KAREN KENDALL
Midnight Oil

TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID

PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

MILLS & BOON

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To my editor, Wanda Ottewell,

who is always a lot of fun to brainstorm with.

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

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

1

TROY BARRINGTON FELT like a pervert, sitting here in his car in a dark parking lot at 10:00 p.m. Either a pervert or a cop on a stakeout, except he didn’t have any doughnuts or one of those cool police radios.

“What are you doing, Uncle Troy?” asked his eleven-year-old nephew, Derek, via cell phone.

He visualized the kid, tousled blond hair sticking out every which way and a chocolate stain on the Marlins T-shirt he liked to sleep in. His skateboard was probably at the end of his bed. “Just sitting out on the porch, smoking a cigar,” Troy lied. He couldn’t tell an eleven-year-old what he was really up to: spying on a bunch of people he didn’t know but suspected were up to no good. He also couldn’t tell Derek that one luscious redhead in particular made the stakeout a lot less boring than it could have been.

“Why are you still awake?” Troy asked, tearing his eyes away from her very interesting curves. “Huh? You should be in bed.”

“Mom says cigars are bad for you,” Derek told him, ignoring the question.

“They are. Terrible. But someone gave me this as a gift, and I didn’t want to throw it away.” It was true that he had a cigar in his glove box, from his friend Amos, whose wife had just had a baby girl. His old teammates were dropping like flies to wives and kids. He scrubbed a hand over his face. Hadn’t it been just yesterday that they were all a bunch of rowdy, testosterone-crazed twentysomethings? He had no idea how he’d suddenly fallen into his midthirties, and still had no desire to settle down with a woman.

“Well,” Derek said judiciously, “I guess that’s okay, then. So did you fix the holes in your porch?”

“Nope. That’s my weekend project, big guy. You wanna help?”

“Yeah! Can I really?”

“Uh-huh. If you promise to hang up the phone and go to bed now. I’ll bet your mom doesn’t know you’re still up.”

Guilty silence.

“Does she?”

“No. Are you gonna tell?”

“Not if you get to bed this minute. I’ll talk to her tomorrow and see if I can pick you up Sunday morning, okay? After church.”

“How ’bout before church?”

“After church. But good try.”

His nephew sighed. “Can I use a power saw?”

“Absolutely not. But you can measure and mark for me, and help in other ways.”

“Cool.”

“Where are Danni and Laura?” Troy’s twin nieces were twelve and played powder-puff football in his honor, which tugged at his heartstrings.

“They’re spending the night with Lana Banana. That dumb girl.”

“It’s not nice to call her that.”

“I know. Bye, Uncle Troy. Don’t smoke any more cigars. Okay?”

“Yup.” Troy hung up with a smile and refocused on the cute redhead.

His half sister’s kids were one of the biggest reasons he’d moved to Miami—her creep husband had taken off and she was now a single mom. Frankly, Troy thought she was better off that way. Unfortunately, Derek and the girls weren’t. They needed a decent male role model, and though Troy was certainly no angel, at least he could fake it for the kids.

From behind the windshield of his vintage Lotus, he squinted at Uncle Newt’s strip mall. Correction: his strip mall. A month ago, at the reading of old Newt’s will, Troy had suddenly become a slum lord.

Nine storefronts, most of them dark, stared back at him from his spot in a parking lot that had seen better days. The macadam was a faded gray and there were cracks everywhere. The lines demarking the car slots were barely visible during the day, and Troy wondered just how much money it cost to repave an entire lot. Damn. That would put another dent in his savings. And there’d been a few too many dents lately, one big one made by the kids’ college funds. But Samantha would never be able to save enough, and the father was a deadbeat.

Troy tilted his head against the leather seat and leaned back to crack his neck, still training his gaze on the best storefront, the brightly lit one, dead center, with the largest expanse of plate glass. The one with all the laughing pretty girls inside, that redhead in particular, and a thousand bottles and jars of goop in the window. The one he wanted for his own business, a new sporting goods store—if he could break the tenants’ lease.

After Hours, said the funky, squiggly script. A Salon and Day Spa. And in smaller letters, Open Till Midnight!

Inside, the place was self-consciously artsy, with an S-shaped reception desk, movable walls in pastel ice-cream colors and exotic glass lamps of different sizes and hues dangling over it all. There were filmy white curtains bracketing the windows, but the tenants never seemed to close them.

Yesterday, as he’d oh, so casually sauntered by, he’d spied a zebra floor cloth and a unicorn floor cloth, both of which appeared to be floating in an expanse of seawater from out here. When you got up close, you could see that the concrete floor had been textured and painted to resemble the ocean.

Fishy, thought Troy. What kind of spa stays open until midnight? A spa that gives dirty massages to dateless, desperate men, that’s what kind. He smiled in the darkness. Because that sure violated the lease agreement.

His smile faded. At least, he’d been convinced of the spa’s underhanded activities a couple of hours ago, when he first started watching the place. But to his disappointment, most of the clientele were women. And the two men who’d gone in had stayed up front, clearly visible in the well-lit windows while they got haircuts and laughed with the pretty girls over glasses of wine and beer.

Alcohol. What kind of spa serves drinks and blasts hip dance music? Troy could hear the music clearly from outside in his car, inspiring his unwilling fingers and toes to tap to it.

If he couldn’t prove they were running a dirty massage parlor, then maybe he could get them on the liquor license. If they served alcohol, didn’t they have to have one by law? Troy rubbed his jaw. Or was that only if they sold the drinks? No money was changing hands in there as far as he could see.

He continued to watch as the cute little redhead in the white lab coat bumped hips with a dark-haired girl in artsy clothes and rubber flip-flops. Red had serious curves, tempting and visible through the open coat. She also had sweet, kissable pale skin and a load of hair for a man to lose his hands in….

Okay, now he really was being a pervert. He was here on a business mission, not for a cheap thrill.

Red threw back her head and laughed, then spun 360 degrees on one foot. She wobbled as she stopped, though, and would have lost her balance if a tall, broad-shouldered Latino guy hadn’t caught her by the elbow.

Aha! Where did he come from? Maybe, Troy thought hopefully, he’d been getting happy in the back. But no—he swung himself behind one of the manicure stations and…

Troy gaped. Surely that bruiser wasn’t actually removing a woman’s nail polish and then filing her nails? But he was. Where had the guy’s balls gone hiding? Were they soaking in warm paraffin wax in the back?

He continued to feel like a Peeping Tom—and, oh, shit! The redhead squinted out the window again, looking directly at him. He ducked, sliding as low in the seat as he could go.

Troy stayed that way for two or three long minutes, barely breathing, his heart pumping fast. He was just about to ease upward again when a female voice spoke to him with deadly calm.

“There are laws against stalking in this state, you pathetic creep.”

Troy looked up to find the redhead standing there, all five feet of her, aiming a container of Mace at his head.

“It’s not what you think,” he said, the words sounding lame to his own ears.

“Really. So what’s up, then, big guy? You shopping for a dry cleaner at this hour of the night? Or did you figure you’d sleep in your car so you’d be first in line for hot doughnuts at 5:00 a.m.?”

“I’m not a stalker,” he told her, straightening in his seat. “Or a rapist. But it’s a really stupid move for you to come out here alone to confront one. What were you thinking?”

“Mace. It does a body good.”

“Sweetheart, go back inside and don’t ever try this again. I could have that out of your hand and you pinned to the ground in about two seconds.”

Her gaze drilled into his. In the dark he couldn’t tell what color her eyes were, but he thought probably brown. Whatever color they were, they were gorgeous: almond-shaped, long-lashed and steely with determination.

“Yeah? I don’t advise you to do that. Because I’ve called the cops, pervert, and they should be here within a minute or two. So if I were you I’d get the hell off of this property right now.”

He really didn’t need to be questioned by the police about his behavior. “Look, I’m telling you, this is not what you think. I’m not some kind of sicko.” But Troy did as she suggested. He put the Lotus into gear and slowly drove away from her.

“And don’t come back!” she shouted.

Great. Just great. Now is probably not the time to tell her she’s hot—or ask her what she’s doing next Saturday.

THE NEXT MORNING Troy awoke in his bed with a numb arm, a migraine and a persistent hard-on. Visions of the pissed-off redhead had flitted through his head all night, and in a lot of them she wore nothing but that lab coat, unbuttoned.

He’d been wasting his time the night before. He wished he’d gone to bed around the same time he’d forced Derek to do so. Besides the drinks and the weird late-night schedule, After Hours wasn’t conducting any out-of-the-ordinary business, and he’d come close to being arrested for stalking. Damn it.

He focused on the extremely ugly brown-paneled wall of the furnished hovel he’d just purchased. The place dated from the early sixties and hadn’t been remodeled since then. The scent of its elderly former resident, now dead, still hung in the air: a peculiar essence of Listerine, moth balls, old grease and musty carpet.

Troy swung his legs over the side of his bed and eyed the malfunctioning window-unit air conditioner sourly. Until he got this wreck of a place gutted and fixed up, he might be better off sleeping in his car.

The house had been the only halfway decent buy left in Miami’s Coral Gables, and it was going to take a year of his time, a hundred contractors and a miracle of God to make it livable.

Troy shook his dead arm—it used to take a woman sleeping on it to make that happen—and made coffee one-handed as what felt like an army of ants ran from his wrist to his bicep. He yawned while something tickled at his barely functional brain.

Oh, right. Alcohol permit. He needed to check on that. If the tenants at the spa could be kicked out for something that simple, he’d be a happy guy.

He felt a little guilty as he drank coffee—black with one sugar—and did some research on the Internet to look into the laws. They’d all seemed so happy and energetic last night as he’d sat in the dark like a vulture, plotting to yank their storefront out from under them. A really nice guy, he was.

Hey, it’s nothing personal. Just business.

Unfortunately, the Internet informed him that yes, indeed, After Hours could legally serve beer and wine as long as they weren’t selling it. Liquor required a license, but he’d seen no signs of them serving hard liquor.

Great. Since when had salons and spas turned into lightweight bars? He was obviously getting old.

Troy logged off gloomily and fried two eggs and three strips of bacon. He made toast. He regained use of his arm. And after a shower he drove back over to the strip mall to think about the problem in the light of day.

He parked the Lotus on the other side of the lot and walked by casually, peering in the door. Nobody was visible yet, but the salon would open in a few minutes. It looked spotless inside, and unfortunately there were no degenerates passed out on the floor after a night of partying. He frowned at the smaller gold letters on the door.

We’re All About You!

Not, thought Troy. If you were all about me, you and your male manicurist and your pampered princess clients would be outta here. My new sporting goods store would occupy that prime retail space. And you wouldn’t be getting away with murder on the rent.

What had Newt been thinking, when he’d signed all the tenants to bargain-basement rents and ten-year leases? Ten years! For chrissakes.

But Troy couldn’t evict any of these people without cause, and he didn’t particularly want to evict the ones in the smaller storefronts. Well, except maybe the nut bags in the Arrowroot Café, where they served chai or green tea instead of a decent cup of coffee and wouldn’t make anything using dairy products, meat or wheat. Soy milk—ugh!

Wasn’t it time to take back the planet from tree huggers and vegetarians? Was it too much to ask for a real cup of joe in the morning, a BLT for lunch and a steak after a long, hard day?

His gaze rested with more approval on the other restaurant in the strip mall. Benito’s Bistro, an Italian place, seemed to be popular, judging by the constant stream of customers. So what if the owner shared his name with Mussolini—at least he wasn’t a granola head.

Other businesses in the place included a mail and copy center, a dry cleaner, a gift shop and a small pharmacy. They were fine as far as Troy was concerned. He’d thought briefly about knocking out a wall between a couple of them and using the larger space for his new store, but he really wanted the large central one. And why lose two rents instead of one? Curiously, Newt hadn’t charged After Hours higher rent, even though they had the biggest and best space. Why not?

His best guess was that Newt, a product of the Great Depression, had locked in the first paying customer to come along.

Troy had fond memories of fishing in the Everglades with Uncle Newt, but they had eaten everything they caught, and that meant everything. He’d almost gagged on the grilled salamander and he’d wondered if Newt ate the leftover bait when Troy went home to his parents….

His cell phone rang, interrupting his thoughts, and Troy flipped it open. “Hey, Jerry.”

His attorney said, “Hey, yourself.”

“Any luck finding a clause to break the lease?”

“I hate to disappoint you, but old Newt made sure the damn things were watertight. He didn’t want anyone sliming out of their rent money.”

Troy cursed.

“But if you can catch them on some violation, then you’re good to proceed with eviction.”

“What kind of violation?”

“Well, salons are notoriously regulated, and there are all kinds of little rules they might not be in compliance with. And remember, they have to have permits from the city for every single thing, from electrical outlets to drainage to cleanliness. See if you can get them on something. Maybe they snuck in an extra footbath somewhere, or a manicure table. Maybe they’re not disinfecting the sink to standards. Or the pH in their shampoo ain’t right. Hell, I don’t know. You’ll have to get in there and see.”

“How am I supposed to recognize what’s code and what’s not? Can you fax me the regulations for Miami?”

“Fax them? The regs will be the size of the phone book. You asked me to keep your bill down.”

Yes, Troy had. Jerry wasn’t cheap. “Well, yeah, but I’m flying blind here! Can you overnight me a copy?”

“I’ll get an intern on it. You’ll have ’em by tomorrow morning.”

“Thanks.”

“How’s the new house?”

“Peachy,” Troy growled. Real estate had gone sky high in South Florida, and Coral Gables was a primo location, so his three-bedroom shack was a great investment in spite of its appalling interior. Troy actually looked forward to the do-it-yourself challenge—it would distract him for the next year or so while he accustomed himself to not being part of a football organization. Until he got his sporting goods store going, he had way too much time on his hands.

Troy was also going to have to accustom himself to being on a budget. As a former strong safety for the Jacksonville Jaguars, he wasn’t used to that. But the stock market had been performing poorly, he had his nieces and nephew to think about and he’d lost his coaching job in Gainesville after the team went on a losing streak. Just business, nothing personal.

In a heartbeat he’d gone from being a big cheese in Jacksonville to a…cheese doodle. He was unaccustomed to being a nobody and, frankly, it abraded his ego. Hell, nobody in South Florida even recognized him, much less asked for an autograph.

But beyond that, Troy wanted to control his own financial future: he was sick of being jerked around like a puppet by various football organizations, just as he was sick of women who used him for his connection to them. It was time to change all of that.

He considered hiring Jerry’s intern to snoop around After Hours, but decided to suck it up and do it himself. He’d park in the back, and hopefully the curvy redhead wouldn’t recognize him in daylight. All she’d really seen was a head in a car.

He ended the call with Jerry, cutting off his banter about the Miami Heat and the unbearable mosquitoes this time of year. At a cool three hundred an hour, Jerry loved to have long conversations with his clients and then bill them for the pleasure. Once, Troy would have played along, but not now. Jerry could discuss free throws and insect larvae at somebody else’s expense.

Troy glared again at After Hours and the hundreds of foo-foo bottles and jars in the window. Snooty, tooty-fruity place.

He pictured canoes, camping equipment, mountain bikes in that window. Hiking boots and parkas, wet suits and surfboards. Rugged, outdoorsy stuff.

He pictured a gathering place for sports-minded, manly men. Hell, maybe he’d install a wide-screen TV and some seating and serve beer himself! If the Pretty Palace could, then he sure as hell could. The vision grew in his head until he saw himself presiding over a retail version of Cheers. He’d have company all day and everyone would know his name…he’d be, if not a big cheese, a medium one.

Troy gave a mighty yawn and thanked the Guy Upstairs that he didn’t have to play Peeping Tom again tonight. Being sleep deprived made him cranky.

But no matter what it took, he’d get this silly salon and spa off his property. He just had to get inside the damn place and figure out how.

2

“PEG,” THE RECEPTIONIST reasoned at After Hours Salon and Spa, “how are you going to meet Mr. Right when you won’t go out?”

Peggy Underwood, the spa’s manager and massage therapist, rolled her eyes. “I’m going to buy him from a pet store, already housebroken.” She no longer believed in Mr. Right. She was pretty sure that he’d been dreamed up by Disney, like Donald and Goofy and Mickey.

“Peggy! You’re so cynical.”

“Yeah. And I refuse to apologize for it. I told you about the weirdo staring at us from the parking lot last night.”

Shirlie looked uncomfortable. “He was probably harmless, but I’m glad you got rid of him.”

Peg twisted off the cap of a body mist and sprayed some into the air. She sniffed. “Nice. Breezy. Gardenias.” She squirted some under each arm of her white lab coat, recapped the bottle and stuck it onto one of the spa’s shelves.

Shirlie laughed and tossed her short blond curls. Peg looked at them with envy. Why hadn’t she been born tall, thin and blond, instead of short, curvy and carrottopped?

“Come on,” Shirlie urged. “This new club is fab. Hot men, cold drinks, great music!” She kept on blandishing. Shirlie was twenty-two, fresh-faced and eternally optimistic.

Peggy herself was twenty-nine, cynical and currently cranky, even though she kept reminding herself that she didn’t like cranky people. “I think what you mean, Shirl, is gay or gruesome men, cheap, watered-down vodka and lip-synching to the latest prepackaged boy band. I love you, hon, but I think I’ll pass.”

Men were of no interest to Peggy for the next fifty-two weeks; she was committed to finding her center. Before the year was out, she’d be floating in a state of total balance between mind, body and spirit. She’d taken up meditation, she was reading about Buddhism and she not only gave massages and treatments but underwent them regularly herself.

Peg popped the lids off some new erotic lipsticks from Sugar Lips and inspected them. Nice. High quality. Very kissable. The company was new, and she’d only recently discovered it.

Since the image for After Hours was oriented to sexy, evening fun she’d tested one and ordered some immediately. They glided on beautifully and tasted delicious.

She chose three different flavors and drew stripes of them on the inside of her wrist: one cinnamon raspberry, one pink and one deep slut red. “Hmm. Try this on, okay?” She tossed the red one to Shirlie.

She tested the pinky cinnamon one on herself, applying the Ride Him Raspberry generously.

Then she lip-synched—puckered up against an invisible microphone—to the Brazilian pop song on the sound system. She moonwalked to the reception desk while Shirlie laughed again. Peg scooped up a box behind the desk and cushioned it against her stomach as she gyrated back to the shelves.

Producing a utility knife from her pocket, she slit open the box with a dramatic, pseudosexual gesture and tore it open as if it were a man’s shirt.

Shirlie shook her head at her and tossed the lipstick back, her mouth now fire-engine red. Peg evaluated the color, nodded and then continued to stock new products on the spa’s curvy modern shelves, blinking under the bright halogen lighting.

Her heart-shaped, freckled face and red hair competed with bottles, jars and tubes for reflection space in the mirrors behind the shelves. Her skin was almost as pale as the white tips of her chipped French manicure. What had possessed her to move to sunny Miami?

Oh, right: the ability to spend more time outdoors, under an inch of SPF 30 sunscreen instead of two inches of wool.

“You have to get back into the swing of things sometime,” Shirlie urged. “Not all men are like Eddie.”

Ugh. Her ex-fiancé. Steroid-popping jock. Compulsive gambler. Borderline alcoholic. Cheap, lying bastard! She’d moved down here from Connecticut to make a new start.

Peg’s hand tightened around a tube of hair gel so hard that it spit off the loose top and plopped some product onto the floor. She looked down at the mess, reached for a tissue and mopped it up.

“You deserve so much better than that,” Shirlie said. “And trust me, you have a better chance of finding it—him—while wearing a cute little miniskirt on a dance floor than wearing your baggy, ice-cream-stained pajamas on your couch.”

“Hey!” Peggy said. “There are no ice-cream stains on my pj’s. I wash them regularly. And besides,” she added, “since they can now clone sheep, it’s got to be a snap to clone a single-cell organism like a man. I’m thinking we’ll be able to order men from a catalogue within about five years. I could be really into that.”

Shirlie wrinkled her nose. “That would take all the fun out of life. What about the thrill of the chase?”

Poor thing. She was still young enough that she got excited about the whole silly mating dance. “What thrill? Shirlie, I’d get a huge charge out of just ordering up a man without the burping or farting gene. Or the beer-gut gene! Can you imagine the possibilities? You might even be able to special-order one with an on-off switch. Or even better, an erect-limp switch!”

“Eeuuwww.” Shirlie’s expression was priceless.

Peg stuffed an unruly curl behind her ear and said, “Oh, right. You’re still too young to have had more than a five-minute-long relationship, so maybe none of these issues has come up. Or, uh, refused to come up, as the case may be.” She produced some fiendish laughter. “Mwah-ha-ha-ha, my pretty! Nothin’ but good times ahead.” She winked.

“Peggy, I wouldn’t date a…nonstarter.”

Peg scooped more bottles and tubes out of a box, her tongue in her cheek. “Well, here’s the thing, honey. You don’t always know at first. For example, take my advice and stay far, far away from any guy who’s on steroids.”

“Oh, my God! You don’t mean that Eddie…”

Peg nodded. “I could write a book called Limp Lovin’. The man popped so many pills that his dong had turned to linguine.”

Shirlie’s expression was priceless. “Hey, at least you know he wasn’t cheating on you, right?”

Peg choked. “True. Not without a Popsicle stick and some electrical tape, anyway.” She didn’t feel in the least bad about revealing her ex’s dark secret, since the creep had actually swapped the stone in her engagement ring for a cubic zirconia. Which brought her to another piece of advice for Shirlie. “And, hon, take it from me—don’t date any guy who shows an affinity for gambling.”

“O-kaaaay.”

“Then there are the ones who hate women, even though they like to have sex. And the ones who have inferiority complexes and have to bring you down so they can feel superior. And worse, there are—”

Shirlie clapped her hands over her ears and moaned. “Stop! Look, maybe it is a good idea for you to stay home tonight. I just want to go dancing and have a good time, Miss Wet Blanket.”

Peg grinned at her. “Yeah, well, it’s better than being Mrs. Wet Blanket, married to a guy who’s so cheap that his wallet creaks when he has to open it. Or—”

Shirlie was beginning to look a little wild-eyed when the door to After Hours opened and in walked The Man. Her eyes went from wild to glazed over within a nanosecond.

Peg observed this while running her own eyes over The Man. He was six feet, two inches of gym-terrorized perfection, she had to give him that. His wide, solid torso formed a perfect V as it tapered into his slim waist, which was the only thing slim about him. He had the biceps of a young Arnold Schwartzenegger, shoulders that made even Peg want to cram a fist into her mouth and long, lean-looking legs. She couldn’t see his backside, but she’d be willing to bet that it was Grade A prime beef.

The Man smiled at her, displaying even white teeth.

Just as a spark of sexual awareness shot through her belly and zoomed lower, she recovered her mental capacity. Steroids, she sang to herself. The guy is so bulked up he looks like he’s made of rubber. He’d bounce if you threw him on the pavement. And he’s probably a knucklehead, to boot.

Peg pulled her white lab coat closed against his gaze. There was something vaguely familiar about him, which disconcerted her. She didn’t like his air of cool appraisal either—he stepped in as if he owned the place.

Shirlie beamed at The Man and got an instant case of the nervous babbles. “Hi, welcome to After Hours! I mean, I know it’s not after hours right now, it’s regular daytime business hours, but After Hours is the name of the salon and spa since we’re open 9:00 a.m. to midnight. Isn’t that fabulous? New marketing concept. Most people don’t have time to leave work and come during the day, so we get them to come at night.”

“Oh,” said The Man, “I’m not particular about when I come.” He grinned at Peg.

She narrowed her eyes, but she couldn’t find a trace of innuendo or sarcasm in his voice.

Shirlie’s blue eyes widened and she squirmed. “Uh, arrive at night. Make evening appointments. I didn’t mean, well, you know…” Shirlie blushed fire. “I didn’t mean anything by—I just meant—Oh, God, just shoot me. But by the way, I’m Shirlie!”

Peg cringed for her.

The Man blinked, bit back laughter and finally said politely, “Nice to meet you, Shirlie.”

“You have an appointment for a massage?” She scanned the book, looking very much as if she’d like to close her face in it and die.

He shook his head and opened his mouth to speak, but the babbles took hold of her again. “You’re here to have your back waxed, then! Of course. Don’t be embarrassed—lots of men have your problem. We wax backs all the time. My brother has come here for that. No shame in it at all—”

“Actually,” The Man said, “I’m here to—”

“Your bikini area, then?” Shirlie blurted.

“God, no!” He looked alarmed.

Peggy decided that it was time she stepped in, to rescue both Shirlie and The Man from any more awkwardness. “What can we help you with?” she asked.

“I was, uh…” He looked up at the ceiling tiles, of all places. And along the baseboards. He squinted into the back of the salon, gazing…under the sinks?

Peggy didn’t know what to make of him. Then he stuck his foot in his mouth.

“Listen,” he said. “Do any straight guys come here?”

Unbelievable. Peg couldn’t help it. She snorted.

He looked at her sharply.

She cleared her throat. “Sorry. Just getting over a cold. Yes, plenty of straight guys come here. Your masculinity is safe on our premises.”

“Are you making fun of me?” he asked.

Oh, hell. Yes, I was, and it was wrong, and it’s certainly not good business to do that. “No, no. Not at all.” She gave him her best smile. “We’re running a special right now on spa packages, and as the manager, I can offer you twenty-five percent off. Would you be interested in booking our Qu—uh, King package? It’s a combination of a sea salt body scrub and wrap, a hot stone massage and a warm mud bath. Very relaxing and rejuvenating—and men, straight men, get this package all the time.”

“Sounds great,” The Man said, looking uninterested and still inspecting everything but the decor, which usually riveted first-time visitors since it was so splashy and contemporary. Orchid, sea-foam green, yellow and pink walls surrounded übermod furniture and funky floor cloths.

After dark, the spa’s lighting, music and atmosphere created almost a nightclub feel, where clients could have a cocktail or two while getting their nails or hair done. Part of Shirlie’s job was to mix drinks after 5:00 p.m.

The idea was that the spa functioned as a relaxing, fun preparty spot where clients could start their evenings while being pampered and polished.

“Would you like to book your package all at once,” Peg asked, “or in three separate treatments?”

The Man hesitated for a moment. “Three separate treatments, please,” he said.

“All right.” Since Shirlie wasn’t responding to the verbal cues, Peg took the appointment book from her apparently nerveless hands and flipped through the pages. “When would you like to come in?”

“Uh, tomorrow? Say, around six or seven?”

She scanned the book. Their part-time massage therapist was off tomorrow. She’d have to take the appointment herself. “Seven o’clock all right?”

“That’ll be fine, thanks.” He continued to scan the premises. What was he, an engineer? Again, he didn’t seem interested in the design, the multicolored walls or the distressed, hand-painted cement floor.

He did seem interested in her—she could feel it in his gaze—but it was as if he didn’t want to be.

There was something about him that she didn’t trust, though she couldn’t put her finger on why. And why did he seem familiar? It wasn’t just that his casual, cocky, muscular stance reminded her of Eddie.

Don’t be ridiculous, she told herself. There’s nothing sinister in a guy signing up for a sea salt scrub.

She tried not to think about the fact that tomorrow she’d be running her bare hands all over those broad shoulders of his, that smooth, tanned muscle. Her body went on full, red-hot alert, which wasn’t in the least professional.

Shirlie was still pinned in the receptionist’s chair by the visual force of the man, riveted by that butt of his as he strode to the door. Was that a trickle of drool at the corner of her mouth?

The butt was indeed Grade A prime. And his chinos fit him just right. The Man’s back muscles rippled as he opened the door, and both Peg and Shirlie sighed as he walked through it and let it close behind him. God, what was wrong with the pair of them? This was Miami—they saw male models all the time.

It wasn’t until he’d disappeared from sight that Peg realized she’d forgotten to get his name and phone number. Had she really been lecturing Shirlie in that smug, worldly way just a few minutes ago? She herself was just as bad!

“What do you think he looks like with his clothes off?” Shirlie asked reverently. “Did you catch his name?”

Peg shook her head sheepishly. “No, but I’ll be the one doing his sea salt scrub tomorrow, so—”

“Shut-up-no-you-are-not!”

“Yep.”

“Some people have all the luck. I’m going to get my license, I swear.”

“Believe me, not all your customers will look like that. There are some people you do not want to see naked. Case in point, Pugsy Malloy. I close my eyes when I have to do Pugsy.”

Shirlie sighed. “Yeah, but I think I’d sign up for five Pugsys if I could have just one what’s-his-name.”

Peggy laughed. “Okay, Miss Babble. Wipe the slobber off the reception desk.”

Shirlie wrinkled her nose. “I did babble, didn’t I? I’m so embarrassed. But you were drooling, too! Don’t deny it.”

“I did not drool,” said Peg with dignity. “I just salivated a little.”

Judging from her face, a horrifying possibility had just occurred to Shirlie. “You don’t think…you don’t think that guy does steroids, do you? I mean, it would be a crying shame if—”

Peggy pursed her lips. “Judging by his body, I can’t say I’d be surprised.” She began to flatten the cardboard box that had held the new products.

“Tomorrow at eight, you have to give me a full report! Plus his name and number.”

“Shirlie, I’m not likely to see that part of him. I do work with a sheet, hon.”

“Oh, c’mon! Can’t you take a little sneak peek? Just for me?”

“No,” said Peg, laughing. “That’s not ethical and you know it.” She tossed the flattened box into the trash.

“Who said anything about ethics? I just don’t want to waste my time if he’s hung like a garden slug.”

Peg shook her head. “Shirl, you’re impossible. Go dancing tonight. Get it out of your system. Do everything I wouldn’t do, and have fun. You know I adore you, but I cannot check out a customer’s equipment on the sly.”

“Can you step on the sheet accidentally? And, hey, do you have a camera phone? Or you could text message me from the back room—”

“No. I’m going to lunch now. Can I get you anything while I’m out? A foot-long hot dog, perhaps?” She laughed as Shirlie threw a wad of paper at her, and ducked out the door.

Peggy walked down the block to a local sandwich shop, grimacing at the heat and humidity of Miami in May. Unfortunately, her seven-o’clock appointment the next day had now started to assume a significance of epic proportions. The question was, would her client’s significant proportions also be epic?

3

AT FIVE MINUTES TO SEVEN, Peggy put a William Ackerman new age CD into the treatment room’s stereo system and hit the play button. She lit an imported French candle—Japanese-quince scented—and spread plastic, clean white towels and a fresh sheet on her massage table.

She looked around the room, satisfied that it was soothing and calming. The walls were a delicate pale blue, with a mural of trees, grass and rolling hills on one side and a beach on the other. Marly, the salon’s hairstylist, had painted them, plus a mural of an open window on one end, since the real thing was absent. The window “looked into” a cozy living room, so that the client felt as if he or she was being treated in an outside garden bower. They’d added a real window box at the painted sill and planted silk flowers in it. The effect was charming and magical—as well as soothing.

For some odd reason, butterflies had invaded Peggy’s stomach. She emerged from the treatment room and rounded the corner, walking down the apple-green hallway and then into the hall near the front of the spa, wiping her palms quickly on her lab coat as she heard the door of After Hours open and close. A deep voice announced that Troy Barrington was here for his seven o’clock appointment.

Troy. The Man’s name, at last. It fit him: one no-nonsense syllable, and masculine in the extreme. Peg still couldn’t believe she’d forgotten to ask it yesterday.

She braced herself to go out and get him, tying her hair back into a ponytail since it was best not to shed on the clientele. She buttoned her lab coat and then pulled a tube of Sugar Lips Ride Him Raspberry from her pocket. She dabbed some on her lips while simultaneously scolding herself for primping. She’d sworn off men for a year, remember? Plus, the guy was an über-jock, for God’s sake, and she’d sworn off jocks for life.

Peg walked into the reception area. She should have brought a tissue to wipe the drool from Shirlie’s chin. The girl’s cheeks were flushed, and she kept rearranging a vase of flowers, managing to snap half the blooms and leaves off them.

Peggy remembered a time when hot men had made her nervous. But that was so long ago, before she’d learned that they were all schmucks. The butterflies she’d felt in her stomach? Puh-lease. It was just hunger: she wanted her dinner.

“Nice to see you again, Troy.” Peg held out her hand to him. See? It wasn’t shaking the tiniest bit.

Troy had been inspecting the display of erotic lipsticks with a raised brow, paying special attention to Whip Me Cream.

He turned to greet her and she felt dwarfed by his sheer size: not all height, but breadth, too. Somehow, with the reception counter between them, he hadn’t seemed quite this big yesterday.

He wrapped huge, warm fingers around hers and clasped gently. “Hi.” He gestured with his head toward the lipsticks. “Interesting products you got there.” He wore a knowing grin.

She felt a jolt at the contact, and a flush started at her neck, as if she were a teenager. “They’re great. The next Smashbox or Hard Candy, but more fun.”

His amusement faded to puzzlement.

“Never mind. Girl stuff.” She smiled. “My name is Peggy, and I’ll be doing your sea salt scrub this evening. Can I get you something to drink? Wine? Beer? Sparkling water?”

“Bottled water would be great,” he said, releasing her hand.

She nodded in approval. He cared about his body. Peg was torn about the alcohol policy in the spa. On the one hand, it brought them clients and helped them keep the fun, partylike atmosphere at night. On the other, alcohol didn’t really have much to do with total mind-body-spirit fitness. It muddled the mind, slowed the body and wasn’t great for the spirit, either, after the initial high.

However, alcohol had been great for business. Simply amazing how a drink or two loosened up wallets and led to further treatments. A regular pedicure became a spa pedicure; a simple facial led to the purchase of two hundred dollars’ worth of products, and so on.

“Just follow me.” She led Troy to the treatment room and showed him the table, though he seemed to be looking at everything in the room but that. He was intense about it, too.

It was almost as if he were some kind of corporate spy, checking out their premises so that he could set up a competing business. She didn’t know what to think.

“Have you ever had a sea salt scrub before?” she asked him.

He shook his head. “No, can’t say as I have. Why is there a drain in the floor here?”

“This used to be the only wet room we had,” Peggy explained. “So we had what’s called a Vichy shower mounted over the treatment table. But now we have four wet rooms surrounding central locker rooms over there—” she pointed to a set of double doors “—so the showers are centralized. When we’re done here, you’ll just walk into the men’s area, find an unoccupied shower and rinse off.”

He nodded.

“Through the doors and to the right, there’s a set of teak shelves where you’ll find folded spa robes and clean towels. Here’s a locker key—” Peggy handed it to him “—so you can store your things securely.

“Go ahead and take a quick shower just to get your skin moist, and then come on back in here. You can hang your robe on the back of the door. Then just lie down on your stomach and cover yourself with the folded sheet at the foot of the table. Do you have any questions?”

“So when did you make all these improvements to the place?” Troy asked casually.

“Recently. Just last year, when Alejandro relocated what was his mother’s salon and expanded into a day spa, too. I came onboard as the manager and massage therapist only about three months ago.”

“Alejandro is your…?”

“Business partner and a childhood friend.”

“Oh, so you grew up in Miami?”

“No, I grew up mostly back East. But we lived here for a few years. Alejandro’s been here all his life, though, and we’ve always kept in touch.” Peg moved toward the door. “I’m going to get your water now, okay? Go ahead and make yourself comfortable and I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.”

She exited and tried not to think about Troy Barrington unbuttoning his shirt, unbuckling his belt, stepping out of his jeans. Tried not to think about the expanse of muscle that would greet her when she walked back through the door. She was a professional, after all.

Peggy walked to the kitchenette and got one of the spa’s tall, apple-green plastic cups from a cabinet, added a few ice cubes to it and began to fill it with bottled water from the fridge. She caught sight of herself in the steel microwave door and as usual hated her freckled, pug nose. Not the kind of schnoz that got a man fantasizing.

“Hey!” she said aloud. “I don’t want men fantasizing. Mind, body, spirit. No guys.”

“What’s that, hon?” Marly Fine, the spa’s hairstylist and muralist, walked up behind her and dumped out the remnants of her green tea. Her glossy black hair hung in a loose French braid down her back and she’d eaten off all her lip gloss, along with part of her lip liner, too. Despite this, Marly was true to her last name: fine. Tall and willowy and ethereal, with deep blue-green eyes and unfairly olive skin.

“Mind, body, spirit. Impulse control. Balance in all things,” said Peggy, feeling like the Pillsbury Doughboy in a red wig beside her. She needed to get her butt running again, instead of just coaching kids to do it from the sidelines. But no matter how much she ran or starved, her legs would always be short and thick compared to Marly’s.

“Right, mind, body, spirit.” The hairstylist batted Peg’s ponytail playfully. “I hear you have a hottie under your sheet right now.”

“Is Shirlie still panting out there?”

“Yes.” Marly’s expression was amused. “And she swears she’s seen the guy before, in the news or on TV or something. What does he do?”

Peg shrugged. “Beats me. All I’ve done is ask him what he wants to drink and point him toward the men’s locker room.”

“Well, once you’ve got him kneaded to jelly under your magic hands, try to figure out the mystery. She’s going to drive me crazy.” Marly got another tea bag out of a canister and stuck her mug, full of water, into the microwave.

Peggy liked green tea, too, but preferred it cold, straight from the refrigerator. “Okay. So what’s your evening look like?”

“I’m doing highlights on Candy Moss right now. She’s had two glasses of wine and is giggling for no apparent reason under the dryer. Then a couple of updos for some gala in Coconut Grove. And last a simple cut and blow-dry. I should be able to leave early tonight.”

“Lucky you.”

“That reminds me, though—would you be able to wax a client’s eyebrows after you’re done with the hottie?”

“Sylvia can’t do it?” Sylvia was their aesthetician.

“She can, but this woman doesn’t like her—she over-plucked her last time.”

“Oh, okay. Sure.” Peg headed for the exit. “Good luck with Candy after glass of wine number three, okay?” They really weren’t supposed to give the customers more than two drinks, but sometimes it was hard to cut them off.

Marly laughed. “Thanks.”

Peggy headed down the hallway and knocked on the treatment room door.

“Come in,” Troy said. He was lying facedown on the table, with the sheet draped over his lower half.

Peggy swallowed hard at the sight of his broad, smooth, tanned back and powerful biceps and triceps. She’d had a feeling his body was gorgeous underneath the simple cotton knit shirt.

“Here’s your water,” she said.

Troy propped himself up on his elbows and accepted it with thanks, flashing a chest that reminded her of Brad Pitt’s in, appropriately enough, Troy. It segued into a perfectly flat abdomen sporting a six-pack of trained, hard muscle, and her knees went disgustingly weak at the sight.

Jock. Eddie. Jocks suck. Be true to own mind, body, spirit. Impulse control.

Still she stared at Troy’s chest while he drank his water, until he quirked an eyebrow. “Have you spotted something important to science?”

“What?” She flushed. “Uh, no. Let’s get started, okay?”

He flashed her a quizzical grin and she realized, mortified, that she’d sounded as if she was in a hurry to touch him. Worse, he didn’t seem surprised. Egotistical jerk.

He set his cup down on a side table within reach and relaxed again on the table.

“Music okay?” she asked in crisp tones as she prepared the salt scrub. She added just a touch more shower gel to it so it would glide onto his skin smoothly. She mixed it with a wooden tongue depressor, the same thing a doctor would use with patients.

“It’s very…uh, peaceful,” he said. “So how long have you been doing this, Peggy?”

Let the small talk begin. “For about five years.”

“What did you do before?”

“I got out of college, waitressed and bartended for a couple of years, then tried to work for my brother, Hal, as an account manager—which was boring beyond belief.”

“You don’t like a nine-to-five office environment?”

“God, no.”

Peggy filled her hands with the salt scrub and warmed it a bit before spreading it over Troy’s shoulders and upper back. “I’m more of an outdoors person, believe it or not.” She laughed a little self-consciously, smoothing her hands in circles over his skin.

He groaned softly, and she was pleased that it felt good to him.

“But I’m not really artistic enough to become a landscape architect,” she continued, “and I don’t have any desire to dig ditches…so here I am. I do this and also coach a powder-puff football team on the side.”

Troy lifted his head. “You’re kidding—my twelve-year-old twin nieces are on a powder-puff team.”

Her hands stopped. “Twins? Their names aren’t Danni and Laura, are they?”

“Yes! Blond? Smart mouths?”

“That’s them! I coach them Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday at the Woodward School. They’re really good, too.”

“Yeah, don’t I know it. I’m the one who taught them to throw a ball. I used to play strong safety for the Jacksonville Jaguars.”

Ugh. Football player, worst species of the genus Jock. She should have known. “Of course—that’s where I’ve heard your name,” Peg said politely. “Shirlie, our receptionist, was convinced that you were some celebrity…she’ll be so psyched that she was right.”

“Celebrity? Nah.” But he looked pleased. “You tell her I’m just a broken-down old ball player.”

He certainly didn’t look broken-down to Peggy. He didn’t feel broken-down, either, as she polished his body with the salt scrub and a loofah mitt. She was so close to him as she worked that she could smell the faint aftershave on his jaw and the essence of Dial soap on his skin.

The gel she’d mixed with the salt had a sweet grapefruit scent. Imported from France, they’d just gotten it in last month and it was very popular. She smoothed it into his skin, exfoliating and massaging, and thought about the odd intimacy of her job. Most of the time, if anyone was uncomfortable, it was the client, unused to the touch of a stranger.

But right now she herself was discomfited, and fighting the urge to…she didn’t know exactly. Rub her face against the smooth skin of his back, or even hike up her lab coat and skirt and sit astride him, feel him between her thighs.

To distract herself from the renegade thoughts, she forced herself to focus on his nieces, white-blond Danni and dishwater-blond Laura.

“Laura’s an amazing place kicker and Danni throws one of the tightest spirals I’ve ever seen,” she said, trying not to be fascinated with the corded muscle in Troy’s forearms. The man might have retired from the playing field, but he still worked out.

“Yeah.” He chuckled. “Danni’s got quite an arm. And she’s fierce, too! Laura’s not as aggressive, but she’s all about precision. I started working with them on my visits when they were about six, I think. So how did you get into football? I know a lot of women who watch it, but not many who play it or coach it.”

Peggy didn’t know exactly what to say. She had a love-hate relationship with football. How did she explain, without sounding pathetic, that she’d started learning it to get her father’s attention after he left? That she was so good that all the Little League teams had been thrilled to have her—until high school, when suddenly she was suspect.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, working her way down to his lower back muscles and getting perilously close to the sheet covering his glutes. “I was a real tomboy, I guess, and used to play with the neighborhood kids. I worked at it. I was good. I watched it all the time on TV—thought it was a lot more interesting than making Barbie kiss Ken. And my dad was really into football.”

She didn’t mention that she’d loved to tackle people, that it had helped with all the pent-up anger and frustration she’d felt over her parents’ divorce. At first she’d blamed her mom for not being nice to Dad, for making him want to leave. Then she’d found out why Mom wasn’t nice: Dad had a girlfriend on the side.

“Yeah? So what’s your favorite team?” Troy asked, his voice trailing into something like a deep purr as she firmly massaged the muscles on either side of his spine.

“Dolphins. Dan Marino was my hero.”

“Yeah? Mine, too.” Troy turned his head toward her and smiled. “Watching the guy run with those bad knees was like seeing paint dry, but man, his passing game was incredible.”

Peggy nodded. “Quick release, amazing accuracy, tight spirals. Good thing he had Mark Clayton and Mark Duper to pass to.”

“I can see my nieces are in good hands. Speaking of which—” Peggy moved from his back to his thighs, and he edged them apart a bit “—so am I. They teach you how to do this in some special school?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’ll bet you got all As.”

“Let’s just say I did better at this than at trig and calculus.”

His legs were covered in a light sprinkling of coarse hair, and his thighs were packed with muscle, as were the calves. She applied more scrub and worked it in over every inch that wasn’t private, right down to his feet and each toe.

“Okay,” she said finally. “You can turn over now.”

He rolled onto his back, holding the sheet in place over him.

She did her very best not to look at that area, even though Shirlie’s questions came tumbling back into her mind. Do you have a camera phone? Can’t you just accidentally step on the sheet? You can text message me from the back….

Peggy bit her lip to keep from laughing.

“What’s the dimple for?” Troy asked, just as her humor vanished on seeing his chest and shoulders again.

She turned away for another handful of the salt scrub. God, the man was gorgeous. And this—she applied the scrub to his skin, trying not to meet his eyes—this was even more intimate.

“Dimple?” He had flat, coppery nipples, and she avoided them, not wanting the salt to irritate the more sensitive areas of his skin.

“You get a dimple, only on the left, when you’re trying not to smile. It’s cute.”

“Um, thanks.” She worked salt scrub into his left bicep and tricep groups, using both hands to span the muscles. She swallowed as she met his eyes, which were gray green like stormy seawater and set off by his tanned skin.

His lips held a devilish curve as she bent over him and worked her way over his chest, across his rib cage, down his abdomen. He had an old scar there, she noticed, and as her fingers drew near it he murmured, “Appendicitis at fifteen.”

“Painful,” she said.

“Mmm.”

She’d reached the limits of the sheet and couldn’t help looking right smack into the center of it. Not that she was sharing with Shirlie, but she didn’t need to accidentally step on the sheet to tell that there was nothing wrong with his personal equipment. Troy Barrington, she decided, had never been on steroids.

4

TROY RELAXED on the massage table, relieved that Peggy hadn’t connected him with the “stalker” in the parking lot.

She’d been quite the little scrapper then, and he loved her hands on him now. They were small, white and soft, just like her, but they possessed an unexpected strength—and she radiated competence from every pore.

Competent, confident women turned him on like nothing else. Women who didn’t need him and didn’t look up to him; women who weren’t groupies or sluts. Cool women who were a challenge without being bitchy—those were the ones Troy found irresistible.

Troy had seen all types, having been a professional ball player. He’d been chased by hundreds of beautiful women, very few of them interested in who he was as a person. They just flocked to the outer package: the muscular guy with the glamorous, well-paying job and the great car—not that most of them even recognized what the Lotus was. “Why don’t you drive a nice car, like a Porsche, instead of that old thing?” one girl had asked him. That had been their first and last date.

Troy had no regrets about leaving Jacksonville or Gainesville—well, besides his new, lowly status of Head Cheese Doodle and Nobody. It was a little lonely starting over, but it felt good. He had no baggage in Miami. No big reminders of the selfish, hedonistic guy he’d been for years. He was a new man, shouldering new responsibilities, and he was strangely enthusiastic about them. For the first time his life would have meaning to someone other than himself.

As Peggy’s hands slid over his skin, buffing him with the coarse salt stuff, he felt half relaxed and half energized. The cute redhead with the dimple was genuinely into football. The girl knew her stuff. Even coached his nieces…. It was a small world.

He felt her hands stop at the sheet covering his privates and wished he could throw it off. Though come to think of it, he really didn’t want his knob polished with sea salt—it might be a tad painful. He wouldn’t mind rinsing off the stuff and then pulling her on top of him, though.

Troy entertained himself by imagining once again that she was naked under that spiffy little white lab coat. That her full breasts were straining against the buttons and that maybe she had a Brazilian wax job with just the skinniest strip of red hair covering her down there.

He groaned as Peggy went to work on the tops of his thighs, and was forced to push his fantasies away before things got embarrassing. A folded sheet couldn’t hide a determined arousal, and he shouldn’t be thinking this way about his nieces’ coach, for chrissakes.

To relieve himself, he pictured her instead in a hair-net, à la cafeteria lady. Then he added a flannel nightgown and matching robe with giant blue cabbage roses all over them. He smeared her face with cold cream for good measure.

Ah, that was better: the pressure in his groin subsided.

Peggy, oblivious to these changes in her appearance, simply did her job. And with her hands all over his body this way, Troy found it hard to remember why he was here in the first place: to scope out the spa for code violations.

Okay, she’d mentioned that the showers were new and they’d undergone extensive renovations. There should be city permits for all of that on file.

Oh, damn, that feels good! He almost drooled with gratitude. No, no, where was he?

Oh, yeah. There should also be inspection reports by officials to determine that everything was built to code. What he needed to do was somehow research each and every change to the building in the last two years….

Peggy’s wonderful hands stopped—

No, no! Don’t stop, please don’t stop. Touch me just a little farther south. There’s a toy surprise there, honey.

—and she announced that he should go and shower now. He thanked her and regretfully got up after she’d exited. Troy pulled on the cotton waffle-weave robe again and headed for the state-of-the-art showers to rinse off.

He stood under the warm water and used a sea sponge she’d given him to remove all traces of the salt scrub. He smelled like a large, aromatic-but-manly grapefruit and tingled from head to toe. This spa stuff wasn’t bad, was it?

What was bad was his urge to see the delectable redheaded Peggy again, preferably naked. And he wished it would go away, seeing as how he wanted to kick her and her business partners off his property…and she probably wouldn’t take kindly to that. Go figure.

Troy turned off the water and buried his face in a soft, clean towel. He rubbed at his hair with it, then dried his body and wound the towel around his waist. He stepped into some rubber shower thongs provided by the spa and reminded himself of his mission: to snoop. To make notes. To remember each and every detail of the place so that when he combed through the hundreds of pages of records and regulations, he could find something—anything—to nail them with and therefore break the lease.

He did feel regret about Peggy and her magic hands and her sweet smile with the single dimple. But when it came right down to it, this was just business, nothing personal.

PEGGY TOOK A COFFEE BREAK and watched wryly as one of Alejandro’s pedicure clients, Monica Delgado, deliberately messed up the polish on one of her feet so that he’d have to redo it, and therefore spend more time with her. Monica liked to wear miniskirts for these occasions and flash the poor guy as much as she could. Today she also wore an array of toe rings: three different ones, set in white gold with expensive stones.

Alejandro’s shoulders tensed as she called him back to the pedicure station, “embarrassed” by her clumsiness. But he smiled and joked with her, saying that Monica just enjoyed having him at her feet.

In the manicure area, the group of fortysomething ladies they’d dubbed The Fabulous Four gossiped and shrieked with laughter over what was probably their third bottle of wine. The downside to serving alcohol in the salon was that certain clients took total advantage of it. The Fab Four showed up like clockwork once a week, all at the same time, and indulged in a raucous happy hour at After Hours’ expense.

But since they collectively spent so much money, Alejandro had decided that as long as they weren’t allowed to drive drunk, the few bottles of wine and the noise were worth it. Today, the poor guy looked as though he should have a glass himself and maybe lie down on her massage table for a half hour.

There were days when After Hours was more zoo than spa. At his hairstyling station, one of the master cutters, Nicky, shrilly accused Sylvia of swiping a pair of his shears to cut her own bangs. She denied it at the top of her lungs.

Ugh. As the manager, it was Peggy’s job to go break up the argument, calm them down and find the missing scissors. They turned up under the GQ magazine by his hand mirror, but when Peg suggested that he apologize to Sylvia, he sniffed and said he didn’t like her attitude and she could kiss his left ass cheek.

Peg sighed, while Nicky launched into a long dialogue about how he couldn’t find the right man to do it, no matter how many Internet dates he went on….

She finally took Sylvia into the back and explained that Nicky was experiencing a bad case of PMS and he’d be over it next week. Sylvia rolled her eyes and went to take her next facial appointment.

Peggy shook her head, took a deep breath and went back to the front of the salon, where she opened a tip envelope and stared at the enormous bonus Troy Barrington had left for her. Shirlie and Marly stared, too.

“That’s, like, a thirty percent tip!” Shirl exclaimed.

Marly lifted a dark, winged brow, her expression teasing. “Sea salt scrub, hmm? You must not have missed an inch.”

“Hey! Just what are you implying?” Peggy could feel her face flushing, though she knew her friends were just kidding around. “I do not finish off the clientele sexually, okay?”

“Maybe he wants you to think about it for next time,” Shirlie said, with an evil wink.

Peggy drew herself up to her full height, which wasn’t much taller than the receptionist sitting down. “There won’t be a next time, ladies. Margaret can do the honors when he returns for his next treatment.”

“I take it his happy-package was disappointing?” Shirlie probed for the information dear to her heart.

“Did I say that?” Peggy asked.

“Well, it must be tiny if you don’t want to do him next time.”

Peggy shrugged. She wanted to do him, all right. She just didn’t think it was healthy for her to be around Troy Barrington in such an intimate setting—not until she’d purged the sexual attraction from her mind and body.

This is my year of self-discovery, she told herself firmly. The year of Peggy Power. I’m not going to cater to anyone else, especially not a man. I’m not going to try to fix anyone’s ego or gambling habit. I’m going to recover who I am and figure out how I got so out of balance last year.

“Girls, I hate to disappoint you, but the size of Mr. Barrington’s tip probably has more to do with the fact that I coach his nieces’ powder-puff football team. He was just being nice.”

The phone rang, forcing Shirlie to answer it. Peggy escaped to the kitchenette, where she found Alejandro looking elegant and tailored as usual, despite his recent harrowing experience with Monica Delgado. He was frowning and poking at something in the microwave.

“This tamal is still frozen,” he explained. “And I am starving.” She loved his slightly accented English—he was half Peruvian.

“They say patience is a virtue, doll.”

He laughed. “How would you know, eh?”

Peggy stuck her tongue out at him. “I don’t. But my New Year’s resolution had to do with patience and impulse control.”

“I can tell you’re sticking with that,” Alejandro said, “since it took you five seconds to make up your mind to move down here after I suggested the partnership.”

She winced. Yeah, and it had taken her three seconds to decide what college to attend, two seconds to get engaged to a dud and one to buy a car.

He took pity on her by changing the subject. “So is Hal still dating that crazy image consultant, up there in Connecticut?”

Peggy brightened. “Yes! As a matter of fact, they’ve moved in together. Can you believe that? A woman brave enough to actually live with my brother. And she’s got him dressed like an actual human being now, and keeps his hair cut.”

“Wonders will never cease.” The microwave pinged, and he removed the tamal once again. This time steam rolled off it in waves, and the aroma of corn, garlic, onion and shredded pork was delicious.

Peggy watched Alejandro spread a huge quantity of Ahi (an unbelievably hot pepper sauce) over his tamal and dig in. How did the guy eat pure fire?

“Don’t you at least want a glass of ice water?” She asked. “You know, for when your throat goes up in flames?”

He grinned and shook his head.

She opened the refrigerator and pulled out the lentil salad she’d made as part of her new, healthy, Peggy-Power regimen. She was not going to snarf fast-food pizza and burgers any longer. She was going to eat fiber and vitamins and leafy green vegetables. She was going to feel like a million bucks each and every day. Her chest swelled with pride as she mounded the lentils on a plate and sprinkled a few sliced green onions on top.

Shirlie walked in with a Wendy’s Old Fashioned Hamburgers bag smelling of heavenly grease. “I super-sized my fries. Want some?”

Typically, it took Peggy half a second to decide. “Slap ’em right here,” she said. “Where’s the ketchup?”

SINCE THEY WORKED at the spa all day Saturday, Sunday was relaxation day, and Monday usually got taken up by errands and housework.

Marly was working too much to pay attention to her dating life, so she and Peg spent a lot of time together, this Sunday being no exception.

Peggy had sold everything she owned in a whirlwind garage sale before she’d driven to Miami from Connecticut. As part of her self-improvement program, she’d even sold her television, intending to read in her spare time instead of being sucked into sitcoms. Now she missed the TV’s comforting presence, and she had an idea.

“You want me to paint a television on your living-room wall?” Marly said incredulously.

“Yup. C’mon, you could do it in an hour with one hand tied behind your back.”

“Yeah, but it’s a nutty thing to do.”

“It’ll make the room seem more homey.” Anything would make the sterile white box of an apartment seem more homey, even a fire extinguisher and a can of bug spray. It was awful. White tile. Beige carpet. White walls. White ceiling. White vertical blinds. She was living in a freakin’ hospital. Every morning, she half expected to wake up in surgery.

“Uh, Peg?” said Marly. “The TV will have only one, unchanging image.”

“I know! It’s motion picture subversion. How cool is that?”

“Huh?” Marly started to laugh.

“Simplifying the constant barrage of images into one. But it’ll be hard to choose which one I want.”

“What’s gonna be hard is convincing your landlord to give you back your deposit money.”

Peggy waved that mundane thought away. “I’ll just roll the walls white again before I leave. Can you do the TV today?”

“Sure, Miss Crazy. Bring me a pencil and think about what colors you want. Should I put it on that big wall over the couch?”

“Perfect. And I have some tempera poster paint. Will that work?”

Marly nodded, resigned to the project. She stood on the couch and lightly outlined a huge television screen on the wall, using the side of a framed art poster as a straightedge. “So, is this a plasma TV, Peg?”

“Oh, definitely. Only top-of-the-line equipment for me. Don’t you agree?”

“Uh-huh. Get me some paint and some paper cups to mix colors in, okay?” Marly worked quickly, somehow making the sketch look three-dimensional.

They threw a sheet over the couch, and within half an hour Marley was painting in the frame and asking Peg, who was daydreaming about the possibilities of Troy Barrington’s backside, what image she wanted on the screen.

Without even thinking about it she said, “A football player’s backside in uniform. He’s bent over, gripping the ball and ready to hike.”

Marly set down her brush. “Peggy. You really want to look at a butt every time you walk into your living room?”

“Yup. If it’s a nice male one in spandex, I sure do!”

“Have you been sniffing too many aromatherapy candles, honey?”

“Probably. Hey, when you’re done let’s have a glass of wine and give each other pedicures. I think your laundry’s just about done.” Peg went to check on it, transferred the wet load to the dryer and got her cheap little foot spa out of the cabinet over the washer.

She brought it into the main room and set it down on a clean towel. Then she filled a pitcher with warm water from the kitchen sink and poured it into the basin. She added bath salts and brought out other supplies.

Marly was deep in concentration now, sketching the seat of the player’s pants, his socks, cleats and hands on the football. Peggy was impressed that she didn’t have to work from a photograph to get the details, proportions and angles right.

“Why didn’t you go to art school, Marly?” she asked.

“I did.”

“But you do hair.”

“You know the story about why I didn’t graduate. My dad got sick. Besides, I love what I do for women every day. I get to be creative, I make them feel better, it pays well and I’m never between jobs for longer than a couple of hours. What more could I ask for?”

Peggy nodded.

“And I’m able to do my art on the side.” Marly painted in the football, somehow giving it texture and dimension, too. The stitching appeared almost real.

As Peg looked at it, the familiar wash of conflicting emotions about football rolled through her. It represented both success and failure for her, strength and weakness, power and victimization.

A guy like Troy Barrington—great, there she went, thinking about him again—had been a natural to play on a high school team, then a college one and finally go pro. He’d been encouraged all the way.

But her experience had been different. Suddenly, when she’d gone out for the high school team, she was resented. She’d made it because she was so good, but all the guys had looked at her funny. She’d cost one of their friends a place on the team. She had long hair and breasts and odd plumbing. She was just different with a capital D.

Instead of the camaraderie that someone like Troy had with the team, she’d battled sexually aggressive glances and felt bad because she couldn’t share the same locker room, causing no end of logistical problems.

But she’d stuck it out. She’d won everyone’s respect, however grudging. She could kick a decent field goal, run like the wind and would tackle anything that moved. The problem was, admittedly, that her body weight didn’t stack up to a six-foot, two-hundred-pound male’s.

Still, by the end of her senior year, she’d been practically the team mascot, carried on their shoulders when they won the district championship with her field goal.

Peggy would always proudly carry that moment in her heart, no matter what had happened later when she’d fought her way onto her college team. Nobody could take the district win away from her, not even her father’s absence from the stands at the crucial moment.

Impulse struck again. “Marly, you’re going to kill me, but I promise you a deep-tissue massage if you’ll change the image on the screen.”

“You’re right, I am going to kill you.” Marly straightened and glared at Peg.

“Please can you paint over the man butt and put a kick-ass woman there, instead? She’s triumphant. She just kicked a field goal that won a big game.”

“Why do I have a feeling that this kick-ass woman should have long red hair?” Resigned, Marly was already whiting out the other picture. “Get me a hair dryer, will you? It’ll speed us up. I’m not staying here all night.”

“Even if I make whiskey sours?”

“Okay, I’m staying all night. But you have to give me dinner, too.”

“Deal. You know I wouldn’t ask you to do this if you weren’t so fast and so good.”

“Yes, you would.” Marly aimed the hairdryer at the wet paint, since trying to white out the wet image had just made a nasty smear on the wall. “So, um, Peg? How’s that impulse-control thing going? I can see you’re making huge strides.”

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