“Right,” said Officer Tony. “He likes to brag about being ‘the most arrested man in the Coachella Valley.’ Which he is, at last count.”
After the cops left, Carl insisted on sticking around as a security guard—for an additional fee, of course. Willow didn’t think that was necessary, but Steffen and Amadeo seemed to think it was excellent.
“Without Carl, you’re the only person sleeping in this entire building,” Amadeo pointed out. “And I don’t like that.”
“Right,” agreed Steffen. “Willow, he took your whip and flogger and God knows what else. Did you even know what was in this room? There were some old clothes in that chest of drawers that seem to be missing.”
“Right,” said Carl with authority. “And there was a banging leather head harness hanging in that closet that isn’t there anymore.”
Everyone stared at Carl. Carl held his hands up innocently and slunk back a few feet.
“What we’re trying to say is,” said Amadeo, “I think we should take Carl up on his offer. Or you spend the night at my ranch.”
“I’m fine here,” insisted Willow. “I get up at five in the morning to start work, or I’d take up your ranch offer, Amadeo. Carl, can we start tomorrow relocating this equipment and furniture into the Gadabout Gaddis Cottage?”
Carl hooked a thumb at the wall. “Gadabout Gaddis? You mean that gentleman on TV who flew around to different lakes fishing was a client of this place in the day? Good for him! I guess he wasn’t called a ‘gadabout’ for no reason. Yeah, sure, Miss Paige, no problem. The painting in the cottage has been done and the carpet installed, so no problem moving the furniture in. I can upgrade the security on the cottage, too, to include alarms if anyone breaks any of the windows. Only a couple more bucks a month per window.”
“Cool,” agreed Willow. “You’ll sleep here, then?”
“Absolutely,” said Carl. “You never know when thieves return to the scene of a crime. He might be coming back for one of those furry blindfolds in that drawer. For all you know, it could be as rare as a Billy Ray Cyrus hit song.”
The men stared at the worker with narrowed eyes, but Willow snickered and stepped over the wood splinters and into the hallway. Her own suite, the Ocean’s 11 Room, was up a flight of steps past the office. The men insisted on walking her upstairs to her door.
“I’d like to know Dobbs’ end game,” said Amadeo. “It can’t possibly just be that wristwatch. There’s got to be something in here that’s valuable.”
“Yeah,” said Steffen. “Carl’s halfway right. You never know when some furry blindfold turns out to be worth a hundred grand. I’ve got a collection, myself, of fairly trivial stuff that’s been valued for amazing sums.”
Willow had never been to Steffen’s house, but she could imagine that in his travels around the Coachella Valley he collected some worthwhile things. “What do you collect?”
Steffen seemed to regret having said anything. “Oh, entertainment memorabilia. My point is—”
“Liberace,” it sounded as though Amadeo said from behind his hand, but he coughed at the same time.
“Liberace?” Willow tried to clarify. “You mean that flamboyant pianist who—”
“Yeah, yeah.” Steffen tried to wave away the word “Liberace.” “That stuff is valuable, no matter whose memorabilia it is. And Ronnie Dobbs is such a whack-a-mole it’s entirely possible he’s still looking for Norman Fell’s stupid wristwatch and is just stealing everything else that isn’t nailed down.”
“I think there’s more to it than that,” said Willow thoughtfully. “Ronnie Dobbs is a fairly random guy, but I think there might actually be a method to his madness. Come by tomorrow. Check out the Gadabout Cottage once Carl moves everything in.”
She kissed Amadeo goodbye. She felt like a tiny sparrow in his arms, which was better than feeling like a “thunder thighs.” When she kissed Steffen, she chided him. “Liberace.”
He held her at arm’s length. “Hey. You should count your blessings. At least I’m not looking for Norman Fell’s wristwatch.”
The men waited until she was in her suite and had locked her door. She threw her bag on the coffee table, and her cell phone slid out. She noticed she had a voice mail. She held it scrunched between her ear and shoulder as she yanked open her fridge door to find that open bottle of white wine she thought was already in there.
She had yanked out the cork but froze when she heard Matt’s tinny, recorded voice. “Willow. Ah, I just want to say, ah, I…I really feel like an asshole about the other day, how I acted when you tried to tell me about Stormy. I’m really sorry that I was so distracted about some business that I didn’t give you my full attention. I came across like I was insensitive. For that I apologize.” Matt inhaled and exhaled, as though an enormous weight had been lifted now that he’d officially apologized. But for some reason it didn’t really feel like a sincere, true apology, and Willow waited for more flowery words or sentiments.
Nothing like that came.
Matt continued. “I was just all occupied with some urgent business.” He tried to laugh. “You know how it is, no doubt, with your new business venture and all. Anyway, I’ll really miss Stormy. She was the best. Take care.”
Willow stared at the phone as if it was somehow responsible for leaving out the truly sincere part of the voice mail. But no, that was the whole thing, apparently. Matt didn’t say “I apologize for being an asshole and honestly not giving a flying fuck about you or Stormy,” no, he just felt bad that he had looked like an asshole, probably in front of whatever bimbo he was banging. Maybe the bimbo had asked “who was that and what did she want,” and when Matt was forced to tell her about the dog, the bimbo had chided him for actually being insensitive. Not “seeming” insensitive.
Willow poured her wine and drank it, drifting to the slider that led to the patio. A couple of faraway remote lights twinkled in the valley underneath the dark purple silhouette of the San Jacinto Mountains. They were probably all buildings of Amadeo’s Lone Palm Ranch.
A week ago, that asshole message from Matt would have upset Willow beyond all measure. But right now, maybe because she had had a long exhausting day, she really didn’t give a shit.
That’s Matt’s loss if he’s so callous he can’t really love a dog. Or me.
Maybe only when you stopped caring about one thing were you able to start caring about something new.
Chapter Ten
“I’m not going to ask why you want me to bolt these shackles to this pool table.”
“You’re a smart one, Carl,” said Willow.
The St. Andrew’s Cross had been installed in the Gadabout Cottage. There had been a pool table in excellent condition in her Ocean’s 11 Room when Willow had first moved in, so she had just had it removed down to the cottage. The pool table fit in perfectly with the swinging motif. Steffen was already calling the cottage “our mid-century oasis.”
Steffen was becoming an invaluable asset. With his architectural and design knowledge, Willow had incorporated about a hundred of his suggestions, not just into the cottage, but all over the Searchlight Motel. Just today he had even sheepishly brought over a framed poster of a sequined Liberace for the Gadabout Cottage. He had explained that it was the only memorabilia he owned that a guest might not steal. The poster frame’s pumpkin orange even matched the plastic seat covers of the modular dining room set.
Carl’s electric screwdriver whirred as he attached the shackles to the head rail of the pool table. “I can’t figure out if these are for wrists or ankles. I got to give you that. I just don’t understand, I guess. How are the cops going to believe you if you ever get robbed again if you’re already tied up?”
“You just leave that up to us, Carl,” Steffen said soothingly. He was finishing up installing a new gas range in the kitchenette.
Carl wouldn’t, though. He did love to talk. “I mean, is this up to code? What kind of liability insurance are you going to carry, Miss Paige?”
Willow was suppo
sed to be working at the table on her laptop surfing for venetian blinds, but she was really looking at Steffen. He lay on his back fiddling with something on the stove. With his arms over his head, his shirt hiked up, revealing an enticing strip of taut, bare abdomen. “You know, Carl,” she said distantly, “if you ever feel like switching jobs, come work for me. Jaclyn keeps harassing me to hire her Fernando as the motel handyman, but I don’t trust that guy’s work ethic. He’s always too busy lounging at her house watching the Gladiator Channel, some old sword-and-sandals epic.”
“More like a socks and sandals epic,” said Steffen. “That guy has absolutely no sense of style. Always wearing socks with his Birkenstocks.”
A laugh escaped Willow’s lips. Steffen was right. Not only did Fernando cultivate the Bozo hairstyle as if it was some new trend, he did have unfortunate choice in footgear in addition to his Bermuda shorts. “He must have some good traits, Steffen,” she called out, trying to be fair. “He does seem fairly mellow and easygoing.”
“I just talked to Tony Pickett,” said Amadeo as he breezed into the cottage. Willow looked over, surprised he was there. She knew he was supposed to be overseeing the baling of hay, or some such cattle ranching thing. “He verified that Ronnie Dobbs had just been released from jail two hours before the break-in.”
Willow wanted to forget about Ronnie Dobbs. She was sure he would just move on to whatever caught his eye next, like falling into a wood chipper or smoking some poison oak. She felt much more secure with Carl around, too. She had already advertised her motel’s grand opening in several places and had included a date, so she wanted to ignore Mr. Dobbs. She had no time for him. “That’s no indication of anything, really. Did they get print results back?”
Amadeo nodded sternly. “Yeah. The only prints in the room belonged to the three of us.” He cast his narrowing eyes at Carl, who peeked innocently over the head rail. “And the fingerprints of some guy named Carl Bogart. His prints were in the database due to some St. Patrick’s Day drunk and disorderly.”
Carl half-rose from behind the table. “It was a police horse I was kissing! Why’d they arrest me for kissing their own horse?”
Amadeo’s gaze was steely, but Willow and Steffen laughed. Steffen sat up straight on the kitchenette floor. He looked manlier than ever holding a wrench. “Question is, Carl. Why were your prints in the room at all?”
Carl’s eyes grew wider. “I had to clean the mirrors, didn’t I? Cesar Romero wouldn’t tolerate dust-covered mirrors.”
Willow got up from the table. The venetian blinds could wait—Steffen was looking just too, too delicious. He sat blinking in the middle of a block of sun that flooded one of the cottage’s many windows. A “long cool drink of water,” that’s how she had thought of him the first time she’d seen him. Already she knew him so intimately. She knew he hated celery yet was mostly a vegetarian, owned a tropical salt water fish tank, had an American father who was a Lieutenant Colonel in the army, and came almost instantly when his balls were licked.
Now, knowing he’d been the high school quarterback, Willow marveled at how things changed. In Florida she had been neither with the “in” or the “out” crowd. She had just been a slightly overweight but pretty girl who hung around on the fringes. She started smoking cigarettes to look cool, lost the weight, and got a degree from the community college. Everything was fairly middle-of-the-road for her until she met the handsome Matt at that door company. She had been amazed he had seemed to want her, and she even changed her perfume and toenail color to suit his likes.
That didn’t seem necessary with the open, confident, relaxed Steffen Jung. He called her “shapely” and “supersonic,” not “fat.” Her only fear was that he’d tire of her. She knew he was accustomed to dating several women at once, and he’d told her in plain English that he liked “racy women.” How long before he got bored with her? He might stick around until they got to the “Dessert Tray” on the Palomino Ranch’s menu—when they were done trying out every piece of bondage furniture in the Gadabout Cottage.
And he claimed to have never had a relationship with another man, yet he seemed to plunge right into lovemaking with the virile Amadeo. Steffen held nothing back when he thrust his tongue down Amadeo’s throat or gulped the strapping man’s penis. She was suspicious of his talent when it came to women, sure, but that background was more obvious. Steffen loved women. He had a lot of experience. He was, after all, forty. After about age thirty, no one was kidding anyone if they pretended they were not experienced. But Steffen seemed to lust for the former high school loser Amadeo with almost equal enthusiasm as he lusted for her. He must have a steamier background than he let on. Or, it might be possible he simply liked Amadeo as much as he liked her.
She reached a hand out for Steffen to take. Thank God he had signed off his approval on the newly installed air conditioning, because it was over a hundred degrees outside. “Come on. Is the stove installed all right? Let’s try out that pool table.” He clasped his hand around her wrist and let her help him up.
“That’s my sign to exit.” Carl was unplugging his screwdriver. “I don’t need to see no eight-ball in the corner pocket.”
Willow and Steffen looked quizzically at each other. Had Carl been reading the menu too? It was likely just an accidental pun, though, and Willow told Carl, “After your lunch, can you check on the sign installers?” Her retro neon “Searchlight Motel” sign was being installed out front. Lots of people had already stopped to take photographs, some of them probably newspapermen.
Carl left, and Amadeo said, “You should get out front and pose before your new sign. Good publicity.”
Steffen sat Willow down on the rail of the pool table. “I really don’t think she needs publicity, Amadeo. This place is right on Manilow Avenue. I know this part of Last Chance has been pretty dead since the sixties when they rerouted the highway, but it’s been up and coming the past few years. They’ve got that new organic store, green store, card store—”
“The Racquet Club,” Amadeo added with a crooked smile.
Steffen was already taking a deep bite from the side of Willow’s neck. When he squiggled his tongue near her jugular vein, the shiver that raced down her spine plumped her pussy lips. Steffen was handy with the ladies, that was for sure. Suspiciously handy. “You’re sublime,” he murmured. Then, louder, he said “And the newspaper offices, new fire station, that office building—”
Behind Steffen, Amadeo was already stripping off his wifebeater shirt. Willow didn’t blame him for going shirtless at every possible opportunity. A group from Steffen’s Modern Committee had stopped by to see the remodeling progress, and several women had assumed Amadeo was a cabana boy. He didn’t dissuade them from thinking that, either. He’d hung out at her outdoor Atomic Café, which actually was a poolside cabana, mixing drinks with rum and coconut milk for the women. “And the Racquet Club. I’m telling you, that club is the number one draw in the downtown area.”
“You can go to the Racquet Club.” Steffen’s breath warmed Willow’s neck and stiffened her nipples against the bra of her skimpy slip dress. “I have no need to go there anymore.”
His words warmed Willow’s heart. Dared she hope? She knew that she wanted to be monogamous with the men—or was that “polyamorous”?—but it was too much to expect them to feel the same. Men were dogs. At the slightest sign of a complication, they withdrew emotionally, if not physically. She kissed Steffen’s seductive mouth and twined her sandals around the backs of his knees. “We have our own Racquet Club here.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Amadeo continued dismissively. “I’m just saying that the traffic going to and from the Racquet Club, the word of mouth, is enough to get you business. Especially for your new Gadabout Cottage.”
Steffen said, “I’ll gadabout you, buddy, if you don’t get up on this table and get your dick in her mouth. We’re spit roasting her today.”
“Ooh,” Willow cooed, although she didn’t really know what Steffen referred
to.
She knew that their experience near the Kupka House the other day was called a Spit Roast. The person in the middle, in that case Steffen, was skewered from two ends by two different people. Willow now had a new erotic fantasy, if she ever needed to fire up her trusty vibrator again. The image of the two young men in Daytona Beach was forever erased from her memory banks now that a new image had taken its place. Steffen bent over, subservient on his knees as he lapped away at her pussy, penetrated from the rear by that sensuously brutal cowboy. The memory was seared onto the backs of her eyelids. How Steffen’s moans had vibrated deep inside her uterus when Amadeo lunged his penis inside him. How she could reach out and touch her fingertips to Amadeo’s smooth chest, his pectorals flexing as he gripped his lover by the hips. How she could even tell when Steffen was coming, spilling his seed over Amadeo’s fingers as her clitoris quivered against his tongue.
Never. Never had she experienced anything like it.
The memories spurred her on now. “I thought you didn’t want me, ah, interacting with Amadeo,” she whispered against his ear. Meanwhile, Amadeo was eagerly stripping, flinging his clothes right and left with abandon, even though the windows had no covering and workers were passing by the cottage.
Amadeo must have had the ears of a rabbit. He coiled his naked torso around Steffen’s and eagerly began unbuttoning his shirt from behind. “Yeah. What’s up with this sudden change of mind?” he growled, impatiently fingering Steffen’s nipples.
Steffen shook his shoulders like a dog shaking off rain. “Why are you questioning it? Get up there and enjoy it.”
Amadeo was clearly torn between taking his palms off Steffen’s chiseled pecs or jumping onto the table to do Steffen’s bidding. Naked now, he humped Steffen’s hip with a cock so hard it was up against his navel. He had torn off Steffen’s shirt, so Willow could feel Steffen’s velvety skin, the wiriness of his chest hair against her bosom as he leaned over her.
Steffen slid both hands around her ass that was perched on the edge of the table rail. He opened her up like splitting a peach, rimming her bulging pussy lips with his fingertips. She knew she was already juicy as a peach, too, the way his fingers slithered up and down her clitoris, expertly lingering on the spot he knew was the most effective.
The Sublime Miss Paige (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 10