Fools Paradise (36 page)

King Dave knew damned well what. The end of tolerable life as he knew it.

King Dave knew he had a lot of latitude—hell, he knew. He was King Dave Flaherty, son of the president of the Local. His shit didn't stink. Now and then he admitted to himself that maybe his shit should stink. Hey, he was still young. A guy needed to cut loose now and then.

But the old man's name wasn't going to cover this one. It was too ridiculous. He'd never hear the end of it. Never. King Dave looked into a future of pushing boxes and running follow-spots and manning the flies and focusing lights. And everywhere, in backstage corners all over town, he would find the pictures—eight-by-ten glossies duct-taped to a stage weight carriage, soaped to the mirror in the men's room, hot-melt-glued to the side of his own workbox or Super Trouper follow spot.

Full-color photos of his Day-Glo orange dick.

Unless he bought Tammy off. Okay, he'd buy her off.

But that wasn't the worst possible consequence, he realized with fresh horror.

His father would go ballistic. That could translate into serious consequences—less work from the hall, fewer cherry jobs with gobs of overtime. His mother, shit, she'd have a shit hemorrhage.

But
worst
of all, naturally they would hang another moniker on him. There was a no-brainer.

Day-Glo Dick Dave.

He shivered, aghast. Quite a comedown from King Dave.

Hell, he knew guys who would never call him Dave again. Just “Day-Glo Dick.” The very thought made him cringe down to his socks. Creative sons of bitches that they were, they could come up with a dozen variants, he'd never beat it out of 'em.
Day-Glo. Glow-worm. Ouch.

They didn't even need the photos to do that to him. He could pay Tammy off and this waitress could still ruin his life. The moniker would stick.

It could go on for years. It might never end.

He glanced around the coffee shop as he walked through the door. Thank heaven, nobody from the Local was in here right now.

King Dave filled himself with a lungful of righteous hot air and walked slam into that snippy waitress.

Hot coffee cascaded down his tee-shirt, scalding his nipples. He yipped.

“What th—why can't you—oh, it's you.” He was off to a bad start. He met her eyes. The shock literally rocked him back on his heels. Whatever advantage he may have had, he realized he wasn't going to recover it.

She smiled at him. It was a warm, kind smile, the smile you get from the day-shift waitresses at Liz Otter's—not the skinny young ones in black lipstick with studs in their lips, but the big-hair, big-bra old babes who've seen it all and forgiven all, short of a check stiff. Her smile told him what he most feared.

She'd seen everything. She knew who he was. She knew what she could do to him. And she knew he couldn't do a thing about it.

“King Dave, you get yourself right back to the men's room,” she said, as if she was one of the old waitress babes, not some snippy tight-ass Southern chick with too much vocabulary.

He opened his mouth and shut it. She was tall enough to look straight into his eyes. Her golden hair was piled up on her head like a queen's. Her usually lazy-eyed aloofness was transformed. As if she'd suddenly, finally noticed he was a man, goddammit, and at the absolute worst moment.

Someday she'd be old enough to wear the big bra and boss him and the other boys around. But not yet.

In self-defense, King Dave ogled her up and down, meaning to slap her down with his eyes. She was wearing health sneakers. Jesus. In heels she might be taller than he was. Her body was all curves under her Liz Otter's white uniform, curvy but strong.

There wasn't a drop of coffee on her.

His tee-shirt was drenched. He flushed.

She ignored his hey-baby look. She put her hand on his shoulder and said in a motherly, half-scolding tone, “Go right back there. I'll see if the cook has a spare pair of pants. You lock the door. Clean yourself up. I'll knock when I've found you some clean clothes.”

She glanced down at his coffee- and paint-stained shirt and then, for an instant, a little lower, at the orange fingerprints all over the fly of his Levis. King Dave felt himself go hot. It was already starting. Damn her.

Then she turned him by the shoulders and shooed him back toward the men's. “Get along.”

There was definitely, definitely a hint of laughter in her voice. God damn her.

King Dave shut his gaping mouth and allowed himself to be hustled to the little boys' room. He took some satisfaction in shooting the lock noisily shut. Was that a giggle outside the door?
Grrr!
After sixty futile seconds glaring into the mirror, he stripped and got down to the awkward business of trying to wash orange spray paint out of his pubic hair.

Nadine fled back to her coffee station. Heart hammering, she poured a new cup of decaf and delivered it to the customers in booth six. Her breath came in halts. Something strange was happening in her head, a kind of dizzy singing silence that made it hard for her to concentrate.

She shut her eyes and remembered their collision in the doorway. Lord, he was attractive up close. In the instant before she spoke, as the coffee doused him, she had looked straight into his eyes. She knew: King Dave Flaherty, a god among men, was completely in her hands.

And she realized that she wanted him.

What appallingly bad judgment. What a delicious cave-woman feeling.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Nadine was a practical girl. If she were not to go down in Day-Glo orange flames herself, the butt of stagehand humor until the day she quit Liz Otter's and scurried back home to Daddy with her tail between her legs, she would have to plan her next moves very carefully.

The main thing was never to let him see her off balance.

She begged Miguel the cook for his spare pair of whites and snitched a Cafè Les Auteurs tee-shirt from the pile under the cash register. As she passed the shiny Bunn machine, she whipped out her lipstick and freshened her makeup.

Daddy would have conniptions to see her in lipstick. She flushed, remembering Daddy's condemnation and the humiliation of slinking out of town.
Oh, King Dave, I've been there.

That was why she would never betray what she'd seen.

If she was to succeed, however, King Dave must never know.

She could feel his gaze on the front of her body like a fingerprint. He was furious. He was anxious. He didn't trust her.

Well, she'd have to make him trust her. If she didn't, she knew well, he was capable of doing something supremely nutty and unpleasant to make himself safe. King Dave Flaherty would not let her take him down without a fight.

She knew she ought to be scared.

Nadine smiled. It was a tender, affectionate smile for a wayward boy who badly wanted his butt smacked and his face kissed, in that order. She made sure the butt-smacking part of her smile was uppermost when she knocked on the men's room door.

“King Dave, honey?” she said in a low voice.

The door was jerked open. King Dave glared through an inch crack.

“Here.” She shoved the pants and tee-shirt into his hands.

He took them and started to shut the door in her face.

“And King Dave,” she added in her sternest waitress voice. The door stopped moving. She could see past his head to the men's room mirror. In the mirror, she could see all of him from behind. He was naked to his socks. His back looked as sculpted and muscular as his chest. She felt a hot spike of lust shoot up through her body.

“Now King Dave,” she said in her most motherly voice, “don't you worry about a thing. Nobody was in here who knows you.”

He stared at her through the crack in the door, his face a picture of doubt and heart-stopping vulnerability.

“So all you've got to worry about is the women.”

His look said as plainly as words,
You're one of them.

Her smile said back,
Well of course I am. But you're going to have to trust me anyway.

The door slammed and locked again.

To find out what happens next, buy
King Of Hearts
, available at all leading online retailers!

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