The Subject Was Rose [The Sunset Palomino Ranch 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)

by Karen Mercury

  “Why do I want to meet him? I don’t want my portrait painted.”

  But Willow was already waving to the guy seated in the palm thatch-roofed cabana. “Jesse, hey!”

  Turquoise light reflected from the swimming pool onto Jesse’s face. Rose nearly gasped, Jesse was so beautiful. The watery reflection lit up his blue eyes, so dazzling Rose had to squint. Yet his velvety skin had a baked caramel glow to it, as though he was part African-American mixed with something ethereally northern. He came forward, his smile lighting up his entire face, giving him a youthful radiance, although he was probably around the same age as Rose’s thirty-four.

  Suddenly Rose didn’t recall that she’d sworn off men. Suddenly Rose was eager to meet this Jesse, to know more about him. I can have men friends, can’t I?

  Rose knew she was taking her chances. Being this close so such a delicious man was tempting fate.

  But when he shook Rose’s hand as Willow introduced them, suddenly he posed no threat to Rose anymore. He’s gay. Good. He was far too beautiful to be straight, he wore a diamond stud in one ear, and Willow was saying,

  “This is Jesse Factor. Not only has he painted my portrait, he’s a well-known interior designer.”

  Well, that just tears it. He’s no threat to me. Maybe we could even be friends. Rose took a tall stool next to Jesse and ordered a Harvey Wallbanger as Jesse said humbly, “Oh, I don’t know about ‘well-known.’”

  Willow lightly shoved Jesse. “Oh, you are too well-known. He just came from designing one of Barry Manilow’s interiors here in town.”

  Rose giggled. She didn’t know if that was a good or a bad thing. “Well, Barry must spread the wealth fairly generously.”

  Jesse was a bit too humble. He stared into his drink that glowed even more electrically under the groovy cabana lights. “Barry wanted everything in the Hollywood Regency style. You know, a lot of black and white and tomato-red lacquered finishes, mirrors, tasseled pillows.”

  “That’s not your style?” Rose asked.

  “Not ideally. My favorite is the Desert Modern style, like the way Willow redid this motel. That’s why I came to Palm Springs. But Barry wanted Grauman’s Chinese Theater.”

  “Oh, yes!” cried Rose. “I love this style. I don’t know why, because I was born in seventy-nine, but this mid-century chic brings me back to a cozier, more comforting time.”

  “That’s what it’s designed for,” said Willow. She was already walking away, toward a breezeway that led to a cottage where she stayed when she didn’t go home to her ranch. “To send guests back to a happier and simpler time when all you needed was a Pink Squirrel—”

  “Or a Harvey Wallbanger.” Rose giggled.

  “—a few boulders, and an egg chair to be blissfully, ecstatically unaware of how awful life can be. Rose, show Jesse the menu in the lobby. You can send the purchase order tomorrow.”

  “A menu you designed?” Jesse stood as he swallowed the last few gulps of his electric drink. “You’re the chef, right?”

  “Not that sort of menu,” Rose said slyly.

  Rose already felt close to Jesse Factor as they skirted the sparkling swimming pool toward the lobby. He would be her first official male friend in Last Chance. Maybe he could introduce her to some of his other gay friends. Gay men weren’t threatening. There was no chance they would hurt her.

  Jesse was harmless, but damn, was he beautiful. It was almost a shame he was gay.

  Chapter Two

  Jesse Factor wasn’t gay.

  He wasn’t gay in the slightest. It was just that he was practically the only straight interior designer in America. Everyone assumed he was gay.

  And he probably had a sort of gay look. He gave off a gay vibe. That’s all Jesse could figure out, after years of men hitting on him, and women assuming he was a non-threatening gay man. He knew he was “pretty” with his café au lait skin, his eyes that turned from forest green to sky blue depending on what room he was in. He’d been told that enough times while modeling to put himself through the Rhode Island School of Design. It had mostly irritated him over the years to be so fucking misunderstood. He’d barely gotten a date that didn’t start with the line, “Oh, I thought you were gay.”

  It sometimes came in handy, like now. Willow had told him all about Rose. They had spent many hours together, Jesse and Willow, over at her Sunset Palomino Ranch, posing and painting. Most artists worked solely from photographs—and Jesse normally did, too—but he figured since they lived close by each other, why not try a different approach and do some of it live. After exhausting the details of their own lives—in Jesse’s case, a highly dull one—Willow had told him about her new chef, Rose Britton.

  Raised in Florida, Rose had graduated from a highfalutin culinary academy in New York. Since then, according to Willow, poor Rose had had “nothing but trouble with men.” There was the unhinged stalker who had come all the way from Jacksonville to New York City to demand the penny back he imagined he’d given her at a drive-through in high school. There were the countless guys who left her standing in the rain, abandoned on beaches, or sitting alone during the entire movie. There were epic asshats who’d only let her order an appetizer, dickheads who took her to dueling piano clubs, toolbags who made her hide in closets when the doorbell rang.

  Jesse had never pondered very long on just how shitastic straight men could be. He should be flattered that most people assumed he was gay. But now, entering the breezeway that led to the Searchlight’s lobby, Jesse was filled with fresh hope. He treated women way better than those turkeys who claimed their wives had agreed to an open marriage.

  “Do you stay here at the Searchlight?” Rose asked him.

  “Not that often. I just booked a room for tonight after having a couple too many drinks. I wasn’t in a very good mood until I met you.” Jesse held the glass door to the lobby open for Rose, and she repaid him with an adorable smile. She had those sculpted auburn eyebrows that looked painted on but weren’t, pillowy lips, and tousled hair. Jesse would love to do her portrait.

  “What put you in a bad mood?”

  Jesse sunk his hands deep in the pockets of his cargo pants. They stood in front of what was apparently the menu Willow had instructed them to see, a framed black glossy thing with pink lettering, tattered and beaten up. “Oh, the usual. Some guys with black fingernail polish and fake fur vests wouldn’t stop grabbing me at the nightclub.”

  “Oh? Which nightclub were you at?”

  Jesse had blown it. He didn’t want to tell Rose he’d been at the Racquet Club just down Manilow Avenue. It was a coed bondage dungeon. He hadn’t done anything, had just gone there out of boredom, and had fled the premises after seeing a guy who looked like Andy Richter waddling proudly around in a latex diaper, sucking on a pacifier. Nope. BDSM clubs aren’t my style.

  Jesse pretended he hadn’t heard the question. “So I came here, but wound up running into my boss, and—no kidding! Is this menu really what I think it is?”

  Jesse squinted and leaned closer. Yes, he’d seen correctly. The balloony, pink letters proclaimed excitedly:

  World Famous Sunset Palomino Ranch Bordello

  Not Just Sex—A Trip!

  “Yes,” said Rose in a hushed, reverent tone. “Willow found this menu in her motel office. The Searchlight used to be the Sunset Palomino Ranch Bordello until the mid-sixties. You wouldn’t believe all the artifacts she discovered in the Cesar Romero Room.”

  Jesse was actually staying in the David Niven Room. It featured a pair of burnt orange butterfly chairs, a UFO desk lamp with fiberglass shades, and atomic wallpaper so groovy it made Jesse dizzy.

  “The Best Fillies in California,” Jesse read. “This is incredible! Ranch Delights. Hand Relief Party, Spit Roast, Slippery Nipples—”

  “Bondage Dungeon. I think that was the Cesar Romero Room. She found a St. Andrew’s Cross in there, and several things called ‘spanking benches.’”

  Jesse didn’t want to think about bondage dun
geons after seeing that diapered fellow, so he kept reading the menu. “Feast at the Y. That sounds delicious.”

  “Oh,” sighed Rose. “I haven’t had that particular item in quite a while.”

  Jesse welcomed the chance to become more intimate with the head chef. “Ah, that’s too bad. No pretty woman like you should wait that long between feasts.”

  But Rose’s wistful look quickly shriveled and became bitter. “That’s okay. I’m not missing out on much, from what I’ve seen from my dates.”

  “Maybe they’re not doing it right.”

  Rose shrugged. “They’re not doing it at all is the problem. Now look at these two. Horse and Buggy, and Pony Express. Wouldn’t you think those were both the same thing?”

  Jesse chuckled. “Some kind of pony play. Maybe one is a cart pony, and one is a riding pony. What?”

  Rose was giving him a long, questioning, sideways glance. For a few moments Jesse wondered why she looked at him so oddly. Then it struck him.

  “Oh! No, not me! I don’t partake of that sort of thing. I’ve just heard about it, is all.” He was being honest. He was just lucky to convince a few female models that he wasn’t gay. He hadn’t been all about getting into the whole dark side of sex. He was just glad to have had a few Cream Pies or Milky Ways in his time—if “Milky Way” meant suckling on a woman’s boobs. He had just gone to the Racquet Club out of idle boredom, and because his boss was such an overbearing fuckwad. He was living in a cottage on the property of the guy currently paying him to decorate his house, but he had just needed to get away from there tonight.

  Rose giggled, and even patted Jesse on the bicep. “It’s okay, Jesse. I’m not seriously frowning on whatever it is you like. I mean, hey. My boss is living with two men and has her own private bondage dungeon.”

  Jesse dared to enclose Rose’s hand in his. “So you wouldn’t be averse to, say, a Neapolitan?”

  Jesse realized too late what he’d accidentally described. He’d just picked the first thing on the menu that grabbed his eye. He didn’t realize that a Neapolitan was probably a threesome involving an African-American person such as himself. He was quite self-conscious that he was one-quarter black. He’d been trained to be sensitive about it growing up whenever he’d left the American Embassy compound in Cairo where his father was an attaché. It wasn’t only other kids who had taunted him about being of mixed race. Adults, men and women, you name it. They all lobbed verbal bombs at him. And it wasn’t anything he could cover up. Even when he’d wrapped his head in a keffiyeh, he still looked like a blue-eyed, mixed-race Arab.

  He tried to divert her attention. “I mean, what do you think this Sex on the Beach involves?” He knew he was only acting even more nervous, as though he’d never been around a pretty woman before. “If it involves peach schnapps, I’m there, but who would want to do it in sand?”

  Rose didn’t remove her hand from his arm, though. “I think any girl in the world would be lucky to be smushed into a Neapolitan with you, Jesse.”

  Her look was warm and ardent. Could she possibly be one of the few women who had instantly known that he liked women? Jesse was encouraged. He put his hand back over hers. “That would be amazing, Rose. We wouldn’t even necessarily need…the other layer.”

  Jesse thought he was making progress. Suddenly he wasn’t so sure. “Oh, why not include Marilyn Monroe? You guys always admire her. Hell, even I might change teams if it involved Marilyn.”

  Jesse was so stunned and chagrined his heart seemed to stop. Haven’t I been through this enough times? When will it ever stop being such a shock to me that women jump to the conclusion that I’m gay? Taking a deep breath, he prepared himself for the explanation that should’ve been second nature to him by now. He took her by the shoulders. “Rose. This might be hard to believe, but I’m not gay. I’m not even bi. I’m as straight as a Roman road.”

  Rose actually gasped, and her eyes went round. “What?” she breathed.

  Now came the part where he needed to talk fast. “I know, I seem to have this gay ‘look,’ maybe because I dress well. I used to be a model. And now I’m a decora—”

  “—tor!” Rose cried out at the revelation. “I know, right? Did I just jump to a biased conclusion just because you’re an interior decorator? Oh my God, I can’t believe I just did that. It’s because my gaydar is never wrong, and I could’ve sworn—”

  “No.” Jesse removed his hands from her shoulders. “No. Don’t feel bad. Almost everyone makes the same mistake. It’s my skin, my eyes. I’m half Dutch.”

  Rose smacked herself on the chest. “Really? So am I! My father was born in Amsterdam!”

  Jesse couldn’t believe it. “So was my mother! In Utrecht, really. She met my father while he was in the diplomatic corps. That’s amazing! That’s where you get that beautiful cotton candy hair from.”

  Rose didn’t seem to want to talk about herself. “And that’s where you get those gorgeous Prussian blue eyes.”

  “Prussian blue. You know something about painting, or colors?”

  “We had some art classes at the Academy. But mostly, I’d just kill to have my portrait painted. How much did you charge Willow? How big is the painting?”

  Jesse was shocked. She was encouraging him, not pushing him away. After all Willow had told him about Rose’s shitty history with men, Jesse assumed she would be down on all men. Maybe he had a chance with her, after all. Already Jesse’s heart was leaping to fantasize about more than just a hookup with this bouncy, exotic woman. He was such a sap for love, having grown up with none, that he tended to race too fast into relationships. Already Jesse was envisioning proclamations of love with Rose Britton. And all he knew about her was that she had a bad history with men, she was a good chef, and she was half Dutch like him.

  “Oh, I only charged Willow my full fee because she insisted, and I know that her husband is a cattle rancher. But I know…you’re a chef…you shouldn’t pay the full fee.”

  “All right. Charge me a little less, like, give me your Indigent Discount.”

  Jesse doubted that even at a deep discount Rose could afford it, but he didn’t want to blow her off completely. “All right. Maybe you could give me a few extras with my meals to help pay for it. A little extra parsley for garnish or something.”

  Rose laughed adorably. “An extra pat of butter with your pancake sandwich.” Suddenly a soberness overcame her face and her eyes widened. “Jesse. You’re not thinking…”

  “What?” Jesse truly didn’t know what she referred to.

  Rose covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh! You weren’t thinking that I’d, you know, put out to get a cheaper painting?”

  Jesse frowned something fierce. “God, no! Oh, God, no, Rose! I don’t want you thinking that.” But he had been hoping something of that nature would happen. Deep shame overcame Jesse. Why do I strike out so often with women? Maybe I should just give up and become gay.

  Rose seemed almost as apologetic as Jesse felt. She shook him by the shoulders. “It’s not that I wouldn’t want to, in normal times, does that make any sense? But these aren’t normal times, Jesse. I…” And she pulled back, hugging herself, staring at the Sunset Palomino Ranch menu. “I’m celibate, Jesse. Have been for about a year. I just had too, too many awful experiences with men. None of the men ever seemed to see me as Number One, you know what I mean?”

  “I do.”

  Rose twirled to face Jesse again. “I want to be Number One, Jesse! I’m sick of being left standing in the rain, eating buffalo wings, waiting for a guy to come back from the bathroom! I’m sick of being Number Two—at the very best—after his mother, or cocaine, or his job. I want to be important, you know?”

  Jesse did.

  “I want to be the most important thing in a man’s life! I’m not saying you can’t do that—maybe you can—but right now I’m not even entertaining those notions because of so many crappy dates. Jesse, thanks to the nozzles and tools that came before you, thanks to the doofus who
brought me to his mother’s flower show or the guy who had to get home before his grandma locked him out of the basement, I’m now permanently ruined for all men.”

  “Not permanently ruined,” Jesse insisted, trying to keep his tone light and optimistic. “Don’t let a few toolbags throw you under the bus, Rose.” But inside he wasn’t so optimistic. Maybe that’s what I should become. Celibate. Now he had caused a woman to nearly cry.

  “I would love to make a little Neapolitan sandwich with you, Jesse, believe you me.” Her eyes brimmed with unshed tears. “You’re extremely handsome, and you seem sweet and sincere. I just have to focus on my job now. I think that’s the only thing that’s going to save me.”

  “That’s fine! I’d never press a girl in a million years, Rose. It was just an idea. Forget about it. Listen, let’s go back to the bar and have some more fluorescent drinks. I think we both need one.”

  Rose sniffed and wiped her eye with a finger. “Yes. You were saying you were stressed out, too. Something about your boss? Barry Manilow is stressing you out? Did you not give him the right sunburst-yellow velvet drapes?” She even giggled a little now.

  Jesse relaxed a bit, too. “Nah, I’m finished with Manilow. It’s the current asshole. We both agree overall on the style we’re using. Or, we did, at first. He seems determined to contradict me on every damned thing I come up with, even if it’s something he approved to begin with. I think he’s just an ornery fucker. I’m living in a stupid cottage on the grounds of his stupid estate so it’s not like I can even get away. Thus, why I was going to the Racquet—came into town to eat dinner.”

  “That sounds horrible. Yeah, I’m starting to not like living at the Searchlight. The Ocean’s 11 Room is great, you know, Magic Fingers in the bed, Coffee Host plugged into the bathroom wall and all, but I’m starting to feel claustrophobic.”