After Hours Bundle (19 page)

The Mini's digital clock told her it was 9:30 p.m. She could drive to Barrington's house now, make the delivery and croak out her apology.

E
VEN THE HOUSE
looked mad at her. It squatted ominously at the end of Troy's cracked driveway, the windows seeming to squint at her, the door a tight frown.

Peggy gulped. She wondered if she should leave the Mini running in order to make a quick getaway, in case he came after her with murderous intentions.

She contemplated how she herself would feel toward someone who'd forced her to streak into a busy parking lot and drive home stark naked. Visions of steak knives, rat poison and vehicular homicide danced in her head. Perhaps this was not such a good idea…but she forced herself out of the car.

The front door opened before she'd taken two steps. Barrington stood there in a pair of faded Levi's, hands on his hips, his expression anything but welcoming.

“Crack a rib from laughing, did you?” he asked.

She caught her lower lip between her teeth. Then she just extended the pile of clothes.

“The least you can do is bring them all the way to the door. You were planning to dump them and run, weren't you?”

Her legs rooted to the ground, she shook her head.
Open mouth. Unstick tongue from roof of mouth. Form words. Push them out.
God, this was more hideous than she'd even imagined.

“S-s-sorry.” She pushed the word out, but it was harder than forcing harmonious sound from a tuba.

Troy raised an eyebrow and eyed her with a considering, analytical expression. “No, you're not.”

She furrowed her brow and glared at him. “Am, too.” She pulled her feet from the imaginary quicksand sucking at them and made herself walk the remaining few steps. She extended the pile of clothes to him. “Here.”

“Then I'm disappointed. Extremely so. The Peggy Underwood I used to know wouldn't have apologized if needles were being driven under her fingernails.”

“Let me get this straight,” she said slowly. “You're
disappointed
that I said I'm sorry.”

“Yes. It ruins your entire revenge strategy.”

“Look, Barrington,” she said. “If it makes you feel any better, I'm not here on my own behalf. I'm here because my revenge screwed over my friends, my business partners.”

“Ah. Now I understand. That's better. I begin to have some respect for you again.”

Peggy's blood began to simmer. “Of course, I live for your respect.”

He smiled. It wasn't a very nice smile. “Step carefully, Peggy-Sue.”

She took a deep breath and counted to three. “Let me put it to you this way, Troy. Before I…pulled tonight's stunt, you indicated that you wouldn't break the lease and force us to move After Hours.”

He nodded.

“I'm hoping that your decision hasn't changed. To be blunt, we have a huge loan that we took to pay for the build-out and remodeling of the spa. If we have to close for six months and reopen somewhere else, we'd lose all our business. We'd default on the loan. We'd all be financially ruined. I could handle that for myself, but I can't live with it happening to Alejandro and Marly, my partners. And there are staff and dependents involved, too.”

“My heart bleeds,” Troy said.

“Look, I can try to make this worth your while. I can pay you some extra money every month out of my salary. Just don't take out your anger on them.”

“I'm not interested in your money.”

This wasn't going well. But had she really expected it to? She had one last bargaining chip, but she didn't know how to even bring it up. She worked some saliva into her dry mouth. “Then what are you interested in, Troy?” She tried to inject her voice with a tinge of seduction.

A long, very long, pause ensued. She couldn't meet his eyes. When she finally did, his were hard and angry.

“Don't,”
he said. “Don't cheapen what we had.” He dropped the pile of his belongings on the porch, took her by the shoulders and whirled her 180 degrees. Then he gave her a none-too-gentle shove. “Get out of here, Peggy. And don't come back.”

 

T
ROY SLAMMED THE DOOR
behind her, so hard that the walls of his hovel shook. He felt like destroying something. He was still furious with her over his very public humiliation and the fine he was going to have to pay on top of it all. Bad enough that people he didn't know had laughed at him, and that the police had, too. But Jerry had just about peed on himself when he'd come to get Troy out of jail. He hadn't chosen to share that part of his mortification with Miss Underhanded Underwood.

Troy was mad at her, mad at himself for making her mad at him and mad at Jerry for his mirth. In other words, he was a madman.

There was really nothing else in the kitchen for him to destroy. He prowled around the house, searching for something to take out his temper on. Screw anger management. Maybe he'd take a buzz saw to the old olive-green couch. Or burn the old geezer's plaid La-Z-Boy.

His eyes settled on the wall between the living room and dining room, a wall he planned to take out anyway. He'd half decided to liberate a sledgehammer from his toolbox in the garage when reason paid him a quick visit again. Best to find out if the wall was load bearing first. With a growl, he hunted down shorts, socks and some running shoes. Exercise was the only thing that would calm him down.

As he burned up the miles in the late-evening air, his aggression faded. He saw Peggy's face again as she'd stood before him, apologizing and resenting every second of it. A muscle had jumped in her jaw, her teeth were clenched and she'd elevated that little freckled nose of hers.

He grinned in spite of himself. That had cost her dearly. As a competitive spirit who enjoyed vengeance just as much as the next person, Troy knew it. But she'd come to grovel on behalf of the people she cared about, and that touched him.

He knew he was a big pushover, but he couldn't break the damn lease and kick them out. If that made him a bad businessman, so be it. As Peggy had stood there, attempting to hide her pugnacious attitude for her partners' sake, he'd fallen the rest of the way in love with her.

God
damn
it. Why he had to love a stubborn, freckled, bad-tempered little vixen he didn't know. One whom he should have shot on first sight. One who didn't want to be anyone's girlfriend and spent her days running her hands over other men.

Really, could he make a worse choice? He honestly didn't think so. The woman was so cynical she redefined the word, and she would undoubtedly drive him nuts and make his life a misery.

But she was also funny, sexy as hell and knew her football. She wasn't with him for the money or a borrowed identity. She challenged him at every step and she made love like there was no tomorrow.

Peggy Underwood was perfect for him. What other woman would have had the nerve to exact revenge on him the way she had? Troy started to laugh alone in the dark as he ran, aware that he was behaving even more like a madman. Well, tough. He was a madman in love.

 

P
EGGY CLIMBED THE STAIRS
to her apartment, so tired and depressed that she felt drunk. She gripped the iron railing set into the steps and used it to drag herself upward.

She unlocked the door, closed and relocked it behind her and slid down it into a heap on the floor. The silence shrieked at her, and the white walls gave her an instant headache. But Marly would probably never help her decorate now, since she'd let her down.

Peggy cringed as she pictured Alejandro's face when he heard the news. His dark eyebrows would draw together in a half incredulous, half furious squiggle; his eyes would snap with pure temper; his mouth would tighten in disappointment. He'd throw her out of the spa…but then what? Would he have to quit business school?

And Marly. In a flash of horror, she pictured her friend's beautiful tapestry pillows and candles inside a cardboard box by the side of the road. What would Marly do? She was a great hairdresser and could find another job in a heartbeat, but she'd lose her life savings.

Peggy started doing math in her head. If she sold her car, if she combined that money with what she had in savings and a 401(k) from when she'd worked for her brother, and if she borrowed a little from him, she could probably give Alejandro her part of the business loan. But it wouldn't make up for everything else: the lost income, the stress, the end of their friendship….

Peggy stared at the huge painted television on her wall, at the redheaded female kicker who'd just scored. Her gaze was so intent on the ball that she'd lost focus on everything else around her.

The stadium crowd was a bunch of skillful blobs and dabs of color, details of a face here and there, courtesy of Marly's brush. The field—the ground that the kicker stood on—was a slash of green, hardly stable. And even the ball was beyond the figure's grasp, flying high through the air and through the goalposts to signify what? A point on a scoreboard? What exactly was the meaning of that?

It was fuzzy, not concrete, a fleeting blip on the radar screen of life. Worthless—similar to revenge.

Her eyes filled with tears. Troy had called innumerable times. He'd sent flowers. He'd brought chocolates. He'd tried reason and apology. What was it about her personality that made her so intractable, so tough to the point of stupidity?

He'd had to threaten to sue her just to get her to talk to him, and even then she hadn't listened. She'd just followed through with her idiotic plan of vengeance. She'd let her disappointment in her father and Eddie and her general cynicism twist her, somehow.

Was it possible that Troy had been telling the truth: that he'd had one goal when he first came into the salon, but had set it aside after meeting her?

Peg banged her hard head against the door. Well, she'd never know now, would she? She'd succeeded in ruining everything for everybody. She was a real winner, all right.

She didn't sleep more than two hours that night. She lay there in the stark-white apartment bedroom, letting the sterility wash over her. She wished it would numb her thoughts, but instead the glaring white assumed the properties of noise and closed in on her, deafening and paralyzing.

When morning came she felt like a zombie, but her subconscious had sifted through all the possibilities of why she couldn't sleep. Yes, guilt and worry were part of the problem. But there was another looming issue, one that she wasn't sure she could grapple with right now.

She'd gone and fallen in love with Troy Barrington, the guy whose girlfriend she didn't want to be.

Peggy stumbled into the kitchen, made coffee and took a cup into the living room. Blearily she stared at Kicker Girl, the red hair streaming out from under the helmet she wore to protect her head. Stupid chick. Where was the helmet to protect her heart?

P
EGGY STILL FELT
like roadkill when she arrived around 8:00 a.m. at After Hours. It was her job to open this morning.

Her first client wouldn't show until eleven, so she unloaded some new supplies from their boxes and checked them in on the computer, doing her best to respond to Shirlie's chatter.

The receptionist had gone to a movie last night on a first date. “And then he spilled popcorn down my cleavage and tried to fish it out!”

“You're kidding,” Peg murmured.

“No. I mean, how obvious can you get? I was like, ‘Get out of my bra, thank you very much!'”

“So did he behave himself after that?”

Shirlie shook her head. “When he walked me to my door, he tried to vacuum my tongue out of my mouth. When's the last time a stranger tried to suck on your tongue?”

“Never, thank God.” Peggy finished typing the last SKU number into the machine and hit Control and S to save the information.

“So gross. Then he tried to get into my apartment by claiming he had to use my bathroom. I told him it was broken and shut the door in his face.” Shirlie brushed her hands together in a classic dusting-off gesture.

“Where did you meet this fabulous guy?”

“Over the avocados at the grocery store.”

“Well,” said Peggy. “Maybe you should try the fruit section next time. Peaches, maybe.”

Shirl nodded. “You're telling me.”

The door of the salon opened and in came Mel, their postman, with his cute little knobby knees hanging out of his regulation navy shorts. “Hello, my lovelies. Beautiful day, eh?”

“Hi, Mel. What's new?”

“Well, let's see. Newsflash! The sky is blue, the grass is green and my wife is shopping.” He gave the same answer to the question every time they asked. “Now, what do I have here for you, my lovelies? Aha. This for Miss Underwood, looks terribly important and official.” He handed an envelope to Peggy. “You'll have to sign for that, dearie, it's certified.” He handed her a pen. “And a naughty lingerie catalogue for you, Miss Shirlie. Also some bills. The rest is for Tall, Dark and Handsome.”

Peggy looked at the return address, which was a law firm's. Her heart dropped into her underwear. With a shaking hand, she signed for the letter and went into the kitchenette to open it privately.

She ran over to the salon, where Marly was highlighting a customer's hair. The woman's head was piled with small squares of aluminum, and she was drinking a clear golden liquid from a coffee cup. Wine? At nine-thirty in the morning?

Peggy exchanged a glance with Marly, who just shrugged, as if to say that alcoholics had to have their hair done, too.

Peg waved the letter under Marly's nose. “Certified,” she moaned. “Regarding you-know-what.” Marly smiled angelically at the lady in her chair and set down her paintbrush and color bowl. “Will you excuse me for just a moment, Mrs. Dalton? I'll be right back.”

She pulled Peggy to the other side of the salon. “You can't mention a word of this to Alejandro right now.”

“But—”

“He's in the middle of exams! You can't.”

Peggy took a deep breath. “Okay. But will you come with me? I have to go Thursday at eleven.”

“I'm booked all day Thursday. Sorry, Peggo, but you're going to have to handle this alone. I thought you were going to apologize?”

“I did. It didn't do the slightest bit of good. I was even going to make an offer he couldn't refuse…but he did. He refused it before I could even get the words out! How unfair is that?”

Marly's large aqua eyes weren't devoid of sympathy, but they weren't forgiving, either. “You did make him streak to his car from the mud bath. I can't say I'd want to sleep with you, either, after that.”

“Well, good. Because you're not my type.”

“Go on Thursday and handle it like an—uh, like a pro. Apologize again if you have to. Just get us out of the soup.”

Peggy had a strong suspicion that Marly had almost said, “Like an adult.” Jeez, sometimes friends were tough. “Yeah. Out of the soup.”

“Don't leave that letter lying around for Alejandro to find. I guarantee you he would freak and fail all his exams, and that's the last thing he needs.”

“What would you like me to do with the letter, eat it?” Peggy stuffed it into her bra and walked away.

 

T
HURSDAY ARRIVED
like a speeding bullet, even though Peggy would have preferred it to wait a month or two. She showered and then stood dripping in front of her closet, wondering how to dress appropriately for an eviction. Hair down or pulled up? Trousers or skirt? Scoop neck, V-neck or camisole under jacket?

She snorted at herself. Could anyone be more ridiculous? Finally she pulled a simple khaki skirt from its hanger and topped it with a white cotton blouse. She went for minimal makeup and close-toed chestnut sling backs. Pearls in her ears, a clip in her hair and a cinnamon-mauve lip gloss completed the outfit.

She looked young, fresh and even a bit innocent. Weren't appearances deliciously deceiving?

Peggy pulled an ancient Vuitton signature bag from the back of her closet and dusted it off. Her father and stepmother had given it to her as a high school graduation gift, along with the matching wallet. They couldn't have chosen anything less suited to her personality.

She tossed the matching wallet back into the closet and wrinkled her nose at the bag. But it was the only thing that came close to going with her shoes, and it seemed appropriately stuffy for a law firm. Besides, if you were going to be evicted, why not be tossed out with designer accessories?

Her stomach felt heavy and squeamish, as if it had big globs of mercury sliding back and forth inside. She popped some antacid pills and donned her most upscale Jackie O sunglasses. Then she walked toward the Mini and drove downtown to her doom.

Would she have to face Troy himself? Or just some faceless suit with a document? Probably the latter. Marly's words came back to her. “Handle it like a pro. Just get us out of the soup.”

Peggy had no idea how to handle this like a pro, other than bluffing her way through it. Maybe she should have consulted her own lawyer. But she decided to argue that they had indeed filed the permit for the mud bath plumbing. Obviously, it had just been misplaced.

She wondered wildly if she could bribe some city employee to “find” it. That always worked in the movies. The protagonist suavely slipped the guy an envelope and got his way. The audience forgave him his unethical behavior because they knew he was really a good guy.

I'm a good guy—er, good person. Why shouldn't I be able to pull this off?
Peggy stopped for a light and fished her wallet out of the snooty Vuitton bag. A cursory review of its inner pocket revealed that she had nineteen dollars in ones. Not much of a bribe.

She dug into the Mini's console and discovered a pack of melted gum, three paper clips and some dusty change. She didn't have time to stop at a bank. So much for bribery. Though, come to think of it, the law firm would only be notifying her of the eviction today. Surely they had to give thirty to sixty days notice, and during that time she could produce the missing permit and fight back.

Peg parked in a vast garage that seemed to swallow her car the way a whale inhaled plankton. She hiked to the elevator and hit the button for the ground floor. Then she crossed the street to the office tower opposite the garage and took another elevator to the law firm's floor.

The mercury globs in her stomach slid back and forth, her palms started sweating and she tamped down a rising hysteria. No! She was not going to lose it.

She pulled open one of a set of glass doors and introduced herself to a receptionist who looked like a runway model and had twice the attitude of one.

She was told to sit, like an obedient dog, until Mr. Buckheimer could see her. Fifteen minutes went by, during which Peggy figured she lost half her body's water content through her palms. At last a large, paunchy, jovial man came into the reception area.

“Miss Underwood! Pleasure to make your acquaintance. I'm Jerry Buckheimer. Hope you haven't been waiting long.”

Peggy shook his big paw and wondered if he always looked so damn cheerful about evicting people. He radiated amusement, the sadist.

“Let me show you to the conference room, and then we can get started with the, uh, proceedings.”

She ratcheted up her jaw, squared her shoulders and followed the man to a polished wooden door with glass panels to either side of it. The panels were hung with blinds, and these were drawn.

Buckheimer opened the door and ushered her in. A long cherry conference table greeted her, dotted with dozens of lit candles. A huge cut-crystal vase of irises sat in the center of it. And over the back of each chair around the table lay a pink numbered jersey. In each seat rested a pink football helmet and a pair of pink cleats.

Peggy stood there stupidly, taking it all in. Behind her the door clicked shut and she turned to see Troy, hands in his pockets, leaning casually against it.

“Hi,” he said.

She stared at him, her mouth working. “What are you doing here?”

“I was in the neighborhood,” he said dryly.

“What, you came in for the kill?”

“Now, now.”

She gestured toward the table, her expression a question. “Is there a kill? Or is this part of a sick joke?”

“I figured since you once thanked me for sending you flowers, that maybe I should give you some.”

Peggy put a hand to her temple. “You, um, always give women flowers after they've played evil pranks on you?”

He nodded. “Yeah, especially when they get me arrested for indecent exposure.”

Horrified, she clapped a hand over her mouth. “No…please tell me that didn't happen.”

He nodded. “You couldn't have engineered it better, sweetheart. That mineral mud looks exactly like dried blood under a setting sun. Makes a driver
very
interesting to the cops.”

He wasn't kidding. She tried to speak, but he cut her off. “I guess I now know exactly how you felt back in college, after the incident with those guys—the coach seeing you naked.”

Her eyes flew to his and her mouth went dry. For a long moment she said nothing. Then she swallowed hard. “Troy, I am so sorry. What I did was beyond infantile, and I certainly didn't mean for—oh, God! No wonder you were so pissed when I showed up at your house.”

“Let's just say that if this gets out, nobody's going to let me coach their little boys on a Pop Warner team.”

She inhaled sharply; she hadn't thought of that. She looked at the floor while shame swallowed her. “And you're not strangling me
why?
”

“The thought did cross my mind once or twice,” he admitted. “Okay, even three times. But I decided that was too easy.”

“Too easy,” she repeated. He was smiling at her. Why?

And what was up with the flowers and the candles and the pink uniforms?

“Yeah. I want to torment you over a period of months, even years. Maybe decades, if you'll hang around that long and develop the right sadomasochistic tendencies.”

She squinted at him. Was he saying what she thought he was saying?

“I can't strangle you,” Troy explained, “because I fell for you the first night I saw you.”

“You did?” Her insides started going gooey. Then she frowned. “That night in the parking lot? Wait a minute. You swore you weren't stalking me.”

His mouth twisted and he caught his lip between his teeth. His eyes danced. “I wasn't stalking, exactly. But I
was
kind of spying. Playing Peeping Tom because I was convinced you guys at After Hours were giving more than massages in the back.”

“What?”

“I was really disappointed when you weren't, since I could have broken the lease right away.”

“You—you—”

“I thought you were real cute for a hooker.” Troy grinned at her, dodging around the end of the table when she came at him, fist raised. “I wondered what you looked like under that lab coat.”

She dropped the Vuitton bag on the floor, snarled and leaped over it. Then she tackled him.

Unfortunately, as he'd argued during their discussion about coed football, her 120-pound body was no match for his 230-pound one. He laughed as she head-butted him and tried to knock him off balance. Then he picked her up and held her at arm's length while she flailed her hands and feet.
“Hooker?”
she panted.