Palm Springs Heat

by DC Thome

  Clay pushed into her as far as he could go. They were moving at a hundred miles per hour—and then everything suddenly stopped. For a moment, everything hung in suspended animation. Lara’s whole body tensed. Her fingers dug into clefts in the rock.

  And then torrents of pleasure cascaded to every part of her body.

  They let go simultaneously, shuddered, then leaned against each other, panting, languid. The sound of the waterfall returned.

  Lara’s eyes fluttered open to meet Clay’s gilded gaze. A shower was a pretty good idea.

  7

  An hour later Lara lay on her side on the vast bed, her naked skin drinking in the milky smoothness of the silk sheets, Clay drawing circles on her shoulders with his fingers. A girl could get used to this.

  “More Veuve Clicquot?”

  Lara turned toward Clay. A girl could get used to this, too. She kissed him. He tasted like pineapple and champagne.

  “It might be easier if I pour it into a flute.”

  “But not as much fun.” Be careful. Don’t have too much fun.

  Clay turned to the remains of a midnight snack tray of fruit, cheese and exotic crackers and refilled two flutes with bubbly. Lara took a sip and let it linger on her tongue while she pondered the bottle’s unassuming—almost generic—yellow label. Clay had assured her the Veuve Clicquot balanced power and delicacy better than vintages that cost three times as much.

  Sure beats Andre.

  “A penny for your thoughts,” Clay said.

  “Just one penny?”

  “A million?”

  “That’s still only ten thousand dollars. How much did you pay for the car you bought today?”

  “I withdraw all offers. Your thoughts are priceless, anyways.”

  Some of them, maybe. “Okay. I was wondering why there’s a nice selection of lingerie in that closet.”

  “Some of my guests can be impulsive.”

  “The host, too?”

  “Me? No. I never stay in this room.”

  “You don’t?”

  “It’s reserved for good friends.”

  “Tonight?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t been invited.”

  Lara looked off to the side and sipped her champagne.

  “Like it?” Clay emptied the bottle by topping off both of their glasses.

  “I haven’t decided yet.” She took another sip. “What was the other choice?”

  “La Grand Dame Riva. I could have some sent up.” He reached for his phone.

  “Don’t do that. There’s no way we could finish it.”

  “Who says we have to finish it?”

  “You said it cost five hundred dollars a bottle.”

  “I have a whole case.”

  “Maybe another time.”

  Clay shrugged and put down the phone.

  “All this is kind of outrageous,” Lara said. “Expensive wine. Indoor waterfalls in the middle of the desert. A closet full of nighties.”

  “I outdid myself on this room,” Clay said without a hint of smugness.

  “Everything’s pretty enough.”

  “Something tells me there’s a ‘but’ coming.”

  “But it’s kind of self-indulgent.”

  “That’s the whole point of a place like this.”

  “It seems so wasteful.”

  “Emphasis on seems.”

  Lara gave him a prove-it look.

  “All the stone,” he said, “every bit of it, came from right here, onsite. All the wood is repurposed—some of it’s from old-growth forests that were harvested in the 1880s. The way the building’s set into the hillside—and the fact that every inch of glass is insulated and polarized—means there’s no air-conditioning.”

  “But, the fountains and the waterfall...”

  “The water’s recycled. Even the stuff that evaporates.” He pointed to unassuming fixtures tucked away in the shadows of the rafters. “Humidity collectors. We’ve lost only one percent of the original water since we opened five years ago.”

  “All the self-indulgence, none of the guilt.”

  “I like that. Maybe I should hook you up with our ad people.”

  “So, my thoughts turned out to be worth a penny after all?”

  “Absolutely. And I would shell out a lot more to get inside your head and take a good look around.”

  “What do you think you’d find?”

  “Mysteries.”

  “Like what? Secrets of my dark, sordid past?”

  “Oh, no. My security people will take care of that.” His matter-of-fact tone gave Lara pause. “I’m talking about being able to see what makes you think the things you think and do the things you do.”

  “If you could just somehow get inside there and roam around a little, you’d be able to figure that all out?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Then what would be the point?”

  “You’re right. It’s better not to know everything about someone. If you did, you might not want to know them anymore.”

  Oh, shit. Just stay cool. Lara turned back onto her side so Clay couldn’t see her face. “You, um, you hear about people having ‘a meeting of the minds.’”

  “Yeah, but how much do you really know? I mean, take Sushma and me. We’ve got a meeting of the minds about how to run Fast Lane. But it’s all about business. We come to work, do our jobs, go home at night.”

  Clay had made circles on Lara’s shoulder again, but now he rolled onto his back.

  “My dad had a passion for this business. He tried to instill that in me—really wanted me to have what he had. I guess it just wasn’t in my genes. He drove this place with his heart. I was in over my head.”

  Lara rolled over to look at Clay. He looked at the ceiling.

  “By the time Shush came along, Fast Lane had missed the curve and was heading for the wall. She proposed all kinds of things I never heard of—I still don’t know what they all were. But I had a feeling she could turn things around. And she did. But for all the work we’ve done together, I really don’t know much about her.”

  He looked at Lara. “All business.”

  Lara made circles on his shoulder. “That conversation I heard in the lobby was ‘all business’?”

  “She’s gotten this reputation as the mother hen of Fast Lane. But she’s more like a surrogate dad. To me, at least. A cool dad you can joke around with.”

  I tried to get that out of a husband. Big mistake. “I never heard anyone talking with their father the way you talk to Shushma.”

  “Soosh-ma.” Clay chuckled. “I call her Shush because she can be, well, a little excitable. I’m the only person in the world who can get away with that.”

  “She did sound pretty angry.”

  “It drives her crazy when I go off the radar like I did today.”

  “Couldn’t she just call you on your company-issue phone?”

  “I turned it off.”

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t want to be interrupted—I didn’t want us to be interrupted.”

  Clay turned toward Lara. Her heart beat faster. Those eyes.

  “She’s kind of afraid of you, you know,” Clay continued.

  “Of me?” Lara felt a flash of panic. She sat up and turned away. “Why would she be afraid of me?”

  “You came out of nowhere. She doesn’t know anything about you, and that scares her. Knowledge is power, and if she doesn’t know anything about you, she feels like she’s not in control.”

  “What does she think there is to know?”

  “It’s S.O.P, that’s all. I’m a brand. What I do affects people’s lives. At least, that’s what Shush tells me. Over and over. I’m not so good at, you know, the details, so I employ other people who are. Everything—and everyone—has to check out.” He sat up and put a hand on her shoulder. “You’re not intimidated by that?”

  “Oh, no!” Lara looked at him over her shoulder. “A little, I guess.”

  “I forget. I grew u
p in a fishbowl, so I hardly notice it.”

  Fishbowl. How easy would it be for someone to link me to Gina? “What is she trying to find out about me?”

  “The usual stuff. If you have a criminal record. A history with any terrorist organizations or cults. Ties to some competitor, maybe a tell-all media organization. You can’t be too careful about corporate sabotage. Some companies will do just about anything.”

  “You don’t sound too worried.”

  “It’s not my job to be worried.”

  “What is your job?”

  “My job is to be Clay Creighton.” He kissed his way from one of Lara’s shoulders to the other.

  Oh, my god…is he on the clock right now?

  Clay stopped abruptly. “Oh! You have marks from the car!”

  “I have what?”

  “Do they hurt?”

  “Do what hurt?”

  “I know just the thing.” Clay sprang from the bed and bounded to the basket of lotions and creams next to the hot tub. Lara craned her neck but couldn’t see any marks, so she felt around with her fingers.

  “Uh…uh. Don’t irritate it.” Clay sat close to Lara and rubbed a velvety salve onto her back. “Feels good, right?” he said. “Soothing.”

  Since Lara hadn’t even known about the marks, there wasn’t really anything to soothe. But she didn’t mind Clay doing what he was doing.

  8

  The second lovemaking session with Clay had begun with him, as he had said, being himself. Which meant, as far as Lara could tell, “irresistible,” “charming,” “attentive” and more of a man than she had ever experienced. It began with the cream and the kisses and ended up with her on her back with Clay more or less nailing her to the mattress. She hadn’t experienced that since the second year of her seven-year marriage. Maybe even the first.

  Like falling off a bike—except that if falling off a bike felt so good, people would do it on purpose. Afterward, though thoroughly spent after the day in the sun and the evening with Clay, Lara found it difficult to sleep. Lying in the dark with Clay pressing against her, his breathing rhythmic and deep, and hearing nothing but the waterfall’s murmur, Lara mulled over the many ways in which Clay had surprised her. Is there a soul somewhere beneath those ripped abs and that infectious smile?

  Still, casting a pall over everything was this business of The Rotation. If Clay did, indeed, have a soul, what darkness in his character allowed him to indulge himself in such a travesty?

  Black and white tigers. A supercar that could go two hundred miles per hour. Sex in a waterfall. A glass bedroom. The waterfall. Expensive champagne.

  The waterfall.

  Eventually, the waterfall and exhaustion won out. The next thing Lara heard was a phone ringing.

  * * *

  It was Clay’s. Still not fully awake, Lara looked at him and blinked. Clay mouthed one word: “Chartre.”

  “Ask when’s a good time.”

  “When’s a good time? He says now.”

  “Now?” Lara sat up and held the sheet in front of her chest.

  “I don’t think she’s on the same page. What’s this all about, calling at this ungodly time of day? Oh. He says you had an appointment.”

  Now Lara was fully awake. “I thought the appointment was for ten.”

  “He says it is ten.”

  There was a knock on the door to the suite.

  “And now someone’s at the door?”

  “That would be Chartre.”

  “What?”

  “Right outside the door.”

  “Tell him to come back!”

  Clay winced. “Ooh. You do not want to break a date with Chartre.”

  The knocking grew more insistent. Lara jumped out of bed, yanking the sheet along with her. “But I have to…” She fussed with her hair in the reflection of the glass wall.

  “You have to what?”

  “Get dressed.” She checked her breath. “Brush my teeth.”

  “But he’s here to dress you.”

  Lara realized she could see through the glass wall. A pool. A golf course. Desert. There were no people in view, but Lara hiked the sheet all the way to her shoulders.

  Clay pushed the sheet back down and kissed her shoulder. “Relax. Even if there was anyone out there, they couldn’t see you.” He wrapped a towel around his waist. “And there’s nothing you could do to make yourself any more desirable, either.”

  The knocking got even more emphatic. Clay kissed Lara’s neck and then headed into the outer rooms. “Chill out! Geez!”

  Lara looked at her reflection and saw herself wearing a sheet and suffering from a serious case of bed-head. I look like the Statue of Liberty after a one-night stand.

  * * *

  Out in the suite, Clay threw open the door to a pudgy little bald man wearing purple sweats, silver cross-trainers and Buddy Holly glasses with diamond-studded temples.

  “Ten A of M, people!” Chartre trundled past Clay. Two female assistants—a blonde with long, straight hair and a redhead with her curls in a ponytail—followed, doing their best to avert their eyes as they passed their scantily clad boss.

  “But we haven’t even had breakfast,” Clay said.

  “Make that ten oh-one,” Chartre countered. “And I can’t imagine what you could have been doing to delay breakfast for so long.” Chartre looked Clay up and down over the tops of his glasses as though noticing for the first time that he wore nothing more than a strategically placed band of terrycloth. “Then again, I have a pretty good guess. But what is that to me? I’ve been working since seven. The luxuries of a leisurely lifestyle do not trickle down to my level on the organizational chart.”

  “It’s easy being C.E.O., huh? People barging in on you on Sunday morning and making outrageous demands at such ungodly hours?”

  “I’m not making any demands on you. I’m here to see Miss Dixon.” He strode toward the bedroom.

  “I’m not sure she’s ready,” Clay said as the assistants edged past him.

  “Ten-oh-two!” Chartre disappeared through the door.

  * * *

  Lara preened in the smoked glass of the wall. She wore a negligee from the closet that resembled the swan gown Bjork wore to the Oscars. And it was at least six sizes too big. Lara pinched the plunging bodice to keep from flopping out.

  “Good morning.” Lara played it cool.

  Chartre froze and stared at her. His face was stern, his lips taut, his eyes oddly impassive as they bored through her. Flanking Chartre, the assistants whipped out their phones so they would be ready to take notes when the Great Man spoke.

  “The raw materials are all present,” he said.

  Lara frowned. “What does that mean?”

  “He’s saying you make a nice clothes rack,” Clay explained as he sauntered in. Lara felt her face redden. Clay stood behind her with his hands on her shoulders. “He wants you to believe he has everything under control.”

  “Don’t listen to him!” Chartre retorted. “I know what a woman’s got. Although, I can’t for the life of me fathom why, of all the wonderful negligees in that closet, anyone your size would choose this monstrosity.”

  It was the closest to my hand when I reached into the closet.

  “Eight,” Chartre barked to the assistants without looking at either of them. The redhead nodded and typed on her phone.

  Chartre turned toward Clay. “Scoot!” he said, fanning Clay away with the back of his hand. Then he circled Lara, studying her as if she were a dog in a kennel show. She had the distinct impression he was judging her haunches, muzzle and coat—not good, since at the moment she felt more like a beagle than a greyhound. It was a strange position to be in, but it got stranger when, without warning, Chartre reached into the swan costume, hefted one of Lara’s breasts with the back of a hand, then tweaked it to see how it bounced.

  Lara squeaked, jumped back and raised her hand to slap Chartre, but Clay stopped her.

  “It’s okay. He’s a professional,�
�� Clay whispered through gritted teeth.

  Without acknowledging Lara’s discomfort or Clay’s admonition, Chartre tilted his head, puckered his lips and nodded.

  “Yes, very nice raw materials,” he said. “It will be wonderful dressing a woman. A real woman, if you know what I mean.”

  Not really.

  Clay cupped his hands on his chest and whispered, “Natural.”

  In that case, all right.

  Chartre nodded with scorn at the yellow dress that had made Lara feel so pretty the previous afternoon. The blond worker bee whisked it away as though removing roadkill from a highway.

  “Are you going to get on with it,” Clay chided, “or is she going to have to go around naked all day?

  “We certainly wouldn’t want that.” Chartre clapped, and more assistants wheeled several racks of clothes into the room.

  Lara was dumbfounded. “Do we really need all this?”

  “My dear,” Chartre said, looking at Lara over the top of his glasses, “we do things right around here.”

  * * *

  Lara tried on one item after another. Chartre operated like a madman, tossing articles of clothing hither and yon, so focused that he practically ripped articles he deemed unacceptable from Lara’s body before she had a chance to remove them. It made Lara giddy. So giddy that she blocked out Chartre and the worker bees. She was putting on a show for Clay—and he was enjoying it.

  “Gina?”

  Gina?

  “Gina, love, where did this end up?” Chartre held up a pouffy turquoise chiffon top that no one but a seventeen-year-old suburbanite would wear.

  The blond assistant feathered her phone’s screen with her thumb. “Consider,” she said.

  “Consider? Whatever could I have been thinking?”

  Gina. If Lara developed genuine feelings for Clay, how would that affect her “mission”? And what’s going on with him? As she looked back over the past twenty-four hours, Lara could see how she might reinterpret certain utterances, certain moves, certain touches. Could it be possible that Clay—Clay Creighton, the ruler of the Fast Lane empire of pleasure for men—might be feeling like a boy in a tux and a boutonniere slow-dancing with his favorite girl at the junior prom?