Alison Kent – Kiss & Makeup (страница 2)

And then she wondered if he truly understood where it was he was staying. How perfect a setting Hush made for a steamy affair.

She smiled as she thought of the words the media had used to describe the hotel when it had initially opened. The brainchild of heiress Piper Devon, Hush had been called the place for the young, the rich and the horny. Shandi, of course, knew it was much more than that—no matter the truth to the adage that sex sells. The business of Hush wasn’t as much sex, however, as it was sensuality.

Rich perfumes were found in each room’s candles, bath salts, shower gels and massage oils. Private video cameras, video collections and boxes of stimulating toys encouraged tactile intimacy. Whether enjoying a midnight swim by moonlight in the rooftop pool or the basement sofa bar’s music and erotic performance art, guests were guaranteed privacy, discretion and the freedom to explore.

Then there was the pure visually artistic appeal of the place. The hotel’s vintage and original artwork made for the perfect complement to the 1920s art-deco theme done in black, pink, gray and sea-foam green. What Hush was could only be described as a luxurious feast for the senses.

And at that, Shandi’s thoughts returned to the man she’d met tonight at the bar. Yeah, she mused, sighing deeply as she stretched out both legs in front of her, leaning forward to grab her toes. Another very long shift lay ahead. And she was already anxious to get back to work, to see him again. And for a simple reason, really.

He was the first man since her arrival in New York to have her thinking beyond work and school to the physical things that occurred between a man and a woman. Those things she wanted. Those things she missed. Those things she hadn’t taken time to pursue since moving here and settling in and scheduling every hour of every day of her way-too-busy life.

When she heard a key in the front door behind her, she screwed up her mouth and shook her head. Speaking of busy, at least she didn’t have class tomorrow until noon. Evan Harcourt, her roommate, who was in FIT’s master’s program in illustration, having switched gears after years spent in photography, had to be on campus at eight.

Silly man, keeping the working and dating schedule he did, even now at the beginning of September’s new term. She waited until he’d closed and locked the door before speaking.

“The things men do for love.”

Evan jumped, cursed swiftly and under his breath. “I swear, Shandi, if I end up dead from a heart attack, I’m going to kick your ass.”

She listened to his steps as he crossed the room. “That’ll be hard to do from the grave. Unless you come back as Angel or Spike.”

“Smart-ass,” he mumbled, dropping to his haunches behind her and massaging her shoulders, as was his routine when finding her here after work. “I’ll get April to do it for me then. Vengeance and all that.”

“Hmm,” Shandi murmured, halfway pondering Evan’s shaky romance, halfway out of her mind with a pleasure that was purely platonic.

April Carter, Evan’s girlfriend for a year now who was majoring at FIT in jewelry design, had definitely lucked out, snagging a man with amazingly talented hands.

And that thought had Shandi’s mind returning again to Erotique and picturing the way he had used his hands tonight, holding his glass, stroking the crystal tumbler the way she’d wanted him to hold and stroke her.

With a sigh she returned to the moment. “What makes you think April would lift a finger on your say-so? Your dead say-so at that? You can’t even get her to introduce you to her parents.”

At her prodding of a sore spot that was none of her business, Evan backed off and away. “What’s that? Your shoulders aren’t aching tonight as usual?”

Grr. “That dead ass-kicking you’re threatening me with? You’re about to see the real-life version if you don’t bring those hands back over here now.”

“Oh, well, when you ask so nicely…” The sentence trailed, but he did scoot in behind her and resume the massage for which a licensed masseuse would charge a night’s worth of Shandi’s tips, if not more.

She supposed she really shouldn’t rag on Evan about his romance with April. On the one hand, the couple had everything going for them—and had ever since the night a year ago when they’d met at the Starbucks where Evan still worked, though he’d since moved up into management.

Shared interests, similar goals, amazingly compatible personalities. An attraction undeniable by anyone who spent time in the same room with the two—even if they stood on opposite sides.

On the other hand, April’s family weighed down the scales until even Shandi doubted that Evan and April’s romance could weather the storm brought on by the Carters’ expectations as to what made an appropriate marriage match.

Sometimes love just wasn’t enough—a truth that strangely brought her thoughts back to him one more time. And for the first time to a subject other than sex.

He was obviously high powered enough, wealthy enough, well enough connected to be staying at Hush. And that meant what? He’d take one look at Shandi Fossey from Round-Up, Oklahoma—only one, in his rearview mirror—and that would be that? The end of her own fantasy fling?

And why was she even going there? What did it matter what he thought? Especially when she wasn’t looking to do anything more than get him out of his designer duds and into her bed.

You can take the girl out of Oklahoma, Shandi, but Oklahoma stays forever in the girl.

“Yes, Daddy,” she grumbled under her breath. “I hear you loud and clear.”

“Talking to yourself again?” Evan asked.

Her head bobbed with the motion of his hands when he kneaded the base of her skull. “Thinking about you and April.”

“Funny. I could’ve sworn you were calling me Daddy.”

She couldn’t help but grin. “If I were going to call anyone Daddy, it would be this guy tonight who spent most of my shift sitting at the bar.”

“Hmm. A sugar daddy with one foot on a banana peel and one foot in the grave?”

Shandi swung around and swatted Evan’s shoulder. “Hey, that’s so not funny.”

He shifted to face her, one wrist draped over one raised knee as he sat. “No, but you and I are in the same broke-as-a-beggar boat.” He grinned, his smile bright in the room’s low light. “Why do you think I’m dating April?”

“If you say for her money, I’m going to hit you again, buddy.” Shandi did her best schoolteacher finger shake. “Besides, you’re not exactly a pauper.”

“My grandmother’s not a pauper, you mean. I’m poorer than dirt.”

And Shandi knew that really he was. That his grandmother let him—and by association let her—live rent-free in this, one of several apartments she owned in the city. As long as he paid his own way through school.

And as long as he didn’t live with April in sin.

No grandson of Ellen Harcourt’s was going to take up with a girl who’d never had to work for a thing in her life.

“Do you think it matters?” Shandi asked him. “Being attracted to someone totally out of your league?”

“Are you talking about me and April? Or you and banana man?” When she glared, he went on. “Being attracted, no. Who can help it?”

“Those of us not thinking with a penis?”

“That’s bull, Shandi. A woman’s just as likely to make a move because she wants in a guy’s pants as a guy is. Uh, as a guy is who wants in a woman’s pants. Whatever. You know what I mean.”

Shandi chuckled. Then sobered, thinking more about her mystery man’s eyes, more about his hungry, burning look, the devastating way she’d found herself wanting to help him get her naked.

Dear Lord, she was losing her mind. “Is that a bad thing? Wanting in a guy’s pants?”

Evan blew out a breath heavy with his reluctance to talk. Had she been prying about baseball, he’d be animated and all up in her face yammering on about the Yankees.

Instead he pulled up his other knee and rolled down to lie on his back, feet flat on the floor, his head pillowed on his wrists, his dark hair sweeping the cherry wood planks.

“I’m waiting over here,” she finally said, once again sitting cross-legged.

“It’s still a double standard, Shandi—the women a guy takes to bed and the one he takes home.”

That particular truth really sucked, yet in this case it was more the reverse of the situation that she couldn’t let go. She shouldn’t be so hung up, but with Evan and April both her very best friends, it was hard to think of either hurting the other. Or either getting hurt.

Her concern was strictly that of a friend in the middle. A sucky place to be. “So why doesn’t April take you home? She doesn’t want her parents to know she has a lover?”

He waited a long time before answering, clearing the hesitation from his throat before he did. “April and I aren’t lovers. And if you tell her I told you that, the ass-kicking switches into high gear.”

What? Speechless. She was absolutely speechless, her mouth as dry as a bone. April hadn’t once hinted that she wasn’t sleeping with Evan. She’d hinted at quite the opposite, in fact.

“I don’t get it. You’ve spent the night over there—”

“On the couch.”

Unbelievable. “Not in her bed?”

“Nope.”

“Never?”