Midnight Touch

by Kendall, Karen

  “He told me it was a product,” Kate repeated.

  “Listen, hon, he’d have told you chicken crap was good in a sandwich if he thought it would throw you off track about him giving manicures. It would be bad enough for a big strapping Anglo kid to admit. But Alejo is Peruvian. Ever heard of the term machismo? Take average pigheaded male pride and multiply it times ten, or maybe twenty. That will give you some idea of how acceptable it is in his culture for a straight man to give manicures.”

  “Look, I can understand that, but—”

  “No, I don’t think you can. To have this information come out to you or any of his buddies—” Marly shook her head. “It’s like him tearing off his pants in public and displaying, er, equipment an inch long and half an inch in diameter.”

  Kate choked, knowing very much different.

  “It’s like him shouting to the world that he’s not a real man.”

  “That is ridiculous,” Kate said.

  Marly shrugged. “We’ve been warning him for months now that it would come out sooner or later, but that’s how he’s felt about it. He wanted to hide it as long as possible—especially from you.”

  Kate clenched her fists. “I could kill him.”

  Marly lifted an eyebrow. “Sounds like you made a start, if you’re slapping him around. But I would have figured you as more of a closed-fist-into-the-stomach type of girl.”

  “I am,” Kate growled. “But thanks to Miami, I’m getting all too girlie.”

  “Anyway—why did you slap him?”

  “Because I think—I thought—he was dating me for what the Spinney name could do for his goddamned stupid lotion that doesn’t exist!”

  “Ouch.”

  “And he let me think it was true until he got the last word.” Kate threw up her hands.

  Marly’s lips twitched. “Of course. Men always have to have the last word.”

  “And now I’m going to have to apologize, except I’m too freakin’ furious to apologize, and he freakin’ needs to freakin’ apologize to me first, for lying to me!”

  “Uh-huh,” said Marly, looking skeptical about this possibility.

  “And I hate freakin’ apologizing! Spinneys don’t freakin’ apologize!”

  “Neither do pissed off, pigheaded, Peruvian males.”

  “I thought he was only half-Peruvian,” Kate fumed.

  “Irrelevant. He’s all pigheaded male.”

  “Well, I never want to see him again!”

  Marly nodded. “Except to kill him. I’ll pass along the message.”

  “Do that, will you?”

  “On one condition—that you believe me when I tell you that Alejandro has talked about you since the very first week of your MBA program, and he never once mentioned your name or your money.”

  “Why should I believe you? You’re his friend and business partner.”

  Marly elevated her chin and shot her a steely glance. “Believe whatever you want, Kate. But to suggest that Peggy and I are in on some vast conspiracy to snow you, use you and fleece you of your money is to suggest that you have a paranoia bigger than the state of Florida—and an ego to match. It’s just possible that we actually liked you.”

  Kate’s mouth dropped open for the third time that day. Marly held her head high and sailed to the door. She opened it and left the room without a backward glance.

  ALEJANDRO DID NOT return to work that day. He was too furious, and Kate’s palm print was still clearly outlined on his face a half hour after their confrontation.

  How could she have thought he’d sought her out for her family connections and money? The unfairness of it stung him. After what they’d shared together, in bed and out, she still thought he was a lowlife and an opportunist. A user.

  Well, good Christ, Alejo, look at her cousin. If all her relatives are that bad, no wonder she thinks everyone’s got an agenda.

  But he ignored the voice inside him that tried to analyze and explain—if not justify—her behavior. She should have known he was different. He wouldn’t take a red cent of her damned money—he planned to make his own. And as for the Spinneys and their family connections—he snorted. They could all go get stuffed.

  He put his hand to the cheek Kate had slapped and burned with anger. Then the insidious voice came again. Can you really blame her, given what she thought and what you said?

  Yes! Hell yes, he could damn well blame her. Because if she hadn’t thought it of him in the first place, they wouldn’t have been in such an argument.

  Put yourself in her position, man. She’s probably had people sucking up to her for her money for years. She’s probably gotten a little cynical. A little wary of smooth talkers.

  But Alejandro didn’t feel like thinking about her perspective on things. She was a bruja.

  What about her uncertainty about sex and her doubts about her physical appeal? What had she said…I’ve been warned about smooth-talking Latin men like you.

  Had she been warned from birth that men would lie to her to get to her money?

  Again, he told himself that he didn’t care. He never wanted to see her again, and he wouldn’t.

  Then he remembered the stinking marketing project. The one he’d pressed her so hard about. The one they now had to do together. Mierda!

  To distract himself, Alejandro went over to Tia Carlotta’s and worked on various projects that needed to be done, while she popped out intermittently to try to feed him something. He refused all offers of anything except water.

  “What,” she asked him, hands on her ample hips. “You diet? Your mother was always on diet, God rest her soul.”

  “I’m not on a diet, Tia. I’m just not hungry. Thank you, though.” He wiped the sweat from his eyes and continued to work on trimming the trees back from her roof.

  “You are angry for something?”

  “No, no. I’m fine.”

  She sighed. “Won’t talk about nothing, just like your mother. Held it all inside, God rest her soul.”

  As usual, he could almost hear Mama’s soul sawing logs with all the resting, but he chased away the irreverent thought. “Tia, it’s hot out here. You should go inside and get out of the sun.”

  She continued to buzz around him until the arrival of the arborist he’d hired to remove the tree they’d argued about. The arborist was a big, strapping, once-blond gringo with a tanned, leathery face. Alejo judged him to be about Tia Carlotta’s age. More importantly, it only took her five minutes to get him to admit he was hungry. Alejandro heaved a sigh of relief.

  When he was finished, he went inside to find that the tree man had devoured half of her fresh-made cau-cau with great appreciation. Alejo raised an eyebrow and finally accepted a slice of flan and an Inca Cola. Then he kissed Tia’s cheek, subtly chased the guy back out into the yard and went home to change for soccer practice.

  HE KNEW SOMETHING was wrong as soon as he got out of the car and the guys turned as one to look at him, sneers etched on their faces. He froze. Hadn’t this day been crappy enough? Now he had to deal with this? What he felt like doing was getting back into his car and driving north to Georgia.

  Instead, he took a deep breath, slammed the Porsche’s door and strode onto the field, ignoring the bleating goat sounds a couple of his teammates were making.

  “Eh, maricon,” a man named Franco called. “Let’s see your nails.” He hooted with laughter. “Did you have the French manicure today?”

  Beauty Boy! Beauty Boy! Alejo dropped his soccer ball on the ground and passed it somewhat viciously to the jerk. “No, pendejo, I did a nice shade of ruby red on my customer. After she had an orgasm in her chair just from me touching her.” He grinned maliciously, and Franco kicked the ball back at him as if it were infected.

  Alejandro spun it on his toe and then kept it in the air with his knees and some good footwork. “Franco, did you have fun at the insurance company today? I’ll bet you don’t get to touch beautiful women’s legs all day, like me.” That shut Franco up, since he wasn�
��t that quick on his feet, but there were still fifteen others to contend with.

  “Partner in the spa, eh?” Another man snorted. “Obviously, the bottom partner, chivo!” More bleating and snickering ensued, and they all looked at him sideways.

  “Vete a la mierda, eh? I’m as straight as you are.”

  The guys gestured at him rudely and laughed. Behhhh! Behhhh! The animal noises got louder, the jeers more pronounced.

  Alejo dished it right back. “What’s the matter, guys? You having fond memories of the sheep you violated last night?”

  “Ooh, Alejandro!” Luis ran up to him in a parody of a girlie skip. “I have a callous. Will you file it down for me, por favor?”

  Alejo head-butted the ball right into his nose and grabbed himself in a very male, uncouth gesture. “Jodete. File down this.”

  “Nothing there to file, since it melted in your boyfriend’s mouth…” called another teammate.

  “You want to say that again to me, within arm’s length?” Alejandro asked him, menace in his voice. “Because I’ll kick any ass on this field. What’s more, you know I can do it. You’re all free with the insults when there’s fifteen against one. But will you meet me alone?”

  “Asking for a date, Señor Manos?” A guy named Carlos mocked him.

  “Date? Nah. Your mother begs me for it without me buying her dinner.”

  Carlos’s face darkened and he clenched his fists. “What did you say?” He vaulted forward and threw a punch at Alejandro, who dodged it and knocked him right to the ground with a nice left hook.

  Carlos was up again within seconds, raging for a good fight, but Franco pulled him back by the shirt collar. “Detente! You want to be infected with the maricon’s blood?”

  Alejandro gritted his teeth. This was going nowhere. They could trade insults—or punches—all night. He needed a different strategy.

  Alejandro shouted, “How big is your mortgage? How much do you have to pay off in student loans? Business loans?”

  “Eh?” Carlos stared at him, nonplussed by the change in subject. “A lot.”

  “Yes? Well, me, too. Except that I’ve paid my loans down already fifty percent in one year—yes, by giving pedicures.”

  All the men snickered again. Then they stared at him, stone-faced.

  He kept going. “And how do you, Jorge, hold yourself above me when you’re working for The Man? Somebody orders you around all day while you kiss his ass. I have my own business.”

  Jorge’s fleshy face suffused with red.

  Alejandro took yet a different tack. “And you, Luis. Your family’s in the restaurant business. Did you feel shame when you worked there as a waiter?”

  Luis shook his head reluctantly.

  “Well, my family was in the salon business. And I’m not ashamed of having worked there, either. So you can all shut the hell up, and you can come ask me for a job when my place is franchised all over the country. Maybe I’ll hire you to mop floors or do shampoos.”

  Alejo skewered them all with his gaze. They still wore smirks, but at least the bleating and catcalling had stopped. “Now, do you want to practice, or not? Or are you still afraid—like a bunch of girls—that because of my temporary job, I’ll take you from behind?”

  Luis laughed outright at that, and Alejandro knew, though there was a long road ahead and still a lot of ribbing to come, that he’d won.

  “Pass me the ball, rosquete.” Luis said, finally. “Let’s go!”

  Chapter 22

  Kate lay in bed with T-bone and thought about the fact that she should be working. But she just couldn’t force herself to pick her head up off the pillow. It was stuck there like a ten-pound filing to a magnet.

  This probably had something to do with a very lowering realization: that she’d gone and fallen in love with Alejandro Torres, the lying sack of—

  She rolled over and sighed. Why hadn’t she fallen in love with Drexel, or Kippy or Stone? Someone who wasn’t so impossibly good-looking and sexy. Someone who didn’t wear a gold chain around his neck, insult her and make her buy girlie shoes. Someone whom she didn’t want to punch and kiss at the same time.

  She lifted her head with difficulty and smacked her pillow in the hopes of…something or other. She didn’t know what. It just felt good to hit something.

  It should have been Kippy, she decided. In spite of his somewhat bulbous eyes and his annoying habit of quoting statistics and reciting chemical compounds. Kippy had been nice and malleable, as long as she’d let him run his mouth.

  She should have married Kippy when she had the chance. Then she’d never have moved to Miami and met the smooth-talking Latin scourge of her existence.

  But then she’d never have experienced really great sex. And she wouldn’t have discovered how adorable and intelligent a pig could be. And she wouldn’t have fallen in love…. Wait.

  Falling in love belonged in the Con list, not the Pro list. It had knocked the breath out of her, as well as the sense. And even if it hadn’t hurt at first, it sure as hell did now.

  She made a conscious decision to fall out of love with him. Immediately. All it would take was a little willpower, damn it.

  T-bone was obviously chasing something very exciting in her sleep, since her legs whirred like an eggbeater and she emitted snoozy little barks and whimpers as she almost caught it.

  When the phone rang Kate ignored it, but after it stopped it just started ringing again. And again. Then her cell phone started, and wouldn’t stop, either. It was a bloody cacophony of ring tones, and she finally fell out of bed with a curse and answered her main line. The phone with the caller ID was in the kitchen, so she couldn’t tell who it was, and it might be some awful emergency.

  It was someone awful, but not an emergency. “Katy! Damn you, I can’t believe you did this to me!”

  Huh? She pushed the hair out of her eyes and then said calmly, “Wendell, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t play dumb, Katy. I will get you for this.” His venom shot through the phone line.

  Kate was mystified. “Wendell, again, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Will you at least tell me what I’m accused of? Because I’m honestly in the dark here.”

  “You have the nerve to tell me you had nothing to do with that creature bursting into my meeting and demanding that I live up to my promise to pay for her breast implants and buttock lift? Not to mention a sex-change operation?”

  “What? Oh, Wendell! That sounds just awful. How embarrassing for you.”

  “And screeching that she’d serviced me enough times to pay off the national debt?” Wendell’s voice shook with rage.

  “Well, is it true?”

  “No! You know it’s not true! You set the whole thing up.”

  Someone had finally decided to repay Wendell’s nastiness, but it wasn’t her. She almost wished it had been. Kate bit her lip hard enough that she tasted the salty, metallic tang of blood. She couldn’t laugh, not with him on the phone.

  “Wendell, I assure you that I had nothing to do with the incident. I’m shocked and appalled.”

  He snarled.

  “But you should always keep your promises,” she added, unable to resist. “It’s a point of honor with us Spinneys. You know that. So if you did promise to pay for her cosmetic surgery and sex change, you really should.”

  She could almost hear the flecks of foam spattering his receiver as he struggled for words. “Bitch!” he finally screamed.

  “There is no need for name-calling. I really didn’t do this.” But I should have.

  “I’ve been fired from the Miami project because of this, you whore!”

  “Wendell, we both know that with the trust, I don’t need payment for sex. So I’m just a garden-variety slut. Now, honestly, this conversation is getting tiresome. I didn’t have anything to do with this situation. I swear it. Why don’t you pour yourself a nice double scotch and you’ll feel better in the morning.”

  Kate hung u
p on the ear-splitting squeal of rage that followed her recommendation. In case he called back, she unplugged her house phone and turned off her cell. Then, unable to help herself, she laughed until tears rolled down her cheeks and her ribs hurt.

  She pumped a fist into the air. “Somebody got that little rodent but good. I only wish I knew who it was.”

  T-bone opened one eye and wagged her tail.

  “Maybe it will teach him a lesson.”

  T-bone looked dubious about that.

  “Yeah, you’re probably right.” Kate went back to bed and relapsed into her state of depression.

  She’d been an utter fool, and she was mortified, though still furious at Alejandro for lying to her. In fact, it was possible that she was even angrier, since his lie had led to her wrong conclusion in the first place, and therefore her foolishness and mortification was all his fault.

  Kate told herself that the probabilities were the same: so maybe he hadn’t had a specific product in mind when he began to schmooze and romance her, but her name and financing couldn’t hurt his business.

  A small niggling voice told her that she wasn’t being fair. But then a person who had consumed three pans of brownies in three days—plus one bowl of brownie batter—probably had sugar poisoning and couldn’t be held to normal standards of fairness.

  “Isn’t that so, T-bone?”

  The dog rolled over and placed her paw against Kate’s cheek, very gently. She began to cry.

  T-bone sat up, shook herself, and then began to lick the tears off Kate’s face, which made her cry even harder. “I hate him, T.”

  She sat up in bed and wiped her face with her sleeve. “Yeah, if you want to know the God’s honest truth, it would be a little embarrassing to introduce him to my family as my boyfriend, the macho male manicurist. But hell, why is it any more manly for my dad to be the CEO of a bloody shampoo company? I don’t notice that he goes out of his way to talk about the tampon division at cocktail parties…” She sniffed. “So the whole thing is stupid!”