Palm Springs Heat (11 page)

“You have to what?”

“Get dressed.” She checked her
breath. “Brush my teeth.”

“But he’s here to dress you.”

Lara realized she could see through
the glass wall. A pool. A golf course. Desert. There were no people in view,
but Lara hiked the sheet all the way to her shoulders.

Clay pushed the sheet back down and
kissed her shoulder. “Relax. Even if there was anyone out there, they couldn’t
see you.” He wrapped a towel around his waist. “And there’s nothing you could
do to make yourself any more desirable, either.”

The knocking got even more
emphatic. Clay kissed Lara’s neck and then headed into the outer rooms. “Chill
out! Geez!”

Lara looked at her reflection and
saw herself wearing a sheet and suffering from a serious case of bed-head.
I
look like the Statue of
Liberty
after a one-night stand.

* * *

Out in the suite, Clay threw open
the door to a pudgy little bald man wearing purple sweats, silver
cross-trainers and Buddy Holly glasses with diamond-studded temples.

“Ten A of M, people!” Chartre
trundled past Clay. Two female assistants—a blonde with long, straight hair and
a redhead with her curls in a ponytail—followed, doing their best to avert
their eyes as they passed their scantily clad boss.

“But we haven’t even had
breakfast,” Clay said.

“Make that ten oh-one,” Chartre
countered. “And I can’t imagine what you could have been doing to delay
breakfast for so long.” Chartre looked Clay up and down over the tops of his
glasses as though noticing for the first time that he wore nothing more than a
strategically placed band of terrycloth. “Then again, I have a pretty good
guess. But what is that to me? I’ve been working since seven. The luxuries of a
leisurely lifestyle do not trickle down to my level on the organizational
chart.”

“It’s easy being C.E.O., huh?
People barging in on you on Sunday morning and making outrageous demands at such
ungodly hours?”

“I’m not making any demands on
you.
I’m here to see Miss Dixon.” He strode toward the bedroom.

“I’m not sure she’s ready,” Clay
said as the assistants edged past him.

“Ten-oh-two!” Chartre disappeared
through the door.

* * *

Lara preened in the smoked glass of
the wall. She wore a negligee from the closet that resembled the swan gown
Bjork wore to the Oscars. And it was at least six sizes too big. Lara pinched
the plunging bodice to keep from flopping out.

“Good morning.” Lara played it
cool.

Chartre froze and stared at her.
His face was stern, his lips taut, his eyes oddly impassive as they bored
through her. Flanking Chartre, the assistants whipped out their phones so they
would be ready to take notes when the Great Man spoke.

“The raw materials are all
present,” he said.

Lara frowned. “What does that
mean?”

“He’s saying you make a nice
clothes rack,” Clay explained as he sauntered in. Lara felt her face redden.
Clay stood behind her with his hands on her shoulders. “He wants you to believe
he has everything under control.”

“Don’t listen to him!” Chartre
retorted. “I know what a woman’s got. Although, I can’t for the life of me
fathom why, of all the wonderful negligees in that closet, anyone your size
would choose this monstrosity.”

It was the closest to my hand
when I reached into the closet.

“Eight,” Chartre barked to the
assistants without looking at either of them. The redhead nodded and typed on
her phone.

Chartre turned toward Clay.
“Scoot!” he said, fanning Clay away with the back of his hand. Then he circled
Lara, studying her as if she were a dog in a kennel show. She had the distinct
impression he was judging her haunches, muzzle and coat—not good, since at the
moment she felt more like a beagle than a greyhound. It was a strange position
to be in, but it got stranger when, without warning, Chartre reached into the
swan costume, hefted one of Lara’s breasts with the back of a hand, then
tweaked it to see how it bounced.

Lara squeaked, jumped back and
raised her hand to slap Chartre, but Clay stopped her.

“It’s okay. He’s a professional,”
Clay whispered through gritted teeth.

Without acknowledging Lara’s
discomfort or Clay’s admonition, Chartre tilted his head, puckered his lips and
nodded.

“Yes, very nice raw materials,” he
said. “It will be wonderful dressing a woman. A
real
woman, if you know
what I mean.”

Not really.

Clay cupped his hands on his chest
and whispered, “Natural.”

In that case, all right.

Chartre nodded with scorn at the
yellow dress that had made Lara feel so pretty the previous afternoon. The
blond worker bee whisked it away as though removing roadkill from a highway.

“Are you going to get on with it,”
Clay chided, “or is she going to have to go around naked all day?

“We certainly wouldn’t want
that
.”
Chartre clapped, and more assistants wheeled several racks of clothes into the
room.

Lara was dumbfounded. “Do we really
need all this?”

“My dear,” Chartre said, looking at
Lara over the top of his glasses, “we do things right around here.”

* * *

Lara tried on one item after
another. Chartre operated like a madman, tossing articles of clothing hither
and yon, so focused that he practically ripped articles he deemed unacceptable
from Lara’s body before she had a chance to remove them. It made Lara giddy. So
giddy that she blocked out Chartre and the worker bees. She was putting on a
show for Clay—and he was enjoying it.

“Gina?”

Gina?

“Gina, love, where did this end
up?” Chartre held up a pouffy turquoise chiffon top that no one but a
seventeen-year-old suburbanite would wear.

The blond assistant feathered her
phone’s screen with her thumb. “Consider,” she said.

“Consider? Whatever could I have
been thinking?”

Gina. If Lara developed genuine
feelings for Clay, how would that affect her “mission”?
And what’s going on
with him?
As she looked back over the past twenty-four hours, Lara could
see how she might reinterpret certain utterances, certain moves, certain
touches. Could it be possible that Clay—Clay Creighton, the ruler of the Fast
Lane empire of pleasure for men—might be feeling like a boy in a tux and a
boutonniere slow-dancing with his favorite girl at the junior prom?

“I mean, really.” Chartre tossed
the offending garment aside like a used dish rag. “I damn well better be at the
top of my game if we’re going to give this lovely creature a fitting welcome
into The Rotation.”

What?

Lara looked at Clay. “What?”

“That’s a good question.”

“Oh, dear.” For the first time
since Lara met him, Chartre was at a loss for words.

Clay, who had been reclining on the
bed, stood up. “Are  you saying Shush went ahead and…”

The color drained from Chartre’s
face. “All I know is that I was told this was a Rotation fitting.”

A brusque voice came from near the
door. “You were told correctly.”

Everyone turned to see Sushma
standing in the doorway, her arms crossed. “And, you are correct that
everyone”—she shot a venomous glance at Clay—“had better be at the top of his
game.”

Sushma crossed the room toward
Lara. Looking at Lara but talking to Clay, she said, “My, but she is as lovely
as I have been led to believe. I am Sushma Vishnuveda.”

She extended her hand.

9

 “You do brighten a room,
Shush,” Clay said.

Sushma ignored Clay. “How is the
fitting going, Miss Dixon?”

Fitting?

“You know, it might have been a
good idea to ask Lara about it first.”

“Why? Is this not what she wanted?
Miss Dixon, is this not what you wanted?”

“I hadn’t really thought about
being in The Rotation.” Lara felt her training on how to lie kicking into high
gear.

“Apparently, doing things without thinking
is quite in fashion around here.” Sushma directed her deadpan gaze at Clay. “We
need to talk.”

“My schedule’s pretty open all
afternoon,” Clay responded.

“Your schedule is open right now.”
Sushma marched toward the door.

“I’m not exactly dressed.”

Sushma stopped. “I have seen you
wearing less.” She looked coyly in Lara’s direction. Taking it as a show of
dominance, Lara countered by tilting her head, narrowing her eyes and staring
back at Sushma.

You may have been here first but
I’m here now.

“Now’s as good a time for a
business meeting as any, I guess.” Clay shrugged and gave Lara a peck on the
cheek.

Chartre exhaled after Sushma and
Clay were gone. “That was awkward,” he said. “Where were we?” The blond
assistant named Gina brought him a knee-length dress.

“Don’t worry, my dear.” Chartre
held the dress up to Lara. “I’m sure you’re going to love being a part of The
Rotation. All the girls do.”

He shook his head and tossed the
dress aside.

* * *

 Sushma followed Clay into the
living room and shut the door behind her.

“Whatever happened to work/life
balance?” Clay quipped.

“Do you think the paparazzi have
heard of work/life balance?”

She pressed a button on her phone
and handed it to Clay. He watched a video of his and Lara’s bungling attempts
to hook up on the salt flat.

“Not exactly triple-X material,” he
said.

“No, but it is material that we
cannot control—and your ill-considered escapade at Rev already has people
asking whether this woman is Sun’s replacement.”

“I guess we know the answer to that
question. So she checks out?”

“I have not been able to have her
fully vetted.”

Clay chewed on his lower lip.
“Okay, you got me. No one gets into The Rotation without being fully vetted,
but you just stuck Lara into The Rotation
because
she’s not fully vetted?”

“You and your public antics with
her gave me no choice.”

“Now I get it. It’s easier to keep
an eye on her if she’s on the inside.”

Sushma just looked at him with
gunslinger eyes.

Clay tightened the towel around his
waist. “What if she doesn’t check out? What if she was arrested for
prostitution when she was fifteen, like Miriamne?”

 “You do not know what goes on
right before your very eyes!” Sushma waved her hands in Clay’s face. “The
arrest was not the only issue with Miriamne. It was the fact that she turned
out to be only seventeen. And even though we found out before she was
officially announced, it took a supreme effort to prevent her from becoming a
serious problem.”

Clay studied Sushma’s face.
There’s
something fishy about this.
“I know what’s really going on,” he said.
“You’re scared.”

“Scared of what?” Anger flashed in
Sushma’s eyes.

“You’re worried things are going to
change around here.”

“Change I can contend with.” She
jabbed Clay’s chest. “But she is a cipher, and that is a very bad sign. It is
as if she has taken pains to cover her tracks.”

Clay rubbed the red mark Sushma’s
fingernail made on his chest. “She was married to a movie producer! You know
all about that.”

“A B-movie producer, which is
another thing I do not like about her. Her husband made tawdry films, and she
was surprised to discover him cavorting with bimbos in a hot tub?”

“She’s, I don’t know…sweet.”

“‘Sweet’? Oh, my fucking god, can
you even hear yourself speaking?”

“What’s wrong with sweet?”

“‘Sweet’ is just one more reason to
be suspicious. I have never met anyone ‘sweet’ whom I could trust.”

Clay laughed and plopped into a
big, soft chair.

“So you think—what? That Lara’s
some devious she-devil who’s putting on an act to lull me into complacency? A
Trojan horse bent on destroying me? Why?”

“I can think of one-point-two
billion reasons.”

 “You are a piece of work,
Shush. So hard-boiled and cynical.”

“Cynical, worldly wise—call it what
you will, Clayton Albert Creighton. My eyes are open.”

“Everyone around me is so ‘worldly
wise.’ That’s what’s so fascinating about Lara. She’s naïve.”

“A resounding endorsement.”

“It’s not an endorsement. It’s
refreshing.”
Beat that
.

Sushma calmly checked her phone. “A
pool of water can appear to be refreshing on a hot day,” she said without
looking at Clay, “but that does not make it a good idea to dive in head-first
without knowing its depth.”

Damn!

Clay looked at the floor. He knew
that, from a business standpoint, Sushma was right. He had started to think
Lara could be the woman who would end The Rotation. But, in business, one must
proceed with caution. If bringing Lara to Rev and being seen with her at the
salt flats had triggered an avalanche of speculation, it would be better for
Fast Lane to make Lara official, hope for the best, and dispatch her if a
problem arose. That way, it would look as though Lara had deceived them, and
that would corral valuable sympathy points from the media. Cold-hearted. But
that was business.

“So, what do I tell Lara?”

“You believe that she will check
out?”

Clay nodded.

“Then what reason could there be
for telling her anything?” Sushma spun on her heels and left.

How does this stuff get so
complicated?
Clay tightened the towel again and headed back into the
bedroom.

* * *

The fun evaporated from the fashion
session after Sushma’s appearance. Chartre kept throwing things around the room
and tugging and pulling on Lara, but Lara focused on what might happen next.
What if they know about Gina and
HardCoreGrrrls?