Читать книгу Just For Kicks - Susan Andersen - Страница 12

“SO THERE I WAS Tuesday morning, girding my loins to swallow my pride and ask Jones for more German commands,” Carly said, winding up the story of Rufus’s amazing progress over the course of the past couple of days. It was Thursday night, and she and her best friend, Treena McCall, were headed to work. “And you gotta know, Treen, that this took some major attitude adjustment on my part after the way he’d talked to me Monday night.” Wheeling her car into a slot in the Avventurato parking garage, she shot a glance at the redhead in the passenger seat. She cut the engine and yanked on the parking brake, then turned in her seat to meet her pal’s interested gaze more fully.

“Yeah,” Treena agreed. “Having seen you in action with Wolfgang, we’ve gotta be talking serious adjustment.”

“As a heart attack, toots. So, anyhow, I did the girding thing—and guess what?” Indignation ruled all over again. “The bum’s disappeared!”

“That rat!” Treena’s tone was full of the appropriate best-friend outrage. But her tongue was firmly planted in her cheek when she demanded, “What do you bet he did it just to piss you off?”

“That was precisely my first thought,” Carly agreed. Then she laughed. “But all right, so maybe I’m not even a blip on Jones’s radar, while I continually overreact when it comes to him.”

“Ya think?”

“I don’t know what it is about him. I mean, it’s not as if I’ve never run up against a disagreeable man before.”

Treena’s lips ticked up in her habitual barely there, one-sided smile. “Just not one with such a great butt.”

She didn’t even have to think twice. “Yes! His is truly world class and, omigawd, it’s been forever since I’ve had sex. So how fair is it that a guy with the finest ass ever designed to spin a girl’s thoughts to getting a grip on it for a little hootchie-kootch, turns out to have the personality of a gorilla accountant?”

Treena shook her head in sad commiseration. “Life’s a bitch.”

“Tell me about it.” She was never attracted to men she didn’t like. They could be Adonis come to life, and it didn’t matter—if they were jerks they left her cold.

Wolfgang Jones wasn’t even close to Adonis and he was definitely a jerk. So why the hell had she been feeling that raw edge of sexual awareness lately whenever they’d encountered each other? “Damn chemistry,” she groused as she climbed out of the car.

Treena gave her a look over the top of the sporty auto’s red roof. “You talking to me?”

“No. It’s just…I don’t understand why certain people have chemistry with each other while other guys—people—leave you cold.”

“Is that what’s yanking your chain with Wolfgang? You got some chemistry going with a guy you don’t like?”

“Hell, no! Well…maybe.” She shook her head. “No, no, of course not. It’s his lack of respect for the babies, that’s all.” But that wasn’t all, and she gave the other dancer a helpless grimace. “Oh, crap, Treena, I don’t know.”

A friend for ages, Treena took pity on her and changed the subject. “So, how’s your ankle feeling? You sure it’s going to hold up for you tonight?”

Carly shrugged. “I’m not even sure of my own name these days.” She held her fist out, knuckles facing her friend. “But here’s hoping.”

Treena bopped it with her own. “Promise me you won’t push yourself if it starts to hurt too much.”

“Cross my heart, Mom.” Her tone was ironic, but she gave her friend an affectionate smile. “It feels so much better than it did Monday night—or even yesterday—and I’m pretty sure I’m back up to speed. But if I feel it start to go I’ll call it a night. You have my word on that.” As they headed down Row E for the garage elevator, she gave her friend a friendly bump with her hip. “So San Francisco was good, huh?”

“Oh, wow.” Treena’s pale brown eyes grew dreamy. “It was so great. We stayed at the St. Francis and saw as many sights as we could pack into two days.”

“Jax didn’t play in a poker tournament, then?”

“No, and it was so smokin’ not to have a single thing we had to do. We ate too much and maybe drank a bit too much and just played tourists. And the weather was gorgeous. So much cooler than it is here.”

“Yeah, this is unseasonable for mid-October. The temps should be dropping any day now.”

“I’m beyond ready. It was such a relief when the thermometer took its normal dip a couple of weeks ago. I wasn’t prepared for the temperature to start soaring again.”

The noise of the casino bombarded them as the elevator doors slid open into the hotel lobby, but after years of working there Carly was adept at automatically relegating the din to background noise. Dodging the tourists who didn’t wait for them to exit the car before barging into it, they skirted a bellman maneuvering a rolling luggage cart across the marble lobby floor and strode into the casino proper. They passed the Italian bistro, with its smells of garlic, tomatoes and olive oil, passed their favorite little after-work open-air lounge, then took a left at the craps tables, heading for the east wall and the short hallway that led to the employees-only area backstage of the Starlight Room.

“Ms. Jacobsen.”

Damn! Carly didn’t need Treena’s murmured, “Looks like the bum is back,” to know who she’d see when she turned around. Sighing, she pivoted on her heel.

She studied Wolfgang Jones as he strode up to them. Looking at him objectively for perhaps the first time ever, she finally got a handle on part of what her problem was. It wasn’t merely that he was so cool and controlled he was damn near robotic; it wasn’t even that he didn’t seem to like animals. It was those two elements combined with the fact that he had that edge she liked in a man. That don’t-fuck-with-me-and-don’t-even-think-you-have-a-chance-of-tying-me-down edginess that sucked her in every time.

Part of the appeal spoke directly to her own personality, since she had no desire to tie any man down. Never had, never would.

Especially not this man.

Still, there was just something that turned her on about a guy with the confidence to stride through life with his goals firmly front and center.

Really.

Turned her.

On.

Wolfgang had that goal orientation. She didn’t have the first idea what his objectives were, but she didn’t doubt for a minute that he had them. He also possessed one superbly fit body. She might have a preference for men in jeans, but beautifully cut slacks did nothing to detract from the muscular swell of his butt. Neither did his pricy well-tailored jacket disguise the width of his shoulders.

No, ma’am. There wasn’t a damn thing wrong with the physique beneath those upscale threads.

He stopped in front of her, standing close enough that she had to tip her head back in order to look up into his cool green eyes. She tried to assure herself that wasn’t a thrill all on its own, but knew it for the lie it was. Because at more than six feet tall herself in high heels—which meant seventy-five percent of the time—looking up at any man was a treat.

“I need to talk to you about your injury the other night,” he said with crisp precision. Pulling his head back, he slid his gaze slowly down her until it reached her ankle, then back up to meet her eyes once again. “You are better?”

A little curl of warmth unfurled in her stomach. “Yes, very much so, thank you.”

“Good. Then you will need to fill out an incident report so I can close the event.”

The warmth iced over. Yet her eyes still narrowed on his lower lip, noting that when he wasn’t all stern-mouthed the way she was accustomed to seeing him, it was much fuller than she’d previously realized. Yes, indeed, he had that beckoning edge, that look she went for in a guy—not particularly handsome, perhaps, but definitely all man.

If only he would keep his mouth shut.

Still, when she raised her gaze and saw him watching her, a frisson of sexual heat curled down her spine.

Whoa. Wait a minute. That selfsame backbone snapped erect. What the hell was she thinking? She didn’t even intend to go there with this man. “Yeah. Sure,” she said. “I’ll get right on that.” She turned away.

He wrapped his hand around her forearm and swung her back. She gave the long fingers and broad palm grasping her flesh—and pumping heat throughout her system—a pointed look.

Wolfgang set her loose. “Now would be a good time.”

“Not for me, it wouldn’t,” she disagreed coolly. “I’m on my way to work, and I don’t intend to bring myself to my G.M.’s attention by being late. Trust me, Vernetta-Grace is scarier than your entire Security and Surveillance force combined. I’m sure you understand.” She shot him a challenging look from beneath her lashes. “You being so big on personal responsibility and all.”

“Fine.” His mouth adopted the slant of grim hardness with which she was much more familiar. “Then stop by Surveillance and sign off on the report when you’re done for the night.”

“Absolutely. I’ll be sure to do that before we go home.” She turned to Treena. “Remind me, okay?”

“Sure.”

She swung back to Wolfgang. “There you go. Anything else?”

“No.”

“Gotta run, then. We’re on the clock in about fifteen minutes and we still have to change and get into our makeup.”

He stepped back with a stiff nod and she and Treena walked away.

Once they were out of earshot her friend glanced over at her. “It’s going to be a cold day in hell before we stop by to sign off on Wolfgang’s incident report, isn’t it?”

Carly snorted. “Oh, yeah. A very cold day.”

SHE WAS FEELING SURPRISINGLY full of herself when she bopped into the backstage dressing room a few minutes later, and just for a minute she wondered if that should worry her.

As if reading her mind, Treena shot her a dry, sideways look. “You might be having just a little too much fun from your encounter with the wolfman, babe.”

Even though she’d had virtually the same thought herself, her initial knee-jerk response was to deny it. But she couldn’t.

“I know,” she admitted in a low voice. “And I feel like that oughtta be scaring the bejesus out of me. Yet somehow it doesn’t.” Instincts insisting that it was wrong, wrong, wrong to be attracted on a physical level to a man she disliked on a personal one, she raised her hand to erase the admission right out of the air. Even her instincts seemed conflicted, however, for she terminated the motion with a jerky movement that gave her a flashback to her gawky pubescent days. That was an age she’d just as soon not revisit.

Blowing out a breath, she dropped her hand to her side and gave her friend a wry smile. “It was easier when he just annoyed me. But lately it’s as if all my senses are in this warped heightened state whenever he’s around. And I honest to God don’t understand what that’s all about.”

“Maybe simply that there’s more to him than you first thought.”

“I doubt that very much.” Then a beautiful arrangement of exotic flowers on the counter at her station caught her eye. “Hey, would you look at that?” she demanded, raising her voice. She picked up her pace across the room full of dancers in various states of undress. “Somebody must love me lots.”

Rude hoots greeted her statement. “Yeah, Carly,” Michelle said from down the row of stools in front of the long lighted mirror. “You’re off on your regular days and rumor has it that you’ve been laid up with a bum ankle. Yet here you are, all hale and hearty and with a rich new Stage Door Johnnie to boot from the looks of things. What’s up with that?” Tipping up her chin, her lower lip drooping open, she leaned into the mirror to align false lashes along her natural lash line. Then pressing them in place while the adhesive dried, she swivelled to meet Carly’s gaze. “He got a brother?” she asked hopefully.

“Toots, if I had a sugar daddy and he had a brother, you can be damn sure I’d be holding the latter in reserve. It’s been a long, dry spell for me, you know? If the day ever comes when I’m faced with that scenario, I’ll probably need the spare. Just in case I break the first one.”

That brought a fresh spate of ribald laughter and comments, and she dropped her dance bag on the floor in front of her station to root through the blossoms.

Discovering a tiny white envelope, she pulled it out and ripped it open. She extracted the card inside. “‘Hope you’re back on your feet and dancing soon,’” she read aloud. There was no signature. “Huh.” She looked up to find several of her sister dancers grinning at her and a lightbulb went off in her head. “Aw, you guys, these are from you, aren’t they?”

Across the room, Jerrilyn paused in fitting her towering headdress over her slicked-back hair to blow a raspberry. “Yeah, right. When’s the last time you remember us buying flowers for anyone in the troupe?”

“When Georgia had her baby,” Carly said. “Okay, I know we don’t usually. So what was all the grinning about, then?”

“Oh, honey,” Michelle said. “A woman getting flowers is always a huge event. And some of us have to live vicariously.”

She looked at the arrangement again. Okay, that made sense. Only… “So, who are these from if they aren’t from you all?”

“Did you meet a hot young M.D. in the E.R. Monday night?” Juney asked.

“Nah. I didn’t even go to the E.R., just limped on home and iced it. Besides, the last time I was at the E.R. the hottest thing I saw was a nurse named Brunhilda who you wouldn’t want to drop your soap in front of in the shower room.”

“You are so full of it,” Treena scoffed.

Jo’s head popped up over the mirror that backed Carly’s “Hey, maybe you’ve got a secret admirer.”

“Yeah, maybe,” she agreed doubtfully. Then she looked at the clock on the wall and headed across the room to collect her costume. “If so, I’ll have to figure out who later. I don’t have time to worry about it now.”

The wardrobe mistress looked up as she approached. Adjusting the measuring tape draped around her neck, she pushed a frizzy strand of hair behind her ear and selected Carly’s costume from the rack. “Thanks for sending your costume and wig in with Treena yesterday,” she said, and handed Carly the wisp of illusion and glitter that comprised the first act’s attire. She also passed over a headdress of fountaining, white-tipped gold plumes, then pushed her slipping glasses up her nose. “I like it when I’m given time to get them clean, although you are one of the neater ones.”

Carly returned to her station and quickly stripped out of her street clothes and donned her own fishnet stockings before pulling on the costume. Plopping the headpiece atop a mannequin head, she quickly applied her greasepaint. It looked trashily overdone under the harsh fluorescent lighting, but features tended to disappear beneath the stage lights in ordinary street makeup.

Her friend Eve strolled into the dressing room a moment later and stopped at her station three places down the row to prop her right foot up on the stool. She smoothed her fishnets up her calf and along her thigh. Glancing up, she caught sight of Carly and smiled. “Hey, girl,” she said. “How’s the ankle?”

“Back to normal.” I hope, I hope.

“It better be,” Julie-Ann said in the sugary, upbeat voice she used to slice-and-dice. “I won’t have you messing up my chorus line.” She laughed as if it were all a big joke.

Carly gave the young dance captain a neutral look. “Yeah, I’d sure hate to have my injury ruin your night.”

“Haven’t you heard, Carly?” Treena asked, deadpan. “It’s all about Julie-Ann. Your comfort doesn’t enter into it.”

“Sure, it does,” Eve disagreed. “You heard her—it could mess up her line.” She cocked a brow at the dance captain. “And when did this become your dance troupe again? I thought we functioned as a unit.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Julie-Ann said in exasperation. “Lighten up! It was a joke.”

Uh-huh. The three dancers exchanged brief gazes. Then without further comment they went back to getting ready for the show.

But Carly turned and, reaching between her shoulder blades, gave her back a pat. “Do you see a knife sticking out anywhere?” she asked Treena sotto voce over her shoulder.

The redhead gave her a crooked smile. “Amazing how she does that, isn’t it?” she said equally quietly. “It will forever remain a mystery to me how one woman can smile so angelically while poking her busy little fingers into another woman’s wounds.”

“And if anyone would know how that feels, toots, it would be you.” Treena had come under Julie-Ann’s fire the past several months while she was fighting to get her dancing back up to speed so she could pass the annual audition after an absence of almost a year away from the troupe. Instead of lending support, their dance captain had undermined her friend every chance she got.

Treena’s smile turned into a full-fledged grin. “She has so lost the power to bug me.”

“You’ve definitely decided this will be your last year, then?”

“Yeah. You know it’s time for me. I’m getting too old for this and it’s just plain getting tougher physically. Jax and I have been talking over some of my options.”

“I’ll wager you have quite a few, too,” Carly agreed. “And I’m happy for you, toots. For myself, though, I’m going to miss working with you. What’s it been, a decade we’ve been dancing together?”

“Yes, can you believe it?” Propping her heel on the countertop, Treena bent over her straight leg, stretching out her hamstrings. Slowly straightening, she gave a nod to the bouquet on the counter between their stations. “So who do you think the flowers are from?”

“You got me.” She paused in tucking her hair beneath the turban portion of the headpiece to look at her friend. “I might check with the hotel florist tomorrow to see if anyone remembers anything. Because I honestly don’t have a clue.”

“Hey, maybe it was Wolfgang.”

Carly choked, then laughed so hard tears began to leak over her bottom lashes. “Oh, shit, if you made me ruin my makeup you’re a dead woman.” She grabbed a handful of tissues and gently pressed them beneath her eyes to catch the overflow before it could smear her mascara. Once she was certain the damage was contained, she turned to her friend. “Do you honestly see Mr. Grim and Grimmer sending flowers to someone he’s not sharing the sheets with?”

“Well…no.”

“Me, neither. Hell, I can’t even see him loosening up enough to do the hootchie-kootch.”

And if sometimes she jerked awake from a dream of him hanging over her in a red-hot naked lather…?

Well, that would just remain her guilty little secret.