Midnight Touch

MILLS & BOON

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With thanks to all my Florida friends who have

brightened my new life here! And especially to

Sandra, Adolfo, Hugo, Carla and Stany for helping

me get the cultural details/Spanish straight.

I couldn’t have written this book without you.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Epilogue

Coming Next Month

1

IF WORD GETS out, I’m a dead man.

Alejandro Torres looked furtively behind him to make sure he wasn’t spotted; then ducked into the backroom of After Hours. A real man wouldn’t live this way, slipping into the darkness, blending with the shadows, unable to reveal to anyone what he did for a living.

He told himself that CIA operatives were in the same boat, but unfortunately there was one key difference: ops guys carried concealed weapons and cool gadgets. Alejandro carried a concealed pumice stone and very uncool purple foam toe separators.

CIA agents—in theory—sought to protect truth, justice and the American way. Alejandro sought to protect his machismo: keep his cojones from shriveling to the size of peas and dropping off into the dust.

His code name was Señor Manos. Not quite 007, but then, this wasn’t MI6—After Hours was an upscale salon and day spa in Coral Gables, one of the ritzier sections of Miami.

It was way too hot for a cloak, and he’d never needed a dagger yet, but the secrecy was urgent. Alejandro shuddered. If any of his buddies on the soccer team found out what he was up to, things wouldn’t be pretty. He should never, ever have filled in for that MIA nail technician!

It was one thing to be a financial partner in a spa. It was quite another for a six-foot-four Peruvian male to be a closet manicurist. But there seemed to be no turning back now: he was in demand, even at the outrageous prices he’d begun charging to dissuade appointments.

“Señor Manos,” said a high, breathy female voice. “I’ve been waiting all week for this.”

The voice came from the shadows of the pedicure chair, from behind a pair of tanned, candlelit knees that were not pressed firmly together.

In fact, the knees were a foot apart from one another, which was alarming, since they wore a short skirt. Not that Alejandro hadn’t spread his share of female knees in his thirty-four years—he certainly had. But he didn’t wish to spread this pair, not even a little bit. Those were married knees. Knees of a three-time mother.

Nevertheless, as a salon and spa owner, he was accomplished at lying to women. Just part of doing business. “And I, mi corazon, have also been waiting all week. You have toes to melt a man.”

The client giggled. “Oh, honey. Do I really have man-melting toes? I don’t believe anyone’s ever said that to me.”

“Then you have obviously been with the wrong men.” He smiled and seated himself on the low stool in front of the basin area of her pedicure chair. “How’s the water temperature?” He dipped his hands in.

“It just got hotter, thanks.” She giggled again, and then sighed with pleasure as he took her left foot in his hands and tried not to stare up her skirt, which was quite difficult.

His balls had sagged immediately as he assumed the position. They drooped in shame as he began a preliminary massage with soft liquid soap—an extra service that After Hours provided to their clients.

Heather Carlton, the woman in his chair, moaned with pleasure and Alejandro’s manhood pulled a complete turtle, retreating from the horror of this abasement and servitude.

He actually didn’t mind the foot massage, as long as the foot in question wasn’t too large and gruesome. It was scrubbing the calluses, pushing back the cuticles, cleaning under the nails and filing them that he really despised. And the polishing.

Bad enough that he knew how to do all of it, having grown up helping out in his mother’s salon. Beauty Boy, the kids at school had called him, taunting him mercilessly. On one particular, ignominious afternoon, a gang of bullies had jumped him after classes, beaten him to a pulp and then decked him out in a wig and a full face of makeup. He’d laid there groaning until he could force himself up and find a gas station restroom so he could wash it all off.

His mama had scolded him and grounded him for fighting, but he’d never told her what really happened. She was a single mother in a country not her own, and he was all she had, besides her partner and best friend Carlotta Perez. He didn’t want Mama to feel guilty that he had to help her after school and on weekends.

Heather’s moans of bliss subsided as he rinsed her feet and applied a grainy scrub to exfoliate them and slough off dead skin cells.

“You really have magic hands,” she said.

“Gracias.”

“How did a big, handsome guy like you become a nail technician? I can’t figure it out.”

Alejandro laughed. “By accident. My family’s been in the salon business for years.” And now, even though Mama’s passed on, I can’t seem to get away from it, since Tia Carlotta has no retirement savings and needs me to turn a tidy profit for her….

Those were the things that he couldn’t say aloud. The issues that explained why he was stuck in the particular rut of life he found himself in. There were other things he couldn’t say, either. Such as:

I hate doing this and that’s why I’m getting an MBA on the side. But until I’m done with school and figure out how to franchise After Hours in every big city in the U.S., I have to meet client demands. If the clients are demanding my touch, and will pay as much as you’re paying for me to lay my magic hands on you, then so be it.

Heather drained her free glass of wine and hinted strongly that she’d like another. After Hours, to Tia Carlotta’s great suspicion, served alcohol and was open until midnight Tuesday through Saturday. He’d bought out most of her interest, relocated the old salon, renamed it and given it a new marketing twist.

Miami was a late-night, party town. They needed to cater to their clientele, and giving them a hot, pre-party spot to get beautiful and tipsy was the perfect solution. The tipsier the clients got, the happier they were and the more money they spent.

Alejandro rose from his stool and held out his hand for her glass. In Peru, his mother’s country, the women waited on the men. “Chardonnay or pinot grigio, mi amorcito?”

“Ooh, say that again.”

“Say what?” Alejandro asked. “Mi amorcito?”

“Well, I like that, too, of course. But the other.”

“Pinot grigio?”

“Yes. It sounds so sexy when you say it.” She sighed and stretched, flashing him abundant cleavage and a swatch of emerald-green crotch.

Crazy woman. “Pinot grigio,” Alejandro repeated, averting his gaze. “Is that what you would like, then? Not the chardonnay?”

“Grinot pigio,” she said. “Yes, please. Mi, uh, corazon.”

He bit his lip to keep from laughing. Maybe she was drunker than he’d thought. “Of course. I’ll be back in a moment.”

He opened the door and slipped out, leaving her alone with the ocean wave music, the candlelight and her wine-buzz. All clear in the hallway. He straightened his shoulders and headed for the little coffee-and-wine area up front, where the customers could help themselves.

For liability reasons, Alejandro and the staff were careful not to serve more than one or two glasses of wine. After that, if the client wanted more, it was available on a self-service basis.

“Are you drinking on the job again?” his partner Marly teased him, as he poured Heather’s wine. She was the salon’s master hairdresser, and had recently become engaged to Florida’s governor, Jack Hammersmith.

“Always, mi vida.” He winked. “Actually, my client just asked me for a glass of grigot pinio. No, grinot pigio.”

Marly laughed. “Pinot grigio?”

“Well, that’s what she meant to say.”

“I think Heather was lit when she came in here,” their tiny blond receptionist, Shirlie, reported from behind the checkout counter. “She sorta rolled through the door. And I also think she wants you, Alejandro.” Shirlie snapped her gum and grinned.

“There’s a newsflash.” Marly’s voice was dry. “Yet another spoiled Coral Gables housewife panting after our Alejo.”

He hunched his shoulders. It was actually getting embarrassing, the number of female clients who were trying to bed him.

Nicky, another hairstylist, skipped up and sang into a faux fist microphone, making up the lyrics as he went along. “Yo touch, baby, yo touch, it’s just tooooo much!” He followed that with an air-guitar riff. Then he folded his hands behind his head and gyrated his pelvis. Alejandro averted his gaze from the painful sight.

“Nicky, don’t quit your day job, okay?”

“You’ll be sorry when I’m the next American Idol, sweets.”

Alejandro retreated with the wine, calling over his shoulder, “If you ever even pass the first round of American Idol, I will eat an entire box of your highlighting foil.”

“Fine,” Nicky shouted after him, hands on his black, leather-encased hips. “You better work up an appetite for aluminum, then.”

Alejandro did a quick scan of the hallway and then ducked back into the treatment room. He refused to sit out in front with the other manicurists, because of the risk of being seen by someone he knew. He’d only sat out there a couple of times before deciding that he’d never live it down if one of the guys on his soccer team walked by on his way to Benito’s restaurant and got an eyeful of their star forward with a bottle of nail polish.

Forget Beauty Boy. They’d call him maricon—fag—or chivo, an even ruder Peruvian term that meant goat. They’d also run him right off the team, talent be damned.

Heather had slid even farther down into the chair, which had caused her skirt to hike up several inches. Not for the first time, Alejandro wondered if he shouldn’t just swallow his pride and move up to the front with the others. It would save him from would-be seduction scenes like this one. Beauty Boy! Beauty Boy! The old taunt echoed through his head. He just couldn’t do it.

“Your wine, señora.” He handed Heather the glass.

“No, no, please don’t call me that—it makes me feel a hundred years old.”

And it reminds you that you’re a married mother of three. Tsk, tsk. “Apologies, mi amorcito. If it’s any comfort, you look all of twenty-two.”

“Now you’re talking, honey.”

Alejo assumed the position again and began sawing away at the calluses on Heather’s feet, while she sat shamelessly flashing her emerald-green crotch and a come-hither smile.

He wasn’t coming any more hither than he already was. He rinsed off her feet, dried them, drained the basin and began her foot and calf massage with scented lotion. She began to make little noises of pleasure, soft moans and small mewls, while he ignored her and tried to be professional.

Once he was done, he wiped his hands on a towel, removed the lotion residue from her toenails and adjusted the light so that he could see better. Heather returned to her wine, blinking resentfully at the stronger light.

She’d chosen a dark red polish color called Sex on the Subway. Coincidence? He thought not. Who were the people who made up these cosmetic colors, anyway?

Alejandro applied two coats to her toenails and then topped it with a clear polish, while she managed to drain the second glass of wine in record time. She stared at him through slitted, smoky eyes that she’d taken great pains making up.

He was cleaning up the last toe on her right foot with a wooden cuticle stick and a bit of acetone when she said huskily, “What ish thish thing between us, Alejandro?”

Alarmed, he repeated, “Thing?”

Then she lurched forward and stuck her left foot, wet polish and all, into his crotch. “Oh, baby! Is that a python in your pants?”

He looked down, his jaw working. Red nail polish—all over his trousers. He searched for tact. Remember, she’s a client.

She blinked at the mess, giggled and covered her mouth with a hand. “Oops. Sorry…”

He gently removed her foot and wiped her ruined toenails with a paper towel soaked in acetone. He didn’t bother with his pants—they were history. “Señora, I think the wine may have gone to your head.”

She put a hand on her heart. “No, it hasn’t. I feel this ’lectricity in the air when I’m with you, and I can tell you feel the shame way.” She glanced meaningfully at his, er, python, which wasn’t feeling at all aggressive. In fact, it had practically shrunk up to his chin.

He had to step carefully. “Indeed, señora, you are very beautiful, and a man would have to be dead not to, ah, desire you. However, you are a married woman and a mother—I could not possibly act on such an attraction. It cannot be.” There, was that dramatic and mournful enough? He hoped so.

“Just because I have kids doesn’t mean I’m dead.” To his horror, Heather began to cry.

He stared at her, aghast.

“You think I’m a tramp, don’t you?”

“No, no, no, no, no! I think you’re a lovely lady,” Alejandro said desperately. “Really.”

“You think I’m ugly.”

“No! You are gloriously, stunningly beautiful.”

“Then you think I’m fat.” Tears rolled down her cheeks.

“I do not think you’re fat. You’re like a—” he searched wildly “—a gazelle!”

“Now you’re calling me an animal?”

“It was a compliment! Gazelle—you know, graceful. Svelte! Dainty.”

“You don’t waaaaaaant me,” she moaned.

“I do. I want you, Heather, more than—than words can say. Madly. Passionately.”

“You do?”

He nodded, his hand over his heart. “But first, we must paint your toenails, yes?”

She gave a woeful sniff. “Uh-huh.”

“Excellent. Now, give me your scrumptious foot, mi corazon. Let me make it as lovely as the rest of you.”

Heather stuck out her foot and her lip at the same time while he thought wildly of what disease or disability to claim so that he could get out of this mess.

She sulked for a while.

Syphilis? Or erectile dysfunction? Eeny meeny miny mo, catch a whopper by its toe…please, lady, just let me go!

Then the heavens intervened. “By the way, you should know that I’m not really in the mood anymore, Alejandro.”

Praise God and all His angels. Alejo dredged up a wounded expression. “But…I am devastated.”

She shrugged and tossed her hair over her shoulder. Then she folded her arms across her chest and pressed her knees firmly together. If he hadn’t been so relieved, he might have poked his eyes out with the cuticle stick.

Women. Hard enough to understand them when they were sober. He couldn’t keep up with their lightning changes of mood then, much less adding alcohol to the equation. All he knew was that he’d been spared, thanks be to Jesus.

Alejandro polished Heather’s toes for the second time that night, and then escaped from the room, only to run into Peggy Underwood, his other partner.

Peg, the spa’s massage therapist, stuck her hands into the pockets of her white lab coat and looked pointedly at his crotch. Her eyebrows climbed into her hair. “Alejo, did your client try to Bobbitt you?”

He could feel his face sizzling. “No. She, um…”

“Tried to play footsie with your tootsie?”

“That about covers it.”

Peggy grinned. “Sweetie, it’s gotten to the point where we can tell which women are your clients. The ones who come in for their pedicures in short skirts. They’re absolutely shameless!”

“Yeah, tell me about it. I can’t keep doing this, Peggy. If my buddies find out…” He shook his head.

“Alejandro. Since you’ve been doing pedicures, our revenue on them has shot sky-high. Like it or not, your fifty-dollar pedicures are bringing in over two thousand dollars a week, and don’t tell me to hire someone else, because it’s you they want. Shirlie tells me we get calls all the time, asking for the guy who looks like Jesse Metcalfe from Desperate Housewives. If you’re not available, they say they’ll wait.”

“But it’s humiliating!” he complained. “You don’t understand. Peruvian men don’t give manicures or pedicures. They just don’t! You have no idea what will happen if this gets out. I will be branded rosquete, be the butt of jokes, kicked off the soccer team!”

“What’s a rosquete?” Peggy asked.

Alejandro shuddered. “It’s very rude. It means big doughnut, and it’s used to describe gay men.”

Peg snorted with laughter.

“It’s not funny!” he hissed. “Not at all.”

“Sorry,” she said, trying and failing to smother her mirth.

“I’m telling you, I cannot do this anymore.”

She sobered. “Alejo, it’s just until we get the business loans paid down. You said it yourself.”

“Yes, and my MBA loan, and—There’s no end in sight. Meanwhile I’m dying inside every time I touch a woman’s foot or hand!”

“Sweetie, how many men would beg to be mauled by beautiful women all day long?”

He growled.

“Plenty of Asian men do nails. Why shouldn’t you?”

He growled again.

“I know, I know. But we’ll keep your secret. None of the clients even know your real name, Señor Manos, and your friends just think you’re an owner. It will be fine. Our secret. Just for a few more months.”

He groaned and swiped a hand over his face. “You don’t understand. Latino men do not give manicures!”

2

THE NEXT MORNING, Alejandro sat in dark slacks and a pressed white shirt in his marketing class, one of the requirements for the Executive MBA program at the University of Miami.

As usual, his gaze strayed from the professor’s scintillating discussion of economics to the profile of Kate Spinney, a fellow classmate.

Kate’s face was all angles and planes and chiseled features—like a young Katharine Hepburn. Even in her baggy, frayed khaki pants and oversize man’s blue oxford shirt, her feet stuck into beat-up, brown penny loafers, Kate was gorgeous. And as far as he could tell, completely unaware of her looks.

Penny loafers. God, they were ugly! Women in Miami did not wear such things. They wore high-heeled, strappy, sexy sandals. They wore ankle bracelets and toe rings. They did not wear men’s shoes or shapeless clothing.

But Alejandro had observed Kate for months now, and he couldn’t imagine her in sexy, strappy heels or low-slung, skintight pants that bared her belly.

When it came to fashion, she was a walking disaster, and when it came to social grace…His mouth twisted wryly. Kate certainly hadn’t been born in the South.

At the meet-and-greet cocktail party that kicked off the first semester of the program, she’d stood forlornly in her loafers, clutching a bottle of beer in her scrawny hands. She’d shredded the label using her ragged, unpolished nails within minutes, and she shook hands like a man: no nonsense, vice-like grip, brief nod and sketchy introduction. “Hi, I’m Kate Spinney from Boston.”

No, “A pleasure to make your acquaintance,” or “Nice to meet you.” Just the identifying tag and the impersonal hand-squeeze. That was Kate.

She had the intellectual capacity of a mainframe computer, and Alejandro wondered why she wasn’t studying business at Harvard or Yale or Wharton. Overall, she seemed the sort of person who belonged in Miami about as much as a hooker belonged in a convent.

He was curious; intrigued. And he didn’t know why, since his tastes in women usually ran to black hair, C-cup and size eight. Kate had springy, crazy, ginger-brown hair, tiny breasts that he’d guess were an A-minus and she’d be lucky to be a size two. In short, she was built like a string mop. And yet…he thought about her.

She wasn’t an everyday, average woman, and he’d detected a hidden sense of humor behind her Yankee reserve. Every once in a while her green eyes went warm and sparkled with a sense of the ridiculous, etching lines of sweetness around her mouth. There was more to Kate than met the eye.

He turned his attention back to Professor Kurtz, a big burly guy with small eyes in a slab of face. But Alejandro couldn’t stop his eyes from wandering back over Kate’s messy, wiry curls and the way they clung to her delicate neck.

Kurtz was waxing poetic on the intricacies of supply and demand, using a certain brand of baby lotion as an example when Kate called out, “Excuse me, but that’s incorrect.”

All eyes in the small auditorium swiveled to her, and then to Kurtz and then back to her.

The professor bristled. “What do you mean, incorrect?”

“I mean that your information is wrong. In 2002, Johnson & Johnson wasn’t even marketing that product.”

“My information is reliable.”

“Johnson didn’t put that new lotion formula onto the shelves until spring of 2003. They were still product-testing in 2002. I know this because Spinney Industries is their main competitor, and we introduced our version of that lotion in October of 2001, gaining the edge in the market.”

Kurtz blinked his small eyes rapidly. After a pause, he said, “Fine. Thank you, Miss Spinney.”

“You’re welcome. And it’s Ms., please.”

A collective rustle went through the class, some students hiding grins and snickers behind their hands. Kate appeared oblivious to this and the glare that Kurtz sent in her direction. She just swung her loafer-clad foot over her knee and bounced it gently as the lecture went on.

When she got tired of that position and put her feet flat on the ground, flexing them, Alejandro saw that the side stitching of her loafer had pulled free, leaving the sole flapping open and baring her little toe. Kate Spinney of the Spinney Industries family couldn’t afford new shoes?

Ridiculous. The watch on her wrist was Tiffany, and he’d also seen her wear a Piaget. Her purse, though it was battered and worn, was an Hermès Kelly bag, which cost thousands of dollars new.

He found the sight of her little toe oddly endearing. She propped her chin on one hand and seemed entirely unconcerned that she’d just embarrassed their professor in front of the class.

From his position in the row behind her, he could see her doodling in the margins of her yellow pad. So far he could make out a bicycle, a sailboat and a beach umbrella. Literal, no-nonsense drawings, very illustrative of Kate’s personality. He squinted to make out what she was sketching now, and chuckled when he saw a steak with eyes and legs. It looked uncannily like Professor Kurtz.

“Mr. Torres? Do you have something to add to the lecture?” the professor asked sharply.

Kate, along with a few others, turned and looked at him. So she knew who he was…He winked at her. She blinked, then raised a corner of her mouth uncertainly and turned back around.