the left, correct?”
He nodded.
“And it looks like…are you having these strands near your temples colored gray?”
“Yes. They decided I looked more statesman-like with a little silver around the edges.”
Marly pursed her lips. “I don’t have anything with me to do color. All I can do today is a cut.”
“Isn’t that a shame. Guess you’ll have to see me again, won’t you?” His lips twitched.
“You know,” said Marly severely, “if you were anyone but the governor, and if you were even a smidgen uglier, I wouldn’t put up with you.”
“Even though you’re curious?”
“Who said I was curious?”
“Your eyes, your voice, your body language. The fact that you’re still here and haven’t run screaming out the door—even though you think I’m crazy.”
She glared at him. “I don’t think you’re nuts. I know you’re nuts.”
“We’ll see about that. History often repeats itself.”
Again, a shiver spiraled around her spine before dispersing into hundreds of tiny ions of unease. Marly dug her spray bottle of water out of her nylon bag and depressed the nozzle several times, soaking the man’s head.
“I guess that’s one way of telling me I’m all wet,” said The Hammer. “But by the way, if we’re going to ride into the sunset together one day, you should call me Jack.”
Chapter 3
RIDE INTO THE SUNSET together?
“So you see,” Marly said later to her business partner Alejandro, “the guy is off his gubernatorial rocker!”
They stood on the salon side of After Hours, on the zebra floor cloth and in front of a tangerine wall. The spa was funky and colorful, with Italian glass lamps, walls of all colors and a distressed concrete floor painted to look like the ocean. Every time she looked at it, Marly felt a mixture of pride and horror: she had painted it, crawling around on her hands and knees to do every lovely little blue-green swirl. Ugh. She had, in fact, driven the design of the whole place, since she’d studied art during her three years of college and had a knack for interior design.
Alejandro stretched his six-foot-four, muscular frame. A yawn overwhelmed his classically handsome face. He rubbed the day-old bristle on his square chin and sipped at a beer, his treat for passing his business school exams and squaring the books. “Oh, I don’t know, mi corazón. If I didn’t think of you as a sister, I might fall into instant love with you.”
“Be serious!”
“I am.” He rubbed absently at an uncharacteristic stain on his elegant linen pants.
Shrieks of drunken feminine laughter rolled over them, coming from the pedicure stations in the back. Marly lifted an eyebrow. “Let me guess, the Fabulous Four are here? Aren’t they early?”
The Fabulous Four was a group of women in their forties who booked their appointments together each week and got blind drunk on After Hours’ wine. At first Marly had thought it was cute. But after an entire year, it was getting a little out of hand. The Fab Four took over the place and got so loud and raunchy that sometimes other clients complained.
“They’re all going on a cruise together tomorrow,” Alejandro explained. “So they moved their pedicures—and happy hour—back to lunchtime.”
“Did they fight over you, honey?” Alejandro was often in demand for hand and foot treatments, as much as he hated to give them.
“No—when I found out they were coming, I deliberately crossed myself off the book for that time slot.” He grinned. “Now, tell me more about the governor.”
Marly frowned. “He’s feeding me lines, and I’m not going to fall for them. How many times a week do you think he tells the story of his great-great-grandfather and the mail-order bride?”
“I’ll go to bed with him,” her coworker and fellow stylist, Nicky, said with a leer. “He’s hot…for a Republican. Yeow, baby! I’d leave nothing on the guv but one of those royal-blue neckties….”
Marly shook her head at him. “I don’t think he’s bent your way, Nicky-doll. And I didn’t get the feeling he’d care much for orange spandex, either.”
“Oh, gawd.” Nicky shook his blond hair. He was like Princess Di in drag, with a California accent and a lisp. “It’s back to the Internet for me, then. Did I tell you about my date last week? Finally, finally, I thought, yay, this guy is gonna be it. He was good-looking, head to toe Calvin Klein, makes tons of money as a designer. I was ready to marry him—Even though we’d have to go to Massachusetts to do it! And then he shows up wearing those plastic food-service gloves. He wouldn’t even take them off to shake my hand! Fuh-reak, freak, freak.”
“But, Nicky,” said Alejandro. “You wouldn’t know what to do if you had a normal date. You’d have no stories to tell us and nothing to complain about.”
“So true,” said Nicky with a frown. “Do you think I should see a shrink about this?” He wandered off, one hand on his spandex-encased hip.
Marly sighed. “He makes the governor seem normal, honestly.”
Alejandro laughed. “Don’t you mean Jack?”
“I’m not going to call him by his first name. And besides, even if I was dumb enough to fall for his lines, how can I ignore the fact that he’s been seen all over the state with that debutante…you know, the one they’re expecting him to marry, like, yesterday?”
“Carol Hilliard?”
“Yeah—the one in the pastel Chanel suits and the Ferragamo shoes.”
“Nobody’s seen a rock on her finger, Marly.”
“They’re probably still excavating it, all hundred carats, from Daddy’s diamond mine.”
“Meow!” Alejandro winked at her. “What has she ever done to you?”
“Nothing,” muttered Marly. “She’s just perfect for him and I’m not. Do you know the guy had never even seen blue toenail polish before? I guess it’s not fashionable among the little debbies.”
“Marly, chica. Why does it bother you that you’re not perfect for him?”
“It doesn’t.”
“Right. That would be why you’re obsessing.”
“I’m not obsessing! I was just sharing my morning with you. A morning that happened to include a half naked governor who’s a big flirt.”
“Ooooh, is he cut?” Nicky was back again.
“Um, well, yeah.”
“Six-pack?”
She nodded.
“On a scale of one to ten, how much chest hair?”
“Five.”
“Mmm. Sounds divine. You should sleep with him.” And with that little bit of advice, Nicky disappeared to mix color for his next client.
“He hasn’t asked me!” she called after him, hands on her hips. Not that Jack Hammersmith needed to, really. She knew exactly what it meant when her body got that boneless feeling, the melted knees syndrome, the warm rushes of sensation in private areas.
“So,” Alejandro said. “You cut his hair. And you’re not sworn to secrecy, so that’s great PR for After Hours. The best, in fact. The only thing better would be for us to cut the hair of Brad Pitt or Colin Farrell. Would you get to work on that, please?” He grinned.
She heard his unspoken request. Don’t piss off the governor. We can use the cachet and the extra clients he’ll bring us.
Alejandro owned the biggest percentage of the spa and therefore owed the most money on the business loans they’d taken out. He constantly worried over finances, even though he masked the concern with his Latin charm.
She and Peggy had never told him how close they’d come to being kicked out of the retail space. He would have flunked all his business school exams or something. To reassure him, Marly said, “Hammersmith’s coming in here in a couple of days so I can do his color. I’ll have to use a private room, though—he doesn’t want to advertise the fact that he gets gray highlights to make him look older and more experienced. Isn’t that funny?”
Alejandro shrugged. “What is he, thirty-six or so?”
>
“Something like that.”
“You can understand it—most of the guys he’s working with in the Florida state legislature are on the far side of middle age, and he needs their respect.”
“Uh-huh.” Marly yawned. “I wish I was going to get out of here before midnight….”
“I’m sorry, mi corazón. Tell you what, dinner’s on me later. We’ll order from Benito’s. Sound good?”
“Thanks. You’re a sweetie. But what sounds good is a three-week vacation in the Caribbean. I’ve got to start limiting my schedule, Alejandro. I can’t keep going like this…. I haven’t been to see my parents in months, and as for spare time…” Spare time was a dream. And forget spare time to paint.
“I know. Give it a little longer? Then we’ll bring in a couple more hairdressers, and everyone can ease up on their appointments a bit.”
Marly nodded. “You know I don’t mean to bellyache, hon. I’ve got my dad’s medical bills, but you’re under even more stress, with the whole business school thing.”
She only had a few more months to go to pay off the thoroughly scary multithousand-dollar hospital bill that she’d had sent to her, because if her father had seen it he would have relapsed, gone into renal failure and died.
She’d worked a deal with the administrator: only a quarter of the bill balance was sent to her parents. She’d dropped out of art school and begun working immediately to pay it off, since they were on a fixed income.
The pace of her work these days was killing her, but she focused on the light at the end of the tunnel, when the balance would be paid.
What would it be like to have spare time again? A social life? She couldn’t wait. Marly went to greet her next customer and initiated the normal chitchat while she snipped and reshaped the woman’s hair.
The rest of the day flew by: she cut the hair of a city council member, wove blond extensions in for a local model, did a short, spiky style for a woman who owned a boutique around the corner. She snipped, textured, shaved, highlighted, gelled, moussed and sprayed. Then she did it all over again.
By 10:00 p.m. her feet were throbbing and she was exhausted—but they had two hours of prime party time to go. Marly looked longingly at the wine Shirlie, their receptionist, brought to the customers, thinking that just one glass would do a lot to ease her pain and give her a second wind.
Midnight Madness Page 2
