“And the women who want guys like me are after my money, which is what I’d already figured out.”
Fleck leaned back against the dresser, crossing his arms over his chest. “You’re going to let Azure think you’re poor?”
“Why not? It’s a way to find out if she really likes me for myself.”
Fleck cocked a skeptical brow. “From what you’ve said, she doesn’t like you at all.”
“You’re right. Which means that I’ve got my work cut out for me.” He gave his tank top a tug and stood back to admire the effect. His pectorals bulged under the jersey, thanks to regular workouts in the Samoa’s gym and vigorous massages from the live-aboard masseuse. His chest hair didn’t look half light enough for a guy who was supposed to be surfing in the sun most of the time, but maybe Azure wouldn’t notice.
He slipped his Rolex off his wrist. “Here,” he said. “I can’t wear this.”
Fleck forked over his own ancient Timex. “You might have to gas up my car,” he said in a cautionary tone. “I haven’t checked lately.”
“Will do. And take it easy on the women, Fleck.”
Fleck laughed. “From what you say, I’d better hope the women take it easy on me.”
Lee scooped up the car keys from the dresser. As he headed for the launch, Fleck was still chuckling.
3
YOU’VE GOT MAIL!
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: paco and tiffany
hi, a.j., we miss you at the office. guess what—i spotted charming paco alone and looking down in the dumps in the coffee shop today. i decided i was still speaking to him after all and asked him where tiffany was. he said he didn’t know. you don’t suppose she’s gone somewhere and had a breast reduction, do you? you know she always talked about it. it would serve c.p. right, wouldn’t it luv,
dor
Reply to: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: paco and itffany
Dorrie:
I am as tired of thinking about Tiffany’s breasts as I am of kissing frogs and hoping they will turn into princes! I never want to hear about her breasts again! And yes, it would serve Paco right if Tiff came back from wherever as a 30AA instead of her normal 40DD. But miracles like that don’t happen in real life.
Speaking of real life, I’m stuck here in M.B. until my client calls, and I haven’t heard Word One from him yet. More later.
A.J.
AZURE, EAGER TO CONCLUDE the whole car rental chore, waited impatiently by the curb outside the Blue Moon and tried to ignore the man with a slick black pompadour who was parading a chicken on a leash down the sidewalk. The chicken was being trailed by two teenagers, who were jokingly threatening to kidnap it for voodoo purposes. At least Azure thought they were joking, but then again, maybe not. According to Goldy, all kinds of weird things went on in South Florida, with santería, a specialized type of voodoo originating with the large Cuban population, being only one of them.
As she was contemplating calling the SPCA or whoever was in charge of the well-being of animals, Goldy came lumbering out of the Blue Moon, and as she did, a bright red convertible with its top down roared around the corner and screeched to a stop in front of them.
Lee jumped over the door on the driver’s side. “At your service, ma’am. Beach taxi service. Our motto: We go where you go.”
“Um, Goldy, this is Lee. Lee, Goldy.”
Goldy batted thin eyelashes. “Nice to meet you. Hmm, I don’t get the feeling that you’re one of those Elvis worshipers. You live in a big place on the water, don’t you?”
“How do you know where I live?”
She smiled mysteriously. “It was in the tea leaves. Nice to meet you, Lee, but I’d better get back to my desk. Stop by to see me sometime and I’ll read the tarot cards for you. It could be most enlightening.” With a little backhanded flutter of her plump fingers, she hurried back inside, her caftan flapping in the breeze.
Lee stared after her. “What was that all about?”
How to explain Goldy? Azure didn’t have a clue. “She’s into New Age,” she said, less than eager to expand.
“What in the world is an Elvis worshiper?”
Azure sighed. “Evidently there’s a local cult, and that’s all I know about it. Shall we go? I don’t want to lose the reservation on the rental car by not showing up on time.”
Lee courteously opened the car door, and she slid in. As he continued around to the driver’s side, Azure knew she had no business looking down on the only mode of transportation that had presented itself, but it was plain to see that the vehicle was falling apart. The paint was peeling, revealing that in a previous incarnation the car had been green. Various parts were missing, and from the sound of it, the muffler needed to be replaced. If there was a muffler, that is.
When Lee climbed in beside her, he immediately threw the car into reverse, which was apparently not the way he wanted to go because he then slammed on the brakes hard enough to make her sunglasses fall into her lap.
“Sorry,” he said as she jammed the glasses back onto her face. “Stick shift. Sometimes it actually does stick.”
“Right.”
Without too much additional effort, Lee managed to insert the car into the stream of traffic. “So,” he said, keeping his eyes on the road, “how long will you be in town?”
Not that this was any of his business, but he was going out of his way to do this favor for her.
“I’m not sure,” she said.
“You said you have a client here,” he prompted, turning and treating her to the megawattage of his super-white smile.
“That’s right,” she said, deciding to offer no more information. He was entirely too cocky, and he was entirely too good-looking. Plus he had a lot of charm, which set off a cacophony of alarms in her head. It would be better if the man were mud-fence ugly; at least then she wouldn’t be thinking about the way his hands, strong and sinewy, gripped the steering wheel. Or about the muscles of his thigh tensing and letting go as he worked the accelerator and the clutch.
She forced herself to glance away, to gaze out the window at the sign heralding their approach to the causeway, at anything. She hadn’t been so rattled about any man in a long time. Since before Paco, and even he had never had quite this unnerving effect on her. Right now all she could think about was that tattoo of a frog below Lee’s navel.
“You—you could tell me what kind of work you do,” she said in desperation, stumbling over the words at first and then letting them out all in a rush.
He blinked his gaze in her direction for a moment, then back to the traffic. “A little of this, a little of that,” he said vaguely. “Whatever it takes.” He figured it was what Fleck would have said. Until now, he hadn’t considered that pretending to be someone else would tend to limit self-disclosure.
“Look,” he said, gesturing toward the water as they approached the bridge across the water. “Parasailing.”
This distracted her for a while as she watched someone riding the breezes on a brightly colored parasail, and they were halfway across the long causeway before she spoke.
“I really appreciate what you’re doing for me,” she said. “Really.” In profile, her delicate bone structure was even more evident.
He cranked up his nerve and made a move. “Enough to see me again?”
She swiveled her head around and frowned. “Are you serious? I already told you that I’m not interested.”
“Would you go for a simple flirtation?”
“There’s no such thing. Flirtations tend to get complicated.”
He shot her a sidelong glance. “They don’t have to. You’re visiting Miami Beach, I’m visiting, why don’t we hang for a while? Go out for a few drinks, maybe a bite to eat, and then we both head back to our respective homes, richer for the experience.” He hadn’t known he could wax so eloquent about a few simple dates, and he though
t he had outdone himself until she let out a sigh of exasperation.
“Lee, I don’t want a boy toy for a night or two. And I thought you lived here.”
He had to think fast. “I’m only in Miami Beach for a while, like you.”
“How did you happen to come to the wedding? Do you know my sister?” When she pivoted to look at him, the wind from the open convertible caught her bangs and mussed them attractively.
He shook his head. “I’m a friend of Slade’s.”
This produced a flare of interest. “Oh? And how did you two meet? You don’t seem much alike.”
He had to make a split-second decision as to whether he wanted to use the Lee Santori connection or the Fleck connection. He finally decided on the Lee Santori one. “Slade and I were college roommates,” he said. It was true. They’d met in their freshman year at Florida State.
“What did you do after college?” she asked. For a moment, he thought she was sincerely interested, but judging from the way she was inspecting her manicure, he could scratch that notion. Still, he had to admit that it was better to attempt a conversation than to sit in awkward silence. “I worked,” he told her.
“Worked?”
“Corporately,” he said in a tone that invited no further discussion.
“But hanging out at the beach is more fun? Especially the nude beach?” She slanted a questioning look at him out of the corners of her eyes.
“I don’t—” he started to say, thinking better of it immediately.
She called him on it. “You expect me to believe that you don’t go there regularly? That it was a fluke when you happened to stroll stark naked out of the Atlantic Ocean and invited me to join a volleyball game?”
“Haulover Beach is not my usual habitat,” Lee said desperately, wondering why he was inexorably attracted to someone who didn’t give a flying fig that he found her fascinating. It was time for a quick review of what appealed to him: Her eyes, so breathtakingly blue. Her carefully hidden vulnerability, which he liked to think most people never saw.
“If you don’t walk around nude with some frequency, why on earth would you have a tattoo in a place that is normally hidden by your clothes?” she asked in what he pegged as a sudden and welcomely whimsical mood. It was a new side of her personality, and he had to hand it to her—it caught him by surprise.
He laughed. He couldn’t help it. “My tattoo is not for the admiring glances of everybody,” he said. “It’s for the inspection of people who get to know me in a more intimate way.”
“Meaning people you have sex with,” Azure said in a slightly world-weary tone which earned her a sharp look from Lee.
“It’s a conversation piece,” he said. “It distracts them.”
“Do they need to be distracted? And from what?”
He hesitated, unsure if this line of conversation was something he wanted to continue, but in the end he reminded himself that this might be the only chance he would have to get to know Azure and for her to get to know him well enough to see him again. And there were so many things that he couldn’t be honest about as long as he kept up the pretense of being a beach bum. When he could be honest, he should.
“Sometimes,” he said carefully, “when two people decide to become intimate, it can be awkward. Daunting. If there’s something silly and inconsequential to talk about while you’re warming up—”
“Warming up?” Azure looked askance.
“Proceeding through the preliminaries,” he amended. “If you can joke or make light of things, then it makes it easier.”
She turned a wide-eyed gaze upon him. “Oh, how considerate. What a swell guy you are! I am sure that the women of your acquaintance must grovel in gratitude when the fact of your thoughtfulness in getting a tattoo gets through to them.”
It took him a moment to realize that she was being facetious.
“Okay, okay. I was only telling you one of the reasons I got the tattoo. You want to know the other one?”
She shrugged. “Sure.”
“I was shanghaied into it on a night when I was drunk out of my mind. Two buddies hauled me into a tattoo parlor and next thing I knew, I was walking out of there stone cold sober with a patch of skin that felt like it was on fire.”
“I can believe the part about being drunk. But did it really hurt?”
“It was awful. I’ll never get another one.”
“Why a frog?”
He shrugged. “Why not a frog? It’s not like I knew what I was doing.”
“I once thought about getting a tattoo,” she said thoughtfully, surprising him completely.
“You? No way.”
“Yes, way. Fortunately, I didn’t go through with it.”
“Why not?”
This caught her up short. She had no intention of confessing what a fool she had been over Paco, nor did she feel like telling anyone that his nagging her to get a tattoo to match his, which was on the high inside of his thigh, had resulted in her making an appointment that she didn’t keep after she found Paco having wild crazy sex in her bathtub with Tiffany, one of her closest friends. The only good thing you could say about that episode is that it had been easy to wash away all evidence of their betrayal with a long-handled brush and a few squirts of bathroom cleaner. Even so, Azure had showered at the health club for two whole weeks before she felt like using her own tub again.
She cleared her throat. “Let’s just say that I didn’t get the tattoo because circumstances changed.”
Thinking about taking showers at the health club reminded Azure that she needed to find a place to work out. She’d already asked Paulette, who appeared to stay devastatingly slim by snacking on Snickers bars, but the question about where to find the nearest gym had drawn a blank.
“Jim?” Paulette had answered vaguely. “Is he one of my clients?”
Azure turned to Lee, who certainly looked fit with those biceps bulging and those pecs positively pulsing in rhythm to the music from the radio. Or was that only her imagination? Maybe so.
“I don’t suppose you know a gym near the Blue Moon where they welcome guests,” she ventured, making herself look elsewhere besides those pecs.
“I usually—” he began, catching himself before he mentioned the gym aboard the Samoa. “I’ve noticed one two blocks up from Ocean Boulevard on Marco Polo Street.”
Azure fished her PalmPilot out of its special pocket in her purse and entered the information.
“Do you take that everywhere?” he asked.
“Of course. Also my cell phone.”
“I noticed,” he said dryly.
“You have a problem with that?”
He thought about when he had been building his business, when he couldn’t afford to be out of touch for even five minutes a day, juggling more tasks than most people would have found humanly possible. “No,” he said quietly. “I don’t.”
She pulled a scrap of paper out of her pocket. “I’d better check the directions to the rental car place.”
“Let me see,” he said. She handed the paper over, and he studied the map she’d drawn on it. He was fairly familiar with Miami geography because he’d traveled there frequently on business. “I can find it,” he said.
“I hope I’m not taking you out of your way.”
“Nope,” he said. After he dropped Azure off to pick up the car, he planned to check on the progress of the contractor who was renovating the store in the strip mall where he was scheduled to open the first Grassy Creek outlet. The painters were supposed to be working this week.
“There!” she said. “I see a sign for the car rental company. See? The arrow to our right?”
Sure enough, there was a directional sign pointing down a short side road and a larger sign on top of the rental company’s office. It hadn’t taken as long as he’d thought it would to get there, and he wasn’t any closer to seeing Azure again than he’d been before they started out.
He pulled into the parking lot in front of the car rental office
. “How about dinner tonight?” he said, figuring he might as well shoot for the moon.
“I told you,” she said, “I’m not interested.”
“In anyone?” Maybe there was someone else.
“In you. You know the old saying, you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince? I’m sick and tired of kissing frogs.” Too late, she realized what she had said; too late, she remembered the nature of Lee’s tattoo.
There was a silence that lasted a jot too long, and then Lee began to laugh. “I wasn’t asking you to kiss it,” he said. “I wasn’t even suggesting that you see each other again.”
“That is quite enough,” she said tightly. She got out and slammed the car door, which is when its inside handle fell off. “Azure, wait,” Lee called after her rapidly retreating figure, but she ignored him and continued into the car company’s office building.
Lee swore softly to himself at his inability to refrain from smart remarks and slid over to the passenger seat where he set about reaffixing the handle to the door, which would have been easier if he’d had a screwdriver. A check in the trunk for a nonexistent tool kit made him realize that he’d have to do the job without tools.
He concentrated on getting the handle back on, thinking that he’d have a chance to make amends with Azure when she came out of the building, but the next time he looked up, he spotted her driving out of the lot in a jazzy white convertible. He watched helplessly as the car tooled around the corner toward the interstate.
Barring unforeseen bad luck, he thought that Fleck’s Mustang might be fast enough to catch her.
LEE WAS SPEEDING ALONG the expressway keeping a sharp eye out for Azure in her white convertible when he spotted a farm truck with its bed full of cucumbers up ahead as it swerved into the next lane. He slammed on his brakes and saw that the truck had been trying to avoid running over an armadillo that was taking its time meandering across the six-lane highway.
To Lee’s horror, the truck began to fishtail back and forth across all three lanes going north, and cukes began to rain down in front of the car in the passing lane, which happened to be—a white convertible?
Life Is A Beach (Mills & Boon Silhouette): Life Is A Beach / A Real-thing Fling Page 22