Natural Born Charmer (4 page)

“I wish I had an agent,” Blue said. “Just so I could drop the word into a conversation. But I guess I’m not an agent sort of person.”

“I’m sure you have other good qualities.”

“Tons,” she said glumly.

Dean headed for the interstate as soon as they got back on the road. Blue realized she was chewing on her thumbnail and quickly folded her hands in her lap. He drove fast, but he kept a steady hand on the wheel, exactly the way she liked to drive. “So where do you want me to drop you off?” he asked.

The question she’d been dreading. She pretended to think it over. “Unfortunately, there aren’t any really big cities between Denver and Kansas City. I guess Kansas City would be fine.”

He shot her a who-do-you-think-you’re-kidding look. “I was thinking more along the lines of the next decent-size truck stop.”

She swallowed hard. “Except you’re obviously a people person, and you’ll be bored without company. I’ll keep you entertained.”

His eyes flicked to her breasts. “Exactly how do you intend to do that?”

“Car games,” she said quickly. “I know dozens.” He snorted, and she hurried on. “I’m also an excellent conversationalist, and I can run interference with your fans. I’ll keep all those yucky women from throwing themselves at you.”

His blue-gray eyes flickered, but whether from irritation or amusement, she didn’t know. “I’ll think about it,” he said.

Somewhat to Dean’s surprise, the Beav was still in his car that night as he exited the interstate somewhere in west Kansas and drove toward a sign for the Merry Time Inn. She stirred as he pulled into the parking lot. While she’d slept, he’d had more than ample time to study the rise and fall of her breasts underneath her muscle shirt.
Most of the women he spent time with had pumped themselves up to four times their normal size, but not the Beav. He knew some guys liked overinflated breasts—hell, he used to like them—but Annabelle Granger Champion had long ago spoiled his fun.

“Every time a man like you ogles a woman with artificial E cups, you encourage some innocent girl with perfectly nice breasts to go under the knife. Women should concentrate on expanding their horizons, not their busts.”

She’d made him feel personally responsible for the evils of breast enlargement, but Annabelle was like that. She had a lot of strong opinions, and she didn’t pull her punches. Annabelle was his one true female friend, but between her marriage to Heath Champion, his bloodsucker of an agent, and the birth of her second child, she didn’t have much time to hang out anymore.

He’d been thinking about Annabelle a lot today, maybe because the Beav had strong opinions, too, and she also didn’t seem interested in impressing him. It was odd being with a woman who wasn’t coming on to him. Of course, he
had
told her he was gay, but she’d figured out that was bullshit at least a hundred miles ago. Still, she’d kept trying to play him. But Little Bo Peep was way out of her league.

Her mouth froze in midyawn as she spotted the well-lit three-story hotel. As many times as she’d aggravated him today, he still wasn’t quite ready to hand her a couple hundred bucks and throw her out. For one thing, he wanted her to ask him for the money. For another, she’d been good company today. And then there was the hard-on that had been plaguing him for the past two hundred miles.

He turned in to the parking lot. “These places will take most any credit card.” He should have felt like a bully, but she was so full of tough talk and swagger that he didn’t.

Her lips compressed. “Unfortunately, I don’t have a credit card.”

No big surprise there.

“I abused the privilege a few years ago,” she went on, “and haven’t
trusted myself since.” She studied the Merry Time Inn sign. “What are you going to do about your car?”

“Tip the security guy to watch it.”

“How much?”

“Why do you care?”

“I’m an artist. I’m interested in human behavior.”

He pulled into a parking space. “Fifty dollars now, I guess. Another fifty in the morning.”

“Excellent.” She held out her hand. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”

“You’re not watching my car tonight.”

The muscles in her throat worked as she swallowed. “Sure I am. Don’t worry. I’m a light sleeper. I’ll wake up the minute anybody gets too close.”

“You’re not sleeping in it, either.”

“Don’t tell me you’re one of those sexist jerks who thinks a woman can’t do a job as well as a man.”

“What I think is that you can’t afford a room.” He got out of the car. “I’ll sport you.”

She shot her sharp little nose up in the air and followed him. “I don’t need anybody ‘sporting’ me.”

“Really?”

“What I need is for you to let me guard your car.”

“Not going to happen.”

He could see her trying to find a way around him, and he wasn’t completely surprised when she began reeling off the price list for her portraits. “Even taking out the cost of a hotel room and a few meals,” she said when she finished, “you’ll have to agree that you’re getting the best end of the deal. I’ll start sketching you tomorrow over breakfast.”

The last thing he needed was another portrait of himself. What he really needed was…“You can start tonight.” He opened the trunk.

“Tonight? It’s…awfully late.”

“Barely nine o’clock.” This team could only have one quarterback, and he was it.

She muttered to herself and started rooting around in the trunk. He pulled out his suitcase and her navy duffel. She reached past him to snatch up one of the toolboxes that contained her art supplies and, still muttering, followed him to the entrance. He negotiated with the inn’s sole bellman to watch his car and headed for the reception desk. The Beav stayed at his side. Judging by the live music coming from the bar and the locals spilling out into the lobby, the Merry Time was the small town’s Saturday night hot spot. He noted the heads turning in his direction. Sometimes he could go for a couple of days without being recognized, but not tonight. A few people in the crowd openly stared. Those damn End Zone commercials. He set down the suitcases at the front desk.

The clerk, a studious-looking Middle Eastern guy in his twenties, greeted him politely, but without recognition. The Beav jabbed him in the ribs and cocked her head toward the bar. “Your fans,” she said, as if he hadn’t already noticed the two guys who’d detached themselves from the crowd and were heading his way. Both were middle-aged and overweight. One wore a Hawaiian shirt that bunched over his belly. The other had a handlebar mustache and cowboy boots.

“Time for me to start work,” the Beav said loftily. “I’ll take care of this.”

“No, you won’t. I’ll—”

“Hey, there,” Hawaiian shirt said. “Hope you don’t mind the interruption, but me and my buddy Bowman have a bet you’re Dean Robillard.” He stuck out his hand.

Before Dean could respond, the Beav blocked the man’s arm with her small body, and the next thing he knew, she was addressing him in a foreign accent that sounded like a cross between Serbo-Croatian and Yiddish.
“Acht
, this Dean Roam-a-lot, he is very famous man in America, yes? My poor husband”—she curled her fingers around
Dean’s arm—“his Eeenglish is veddy, veddy bad, and he does not understand this. But my Eeenglish is veddy, veddy good, yes? And everywhere we go, these pipples—pipples like you—they come up to him and say they think he is this man, this Dean Roam-a-lot. But I say, no, my husband is not famous in America, but veddy famous in our country. He is a veddy famous—how you say?—por-nog-ra-pher.”

He just about choked on his spit.

She furrowed her brow. “Yes? Did I say this with rightness? He makes the dirty moo-vees.”

Dean was changing identities so fast even he was losing track. Still, the Beav deserved his support for all her hard work—however misguided—so he pulled in his grin and tried to look like he didn’t speak English.

She’d thrown the ol’ boys for a loss, and they didn’t know how to handle it. “We’re, uh…Well…Sorry, there. We thought…”

“Is all right,” she said firmly. “Happens all the time.”

Stumbling over their feet, they made their getaway.

The Beav regarded him smugly. “I’m awfully young to be so gifted. Now aren’t you glad I decided to tag along today?”

He gave her high marks for creativity, but since he was in the process of passing over his Visa card to the clerk, her efforts to keep his identity secret were pretty much wasted. “I’ll take your best suite,” he said. “And a small room by the elevator for my insane companion. If that’s a problem, put her next to any old ice machine.”

The Merry Time Inn had done a great job training its people, and the desk clerk barely blinked. “Unfortunately, we’re very full tonight, sir, and our suite is already occupied.”

“No suite?” the Beav drawled. “Will the horror never end?”

The clerk studied his computer screen unhappily. “I’m afraid we only have two rooms left. One, I believe you’ll find quite satisfactory, but the other is slated for renovation.”

“Aw, hell, the little woman won’t mind staying there. I’m sure you
got all the bloodstains out of the carpet. Plus, porn stars can sleep just about anywhere. And I do mean anywhere.”

He was having one heck of a good time, but the clerk was too well trained to smile. “We will, of course, give you a reduced rate.”

Blue leaned on the counter. “Charge him double. Otherwise, he’ll be offended.”

Once he’d countered that piece of nonsense, they headed for the elevator. As the doors closed, the Beav gazed up at him, her grape lollipop eyes round with innocence. “Those guys who came up to you knew your real name. I had no idea there were so many gay men in the world.”

He punched the elevator button. “The honest truth is, I play a little professional football under my real name. Only part-time, though, until my movie career takes off.”

The Beav faked looking impressed. “Wow. I didn’t realize you could play football part-time.”

“No offense, but you don’t seem to know much about sports.”

“Still…A gay man playing football. Hard to imagine.”

“Oh, there’re a whole bunch of us. Probably a good one-third of the NFL.” He waited to see if she’d finally call him on his bullshit, but she wasn’t in a hurry to end the game.

“And people think jocks aren’t sensitive,” she said.

“Just goes to show.”

“I noticed your ears are pierced.”

“I was young.”

“And you wanted to flash your cash, right?”

“Two carats in each ear.”

“Tell me you don’t still wear them.”

“Only if I’m having a fat day.” The elevator doors slid open. They headed down the hallway to their rooms. The Beav had a long stride for someone so petite. He wasn’t used to pugnacious women, but then she was barely female, despite those curvy little breasts and his stubborn hard-on.

The rooms were adjoining. He opened the first door. Clean, but a little smoky, definitely inferior.

She brushed past him. “Ordinarily, I’d suggest we toss a coin, but since you’re paying the bill, that doesn’t seem fair.”

“Well, if you insist.”

She took her duffel and once again tried to hold him off. “I do my best work in natural light. We’ll wait till tomorrow.”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were afraid to be alone with me.”

“Okay, you’ve got me. What if I inadvertently step between you and a mirror? You might turn violent.”

He grinned. “See you in half an hour.”

When he got to his room, he flipped on the last half of the Bulls game, pulled off his boots, and unpacked his things. He already had more drawings, paintings, and photos of himself than he knew what to do with, but that wasn’t the point. He grabbed a beer from the minibar, along with a can of peanuts. Annabelle had once suggested he send some of the glamour shots people had done of him over the years to his mother, but he’d told her to mind her own damned business. He didn’t let anybody poke around in that twisted relationship.

He stretched out on the bed in his jeans and the white-on-white button-down Marc Jacobs shirt the designer’s PR people had sent him a couple of weeks ago. The Bulls called a time-out. Another night, another hotel room. He owned two condos in Chicago, one not far from the lake and another in the western ’burbs close to Stars headquarters in case he didn’t feel like fighting the traffic back into the city. But since he’d grown up in boarding school dorm rooms, no place really felt like home.
Thanks, Mom.

The Tennessee farm had history and roots that grew deep, everything he lacked. Still, he wasn’t usually so impulsive, and he was having second thoughts about buying a place without an ocean nearby. A house with a hundred acres of land around it signaled a permanence
he’d never experienced and might not be ready for. Still, it was only a vacation home. If he didn’t like it, he could always sell it.

He heard water running next door. A promotion came on for an upcoming story about the drowning death of country western singer Marli Moffatt. They flashed twelve-year-old news footage of Marli and Jack Patriot coming out of a Reno wedding chapel. He hit the mute button.

He was looking forward to getting the Beav naked tonight. The fact that he’d never had anybody like her made the prospect all the more interesting. He tipped a handful of peanuts into his mouth and reminded himself he’d stopped doing one-night stands years ago. The idea that he might be turning into his mother—a woman who’d been so busy snorting coke and giving head that she’d forgotten she had a son—had gotten too depressing, so he limited himself to short-term girlfriends, relationships lasting anywhere from a few weeks to a couple of months. Yet here he was about to violate a decade-long policy against casual hookups and not feeling one bit bad about it. The Beav was hardly a giggling football groupie. Even though they’d only been together for a day—and despite all the ways she raised his hackles—they had a real relationship, one forged by interesting conversation, shared meals, and similar taste in music. Most important, the Beav had proved herself a match for his BS.