So there was going to be no more scamming her, if that’s what this was. Because if it wasn’t, nothing made sense anymore. “Look, again I’m going to refer to our very strange circumstances, and while I don’t want to insult you, before we go any further, you are a man who wants to sell cosmetics. That happens like never, and I’ve been doing this for almost two years now. I’m a woman who’s beginning to wonder if this is some nutty scheme of yours to pick up women. Believe me when I tell you, I’ve heard about far crazier, much more elaborate schemes to meet women. Or worse still—maybe you have some fetish for all things girl-like.” There. No more word mincing or beating around the bush.
“Uh, fetish?”
If he was faking that perplexed look, he was damned good. And still yummy while he did it. Wanda waved a hand at him. He knew damned well what she was talking about. “Yes, fetish. You know, like some men like to wear women’s clothing even though they’re perfectly straight. And others like to wear diapers and have their girlfriends bring them bottles. It’s called infantilism, if I remember correctly, and while I fully support whatever gets your freak on as long as it’s safe, sane, and consensually indulged in by two—or even ten—adults you can’t use me and Bobbie-Sue as your freak vehicle. Got that?”
Heath’s sharply edged jaw shifted, then popped while his eyebrow arched upward. “Diapers . . . Okay. I think I just achieved a new level of awareness I could have lived another two hundred . . . er, lifetime without. Here’s the thing, I have absolutely no desire to wear diapers or drink anything from a bottle that isn’t labeled Heineken or better still, Jack Daniels. I applied for a job, and don’t think I don’t get how unusual this is—a man selling a product women primarily sell. But I need a job, and if that means helping women achieve what that manual calls color success by selling makeup, then I’m all about it. For the last time, I don’t want to pick up women. Though I think I see how you might think that’s what I’m up to. I don’t have any fetishes—especially involving women’s clothing and makeup, or any that I know of that even resemble what you just mentioned. Which now has me freaked out. So thanks for that. I have no criminal record, and I’m not some serial killer. I’m here because I want a job. Period.” His confused expression was replaced by a harder, colder determination.
And it was fierce.
Delectably so.
Wanda shivered, but plowed ahead. If he was this serious, then he wouldn’t mind if she prodded some more. “Are you gay?”
Heath’s eyes narrowed, and his posture stiffened. “That matters how?”
Eek. He was right. If this were another woman, she wouldn’t be asking such a sensitive, incredibly personal question. In fact, on a personal level, she knew very little about her recruits. His sexuality shouldn’t matter one iota to her. But for whatever reason, she found herself hoping he wasn’t gay.Which made her a horrible person.
Ah, but then again, her life was short, and if he was gay, the possibility of his wanting to use this supposed need for a job to pick up women declined radically as did the idea she might end up some case for a New Jersey CSI investigator. And that made her feel safer. So she’d poked at him with her imaginary stick. Which, again, made her a shitty person, but whatever. “It doesn’t matter—but it would make more sense.”
His fantastically sexy mouth became a thin line of pissed off. “So what you’re saying is, if I’m a gay man, I’d be more likely to want to sell makeup? I’m missing your point.”
Apparently, so was she. Remorse for her insensitivity set in, and it trampled all over her resolve to nip this craziness in the bud. “Sorry. That was really insensitive of me, and it’s totally none of my business. I guess I just thought if you were gay, the chances you just want to pick up women, or maybe kill them and stuff them in some wood chipper, would be less likely, you know?” Omigod. That was so not why she wanted to know if he was gay, and she’d just lied about it—blatantly. But dayum—it’d sounded soooo convincing she felt momentary pride. Even Nina would have patted her on the back at how convincing she was. But her proud moment faded. She’d broken a cardinal rule of the new millennium, and it was unforgivable. Don’t ask, don’t tell, and all that political correctness shit.
Cue awkward moment.
But Heath surprised her, barking a laugh that was sharp. “A wood chipper? Messy, don’t you think?”
Wanda expelled a tension-filled breath and laughed, too. “Definitely.”
Heath didn’t say anything else as he leaned against her door frame, filling it with his rugged, well-muscled maleness, but his eyes held hers with that gaze that left her feeling like she was buck-naked and he was an X-ray machine.
Wanda clucked her tongue, refusing to squirm under his hard glare. She couldn’t stop her skepticism from oozing out in her tone, and she wasn’t going to let him think this was easy because he’d wooed all those women last night. “I was just trying to be honest with you. If you can’t tell how crazy this idea of yours is, then I guess you’ll just have to see firsthand. Women relate to other women about things of a personal nature far easier than they ever will a man. Makeup, despite the belief that it’s frivolous and silly, is personal—very personal. In fact, I’d dare you to tell any of my clients that it isn’t. And I can’t help but get the impression that the very idea is joke-worthy in your mind. I think the luck you had last night was just that—luck.To do this day in and day out takes a certain level of commitment. It takes a true desire to see your fellow sister shine—be the best she can be. I realize it isn’t like curing cancer, but for some women, women who never understood the difference it could make in their lives and how good it can ultimately make them feel—it can be.”
His look was pensive, his face serious. “Wow, that’s deep. You have to admit, though, the analogy to curing cancer is kinda dramatic and big.”
God, if that wasn’t just a shade shy of Nina and her pessimism. Okay, so it was a little dramatic, but each woman she’d made over, some who actually were in a hospital she visited once a month and really did have cancer, who felt like shit, who’d lost their hair—made the comparison startlingly close. “And this is where your trouble will lie—you’re not a woman. You can’t possibly understand what a little blusher can do for you, because you’re a man.”
But Heath wasn’t whipping out his white flag. “Yep. I am, and I say you let me worry about whether I can relate to these women.”
“I’d do that if it wasn’t something that’s so crucial to creating a client-to-representative relationship and imperative to my good reputation with Bobbie-Sue.”
His face fell as he mock-pouted. “Boy, you’re determined to crush my color wheel dreams, aren’t you? First it was picking up women and fetishes that made even a Neanderthal like me cringe, and now it’s color crises and the possibility that I’m gay. If I were less of a man, I’d have handed you my man-parts by now and taken my toys home.” His grin was teasing, but again, there was that dogged look in his eyes.
Wanda couldn’t help the snort that escaped her lips. Alrighty then. He won—this round anyway. He was in for a serious color walloping, and the only way to let him see that for himself was to let him fall flat on that hot, overconfident ass of his. But she could admit she’d been out of line. She had no right to question his sexuality. “I’m sorry I even suggested you share your sexual preferences with me—it was totally out of line. So I’m just going to skulk off and take that shower now, but not before I saw off my wildly flapping tongue with my nail scissors or something.You go ahead and make breakfast, and when I come back, we’ll pretend I have manners and start over, okay?”
His dark blond head nodded affirmation.
Satisfied, she turned away to hide her flaming cheeks.
“Wanda?”
Her feet stopped at the threshold of her bedroom doorway, sparing him a meek glance over her shoulder. “Yeah?”
Heath grinned again, self-assured and cocky, flashing his teeth. “I’m not gay. But if it makes you feel any better, I thi
nk Home Depot had a sale on wood chippers this past week—I bet they’re all out.” He winked before heading to her kitchen without saying another word.
Wanda threw her head back and laughed, scuffling off to her bedroom and heading for her closet. Heath wasn’t gay.
Yippee and skippee. Totally rad.
Or bad because she had no business fending off butterflies in her belly and the hot rush of excitement she’d experienced over this small piece of clue cake. He was, for all intents and purposes, her employee, and if that wasn’t enough of a mood dampener, she might consider her shortening mortality one.
Her throat clenched, tightening with anxious fear. Wanda gripped the rack she’d just cleared last week of clothes she’d given to Goodwill. Her knuckles turned white, but then her eye caught her favorite teal sweater, and she reached for it. Clinging to it because it was tangible, and just touching the sweater, running her fingers over it, meant she was still in the here and now.
Living in the here and now meant she not only had purpose—and an avoidance tactic—but it also meant she had something to keep her busy.
Heath and his notion he could sell makeup because he’d gotten lucky last night. Whether she liked it or not—they now had an employee-employer relationship. Even if it was an unconventional one.
Or what some might call really fucking weird.
But whatever.
Hopping into the shower, letting the hot spray soothe the dull ache of her belly, it occurred to her that she was now naked in her house with a strange man who was in her kitchen making breakfast for her. How naughty. How risqué, or was that risky? How un-Wanda-ish.That she hadn’t begun a background check the moment Heath’d said he wanted to sell Bobbie-Sue should have been testament enough to how hinky her world had become after just one doctor’s appointment.
And she didn’t even care. Again, not Wanda-like at all. Had there ever been a time she wasn’t cautious about her own safety? Sometimes even paranoid to the point of looking people up on the America’s Most Wanted website?
Instead she was in her shower stomping all over her OCD-edness with soapy feet and thrilled to itsy-bitsy bits that Heath didn’t play shortstop for the other team.
She mentally stuck her tongue out at Nina and Marty. How was that for predictability, eh?
She wasn’t feeling at all threatened by him in her kitchen either—which could be an incredibly stupid emotion to continue to entertain if he were say, an ax murderer. But the vibe she got from him was anything but malicious. Annoying, persistent like no one she’d known before him, and oddly urgent, but not malicious or threatening.
Turning the taps off, she grabbed a towel and scrubbed her skin dry, then popped open the medicine cabinet and took out her bottle of aspirin, hoping it would quell the building ache in her gut.
She caught sight of her reflection in the mirror as she swung it open, focusing on the ugly truth. Aspirin wouldn’t keep at bay what she had forever. The prescription for pain meds poked its frayed, finger-worried edge out at her from the cabinet shelf, just to give her a healthy dose of the here and now.Wanda shoved it to the back of the cabinet, hoping she’d be able to stall filling it.
She firmly shut the cabinet door and took one last look at her blue eyes in the mirror, devoid of makeup, full of fear. She saw this for what it was. What she was really doing was avoiding the inevitable. If you close your eyes, no one can see you . . .
She’d played that game when she was little, when she was embarrassed—uncomfortable—when she wanted to be invisible. Although what she’d been diagnosed with was invisible to the naked eye, she couldn’t hide it by closing hers.
A rap on the bathroom door startled her. “Wanda? Maybe we could speed things along? Your eggs’ll get cold if you don’t pick up the pace.”
Heath’s voice reminded her, her hair was wet and she still wasn’t dressed.
And breakfast was waiting. Breakfast.
And they were going somewhere.
Together.
Alone.
Niiiiice.
“YOU have a Yugo.”
“Yep.”
“It’s—it’s nice.” Which sounded like the biggest lie ever. But there it was. Nice was reserved for a Hyundai, maybe a Saturn, but that was all she could summon—nice.
Wanda stood astounded, unable to make sense of Heath and his fancy suit, with his shiny Rolex watch and now—a Yugo. Did they even exist anymore?When he’d offered to drive, she’d hesitated, but then decided she was tired—she didn’t want to have to fight traffic, but if he was willing, what the hell. She was feeling content after a breakfast of scrambled eggs, toast, and rich, black coffee. She’d lost her edge and maybe even her will to continue the war of words with him. He always won, because he always had an answer, anyway.
But this—this car, him, everything about this—was just, well, wonky.
“It’s a classic now. From 1986—the first year they came out,” he said, running a proud hand along the gleaming white fender before guiding her to the passenger side door.
Like she’d know anything about what year it was, other than it was a Yugo.
A Yugo.
No matter how immaculately maintained.
“Wanda?”
“Huh?”
“In—get in the car, or we’ll be late.”
Her head bobbed upward, narrowly missing his as they stood at eye level. Crap, she so wanted to ask a million questions. Instead, she slid silently into the passenger seat, shivering from the feel of cold vinyl beneath her nylon-clad legs.
“Ready?” he asked, turning the key in the ignition.
“I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me where we’re going, then I’ll tell you if I’m ready.”
He grinned, making her heart thump with an irregular skip to it. “To a place where you can see color wheels for miles and miles and I can sell those starter kits, as promised.”
Wanda folded her hands in her lap, fighting her schoolgirl reaction to him. “If I were a smart woman, I’d make you stop this car right now and let me out. I’m in a car with a man I’ve known less than twenty-four hours who could still turn out to be a nut—with no knowledge of our destination. Oh, and I have Mace, in case you were thinking of going all killing spree on me.” Yeah. She did have Mace, too. Mace and pepper spray and a whistle. There’d be no whacking Wanda Schwartz today. No siree. She’d learned from the master—Nina—and Marty had taught her a thing or two about not ending up in the county morgue.
He shook his head, resting his arm on the ledge of the driver’s side window. “No, if you’re a smart woman you’ll let me make you some money, and for the final time, I don’t want to kill you.At least not until I’ve sucked you dry of every last ounce of your Bobbie-Sue knowledge. After that, I make no promises you won’t find me in the Home Depot with some cold, hard cash.” He winked, his chiseled profile relaxing into yet another one of those wolfish grins that screamed he was mocking her while he looked ridiculously comfortable in a car where his head nearly grazed the roof.
Turning on the seat, she repositioned herself to face him and began to speak, then stopped. He was hell-bent. Who was she to try and stop him? If he made money, she did, too—which wouldn’t mean squat for her in the end, but maybe she could leave it to her mother. It was just that dude was way into this. Typically, new recruits were nervous and awkward, worried they’d look foolish, but not Heath. He threw off the kind of vibe that hollered anticipation—a lust for the Bobbie-Sue kill.
Omigod, she’d been wrong. He wasn’t Nina. He was Marty, only with dangly bits. And hotter.
Wanda stifled a chuckle. Marty had had much the same thrill of the hunt in her eyes when they’d first all met and gone on cold calls door-to-door. Marty could sell a subscription of Modern Day Mercenary to an Amish woman. She was that good when she’d been a Bobbie-Sue rep. Wanda’s approach was a little less rabid than Marty’s, but she loved selling Bobbie-Sue.
She loved Marty.
She loved her life.<
br />
Whoa. Maudlin alert.
The car came to an abrupt stop, forcing her to turn her whiny thoughts off.
“Welcome to Hoboken,” Heath said, casting a sidelong glance of amusement in the direction of the crowd forming in front of a large window with dark glass.
Wanda’s gaze was too caught up with the people on the sidewalk, milling about the establishment they’d pulled up in front of, to pay much attention to where they were.
A long, lanky woman with fishnet stockings and the hottest pair of six-inch-heeled thigh-high boots Wanda’d ever seen turned, flipped her luscious, waist-length curls over her shoulder, and winked, right at Heath. Did women wear thigh-high boots in broad daylight?
A woman who had an Adam’s apple?
Huh.
Wanda pursed her lips, staring with a fixed gaze at some trash that blew along the curb. “Um, where are we again?”
“Hoboken.”
“No, not the town—the establishment.”
“Oh, right. Dirty Petey’s.”
“Dirty who?”
“Petey’s.”
“Right.”
“So you ready?”
“For?”
“To sell cosmetics.”
“To?”
“The Miss New Jersey TransAmerica contestants.”
Holy feces.
CHAPTER 4
“I dunno, Wanda, whaddya think about the Yuck-It-Up Yukon for my under the brow highlighter? I mean, do you think it picks up the gold foil wraps I had Leland do on my wig? Or do you think it makes me look pasty?” Miss Egg Harbor, er, Joe, tilted his head from left to right, catching the light of the big bulbs surrounding his mirror.
Wanda smiled, placing her hands on the back of his chair, trying valiantly to forget the caaa-raziest sales pitch she’d ever watched go like so much helium from a balloon in favor of keeping a straight face. “I think Heath’s right on target and the Yuck-It-Up-Yukon is soooo in your color wheel, it’s almost scary.You look—well, you look better than I ever could.You’re gorgeous.”
The Accidental Human Page 6
