Hot and Bothered

by Crystal Green

  On her way into the dim saloon, she passed Rochelle’s manager Suzanne, who bustled out of the bar toward the courtyard as quickly as her Manolos and pencil skirt would allow her to. Her brown-and-gray streaked hair was perfectly in place, thanks to a chignon, her makeup evenly applied over burgeoning wrinkles, her gaze slightly panicked.

  “Are you okay?” Rochelle asked.

  “Better. Tired and ready to go to bed with some Pepcid.” Suzanne stood by Rochelle’s side, completely out of breath. She’d obviously made a beeline through the saloon. “That little tin box they call a restroom only allows in one lady at a time and . . .” Ill or not, she suddenly smiled when she saw Gideon.

  “This is Gideon Lane,” Rochelle said without any more explanation. She didn’t want Clancy or this Beetles man knowing anything about her business here.

  Suzanne merely shook hands with Gideon. She knew all about how Rochelle’s cousins had contacted him about a guarding job, and she’d agreed wholeheartedly with their plans in that motherly way of hers.

  Gideon seemed to have no patience for Cherry Chastain book talk—that was obvious from the way he took Rochelle by the arm and guided her past Beetles and Clancy toward the door.

  “Excuse me?” Rochelle said to him.

  “Just doing my job.”

  “But you don’t have a job . . .”

  Behind them, Beetles said, “Yo, quick-draw, what about those girls?”

  Gideon paused. “Keep ’em busy, will you? Use your ample charms on them and explain that I had some pressing business come up.”

  “Will do, cowboy.”

  Jimmy Beetles didn’t sound put out in the least by the notion of entertaining the four women with their . . . er-herm . . . hot poker pussies.

  Just as Rochelle was wondering if the guys in this place actually shared women, Gideon led her by the arm into the saloon itself. In back of her, she could feel Suzanne holding onto the hem of her vest.

  Surely she wasn’t afraid of lil’ ol’ Rough & Tumble. Rochelle wasn’t, but maybe that was because she had encountered real threats before, during her research, like connecting with a drug dealer who explained the ins and outs of the trade so she could get into the mind of a supporting character she had created for the Veronica Lake book. She’d also visited seedy places in Hollywood time and again where villains might lurk. All for her art.

  Truthfully, this saloon was child’s play in comparison, although Rochelle recognized possible danger when she saw it, like a few leathered men who were hanging out by the jukebox in the shine of neon beer signs while the ceiling fans stirred the cigarette-laced air and cast shadows over them. There were more rough guys slouching over the bar, shot glasses dangling from their fingers as they tried their hard luck with the video-poker machines embedded in the wood. A couple of men and women took to the corners, kissing and copping feels.

  It was almost as if the painting of Cherry Chastain, which queened over the mirrored liquor shelves, was the leather saint of horniness here. The knowing grin on her face and her heavy-lidded gaze only confirmed that.

  But the saloon wasn’t all shadows and sin. Some vintage, playful Journey rocked the jukebox, almost loud enough to shake the hinges off the potbellied stove and the license plates off the walls. A bartender was mopping Jell-O from the floor around a kiddie pool after a bout of wet T-shirt, pudding-coated catfighting that’d been going on when Rochelle had first entered. Then there was the drunk dancing by himself in the corner, smiling and silver-haired, as harmless as a rusted, old car that was having trouble getting anywhere.

  Gideon was taking her toward one of those corners where a dark-haired man was lazily kissing a woman’s neck. He was dressed all in gray, his back to them.

  “What’re you doing?” Rochelle asked, dragging her feet. Why would Gideon want to interrupt a couple in heat?

  Suzanne’s desperate hold on her clothing emphasized the question.

  Gideon stopped just short of the make-out session, and when he took his hand away from Rochelle’s elbow, her skin burned, just as if it were sizzling.

  “I want you to meet Boomer,” Gideon said over the music. “He’s the best private investigator I know.”

  The man, who was tall and slim but broad in all the right places, glanced back at Gideon. He smiled, his lips full and framed by deep dimples. His hair was short, except for the front, which flopped over one eye.

  “This better be good, quick-draw,” he said in a raspy voice that reminded her of sultry southern bayous, except it was slightly ironed out, as if he hadn’t spent time there in a long while.

  Boomer kept one of his hands on his lady’s hip, rubbing her exposed belly with his thumb, and Rochelle was fairly certain she heard Suzanne blow out a breath.

  Gideon had taken a step away, keeping a professional distance between her and him, and even though she’d been trying to resist him all night, she found herself sighing—but it was in disappointment.

  Why, though? Wasn’t professional distance what they both needed?

  Gideon introduced everyone, even Suzanne. Then he spoke to Boomer. “Are you back in town for the week? ’Cuz, I’ve got a job for you.”

  He did?

  My, it hadn’t taken long for Gideon to take over, had it? But the way he assumed control was . . . well, a turn-on of sorts. She was always so busy taking the lead in her life that she wasn’t used to this.

  He slid her a cocky glance from beneath the brim of his hat, and she wondered if he was actually getting off on pulling her around the bar, telling her what to do.

  All the while, Boomer had been perusing her, even while caressing his woman’s stomach. The lady couldn’t keep her eyes off him, as if spellbound.

  Voodoo magic, Rochelle thought. He’d make a great supporting character in one of my books.

  “For you, quick-draw,” he finally said over the music, “I’ve always got time. As long as the case doesn’t start right now.”

  His woman laughed, reaching over to hook her fingers under his belt. Rochelle didn’t look any lower, but when Boomer bit back a smile, she suspected that there was some subtle finger walking going on over his zipper.

  Gideon tipped his hat to Boomer. “I’ll give you a call then.”

  With one last look at Rochelle, Boomer turned back to his amour. Or, more to the point, she used her hand to turn his face back to her.

  As Gideon blazed a path through the customers in the bar and Rochelle followed, Suzanne clutched even harder at the back of Rochelle’s vest. When he opened the front door, a burst of fresh night air greeted them.

  Their shoes thudded on the wooden boardwalk as the lonely streets of Rough & Tumble stretched into nowhere, like the played-out silver mining town it’d once been.

  “Whew,” Suzanne said, flapping a hand in front of her. She was still holding onto Rochelle. “Even when I’m sick, I can still appreciate a sexy man.”

  “Suzanne,” Rochelle said. No one wanted to hear a grandma talk like that, even if she could do Zumba and go skeet shooting just for fun.

  Gideon chuckled as he walked down the boardwalk toward the General Store. In the near distance, the aluminum-sided diner and stained-glass–windowed church stood like dark gravestones in the night.

  Suzanne leaned over to whisper. “This one isn’t exactly a slouch, either.”

  “Suzanne.” Then Rochelle raised her voice and called to Gideon. “Where’re we going now?”

  “Somewhere quiet,” he said, still walking. Or perhaps ambling was a better word. He moved like a sheriff through dusty streets—confident and in no hurry. “I figure the best quiet place around at this hour is my house, and it’s not that far off. You can wait on my sofa with beers while I fetch one of my contracts, and we’ll discuss terms and settle on my deposit.”

  All right. He’d told her that there was no way she was brushing him off after he�
��d found out about the creeper, and he was as serious about this job as they came.

  At least she had a safeguard against Superfan now, even if Gideon wasn’t an ideal first choice. But his reputation in the industry was sterling, and her cousins trusted him.

  Before Rochelle went anywhere she turned to Suzanne, who was holding a hand to her forehead.

  “You’re not all right,” Rochelle said, reaching out to feel her temperature. Suzanne was clammy and hot.

  Gideon stopped, standing near the dirt road. “Ma’am, I have a place for you to lay yourself down.”

  Yeah, how many women had he said that to?

  Suzanne sent a yearning look toward the limo they had hired. It was parked in front of the General Store, away from the cluster of bikes, and the driver was waiting behind the steering wheel, focused on a backlit ebook, his face illuminated by the glow.

  Gideon pressed on with Suzanne. “Or, if you prefer, I can take care of Rochelle from this point on. You ain’t the bodyguard, after all.”

  Something spiraled in her. I can take care of Rochelle.

  “But I am her manager,” Suzanne said.

  It was obvious she wanted to be out of here, even to Gideon.

  “I think we can manage ourselves, ma’am,” he said. “Unless you take care of all Rochelle’s business and you’re the only one who negotiates for her.”

  “I always look over my own contracts,” Rochelle said. He didn’t need to know that she also had an agent and literary attorney to go over them, too. She would run the terms by her team, of course, but she could handle the preliminaries.

  As if acknowledging that he’d already realized she could take care of herself, Gideon sent Rochelle a scorching look of sexual desire that gnawed through her with its primitive heat. Did he remember that they were still at odds about their past? Because that kind of look could certainly make her forget.

  But in the next instant, he did seem to remember, and he carried on with their business.

  “Where’re you all stayin’?”

  “A rental in Seven Hills,” Rochelle said. Why hadn’t her heart calmed itself down yet?

  “They’ve got a lot of fancy mansions there.”

  “It’s not a mansion, exactly . . .” Or maybe it was.

  At any rate, she turned to Suzanne. “You go on and get some rest. I’ll come to terms with him.”

  “Make sure you bring him home with you tonight.” Suzanne was already halfway to the limo. “It’d be nice to have some peace of mind with him around.”

  Her bodyguard. It just now hit Rochelle that her cousins and Suzanne had suggested that her protector should move into a guest room for the time being. And certainly, there were more than a few of those in the rental, but . . . still.

  Gideon, nearby, down a hall, footsteps away?

  Her pulse was accelerating, excited as hell even though it shouldn’t have been.

  Rochelle rushed over to walk her manager to the limo, where the driver had already gotten out and opened the door. Meanwhile, Gideon waited.

  Well, here she went, with her new bodyguard, all safe and protected now. At least from Superfan.

  She caught up with Gideon, and the farther they walked down the road, the more the music from the R&T faded.

  Unfortunately, she couldn’t exactly say the same for the piercing jolts of electricity that permeated the so-called professional space between them.

  ***

  Less than five minutes later, they arrived at Gideon’s, and he wasn’t sure whether he should be embarrassed about his house or proud of it.

  On one hand, this was his home, paid off in full after inheriting it along with a mortgage from his parents after they’d both passed on—if that was the phrase for it.

  But Gideon didn’t dwell on shit like that. Everyone in R&T had their deep, dark secrets, and he preferred his to stay as buried as they could.

  At any rate, this house didn’t hold many memories for him, seeing as he’d grown up on a ranch just outside R&T, so that’s why he’d had no problem tearing it apart, bit by bit, as if to destroy every argument he’d ever heard his parents get into, every shouted hateful word and promise to leave each other.

  He’d wished they’d just up and done it, too. Couldn’t live with each other, couldn’t live without. Sometimes, he felt the same way about them.

  Now the old picket fence was gone, replaced by half of a wrought-iron gate and rock fence he was putting up. He was also in the process of ripping out the dead grass in favor of desert landscaping—stones and cactus.

  As he held open the gate for Rochelle, he watched her face to see what she thought about his most precious possession. That was stupid, though. She was staying in one of those luxurious enclaves for the well-to-do over near Henderson, about a half hour away from R&T. This was Podunk compared to that.

  Even so, she smiled as she surveyed everything. “The boys said you had a place. It’s homey.”

  Homey? He downplayed his pride. “It’s nothing really, especially when you probably have five houses of your own.”

  “Oh, no. Only one. In Rancho Santa Fe near the ocean in San Diego County. I’d love to buy something else, though. My accountant has always told me that property and art are great investments.” It was like she realized she might’ve sounded hoity-toity, and she clamped her lips together.

  And such pretty lips they were, he thought as he went to the door, ushering her inside. He’d kissed those lips once, and he remembered them being soft and tasting sweet, like the petals of a honeysuckle.

  As she passed him on her way in, he swore he could still catch a hint of that youthful scent on her. But he gathered himself soon enough and began looking at his house as she might be seeing it. Though it wasn’t anything special, it wasn’t as messy as his work-in-progress front lawn. He’d painted the walls a few years ago, put up some tasteful wallpaper in the bedrooms, refurbished the kitchen until it gleamed, and bought new, simple, cabinlike furniture that suited him.

  “This is so cozy,” she said as she smiled in the middle of his family room.

  Wasn’t that a misnomer, though? There’d never really been any family in this room.

  He headed down the hall for his study, where he kept his files and contracts. “Beer’s in the fridge if you want anything. Sorry, I don’t have any Château d’Famous Author wine on hand for you.”

  “Cute,” she muttered.

  He wasn’t gone for long, and when he returned, she was seated on a cushioned sofa with a quilt hanging over the back. She’d gotten two beers and placed them on the manila folders he’d stacked on the coffee table.

  So he had no fancy coasters for her, either. Was she itching to get back to her mansion yet, to the kind of life she’d always been headed for? Where had she run to after she’d realized that being with him had been a mistake?

  Mind on contracts, he told himself, wandering over to the kitchen counter. He reached into his jacket to empty it of what little ready cash he had plus a nine-millimeter pocket carry that he held a concealed weapon permit for. Then there was the lighter he always had with him—a gift he’d gotten from a good friend named Ben Hughes before the man had married the love of his life a few months ago.

  Gideon slid them all onto the counter, where the icon on the lighter—the great Bettie Page—stared up at him with her straight black bangs and wavy hair that flowed over her bare shoulders. Sex on wheels, he thought. Or was she looking at him with an entirely different message?

  A flame that never seemed to go out.

  Ignoring that, he took off his denim jacket, tossed it over the back of a bar stool, and then came over to sit on a sofa opposite Rochelle’s. He grabbed his beer and took a nice long swig, which he hoped would put out that fire in him.

  No such luck, especially with Rochelle sitting there, all nice and put together, so fresh and
neat in her designer clothing. She even had a celebrity look about her, those sunglasses still perched on her head like she was ready to cruise down Rodeo Drive.

  And he wasn’t talking about his kind of rodeo, either.

  He set down his beer, and she shifted on the couch. Was she . . . nervous?

  With a tight laugh, he said, “Don’t worry, Boss. I’m not gonna jump all over you and try to re-create our historic night together.”

  The spunky girl he’d known before returned, and his heart leaped.

  “Even you wouldn’t be that cocky.”

  “Good thing I’m not, because I have a strict policy about keeping my hands off clients.”

  “Oh, really?” she asked in a droll way that told him she was about to take this ball and run with it. She’d never been able to resist a good spar. “Even all those lovely young country singers who come through Vegas and are in need of some protection? All those rich women who hire you while their tycoon husbands attend meetings all day?”

  “Yeah, really,” he said, leaning his arms on his thighs. He doffed his hat, tossing it onto a nearby chair, and then ruffled his hair.

  She watched him, maybe with a little too much interest, and he wrestled back a smile.

  But the next second, she was back to being distant. “So what happens next with this bodyguard stuff?”

  “I can recommend a colleague for a team, seeing as I’ll need to rest a spell every so often.”

  “Well, you already decided on a private investigator for me, too. Why don’t you just go ahead and interview my next massage therapist and esthetician while you’re at it?”

  He didn’t know what that last one was, but he thought wealthy people needed them. “This is killing you, isn’t it?”

  “What?”

  “Having your choices taken away from you, being ‘forced’ to use me because your cousins got in touch with me and you never had the chance to veto me.” He pointed at her. “You, Boss, clearly always get what you want, and you like to be in control of every aspect of what you get.”

  Her gaze widened, and he laughed.