Neck & Neck (8 page)

He looked at the invitation again and, impulsively, lifted it to his nose for an idle sniff. Yep, it smelled like her. Like Natalie. Soft and sweet. He wondered what she would be going to the party dressed as. Did party planners do that? Attend the parties they planned? Surely, they must, to make sure everything went according to plan and schedule. But would she dress up or wear street clothes?

Probably, he decided, she would dress up to blend in with the crowd. If it was a formal affair, she’d wear a formal. A barbecue or picnic, she’d wear something casual. Nobody wanted to stand out in a crowd, especially the person who was supposed to be keeping that crowd happy. So Natalie Beckett would almost certainly wear a costume to a costume party thrown by . . . He glanced at the name on the invitation again. Of course. Of course people who would throw a five-hundred-dollar-a-plate party would have names like Edgar and Clementine Hotchkiss.

So what would Natalie dress up as?

The answer came to him immediately. Hell, she could go as a screen siren from the Golden Age of Hollywood, and she wouldn’t even have to change out of what she’d had on today. But she seemed like the type who would be more inventive than that. Maybe she’d go as a French maid. Or a Playboy bunny. Or a swimsuit model. Or wait . . . he knew. A harem girl. Yeah. That would suit Ms. Natalie Beckett to a T.

Well, okay, actually, it wouldn’t suit Ms. Natalie Beckett at all. But it would suit Finn just fine. Except that, if he were her date, he’d have to dress like Rudolph Valentino, which wasn’t going to happen in this life or any other. Then he realized he was thinking in terms of not just going to this party, but being Natalie’s date, and that
really
wasn’t going to happen in this lifetime or any other.

He inhaled deeply one more time of the invitation, breathing in the scent of Natalie and envisioning her in a skimpy, filmy Arabian Nights outfit. Then he closed the invitation and started to toss it into the trash can under the desk. He hesitated before completing the action, however. Just because Russell wasn’t going to go to the party—or Finn, either—there was no need to be hasty. He had promised Natalie he would pass along the invitation to Russell or his assistant William, who normally took care of such things, and have a check sent around for whatever fund the party was raising money for. So he should hang on to the invitation, right? Just so he’d have a contact name and all that.

He started to fold up the invitation again, but something stopped him. Instead, he flattened his palm over the heavy paper and smoothed it out again, as well as he could. When he did, the scent of Natalie Beckett drifted up from it again. Or maybe that was just his imagination. Or wishful thinking. Or something.

He propped the invitation up against the lamp on the desk, to remind him to pass it along to William tomorrow. No need to bother Russell with something like this. There was no way he would accept the invitation. He hadn’t accepted any of the other dozen or so he’d received since his arrival in Louisville had been made public. Hell, even in Seattle, he rarely went to parties anymore. Or anywhere else he might be recognized and/or photographed and/or glad-handed and/or hit on and/or all of the above. Russell much preferred being in places where there were other things that commanded attention way more than he did. Things like naked, sweaty women swinging around poles on a stage. And when he did his own entertaining, he did it in private.

Then again, there was a lot to be said for that.

Finn enjoyed another swallow of his beer and tried to think about something else. Something that didn’t involve naked, sweaty women or entertaining in private or Natalie Beckett dressed as a harem girl. Unfortunately, that just made all those things become inextricably entwined.

Damn. It was going to be a long night.

 

 

AT TWO A.M. SUNDAY MORNING, NATALIE LAY IN HER darkened bedroom, wide-awake and staring at the ceiling, still trying to put her finger on plan B. But all she could think about was Finn Guthrie in his tight, X-tra brawny T-shirt and five o’clock shadow. Specifically, she was thinking about how it would be to peel that T-shirt from his X-tra brawny body and feel that five o’clock shadow abrading her tender skin.

Damn, would this night never end?

She tossed restlessly onto her side and checked the clock again. Two oh one. Nope, this night was never going to end. Not unless she got some sleep. And the only way she was going to get any sleep was to come up with a way to convince Russell Mulholland to attend Clementine’s party. So far, she’d ruled out kidnapping (because it was illegal), seduction (because it was immoral), drugging him (because it was illicit), and conjuring him with herbs (because it was impossible). And, okay, fine, her morality was a little fluid in the seduction department when it came to gorgeous, wealthy men. But the problem was, it hadn’t been Russell Mulholland she’d been thinking about seducing. It had been his head of security. And she’d already tried that once and failed abysmally.

She’d also thought about simply appealing to the billionaire’s compassion for children, since he must have some compassion somewhere, but that would necessitate being face-to-face with him, and Finn Guthrie put an X-tra brawny obstacle between her and her target.

So what was she supposed to do now? Other than toss and turn some more and think about Finn?

She tossed and turned some more and thought about Finn. Hey, at least it was something.

She tallied everything she knew about Russell Mulholland in her head. One, he liked beautiful women and lots of them. Two, he liked fast cars and lots of them. Three, he had a teenage son she couldn’t recall seeing him photographed with. Four, he was a game designing genius. Five, he owned Thoroughbreds. On and on Natalie went, listing facts and figures, rumor and innuendo. What she finally had at the bottom of the list was a man who used his billions to live life to its most extreme, who might need to work a bit on his fathering skills, who might have a teeny bit of a self-destructive streak, and who came across as not a little shallow and superficial.

She could work with that, she told herself. She might not be accustomed to mingling with billionaires, but she’d grown up amid wealth and people who enjoyed living life to its fullest. She knew plenty of fathers, including her own, who hadn’t exactly lived up to their paternal potential, and she knew a lot of risk-takers—though, granted, most of them took risks with the stock market, not race cars that went a million miles an hour. And shallow and superficial? Pshaw. That was three-fourths of the social register, as far as she was concerned, from Arabella Aber nathy to Zachary Zimmerman. Now all she had to do was figure out how to make her deductions about Mulholland work for her instead of against her.

Unfortunately, instead of thinking about Russell Mulholland, she found herself thinking about Finn Guthrie again. Only this time the X-tra brawny T-shirt was gone. And so were the ragged jeans. And, dammit, so was the five o’clock shadow.

She turned to look at the clock once more. Two twenty-two. She sighed fitfully, tossed some more, and resigned herself to the fact that no, in fact, this night wasn’t ever going to end. Nor was plan B likely to develop. Not unless it included a shirt-free, jeans-free, shadow-free Finn Guthrie.

IT WAS AT SOME POINT DURING HIS THIRD LAP DANCE that Russell Mulholland realized his boredom just wasn’t going to go away. Oh, certainly the young woman grinding her pelvis against his chest at the moment was reasonably attractive. At least, he thought she was reasonably attractive. It was hard to see her face the way her hair was flailing around like that. Unfortunately, that was the only thing that was hard at the moment. And what did it say about a man when a scantily clad woman straddling him while he sipped a fifty-dollar-an-ounce brandy did nothing to appease his ennui?

He glanced at Stoller on his left and Franklin on his right, for whom he had also purchased a third lap dance. Both men seemed to be entirely delighted with the goings-on, though their dancers were no more, ah, gifted than Russell’s was. So why wasn’t he enjoying himself, too?

Gentleman’s club
. That was how Minxxx referred to itself. And although the decor did a decent job of evoking the feel of an English manor smoking room—provided English manors today had taken to gaudy pink and purple neon, disco mirror balls, and scratchy Eurotrash pop music—few, if any, of the club’s current patrons bore even a remote resemblance to a
gentleman
. Russell himself included, of course. And although the proprietors of Minxxx referred to their acts as
cabaret
, few, if any, of the women who had wrapped themselves around the pole tonight had looked as good as Liza Minnelli in a halter top. Really, they didn’t even look as good as Joel Grey in a halter top.

The signs hanging outside of Minxxx had depicted a juicy young blonde with a tiny waist and enormous hooters. But she must have been lifted from a piece of Internet clip art, because none of the women who had graced—and it went without saying that he used that word sardonically—the stage tonight had claimed
any
of those traits. Well, there had been a couple of blondes, but they hadn’t been natural blondes. He knew that by looking at their eyebrows, not their—

Well, he knew it by looking at their eyebrows, because Louisville had an unfortunate law about liquor not being served in places where women disrobed completely. At least professionally. And whoever had come up with that idea should be taken out and flogged.

Oh, well, Russell thought. He doubted he’d be having a good time even if the woman in his lap
wasn’t
wearing a hot pink thong, a couple of purple pasties, and a tattoo immortalizing someone named Phil.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” he told the woman in an effort to make her stop, ah, performing. When she continued with her gyrations, he added, “That was lovely. Brava.” But still she continued to bump and grind and slap her sweaty hair across his face. He would have halted her by placing his hands on her shoulders to get her attention, but he’d seen other guys—ah, he meant
gentlemen
, of course—tossed out on their keisters for laying hands on the women in their laps. “Truly,” he continued, raising his voice in the hope that she might hear it over the raging cacophony of a band who obviously hadn’t been able to afford a brand-name synthesizer, “I had a delightful time, but I have an appointment that I absolutely can’t miss.” At two a.m., he thought further. Then again, two a.m. was probably a time when a lot of these women had, ah, appointments.

When she still didn’t stop dancing, Russell reached into his jacket and withdrew his wallet. At the sight of that, the young woman immediately ended her performance. He opened it to pull out a fifty—even though the dance itself had only cost twenty-five—when she looked in and saw a Benjamin gazing back at her.

Before he could stop her, she snatched out the hundred dollar bill and stuffed it into her bikini bottom. Then she met his gaze and smiled. “Hey, you can afford it.”

Oh, if he had a dollar for every time he’d heard that, he’d be a billionaire. Again. He was hoping that would be the end of it, but she leaned forward again, brushing her pasties against his brand-new Hermès shirt with great intent. Instead of feeling aroused, however, Russell only hoped she didn’t leave a stain.

“Thanks, babe,” she purred. Well, okay, maybe not purred. There was that heavy smoker’s rasp that turned the purr into something that sounded like fingernails on a chalkboard, punctuated by a clearing of her throat that could have put a dying giraffe to shame. “If you want, we could dance some more after my shift is over in an hour.” She winked with all the enchantment of a wildebeest with a sty before further grating out, “If you know what I mean.”

Alas, he was afraid he did know what she meant. And it would cost him even more than this so-called dance . . . not to mention a trip to a clinic for, at the very least, a penicillin shot in a week or two.

“I’d love to,” he said, “truly I would. But, as I mentioned, I have an appointment.” Just because it was an appointment to avoid an STD, there was no reason for him to elaborate.

“Shame,” she said as she levered herself off his lap and tugged at her panties to readjust the thong wedgie she’d gotten as she danced. “We coulda made beautiful music together.”

“Hmm,” Russell replied noncommittally. He didn’t know about that. Though he was sure they could at least do better than the outdated disco covers he’d been listening to all night.

He watched the dancer as she strode away, noting she had two more tattoos on her back, one immortalizing a guy named Sheldon, and the other immortalizing a woman named Dolores. Draining the last of his brandy, he looked around to order another and caught sight of a redhead near the bar dressed in the standard garb of Minxxx waitresses.

The waitresses at Minxxx wore only marginally more than the dancers, hot pink vinyl microminiskirts that barely covered their assets and purple vinyl halter tops that covered even less. The redhead at the bar, Russell couldn’t help noticing, filled out her tiny costume better than any of the dancers, and he wondered briefly why the owner hadn’t put her on the stage instead. As he drew nearer, he looked for one of the inevitable tattoos all the other women seemed to sport but saw none on her person anywhere—and he could see plenty of her person in that getup. And where the other women’s complexions seemed sallow and insalubrious under the gaudy lights, this woman’s was creamy and smooth, almost—dare he say it?—wholesome.

When she turned briefly to look at someone behind her, however, he saw that she was, like the other waitresses, wearing as much makeup as the dancers: bloodred lipstick and dark purple eyeshadow that made her look almost bruised. She was undeniably pretty, however, despite the garishness of her cosmetics, and surprisingly petite. Even in purple stilettos whose heels had to be four inches high, Russell gauged that she still wasn’t tall enough to come up even with his chin. He watched as she loaded her tray with a dozen drinks of varying sizes and colors, noting with appreciation the way her breast pushed out of the side of the halter and how the soft curve of its underside peeked from beneath.