Nate came in, chagrin in the set of his shoulders. I raised my chin and smiled, confident, feeling reborn. A new woman in her new life, ready to face life as a redhead.
“Let’s get this show on the road.” I floated past him, grabbed my stuff and walked out of the door. With a flourish, I deposited sunglasses alluringly on my nose, turned up so high in the air that I tripped on the front step. Gracefully on the front step.
In the empty drive, I turned to the left, to the right. I set down my bag in confusion. Finally, I faced the house as Nate stepped into the door frame. “Is there a car or something?”
“It’s in the back. I didn’t want to ruin your dramatic exit.” Nate’s nose twitched.
I put my hands on my hips. “My exits do not require your pity.”
His laugher warmed over me, like special sauce on a Big Mac. Taking my hand, he smiled. “This way, Sarah Bernhardt.”
He led me to the garage and clicked the door open. It rose slowly to reveal…the Nate-mobile. It was blue, sporty, classic. I immediately wanted to hump him in it, because it seemed made for Inspiration Point.
“What is this car?” I took off my sunglasses and caressed the cool cerulean hood. The top was down and the body featured dazzling white panels sweeping the sides.
It was a rolling blue penis.
“Don’t touch anything.” Shuffling our bags into the tiny, immaculate back seat, he continued, “No eating or drinking anything but water inside it. No open containers of water.”
“Are you kidding?”
“I do not kid about the car.” He petted the upholstery of the seats, lingering over the curves as if they were me.
“Duly noted.” I watched him lovingly tickle the handle on his side before he got in. I stood beside the passenger door.
It took him a few moments to stop fondling the rolling blue penis long enough to notice me. “Get in.”
“You told me not to touch anything.” I knew it was obnoxious, but I couldn’t stop myself. It would be a kindness to help him master his myriad control issues.
Ha ha, no. I was just a bitch.
For a brief second, I thought he would roll over my feet. Then, with deliberate, belligerent slowness, he leaned over and opened the door from the inside. His jaw worked furiously, probably suppressing any number of curse words. I perched delicately in the adorable seat, a saintly calm settling over my face.
“Wait!” I grabbed his arm. “What about Captain Taco?”
“There’s a nine-year-old girl next door who looks in on him. I already called her and told her I was leaving town for a few days.” He squeezed my knee. “Why, did you want to say goodbye to him?”
“I’m sure you embarrassed yourself enough for the both of us,” I muttered.
“What was that?”
“Nothing!”
My lover pierced me with a very pointy look. I smiled. The engine started with a roar and good vibrations erupted up through the seat.
Viva Las Vegas.
* * * *
Nate had not been kidding about the car. Oh, not ‘the car’. The 1963 Austin Healey 3000 Mark II Roadster. The 1963 Austin Healey 3000 Mark II Roadster caused the taciturn, if charming, Nate to turn loquacious. Nate waxed poetic about the 1963 Austin Healey 3000 Mark II Roadster, speaking of her sleek body and hot, pulsing engine.
My sleek body and my hot, pulsing engine liked the car, too, obvious as it was. Cliché or no, Nate looked damn hot behind the wheel. I stole glances at him the whole way, causing my undercarriage to overheat. Something about a handsome man playing with his stick shift…
When we finally arrived in Las Vegas, I had more knots in my hair than the 1963 Austin Healey 3000 Mark II Roadster had virtues. The sun set in a lavender haze as Nate pulled up to the Bellagio. He handed the keys over to the valet with an expression of pure, unmitigated death. The instructions he gave the poor kid took five minutes for Nate to convey in a fearsome combination of barked orders and menace. The kid swallowed and gawked at the car in terror.
“Put your sunglasses on.” Nate took my hand to lead me inside.
I donned my shades and almost walked into a slot machine while singing about wearing sunglasses after the sun goes down, the way cool people do.
With a grimace, Nate muttered, “You really shouldn’t sing.”
“Just because I’m awful?”
“Isn’t that a good enough reason?”
“No.”
Nate checked us in, and suddenly I was on vacation. A vacation from life, but with guns. Usually vacations involved visiting a parent or…or…well, visiting a parent. They weren’t very vacationey. I’d never had the cashola to fly myself to Hawaii and sun my pasty-white parts. However…now I had Illicit Lover. Things were looking up, sort of. Or they would if Illicit Lover would stop frowning at my singing. Determined to persevere even in the face of such negativity, I joined the elevator as it echoed with the musical stylings of Corey Hart.
“Stop that! Are you tone deaf?” He reached down and tickled my side.
Giggles pealed from me. “You’re not the boss of me!”
“Oh, no?” Nate pinned me against the wall, rendering me immediately breathless. The elevator stopped just as he began to lower his lips to mine. He backed away, a smirk marring, or perhaps enhancing, his mouth.
I pushed my sunglasses higher onto my nose and strode into the hall, singing, “Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo, doo doo doo, doo doo doo…”
The room overlooked the famous Bellagio fountains, spraying froth upwards in a blaze of green light. At the moment, my idea of sneaking away to see my mother was less appealing than the notion of playing hotel hide-and-seek with Nate. He was currently frowning at his phone again, hand on his hip, lips silently muttering.
The bizarre, dangerous web he’d woven over me tightened, pushing out nice, responsible life goals and leaving only lust behind. I smiled—small, sly. I could misbehave for another day, or two, or three. I had to, until El Escorpión was arrested, right? Right.
I meandered through the cream and chocolate room and did a double-take at the stranger in the ornate black wall mirror. Putting my hand over my lips, I remembered my hair was red. The rats’ nest, courtesy of the convertible, needed to go. I took a brush to it and ended up with a rather bouncy blown-out ’do. I was the queen of Vegas now. Ann-Margret, Shmann Schmargret.
Growling, Nate tossed his phone onto a brocade chair and turned around to me. I met his eyes in the mirror as I admired myself. He sauntered across the room and came up behind me. Twirling a strand of hair in his fingers, he stared into the glass at me, through me, inscrutable. I fought to slow my heartbeat. He concentrated on the strand in his hand. “Room service now? Or later?” he asked, filthy intentions emanating from every pore.
“Later.”
Dark green, his reflected gaze found mine again as his hands traced the shape of my waist. I shivered. He watched me and began to unbutton my blouse.
“Your hair is a little bit…wild, isn’t it?” he whispered.
* * * *
“What does your typical caper entail?” My question sounded muffled through the giant cheeseburger in my face. We sat on the bed eating a late, very late and rather naked dinner.
Nate’s mouth flickered into a smile. “You have a little—” His head dipped, and he lovingly licked something off the top of my breast. “Your burger is dripping.” He considered the area in question and added, “Not that I mind.”
“You’re changing the subject.”
“The subject is boobs, right?” How could someone be so damn charming while saying a silly word like ‘boobs’? “Yours, specifically,” he said.
“The subject is capers! Yours, specifically.”
“Do I have capers? Am I a caperer?”
I pointed a fry at him. “You’re being cute to avoid the question.”
Finished with his dinner, he lay on his back and sprawled across the bed. “I know you think I’m cute, there’s no need to go on and on. It�
��s embarrassing.”
“Ugh.” I threw the fry.
He studied it bouncing ineffectually on the sheets. Propping his head on one arm and turning sideways towards me, he asked, “What was the question again?”
I stopped chewing and stared at him. “What sort of caper, er, job do you usually go on? Do you rob famous museums dressed in tight black Spandex, or seduce old ladies for their collections of dirty Matisse sketches?”
He narrowed his eyes. “My job title does not include the word ‘gigolo’. Anymore.” He got an eye roll for that one. Chuckling, he continued, “I don’t know. It’s not like beating alarm systems or breaking into the Met. That stuff is crazy, and stupid. It’s not Ocean’s Eleven.” The dimple waxed on and off again, as cagey as its owner. “It’s more…talking my way into it. People are trusting, as a general rule.” He tossed the errant fry onto the room service tray without meeting my eyes.
“People like me?” I was not smiling.
“Yes, at first.”
The air conditioner clicked and hummed, orchestrating the awkward silence.
“At first?”
He huffed and lay on his back again. “Well, you don’t trust me now, do you?”
I put my dinner aside, my appetite forgotten, for once. “I’d be crazy to.” I pulled the soft cotton sheet up to cover myself.
His green eyes turned opaque. “Yes, you would.”
Really, I ought to thank him. One of us should think clearly, with no illusions, no embellishments. Only a crazy would trust him, or consider him anything more than an accidental partner in pseudo-crime, as it were.
I bravely picked up my cheeseburger and soldiered on, older, wiser, hungrier. “Have you heard from your people? Did you tell them the painting is back with Oliver?”
“Yes.” He ran his hands through his hair. “And no.”
“That clears it up.”
“I told them I never got the painting in the first place.”
“What?”
“That way, when he’s arrested with it, I’m not fucked.”
“If he’s arrested with it, which hasn’t happened. Do they not wonder where you are and why you don’t have it yet?”
“Yes.”
“So you’re hiding out in Vegas, too.”
He nodded.
I nodded. “Hmmmmmm.”
“What ‘hmmmmmm’?” He scowled at me. He had a wonderful scowl. Like Harrison Ford—intimidating, but sexy. “What ‘hmmmmmm’?” he repeated, giving a sharp tug to my perilous sheet.
“Nothing.” I gripped the fabric harder to me. “Were you really an art history major in college?”
He visibly considered whether or not to tell me the truth. After a too-long pause, he replied, “Yes.”
“What school?”
Tilting his head and rolling his eyes, he intoned, “No.”
You can’t blame a girl for trying. I nodded my acknowledgement of the failed point. “Do you like art?”
“Who’s Art?”
“Oh, ha ha.” Grabbing a pillow, I whacked it across his mouth, muffling all protest. “Do you enjoy art? Paintings? Whatever it is you steal—do you admire it?”
We struggled for control of the pillow. He won. He flipped over onto his stomach and settled the pillow under his chin, backside pert. “Yes. I love art. I used to paint, but I wasn’t tremendously good.”
My eyes grew wide. “You painted?” His revelation almost distracted me from the sight of his gorgeous buns.
“Don’t make fun of me.” The dimple retreated, wounded.
“I’m not! I’m not. I think it’s really cool.” I leant forward to rest on my elbows. “I never was the artist sort.”
“That’s not true. You’re an actress.”
“Urgh.” I planted my face on the sheets.
“Yes, you are.”
“Im brhf fyut fasrurgh.”
Laughing, Nate wound his hand through my hair and gently pulled up to separate my mouth from the linens. “What?”
“I’m a big. Fat. Failure.”
“No, Sam.” He pushed up on his elbows. Taking my chin firmly, he studied me with a gaze that plucked my heart like a cello string. “I’m a failure. I gave up and took the easy road. You never did. You tried. You keep trying, even when it’s really fucking hard. You”—he brushed my cheek with his knuckles—“are merely pre-successful. But you can do it. Look at what you’ve had the courage to do in the last couple of days.”
I wrinkled my nose and blinked away the sudden swell of emotion threatening to make me blubber. It was the nicest thing anyone had said to me in so very long. I refused to examine what that said about me. “Thanks,” I replied casually. “Pre-successful. I like that.”
“Stay on the bright side. Dour is not your style.”
I broke into the Monty Python song about looking on the bright side, then whistled. I whistle perhaps even worse than I sing.
Nate covered his head with the pillow. “Noooooo! Make it stop. How do I make it stop?”
“Always look—”
He smashed the pillow in my face.
* * * *
The next morning, I put on my last remaining clean pair of underwear and outfit from my gym bag of worldly goods. Jeans and another tee—this one with the cast of Arrested Development on it. Arrested Development got a grunt of approval from Nate, therefore I could happily continue sleeping with him.
I zipped up my bag. “I’m going to need more underwear or have laundry done.”
“Is commando not an option?”
My dirty look told him no. Something about a clean set of underpants made a girl feel secure.
“Okay.” He brightened, despite it being morning, the period when he most enjoyed grumbling, growling and generally behaving like a bear.
Oh, wait. That was all the time.
“We’ll go buy you underwear,” he said.
“I felt sure that would be your plan.”
“See, I did so graduate Thief Camp.” Nate began shaving at the sink, pulling the razor carefully across his lovely skin. The room filled with the gorgeous, masculine scent of shaving cream. I watched him, entranced.
“Women’s underwear is covered in camp?” I asked.
He kept his face straight as he swept the razor across his cheekbone. “I attended a special seminar on the making of a Bonnie to your Clyde.”
I didn’t know if that was a good thing or not. Bonnie had ended the affair awfully holey. “Well, Clyde, I’m going for a walk.”
Nate’s eyebrow shot up. His hand hung in the air. “A walk?”
I avoided his mirrored gaze and put on my shoes. “I need new shoes, too. I can’t do with these terrible square dance things anymore. I’m like a mini-Minnie Pearl.”
“A walk?” he repeated, in his morning voice.
“Yes. I’ve been sequestered for days. I’m in disguise now—no one will recognise me. I just need to get out.”
He inspected me, brown eyes wary. “Okay. I understand.”
“You do?” I shouldn’t have sounded sceptical. “You do. Of course you do. I’ll be back later so you can buy me lingerie and stuff. Because I should get something from this godforsaken adventure.”
“Poor girl.” He wiped the last remaining bits of shaving lotion off and suddenly walked over to pick me up. Holding me aloft, he nuzzled his cheek against mine and buried his face in my neck. The mouth that caressed the juncture of my neck and shoulder nibbled me so soft and slow… It was a good thing he held me, as I probably couldn’t have managed to stay upright.
I closed my eyes and returned his embrace, enjoying the lightheadedness of his arms. He planted a delicious, lingering kiss under my ear. A beautiful moment that died when he muttered, “Your hair smells funny.”
Romance, thy name is Nate. Or Sam. Or whatever the hell thy name is.
“Ugh.” I kicked him in the knee, and he put me unceremoniously back on my own feet. “You sure know how to talk to the wimmins.”
“Is it t
he hair dye?” He wrinkled his nose.
“Bye.” Grabbing my purse and the room key, I sauntered out, appreciably less guilty that I had just lied to the liar.
Chapter Nine
You Can’t Spell ‘Mother’ Without ‘Rot’
The cab deposited me on a dusty, almost treeless lane not far from the Strip. I paid the driver and walked two blocks, to the edge of my mother’s street. Wishing I’d remembered to grab a jacket, I shivered in the cool, dry desert air. I attempted to disappear into a stone wall while observing the neighbourhood, just in case the police were at my mom’s.
After fifteen minutes of bored, jittery waiting, no one had come or gone and no one sat in any of the parked cars. Saying a prayer, I crossed the street and hurried to the house. I paused at the drive, wondering what to say to her. Would Diego be home? Maybe she wouldn’t have heard I was ‘missing’. I wished I’d worn a better outfit. These were my least-flattering jeans. I should have put on makeup.
Oh, stop! None of those things mattered—my mother loved me no matter what.
Yeah, sure—that’s the ticket.
Taking in a long pull of air, I stepped up the driveway when someone seized my arm in an iron grip. Yelping in terror, I turned and swung my fist at whatever had attacked me.
“Damn! Could we have a single day in which you don’t batter me?” Nate rubbed his jaw with one hand while the other’s fingers bit with bruising brutality into the flesh of my forearm. “Where the hell are we and why the hell are we here? Are you trying to get murdered?”
“Let me go!” I struggled against his unyielding form to no avail.
After pulling me to a tall row of hedges in between houses, Nate switched his grip to both shoulders and shook me like a snow globe. “What are you doing?”
“You. Are. Hurting. Me!” I gasped, struggling against him.
“Good!”
I stopped and locked onto furious pools of brown. He looked scared. I felt my face drain of colour and melt under that gaze, so unlike the cool, collected Nate I’d come to know. We stood there, panting, for several long moments.
The Dimple of Doom (Samantha Lytton) Page 11
