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“I am so screwed.”
“Because of Satan? Why don’t you just talk to him and tell him everything you know about Martin. Then he’ll leave you alone.”
“That’s not why I’m screwed. I just got fired.”
Her eyes widened. “Fired from Dynasucks? What happened?”
“I don’t want to talk about the lurid details right now.” Skye took a long drink of her Diet Coke, blatantly breaking her recent pact with Fiona to drink only natural, unprocessed fluids.
“Does it have something to do with that Satan guy?”
“Yes—well, no. I don’t know,” Skye said. Not that she’d helped matters by giving her boss every reason in the world to fire her.
“Did you tell Nelly to go screw himself?”
“No, I totally wimped out.”
“Why?” Fiona had been subject to enough of Skye’s rants about what she’d say to Nelly on the day she left Dynalux to deserve an answer, but Skye wasn’t sure she had a decent one.
She shrugged. “Because I want to be polite to the people who attempt to ruin my life?”
Fiona shook her head but said nothing.
“Stop with the disapproving silence!”
“You’ll find a better job. I saw a help wanted sign at Starbucks this morning,” she said. It was Fiona’s lame version of a joke.
“You went to Starbucks? What happened to your disavowing all unnatural beverages?”
Fiona managed to look chagrined—not one of her more common emotions. “Coffee beans are natural. Sort of.”
“I can’t take another sales job. I think I’d rather turn tricks.”
“You’re way too much of a wuss to be a hooker.”
“Do you have any better ideas?”
“There’s always waitressing. I could talk to Tommy at Club Sunset and beg him to give you a job again.”
Skye sighed. She’d be back where she’d started in college. She and Fiona had met five years ago when they were both waitresses at the bar and grill where Fiona still worked. But what other option did she have?
None at the moment.
“I’ll be forever in your debt, Fi.”
“I’m working tonight. I’ll talk to him then,” she said, but the ironic look she gave Skye told the truth about the situation.
It sucked.
Skye had left the job and Club Sunset three years ago with a vow never to go back, she’d been so sure she was moving on to bigger things. The thought that all this time had passed and she still hadn’t sold a book…
It was too depressing to dwell on. Maybe she’d never sell a book. Maybe being a sales consultant for Dynalux Systems was the best job she’d ever have, and she’d just thrown it away because she was too proud to grovel.
“I’ll talk to Tommy on one condition—you spill the story of how you got fired.”
A few more gulps of Diet Coke, and the soothing effects of caffeine began to calm Skye’s nerves. She told Fiona about everything except the bra—which she was reserving for dramatic effect.
“Okay,” Fiona said when she finished. “You’re leaving something out.”
“What do you mean?”
“I got a glimpse of Satan,” Fiona said, her tone pregnant with meaning.
“And?”
She narrowed her eyes at Skye. “And you know he’s a hottie.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“We both know how you get around gorgeous men.”
“So?” she asked, but she knew what Fiona meant.
Skye’s faulty instincts were at their worst when a beautiful man was involved. Martin had been the kind of guy women stopped and turned around to admire when he passed them on the street, and he’d also been her biggest guy disaster.
“What are your instincts telling you to do about him?”
“Run, run, run, as fast as I can.”
Fiona’s brow furrowed. She’d helped Skye develop her new do-the-opposite strategy. “That’s weird. Then… you have to give him a chance.”
“A chance to what? Ruin what’s left of my sad little train-wreck life?”
“I mean you have to cooperate with him, if your instincts are telling you not to. Besides, you said yourself Martin is nowhere near the top of the police’s priority list. If someone doesn’t find him soon, he’ll probably never be found.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“In fact—a guy as hot as Satan, and your instincts are telling you to run? You may need to take him straight to bed and screw his brains out if you really want to stick with the rule of opposites.”
“Fiona! That’s insane.”
“Think about it. You’re always taking things slow, getting to know the guy before you do the deed, waiting for love, blah, blah, blah. Maybe that’s all your crappy instincts leading you astray.”
“Or maybe it’s just, like, common sense. Like, what ninety percent of the human race calls the courtship process!”
“I’m just saying, with your track record… This is your first chance to test out your theory. You ought to do it right.”
“Right,” Skye said, panic settling in her belly.
She didn’t want to test out any theories, especially not with a guy who’d practically gotten her fired from her crappy job. Although…
It was possible she needed to face the fact that her own actions, more than anything else, were what had caused her to lose her job. Nico’s appearance had simply hurried the process along.
“Go talk to him. Maybe between the two of you, you really can find Martin and get your money back.”
“Or maybe he’ll turn out to be a psychopath, and weeks from now the police will find pieces of me scattered around the foothills—the pieces the mountain lions didn’t eat, anyway.”
“If he were a true psychopath, he wouldn’t have approached you in broad daylight, at your office, with a zillion witnesses to ID him and describe your heated exchange to the police.”
“You haven’t seen what he brought and left on my desk.” Skye retrieved her bag and pulled out the red bra, then held it up in all its glory. “Would any sane man think this belongs to me?”
Fiona gawked at the size of the thing. “Why would he bring you that?”
“He thought it was mine, left behind in Martin’s cottage. It was his excuse to pay me an office call.”
She frowned. “I thought Martin didn’t leave any traces when he left.”
“Actually, he did leave a weird assortment of junk at his place, but nothing that could really lead us to him.”
“Why’d you bring that home?”
Skye frowned at the bra. “I thought we might want to perform a ritual burning. You know, to rid my life of the last physical trace of Martin.”
“Sorry, but ever since the drunken flaming-dildo incident, I’ve sworn off ritual burnings.”
Skye laughed in spite of her bad mood. Fiona had nearly burned down their apartment getting rid of the evidence of a previous boyfriend, who’d surprised her with an oh-so-romantic gift-wrapped dildo for Valentine’s Day—that he’d wanted her to use on him.
“Let me see that,” Fiona said, reaching for the bra. “Maybe it’ll fit me.”
“Right.” Skye tossed the bra to her. “In your porn-star dreams.”
Fiona held the triple-D-cup bra up to her C-cup chest. “It’s close.”
“Right. If you talk into it, there’ll be an echo.”
She turned the bra around and read the tag. “Lolita’s Creations, Las Vegas, Nevada. Size 34DDD. Wow, I’d be surprised if the owner of this can stand upright without assistance.”
“That’s kind of odd—a city name on a bra tag?”
“Maybe it’s a custom lingerie shop. I mean, look at this thing. It’s got some unusual details.”
There was a tiny beaded butterfly between the cups, and the edges were trimmed in sequins.
“I wonder…” Skye said, not quite ready to get her hopes up.
“If this is a clue to Martin’s whereabouts? It could be.” Fiona looked at the tag again. “The only other information is Dry Clean Only.”
“Why would anyone wear a dry-clean-only bra?” Skye asked as Fiona handed the bra back to her.
“Maybe if it’s, like, their professional attire?”
“So my ex was screwing a stripper, a show girl or a prostitute. That makes me feel so much better.”
“Don’t forget porn star.”
“Thanks for reminding me.”
“Why don’t you at least find out if Satan’s idea about Martin’s whereabouts matches up with your little lingerie clue?”
Her clue was hardly little, but Fiona did have a point.
“Okay, fine. I’ll talk to him, but if it’s a disaster, I’m giving you fifty percent of the blame.”
“Does Satan have a human name?”
“Nico Valletti, if you can believe it. He should be a soap opera star instead of a stalker.”
“Maybe Nico’s still lurking outside waiting for you.”
Skye tried to ignore the butterflies whirring in her belly as she stood, dropped the bra in her purse and put her shoes back on. “He drives a Ferrari,” she said, not sure what that suggested about his disaster potential.
“And he lives in Malibu. You could do worse.”
“Fiona, I’m going to talk to him about Martin, not scope him out as a possible rebound guy.”
“Every guy that rich and gorgeous has the potential for something.”
“I thought you had more integrity than me.”
Fiona grabbed the remote and switched off CNN, leaving just the jungle sounds to punctuate their conversation. From the distant tropics, a monkey screeched.
“I’m turning thirty next month,” she said. “The starving artist thing is getting old, and I don’t think it would be so bad to be with a guy who doesn’t have to go Dutch on every date.”
Skye blinked. She’d never thought she’d hear Fiona sounding so…pragmatic.
“What happened to, ‘Thirty is the year when we finally become real women’?”
“It is, and as a real woman, I think I’d like to have some financial stability in my life.”
“What are you saying?” Skye’s head was starting to do the same bongo-drum thing it did when she drank too many margaritas. Or maybe that was part of the jungle-sounds CD.
“This probably isn’t a good time to spring this on you,” Fiona said as she began to rearrange the found objects on the coffee table. “But I’ve decided to leave Club Sunset and take that pharmaceutical sales job my dad found for me.”
Skye sat on the ottoman, her beleaguered brain ready to call it quits for the day. She’d thought she’d always have Fiona to be her fellow starving artist. And all through the years, even though she was five years older than Skye, Fiona was the one who’d never seemed to mind being a waitress and earning petty cash here and there on her collages. She’d seemed to relish her carefree lifestyle.
“You? In sales?”
She shrugged. “Just until I set the art world on fire.”
“But—”
“Please don’t look so disappointed. I’ve given this a lot of thought.”
Skye produced a shaky smile. “Sorry, I’m just a little shocked. But you’re right, you’d be a fool to pass up the money.”
“At least we know there’ll be an opening at Club Sunset,” Fiona said, and that was the final straw.
“Excuse me,” Skye said.
She stood up and hurried into the bathroom to wash her face, returned and grabbed her bag, then hurried toward the door before she could burst into tears again.
“Skye? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, I just need some fresh air,” she said, flashing a shaky smile at Fiona before she disappeared.
Outside, Nico was nowhere to be seen, and it was all for the best. She couldn’t have faced him now anyway without revealing herself as the basket case she actually was.
Skye drove on autopilot, her thoughts bouncing from one disastrous event to the next, tears prickling her eyes again as she navigated the road without thinking about it.
God, she’d turned into a caricature of a twenty-something. Job problems, guy problems, roommate problems…
She wasn’t sure where she was going, but she knew she didn’t want to go anywhere she’d already been. A half hour later, she was miles down the freeway, taking the Malibu exit to Martin’s house.
Well, actually, to Nico’s house. Who knew if he was home, but it was her turn to stalk him, regardless.
NICO DIDN’T KNOW whether to be relieved or frustrated that now he had no excuse not to put Skye out of his thoughts. But of course, if it was as easy as all that, he’d have forgotten about her weeks ago.
He closed his front door, kicked off his shoes, and walked through the house to the living room, which mocked him with its emptiness. Why the hell had he come home, anyway?
Because the thought of going out to dinner alone, or picking up carry-out alone, or sitting in a bar alone, might have meant crossing the thin line between sane and crazy. He’d always relished his single status, until the accident. Since his recovery, he’d continued to date, but the women who’d once amused him simply by being hot and willing were now not so satisfying.
Getting a glimpse of his own mortality could do that to a guy.
That hadn’t stopped him from seeking the company of women, but lately, all the company had been strictly sexual. And none of them seemed to care one way or the other.
The light on his answering machine was flashing, and the LCD said he had three messages, so he hit the play button and listened.
“Hey, Nico, busy tonight?” a woman’s voice said. He didn’t recognize her right away. “It’s Lisa. Call me if you’d like some company.”
Lisa. Lisa who? He felt a little pang of disgust at himself for not knowing. Company was the word he did know though—it was the universal booty-call code word.
A second message began to play. “Nico, hi. It’s me, Dawn. Just wondering if you’d like some company tonight.”
There it was again. That word.
A third message. “Hi, Nico. It’s Misha—”
He stopped the recording before he had to hear it again.
And for the first time, he realized what was bothering him so much. He’d become one of those guys. A guy women didn’t want anything serious with—a guy they didn’t even want to talk to or go out to dinner with. A guy they just wanted to screw.
How the hell had that happened?
Sure, he’d expected retirement from racing to bring with it a fading of the limelight, but he hadn’t expected women to stop regarding him as an interesting human being outside of the bedroom.
He sank onto the couch, propped his feet on the coffee table, and grabbed the remote. With the press of a button, a sixty-inch plasma TV screen emerged from a console cabinet on the other side of the room, and with another press of a button, the sports channel was on, displaying scores from yesterday’s games.
He needed to order a pizza, do something for dinner, but the thought of eating alone… Best not to think about it again. Instead, he watched the sports news and tried really hard to give a damn about any of it. Tried to ignore his annoyance that he wasn’t making news anymore.
Thoughts of Skye invaded—a welcome distraction from the news. He closed his eyes and summoned an image of her at her desk at work. He’d never been big on office fantasies, but he could have thought of a few ways to liven up that cubicle of hers. He could have shown up after hours…found her working alone… propped her up on that desk…pressed himself between her legs. He imagined the silky feel of her, the way her thighs would clench around his hips, the way the flesh of her breasts would mold to his hands, the way her breath would feel tickling his neck as he pounded against her—
Then the doorbell rang and jarred him back to reality. He got up from the couch, adjusted his pants, and went to the door slowly, as if he didn’t care about having a visitor, not sure whether to be happy or disgusted that it was probably some unannounced booty call dropping by.
And when he saw Skye outside the foyer window standing on his front steps, it was the most welcome sight he’d beheld in a long time. An unexpected burst of joy surged in his chest. Again, Skye evoked in him emotions that he’d been afraid might be gone for good.
She was glaring at the door, not exactly looking happy to be there. Which was too bad. If she’d been on his doorstep looking for sex and nothing more, she was the one woman he’d be more than happy to oblige.
But more likely, his lure had worked. She wanted to know if he really knew where Martin was. He didn’t know, but he had a damn good idea.
He opened the door and smiled.
“You bastard, your showing up at my office set off the chain of events that got me fired, and you expect me to help you?”
“You got yourself fired. And hello to you, too.”
“I didn’t come here to chitchat. Are you going to let me in, or should I just stand out here until I blow away?”
Nico stepped aside, images of the first time he’d seen her struggling with her skirt filling his head, her tempting proximity causing his groin to stir again. “Downside of living on the ocean. The wind can be a bitch.”
She turned on him and shot him a screw-you glare. “How about you say something more like, ‘I’m sorry you’ve lost your only source of income. I’ll be thinking of you when you’re living on the street.’”
“By the looks of that place, I’d say I did you a favor. Sit in a cubicle like that long enough and you’ll go insane.”
Her expression transformed for a few seconds, as if she was shocked by his observation. But then she recovered.
“I don’t need your career advice.”
“You didn’t come here to scold me about your lost job, did you? Because I have a feeling that Dottie chick is the one you need to scold.”
“No, I came to beg your forgiveness for breathing.” She leveled a smart-ass gaze at him that made him want to kiss her senseless.
He had to start thinking with the right head. Fast. She was too damn sexy when she was pissed.
“Could it be you want to see if I really know where Martin is?”
She shrugged. “If you know where he is, then why haven’t the police beaten down his door?”
She was smarter than he’d hoped.
“I’ve told them everything I know, but I’d say Martin has left the state and is no longer high on their priority list.”
“What you mean is, you don’t have a clue where to find him.”
“The way I see it, you’re in a win-win situation. Either you help me out because you want to find Martin as much as I do, or you help me out because you need to keep me away from your scumbag boyfriend.”
“So what if I agree to help you? Then what?”
Nico had asked himself that question many times already. He might have been able to take whatever information he could get from Skye and find Martin on his own, but he wouldn’t have much chance of getting close to him once he found him. Skye, on the other hand, was quite possibly Martin’s Achilles’ heel.
And even if she wasn’t, she was the best bait he could hope to find to lure Martin out of hiding.
“Then we go on a little trip.”
“Go where?”
“I can’t reveal all my secrets up front.”
“You expect me to just take off with you? Some guy I don’t even know?”
“Don’t I look trustworthy?”
“No.”
“Can you even trust your own judgment after dating a con artist?”
One corner of her mouth curved up, and Nico knew he almost had her.
“I might be willing to help except I’m broke, and I need to be looking for a job right now since I’m newly unemployed.”
Okay, so he wasn’t a heartless ogre. Another stab of guilt struck him that she’d lost her job, and in spite of his suspicions about her, he felt as though he ought to help somehow. “So you’re a writer. Can’t you get a job doing that?”
“Yeah, me and the five zillion other people who want to be writers. I can just go down to the book factory and fill out an application. They’re always hiring.”
“You live in L.A. Why aren’t you writing for Hollywood like everyone else?”
She pinned him with a look. “For one, not everybody wants to write for Hollywood, and second, it’s not that simple.”
“Okay, okay. I know writing jobs don’t grow on palm trees, but still, if you’ve got any talent, you should be able to get work.”
“Screw you.”
Nico held up his hands in surrender. “Guess I had that coming. Listen, if it turns out you aren’t involved with Martin, I’ll get you some face time with my next-door neighbor. He’s the CEO of a couple of TV networks. He’s always complaining about how there’s no talent in Hollywood.”
He could see the spark of interest in her eyes that she was probably trying really hard not to show.
“Okay, whatever. That’s not going to pay my bills right now.”
“I’ll cover your expenses until you can pay me back.”
Her expression transformed to suspicious, but she made no further protest.
“So it’s a deal,” he said before she could change her mind. “You might want to pack for hot weather. We’ll have to take a little drive.”
“How little?”
“We could get there in six hours or less.”
She seemed to be doing the math in her head. Six hours or less could mean driving to any number of places—San Francisco, Las Vegas, San Diego, Mexico, Arizona or anyplace in between.
“You have to at least tell me where we’re going.”
“Does it matter?”
“I might have a clue about where Martin is.”
Nico stared at her, daring her to look away. She didn’t seem much like a criminal, but then neither had Martin. He’d seemed like a regular guy, a friend even. And Nico was the dumb-ass who’d fallen for Martin’s story of needing a loan to get his business venture up and running and having an ex who’d ruined his bank credit.
“What’s your clue?”
“Did you bother to inspect this bra?”
Nico shrugged. “My expertise is in bra removal, not inspection.”
She tried not to laugh but failed. “So is that why you thought it might fit me?”
“For all I know, you like to stuff your bra with basketballs.”
Though he’d seen her coming and going from the cottage enough to know she didn’t bother with anything more figure-enhancing than a push-up bra, and she was sexy as sin regardless. The red bra had just been his excuse for coming to see her, and of course, he’d wanted to make sure she knew Martin had been anything but worthy of her affection, not only because of his thievery but also because he screwed around.
She dug around in her bag and pulled out the bra, then held it out to him.
“The tag says it was made in Las Vegas. Is that where you think Martin is?”
Nico kept his expression neutral. He wasn’t sure how much he really wanted Skye to know. If she was still hooked up with Martin, she’d be able to warn him that they were coming. But the truth was, he had a good hunch Martin was in Vegas. It was like the Olympic Games for con artists, their ultimate challenge, and the police had agreed that even if Vegas wasn’t his goal, he likely could have made a stop there on the way to his next destination.
“Actually, no,” Nico lied. “There’s this town up in the high desert that I saw on Martin’s phone bill before the police took away the evidence.”
That part, at least, was true. Elroy, a nowhere town in the middle of the Mojave, had shown up twice on the bill. And since it was on the way to Vegas, Nico figured it warranted a stop-off.
“What town?”
“Like I said, can’t reveal all my secrets at once.”
She pursed her lips, then sighed. “If I go, I want my own private room wherever we stay, and you pay all trip expenses.”
“Of course.” He didn’t see any reason to point out that if he had his way, they’d only need one bed.
If he was destined to be the kind of guy women wanted for one thing only, he might as well have his fun with the one woman he wanted most.
“And no more suggesting I’m in cahoots with Martin, because I’m not.”
Nico shrugged. He didn’t believe her for a second. “Whatever you say, babe.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
“So what? We just get in the car and take off?”
“We should probably pack first,” he said, hardly believing she’d agreed to go. “I’ll pick you up first thing tomorrow morning.”
“This is insane.”
That was one thing they could agree on.
Wanting a woman he shouldn’t, depending on her to help him find a guy he had only the shakiest clues to the whereabouts of, hoping she’d either prove herself repulsive or completely uninvolved with Martin within the space of the next few days—that was his dilemma and his reward, all rolled up in one hot, tempting, pain-in-the-ass package.