After Hours Bundle (56 page)

She blew out a breath. “Okay. You can stay until you're done with the due diligence on the proposed acquisition. But no more nasty comments, no more awful names for Alejandro and no kicking the dog I'm going to get.”

“Ugh. You're bringing a dog home, now? We just got rid of the pig.”

“Yes, Wendell, I am going to adopt a dog.”
Preferably one with ringworm who will sleep on your bed.
“Today, in fact, because I already miss Gracious and I need an animal to love. It's all part of the new Kate.”

Wendell snorted his disgust with the new Kate and stuffed the rest of his stale croissant into his mouth. Then he disappeared into the guestroom to take a shower.

Kate looked at the white walls around her and thought of Alejandro's magical realist painting. She needed some art in here. And, okay, a couch. It would be nice to be able to study on a sofa, because trying to do so in bed always resulted in her falling asleep after the third page.

She frowned. She and Alejandro had been spending a lot of time together recently, but they sure hadn't been focused on the marketing plan…which was dangerous.

Pushing thoughts of him out of her mind, she grabbed her purse and headed for the door. Just as she got through it and turned to pull it closed behind her, Wendell popped out of the guestroom, his tubby body wrapped in one of her towels. “Thanks for letting me stay.”

Great Scot! Wendell was being polite. Maybe he had potential to become human at some point?

“But you still owe me four thousand dollars,” he announced.

Maybe not. “In your dreams, Wendell. Look, I'm sorry Gracious did that, but the suit can be dry-cleaned, the shirts and sheets can be washed and your shoes can be wiped off with leather cleaner.”

He put his hands on his hips, assuming a mulish expression. He looked like a rogue Pillsbury Doughboy. “No. Everything must be replaced. I'm afraid I must insist.”

“You can insist all you want, Wendell. You're not getting four thousand dollars out of me.”

Wendell squinted at her and rocked back on his nude heels. “How would you like it if the board and the family were filled in on your activities with the greaseball?”

It was the last straw, and Kate finally lost her patience with him. “Trying to blackmail me again, Wendell? This time I won't stand for it. I'm reversing my decision—you
can't
stay.

“And regarding the pig, let me point out that
you
invited yourself here, you left your suitcase on the floor and you antagonized an innocent animal that has very few ways to express itself. So maybe you should take some responsibility for what happened. And by the way, if I were Gracious, I wouldn't have stopped with just pee!”

Wendell choked.

“So you go ahead and broadcast anything you want, you vicious little shit. But while you're doing it, you can get the hell out of my condo! We may come from the same family, and I might have a misguided soft spot for you, God knows why, but that does
not
give you the right to do or say anything you want to me and expect to continue a relationship. Your behavior has consequences. Got it? Now
get out.
If you're not gone by the time I get back, I will call the police. I mean it.”

Kate slammed the door, vaguely surprised at herself. She was finally taking steps to put an end to the twisted, unhealthy relationship she had with certain family members. Spinneys might consider blood thicker than water, but Just Kate wasn't going to be a martyr to their cause.

“Y
OU
, I
WILL
kill with my bare hands,” Alejandro said to Peggy on the day of the client appreciation party. “And you, I will boil in oil,” he said to Marly.

“Alejo, why so bloodthirsty?” she asked, blinking her lashes in feigned innocence. “You should be getting into rock 'n' roll mode! When is the DJ going to show up?”

“After I'm done murdering both of you,” he said in menacing tones. “He'll put on a dirge while he helps me bury your bodies.”

“And when will the luscious Kate arrive?”

“Never, if I can help it.” He glared at them. “I cannot believe you two did this to me! Some friends you are. Bad enough that you had her sniffing around here for the marketing project, but now you're inviting her to parties? I'm not happy with you.”

Marly poked him in the chest. “Alejo, you're going to have to tell her, and soon. You can't date a woman and not inform her of what you do for a living.”

He shrugged uncomfortably.

“Unless you're planning to dump her for a bustier model? Trade her in for a bobblehead?”

“I am going to do no such thing. Kate is not the kind of woman any man in his right mind would dump.”

Peggy and Marly exchanged a significant glance. Then they double-teamed him, the wenches. “So you're either in love or you're crazy, huh?”

“I'm not in love with her—it's too soon for that—but I'm not planning to let her go, either.”

Marly waved a hand airily at him. “Oh, of
course
it's too soon to be in love with her. You've only been obsessed with her for months now.”

Alejandro straightened his shoulders and stuck out his chin. “Obsessed? I don't think so. I have no need to be obsessed with anyone. I have many opportunities with women, as we all know.”

“God,” said Peggy. “If his head gets any bigger, he won't fit through the salon door.”

“It's good for him to be obsessed with a woman,” Marly said with a nod. “He's way too impressed with himself. Otherwise he'd just come clean and tell people what he did for a living, right? He wouldn't have such an ego that he'd hide it.”

“I am not obsessed with Kate, and I am not in love! Why would I be in love with a woman that rude, that stubborn, that poorly dressed, with vile relatives who obviously clone themselves each generation? God forbid there should be a Wendell the fifth or the sixth….”

“We don't know why.” Peggy shrugged. “But we like her because she challenges you. So would you go ahead and fall in love with her already?”

“No,” Alejandro growled.

“Suit yourself. But if you're not going to do that, then you should go ahead and tell her that you give manicures and pedicures.”

“No,”
he growled, even louder. “It's embarrassing. It's not manly.”

“Isn't he adorable?” Peg said to Marly.

“Cute as a bug,” she agreed, smirking. “I have an idea. Let's out him on national television. Maybe on the
Jerry Springer Show.
What do you think?”

“No!”
he thundered. “Go away and leave me alone, before I drown you both in the mud bath.” He stomped into the back office in order to get away from his evil partners. Paying bills was preferable to being tortured by them.

But as he wrote out checks to the electric company and the city for water, guilt nagged at him. He should tell Kate what he really did. Whether he was in love with her or not, they did have a relationship at this point. And a relationship could not be based on lies or omissions.

Beauty Boy! Beauty Boy!
The old demons chanted in his head. She would laugh at him. She would curl her lip. She would walk away. A woman like Kate Spinney would never lower herself to date a manicurist.

Still, there was no getting around it: he had to come clean. And soon. Even though she'd have nothing to do with him once he did.

A sharp noise alerted him to the fact that he'd just snapped the ballpoint pen he held in half. Blue ink spilled all over his right hand and soaked the checkbook, too. Alejandro cursed and stomped out of the office in search of paper towels. He couldn't wait until this stupid customer appreciation party started. He was just dying to have some damn fun.

He'd tell Kate tomorrow, he promised himself, as he blotted ink from his hands. Tomorrow, he'd get his guilty secret off his chest, and say goodbye to his fling with Kate. He looked down at the After Hours checkbook as he attempted to clean it up, and sighed. At least it was drowning in blue ink, not red.

 

T
WO HOURS LATER
, the party was in full swing, with customers squealing over their goody bags and admiring each other's outfits. The wine and beer flowed, the music pulsed with sex-drenched lyrics and the sound of laughter overrode everything. The evening was a definite success and the customers felt appreciated.

As the host, Alejandro flashed his smile often and to potent effect, told jokes, kissed cheeks and fetched countless drinks. He even took to the dance floor with both Marly and Peggy without tripping them as he was tempted to do.

Soon he was dancing with eager female customers and fending off their less-than-subtle advances, as usual. He was just ending a song by dipping Heather Carlton almost to the ground, when Kate walked in and stopped his heart.

Don't drop Heather.
The words flashed into his brain just as he almost did. He managed, mechanically, to right her and thank her for the dance, but then he stood gawping at the woman with whom he was emphatically not in love.

She looked like a goddess. There was no other word for it. Clad in the bronze leather skirt and the chocolate tank, her thin, rangy frame even further elongated by the high strappy heels she wore, she channeled Katharine Hepburn and Gisele Bundchen at the same time. Alejandro had no idea how she did it, but she managed to look simultaneously challenging, fragile and sexy.

He stood inelegantly riveted, unable to shake his gaze from her. She'd done her eyes, this time without smudges or streaks, in bronze and teal shadow and liner. Her lips were soft cinnamon and she'd lined them as well, so that they looked bee-stung. Just the sight of them made his groin tingle helplessly.

She'd done something miraculous with her hair and it framed her face, setting off her gorgeous cheekbones. And to top it all off, she'd dusted some kind of gold-bronze powder over her face and shoulders.

Alejandro did not shove his knuckles into his mouth. He did not step on his tongue. He did not drool onto the floor. But he did finally move like lightning to her side, because if any other man got near her, he was going to take him apart.

Kate smiled at him, and he felt it in his gut like a blow. “Do I look okay?” she asked.

He tried to swallow, but he couldn't. His mouth was too dry. All of his flowery compliments, delivered so skillfully in a slightly exaggerated accent that the women loved, crumbled into dust. He nodded.

She licked her lips and looked vaguely crushed. “It's the bronzing powder, isn't it. I made myself look like a clown—”

He put a stop to her self-criticism with his mouth and devoured the rest of her idiotic words. Clown? No. Siren? Yes. Her lips tasted of cinnamon, too, and the peppermint toothpaste she'd used recently. He wanted her with an intensity that scared him.

When he finally pulled back for air, her eyes had gone smoky. She touched her mouth with a finger. “You messed up my Professional Pout, sport. D'you know how long it took me to get that lipliner on straight?”

He immediately engaged in another smear campaign. This time, he managed to drag the color all the way down to her chin, and give himself a good case of blue balls to boot.

She gasped and pushed him away. “Are you deliberately trying to make me look awful?”

He finally found his voice. “Yes. Where are your khaki pants and those gruesome loafers? You shouldn't be walking around like this.”

“Like what?”

He gestured at her. “Like some kind of sex goddess, bent on the ruination of all mankind. Where is your blue oxford cloth shirt?”

She put her hands on her hips and glared at him.

Dios mio, she's not wearing a bra….

“I look like this because of
you,
sport! You couldn't stand my loafers or my clothes. So I humor you, and you're still not happy. What's your problem?”

He barely registered her words, because he was busy wondering if she had on any panties under that leather skirt of hers, and he was about to seriously embarrass himself in front of the entire party. He grabbed her wrist and towed her toward the back hallway.

“Excuse you! What the hell do you think you're—”

He ignored her and sped up, finally reaching the door of his small office after what seemed like an eternity. As he twisted the knob, he felt her small fist connect with his kidney. “Oof. Kate,
mi amor,
that is not my idea of foreplay!”

He shut the door, locked it and slid his hands up her leather skirt, rucking it up around her waist. She was still yammering about something, and he caught the word
caveman
in there somewhere, until he sealed her mouth with his own and stroked her between the legs. She trembled and sagged against him, which encouraged him to pick her up and set her on his desk while he ripped off the violet tanga she wore underneath the skirt.

He dropped into his office chair and pushed her back onto his papers. Then, with one strappy sandal on either arm of his chair, he bent his head to her and licked.

Kate gave a strangled cry and he did it again, savoring both her and her reaction. He had her completely in his power and could bestow pleasure or withhold it at will. He liked things that way. He was used to having power over women. He was
not
used to the effect that Kate had on him.

He'd never lost his ability to speak in his life. To punish her for that, he swirled his tongue around the area she was desperate for him to touch, careful to stay just out of reach of her clitoris.

Kate squirmed and whimpered and shifted her hips. He chuckled diabolically, then touched his tongue to her center for maybe half a second.

In love with her? Ridiculous. She was contrary and she drove him crazy and he wanted her back in those ugly, baggy clothes so that no other man would see the goddess underneath. His goddess. The one he was intent on torturing so that he didn't feel quite so screwy inside.

Alejandro took the whole of her into his mouth and she convulsed helplessly. He threw her ankles over his shoulders and honed in like a shark until he had her begging, her heels kicking against his back.

He was feeling fully in control again when she gasped something that he both did and did not want to hear. “Please, Alejo,” she whispered. “Come inside. I need you inside.”

How could he refuse the lady? He stood up, unbuckled his belt and freed himself from the tangle of cloth binding him. Then he sheathed himself in a condom and drove into her, her soft cries urging him on.

His eyes damn near rolled back into his head, she felt so good. Alejandro lost himself in her tight heat and to his shame, lasted about five strokes. As she orgasmed around him, seizing his cock with her inner muscles, she turned him on so much that he completely lost control.

He stared down at her beautiful face in a mixture of ecstasy and gloom: so much for wresting back sexual control from this woman. She had him tied around her little finger. It was a damn good thing he wasn't in love with her, that was for sure.