Hot and Bothered (20 page)

“Are you gonna treat me like the only thing I'm good for is sleeping around?” he asked.

She pulled back her hands. “You're worth a lot more, and you damned well know it.”

“Then listen to me. I've always wanted you, Rochelle. Only you. Goddamn, even that kiss you gave me in the saloon was the most earth-moving thing I've ever felt.” He took her hands in his. “Did you mean that kiss?”

The one that had provoked her cousin to punch him? Hell, yes. She'd felt that kiss in every cell of her body, and in that single moment, all there'd been was the desire to have something simple with him, to feel him against her and never let him go.

He'd been everything in that reckless few seconds when she'd kissed him.

But how could she tell him that, if there was one promise she'd made herself a long time ago, when she'd seen how her mom had broken her dad into the closed man he was, it was that Rochelle would leave before she was left?

“Yes,” she whispered, unable to lie. “I meant that kiss.”

Before she even finished, his eyes lit up again, a shining golden brown that warmed her through and through.

“But, Gideon,” she said with a lump in her throat, “we both know that I shouldn't have done it.”

***

Her words reverberated through him as if he were an echo chamber, the sound and slam of bullets leaving open wounds with every ricochet.

Yeah, she'd told him earlier today that she was leaving, but after what they'd been through, he'd expected . . .

What? That she would change her mind suddenly? That somehow they'd be more than two people from two different worlds who had some kind of irresistible chemical explosion every time they got near each other? Did he think she would drop her jet-setting life for the bodyguard she'd slummed with—a man who'd just made things worse by telling her his deepest, darkest secret?

He'd pushed her into this reaction, and even though she'd offered friendship, he'd turned it aside, wanting more.

With a brutal shock back to reality, he realized that he'd gotten on his knee for her like some misguided Prince Charming. Jesus, now he knew how she must've felt that night when they'd first been together, when she'd been mortified by how awkward the sex had been.
This
was mortification.

But had her heart felt like it'd turned to dust that night, like his was doing now?

He'd given her more than he'd given anyone, and it still hadn't been good enough. Then again, when had he ever been good enough for anyone?

His pride still intact, even if the rest of him wasn't, he refused to get off his knee, instead leaning his arms on his thigh, like she hadn't just sliced him in two. A sharp laugh found its way out of him.

Even so, he was done lying to himself. For years, he'd denied that she'd always been on his mind. He'd been storing a lot of things in his black box, and he was sick and damned tired of it.

“Something just occurred to me,” he said in a tight voice. “I'm your Tommy.”

She flinched. “No, you're not.”

He gave her a lowered look from his hunched position. Couldn't she see how much of her was in Cherry?

Anger racked him. “You'd think,” he said, “that you would've learned a thing or two from writing that book about her.”

Her mouth pressed into a straight line. That mouth, the one he'd kissed not even two hours ago, the one that had told him with that kiss that there was so much more between them that she wasn't seeing . . .

A dull throb consumed him. “Cherry never even tried with Tommy, Rochelle. And you know what happened after that. Do you want to go down the same road she did?”

“
She
was a tragedy. Is that what you're saying I'll be?”

With each second that passed, his anger was dissipating under the cover of truth. He was so sure what he'd come to feel for Rochelle was right, too. He was even sure he'd felt it since they were kids.

Maybe she'd even been
his
Tommy back then, and this was his chance to finally go after her, never letting her drive away from the ranch.

He held Rochelle's hand, enveloping it between both of his. She seemed surprised that he was still persevering as she looked into his eyes. Was she finally seeing all the way into him? Was she realizing that they were meant for each other?

“Why not give this a try?” he asked, putting all of himself out there, finally going after his Tommy. “Why not learn what Cherry learned only too late?”

“And what did she learn?” Rochelle asked, sounding frightened.

She had to know the answer. But it was that fear in her that brought out the protective hackles in him. The awful thing was that, this time, the bodyguard couldn't defend her from what was coming at her now.

Emotion, true and strong.

“Don't throw away what's right in front of you,” Gideon said. “Open your eyes, Rochelle.”

But he'd temporarily forgotten that this was the girl who'd been shuffled off to her uncle's ranch every summer because her dad had no idea how to relate to her. She'd learned how to cope through years of isolating herself and depending only on herself, and Gideon could see the battle in her to find her way out of that trap.

He kept holding her hand, anticipating the moment when she'd break through. And just when he thought she'd discovered a way out . . .

A decision cracked in her gaze, and he knew she was cursed to stay bound and chained by the past.

“I guess I was right,” he said. “Even the characters in your books never commit. Why would you?”

She pressed a hand to her stomach, clearly gut-punched. “You've never read all my books. How would you know?”

“Somehow, Rochelle, I can predict the plots.”

He stood and started to go. This was his house, but he wasn't about to stay. Even Tommy had walked out on Cherry in his own apartment.

He thought he heard a sob behind him as he headed for his front door, but even before he closed it, he automatically, tragically started to push Rochelle into that dark box in the recesses of his mind again, where he wouldn't have to feel anything for her.

***

“Cher-ry! Cher-ry!”

They cheered for her as she stood on stage, captured by lights as murky as burning cigar tips, the room filled with smoke and shadows.

Cherry smiled and held out her arms to the crowd, welcoming every clap and every shout. This was the audience she'd always needed, she thought in an alcohol-fumed daze. Finally, her fan club.

When she stepped back for a bow, she lost her balance, then righted herself by grasping a bar on her go-go cage. The lights went out on her, and the men in the club quieted, already anticipating the next act, a young, supple dancer who was crawling on the main stage to that old gem “Teach Me Tiger.”

The song was a string of breathy lyrics as Cherry got out of her cage and retreated behind the stage's curtain. The tassels on her breasts jiggled in the dimness, her white satin hot pants feeling too tight, and even as she dragged down the hall toward the dressing room, she started to unzip her knee-high boots. She tripped, nearly clambering over beer cans someone hadn't bothered to clean up.

When she arrived in the dressing room, Mikki Starr, who'd recently chopped her hair as short as Twiggy's, was ready with a bottle of mezcal from a hippie boyfriend who'd been to Oaxaca. She'd already changed out of her cowgirl costume in favor of a striped miniskirt with a thick white belt and high boots.

“Hey, sugar,” Mikki said, handing Cherry the bottle, gesturing toward some orange slices and salt on her dressing station table. “Drink up and let's get movin'.”

Cherry didn't hesitate, slamming down some of the smoky booze and chasing it, keeping her perpetual haze going. Undressing and dressing and doing it all over again every night was rote by now. Another end of shift, another party. It'd been that way ever since Tommy had left.

Nowhere to go anymore. No one she looked forward to seeing.

She dispensed with the tassels and hot pants, tugging on a white lace short dress instead. She was no longer the svelte girl in his painting—the tight material didn't hide the slight gut she had now, and it wasn't just from the drinking, it was from not caring. Yet men would still throw money at her, even if the bills weren't as crisp as the ones she'd gotten from George Diluccio or any of her other sugardaddies. This money was dirtier, like it'd been crumbled in pockets and slid across poker tables that'd never been cleaned.

But cash was cash, and Cherry stuffed a wad of it in her little clutch purse as Mikki pulled her out the exit.

After they were in Mikki's road-worn Corvette—a relic from a life that'd once treated her better—they wheeled out of the parking lot, nearly swerving into another Corvette as they hit the side streets of Vegas. With the top down on the car, the road a blur ahead of them, Cherry and Mikki just laughed at the close call.

When their open bottle of mezcal tipped over on the seat, spilling on the floor, Cherry let it happen. She laughed again, even though she wasn't happy. “We're goin' the wrong way, Mik,” she shouted over the air as it batted her long blond hair over her face. It blocked her view, but since Cherry didn't have much of a clear view these days, why did it matter?

“We're goin' the right way,” Mikki slurred. “Party's a little bit . . .” She swerved again, just in time to miss driving on the sidewalk, then licked her finger and lifted it up, cutting the wind with it. She pointed south. “That a way!”

More laughter, but Cherry's was choked. She wanted Mikki to turn the car west, where Tommy lived with his wife in a well-manicured neighborhood. She'd sat outside his new apartment complex—one in which young couples lived, pushing baby carriages and driving their shiny new cars to and from work. Cherry had seen Tommy—or, as the phone book said, “Tom”—cruising down the street once or twice. She'd even seen his wife with her swollen belly waddling out of the car once Tommy had helped her out of her seat, holding her delicately, just as he'd held Cherry that one afternoon.

She didn't know what made her sicker, the sight of Tommy's future baby or the fact that he sold insurance these days. The baby was something Cherry could've had with him if she'd only told him that yes, she wanted him and only him . . .

Even now, as she sped along with Mikki in the Corvette, she touched her own belly. Failure, she thought. That's what she was filled with. And as far as she was concerned, the same went for Tommy's insurance gig, which she'd discovered when unseen and invisible she'd followed him to his office one morning. He should've been an artist, still selling his work, showing everyone else the world the way he saw it. If she had told him yes, would he still be painting?

She blamed this other woman—his wife, Frances—for making him into what he was, for robbing him of his creative soul. Then again, Cherry had a big part in that when she'd failed to love what she already had in Tommy.

Such a failure . . .

As she and Mikki continued toward the outskirts of town, where tonight's party was supposed to be taking place on some ranch, Cherry folded an arm over her roiling stomach. There wasn't a night that went by when she didn't wonder what might have happened if she'd chased down Tommy that day, what might have happened if she had decided that there was no one else for her but him and that he was the love of her life.

Instead, Cherry had a wound she had no idea how to heal, even if she'd told herself that there were still big things out there for her and she would find them, with or without Tommy.

She'd just never anticipated this gap inside of her and the fact that it could never be filled by all those adoring, drunk, leering faces beyond the bars of her go-go cage.

As she and Mikki sped down back dirt roads and into a fenced-off area marked Private Property, Cherry seized the mezcal bottle, noticing there was still a little booze left, then poured every last drop into her mouth. When Mikki slammed on the brakes and sprayed dust into the night with the tires, Cherry lost her grip on the bottle, and it went flying. It landed outside of the car, rolling away like it had places to go and people to see, and the girls laughed again. They fumbled for their door handles and tumbled out of the car.

Inside the ranch house, it didn't take long to find another drink. Bottles and glasses, full and not full, were all over the place—on counters, on the floor, on the leather furniture—and Cher was singing about her lover shooting her down. People were draped over the couches and chairs, smoking and toking, grooving to the music.

“It's so dead in here!” Mikki yelled over the music before she spotted a strobe light going off in the hallway and decided to see what that was about.

Cherry suspected an orgy was afoot, and she'd tried a few of those the past year or so, but they hadn't made her forget what it'd been like to be truly loved by someone.

I had him
, she thought, meandering away to somewhere else in the house, anywhere else.
I had him and I lost him . . .

Someone caught the hem of her dress, knuckles creeping against her upper thigh, and she was too numb to smack the invading contact away. She only gaped at whoever it was as her vision came into focus.

“You,” said a man who sprawled in a lounge chair. He looked a little like Burt Reynolds, with tanned skin and a smug smile. In the next chair, another guy dozed, sunglasses over his eyes and a cigarette dangling from his fingers. A column of ash drooped from it, reminding her of Tommy that night in George Diluccio's party suite. Cherry nearly gave into a startlingly sober urge to take the cigarette away before he dropped it on the carpet.