Kiss & Makeup

by Alison Kent

  She didn’t pick up the trailing sentence right away, so Quentin leaned forward again, one forearm on the sleek ebony bar as if he could close the distance between them. He hated having this conversation here.

  The room was growing crowded; he wasn’t going to have her to himself much longer. He was enjoying her too much to forgive the interruptions, yet the ugly head of his impatience hardly thrilled him.

  What he wanted was to take her downstairs into the basement, where the partitioned banquettes in Exhibit A—the underground bar set up for erotic performance art—offered the privacy Erotique did not.

  Except, it would be a privacy swathed in blue lights and smoky darkness and an aura of intimacy more conducive to sex than to talk. He wasn’t quite sure either of them was ready to go there.

  Sure, sex with Shandi would rock his world. It was her world he worried about. Her world that upped the ante. That made the wait worthwhile.

  He cleared his throat and returned to the conversation just as she tossed back her head and glanced up toward the ceiling. “Wow, I have no idea where that came from. It’s the customer who’s supposed to pour out his heartache. And the bartender who’s supposed to offer the shoulder or the ear.”

  “Are you always this hard on yourself?” he asked softly, because he wondered why she was. Why she didn’t want to let go. Didn’t want to talk about herself.

  “Only most of the time.” She shrugged, then brushed some loose hair back from her forehead. “Fallout from my overachiever syndrome.”

  “Something that runs in the family?”

  She stepped away from the bar and laughed. “You are just not giving up, are you?”

  “I never do. Not when there’s something I want.”

  She stood there for a moment staring at him, her pulse quickening at the base of her throat. When she smiled, when she tilted her head to the side and grinned, he swore he felt the glass he was holding threaten to crack in his hand.

  “Quentin,” she started, then paused. “Are you coming on to me?”

  He couldn’t help the way his mouth crooked up on one side. “I’m doing my best.”

  “Okay then.” She nodded. “I just wanted to make sure.”

  “And now that you have?”

  “I don’t know.” She gestured toward the other end of the bar. “I’m thinking about getting back to work. Quitting while I’m ahead and all that.”

  Interesting. “How are you ahead?”

  “Well, I haven’t had to mention anything about my three older brothers and how a year later I’m still waiting for one of them to come and drag me home by the hair.”

  He thought of her hair loosened and draped over his skin, thought of her courage in the face of her family’s expectations, thought of the long, hard career road down which she wanted to travel.

  And then he wondered why he was thinking about more than bedding her.

  “You remind me a lot of a girl I knew in high school.” He shifted to sit more comfortably in his chair. “Her situation was different, her family nothing like yours. But she still had to make her way on her own.”

  “And did she succeed?”

  He smiled, thinking of his two friends from Johnson High in Austin, of Heidi Malone from the wrong side of the tracks who’d played sax and become the fifth member of his band, who was now an attorney defending women’s rights, thinking of her married now for six years to Ben Tannen.

  “Oh, yeah.” Quentin’s smile widened. “She’s come a long way from the waif I knew her as then.”

  “Really. So you have a thing for waifish schoolgirls, do you?”

  He laughed aloud, the sound unfamiliar to his ears. He started to speak, was stopped by the movement of the chair beside his.

  “I certainly hope he doesn’t, considering the wealth of experienced fish in the sea he has to choose from.”

  Quentin turned into a cloud of perfume. The woman who’d sat beside him was gorgeous in that way of starlets, with perfect makeup and perfect hair, nails as bright as jewels and jewels as subtle as her plunging neckline.

  She was most definitely on the make. And these days Quentin much preferred the thought of bedding tousled bartenders.

  “Sweetie, would you get me a Cosmopolitan? Light on the cranberry.” The woman gave her order to Shandi, then dismissed her and turned his way. “You are buying tonight, aren’t you, hon? Or did I get all dressed up for nothing?”

  Nothing was just about it. Not a twinge in his body. But he smiled because that’s what he did, and when Shandi returned with the woman’s Cosmo, he said, “Put it on my tab.”

  YOU HAVE A THING FOR WAIFISH schoolgirls, do you?

  Gah, had she actually asked him that? What was wrong with her? What was she thinking? Oh, wait. She wasn’t thinking. A big, fat problem that seemed to be worsening as the night grew long.

  Show her a gorgeous man and for some ridiculous reason she lost every bit of her mind.

  Here she was, telling Quentin all the things she didn’t want him to know—especially where she’d come from—giving him the ammunition he needed to deduce who she was. Who she wasn’t. Who she didn’t ever want to be.

  And once he figured out all of that…

  In the back room of the bar, Shandi rested against the wall next to the telephone and bulletin board, then beat her head against the surface almost hard enough to leave a dent.

  Uh, a dent in the wall, not in her head. Her head was thick and indestructible, or so was the obvious conclusion, what with the way none of her lectures on what to say and what not to say had managed to sink in.

  The phone rang in her ear. She jerked up the receiver more to kill the noise than because it was her job while Armand covered the bar. “Erotique. Shandi Fossey.”

  “Shan, will you kill me if I bail on tomorrow night’s movie? Daddy called and insists I come for dinner, and there’s no way I can get back by eight. I’m going to spend the night and return Wednesday morning.”

  Well, crud. Once again, April’s priorities and unbreakable family ties meant Shandi would be spending her night off scrambling to find a last-minute date. “Depends. Are you taking Evan with you?”

  “Don’t be nuts. It’s a command performance. Family only. Some ridiculous emergency about Trevor being seen in public with Stefan Navarro.”

  Shandi rolled her eyes. “I was wondering about that.”

  “About what? My brother’s sexuality?”

  “No. About whether or not you really considered Evan family.”

  “Jeez, Shan. Give it a break, will you? Evan and I are fine. And I rather like having him here all to myself.”

  Right. As long as you have him that way fully clothed, Shandi mused, then took it back.

  Evan and April’s relationship was none of her business—even though they were her two very best friends and had been since that first day after classes last year when, bleary-eyed and suffering from information overload, she and April had shared a table in the Starbucks where Evan worked as a barista.

  “Fine,” she grumbled. “I’ll go to the show by myself.”

  “Well, yeah, you could.” April paused strategically. “But you don’t have to.”

  “You’re not fixing me up, April. You’re not, you’re not, you’re not. Never again in this lifetime. Understand?” Life was too short to suffer through bad blind dates.

  “Trust me. I know better. Besides, I don’t have to.” April paused. “Evan says you’ve got some guy at the hotel who’s dishy.”

  Ah, yes. The 3:30 a.m. sacred hour of confession. “He is dishy, but I don’t have him. In fact, he’s currently at the bar being had by a Bambi in serious need of paint thinner. You should see the layers she’s troweled on.”

  April snorted. “Not everyone can manage the fresh-faced farm-girl look, you know. You’ve pretty much cornered that market.”

  “Uh-huh. And thanks for rubbing it in.” The reminder was hardly what Shandi needed when she was doing all she could to wipe away every trace of
the farm.

  She wanted to fit in, not stand out. To gain attention because of her skills, not her accent and the fact that, yes, she really had ridden in barrel-racing competitions.

  To prove to her family that she damn well could make it on her own. To prove the same to herself.

  This time April sighed. “You know, sweetie, you really do need to get over where you come from.”

  “Oh, and you don’t let where you come from dictate your relationship with Evan?”

  “Why? Has he said something to you? Is that why you’re all over us all of a sudden? What did he say? Is he complaining that I won’t take him to Connecticut?”

  “Evan hasn’t said a word.” She leaned forward to stretch out her taut and tired back. “I’m just feeling out of my league here.”

  “Well, stop it. You have no reason to.”

  “Did I tell you he’s from Texas?”

  “The dishy guy?”

  “Yeah, he’s from Austin.” She straightened, then slid down the wall and sat on her heels.

  “Wouldn’t that be a plus in his favor? Having that similar-regional-outlook thing going on?”

  “No, it’s not a plus, you goon. I live here and he doesn’t.” What kind of plus was that? “And who said we shared any regional outlook anyhow?”

  “Hmm,” April hummed before saying, “So? Have fun with him here.”

  “Right. The kind of fun that involves not wearing anything.”

  April sighed, and this time with more force. “Hey, it’s only a thought. It’s one of many that prove you think about sex too much.”

  “That coming from someone who doesn’t think about it at all,” Shandi said, immediately wishing she could bite off her tongue. Especially when she couldn’t even hear breathing on the other end of the line.

  She waited one heartbeat, two. “April? Are you still there?”

  “I’m here. And now I’m pissed as hell. You said Evan hadn’t been talking.”

  “He hasn’t. Not really.” How much more trouble was she going to get into with her mouth? “I was talking to him about Dishy Guy, and we got into a discussion about the girls guys sleep with versus the ones they take home.”

  When April stayed silent, Shandi stood and went back to pounding her head on the wall. “Listen, April, my break’s up. I’ve got to get back. Can we talk about this later?”

  “I love him, Shandi. More than I knew I could love anyone.” April’s voice broke. “He’s everything to me, and I’m scared to death I’m going to do something major to screw it up.”

  The noises from the bar faded into the background until Shandi heard only the hum of the back room’s cooler. Guilt swelled in her chest that she’d even inadvertently betrayed a confidence.

  She had a hard time swallowing around the lump of emotion clogging her throat. “You’re not. Oh, April, you’re not. He feels the same about you. You know that.”

  “Does he? I mean, I know he does, but with all this family stuff…”

  Eyes closed, Shandi drew in a deep breath. “We’ll talk when you get back from Connecticut, okay? After class on Wednesday. We’ll come grab something fabulous at Amuse Bouche. I’m broke, and this way it’s all free.”

  April laughed. “Sounds good. Besides, I’m sure I’ll be stressed from the Daddy-Trevor-Stefan triangle and need to unload.”

  April rang off then, and Shandi hung up the phone, glancing briefly at the bulletin board and the huge pink pushpin tacking up a scrawled note that said:

  Mrs. Mulholland told Mrs. Delancey her doctor says her BP is up, up, up!

  Go light salting her margaritas!

  Hopefully Shandi would be better at watching Mrs. M’s salt than she’d been thus far at watching the words that came out of her own mouth. Honesty being the best policy had never before seemed like such a bad idea.

  And when she stepped out of the back room and into the bar, into the conversations and the laughter and the music with the low throbbing beat, she really had to remind herself how much trouble she’d generated already today simply by speaking her mind.

  Especially because right now her mind wanted to rip the arms off the painted Bambi draped all over Quentin.

  “Scotch neat to the gentleman at the far end,” Armand said, lightly salting the margarita glasses for the aforementioned duo of Mulholland and Delancey. He glanced at Shandi, then back at the salted rims. “Too much?”

  She reached for an old-fashioned glass and the scotch. “Any less and she’ll know we’re onto her.”

  Armand screwed the top from the silver shaker and finished off the drinks while Shandi poured hers and served the customer per her coworker’s instructions. She listened to Armand flirting with the two older women, grinning to herself as the teasing between the three grew boldly risqué.

  She tried to remember why they were here sans husbands and wedding bands, certain she’d stored the gossip in a tiny part of her mind not overloaded with school, work, friends, family and the resulting guilt trips she took.

  But right now she couldn’t access any slot in her memory banks because she’d looked up and caught Quentin’s eye.

  Gone was the man she’d chatted up and flirted with two nights in a row. The man who’d managed to get her to talk about herself when she never talked about herself.

  The man who had been about as mellow as anyone in the entertainment industry with whom she’d crossed paths.

  He wasn’t mellow now.

  He was holding on to his temper with a politely woven thread that was unraveling in direct proportion to Bambi’s aggressive thrust of her exposed cleavage. And even Shandi, standing where she was, felt the heat of his simmering irritation.

  She ignored a smugly satisfied thrill. Or at least she tried. Round one to the long-legged filly. Bambi was on her way down.

  Time for an intervention. A fire alarm. A police action in the lobby. Janice, Hush’s general manager, wouldn’t be supportive should Shandi instigate either.

  That left a phone call.

  She stepped into the back room, reached for the phone’s portable handset and punched in all but the last in the sequence of numbers for her cell. Then she took a deep breath and headed for the end of the bar where Quentin sat.

  “Mr. Marks?”

  His gaze snagged hers sharply. “Yes?”

  “I’m sorry to interrupt—” she gave Bambi a soft smile “—but you have a phone call.”

  “Thanks,” he said, and when he reached for the handset, she surreptitiously hit the last number and whispered, “Excuse me,” to the Bambi as Quentin stepped from the bar chair to take the call.

  On her way to the back room, she walked by Armand and begged him to cover her for five more minutes. In her pants pocket, her cell was already vibrating; Armand simply rolled his eyes and mouthed, “You owe me.”

  She answered what felt like seconds before the call rolled to voice mail. “Shandi Fossey. Bartender extraordinaire and interventionist.”

  In her ear Quentin laughed, a sexy throaty sound. “Where are you?”

  “In the back room,” she said, leaning against the same wall she’d rested on while talking to April, enjoying his voice a whole lot more than her girlfriend’s.

  “How do I get back there?”

  “You don’t. Employees only.”

  “You want me to just keep your phone?”

  Crud. “Uh, no. The wall around the corner from the end of the bar? There’s a panel door. It’s hidden, but if you find and hit the button, it’ll swing open.”

  “You’re going to make me work for it then?”

  It? Oh…my. “Lesson number one.” Anticipation lent a sultry breathlessness to her voice. “I’ve never been one to make it easy on a man.”

  A beat of silence, then he said, “Now that I can’t wait to see. Stay there.”

  No problem, since she couldn’t move to save her soul. She listened to the phone disconnect, her heart pounding in her ears along with the lost signal’s beep.

 
; And then despite standing frozen in place, Shandi began to sweat.

  3

  QUENTIN FOUND THE DOOR, found the button and seconds later found himself on the opposite end of the room from where Shandi stood.

  She held her cell phone pressed close between her breasts, her chest rising and falling at a rapid pace visible even from here.

  Her eyes sparkled. He could see the starry flash in the flickering light cast by the one and only fixture running the length of the ceiling. He let the door close behind him slowly, let the latch click, let the echo fade away before he took his first step.

  She wore a pin-tucked tuxedo shirt in a dark rosy-pink, a black satin cummerbund, bow tie and tuxedo pants, and leaned against the wall beside the main doorway leading from the back room into the bar.

  She looked as if she couldn’t wait for him to reach her. As if the phone’s empty wall unit next to her head was just an excuse to get him alone. He held the handset tightly, his palm sweating as he approached her.

  Sweating even more when the look in her eyes grew bold and warm in ways that surprised him.

  He wondered what it would’ve been like to meet her later. Meet her in Austin. To get to know her on his own turf, his own terms, instead of in an environment where he’d long ago quit trusting anything to be real.

  He wanted her to be real. He so wanted her to be real.

  Shandi held out her hand. “I don’t take kindly to blackmail, you know.”

  He didn’t know. He didn’t know her at all. And since he’d be leaving the city in a matter of days, he’d never have the full pleasure—a thought that caused quite the uncomfortable hitch in his chest.

  “Got it,” he said. “Blackmail’s off-limits. Lying’s on the can-do list.”

  “Uh-uh. I never lied.” She reached for the handset he offered, but he wasn’t ready to let go, and when she pulled, he followed, the momentum bringing him closer still. She arched a dark blond brow but didn’t push him away. “You did have a phone call. A very conveniently timed one.”