by Meg Benjamin
He rolled his beer bottle between his fingers. “When you were young and innocent? How long have you worked for them anyway?”
She sighed. “Two years. More like two and a half. Long enough to wise up anyway. How long have you been there?”
“Less than you. Maybe eighteen months. Enough for two cycles of Finding Miss Right.”
She gave him a dry smile. “And how long did you keep your innocence, Mr. Dewitt?”
He grinned again, his teeth flashing white in the darkened room. “I never really had any, Ms. McKellar. One conversation with Donovan pretty much took care of that.”
“Oh yeah, Glenn’s a full-on realist.”
“I thought we weren’t going to talk about work,” Paul said gently.
She sighed again. “Sometimes I don’t think I have much else to talk about these days. Fairstein sort of eats your life.”
“Only if you let it.” He watched her for a long moment. “Think of Salt Box as a two-day pass. It’s not your fault you’re here, well not entirely anyway.” He gave her another quick grin that made her pulse speed up slightly. “But you can’t go anywhere else. And Fairstein can’t expect much of you as long as you’re here in Salt Box and they’re up in Elkhorn Run. So relax.”
She tried a smile of her own. “Maybe I will.”
“No maybe about it.” He gave her a more definite grin. “Come on, dance with me.”
The jukebox kicked up a song she half recognized and that she sort of suspected was ABBA. Around her people were singing along as they danced. Across the room, Ronnie had a new partner. She still wore her platform sandals, but she seemed much more steady on her feet all of a sudden. She laughed, swinging her hips to the beat. Monica wondered briefly just what had been in that chocolate martini.
Billy Joe had found his own partner and was doing a version of dirty dancing for small spaces. Brendan sat at the bar, watching Ronnie morosely as he sipped his beer.
It wasn’t really a slow tune, but Paul pulled her into his arms anyway. His hand was spread across the small of her back, warm and solid, holding her against the hard muscles of his chest. His thighs brushed hers as they danced. She looked up into eyes the color of molten chocolate, his mouth curving up ever so slightly.
Relax. She suddenly had a suspicion that might be easier said than done.
They pretty much closed the bar. Of course, that might have been more impressive had the bar stayed open later than midnight, but Paul still took it as a mark of good times. The best time he’d had in a while, oddly enough. He paused on the threshold of the Blarney Stone, considering. He went out most nights when he wasn’t working—it was part of the business. Sometimes he went with somebody from work, sometimes by himself. Parties, clubs, industry stuff. But good times? No, not really. Not like this anyway.
Outside the night air was like a sharp blade cutting through his lungs—clear and cold. He hunched his shoulders and hoped mightily that Clark Denham or kind fate had found their luggage in the SUV and brought it to the Praeger House. He needed something heavier than the knit shirt he’d worn on the plane from L.A.
Monica walked beside him, her arms wrapped tight across her chest for warmth. He wished he had a jacket to offer her, but he didn’t think she’d appreciate the shirt off his back. Not when he’d been in it all day.
They hadn’t danced every song with each other. Each of them had partnered with the locals, and Monica had managed to coax Brendan off his barstool for some nineties line-dance thing. Paul had considered dancing with Ronnie as a good will gesture, but she’d developed a sizeable court of local guys and he’d decided to leave well enough alone.
He wondered briefly if he and Monica should have waited for her, but she’d been surrounded by admirers. Monica waved to her, but Ronnie had shaken her head, enjoying herself too much to leave. Surely she could find her way back to the Praeger House by herself—it wasn’t like the hotel wasn’t obvious, hanging on the hillside above them.
“Chilly,” Monica said. She sounded like she was trying to keep her teeth from chattering.
“It’s the altitude.” He stopped in front of her, running his hands up and down her arms quickly to warm them. Right. You’re really concerned about warmth here. The feel of his hands sliding along her skin was definitely making him warmer, and not just in the arms.
She caught her breath in a quick gasp.
He turned back toward the hotel, wrapping his arm across her shoulders so that he could pull her close to his body. For warmth, of course.
She tucked herself more tightly beneath his arm. “Maybe I should have waited until we got our luggage back from the SUV. At least I had a coat in the back.”
“We’re almost there. Just another half block or so.” He ran his hand up her arm again, although by now he was pretty sure neither one of them believed he was trying to keep her warm. The feel of her body tucked against his side was making him almost as lightheaded as the altitude.
Above them the row of lights across the hotel front glowed dull gold in the darkness. As they moved away from the downtown streetlights, the night seemed to envelop them. She paused, tipping her head back. “Look up.”
He raised his head, knowing what he’d see. The mountain night sky. The stars spilled across the expanse like a double handful of jacks, the moon glowing cold silver above the darker shapes of the peaks. “You can see even more when you’re farther away from town.”
“It’s like you can touch them.” She grimaced. “Everybody says that, I know. But what else do you say when you see something like this?”
“Me? I don’t say anything. I figure nothing I can come up with would do it justice anyway.” He pulled her slightly closer.
“And you’re a writer.” She turned toward him, her lips edging up into a grin.
For once in his life, he didn’t even pause to think. Thinking’s overrated anyway. He lowered his mouth to hers, running the tip of his tongue along her lips, breathing in her sigh when she opened to him.
He slid his arms to her waist, pulling her in so that their bodies touched. The warmth that began in his chest moved south rapidly, his body hardening again against hers. He heard her moan softly as he pressed harder, one hand at her shoulders, the other at the small of her back. Her legs opened against him, as she rubbed against his arousal.
He growled low in his throat, his hand dropping to the rounded cheeks of her behind.
He angled his head, taking the kiss deeper, spearing his tongue into her mouth as he felt her rise to him in return. Her hands were on his shoulders now, squeezing gently as she leaned into him. He reached up to pull them around his neck, then speared his fingers into her mass of butterscotch hair, her breasts full and warm against his chest.
After a moment, he pulled away from her lips and ran the tip of his tongue along the column of her throat, his breath warm against the coolness of her skin. He dropped one hand to cup her breast, finally feeling that perfect weight against his palm, his thumb moving across the hard pebble of her nipple through the smooth silk of her shirt.
Her breath rasped against his cheek. “We need to slow down a little,” she gasped.
“Why?” As far as he could tell, this was absolutely the right speed. A great speed, in fact. At this rate they’d be in bed within the next fifteen minutes.
“Because we’re both in a tough situation here, and we can’t do anything about this, even if we want to.” Her voice sounded almost choked.
Paul pulled back to stare at her, trying to shake his addled brain into something resembling coherence. “We can’t?”
“We can’t.” She stepped away from him slightly, closing her eyes as she fought for breath. “It’s way too cold to do anything outside, and we’ve both got roomies.”
Roomies. He closed his own eyes for a moment, willing his respiration to return to normal. Faisal. Ronnie. Life as we know it. Crap.
“Besides,” she said slowly, “this could be something like a shipboard romance. Extreme circumstan
ces and all. We could both wake up tomorrow wondering what the hell we were thinking. And then we’d have to find a way to get to Elkhorn Run without passing out from terminal embarrassment.”
Paul’s chest tightened. “You think that’s likely to happen?”
She stared up at him for a moment, her eyes dark in the moonlight, her lips edging up. “Seriously? No.”
He found himself smiling again. “So the problem is finding a room that isn’t full of other people?”
She sighed. “Yeah. Pretty much.”
He leaned his forehead against hers for a moment. “Let me think…”
“Monica?”
Monica jumped back from his arms, turning quickly toward the voice. Ronnie was trotting up the street toward them, or trotting as much as she could in those killer sandals.
“I lost track of you,” Ronnie said in a reproachful voice.
“Oh.” Monica stared at her. She looked like she was trying to think of something to say to that. Paul wished her luck. His body was screaming for her warmth.
“Who’s with you? Oh. Hi, Paul.” Ronnie gave him a glistening smile.
“I didn’t want to bother you,” Monica said quickly. “You looked like you were having a good time. I figured you didn’t need me hovering.”
“Well, since we came together, I thought we’d leave together too.” Ronnie wrapped her arms around her waist. “Gee, it’s cold. Why are you two still out here?”
She turned and started walking toward the hotel again, her arm linked in Monica’s.
After a moment, Paul followed them. “Just waiting for you, Ronnie,” he muttered.
Briefly, she glanced back. It could have been the darkness, but he could almost have sworn she winked at him.
And then they were through the front door, back to the Praeger House once again.
Chapter Nine
The morning sun seemed three times brighter than it needed to be. Monica peered across the room to where the crack in the curtains let in a sliver of light that hit her straight in the eyes. Ronnie still snored on her side of the bed, oblivious to sunlight, fresh air and other catastrophes.
Ronnie probably expected her to wait for breakfast until she woke up. Screw that. There was no way Monica could survive without coffee.
She pushed out of bed, careful not to bounce. Their bags had been waiting for them in the lobby when they’d gotten back last night. Now Monica rummaged through her suitcase in the dark until she found a pair of jeans and a clean T-shirt. Finding a sweater was probably beyond her at that point, but she just wanted clothes she could wear to the lobby for now anyway.
Maybe there’d be a pot of coffee sitting somewhere. If necessary, she’d hike over toward Main Street. Hell, everybody had Starbucks now, didn’t they?
She ducked into the bathroom, closing the door behind her so that she could turn on the light. Ronnie’s considerable collection of makeup spilled across the sink and onto the floor beside it. When she’d asked about her stuff, she hadn’t necessarily meant her clothes.
Monica washed her face and managed to unearth her brush from beneath two tubes of mascara. She thought about washing her hair and using the blow dryer to try to bake her curls into submission, but she didn’t want to take the time or risk waking Ronnie. Unfortunately, without the application of a blow dryer, her curls had a mind of their own. She made a few half-hearted swipes with her brush, but nothing was going to get her hair civilized. She decided she’d limit herself to a quick application of lip-gloss and head for the lobby.
She switched off the light and tiptoed toward the door, managing to stub her toe on a chair leg before she found her shoes. Ronnie muttered something and then seemed to sink deeper into dreamland.
There didn’t seem to be many people in the halls—fortunately. In the lobby the same iron-ribbed woman from last night stood behind the desk. Maybe she slept there.
“Good morning,” Monica murmured.
“Morning,” the desk clerk said, without looking up. “Breakfast room’s to the right.”
“Thanks.” Monica scuttled by, keeping her head down. She figured the fewer people who saw her in her natural state the better. She hadn’t gone out without makeup since college.
The blessed smell of coffee drifted from a door at the side, probably the promised breakfast room. She slid inside and stopped.
The room was full of people in flannel shirts, cargo pants, hiking shorts and T-shirts, all downing huge helpings of enough carbohydrates to give an Atkins devotee heart palpitations. A buffet line stretched across one wall, with a server at the end fixing omelets to order. She’d never seen so many people so cheerful so early in the morning. She felt as if she’d somehow stumbled into a workout video.
“Monica,” someone called. “Hey, Monica, over here.”
She turned to see Faisal sitting at a table at the side along with a pair of people who looked ready to tame the West single-handedly, given the amount of equipment hanging from the various loops and pockets on their cargo pants.
“Morning,” she mumbled.
“Morning. Grab a chair. The food’s great.”
Monica glanced at his plate and managed to repress a shudder. Pancakes, potatoes, eggs, bacon, something that looked like scalloped tomatoes. Normally, she ate toast and coffee for breakfast—on the rare occasions when she ate breakfast at all.
Five minutes later she’d managed to load her plate with a variety of foods she hadn’t eaten since she was a child. Blueberry muffins. Applewood-smoked bacon. Eggs over easy. And toast. Made of fresh-baked, seven-grain bread, of course, but toast nonetheless.
She settled down opposite Faisal. The other two people at the table had already left, probably to do something nauseatingly healthful. “So where’d you end up last night? Paul said you were in a bar.”
“Yeah, for about ten minutes. Denham told me he knew someone who might be able to fix the camera, so I went off to meet him.”
“And could he? Fix the camera, that is?”
Faisal shoveled in another bite of home fries. “Yeah. He sort of took it apart and put it back together. Turned out some of the connections were loose.”
“So is he some kind of photographer?”
He shook his head. “Don’t know. I think he used to be in the business. He talked like it. I got the idea he was a cameraman somewhere—maybe local news or something”
“What did he charge?”
“He didn’t. Said it was on the house.”
Monica frowned. People who did things for free always made her a little nervous. Probably because they frequently didn’t mean to do it for free after all, and the charge could be high. “That’s good. I guess.”
“Damn straight.” Faisal shoveled in another bite of eggs. “At least now Artie can’t come up with some way to take the repair bill out of my pay.”
She tore off a bit of her muffin and took a quick taste. Oh dear lord! It was possibly the best blueberry muffin in the known universe. Somehow she managed not to shove the rest of it into her mouth. “But now you’ll have to shoot some video of Ronnie and the guys having fun around town.”
“Yeah.” Faisal grimaced.
So much for the two-day pass Paul had promised her. Not that he was in any position to promise her anything. “I’ll try to set something up. Some kind of event for Ronnie and the guys, so you can film them doing stuff.”
Brendan and Billy Joe would probably be glad to be back in the game. Paul would hate it, of course. But she couldn’t let that influence her one way or the other. She really couldn’t.
And Ronnie. She thought of Ronnie last night, dancing with a bunch of men who had no idea who she was. They danced with her because she was a pretty girl, not because they’d been paid to compete for her hand. She’d seemed so happy. So…relaxed.
Monica stared down at the remains of the blueberry muffin in her hand. “Faisal, what if the camera hadn’t been fixed?”
“If it hadn’t…?” His forehead furrowed. “But it
was.”
She nodded. “I know. But if it hadn’t been fixed, you couldn’t take any shots, could you?”
He gave her a you-really-are-an-idiot look. “Why no, Monica, if the camera hadn’t been fixed, I could not take any shots.”
She took a quick breath. “So did you tell anybody else about it?”
“Nope. It took a while to put everything together. To tell you the truth, I haven’t been back to the room yet. I crashed on the repair guy’s couch for a couple of hours.” He narrowed his eyes. “Where are you heading with this anyway?”
“Maybe we could just pretend that the camera never did get fixed. After yesterday, I think we all could use a day to just kick back. Take it easy. With nobody watching.” She gave him the best smile she could muster. “We’ll be back on track when we go to Elkhorn Run. You can shoot lots of stuff there.”
He shook his head. “Glenn won’t be happy. He thinks I’m racking up hours of film here. When he finds out I’ve got nothing, he might fire me.”
“I won’t let him.” She thought about crossing her fingers when she said it. In reality, there was no way she could keep Glenn from doing anything. “I’ll tell him it was all my fault. I’ll tell him the camera got fixed too late to shoot anything here in town, and I didn’t think it was worth it to try.”
Faisal still didn’t look happy. “Then he might fire you.”
Monica waited for the shiver of dread that statement ought to inspire. It didn’t come. “If he fires me, he fires me. Just please don’t ask me to set up any stunts here in Salt Box.”
There was a moment of silence as Faisal seemed to consider the wisdom of what she’d just said—or more likely the idiocy. Then he shrugged. “Okay. Maybe I can shoot some stuff on my own. Some scenery or something. I might even do a few stills.” He pushed himself to his feet, coffee cup in hand.
“Thanks, Faisal.”
He shrugged. “Don’t thank me yet. Wait until you see what Glenn has to say.”
Monica could anticipate what Glenn would say, and it wasn’t pretty. Still, she wasn’t about to back down. Ronnie deserved a day to enjoy being a real belle before she had to be phony again. And before the tabloids plastered her face across the country so that someone, maybe a lot of someones, might recognize her even in Salt Box, Colorado.