Polished Slick (Natural Beauty) (18 page)

“Yeah, I saw something on the news about a potential tropical storm heading this way, but I was so distracted by where you were or
weren’t
, I didn’t give it much thought.” He reached for one of the fluffy white towels on the rack and pulled it down, then gave Trinity’s back a little pat to nudge her forward. “Sorry, sweetheart, I left my Jeep wide open. It’s probably already drenched inside, but I’d like to not have to bail out the water with buckets tomorrow.”

She let him out, begrudgingly, and then leaned back to watch his muscular rear as he walked toward the bathroom door.

“Hurry back,” she said, sinking into the tepid water up to her chin and leaning her head back to wet her hair. She squirted a large dollop of violet-scented shampoo into her palm and giggled as she massaged it onto her scalp, thinking about what she’d just done and what she’d be doing again if she had her druthers. She couldn’t believe it.
Jerry
.

If she had known the quietly caustic tech guy would find every one of her buttons plus some she didn’t even know she had, she probably would have thrown herself onto his lap long ago. Even if the euphoria only lasted for one day, to her it had been worth it. She felt liberated all the way down to her toenails. She felt
wanted,
and even if Jerry didn’t think she was enough, maybe someone else would. She was confident at least in that.

He returned to the bathroom and tossed the rain-drenched towel toward the hamper in the corner. Then he stood there with his hands on his hips.

She thought she heard some words coming out of his mouth, but was so fixated on his unabashed nakedness the words made no sense to her.

“Trin?” he nudged, clasping his hands over his cock.

“Hmm?” She finally looked up into his face and found him offering her a knowing smirk.

“I said it looks like we’re stuck in for the evening, so a restaurant is out. Do you mind if I look through your refrigerator?”

“Oh, yeah.” She sat up fast and nudged the drain cover off the hole with her big toe. “Yeah. I think there’s some convenience stuff in the freezer. Pizzas and whatnot.”

“Let’s see if we can perk one up before we lose power. We may be able to cook with gas, but eating in the dark is no fun.” He gave her a churlish wink and strode away naked.

She got out of the porcelain tub, and grabbed the closest towel. She wrapped it around her breasts and damn near skipped to the sink where she stood in front of the mirror, assessing the afterglow on her cheeks, and the contented grin she couldn’t wipe off her lips. Then she noticed her head full of suds and grumbled.

When she finished her quick shower and had rubbed most of the water out of her short hair, she found Jerry in the kitchen, squatting in front of the oven and staring at the coils.

She couldn’t stop herself from pouting upon noticing he’d pulled his shorts back on. Suddenly, she felt very naked, and was about to flee to the bedroom to dress when Jerry leapt up like some ninja toad and grabbed her around the waist. He pressed her backside to his front and nuzzled his face against her neck. He cupped her breasts with two warm hands heated by his ministrations of the oven. “What’s the hurry?”

“I was feeling a little underdressed.”

“Oh, that’s easy to fix.” He looked at the timer on the oven display. “We can wear matching suits and have a little fashion show. We’ve got about seventeen minutes until that crust puffs up…but I can puff up in about fifteen seconds.”

More like
five
it seemed to Trinity. “Heh.” She led him toward the rumpled bedroom, but halted when a suspicious buzz tickled her backside.

“Damn, sorry, pixie.” He pulled his phone out of his shorts pocket. “Yeah?”

She turned around to look at him and watched as his expression slowly morphed into one of utter perturbedness.

“How’d you get my number? Oh, Bobby, huh? What, did she think that having you call me directly would make me more likely to take the job?”

He grazed his fingertips down the valley between Trinity’s breasts while he listened, causing her to shudder while he made her wait.

“Yeah, that’s a really attractive offer and I’m flattered you think I’ve aged well, but did Bobby tell you I live in North Carolina? I can’t really be…”

Oh. Modeling stuff
. He didn’t seem very excited about it judging by how it’d killed his erection.

He clamped the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger and massaged. “Look, I can’t have this conversation right now. We’re in the middle of a tropical storm here and I need to go…um…board up windows and such.”

He rested a gentle hand on Trinity’s shoulder and turned her back around. He swatted her bottom, indicating she should continue on their previous route.

She walked, slowly, and perked her ears up to catch the tail end of Jerry’s conversation. “No, that has nothing to do with it. I just don’t do that anymore. You couldn’t pay me enough to sit around on your set all day in a banana hammock.”

Banana hammock?

“Give you a number?” He scoffed and flicked on the bedroom light.

She went ahead to the bed and perched on the edge.

He rolled his eyes up toward the ceiling and chewed his bottom lip. “Okay, I’ll give you a number. Three thousand per hour plus travel for me and a guest.” He wriggled his eyebrows at her and she clapped her hand over her mouth to suppress her laughter. Three-k an hour? Yeah right.

“Are you fucking serious? Uh, let me think about it. I do have a day job, you know. Right. Peace out.” He ended the call and powered down the phone. He flicked it onto the carpeted floor, and joined Trinity on the bed. “Fuck
that
shit.”

“Why? That’s a lot of money, Jerry. That is, if my eavesdropping was accurate.”

“Oh, it probably was.” He laid her onto her back and licked her torso from clavicle to navel—just enough of a tickle to make her toes curl and her muscles down below clench.

“Ten years ago I would have loved to be able to name my own price. I would have been set, you know? Got tired of worrying about how I was going to pay the rent. Now, I like my life. I don’t have much, but what I do have wasn’t earned on my looks.”

And what was so wrong with his looks, anyway?

He must have interpreted the question on her face because he remarked, “You know, Kate—my faux mother—used to call me
little girl
trying to get a rise out of me. She only did it when my father wasn’t home. Never worked, but I can’t say I appreciated it. I wasn’t a very big kid, so I guess that made me extra-sensitive.”

“I think maybe she was jealous. And I must say you filled out pretty well, but that’s just my opinion.” She gave his ass an appreciative grope.

“Well, that’s the only one that matters right now.” He winked once more, and knelt in front of the bed with his hands pressed on either of her thighs. He nudged them apart and buried his tongue in her sex.

Oh my
.

A few minutes later the over timer went off and the smell of charred pizza filled the beach house when they didn’t respond.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The following morning, Jerry followed Trinity back to Chowan County and saw her safely home.

She’d looked so sad there on her stoop, waving good-bye to him in his rearview mirror, and he wanted nothing more but to turn around, park his Jeep on the shoulder, and take her right there against the front door.

Why had he never noticed her perfection, her
rightness
for him?

Oh yes—that
mouth
. He was glad she’d turned off the deep freezer. Being on her bad side was a cold place, and he never intended to be there ever again.

When they’d woken up in her bed at the beach house in a tangle of limbs, neither had wanted to move. They just lay there staring at and touching each other’s faces for a while before either felt the urge to speak. It had just felt
right
being nestled into each other like that—like something worth waiting a long time for. And he supposed he had. He didn’t intend to go much longer without making that rightness a thing of permanence. Unfortunately, he had things to do for Nikki that morning, so his plotting to possess his coworker’s heart would have to wait for later.

He had been able to pinpoint exactly which motel in town Preston and Becky were staying at due to some surveillance footage the bodega next to Juan’s wife Mercedes’ beauty shop captured. Normally, the shopkeeper only kept a couple of days of footage then recorded over it, but he’d kept
that
particular footage because someone had keyed his new Impala. In the footage, he saw someone who looked a lot like Becky going into the motel with a big oaf of a man, but the bodega owner couldn’t be sure because her hair was too dark, and the image rather grainy. He’d run next door to ask Mercedes for a second opinion, knowing she’d be able to say yay or nay.

“I’d know that skank anywhere,” she’d told Nikki and Jerry during a conference call after she saw the footage. “It was her, Nikki, I swear it. She done dyed her hair real dark like yours and her nose ain’t right, but I’d recognize that flat tushie anywhere.”

Trustworthy as Mercedes’ hawk eyes were, a third opinion and photographic evidence seemed necessary.

Unlike Trinity, Jerry was actually experienced in evidence gathering, and was going to do a stakeout. He hadn’t told Trinity because he’d been concerned about the pixie’s safety.

Becky and Nikki had gone at it last Thanksgiving, and the end result had been Becky’s broken nose and Nikki’s bruised knuckles. He didn’t want
his
pixie getting all bruised up. She probably didn’t have Nikki’s precise aim or her intent to maim.

Becky had fled following that particular confrontation with Nikki, but they all knew her absence wouldn’t “stick.” Charlie had
paid
Becky to go away two years ago, but she still turned up, raising hell…and finding the occasional married man to sleep with.

Jerry was the person who’d tracked her down in Reno and forwarded her new address to a certain doctor’s
former
wife. The lady needed to serve her some legal papers.

“You think they’ll recognize me in this get-up? I think pretty much everyone in the country saw that last special on television.” Dom tidied up the edges of his lipgloss in the little fold-down mirror of the Jeep’s front passenger side visor and fluffed his bangs.

Jerry assessed his skirt-wearing friend and rubbed his chin as he considered it. “I don’t think so. I have to say, that’s one of your more outrageous get-ups. I’ve been told I look like a lady more times than I can count, but you really go for the gusto, bro.”

On that specific day, Dom wasn’t impersonating anyone in particular. He’d pored through his trunks of wigs and costumes, and created what he called his “Southern Belle: Edenton Edition” ensemble. In addition to his size ten black wedge sandals, he donned a pair of dark jeans—as he’d not had time to shave his legs—a tasteful gray silk shell with matching camisole, enough dangly sterling silver jewelry to lure a pirate from his grave, and a dark bobbed wig which he’d accessorized with a silk scarf, tied around like a headband.

“So, what’s the plan?” Jerry asked, watching the actor rummage through the tote at his feet.

“Well, help me pick. We’ve got two options.” He pulled a Bible out of his bag, still in its original shrink-wrap. “First, I can knock and tell them I’m updating all the Bibles in all the rooms to the most current edition.”

“Aren’t all editions of the Bible the same?”

Dom shrugged. “You tell me.”

“So, what, you’ll tell them the Bible has newly translated information they shouldn’t miss lest they burn in the fiery blazes of Hell forever?”

“Yeah, but some part of me doubts they’d care. I mean, that ship has already sailed, right? So, I came up with a back-up plan.” Dom stuffed the Bible back into the bag, rummaged around some more, and next pulled out a nine-volt battery.

“What’s that for?”

“I figured I’d tell them I’m one of the owners of the motel, and that I’m required by law to change the smoke detector battery today.”

Jerry shrugged. “Hell, all I need is for Becky to come to the door so I can be doubly sure it’s her before we lure them out to the barn. I don’t even need her to believe it, so take your pick. We’ll work on setting a little trap for her later. We’re sort of flying by the seat of our pants here.”

“Okay.”

The maid pushed her cleaning cart down to the last room of the row and paused in front of the door.

“Wait for the maid to get inside then skedaddle. I’ll park beside the chicken restaurant. You can leisurely make your way over after pretending to knock on a couple more doors.”

“Got it.” Dom made a slight adjustment to his wig and unfastened his seatbelt. “So, Jerry. What’s up with you and the little blonde cannoli?”

“Who, Trinity?”

“
Yeah
, Trinity. I don’t even gotta ask. You already know.”

Jerry raked his fingers through his hair and settled lower in the driver’s seat. “I like her.”

“In what way?”

“The kind of way we shouldn’t discuss in the presence of that Bible…and a few other ways, too.”

Dom made a low, crude, whistling noise. “Truth be told, I didn’t think she was your type. Definitely not mine. I like a little va-va-voom and not too much pushback. That woman’s got a mouth.”

“Yeah, Beth’s great for you, then.”

That was mostly true. Beth could have a pretty sharp tongue at times, but she generally let Dom have the final say in most things. Jerry suspected it was merely because she was easily bored with conversations. Still, her bark was worse than her bite with the little guy. If Dom thought
Trinity
had a mouth, he’d obviously not spent enough time around Nikki, because she could make grown men cry. Jerry always figured she married Charlie because he was the only one who wasn’t intimidated by her. Maybe that’s what he had with Trinity.

The maid had the door open, but lingered in the doorway bending over something, probably a trash can.