After Hours Bundle (22 page)

R
IDE INTO THE SUNSET
together?

“So you see,” Marly said later to her business partner Alejandro, “the guy is off his gubernatorial rocker!”

They stood on the salon side of After Hours, on the zebra floor cloth and in front of a tangerine wall. The spa was funky and colorful, with Italian glass lamps, walls of all colors and a distressed concrete floor painted to look like the ocean. Every time she looked at it, Marly felt a mixture of pride and horror:
she
had painted it, crawling around on her hands and knees to do every lovely little blue-green swirl. Ugh. She had, in fact, driven the design of the whole place, since she'd studied art during her three years of college and had a knack for interior design.

Alejandro stretched his six-foot-four, muscular frame. A yawn overwhelmed his classically handsome face. He rubbed the day-old bristle on his square chin and sipped at a beer, his treat for passing his business school exams and squaring the books. “Oh, I don't know,
mi corazón.
If I didn't think of you as a sister,
I
might fall into instant love with you.”

“Be serious!”

“I am.” He rubbed absently at an uncharacteristic stain on his elegant linen pants.

Shrieks of drunken feminine laughter rolled over them, coming from the pedicure stations in the back. Marly lifted an eyebrow. “Let me guess, the Fabulous Four are here? Aren't they early?”

The Fabulous Four was a group of women in their forties who booked their appointments together each week and got blind drunk on After Hours' wine. At first Marly had thought it was cute. But after an entire year, it was getting a little out of hand. The Fab Four took over the place and got so loud and raunchy that sometimes other clients complained.

“They're all going on a cruise together tomorrow,” Alejandro explained. “So they moved their pedicures—and happy hour—back to lunchtime.”

“Did they fight over you, honey?” Alejandro was often in demand for hand and foot treatments, as much as he hated to give them.

“No—when I found out they were coming, I deliberately crossed myself off the book for that time slot.” He grinned. “Now, tell me more about the governor.”

Marly frowned. “He's feeding me lines, and I'm not going to fall for them. How many times a week do you think he tells the story of his great-great-grandfather and the mail-order bride?”

“
I'll
go to bed with him,” her coworker and fellow stylist, Nicky, said with a leer. “He's hot…for a Republican. Yeow, baby! I'd leave nothing on the guv but one of those royal-blue neckties….”

Marly shook her head at him. “I don't think he's bent your way, Nicky-doll. And I didn't get the feeling he'd care much for orange spandex, either.”

“Oh,
gawd.
” Nicky shook his blond hair. He was like Princess Di in drag, with a California accent and a lisp. “It's back to the Internet for me, then. Did I tell you about my date last week? Finally,
finally,
I thought,
yay,
this guy is gonna be
it.
He was
good
-looking, head to toe Calvin
Klein,
makes tons of money as a designer.
I was ready to marry him—
Even though we'd have to go to Massachusetts to do it! And then he shows up wearing those plastic
food-service gloves.
He wouldn't even take them off to shake my hand! Fuh-reak, freak,
freak.
”

“But, Nicky,” said Alejandro. “You wouldn't know what to do if you had a normal date. You'd have no stories to tell us and nothing to complain about.”

“So true,” said Nicky with a frown. “Do you think I should see a shrink about this?” He wandered off, one hand on his spandex-encased hip.

Marly sighed. “He makes the governor seem normal, honestly.”

Alejandro laughed. “Don't you mean
Jack?
”

“I'm not going to call him by his first name. And besides, even if I was dumb enough to fall for his lines, how can I ignore the fact that he's been seen all over the state with that debutante…you know, the one they're expecting him to marry, like, yesterday?”

“Carol Hilliard?”

“Yeah—the one in the pastel Chanel suits and the Ferragamo shoes.”

“Nobody's seen a rock on her finger, Marly.”

“They're probably still excavating it, all hundred carats, from Daddy's diamond mine.”

“Meow!” Alejandro winked at her. “What has she ever done to you?”

“Nothing,” muttered Marly. “She's just perfect for him and I'm not. Do you know the guy had never even seen blue toenail polish before? I guess it's not fashionable among the little debbies.”

“Marly,
chica.
Why does it bother you that you're not perfect for him?”

“It doesn't.”

“Right. That would be why you're obsessing.”

“I'm not obsessing! I was just sharing my morning with you. A morning that happened to include a half naked governor who's a big flirt.”

“Ooooh, is he cut?” Nicky was back again.

“Um, well, yeah.”

“Six-pack?”

She nodded.

“On a scale of one to ten, how much chest hair?”

“Five.”

“Mmm. Sounds divine. You should sleep with him.” And with that little bit of advice, Nicky disappeared to mix color for his next client.

“He hasn't asked me!” she called after him, hands on her hips. Not that Jack Hammersmith needed to, really. She knew exactly what it meant when her body got that boneless feeling, the melted knees syndrome, the warm rushes of sensation in private areas.

“So,” Alejandro said. “You cut his hair. And you're not sworn to secrecy, so that's great PR for After Hours. The best, in fact. The only thing better would be for us to cut the hair of Brad Pitt or Colin Farrell. Would you get to work on that, please?” He grinned.

She heard his unspoken request.
Don't piss off the governor. We can use the cachet and the extra clients he'll bring us.

Alejandro owned the biggest percentage of the spa and therefore owed the most money on the business loans they'd taken out. He constantly worried over finances, even though he masked the concern with his Latin charm.

She and Peggy had never told him how close they'd come to being kicked out of the retail space. He would have flunked all his business school exams or something. To reassure him, Marly said, “Hammersmith's coming in here in a couple of days so I can do his color. I'll have to use a private room, though—he doesn't want to advertise the fact that he gets gray highlights to make him look older and more experienced. Isn't that funny?”

Alejandro shrugged. “What is he, thirty-six or so?”

“Something like that.”

“You can understand it—most of the guys he's working with in the Florida state legislature are on the far side of middle age, and he needs their respect.”

“Uh-huh.” Marly yawned. “I wish I was going to get out of here before midnight….”

“I'm sorry,
mi corazón.
Tell you what, dinner's on me later. We'll order from Benito's. Sound good?”

“Thanks. You're a sweetie. But what sounds good is a three-week vacation in the Caribbean. I've got to start limiting my schedule, Alejandro. I can't keep going like this…. I haven't been to see my parents in months, and as for spare time…” Spare time was a dream. And forget spare time to paint.

“I know. Give it a little longer? Then we'll bring in a couple more hairdressers, and everyone can ease up on their appointments a bit.”

Marly nodded. “You know I don't mean to bellyache, hon. I've got my dad's medical bills, but you're under even more stress, with the whole business school thing.”

She only had a few more months to go to pay off the thoroughly scary multithousand-dollar hospital bill that she'd had sent to her, because if her father had seen it he would have relapsed, gone into renal failure and died.

She'd worked a deal with the administrator: only a quarter of the bill balance was sent to her parents. She'd dropped out of art school and begun working immediately to pay it off, since they were on a fixed income.

The pace of her work these days was killing her, but she focused on the light at the end of the tunnel, when the balance would be paid.

What would it be like to have spare time again? A social life? She couldn't wait. Marly went to greet her next customer and initiated the normal chitchat while she snipped and reshaped the woman's hair.

The rest of the day flew by: she cut the hair of a city council member, wove blond extensions in for a local model, did a short, spiky style for a woman who owned a boutique around the corner. She snipped, textured, shaved, highlighted, gelled, moussed and sprayed. Then she did it all over again.

By 10:00 p.m. her feet were throbbing and she was exhausted—but they had two hours of prime party time to go. Marly looked longingly at the wine Shirlie, their receptionist, brought to the customers, thinking that just one glass would do a lot to ease her pain and give her a second wind.

But it was an extremely bad idea to cut someone's hair under the influence…so she'd wait and have her wine after they'd locked up.

She welcomed her 11:00 p.m. client, Regina Santos, and sent her off to be shampooed. Marly's thoughts turned renegade again, toward Jack Hammersmith, his bare chest and his mouthful of waffles. The way his tongue had licked the whipped cream from the corner of his mouth. The way he'd looked into her eyes as if he could see into her mind, and his calm certainty that she was The One.

The One what? The one who'd tell him that the Hammer wasn't going to nail her?

 

J
ACK
H
AMMERSMITH
successfully dodged Turl's urges to take an extra vitamin and got dressed in front of the maid whom Housekeeping sent to remove his room service cart. He gave the maid credit for waiting until he put on his shirt and tie before she asked shyly if she could take a picture of him with her camera-phone.

He said, “Sure, sweetheart—do you want a photo of us both?” Turls pressed her lips together and did the honors, before almost chasing the poor woman out.

Jack would much rather have signed two dozen autographs or taken as many photos with hotel staff than get down to work with Stephen Lyons and Jorge Martinez, his top aide and his campaign manager, respectively.

But they barged in at 9:45 a.m. regardless of his personal preferences, and worse, they forced him to crack open the thick manila file folder on the suite's desk. They pulled out three of the yellow-flagged documents and handed him a pen snagged from behind Martinez's ear.

“Do you wash those ears?” Jack teased him, pretending to wipe earwax off the pen. “Because I know you've always got one or the other of them pressed to the ground, spying and dragging them in the dirt.”

Martinez shot him a cool glance. “That's why you pay me the big bucks.”

Lyons started yakking at him about pending legislation in the Florida state senate. When he paused for breath, Martinez jumped in. “I've hired a professional PR firm just to manage your press coverage—and consult on your image—during the campaign.”

“Great, more people to push me around,” Jack said in jovial tones. “Well, I'm sure they'll approve of my haircut. You like it, Lyons? Marty?”

They stopped talking at looked at his hair. “It's great, Jack,” said Martinez, and moved on to a new topic: the train wreck that a public school initiative had become. Lyons made a circle out of his thumb and forefinger, spreading his other three fingers wide in the A-Okay sign.

“Hey, Lyons? Your wife—does she ever wear blue nail polish?”

“What? No. Twelve-year-olds and rock stars wear blue nail polish.”

“And artists, wouldn't you say? Creative spirits.”

“Jack, can I get you to focus, here?” Lyons asked.

“I'm very focused,” said The Hammer.

“Oh, Christ,” said Martinez. “What inappropriate woman are you obsessing about now?”

“She's not inappropriate. She's perfect.”

“Jack, if she wears blue nail polish, she is not perfect. I have one name for you—Hilliard. She's beautiful, she's connected, she's got style and wit and fashion sense. You've known her all your life. Now will you please, for God's sake, get engaged to the woman? It could make or break your reelection campaign.”

“That's crazy. It's not my prospective wife who's running! I got elected single last time. Why is it so important that I be coupled now?”