Natural Born Charmer (5 page)

The final quarter of the Bulls game had just begun when a knock sounded on the adjoining door. He needed to start the night out right by letting her know who was in the driver’s seat. “I’m naked,” he called out.

“That’s great. I haven’t done an adult nude in ages. I need the practice.”

She wasn’t biting. He smiled to himself and palmed the remote. “Don’t take this personally, but the idea of being naked in front of a woman is just plain repulsive.”

“I’m a professional. Just like a doctor. You can drape your privates if you’re uncomfortable.”

He grinned. His
privates
?

“Better yet, we’ll wait until tomorrow when you’ve had a chance to adjust to the idea.”

Game over.
He took a swig of beer. “That’s okay. I’ll pull on some clothes.” He unfastened the top buttons of his shirt and watched the Bulls’ new guard miss a foul shot before he switched off the TV and crossed the room to open the door.

The Beav’s contempt for fashion clearly
carried over into nightwear. She wore a maroon man’s T-shirt and a pair of faded black track pants that hung in accordion pleats around her small ankles. Nothing remotely sexy about either of those garments, except for the mystery of what they covered up. He stepped back to let her in. She smelled like soap instead of a perfume factory.

He headed for the minibar. “Let me get you a drink.”

She yelped. “Ohmygod, you don’t actually use that thing?”

He couldn’t help it. He looked down at his crotch.

She, however, had her eye on the minibar. She dropped her sketch pad, shot in front of him, and snatched up the price list. “Look at this. Two-fifty for a tiny water bottle. Three dollars for a Snickers bar. A Snickers bar!”

“You’re paying for more than the candy,” he pointed out. “You’re paying for the convenience of having the candy exactly when you want it.”

But she’d spotted his peanut can on the bed, and he couldn’t talk her down. “Seven dollars.
Seven
dollars! How could you?”

“Do you need a paper bag to breathe into?”

“You should just hand over your wallet.”

“Normally I wouldn’t mention this,” he said, “but I’m rich.” And, barring the total collapse of the U.S. economy, he always would be. As a kid, the money had come from substantial child support payments. As an adult, it came from something one hell of a lot better. His own hard work.

“I don’t care how rich you are. Seven dollars for a can of peanuts is extortion.”

The Beav, he realized, had some serious money issues, but that didn’t mean he had to buy into them. “Wine or beer, take your choice. Or I’ll choose for you because, one way or another, a bottle’s going to get opened here.”

She still had her nose buried in the price list. “Could you just give me the six bucks, and I’ll pretend to drink the beer?”

He took her by the shoulders and set her aside so he could get to the minibar. “Don’t look if this is too painful for you.”

She snatched up her sketch pad and retreated to the chair across the room. “There are people starving in the world.”

“Don’t be a sore loser.”

She reluctantly accepted the beer. Fortunately, the room only had one chair, which gave him the perfect excuse to stretch out on the bed. “Pose me any way you want.”

He hoped she’d suggest the naked thing again, but she didn’t.

“However you’re comfortable.” She set the beer on the carpet, crossed her ankle over her knee tough-guy style, and balanced the sketch pad on her ratty black track pants. Despite her aggressive posture, she looked nervous. So far, so good.

He propped himself on one elbow and finished unbuttoning his shirt. He’d posed for enough cheesy End Zone photos to know what the ladies liked, but he still didn’t entirely understand how they could prefer something lame like this to a game shot of him throwing a perfect spiral. That was women for you.

A spike of inky dark hair had worked free from the Beav’s per
petually disorganized ponytail, and it fell across one of her sharp cheekbones as she turned her attention to her sketch pad. He let his shirt fall open far enough to reveal the muscles he’d developed over more than a decade of hard work, but not far enough to reveal his fresh shoulder scars. “I’m not…,” he said, “…actually gay.”

“Oh, honey, you don’t need to pretend with me.”

“The truth is…” Slipping his thumb into the waistband of his jeans, he tugged them lower. “Sometimes, when I go out in public, the demands of fame get to be too much for me, so I resort to extreme measures to hide my identity. Although, in fairness to myself, I never lose my dignity. I wouldn’t, for example, go so far as to climb into an animal costume. Do you have enough light over there?”

Her pencil moved across the sketch pad. “I’ll bet if you found the right man you’d get past your denial. True love is powerful.”

She still wanted to play games. Amused, he temporarily switched tactics. “Is that what you thought you had with ol’ Monty?”

“True love, no. I have a missing chromosome. But a real friendship, yes. Would you mind turning to your other side?”

So he’d be facing the wall? No way. “Sore hip.” He bent his knee. “All those things Monty was saying about trust and abandonment issues…crap?”

“Look, Dr. Phil, I’m trying to concentrate here.”

“Not crap, then.” She wasn’t looking at him. “Me, I’ve fallen in love half a dozen times. All before I was sixteen, but still…”

“Surely there’s been somebody since then.”

“Well, there you’ve got me.” The fact that he’d never fallen in love drove Annabelle crazy. She pointed out that even her husband, Heath, a head case if there ever was one, had been in love once before he met her.

The Beav’s hand swept across the paper. “Why settle down when the world is your playground, right?”

“I’m getting a cramp,” he said. “Mind if I stretch?” He didn’t wait for an answer but let his legs fall over the edge of the bed. He took his
time standing up, then stretched a little, which sucked in his abs and sent his jeans low enough to reveal the top of his gray stretch End Zone boxer briefs.

The Beav kept her eyes glued to her sketch pad.

Maybe he’d made a tactical error bringing up Monty, but he couldn’t get over somebody with the Beav’s strength of character being attracted to such a dick. He set his hands on his hips, deliberately pushing his shirt out of the way so he could display his pecs. He was starting to feel like a stripper, but she’d finally looked up. His jeans slipped another inch lower, and her sketch pad slid to the floor. She leaned over to pick it up and banged her chin on the chair arm. Clearly, she needed a little time to adjust to the idea of letting him explore her beaver parts.

“I’m going to take a quick shower,” he said. “Wash off the road dust.”

She pulled her sketch pad back into her lap with one hand and waved him away with the other.

The bathroom door shut. Blue moaned and dropped her feet to the carpet. She should have pretended she had a migraine…or leprosy—anything to get out of coming to his room tonight. Why couldn’t a nice retired couple have stopped to help her today? Or one of those sweet, artistic guys she was so comfortable with?

The water went on in the shower. She imagined it trickling over that billboard body. He used it like a weapon, and, since no one else was around, he had her in his sights. But men like him were meant to be lusted over from a safe distance.

She took a deep swallow from her beer bottle. She reminded herself that Blue Bailey didn’t run. Not ever. She looked delicate, like the faintest gust of wind would blow her over, but she was strong where it counted most. Internally. That’s how she’d survived her itinerant childhood.

What does the happiness of one little girl, no matter how beloved, mean against the lives of thousands of little girls threatened by bombs, soldiers, and land mines?
It had been a miserable day, and old memories unfolded inside of her.

“Blue, Tom and I want to talk to you.”

Blue still remembered the sagging plaid couch in Olivia and Tom’s cramped San Francisco apartment and the way Olivia had patted the cushion next to her. Blue had been small for eight, but not small enough to still sit in Olivia’s lap, so she’d nestled next to her instead. Tom sat on her other side and rubbed Blue’s knee. Blue loved them more than anybody in the world, including the mother she hadn’t seen in nearly a year. Blue had lived with Olivia and Tom since she was seven, and she was going to live with them forever. They’d promised.

Olivia wore her light brown hair in a braid down her back. She smelled like curry powder and patchouli, and she always gave Blue clay to play with when she threw her pots. Tom had a big soft Afro and wrote articles for the underground newspaper. He took Blue to Golden Gate Park and let her ride on his shoulders when they went out on the street. If she had a nightmare, she’d climb in their bed and fall asleep with her cheek against Tom’s warm shoulder and her fingers twined in Olivia’s long hair.

“Do you remember, Punkin’,” Olivia said, “how we told you about the baby growing in my uterus?”

Blue remembered. They’d shown her pictures in books.

“The baby’s going to be born soon,” Olivia went on. “That means lots of things will be different now.”

Blue didn’t want them to be different. She wanted them to stay exactly the same. “Is the baby going to sleep in my room?” Blue finally had her very own room, and she didn’t want to share it.

Tom and Olivia exchanged glances before Olivia said, “No, Punkin’. Something better. You remember Norris, the lady who visited us last month, the weaver who started Artists for Peace? She told you all
about her house in Albuquerque and her little boy, Kyle? We showed you where New Mexico was on the map. Do you remember how much you liked Norris?”

Blue nodded in blissful ignorance.

“Well, guess what?” Olivia said. “Your mom and Tom and I arranged for you to go live with Norris now.”

Blue didn’t understand. She gazed into their wide, fake smiles. Tom rubbed his chest through his flannel shirt and blinked his eyes like he might cry. “Olivia and I are going to miss you very much, but you’ll have a yard to play in.”

That’s when she got it. She started to gag. “No! I don’t want a yard. I want to stay here! You promised. You said I could live here forever!”

Olivia rushed her to the bathroom and steadied her head while she threw up. Tom slumped on the edge of the old, chipped bathtub. “We wanted you to stay, but…that was before we knew about the baby. Things have gotten complicated with money and everything. At Norris’s house, there’ll be another kid to play with. Won’t that be fun?”

“I’ll have a kid to play with here!” Blue had sobbed. “I’ll have the baby. Don’t make me go. Please! I’ll be good. I’ll be so good I won’t bother you ever.”

They’d all started to cry then, but in the end, Olivia and Tom had driven her to Albuquerque in their rusty blue van and sneaked away without saying good-bye.

Norris was fat and showed Blue how to weave. Nine-year-old Kyle taught her card games and played
Star Wars
with her. One month slipped into another. Gradually, Blue stopped thinking so much about Tom and Olivia and started to love Norris and Kyle. Kyle was her secret brother, Norris her secret mother, and she was going to stay with them forever.

Then Virginia Bailey, her real mother, came back from Central America and took her away. They went to Texas, where they stayed
with a group of activist nuns and spent every spare minute together. She and her mother read books, did art projects, practiced Spanish, and had long talks about everything. A whole day would pass without Blue thinking about Norris and Kyle. Blue fell back in love with her gentle mother and was inconsolable when Virginia left.

Norris had gotten married again, so Blue couldn’t go back to Albuquerque. The nuns kept her until the school year ended, and Blue transferred her love to Sister Carolyn. Sister Carolyn drove Blue to Oregon, where Virginia had arranged for her to stay with an organic farmer named Blossom. Blue clung so desperately to Sister Carolyn when she tried to drive off that Blossom had to pull her away.

The cycle started all over again, except this time Blue held a little of herself back from Blossom, and when she had to leave, she discovered it wasn’t as painful as before. From then on, she was more careful. With each subsequent move, she distanced herself more from the people she stayed with until, finally, the leaving barely hurt at all.

Blue gazed toward the hotel room bed. Dean Robillard was horny, and he expected her to accommodate him, but he didn’t know how deep her aversion ran to casual hookups. In college, she’d watched her girlfriends, high on
Sex and the City
, sleep with whomever they wanted whenever they’d pleased. But instead of feeling empowered, most of them had ended up depressed. Blue had suffered from enough short-term relationships during her childhood, and she wasn’t adding to the list. If she didn’t count Monty, which she didn’t, she’d only had two lovers, both artistic, self-absorbed men happy to leave her in charge. It worked better that way.

The bathroom doorknob turned. She had to be careful how she dealt with Dean for fear he’d leave tomorrow morning. Unfortunately, tact wasn’t her forte.

He came out of the bathroom, a towel looped low around his hips. He looked like a Roman god taking a breather in the middle of an orgy while he waited for the next temple virgin to be sent his way. But as the light hit him, her fingers constricted around her sketch
book. This was no flawless, marble-carved Roman divinity. He had a warrior’s body—highly functional, powerfully built, and ready for battle.

He saw her taking in the trio of thin scars on his shoulder. “Pissedoff husband.”

She didn’t believe that for a minute. “The perils of sin.”

“Speaking of sin…” His lazy smile oozed seduction. “I’ve been thinking…Late night…two lonely strangers…a comfortable bed…I can’t come up with a better way to entertain ourselves than to make use of it.”

He’d abandoned subtlety to make a dash for the goal line. His gorgeous face and athletic fame gave him a sense of entitlement when it came to women. She understood that. But not this woman. He moved closer. She smelled soap and sex. She considered bringing up the gay thing again, but, at this point, why bother? She could plead a headache and flee the room…or she could do what she always did and face up to the challenge. She uncurled from the chair. “Here’s the way it’s going to be, Boo. You don’t mind if I call you ‘Boo,’ do you?”

“As a matter of fact—”

“You’re gorgeous, sexy, and ripped. You’ve got more charm than any man should have. You have great taste in music, and you’re rich—huge bonus points there. You’re also very smart. Don’t think I haven’t noticed. But the thing is, you don’t turn me on.”

His eyebrows slammed together. “I…don’t turn you on?”

She tried to look apologetic. “It’s not you. It’s me.”