After Hours Bundle (58 page)

A
LEJANDRO DROVE HOME
fuming. Women! Here he was trying to be honest with Kate, tell her his darkest and most humiliating secret, and she wouldn't even let him. Wouldn't listen to a word he had to say, all because he had spoken politely to a few customers at the party.

But worse!
Far worse,
she had chosen to give a mouthwatering T-bone to a
dog
over him. That really showed him where he stood with her, how far down he was on her list of priorities. He still couldn't quite believe it, and she'd done it with a smug expression on her face, too. He and his stomach growled simultaneously at the insult, and he wrenched the wheel of the Porsche to pull into a fast-food burger place.

Slightly mollified by the taste of greasy fries on the way back to After Hours, he took out the rest of his temper on the unfortunate drivers around him, zipping and weaving in and out of traffic like a drunken frat boy. Horns honked at him and fists waved, a trucker insulted his heritage and an improbably blond old lady shot him the finger.

It wasn't until he was on his way to work a couple of days later that he felt better. It wasn't his fault that women flirted with him, for God's sake! And hadn't he shown Kate how much he'd wanted her? He wasn't in the habit of nailing women on his desk in the middle of social events.

What did she want from him? Did she require that he put a ring through his nose and let her lead him through the party afterward? Or perhaps brand himself on the forehead with a large K.S., so that other women would know he was hers? Oh, right—he should have
proposed
as soon as they were dressed again.

Alejo tried to emit a scornful snort, but found that it stuck in his nose and rattled around instead, sending an extremely disturbing message to his brain. Oh, no, no, no. He sent it right back, unopened.

He wrenched open the door to After Hours and Shirlie sang, “
Buenos dias,
Alejandro!” aiming her cute little smile in his direction. It faded immediately. “God, what is wrong with you? You look like you just swallowed a hornet!”

He stared at her a bit wildly. “I'm fine. I'll be in the back. I have an appointment in half an hour, but I don't know her name. It's illegible.” And he brushed past her, moving on autopilot past everyone, from the other nail techs to Marly and Nicky—from whom he averted his eyes since the hairdresser was wearing a purple suede vest over a teal silk shirt. What was he, Merlin's mad assistant?

Alejandro strode to the little backroom where his pedicure station sat, shut the door and slumped into the big chair his clients used.
No,
he thought.
I cannot possibly be entertaining thoughts of spending my life with a woman who feeds steak to a dog over me. It's just not right.

And Mama told me one day I'd find a sweet, darling girl who'd worship me. Ha!

Gloomily, he disinfected the pedicure basin and wiped down all of his tools with Barbasol before setting them down on a clean towel. He put on some soothing music. He ruminated for a while on skinny, flat-chested, troublesome, jealous women with impossible hair and more affection for animals than men. They were so not worth his time.

Finally he glanced at his watch and got up to go and get a double espresso from Benito's. “Shirlie,” he told the receptionist, “if my client arrives early, just show her to the backroom. I won't be long.”

He meandered over to get his coffee and stayed for a few minutes chatting with Benny. He nodded at Shirlie as he came in the door. She was on the phone, but looked up to jerk a thumb toward the back and nod. Was that a smirk she was hiding? Alejandro looked down at his shirt to see if he'd spilled any of the espresso on it, but it was clean.

As he passed Marly, she bent her head to get a clip out of her drawer, her braid hanging in her face. He grabbed a fresh white hand towel and threw it over his shoulder, then scooped up a set of foam toe separators and a fresh buffer. He sighed and went to the door of the back room. Time to assume the position. His balls sagged.

He took a sip of the espresso for fortification and turned the knob. He spit it all over the floor and dropped everything else when he saw the occupant of the chair.

“K-Kate?”
Mierda, mierda, mierda!
His goose was cooked.

“Alejandro?”
She sat with her pants rolled up to the knees, her feet in the basin of warm, sudsy water. Her hair looked even more in disarray than usual, her green eyes seemed sleepy and the skin of her arms glowed faintly with oil in the low lighting. She looked, in fact, like she'd just rolled out of bed after a long, slow afternoon of making love. In spite of the awfulness of this situation, his balls contracted.

She looked at the foam toe separators and the buffer he'd dropped, her expression changing from sleepy to incredulous.

He rubbed furiously at some coffee on his shirt with the white hand towel, fire suffusing his face and neck.
Beauty Boy! Beauty Boy! Beauty Boy!
“I—I was just bringing in these things for your, um, nail tech.” He winced.
Maricon! Chivo! Rosquete!

Her eyes narrowed on him, and she lay her head back in the chair, inspecting him. “Is that right.”

“Yes. She'll be right in.” Peggy had better be here, he didn't care if she had a client or not. He'd massage her client and she could give Kate a goddamned pedicure. Had he really been about to tell Katherine Spinney what he did when he wasn't in class? Her nose was
already
up in the air.

“Then why,” Kate asked, “is your face redder than a boiled Maine lobster?”

“Eh? Oh—I was just moving some boxes around in the office. Heavy boxes.”

She folded her arms and stared at him like he was a particularly large and unappetizing water bug. “You give pedicures here.”

He waved a hand at her. “Don't be ridiculous. Do I look like the kind of man who gives pedicures?” He laughed, too loudly.

“I don't know. What kind of man, in particular, gives pedicures?”

Alejandro made a rude noise. “You know what kind. Men who are not men.”

“Ah. I see. You're referring to gays?”

He gave a half shrug, wondering why he felt as if he were walking the plank.

“And…what exactly do men who are not men look like?”

He refused to meet her gaze. “Well, you know.”

“No, I don't know.”

“Like…Nicky, our hairdresser.”

“Really. All of them? That's funny, Alejandro, because I have a brother who's gay, and he can bench-press three-hundred-and-fifty pounds. He never wears pink, he couldn't flap his hand if his life depended on it and he was captain of his college lacrosse team.” Her tone was just shy of biting.

He swallowed and fiddled with the gold chain around his neck. He set down his espresso and examined a nick in the wallboard.

“So, do you want to tell me the truth?”

“Damn, they did a terrible job of floating and taping this wall.”

“Alejandro!”

He looked up, and her eyes blazed at him, green and hostile. Definitely hostile.

“How's T-bone?” he asked. “Did she enjoy her lunch?”

“T-bone,” she repeated, her anger arrested momentarily. “That's
perfect.
” Then she glared at him again. “She's fine. Now come clean with me, Alejo.” She kicked water at him from the pedicure basin.

He cracked his neck. “I am part owner of After Hours. I also bring in a nice income for the spa by giving—” he gulped “—manicures and pedicures. All day. Sometimes until midnight.” He stole a look at her, only to find that she resembled granite.

“And why the hell didn't you tell me this weeks ago?”

He sighed. “Because you're a Spinney. Women from families like yours don't…date manicurists. I was embarrassed. I thought you'd look down on me.”

She was silent for too long. Then she pulled her feet out of the pedicure basin and snatched the towel he'd left folded on the rim. She dried her legs and feet, unrolled her pants and slid out of the chair. “You sure don't think much of me, do you, Alejandro?”

“That's not true—”

“You think I'm a goddamned snob!”

“No, I don't. I just wanted to have a chance with you, that's all.”

She whirled on him, eyes now like lasers. “Why?”

“I've told you why.”

“Is there anything else you'd like to add to that?”

“No. I thought you were beautiful and smart and—”

“Connected? Rich? Able to market and distribute your exclusive product, perhaps?”

“What?” He goggled at her. Then, when her meaning sank in, anger flashed through him. “I could care less about your family name or your money! If anything, that made me
avoid
asking you out. But I wanted you—”

“Yeah,” she said, cynicism dripping from her voice. “Sure you did. It had nothing to do with your freakin' hand cream.”

He stared at her again. “What are you talking about?”

“Lotion. Whatever it is. That Señor Manos stuff you import from Peru. You know exactly what I'm talking about.”

Incredulous, he began to laugh, even though he was far too furious to laugh. “You think that I came on to you for the sake of Señor Manos?”

She just looked at him, disgust radiating from every pore.

“Well, then,
señorita,
you don't have a very high opinion of me, either, now do you?”

“No,” she said baldly. “I don't.”

He laughed until he had tears streaming down his cheeks and probably looked like a homicidal madman. He wondered vaguely why she still stood there, why she hadn't slammed out of the place, until he realized that he was leaning against the door.

“So let me get this straight,” he gasped. “You believe that I took you to bed in order to manipulate you into getting Spinney Industries to back my product.”

“I know it, sport. And that's why you were so secretive about having a stake in After Hours, isn't it? I'm not stupid.”

“Eh, well. You've got it all figured out, don't you, Harvard? My bluff has been called. You're right. But at least you got some hot sex out of it.”

She drew back her hand and slapped him, hard.

He looked down at her with disdain, ignoring the burn of it. Her freckles stood out starkly against her pale skin, there were two white dents at her flared nostrils, and she seemed unable to catch her breath.

“It's tempting to smack you right back. I'm sure you can take what you dish out, since you're a
feminist.
But I wasn't brought up nearly as badly as you. And I don't hit women.”

She sucked in her breath in a hiss.

“Besides, I'd rather leave you with something to think about, not something to nurse. There's one tiny flaw in your logic, Harvard.”

“Oh?”

He nodded. “Yes. There
is
no product.
I'm
Señor Manos.”

He left her standing with her mouth agape and walked straight out of the salon.

“
H
E
'
S
S
EÑOR
M
ANOS
?”
Kate grabbed Marly by the shoulder and spun her around. “How can he be Señor Manos, when he told me himself it was a product imported from Peru? He lied to me! I may have slapped him, but he lied to me!”

“Shh,” said Marly, her eye on a lovely blonde sitting at one of the manicure tables. The blonde's eyes had widened and she stared avidly after Alejandro's retreating form. Then she dug into her wickedly expensive handbag, pulled out a cell phone and began speaking rapidly to someone in Spanish.

Marly groaned. She asked her client to excuse her for a moment and took Kate into the back office, shutting the door behind them.

Kate stared at the desk where she and Alejo had made love just a couple of short nights ago. She closed her eyes.

Marly sighed. “Damn it, I wish you hadn't said that out there. That little blonde is the girlfriend of one of Alejandro's soccer buddies. And she's wasting no time in telling her man that Alejo is Señor Manos. He's been afraid of this happening all year.”

“He told me it was a
product,
” Kate repeated.

“Listen, hon, he'd have told you chicken crap was good in a sandwich if he thought it would throw you off track about him giving manicures. It would be bad enough for a big strapping Anglo kid to admit. But Alejo is Peruvian. Ever heard of the term
machismo?
Take average pigheaded male pride and multiply it times ten, or maybe twenty. That will give you some idea of how acceptable it is in his culture for a straight man to give manicures.”

“Look, I can understand that, but—”

“No, I don't think you can. To have this information come out to you or any of his buddies—” Marly shook her head. “It's like him tearing off his pants in public and displaying, er, equipment an inch long and half an inch in diameter.”

Kate choked, knowing very much different.

“It's like him shouting to the world that he's not a real man.”

“That is ridiculous,” Kate said.

Marly shrugged. “We've been warning him for months now that it would come out sooner or later, but that's how he's felt about it. He wanted to hide it as long as possible—especially from you.”

Kate clenched her fists. “I could kill him.”

Marly lifted an eyebrow. “Sounds like you made a start, if you're slapping him around. But I would have figured you as more of a closed-fist-into-the-stomach type of girl.”

“I am,” Kate growled. “But thanks to Miami, I'm getting all too girlie.”

“Anyway—why did you slap him?”

“Because I think—I thought—he was dating me for what the Spinney name could do for his goddamned stupid lotion that doesn't exist!”

“Ouch.”

“And he let me think it was true until he got the last word.” Kate threw up her hands.

Marly's lips twitched. “Of course. Men always have to have the last word.”

“And now I'm going to have to apologize, except I'm too freakin'
furious
to apologize, and he freakin' needs to freakin' apologize to me first, for lying to me!”

“Uh-
huh,
” said Marly, looking skeptical about this possibility.

“And I
hate
freakin' apologizing! Spinneys don't freakin' apologize!”

“Neither do pissed off, pigheaded, Peruvian males.”

“I thought he was only half-Peruvian,” Kate fumed.

“Irrelevant. He's
all
pigheaded male.”

“Well, I never want to see him again!”

Marly nodded. “Except to kill him. I'll pass along the message.”

“Do that, will you?”

“On one condition—that you believe me when I tell you that Alejandro has talked about you since the very first week of your MBA program, and he never once mentioned your name or your money.”

“Why should I believe you? You're his friend and business partner.”

Marly elevated her chin and shot her a steely glance. “Believe whatever you want, Kate. But to suggest that Peggy and I are in on some vast conspiracy to snow you, use you and fleece you of your money is to suggest that you have a paranoia bigger than the state of Florida—and an ego to match. It's just possible that we actually
liked
you.”

Kate's mouth dropped open for the third time that day. Marly held her head high and sailed to the door. She opened it and left the room without a backward glance.

 

A
LEJANDRO DID NOT
return to work that day. He was too furious, and Kate's palm print was still clearly outlined on his face a half hour after their confrontation.

How could she have thought he'd sought her out for her family connections and money? The unfairness of it stung him. After what they'd shared together, in bed and out, she still thought he was a lowlife and an opportunist. A user.

Well, good Christ, Alejo, look at her cousin. If all her relatives are that bad, no wonder she thinks everyone's got an agenda.

But he ignored the voice inside him that tried to analyze and explain—if not justify—her behavior. She should have known he was different. He wouldn't take a red cent of her damned money—he planned to make his own. And as for the Spinneys and their family connections—he snorted. They could all go get stuffed.

He put his hand to the cheek Kate had slapped and burned with anger. Then the insidious voice came again.
Can you really blame her, given what she thought and what you said?

Yes! Hell yes, he could damn well blame her. Because if she hadn't thought it of him in the first place, they wouldn't have been in such an argument.

Put yourself in her position, man. She's probably had people sucking up to her for her money for years. She's probably gotten a little cynical. A little wary of smooth talkers.

But Alejandro didn't feel like thinking about her perspective on things. She was a
bruja.

What about her uncertainty about sex and her doubts about her physical appeal? What had she said…I've been warned about smooth-talking Latin men like you.

Had she been warned from birth that men would lie to her to get to her money?

Again, he told himself that he didn't care. He never wanted to see her again, and he wouldn't.

Then he remembered the stinking marketing project. The one he'd pressed her so hard about. The one they now had to do together.
Mierda!

To distract himself, Alejandro went over to Tia Carlotta's and worked on various projects that needed to be done, while she popped out intermittently to try to feed him something. He refused all offers of anything except water.

“What,” she asked him, hands on her ample hips. “You diet? Your mother was always on diet, God rest her soul.”

“I'm not on a diet, Tia. I'm just not hungry. Thank you, though.” He wiped the sweat from his eyes and continued to work on trimming the trees back from her roof.

“You are angry for something?”

“No, no. I'm fine.”

She sighed. “Won't talk about nothing, just like your mother. Held it all inside, God rest her soul.”

As usual, he could almost hear Mama's soul sawing logs with all the resting, but he chased away the irreverent thought. “Tia, it's hot out here. You should go inside and get out of the sun.”

She continued to buzz around him until the arrival of the arborist he'd hired to remove the tree they'd argued about. The arborist was a big, strapping, once-blond gringo with a tanned, leathery face. Alejo judged him to be about Tia Carlotta's age. More importantly, it only took her five minutes to get him to admit he was hungry. Alejandro heaved a sigh of relief.

When he was finished, he went inside to find that the tree man had devoured half of her fresh-made
cau-cau
with great appreciation. Alejo raised an eyebrow and finally accepted a slice of flan and an
Inca Cola.
Then he kissed Tia's cheek, subtly chased the guy back out into the yard and went home to change for soccer practice.

 

H
E KNEW SOMETHING
was wrong as soon as he got out of the car and the guys turned as one to look at him, sneers etched on their faces. He froze. Hadn't this day been crappy enough? Now he had to deal with
this?
What he felt like doing was getting back into his car and driving north to Georgia.

Instead, he took a deep breath, slammed the Porsche's door and strode onto the field, ignoring the bleating goat sounds a couple of his teammates were making.

“Eh,
maricon,
” a man named Franco called. “Let's see your nails.” He hooted with laughter. “Did you have the French manicure today?”

Beauty Boy! Beauty Boy!
Alejo dropped his soccer ball on the ground and passed it somewhat viciously to the jerk. “No,
pendejo,
I did a nice shade of ruby red on my
customer.
After she had an orgasm in her chair just from me touching her.” He grinned maliciously, and Franco kicked the ball back at him as if it were infected.

Alejandro spun it on his toe and then kept it in the air with his knees and some good footwork. “Franco, did you have fun at the insurance company today? I'll bet you don't get to touch beautiful women's legs all day, like me.” That shut Franco up, since he wasn't that quick on his feet, but there were still fifteen others to contend with.

“Partner in the spa, eh?” Another man snorted. “Obviously, the bottom partner,
chivo!
” More bleating and snickering ensued, and they all looked at him sideways.

“
Vete a la mierda,
eh? I'm as straight as you are.”

The guys gestured at him rudely and laughed.
Behhhh! Behhhh!
The animal noises got louder, the jeers more pronounced.

Alejo dished it right back. “What's the matter, guys? You having fond memories of the sheep you violated last night?”

“
Ooh,
Alejandro!” Luis ran up to him in a parody of a girlie skip. “I have a callous. Will you file it down for me,
por favor?
”

Alejo head-butted the ball right into his nose and grabbed himself in a very male, uncouth gesture. “
Jodete.
File down
this.
”

“Nothing there to file, since it melted in your boyfriend's mouth…” called another teammate.

“You want to say that again to me, within arm's length?” Alejandro asked him, menace in his voice. “Because I'll kick any ass on this field. What's more, you know I can do it. You're all free with the insults when there's fifteen against one. But will you meet me alone?”

“Asking for a date, Señor Manos?” A guy named Carlos mocked him.

“Date? Nah. Your mother begs me for it without me buying her dinner.”

Carlos's face darkened and he clenched his fists. “What did you say?” He vaulted forward and threw a punch at Alejandro, who dodged it and knocked him right to the ground with a nice left hook.

Carlos was up again within seconds, raging for a good fight, but Franco pulled him back by the shirt collar. “
Detente!
You want to be infected with the
maricon's
blood?”

Alejandro gritted his teeth. This was going nowhere. They could trade insults—or punches—all night. He needed a different strategy.

Alejandro shouted, “How big is your mortgage? How much do you have to pay off in student loans? Business loans?”

“Eh?” Carlos stared at him, nonplussed by the change in subject. “A lot.”

“Yes? Well, me, too. Except that I've paid my loans down already fifty percent in one year—yes, by giving pedicures.”

All the men snickered again. Then they stared at him, stone-faced.

He kept going. “And how do you, Jorge, hold yourself above me when you're working for The Man? Somebody orders you around all day while you kiss his ass.
I
have my own business.”

Jorge's fleshy face suffused with red.

Alejandro took yet a different tack. “And you, Luis. Your family's in the restaurant business. Did you feel shame when you worked there as a waiter?”

Luis shook his head reluctantly.