Welcome to the Hush Hotel!

Quentin looked like sex

Living breathing sex. From the glint in his eyes that reminded Shandi of what they’d done last night, to the way his hair appeared to have been styled by a lover while she writhed beneath him.

Living breathing sex… As much as Shandi tried to focus on something else, she finally had to back away and sit down. And try not to drool.

Okay, it wasn’t that bad. She tried her best to remain analytical, almost critical. Like a spectator watching a show.

Nothing. It wasn’t working. All she could think about was getting her hands on Quentin, kissing him, tearing off his clothes. That and the way he made her laugh and hope, the way he teased her…

He was a good man and he cared about her future, her happiness. About her.

And seeing him now, straddling the bar chair in reverse, his arms braced along the top, his feet hooked on the rungs, the fit of his clothes revealing the body beneath…

Oh, but she was in such serious trouble here.

Dear Reader,

One of the things I most love about writing for Harlequin Blaze is the chance to work on miniseries with other authors. I first did it with Jo Leigh and Isabel Sharpe on MEN TO DO. This time, for DO NOT DISTURB, we’ve shared the good fun with Nancy Warren, Debbi Rawlins and Jill Shalvis. It’s amazing what can happen when the pot of imagination is stirred by so many creative minds.

Kiss & Makeup, my contribution profiling the erotic boutique hotel Hush, tells the story of bartender Shandi Fossey, who’s come to New York for a career as a makeup artist. She’s excited, optimistic and she runs smack-dab into the cynical Quentin Marks.

Yes, that Quentin Marks. The same one you met in my 1999 fifteenth anniversary Harlequin Temptation, Four Men & a Lady. Quentin is older, wiser and much more pessimistic than any man should be. And he’s ready to go home to Austin, to leave the limelight of his Grammy-winning career behind. Except now that means leaving Shandi, as well.

I hope you enjoy their story, and that you’ll visit all of us at www.hush-hotel.com for an inside peek at Hush. And don’t forget to check out my special linked online story at eHarlequin.com. Finally, look for the next DO NOT DISTURB story, Private Relations by Nancy Warren, available in October.

Best,

Alison Kent

With great fondness and respect to the hardworking, hard brainstorming, hard-to-beat friends who made this project so much fun: Jo Leigh, Isabel Sharpe, Nancy Warren, Debbi Rawlins and Jill Shalvis. Uh, let’s not do it again any time soon! Also to Birgit Davis-Todd for helping to pull the project together. I’ll call Hush and make reservations for seven, k?

Kiss & Makeup
Alison Kent

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

1

TO SHANDI FOSSEY, THE SKY was the limit. And if there was one thing she missed about Round-Up, Oklahoma, that was it. The sky. Pinpoints of white light twinkling in an inky black bowl. Cotton-ball clouds scooped high on a pale blue plate. Butter spreading at dawn. Orange Julius at sunset.

The sky above Manhattan was about wedges cut between buildings, streetlights reflected in windowpanes and flashing neon colors—or so it seemed, sitting as she was, cross-legged and lights-off in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows of her sixth-floor West Village apartment at three-thirty in the morning.

But that was okay. The wedges thing. Really. Because there were lights a whole lot brighter and much more meaningful here in the Big Apple than found anywhere in the sky over Oklahoma.

And that was why she was here, wasn’t it? For the lights on Broadway as well as those off. The theaters and cabarets, sets and stages and clubs. All of those myriad places offering canvases for her work.

Eyelids and lashes and lips. Brows and cheekbones. The slope of a nose. The line of a jaw. These were the landscapes she transformed, shaping and coloring and creating, turning the ordinary into the fantastic with her brushes and sponges, her pots and tubes and jars of colors and creams.

She leaned her upper body to the left, stretching dozens of muscles as she draped her right arm as far as she could over her head and down toward the floor. Her shift as bartender at Erotique in the hotel Hush meant long hours on her feet at least five nights a week, many times six.

Afterward, unwinding beneath her own personal wedge of what sky she could see had become her routine. She enjoyed the silence, the dark, the sense of so much life teeming around her—even though what life she could see from here was so very, very still.

She imagined patrons talking long into the night, discussing and arguing over the shows they’d seen. She pictured the ushers, hostesses and attendants waiting for the venues to empty so they could kick off their shoes, along with their frozen smiles.

She thought of the actors easing out of their roles much as she eased from hers when she sat here each night, leaving behind the Shandi who mixed martinis and margaritas for Erotique’s sophisticated clientele and slipping—reluctantly? regretfully? naturally?—back into the role she’d lived so long.

That of a long-legged, willowy cat’s tail of a filly from Oklahoma—the description she’d been tagged with by the beer-and-whiskey crowd at the Thirsty Rattler, her family’s bar in the small town of Round-Up.

One of these days she would figure out which of the two women she was, whether she needed to make a choice between them or combine them. Had she left Oklahoma to encouraging farewells instead of predictions that she’d return in six months, her tail tucked between her legs, she might find that integration a whole lot easier.

As it was, there was a big part of her that just couldn’t let go of the doubts planted by her family when she’d announced her decision to leave Round-Up for a life in New York City.

For the last year she’d been pursuing a bachelor of science degree in cosmetics and fragrance marketing at the Fashion Institute of Technology. During that time she temped for a living—most recently at the law firm of Winslow, Reynolds and Forster—until hearing whispers around the office about the opening of Hush.

And for the same very long year she’d been satisfied with the status quo of her studies, her work schedule and her friends, needing nothing more. Or so she had thought.

Until tonight, when he had sat down at the bar.

She realigned her body to stretch her left side, her fingertips hovering over the hardwood floor at her right hip. Oh, but if he hadn’t been the most gorgeous thing she’d ever seen. Better even than the actor from that television show about Navy investigators, who had stayed at Hush during the hotel’s grand opening.

Only this guy was real, not an elusive Hollywood fantasy. One who’d wanted to talk to her. Thankfully Erotique had been busy beyond belief, giving her a legitimate excuse to walk away and catch her breath when their flirtation took on a sexually dangerous edge, as it had so quickly.

At least walking away had worked tonight.

But he was a guest at Hush, meaning the odds were that she would be seeing him again. And the bar wouldn’t always be as hopping as it had been this evening. He was going to lose interest if she couldn’t get her act together and keep her mind—and her ever-wavering sense of self-worth—out of Round-Up.

Keeping her mind out of the bedroom was an entirely separate matter. It was hard to talk to the man when she couldn’t stop herself from thinking about getting him out of his clothes, but that’s exactly how she’d spent a large chunk of the night’s long shift.

His hair was blond, or had been when he was younger. It had darkened, leaving him with lo-lights instead of high. And it was long, a bit wavy—a leonine mane. He wore it pulled back and wore a goatee and soul patch, as well.

His smile twinkled. His eyes twinkled. His personality, too. She’d had the best time exchanging bantering quips and innuendo. She’d appreciated his wit. Appreciated, too, calls from the other patrons allowing her to step away and gather her thoughts while mixing drinks and serving.

She’d asked him what had brought him to the city and to the hotel. He’d told her it was a business trip—the business of money, music and women. She’d teased back that she wasn’t much for helping him with the first two, but the third….

For a long moment then he’d held her gaze, and she’d imagined his fingers that were slowly stroking his glass stroking her instead. Her body had responded, her filmy bra beneath her sleeveless black tuxedo shirt doing little good to keep her private thoughts private. He’d noticed. He’d lifted his drink, his eyes on her as he’d swallowed, his throat working, his jaw taut, the vein at his temple pulsing.

Blood had pulsed through her body, too. It did the same now as she remembered the way he’d looked at her. As if he wanted to strip her bare, to eat her up, to discover how well their bodies fit together, to devour her once he had.

And then she wondered if he truly understood where it was he was staying. How perfect a setting Hush made for a steamy affair.

She smiled as she thought of the words the media had used to describe the hotel when it had initially opened. The brainchild of heiress Piper Devon, Hush had been called the place for the young, the rich and the horny. Shandi, of course, knew it was much more than that—no matter the truth to the adage that sex sells. The business of Hush wasn’t as much sex, however, as it was sensuality.

Rich perfumes were found in each room’s candles, bath salts, shower gels and massage oils. Private video cameras, video collections and boxes of stimulating toys encouraged tactile intimacy. Whether enjoying a midnight swim by moonlight in the rooftop pool or the basement sofa bar’s music and erotic performance art, guests were guaranteed privacy, discretion and the freedom to explore.

Then there was the pure visually artistic appeal of the place. The hotel’s vintage and original artwork made for the perfect complement to the 1920s art-deco theme done in black, pink, gray and sea-foam green. What Hush was could only be described as a luxurious feast for the senses.

And at that, Shandi’s thoughts returned to the man she’d met tonight at the bar. Yeah, she mused, sighing deeply as she stretched out both legs in front of her, leaning forward to grab her toes. Another very long shift lay ahead. And she was already anxious to get back to work, to see him again. And for a simple reason, really.

He was the first man since her arrival in New York to have her thinking beyond work and school to the physical things that occurred between a man and a woman. Those things she wanted. Those things she missed. Those things she hadn’t taken time to pursue since moving here and settling in and scheduling every hour of every day of her way-too-busy life.

When she heard a key in the front door behind her, she screwed up her mouth and shook her head. Speaking of busy, at least she didn’t have class tomorrow until noon. Evan Harcourt, her roommate, who was in FIT’s master’s program in illustration, having switched gears after years spent in photography, had to be on campus at eight.

Silly man, keeping the working and dating schedule he did, even now at the beginning of September’s new term. She waited until he’d closed and locked the door before speaking.

“The things men do for love.”

Evan jumped, cursed swiftly and under his breath. “I swear, Shandi, if I end up dead from a heart attack, I’m going to kick your ass.”

She listened to his steps as he crossed the room. “That’ll be hard to do from the grave. Unless you come back as Angel or Spike.”

“Smart-ass,” he mumbled, dropping to his haunches behind her and massaging her shoulders, as was his routine when finding her here after work. “I’ll get April to do it for me then. Vengeance and all that.”

“Hmm,” Shandi murmured, halfway pondering Evan’s shaky romance, halfway out of her mind with a pleasure that was purely platonic.

April Carter, Evan’s girlfriend for a year now who was majoring at FIT in jewelry design, had definitely lucked out, snagging a man with amazingly talented hands.

And that thought had Shandi’s mind returning again to Erotique and picturing the way he had used his hands tonight, holding his glass, stroking the crystal tumbler the way she’d wanted him to hold and stroke her.

With a sigh she returned to the moment. “What makes you think April would lift a finger on your say-so? Your dead say-so at that? You can’t even get her to introduce you to her parents.”

At her prodding of a sore spot that was none of her business, Evan backed off and away. “What’s that? Your shoulders aren’t aching tonight as usual?”

Grr. “That dead ass-kicking you’re threatening me with? You’re about to see the real-life version if you don’t bring those hands back over here now.”

“Oh, well, when you ask so nicely…” The sentence trailed, but he did scoot in behind her and resume the massage for which a licensed masseuse would charge a night’s worth of Shandi’s tips, if not more.

She supposed she really shouldn’t rag on Evan about his romance with April. On the one hand, the couple had everything going for them—and had ever since the night a year ago when they’d met at the Starbucks where Evan still worked, though he’d since moved up into management.

Shared interests, similar goals, amazingly compatible personalities. An attraction undeniable by anyone who spent time in the same room with the two—even if they stood on opposite sides.

On the other hand, April’s family weighed down the scales until even Shandi doubted that Evan and April’s romance could weather the storm brought on by the Carters’ expectations as to what made an appropriate marriage match.

Sometimes love just wasn’t enough—a truth that strangely brought her thoughts back to him one more time. And for the first time to a subject other than sex.

He was obviously high powered enough, wealthy enough, well enough connected to be staying at Hush. And that meant what? He’d take one look at Shandi Fossey from Round-Up, Oklahoma—only one, in his rearview mirror—and that would be that? The end of her own fantasy fling?

And why was she even going there? What did it matter what he thought? Especially when she wasn’t looking to do anything more than get him out of his designer duds and into her bed.

You can take the girl out of Oklahoma, Shandi, but Oklahoma stays forever in the girl.

“Yes, Daddy,” she grumbled under her breath. “I hear you loud and clear.”

“Talking to yourself again?” Evan asked.

Her head bobbed with the motion of his hands when he kneaded the base of her skull. “Thinking about you and April.”

“Funny. I could’ve sworn you were calling me Daddy.”

She couldn’t help but grin. “If I were going to call anyone Daddy, it would be this guy tonight who spent most of my shift sitting at the bar.”

“Hmm. A sugar daddy with one foot on a banana peel and one foot in the grave?”

Shandi swung around and swatted Evan’s shoulder. “Hey, that’s so not funny.”

He shifted to face her, one wrist draped over one raised knee as he sat. “No, but you and I are in the same broke-as-a-beggar boat.” He grinned, his smile bright in the room’s low light. “Why do you think I’m dating April?”

“If you say for her money, I’m going to hit you again, buddy.” Shandi did her best schoolteacher finger shake. “Besides, you’re not exactly a pauper.”

“My grandmother’s not a pauper, you mean. I’m poorer than dirt.”

And Shandi knew that really he was. That his grandmother let him—and by association let her—live rent-free in this, one of several apartments she owned in the city. As long as he paid his own way through school.

And as long as he didn’t live with April in sin.

No grandson of Ellen Harcourt’s was going to take up with a girl who’d never had to work for a thing in her life.

“Do you think it matters?” Shandi asked him. “Being attracted to someone totally out of your league?”

“Are you talking about me and April? Or you and banana man?” When she glared, he went on. “Being attracted, no. Who can help it?”

“Those of us not thinking with a penis?”

“That’s bull, Shandi. A woman’s just as likely to make a move because she wants in a guy’s pants as a guy is. Uh, as a guy is who wants in a woman’s pants. Whatever. You know what I mean.”

Shandi chuckled. Then sobered, thinking more about her mystery man’s eyes, more about his hungry, burning look, the devastating way she’d found herself wanting to help him get her naked.

Dear Lord, she was losing her mind. “Is that a bad thing? Wanting in a guy’s pants?”

Evan blew out a breath heavy with his reluctance to talk. Had she been prying about baseball, he’d be animated and all up in her face yammering on about the Yankees.

Instead he pulled up his other knee and rolled down to lie on his back, feet flat on the floor, his head pillowed on his wrists, his dark hair sweeping the cherry wood planks.

“I’m waiting over here,” she finally said, once again sitting cross-legged.

“It’s still a double standard, Shandi—the women a guy takes to bed and the one he takes home.”

That particular truth really sucked, yet in this case it was more the reverse of the situation that she couldn’t let go. She shouldn’t be so hung up, but with Evan and April both her very best friends, it was hard to think of either hurting the other. Or either getting hurt.

Her concern was strictly that of a friend in the middle. A sucky place to be. “So why doesn’t April take you home? She doesn’t want her parents to know she has a lover?”

He waited a long time before answering, clearing the hesitation from his throat before he did. “April and I aren’t lovers. And if you tell her I told you that, the ass-kicking switches into high gear.”

What? Speechless. She was absolutely speechless, her mouth as dry as a bone. April hadn’t once hinted that she wasn’t sleeping with Evan. She’d hinted at quite the opposite, in fact.

“I don’t get it. You’ve spent the night over there—”

“On the couch.”

Unbelievable. “Not in her bed?”

“Nope.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

“Huh.” Shandi didn’t even know what to say. “Has she said why? I mean, I’m assuming you’ve tried or told her you want to.” And then a pause as she thought. “You do want to, right? Or is this more of that double-standard thing?”

“Do we have to talk about this? I’ve got class in four hours.”

“Drawing? Skip it.” He wouldn’t, and she ought to let him off the hook, but he was her only window into the male psyche.

The only one whose brain she could pick about what to do with her crush on tonight’s customer. “I need to know what men think.”

“Why?” He turned his head sharply. “Are you planning to hit on banana man?”

She shoved at his closest knee, rocking both of his legs. “Would you stop calling him that?”

“What’s his name?”

“Quentin.”

“And you want to sleep with him.”

“I don’t know.” She did, of course, hating how these ridiculous double standards men embraced labeled her because of that want. “He intrigues me. That’s all.”

“Right.” A snort. “It’s not like you want to do him because he’s hot.”

Okay, yes, there was that. An attitude she’d always shared with April. Or so she’d thought. But if April wasn’t even sleeping with Evan, the man she loved…

This complicated love and sex and lust business was for the birds. Shandi wanted things plain and simple, to act on her attraction to Quentin without having him think less of her for doing so.

Because what he thought of her mattered just as much as having him want her. “Okay. I admit it. I’m obviously a hopeless slut.”

“Sluts are good.”

She groaned with frustration, then lay back beside Evan. “Good when I’m the slut in question. Just not when it’s April.”

“Shandi, this conversation is putting me to sleep.”

She ignored him. “You know I’m going to have to rag on April for not telling me the truth.”

“What?” Evan perked up. “She told you we were having sex?”

Good. The reaction she’d wanted. “No, but she let me think so. Heck, you let me think so. I mean, I don’t get it, but if her not sleeping with you makes her a better catch—”

“It’s not about her being a better catch.” He sighed. “It’s just that by the time we realized we were more than friends, we were such good friends we didn’t want to ruin it by sleeping together. Not until we were sure it was more.”

“It is more, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. It’s more.” This time his sigh was pure poetry.

And hers pure envy. She wanted that same more. She really, truly wanted that very same more. “So this guy at the hotel. Quentin. I shouldn’t sleep with him then.”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether you’re interested in more than his banana.”

QUENTIN MARKS STOOD STARING out the window of his sixteenth-floor suite. He had a meeting at nine. He needed to be in bed. Check that. He needed to be asleep.

Except, being in bed made him think of being there for sex and being there with Shandi Fossey.

He had never met a woman with legs like those of Erotique’s bartender. And that was saying a lot considering the legs he’d seen in his lifetime.

A man didn’t get to be a Grammy-winning record producer without being subjected to a hell of a lot of exposure—perpetrated by women—and more than a few men—wanting his attention, looking to gain an industry in. Using him. Willing to do anything, give him anything, promise him the sexual moon if he would simply listen to their demo, make an introduction, reveal the secrets to success he was a greedy bastard for keeping to himself.

Yeah. He was a bastard all right. A bastard because he looked out for himself, he mused, stepping from the corner room’s window to the balcony overlooking Madison Avenue and pulling open the French doors. The night air was muggy, the lights muted, the noise level low enough that he had no trouble hearing his thoughts.

He wasn’t sure if that was good or bad considering lately his thoughts were all about getting back to Austin. And until he took care of business here, made his deals, got what he wanted, he couldn’t go back. He couldn’t go home.

Home.

He sighed, drained the rest of the brandy that room service had delivered, compliments of management. Quentin had to admit the rumors were true. Hush was the place to stay—even if he’d originally planned to stay elsewhere.

It was the hotel’s name that had drawn him. It had drawn his assistant’s attention, as well; she’d been the one to show him its promotional material. Later she’d shown him the write-up in the New Yorker profiling the Devon hotel empire and this newest venture that was run—quite successfully—by the daughter, Piper, whose wild-child reputation was one those in the business knew well.

He’d flipped through both the brochure and the magazine, curious, not as interested in the amenities as much as the privacy said amenities obviously entailed. He wanted his visit to the city to be a quiet one. He wanted to get in, get his business done and get out without a lot of fanfare. He was winding down that part of his life, the one that kept him in the limelight.

He’d reserved the hotel’s basement conference center for two separate meetings tomorrow—uh, make that today—as well as more later in the week. In the past he’d never had reason to be as involved with the industry’s money men as he was now.

But now he had to be. Now was all about his own studio. The Marks label: Markin’ It Up. Finally setting himself up in Austin and going home to stay. Making that dream happen was why he was here. Getting the backing he needed wasn’t going to be the problem. Deciding who he wanted behind him was.

Right now, however, the thought forefront in his mind wasn’t about financing but about sex. As strange as it sounded, as strange as it felt, his studio plans had kept him too busy these last months to do more than mentally indulge.

Now he wanted more. Now he wanted Shandi. A woman he shouldn’t have wanted at all. They hadn’t talked much in the way of specifics; no real getting-to-know-you conversation had found its way into their back-and-forth.

But what she had told him was enough to have made him want to push back from the bar and do his drinking elsewhere. In a quiet corner. At a dark table. Away from her smile and her big blue eyes. But he hadn’t. He’d stayed there with her and drunk her up, too.

She was majoring in cosmetics and marketing, headed for a career—she hoped, the marketing was a fall-back plan— in the theater, in film, in music videos. Wherever she could find work as a makeup artist in the entertainment industry. The marketing was a fall-back plan.

His industry.

An industry that crushed dreams daily.

He’d been lucky to live his. Others weren’t so lucky. Most weren’t so.

She was a clichéd breath of fresh air when he was used to inhaling lungfuls of jaded cynicism.

Hell, these days he didn’t even like listening to himself think, what with the way his own thoughts were so polluted. He didn’t blame Shandi for not sticking around for more conversation beyond the flirting they’d done. He knew he’d been nowhere near as entertaining as her animated responses had made him out to be.

Then again, he wasn’t blind, deaf or dumb to where her attention tended to drift when she’d thought him not looking, when she’d feigned interest in the other bar patrons.

That interest was what was keeping him up, keeping him awake, keeping him from listening to his years of experience and the common sense that came with it.

He was hard-bitten; she was exuberantly optimistic. He was turning his back on the bright lights of the big city she so openly embraced.

He was weary of witnessing the implosion of dreams. She wore hope with the same authority, the same familiar comfort with which she wore her uniform of tuxedo pants and shirt.

And all he could think about was getting her out of the one without damaging the other.

2

Attention: EVERYONE!

The cocktail napkins are NOT to be used to clean up spills or for handkerchiefs, makeup cloths or whatever picnics you have going on in the bar’s back room.

BRING YOUR OWN BOUNTY OR BRAWNY!

Armand & Shandi

QUENTIN IMPATIENTLY WAITED for Shandi to begin the evening shift at the bar.

It had been midafternoon before he’d finished the second of his scheduled meetings and accompanied his business advisor and the bank’s trio of officers from the basement conference center to the lobby.

The group had lingered long enough sharing financial war stories that Quentin had finally suggested a drink—a multipurpose suggestion. He’d felt like a fool paying more attention to the comings and goings in the bar than to the conversation.

At least in the bar his distraction wouldn’t be as obvious, his obsession as apparent. By the time the others had left an hour later, however, Shandi still hadn’t put in an appearance. Quentin then decided on an early and solitary dinner.

He’d convinced the hostess in the hotel restaurant, Amuse Bouche, to seat him where he had a clear view of Erotique. He finally caught sight of Shandi, of course, the minute his server walked away after placing his salad of seared Norwegian salmon, mixed greens, cucumbers and yellow-pepper vinaigrette on the table.

His first instinct was to rush through his meal and hurry into the bar. But then he realized how very much he enjoyed simply looking at her, watching her and doing it while she remained unaware. He usually didn’t have the benefit of flying under the radar and he took full advantage.

She looked completely at ease, dodging the other bartender, weaving in and out and around as they both filled orders, mixed drinks, poured, served and chatted up patrons. She smiled and laughed, her face expressive and engaged, fresh. She enjoyed herself as she worked. It showed. He liked it. And he found himself relaxing while he ate.

He took his time and let his anticipation build. He tasted little of the food on his plate and didn’t touch the complimentary wine a female diner sent over. It wasn’t food or drink his appetite required. And he didn’t want to feel obligated because of the gift and get caught up by a conversation in which he had zero interest.

His only interest was Shandi. Thing was, he wanted more from her than sex. He wanted to see her smile for him, at him, because of him. He wanted to share her optimism, her outlook, her disposition. And then he wanted it all so suddenly that the distance between them was too much, the wait unnecessary.

He signaled for his server, paid for his meal and headed for Erotique.

“How did your meetings go?” Shandi asked as he hoisted himself up onto one of the funky black chairs at the half-moon-shaped bar and leaned against the inverted-triangle back.

The lights above, a strangely cool pink shining down from nested fixtures, turned her blond hair nearly white. Until she cocked her head. And then all he could think about was cotton candy.

He wrapped his hand around the highball glass she set in front of him, focusing on the drink she was pouring instead of her sweetness and the way he wanted her. “Well enough, I suppose. As meetings go.”

She laughed lightly, a soft lyrical sound of crystal and bells. “Doesn’t sound like meetings are much your thing.”

He shrugged. “Depends on the topic.”

“And this one was?” she asked, nodding toward another customer who signaled for a drink.

“Money,” Quentin said, ice clinking on glass. She gazed at him quizzically before stepping away to deliver the bourbon-and-rocks.

He studied her as she moved, as she talked, taking care of her customer, appearing to give the man her full attention yet all the while aware of the needs of the other bar patrons.

He wondered how long she’d been serving drinks, if it was experience tending bar or her natural ease with people that made her efforts seem effortless.

Then he wondered why Hush had her wearing pants when the business of the hotel was eroticism and the length of her legs defined the word.

He could not get enough of the way she walked, of the sway of her hips, the curves of her ass in motion. He’d settled into this particular seat two nights in a row now for that very reason.

From here he had a clear view of the length of the bar and beyond. And watching her was quickly becoming his favorite pastime.

When she returned to where he was sitting, she picked up their conversation right where she’d left it, asking, “You don’t like money?”

“If it’s mine, sure. If it’s not…” He left the sentence hanging and shrugged. “I don’t like being obligated.” He also didn’t like talking business when he wanted to get to know her.

“Ah, you don’t like being in debt, you mean.”

This time he shook his head and laughed as much to himself as for her. “A necessary evil, unfortunately.”

“Tell me about it.” She waved over his head at a cute Gwyneth Paltrow look-alike walking through the lobby. Her eyes danced as she smiled. When he asked, she answered, “That’s Kit.”

“A friend?”

“She’s the director of public relations. We’re forever comparing our student loans that rival the national debt. And I’ll probably be paying mine off with my retirement fund since I waited so late to get up the guts to start school.”

Hmm. “Why did you need guts to start school?”

“If you want that story, you’ll be here all night,” she replied, a teasing lilt to her voice, a suggestion—one that seemed to be an invitation he do just that. That he insist she tell him. That he stay with her all night.

He wanted to. He just didn’t want to do it here. Not with an audience. Not when his room upstairs put a sheikh’s palace to shame. So he simply lifted a brow and tapped his fingers on the side of his glass.

Shandi rolled her eyes, her grin charming him, her reluctance intriguing him, her coy flutter of lashes too cute to be anything but real. “You’re going to stick around until I tell all, aren’t you?”

“I don’t have a single place to go or another person to see.” She might be teasing him, but the reservation in her voice convinced him not to press any button that would send her skittering away. “I’d say you’re stuck with me.”

She shook her head slowly, leaned into the corner. Leaned close to him. Still not quite comfortable, but near enough that he knew she wanted to stay.

One dark blond brow arched upward. “Okay, but consider yourself warned. Because when you fall out of your chair from boredom and need stitches on the back of your head, I won’t be held responsible.”

“Got it,” he said and fought back a grin.

She took a deep breath. “It wasn’t so much starting school that required the guts as it was moving here against my family’s wishes to go. I already had an associate’s degree, which I wasn’t using, by the way—”

“Why not?”

She stared at the bar’s surface, rubbed away a water spot instead of looking at him when she spoke. “Because my parents claimed to need my help at work.” She shrugged, gestured with one hand. “They own a bar. Though compared to Erotique, the Rattler’s really more of a saloon.”

“The Rattler?”

“The Thirsty Rattler.” Her grin returned, though almost reluctantly, a shy self-deprecation. “Yeah. If you can believe it.”

He believed it and he pictured it and had no problem doing either. “Your accent’s not quite Texas….”

“Oklahoma,” she provided. “Round-Up, Oklahoma.”

“We’re almost neighbors then. Except Oklahoma’s still a long day’s drive from Austin.”

“And I don’t live in Oklahoma anymore.”

He nodded his touché, wondering what about Oklahoma had driven her away, because he was certain that’s what had happened. “So your parents wanted you to stay and work. You wanted to leave and study. Either way, someone was going to end up being unhappy.”

“That about covers it.” She curled her fingers into her palm and considered her nails. “Though I’m not sure unhappy is the word I would use.”

He sat back in his chair, crossed his hands behind his head. “What word would you use?”

She laughed then. “Depends on who I’m describing.”

“Then describe yourself.” He was interested in Shandi, not her family. Especially considering her reluctance to talk about herself.

That trait made him all the more curious; most women wanted to tell him every detail of their lives, more than he cared or wanted to know.

He prodded her to go on. “If you’d stayed in Oklahoma, you’d be…what? Bitter? Resentful?”

Nodding, she smoothed a hand back over the hair she wore in a long French braid. “And guilty for feeling either one.”

“Because they’re your family.”

She smiled, the lift of her lips seeming to be more for her own benefit than his. “They may not have my best interests at heart, but I gotta love them anyway. They are who they are, ya know?”

Then she continued, the rush of words making him wonder how long she’d been holding in what came out as frustration. “And it’s not even about my interests. They don’t think that way. The family has always been one entity. The Fosseys. We’re not individuals. No one is expected to think outside that communal box. The fact that I did…”

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.”

She tugged. He moved in, one more step that brought him near enough to feel the ragged breath she released. “Unless my telepathic reception was off and you weren’t begging for a rescue.”

Cute. Very cute. Covering her nerves with cocky bravado when at this distance he could see the sheen of perspiration on her skin.

He took the handset away from her and hung it in place without anything close to a struggle. “No. I was begging. And thank you for the save.”

She shrugged, then tucked her hands behind her. “All in a day’s work.”

“I’ve heard that about your profession.”

“Hey, what’s a bartender for but to hear confessions and intervene on behalf of those seeking salvation?”

Salvation. Was that what drew him to her? The idea that she possessed the secret to saving him from sliding deeper into his cynical pit? “Well, you do deliver a truly religious experience.”

“I aim to please.”

God, but her face was amazing. Her smile wide and dimpled. Her eyes reflecting lights found nowhere in the room. Wisps of baby-fine hairs framed her face, and he found himself reaching up, smoothing several where they brushed her temple.

There were so many things he wanted to know about her, to ask, to hear her tell him in that soft Oklahoma voice. He didn’t know which to ask first, and so in the end he said nothing. He simply stroked the bare shell of her ear.

“You’re staring, Quentin,” she said, her voice a whisper.

He blinked, pulled his hand away, clenched his fingers. Most women visibly preened beneath his stare. Shandi’s soft accusation intrigued him almost as much as the hint of a blush on her cheeks.

“So,” he began, backing a step away, needing even that little bit of distance in order to avoid seeming as if he was only here to get his hands on her. “What’s next?”

She crossed her arms over her chest, a move more protective than defensive. “What do you mean?”

He nodded in the direction of the bar. “I’m assuming you need to get back to work.”

“I do,” she said almost in relief.

“And I can’t stay here forever.”

“You can’t.”

“And if Mrs. Cyprus is still drinking me into the poorhouse,” he added with a pained grin, “I’m not going back out there.”

Shandi held up one finger and pushed open the bar door far enough to look out. When she stepped back, two impish dimples belied her somber tone. “She is. Though I will be sure to tell her you’ve settled your tab with regrets.”

What he was regretting was that tonight’s time with Shandi was coming to an end. That he hadn’t yet managed to throw out a great line that would reel her in.

He’d been the pursued, the proverbial trophy for so many years that he couldn’t even remember how to bait a damn hook—proving again how very much he needed this change in his life.

And then Shandi asked, “Do you ever get used to it?”

“Used to what?”

“The groupies? The fame hunters? Whatever you call them?”

So now she was a mind reader, too? Unbelievable. “If you mean the I’ll-stroke-yours-if-you’ll-stroke-mine come-ons, then yeah. I’m used to it.” He took the admission further. “These days I’m surprised when it doesn’t happen.”

He’d grown used to women’s scrutiny; it came with the job and the looks, and there had been a time he’d embraced the attention for the perk it was.

But he was long past that place in his life, past taking advantage of offers or free glasses of wine, past welcoming the advances, past defining his success by how often he was recognized.

“And here I was just thinking how lucky you are to have turned your passion into a successful career.”

He liked that she’d been thinking of him. But the last thing he wanted to inspire in her was sympathy. He shoved his hands in his pockets and shrugged. “Look, I’ll be in the city till the first of next week. I’d like to see you away from the bar. Hell, away from the hotel.”

She pursed her lips into a bow while thinking over his suggestion. “I’m off tomorrow night. And—” she gestured toward the phone “—I was just stood up for a movie date.”

He grinned. “I’m a huge movie fan.”

She laughed, a crystal clear sound that tickled like wind chimes. “Is that so? Not even knowing what I was going to see?”

“Doesn’t matter. I’m more interested in the company.”

“Okay then,” she said after only a moment’s hesitation. “The theater’s only a few blocks from here. You want to meet in the lobby at seven?”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“Super.” She clasped her hands together. “I’d, uh, better get back before Armand drags me back by my hair.”

He smiled. “Before you go?”

She arched both brows, nodded.

“Is there another way out of here so I don’t have to sneak out through the bar?”

“C’mon. I’ll take you out through the kitchen. Chef is pretty famous in his own right, so he’ll totally understand wanting to avoid the groupies.”

Quentin turned to follow her through the swinging doors at the rear of the room, the same lightness in his step that he’d noticed after making the decision to return to Texas.

He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or bad and quite frankly right now he didn’t give a damn.

SHANDI RIPPED THE YELLOW long-sleeved silk T-shirt over her head and tossed it to the floor on top of the cropped black jeans, the denim corset dress, the rose-colored ruffle-front blouse and at least four other similarly inappropriate outfits.

Evan, who’d been sitting on the foot of her bed, collapsed onto the mattress with an exasperated groan. “Why am I here, Shandi? Why the hell am I even here?”

She plodded out from behind her room divider, a silk screen of Mae West prints. Wearing her ratty chenille bathrobe, she dropped to sit on the hardwood floor in the middle of all the clothes.

“You’re here because A, you have nothing better to do, B, April can’t be here and C, I happen to trust your taste and I need the opinion of an eye other than my own.”

“I’m gouging mine out now, so you’re SOL.”

She picked up a lime leather miniskirt and threw it at him. “And you call yourself a roommate.”

“I call myself male, and I come with the requisite lack of fashion sense.”

“Or—so the rumor goes—you don’t come at all.”

Evan levered himself up onto his elbows again. “Is that a reference to my love life? Because I can assure you that the rumor is wrong.”

“Been taking matters into your own hands again?”

“As often as possible.”

Shandi laughed but stopped short of admitting she shared his pain. Her love life of late was nonexistent and her sex life a figment of her fantasies, her hands and one or two very special battery-operated boyfriends.

She sighed. “If I were going out with you or April, I wouldn’t be having this problem, you know.”

“Right. April and I don’t rate.”

“It’s not that and you know it. It’s just that with the two of you I can be myself.”

Evan heaved an enormous sigh. “This may come as a big shock, Shandi, but guys like women comfortable enough to be themselves.”

“I know.”

“Then be yourself. I can’t imagine any hetero guy with half a brain and at least one good eye not being attracted to you.”

Aww, he was so cute with his compliments…or maybe not! “Now I see why April is so crazy about you. You are one amazing sweet-talker, Evan Harcourt.”

“Shandi, shut the hell up and get dressed.”

“Easy for you to say. You’re not the one trying to be yourself without sending a member of the opposite sex screaming into the night.” Willowy cat’s tail of a filly. Long, tall drink of whiskey and water. Uh-uh. Not tonight.

“Woman,” Evan said with a growl, “I’m about to kick your whiny ass back to Oklahoma.”

“That’s it. As The Donald would say, you’re fired. I’ll just do this on my own.”

“Best news I’ve heard all night.” He smacked his palms to his thighs, pushed up from her bed and stood. “Just no blaming me if anything goes wrong.”

“How can it go wrong?” She gave him a narrow glare. “I’m what every half-witted, one-eyed man wants.”

“And on that extra whiny note, I’m gone.”

“Fine.” She stuck out her tongue, then collapsed onto her back in the mountain of clothes and stared at the ceiling.

She was being childish and she knew it, but stress tended to do that to her. She grew pouty and petulant and always felt better after pitching a fit.

But now it was time to get over it. She sat up and thought about Quentin—what she knew of him, what she hadn’t yet learned, what different impression she might make as his date than she already had as his bartender.

It was time to turn the heat up a notch. But how?

It was when her gaze landed on the short green-and-blue-plaid skirt hanging in her closet that she knew exactly. Ooh, but she loved it when a plan came together!

You have a thing for waifish schoolgirls, do you?

“I THINK I STARTED SINGING in front of audiences as soon as I learned to talk.”

It was Tuesday night, nearing seven o’clock. Quentin was sitting in the elegant boutique hotel’s art-deco lobby, relaxing back in one of the plush leather chairs, waiting for Shandi. At least, he was sitting and he was waiting.

The relaxing part had ceased the minute Mrs. Cyprus had sat down in the chair beside him and opened her mouth. She had yet to shut it.

“In grade school, I actually sang the lead in Annie. Can you believe it? I wasn’t even ten years old and I won the part over children older than I was.”

This was what Shandi had saved him from last night, what he wished she would show up and save him from now. Sure, he could save himself by heading to one of the lobby shops, the restaurant or the bar, even back to his room.

But he had this thing about wanting to be right here to see Shandi walk through the front door. To see her before she saw him. He liked catching her unawares, wanting to weigh the expression on her face as she sought him out. Doing so might not tell him a thing, he mused, frowning as he watched a huge black cat stroll through the lobby, but he wanted those few brief moments anyway.

“The summer before my freshman year in high school was when I caught the notice of my camp counselors. I organized a routine for my backup dancers and sang a medley of Elvis songs. You should’ve seen our costumes.”

He nodded, smiled, then braced his elbows on the chair arms and laced his fingers, tapped his thumbs to his chin. He wasn’t going to give up what he wanted more than anything right now because of the annoying woman at his side reciting her résumé.

He simply tuned her out, shut down the volume, left her running as background noise. Funny how adept he’d become at ignoring what he didn’t want to hear. And how often he had to stop and wonder if he was tuning out what he shouldn’t.

If he was paying attention when he should.

If he’d become too jaded to recognize the difference.

“I studied voice at university. Oh, the raves over my performances. It was the sort of reaction I’d been working toward all my life. And I knew I was on my way. That I’d never get enough.”

She might not have gotten enough, but this one-sided conversation was edging close to more than he was willing to put up with. And he’d just moved his hands to the chair arms to push himself up and make his excuses when the revolving glass doors swung around and there Shandi was.

Or so he first thought. It took a second glance and then a very long and lingering third before he was able to convince himself he was seeing Shandi and not a young girl at whom he shouldn’t be staring at all.

At his side Mrs. Cyprus continued to chatter, remaining oblivious to everything but herself. And that gave Quentin the freedom to focus.

He started at Shandi’s feet, where she wore penny loafers and white kneesocks, both of the sort he hadn’t seen on girls since grade school. And never on a woman he wanted to bed the way he wanted to bed this one. He felt like a complete perv and loved the thrum of arousal stirring in his groin.

He followed the long lines of her legs where they disappeared beneath a green-and-blue-plaid skirt so short it barely covered her ass. And from this vantage point, sitting lower than her hemline, that coverage was questionable.

He was able to see skin and curves and what appeared to be an edge of frilly white lace that had his gut tightening like that of a starving man.

His gaze had reached her white blouse—gauzy and nearly sheer—when she finally saw him. She turned and headed his way, and he sat immobile and watched the gorgeous bounce and sway of her braless breasts.

When she lifted a hand to her mouth, he followed the movement and watched her pull a red lollipop from between her lips. This time it was more than his gut that clenched and stirred, and he shifted in his seat to calm the buzz threatening to turn into full-tilt arousal.

Little good it did. Especially once he got a good look at her hair worn in pigtails. And at her face.

Her skin was made up to appear as translucent as pale porcelain yet soft and warm instead of fragile. Her lips and cheeks were tinted pink, a shade he only saw when she tilted her head and smiled and the light picked up the shimmer.

But, oh god, her eyes. He’d seen stage makeup. He’d seen exotic costuming. Hell, working in music videos, he’d seen it all—or so he’d thought, because he didn’t think he’d ever seen eyes like Shandi’s at any time in his life.

And it wasn’t just the way she’d used the cobalt- and violet-blues, the greens that seemed to reflect every hue between teal and jade. It was the way she’d used her face as a canvas. From her brows to her temples to her cheekbones.

The end result of the application of makeup resembled a colorfully jeweled Mardi Gras mask, complete with hints of ruby and gold. Except there was no mask. It was all done with the tools of her trade.

But the biggest impact, the one striking him like a blow in the chest, came from her expression. The look in her eyes. The way she was looking at him.

He couldn’t help it. He slid deeper into his seat, sat on his spine, spread his legs and groaned.

“I just know there’s an audience waiting out there for my voice, for the way I make every song my own…excuse me?” Mrs. Cyprus looked up as Shandi stepped between Quentin’s knees. “This is a private conversation.”

“Oh, don’t mind me.” Shandi sidled closer, fluffing her skirt before sitting down in his lap, her weight on his thigh as her free hand went around his neck. “My bedtime story can wait until you grown-ups are done.”

Quentin chuckled as Shandi crossed her legs. He brought one hand down behind her to hold her hip in place and draped his other arm over her knees. Now that he had her where he wanted her, he was not about to let her go.

He cleared his throat lightly, trying not to grin. “Mrs. Cyprus has been sharing her fascinating experiences in musical theater.”

“Ooh, can I stay and listen?” Shandi asked. “I know it’s late, but I promise to go to bed the minute you tell me to if I can hear one story. Please?”

“Just one then,” he said, his hand slipping to the hem of her skirt and finding the lacy edge of her panties exposed. “As long as Mrs. Cyprus doesn’t mind. She was telling me how she’s performed everything from Annie to Elvis.”

“Ooh.” Shandi squealed as she waved her lollipop. “I love Annie. Can you sing it for me? That song about tomorrow?”

When Mrs. Cyprus looked from Shandi and met Quentin’s gaze, he simply shrugged and tried to appear chagrined—not an easy task with his body tight enough to snap. She got to her feet, smoothed down her slacks and the halter vest that exposed even more than her plunging neckline last night.

“I’m sorry to have wasted your time,” she said to Quentin. “But not half as sorry as I am to have wasted mine. Had I known you preferred girls to women…”

She left the sentence unfinished and then left the lobby, heading into the bar. Quentin watched Shandi watch the other woman go, finally finding enough of his voice to ask, “Do you think she recognized you?”

“Are you kidding?” Shandi huffed, gestured with the candy. “To recognize me she would have had to actually look at me when she ordered her drinks. Trust me. She’s only had eyes for Armand. And, well, for you. But then, don’t we all?”

And at that she turned her gaze on him.

God, but he hoped she was ready for what she was asking from him. Ready for what he wanted from her. He wasn’t twenty years old and he was no longer in the habit of sleeping with every woman who asked.

Sex, when he engaged, was now about a need deeper than the physical. Not every woman got that. But then he intuitively knew that Shandi Fossey was not every woman.

He left his hand where it was at the hem of her skirt. “Are we going to be late for the movie?”

“I was thinking about that.” She popped the sucker in her mouth, popped it out, shifted a bit so that his hand contacted skin as well as lace. “I’m not sure I want to wear this to the theater.”

Meaning she’d dressed for him and not their date? “You want to change first?”

She shook her head, threaded her fingers into his hair. “There’s not enough time before the movie starts.”

He tightened his hold on her knees. “Dinner then? Drinks?”

She considered him closely while loosening the band holding his hair. It took him several endless moments while he fought down an erection to realize they were still sitting in the hotel lobby, that around them people came and went, that not a soul seemed to notice—or care—how intimately they sat embraced.

Shandi seemed perfectly comfortable, and he strangely enough didn’t feel one bit ill at ease. Whether it was the ambience of the hotel or their connection, he couldn’t say.

As long as she stayed right where she was, it really didn’t matter. He just didn’t want her to move.

“We could do dinner or drinks, sure,” she finally said. “Or we could go to the library.”

She wanted to go to the library? “Is it even open this late?”

She laughed. “Oh, not the public library. The one upstairs.”

The Hush library. Admittedly more interesting. “You’re serious then.”

“About?”

Her fingers massaged the base of his skull, and it was all he could do not to close his eyes and let her have at him right here and now. “About a bedtime story.”

“Well, we don’t have to be in a bed.”

There was no other place he wanted to be. And he started to say so.

But Shandi stopped him by whispering close to his ear, “There are enough sofas and chairs in the library to make you forget you ever needed a bed for anything.”

4

THE ELEVATOR RIDE UP DROVE her mad.

She and Quentin both stood against the back of the car, side by side, hands curled over the railing at their hips, not touching, not speaking, simply letting the ascent heighten the tension that sang in the air.

She stared at their reflections mirrored on the stainless-steel doors. Her skirt appeared the size of a bandage, her legs the length of fence posts. The colorful mask with which she’d taken exquisite care looked like a neon bar sign. Her pigtails like commas of corn on the cob.

Oh, yeah. She was definitely this man’s type. Mr. Sophistication? Meet Clueless in Manhattan. She wanted to slam her palm against the panel of buttons and stop this joke of a journey.

Stop it, put the car in reverse, back her way into the lobby and out into the street. She wanted to start over. To meet Quentin Marks on a level playing field. Not on one where she felt like a rube.

But then it was too late. The doors slid open with a whisper. He gestured for her to precede him, and she did, turning toward the double glass doors that separated the airy room that was their destination from the hallway.

He walked far enough behind that she couldn’t see him without turning, that she couldn’t touch him without reaching out. Close enough that she could feel that he was there, hovering without threatening, looming without alarming, beguiling and tempting and hot.

At the entrance Quentin reached for the handle and pulled open the door. Shandi stepped through, dropped her lollipop into a wastebasket. The room was empty, the only light that of several reading lamps left burning low.

The sky outside glowed with the hues of the sunset, and the walls of windows had begun to reflect the room, the atmosphere one of the kind of intimacy found only after dark. She stopped as Quentin joined her and as the door eased shut.

“This,” she said with a sweep of one hand, “is the library. The sofas and armchairs I mentioned, along with everything from classics to erotica to popular fiction.” Breathing deeply of the room’s bound leather and wood, deeply of the subtle scent of the man behind her, Shandi moved farther into the room. “Pick your poison.”

He walked ahead of her, stopping to study the space and giving her a full rear view of his body. So far she’d seen him sitting down at the bar and in the lobby. She’d had a full-frontal view, too, when he’d come toward her in Erotique’s back room. But, oh, did she like seeing him from here.

His shoulders were broad, his waist narrow, his backside taut beneath the expensive fabric of his dress pants. His hair was the mane she’d described it as. Leonine as it hung there in waves of gold and tawny-brown resting on the tops of his shoulder blades. It was thick and beautiful, and he wore it as few men could.

And then he turned and met her gaze. His brows came down. A wickedly sexy V. “I’ll pick the chair. You pick the story.”

She laced her hands at her back, hooked one foot behind the other, canted her head to the side and rocked back and forth, playing up the part she’d created. “Where do you want me to sit?”

“In my lap, of course,” he said and reached out, pulled her hand from behind her and led her across the room to the far corner. The chair he chose was built for two, not quite the size of a love seat but definitely not meant for a single. He turned and dropped into it, tugging her down.

She sat sideways in his lap, her back against the plush arm that was wider than her body. Her feet she settled on the cushion on Quentin’s far side, where there would’ve been plenty of room for her to sit if he’d let her.

He hadn’t. He didn’t. He wouldn’t.

Instead he draped one arm over her bare thighs, one behind her on the arm of the chair. He was so close. Right there. Inches away. It was hard to breathe, to think, to believe she was sitting in the lap of a man with this one’s fame, fortune and reputation.

With this one’s trail of broken hearts…because she was sure they must be legion.

“So what story do you want to hear?” he asked softly, his fingers toying with the end of one of her pigtails. He gestured toward the stack of books on the side table. “Beck Desmond? Harlan Coben? Charles Dickens? Anaïs Nin?”

Shandi shook her head. There was only one story she wanted. “Quentin Marks. I want to know everything. From his humble roots to his rise to stardom. And all the juicy bits in between.”

His mouth crooked. A dimple appeared at the edge of his beard stubble. “That story will put you right to sleep. I was hoping to keep you awake. At least for a little while.”

She had no intention of falling asleep now any more than she had of staying asleep on Christmas morning. Not with this gift she’d been given, this man who’d come out of nowhere and into her life when she’d least expected anyone to arrive.

She looked away from his gaze that left her breathless—oh, but his scotch-and-water eyes were compelling—to where she held her fingers twined together against what there was of her skirt. That didn’t help much with distracting her since his arm lay across her thighs.

Thankfully it wasn’t his skin but the fine fabric of his dress shirt she felt there. Otherwise she was quite sure she wouldn’t have been able to speak. “I doubt anything you could tell me would put me to sleep.”

“Trust me. I’m as boring as it gets.”

“I don’t believe it. I’ve read enough about you in People and Vanity Fair to know how fascinating you are.” When he gave a soft snort, she smiled, cast him a quick glance and laughingly added, “Hey, it’s better than reading what all the tabloids have to say.”

He used his arm across her thighs to pull her closer. “Too bad all of the music-loving public doesn’t share your restraint. Or your taste in publications.”

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