Hot and Bothered (3 page)

He lifted his gaze and found Jimmy in the crowd, beanpole tall and narrow faced. His former manager waved him toward the wide bar that formed a U on one side of the restaurant. Pete was leaning on the bar, his blond bangs hanging in his eyes, as insufferably cocky-looking as he’d been the last time Mark had seen him. Mark was a poor judge of male beauty, but he’d never gotten Pete’s appeal to women. He looked—to Mark—like an overgrown kid. Countless promoters and image consultants had championed Pete’s boyishness back in the day, claiming he was popular precisely because teenaged girls didn’t really want men. They weren’t ready for them yet. Body and facial hair still secretly scared them. They wanted the illusion of innocence. Hence the appeal of the barely-past-boyhood pop group.

Mark crossed to the bar and Jimmy clapped him on the shoulder, as if they were friends. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

Years ago, Mark had believed that Jimmy liked him. Jimmy was a straight shooter, and Mark had been, too. In an industry that was full of hot air, that was a rare commodity. This last week, though, had made it clear how little Jimmy thought of the man Mark had become—and how unnecessary he considered him to the tour.

It would be humbling, if there were anything in him left to be humbled.

Behind Jimmy, Pete shifted but didn’t step forward to greet him. He wasn’t going to make it easy for Mark. And as much as Mark hated him, he couldn’t blame him.

Moment of truth. He had to lower himself enough to apologize to the piece of dung leaning on the shiny teak bar. Otherwise, all the image rehabbing in the world wasn’t going to make this tour happen.

Pete’s arrogant half smile made Mark think of Lyn. Her beauty, her passion and her promises, the romantic ones and the professional ones. Pete had taken away not just those promises, but something deeper, something Mark had never been able to get back.

The noise in Mad Mo’s formed a cushion around Mark, making everything feel faintly unreal. It still seemed possible to turn and leave, without consequences. His father and the medical bills were far away.

Jimmy shifted uncomfortably. Pete’s smile grew bigger and more smug, the smile of a man who knew his opponent was between a rock and a hard place. Mark wondered how much of this Pete had orchestrated. Did he even give a shit whether or not Mark apologized? Did he just want to see Mark squirm? Had sending Mark to Haven been Pete’s idea? He could imagine Pete howling with laughter at the notion of Mark undergoing an image rehab.

Jimmy gestured loosely toward Pete. “So, um—”

Mark’s mouth refused to open. It was wrong, just dead wrong, that he should be the one apologizing.

Pete Sovereign boosted himself off the bar, giving Mark the full force of his superior grin and thrusting his hand out. “Nice of you to come all this way to beg.”

For a moment, Mark could feel the world stretch and shift—déjà vu. He could feel the moments that had just passed and the moments that were creeping up on them. He remembered how Pete’s nose had given way to his knuckles ten years ago, and he imagined—no
lived
—with unapologetic clarity, the way Pete’s cheekbone would crack under the force of the even more heartfelt blow Mark was about to deliver.

What stopped him from throwing the punch, oddly enough, was not thinking of his father. It was thinking of Haven Hoyt and the way she’d looked at him in Charme, her eyebrows slightly drawn together as if she were trying to figure him out. As if he were
worth
figuring out. And even when he’d called her about this meeting, Haven had not said anything about watching his temper or not getting in a fight. She had, in fact, told him he would be capable of handling it maturely.

He heard himself sigh, and he saw Pete’s eyes widen. He leaned as close to Pete Sovereign as he could bear to, steeling himself against the guy’s cologne, and said, “It will be a long, cold wait in hell for you if you think that’s going to happen, douche bag.”

Then he turned and walked out of Mad Mo’s, the din fading behind him as the door swung shut and the cacophony of Manhattan’s streets filled his ears.

3

“W
HAT
THE
HELL
were you thinking?”

There was something so incongruous about seeing Haven Hoyt in Queens, standing in the foyer of his apartment building, that it took him a moment to realize she was yelling at him. The hangover wasn’t helping.

“Are you the most self-destructive human being on Earth?”

He almost answered her before he registered that her questions were rhetorical. “Did you come all the way out here to ask me that? Couldn’t you have called?”

It was Saturday morning. Last night, Mark had walked as fast as his legs could carry him away from Mad Mo’s and drowned his sorrows in shots of tequila at Over the Border. Countless shots of tequila. He’d gotten kicked out for harassing the bartender when she refused to serve him one more.

Haven crossed her arms. “I thought this bore discussing in person. Plus, I was so irritated with you that I needed to haul myself out here to burn off steam. Why do you live in Queens?”

“Because there’s not enough room on the island of Manhattan for me and all my self-destructiveness.”

A smile flirted with Haven’s impeccably made-up face and vanished just as quickly. “Seriously, Mark, are you off your rocker?”

“Nope. I am totally sane. Pete Sovereign is, in fact, the biggest douche bag on Earth.”

“Douchier than you? Because you’re looking pretty douchey right about now. Throwing away a reunion tour and hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of dollars. Screwing yourself and me out of a job.”

Righteous fury made her even more beautiful. She kept tossing that glossy black hair, which she was wearing down today. It was perfectly straight and it looked like satin. Haven Hoyt was possibly made of satin from head to toe. Right now, he wanted to rub his entire greedy self all over her.

He caught himself mindlessly staring and attempted to corral some brain cells. “I take it you heard from Jimmy.” Of course. Jimmy would have been on the phone to dismiss Haven almost before Mark’s back had disappeared through the door. They’d have been glad to wash their hands of him, glad to have their low opinion of him confirmed.

“Jimmy called me this morning to, effectively, fire me,” she said.

He hadn’t wanted Haven to share the low opinion of him, though. That brought a mild sense of regret into his pounding head and foggy brain.

She teetered in strappy shoes with impossibly high, skinny heels. Not the right shoes for storming out to Queens in a temper. It was a good trek to his Sunnyside studio from the 7 line. This woman had impressive ankle strength and toe endurance.

Jesus, there was
nothing
sexy about either of those things. This was the twenty-first century, and naked feet were no longer the frontier. And yet, weirdly, he was turned on. Probably he would find her elbow sexy, or her toenail clippings, or—

He cast the closest thing he had to prayer skyward. If there were a remote possibility that he’d ever get to sleep with her, he wanted her to wear those shoes in bed.

“Haven, honestly? You should be glad to wash your hands of me.”

She glared at him. “Can you let me be the judge of what I should be glad about? I wanted this job. I’ve been trying to show Jimmy what I can do for years. I need referrals from him.”

“Well, then, I’m sorry. But I can’t work with Pete Sovereign.”

Even before the words were all the way out of his mouth, in the sober, hungover, head-splittingly bright light of day, he remembered that he had very few choices. And he didn’t like the pitying way Haven was looking at him, head tilted to one side. As if he was too pathetic to be believed.

“What happened between you and that guy?”

There was no way he was going to tell her. He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall.

She sighed. “Fine. Don’t tell me. I’ll just take your word that it was a big enough deal that you can let your dad rot because you’re too proud to issue some meaningless apology.”

He closed his eyes.

He could hear her breathing. Fast. Maybe the walk from the 40th Street station, maybe anger. With his eyes closed, he could imagine that was what her breathing would sound like if he got her worked up. If he licked around the rim of her ear, along the line of her neck, and down the curve of a breast.

Now he was breathing fast.

“You’re going to have to find a way to work with Pete Sovereign.”

His eyes flew open. Apparently, she was steel under all that satin. He could see it in her shoulders, in the hardness of her eyes. “It’s none of your business.”

“Too bad. I want this gig, and you’re the gig. I begged Jimmy to give you one more chance. I begged on your behalf. You owe me this.” Her eyes were challenging, her hands on her hips now.

“No. No way. I didn’t ask you for anything and I don’t owe you anything. I don’t even know you.”
Even if I have undressed you in my mind several times since the first time I laid eyes on you.

“This isn’t negotiable.”

“There’s no negotiation, Haven.”

“There’s me, standing here and telling you, you have to do this. Also, there’s your dad. You said he needs a lot of physical therapy.”

“Tons,” Mark admitted. “Every day.”

“And the nurse.” She said it matter-of-factly, with the same sympathy that always undid him.

He couldn’t speak. He just nodded.

“Mark. It doesn’t have to be the world’s most heartfelt apology. It just has to be
an
apology. This time I’ll be there when you deliver it.”

She’d moved from steel to supplication, and he could already tell it would destroy his resolve—that, and the implacable reality of his father’s debt. Mark was crumbling inside, and there were no inner reserves with which to shore himself up. Haven’s compassion had started his undoing, somehow, on Thursday. It was always the urge to let down your guard that killed you in the end.

“I don’t want you there when I deliver it.” As good as surrender.

“Well, tough luck,” she said. “After last night’s fiasco, I promised Jimmy I’d stick close to you for anything that might attract public attention until the tour.”

Stick. Close. To. You.
His pulse kicked up. “You agreed to follow me around for six months?”

“If that’s what it takes.”

“You really want this gig. You begged Jimmy Jeffers. You came all the way out here and—” He wasn’t sure what to call what she’d done to him. Bossed. Pleaded. Unleashed something he wished she’d left pent up.

She didn’t quite meet his eyes. “Yes.” She scuffed the toe of her shoe lightly along the floor, and his eye followed the line of her leg. Today’s skirt was more standard issue, black and midthigh length. Nice, lean, strong thighs he’d like wrapped around his waist.

“I like a good challenge, and you want to do this because you love your dad. And maybe because you’ve done nothing for the last ten years but play wedding gigs and make cameo appearances for screaming groupies. I can’t imagine you find that very satisfying.”

You forgot something,
he wanted to say, with the same fervor that urged him to put his hands in her hair.
I want to do it because you’re going to follow me around for the next six months. And even though I shouldn’t want that, even though it’s suicidally stupid for me to want that, even though you will never
mean
those looks you give me, I do. I want that.

“No,” he said instead, because she was right. “It’s not very satisfying.”

“So let me help you apologize to Pete Sovereign, okay?”

He understood defeat well. It was his friend. “Okay.”

“And let me help you clean up your act, okay?”

“Okay.”

She eyed him suspiciously. Smart woman. His motives were about as impure as it was possible for them to be. They were dirty and male and all about the dark secrets her body was keeping from him, the ones he wanted to unfurl, one sweet mystery at a time.

“Why are you suddenly so agreeable?”

You
.

“Free haircut,” he said, and she laughed, a real, open, musical laugh, and his heart pounded almost out of his chest.

* * *

H
UNKS
OF
M
ARK
W
EBSTER
’
S
hair were hitting the floor, and Haven wasn’t feeling as satisfied by that as she’d expected to.

They were in Caruso’s, a high-end barbershop where Haven liked to take straight male clients. The chairs were covered in black leather, the rest of the furniture espresso and ebony. The sage-green walls displayed vintage photos of female movie stars, classy and sexy at the same time. These were the women Haven had modeled herself after when she’d realized that, as much as she admired them, she didn’t want to be like her mother or her sisters.

Actually, she hated the way Mark’s hair looked on the wide-plank wood floor, the softness of the pieces curled around nothing. The shorn look he had now revealed a pretty-boy quality he’d been hiding from the world for a long time. She wanted it to go back into hiding, because clean-cut Mark was doing something to her insides she didn’t like at all.

The barber, Derek, had shaved Mark first. She’d watched the straight razor scrape over his skin. The blade moved like a caress, highlighting the strength of his jaw, his high cheekbones. Crazy-deep dimples flashed now when he smiled at her in the mirror, just often enough to keep her attention. She was standing there waiting for him to smile at her again. That couldn’t be good, right?

“My hair hasn’t been this short in, like, a decade. I didn’t cut it for almost two years after the breakup.”

Now the look he shot her in the mirror was more the usual Mark. Hard jaw, angry eyes. A little easier to take. She caught her breath, which made her realize she’d lost it, somewhere along the line.

“What made you cut it after two years?”

Just a flick of the smile, one corner. “I decided it was probably time to get laid again.”

His eyes held hers. Too long. She looked away. She was uncomfortably hot in the pale blue suit jacket, but if she took it off, he’d see the sweat stains under her arms.

Her panties were damp, too, and she couldn’t blame that on overdressing for the superheated barbershop.

“Did it work?”

Wait, why had she said that? She was flirting with him, prolonging the conversation. But she shouldn’t. He was her client. He was—

Mark Webster, C.D. Certified Disaster.

He laughed, a rough, lovely sound, like something rusty from disuse. “Yup. The haircut worked the way it was supposed to. All the parts worked, too.”

She didn’t want to ask any more questions. Talking to Mark Webster about sex, with his eyes so big, long-lashed and luminous, his teeth so starkly white, was a bad idea. Removing all that hair should have made him more vulnerable, but she was the one rocked back on her heels.

She cast about for another topic. “I made an appointment for Pete to come see me next Tuesday morning in my office at ten.”

He looked down at his lap, and she was sorry she’d gone there. Bad enough she was making him grovel without making him think about it today.

“It’s not going to be so bad,” she said. “Wham, bam—”

Whoops, that sounded like sex again, and the one-sided quirk of his mouth told her he hadn’t missed that.

“I’ll do most of the talking. You just deliver the line.”

“I regret any lasting damage my temper has caused you,” Mark intoned.

She was proud of the non-apology she’d crafted for him.

He frowned. “I don’t think he’s going to let me get away with it.”

“Trust me.”

Their eyes met in the mirror again, and he gave a short, hard laugh. “If I didn’t trust you, do you think I’d let this guy put a straight razor on my throat? And cut my hair off? I feel like—Samson, right? Don’t you sap my strength or something?”

He didn’t look sapped. He looked...potent. She had to turn away from the mirror because his gaze kept catching hers and not letting go properly.

Mark Webster had a reputation in the media for saying and doing the wrong things, but he seemed to know the right way to get under Haven’s skin. She was having a difficult time remembering why she shouldn’t exchange smiles, meaningful glances and double entendres with him.

Right.
Right
.

Mark Webster was her client, and her job was
not
to land them both in the press as a seedy example of how to become his next castoff. He was a serial womanizer. By definition, that meant he was not interested in anything serious with her. And her job was to clean him up, not let herself be dragged into the mud.

“What do you think?” Derek asked her, warming some kind of expensive styling product between his palms and smoothing it through Mark’s hair, which was now short enough to be “not long,” but still had a lot of wave. He had really great hair, thick and coppery brown with streaks of lighter and darker colors. Women paid fortunes for hair like that.

She was not secretly envying Derek for being allowed to run his fingers through Mark’s hair. Not at all.

Oh, she was such a liar.

“It looks great,” she said.

That, at least, was the truth.

“What do you think of the new, improved Mark Webster?”

It didn’t matter how she answered, because she couldn’t
not
meet the ferocity of his unblinking challenge in the mirror. So he knew. He knew he looked good, and he knew he was having an effect on her.

Derek very politely did not roll his eyes at them.

She wrenched her gaze away, but she couldn’t stop herself from putting her fingers to her wrist to feel the way her pulse raced under the hot skin there, and when she looked up again, Mark’s eyes were on her.

* * *

J
UDY
, H
AVEN
’
S
FAVORITE
personal shopper, kept touching Mark.

She brushed her fingertips briskly over his collarbone, tapped them thoughtfully on his muscled shoulders. “Hmm. Too tight through here. You’re nice and broad.”