“No!”
He climbed down from the ladder. “Just thought I’d ask.”
“You’re much too nosy.”
“I’m interested in how other families work,” he said. “Mine was nothing like yours.”
“I would have thought,” she said consideringly, “that they might be very much like mine.”
Lee’s father, a businessman with international interests, had valued a college education so highly that he hadn’t spoken to his only son for a full two years after Lee quit college to start Dot.Musix. He’d felt abandoned by his dad at a time when, brimming over with excitement for his new venture, he could have used some family support. He didn’t want to get into all that at present, so all he said was, “My father is a dictator. He doesn’t care much for anyone who colors outside the lines.”
Azure caught a hint of something in his tone that made her look at him sharply. “I’ll venture a guess that you’ve colored outside the lines all your life,” she said.
“You’d be right about that,” he replied. “I was a nonconformist from the word go.” He could have added that he’d also captured first place in his school’s science fair two years in a row and that he’d won awards for citizenship and lettered in swimming. Those were things that he seldom told anyone, and in this case, he didn’t want to reveal too much.
Azure stopped to finish drinking the rest of the iced tea in the bottle, tossing it in a trash barrel when it was empty. “I was supposed to be a nonconformist, considering that I had a pair of ex-hippies for parents, but I struggled to give the impression that I came from a quote-unquote normal family.”
He shot her a wry look. “Well, if you ever want to start a support group for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Parents, give me a call.”
“I’m not so sure mine were dysfunctional. Peculiar is more like it, and I’ve been struggling to be different from them all my life.”
“And pretty successfully, too,” Lee offered. “You’re so staid, so dignified.”
At the moment, with her hair pulled back into a ponytail, her feeling had become one of playfulness, and wearing sloppy painters’ coveralls, Azure felt anything but dignified. She realized as soon as Lee spoke that she had actually been having fun as they performed this chore, and one part of her wanted him to know that. Another part of her wanted to hang on to her sedate image, but as she tapped the paint off the end of the brush into the paint can, the fun-loving part overwhelmed the dignified part and she felt a surge of an unfamiliar emotion that she identified as glee.
“I’ll show you staid,” she said as she straightened. “I’ll show you dignified.” And with that she reached out with her brush and very slowly and deliberately painted a green stripe right down Lee’s back.
He froze in surprise, and for a moment she thought she had made him angry. But then he turned, and with the light of hilarity springing into his eyes, he dipped his paintbrush and, as slowly and deliberately as she had done, he painted a wide stripe down her front.
She took this in for a split second. Then, “Oooh,” she said. “You don’t look so good in green. I bet you’d look a whole lot better in mauve.”
“Mauve?”
“Mauve,” she said firmly. She walked to the other side of the room and pried the top off a can of mauve paint that had been opened and almost used up. A fresh paintbrush sat beside it, and she swirled the brush through the paint before setting off toward Lee at a dead run and slapping the paint across his chest. She couldn’t help laughing at the stunned expression on his face as he looked down at the mauve paint, now dripping onto the floor.
“Oh, you think you’re such a great painter, right? Here’s great,” and he ran his brush down one sleeve of her coveralls.
“Green is not my color,” she said with mock hauteur. “I look a whole lot better in something brighter, cheerier.”
“There’s nothing brighter and cheerier than yellow,” he said, reaching down and peering into a discarded can. “And there’s just enough here to brighten you up quite a bit.” He swiped a bit of paint out of the bottom of the can and headed toward her.
Moving swiftly, he bent and wiped the paintbrush on her coveralls at knee level. While he was doing that, she took the opportunity to daub some mauve on the back of his neck.
He danced away to the beat of the music from the radio, putting his hand to the back of his neck and staring at it when it came away covered with paint. “How dare you! When I couldn’t defend myself!”
She couldn’t help laughing at the way his eyes glittered with the light of revenge, and she ran around to the other side of the ladder. He followed, but she dodged him, keeping the ladder between them as a shield.
“I’ll get you back,” he warned. He looked around. “There’s a can of black paint over there. What do you say we open that one up?” He was laughing as he said it, and she began to giggle.
“You look like a clown,” she said.
“So do you. Or worse. Whose idea was this, anyway?”
Suddenly the music stopped. A voice boomed out from the doorway leading to the back room. “That’s what I would like to know,” said the man who had entered and pulled the plug on the radio while they weren’t looking. He was at least six foot two and had burly arms and a shaved head.
Azure dropped her brush with a clatter. Lee cleared his throat as he tried to figure out if he knew the guy. It wasn’t Dave Edelson, the general contractor on the job, with whom he’d had dinner only a few nights ago. It wasn’t the painting subcontractor, either, because he had met him once in Dave’s office. Still, the man looked vaguely familiar.
“Who are you?” he asked, stepping forward.
“I’m the one who should be asking questions. Who are you and what right do you have to be here?”
“He’s only doing his job, and I’m helping,” Azure said. She had a sudden horrified vision of being dragged down to the police station and having to call Harry Wixler to bail her out.
Lee shot her a look that she figured meant he wanted her to be quiet. She had no intention of doing so, but then Lee started to unzip his coveralls.
“You and I should step outside so I can explain,” Lee said to the guy.
“You can explain right here,” the man snarled. “You and your girlfriend with the green hair.”
Azure felt her hair; sure enough, the back of her ponytail was damp, and her hand came away green.
By this time, Lee had divested himself of his coverall and was walking toward the bald man, looking conciliatory and putting on a friendly face. Charm, thought Azure. He’s got tons of it. Well, if his charm can get us out of this, who am I to criticize?
“It’s like this,” Lee said, putting a hand on the man’s shoulder and urging him toward the back door. The man didn’t seem to like being urged anywhere, but Lee made himself look as nonthreatening as possible and continued to move the guy along.
Once they were outside, Lee breathed a sigh of relief and backed off. “I’m Lee Santori,” he said. “I own this place.”
“Yeah? And I’m president of the United States. Believe it?”
Lee suddenly recalled where he’d seen this man before, but he was interrupted before he could remind him.
The guy stuck his jaw out in an attitude of belligerence. “Well, I don’t believe you, either. What I’ve heard around town is that Lee Santori lives on a yacht out there in the bay. He doesn’t run around in beat-up old cars,” and here he jerked his head toward the Mustang, “or bring his girlfriend over here to vandalize the place for fun.”
“I saw you in Dave Edelson’s office last week,” Lee said, dragging his wallet out and opening it to his driver’s license. “That’s me right there,” he said, tapping the picture. “I am Lee Santori.”
With distrust written all over his face, the guy peered closely at the picture, glancing dubiously up at Lee and back again. “That looks like you, all right.” He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “What’s going on?”
Lee fol
ded the wallet and stuffed it back in the pocket of his shorts. “A little fun and games,” he said, winking at the guy. “This is how my girl gets her jollies. You know?”
This statement earned him a look of rank skepticism. “By painting each other?”
Lee shrugged, adopting a man-to-man stance. “Sure.”
“You’re really Lee Santori?”
“You saw the picture, man.”
A long pause, and then the guy held out his hand. “I’m Jake Gruber. I work for Dave. I came to check on the painters because I thought they might be slacking off. Dave wants this job finished on time.”
“I appreciate that,” Lee said. He reached for his wallet again. “And I’d also appreciate it if you’d let us finish up here at our own speed and make sure the painters clean up any mess.” He peeled a couple of hundred-dollar bills off the stack in his wallet and pressed them into Gruber’s hand.
“Hey, that’s not necessary,” Gruber said, but he took the money anyway. Lee had noticed ever since he’d had money to spare that not many people turned it down when he tried to give it away.
“Now if you’ll excuse us,” Lee said, “we’ll pick up where we left off.”
“Kink-y,” said Gruber with barely concealed admiration.
Lee gave him a cocky thumbs-up, and then he went back inside the building and locked the door behind him just to make sure that Gruber didn’t decide to follow him for purposes of observation. That would prove, he thought, slightly more kinky than he had in mind.
AS SOON AS LEE AND THEIR visitor stepped outside, Azure shrugged out of her coveralls and found a rest room opening off the back corner of the storeroom. It was equipped with a sink and a soap dispenser, so she began to scrub the latex-based paint off her hands and wrists. She was studying the end of her ponytail and contemplating various ways to remove the paint when Lee called from the other side of the door, “Azure?”
“In here,” she said, swinging the door open. “So are we busted?”
He nodded ruefully. “We’re through for the day, that’s for sure.”
“Are you in trouble?” Her eyes were wide and solemn, though she appeared slightly comical with splotches of mauve and yellow paint embellishing her forehead and chin.
“No, everything’s fine. Is the paint coming off okay?”
She held up the end of her ponytail. “Look. What do you think?”
He smiled. “I think you look beautiful with green hair.”
She stared at him and for a moment he thought she was going to hit him with a sharp retort, but instead she grinned.
“You have weird taste,” she said.
“Want me to help?” he asked.
“Help? I was helping you, and look where that got us.”
He edged around her to turn on the water at the sink. “Bend over. I’ll get that paint out for you.”
After a dubious look, she leaned over the sink. He punched the soap dispenser a few times, releasing the antiseptic scent of institutional handwashing into the small room, and she wrinkled her nose. “I hate that smell.”
“They don’t provide orange blossom-jojoba shampoo in places like this.” He held the end of her ponytail under the stream of water, carefully working the soap through the ends. The paint began to dissolve and wash away.
“How’s it doing?” Her voice echoed hollowly back from the sink bowl, but he was so captivated by the pale skin of her nape and the softness of her hair that he didn’t answer. It would be so easy to slide the restraining rubber band off her hair and let it tumble around her shoulders, a sight that he had been imagining ever since he spotted her standing so cool and aloof at her sister’s wedding.
“I said, how’s it doing?”
“Almost all through,” he said, trying not to reveal how mesmerized he was by the intimacy of this service he was performing.
“Can you hurry it up?”
He squeezed the water out of her hair and grabbed a paper towel, sliding it around her ponytail so there wouldn’t be any drips. She straightened and blotted at her hair for a moment and said, “Now you.”
There was the problem of that mauve spot on the back of his neck. They traded places so he could stand in front of the sink, and he bent and held his head under the faucet. He closed his eyes and let the warm water sluice over his face; he felt a trickle of it running down his chest, but he forgot all about it when her felt her fingers massaging the back of his neck. They were gentle, and soft, and it wasn’t much of a leap to imagine how they would feel if they were touching other and more sensitive parts of his anatomy. He pictured it in his mind, lying completely naked under a palm tree on a deserted beach, reaching for her, pressing her close as she caressed him and whispered sexy sweet nothings in his ear.
Which was filling with water as it sloshed off his neck. He adjusted the slant of his head, and Azure said much too brightly, “All finished!”
He brought his head up and she handed him a paper towel. “I know an easier way,” he said, and he turned on the hot-air hand dryer and turned the nozzle so that it was aimed at his head. He still had to crouch for the air to hit his hair, though, but this position had its advantages because it put his eyes on the exact level of Azure’s breasts. Considering that he’d had his fill in the last couple of weeks of admiring the silicone implants that bloomed all up and down Miami Beach, it was heartening to see a pair that looked utterly and entirely natural.
She seemed unaware of his admiration. In fact, she was leaning toward the mirror, scrubbing at a small spatter of yellow paint. He concentrated on fingercombing his hair into the proper disarray a la Fleck, and when he straightened, he didn’t realize that she would be leaning in his direction in order to toss a damp paper towel into the trash bin. Their heads collided with a solid thwack!
Lee didn’t exactly see stars. The images that obscured his vision were more like spiraling luminous jellybeans.
“Lee? Lee! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to do that!”
When his vision cleared, when the jellybeans dissolved into the ether, he was surprised to see two of Azure, which was something of a benefit as far as he was concerned. Double eyes, lovely. Double nose, delightful. Double little pointed chin and high cheekbones and pale hair, all gorgeous. Both of her were staring up at him in horror, and that gleam of caring or solicitousness or whatever it was that had so attracted him at the wedding had kindled in her eyes, doubly.
To steady himself, he had no choice but to grasp her shoulders and lean slightly forward as the two of her slowly converged into the usual one. It may have been his imagination, but Azure seemed to lean toward him, too. Or else he was unsteady on his feet, which could be the case. It had been a fairly powerful punch.
“Are you hurt?” he asked, his voice coming out in a husky whisper. He wouldn’t doubt that the crack on the side of her head hurt as much as the one he’d taken on his jaw.
She rubbed the side of her head. “No, not much. I should have been more careful.”
His hands slowly came up and cupped her face. Pain receded, desire rushed in. He was so close that he could kiss her without the slightest inconvenience. And she was staring up at him, lips moist and slightly parted. Her skin felt soft as rose petals beneath his hands, soft as—
“Don’t you think we’d better leave? The painters will be back soon.”
This brought him sharply back to his senses. He didn’t want to have to explain again, this time to the subcontractor painting crew, why he and Azure were on the premises. And this wasn’t the most romantic place in the world for their first kiss, which he would prefer to be a momentous occasion that rocked her to the depths of her soul, one that she would remember for all time.
He dropped his hands. “I’ll go clean up some of the mess,” he said.
She was still staring at him, her eyes unfathomable pools of light. “Good idea,” she breathed, but he realized in that moment that she didn’t think it was a good idea at all. He knew then that she would rather be kissed, and he felt a
surge of triumph at having brought her to this point against all odds.
He backed away, came up against the closed door. “So I’ll go and do it.”
She drew a deep breath. “I—I’ll dry my hair.” She gestured toward the hand dryer. “Under there.”
He afforded her a sharp nod and backed slowly out the door, letting it close softly behind him while her eyes were still captured by his. Moments later, he heard the rush of air from the dryer.
He hammered the lids back on paint cans, tossed the coveralls in the corner where they had found them, and when Azure came out of the rest room and said she was going to go sit in the car, he told her he’d be out in a minute.
But before he joined her, he couldn’t resist picking up one of the paintbrushes and scrawling a large and jubilant “Yesss!” on the blank white wall.
AZURE DIDN’T KNOW WHY she was doing this. She didn’t know why she was attracted to this guy. She didn’t know why she was, at that very moment, walking beside him into a noisy barbecue restaurant on U.S. 1.
She did know why she was ordering the honey-roasted baby back ribs, however, and it was because the waitress recommended them. At least some sanity remained to her, she thought. At least she was still sensible enough to gather data, evaluate it, and make a reasonable decision. She hadn’t totally succumbed to this guy’s considerable allure.
He sipped a beer and smiled at her from across the table, which was a picnic table covered with brown butcher paper. Beer arrived in large pitchers, country music blared from a loudspeaker on the other side of the big room, and people tossed their chewed-up rib bones in large buckets on the floor. It wasn’t the kind of place that she would normally frequent much less have a good time, but nothing about her life was normal lately. This episode with Lee only underscored that fact.
It was an episode that she didn’t regret so far. In fact, she joined him in laughing about her consternation when Jake Gruber showed up and tried to throw them out.
“I couldn’t believe we’d been caught,” she said.
“Did you see the look on his face? He looked so angry I thought he might have swallowed his tongue.”
Life Is A Beach / A Real-thing Fling Page 24
