As Hot As It Gets (3 page)

“What's your pleasure?” he asked with a flirty smile.

“A dry martini.” Claire flashed a halfhearted smile at him, hating that she couldn't even muster the energy to flirt back.

When he turned away, she stared hard at his body, to no avail. Damn it, she couldn't even get aroused by such a fine male specimen. And she'd been like this for months. Mason and all the wild fantasies he incited were ruining her sex life, and it had to stop.

A raunchy Prince song was playing over the speaker system. Claire glanced over at the stage and noted that it was vacant. Either the band was on break, or her hopes of watching drunken people dance to Caribbean music were soon to be dashed. Then she spotted a few couples at the edge of the dance floor engaged in the kind of dancing that left little to the imagination regarding what they'd be doing in bed mere hours from now.

What she should have been doing with Mason at that very moment.

How could Mason have turned her down a second time? What, did he have supernatural powers? Maybe he didn't feel the same animal attraction for her that she felt for him. Maybe she was making an even bigger ass of herself than she feared.

“You look like you need this,” the bartender said when he returned with her martini.

“I need a lot more than a drink to solve my problems,” she said, calculating whether seducing the bartender would be a worthy pursuit.

But try as she might, she just couldn't do more than appreciate him on an aesthetic level. She may
as well have tried to leap tall buildings as get her pulse to quicken over any guy lately.

Except, of course, the one she absolutely didn't want to pulse and quake over.

The bartender looked over her shoulder and his expression changed from flirtatious to guarded. “Mr. Casey,” he said, all business now, “how can I help you?”

Claire followed his gaze and found a gray-haired man in a white shirt that was open to reveal his hairy chest taking the seat next to hers. She flashed a thin smile at him, hoping he wouldn't take it as a sign to start hitting on her.

He ignored the bartender's question and turned his attention to Claire. “You must be Ashley,” he said, placing one hand on her lower back.

Claire shifted her weight away from him, forcing his hand to drop. “No, wrong person.”

“Mr. Casey, I believe Ashley's been delayed by a few minutes. Why don't you take a seat over there and have a drink,” the bartender said a little too quickly, nodding at the other side of the bar.

His gaze darted nervously toward Claire, and his flirtatious smile was nowhere in sight.

Claire glanced between the two men, trying to guess what exactly was going on as the guy named Mr. Casey moved to the empty bar stool the bartender had indicated. Who was Ashley, and why had the bartender suddenly gotten so uptight? She sipped her martini and watched other people laughing and
flirting across the bar. Normally, she would have been one of those carefree souls, but tonight she must have been giving off bad vibes. Bad, Mason Walker-induced vibes.

A few minutes later, a woman Claire guessed was Ashley showed up, clad in a black leather mini-dress that was too slutty even for Claire's taste. After a short conversation with the shirt-button-challenged Mr. Casey, the two left the bar together. Their body language, she noted, was more appropriate for a business deal than a lover's tryst, and her curiosity was piqued.

She eyed the bartender again but doubted he'd offer any enlightenment. And then it occurred to her that he could be in on whatever business dealings, illegal or otherwise, might have been going on between the suspicious pair.

Was the woman a prostitute? A drug dealer? An inappropriately dressed massage therapist?

Without anyone to answer her questions, Claire got bored with the subject and looked around for other people-watching entertainment, but she'd seen it all a million times. Mating rituals performed with the aid of alcohol, loud music and tight clothes. It all just bored her tonight.

Claire downed the rest of her martini. The festive atmosphere in the bar was bumming her out, and the alcohol hadn't helped. What she suddenly wanted more than anything was to be curled up on her couch
at home, watching old movies and eating a fudge-brownie sundae. Maybe Mason was right that she should leave before the storm hit, cut her losses, give up on curing her case of Mason-itis.

She pushed herself away from the bar and cast one last glance at the bartender, hoping he might get her loins stirring after all. He caught her eye and smiled, and Claire decided on a whim she'd take a risk and give him her room number. What the heck. If he called or dropped in and they still didn't click, she could tell him to get lost. She found a pen in her bag and wrote her room number on a drink napkin, then turned it around so that the bartender could read it when he came to clear her glass from the bar.

There, now it was in the hands of fate, and she could at least feel like she was being proactive when she went back to her room to sulk. Getting rid of her Mason urges was proving to be a hell of a lot harder than she'd planned.

A
KNOCK AT THE DOOR
interrupted Claire's perusal of the room-service menu.

“What now?” she muttered, pretty sure Mason hadn't returned to grant her wish for a night of mediocre sex.

Then she remembered the drink napkin, and her hopes rose. Could it really be possible that something good would happen to her tonight?

A peek through the peephole answered her question with a resounding “no.” Instead of Mason or Hunky Bartender, what she saw was a middle-aged man with a disappearing hairline and an expanded waistline. She'd never seen him before, and he was, coincidentally enough, wearing a raincoat tied at the waist. Claire could only hope he had more clothes on under his than she'd had on under hers.

She considered not answering the door, but curiosity got the best of her. Grabbing a hotel pen from the dresser near the door, she prepared to jab her visitor in the eye if he made any funny moves, then opened the door.

“Yes?” she asked.

“I've been a bad boy,” he said, his voice oddly strained. “Are you going to punish me?”

Claire stood there frozen, fully aware that she should be slamming the door at that moment but unable to make her arm move.

When she didn't speak, Bad Boy's expression grew a bit hesitant. “Did I say something wrong?”

“Um…” Where, exactly, should she start explaining everything that was wrong with what he'd said?

“I'm sorry, this is my first time, and, um, maybe you need payment first?” The man started fumbling for what Claire assumed was his wallet, but when he opened the waist of his coat, he revealed that he was wearing a man-size diaper. And nothing else.

Claire emitted a sound something like “eek,” and Bad Boy froze, his expression a mixture of confusion and embarrassment.

“Y-you're not the dominatrix, are you?”

The
dominatrix?
An image of the woman in the black leather dress came to mind.

“No, I'm not!”

“But the number I got from the bar was for suite number—”

He withdrew a napkin from his pocket and looked at it, then glanced between Claire and the room number on her door. The sight of her drink napkin caused Claire's stomach to twist into a knot. She was an idiot, and she deserved every bit of this humiliation.

And it was time to get rid of the guy in the diaper. “Wrong room, buddy,” she said, then slammed the door before her urge to turn the pen into a weapon became too strong to resist.

She locked the door for good measure, then stood staring at it for what felt like minutes, trying to make sense of the encounter.

Questions whirred through her head. What was going on here? And whatever it was, did Mason know about it?

In the face of such a bizarre crisis, there was only one person to call. Without stopping to question how she'd explain her room number on the drink napkin, she went to the phone and dialed Lucy's number. When her best friend answered, Claire relaxed at the familiar sound of her voice.

“Hi, Luc. It's me.”

“Claire! I've been hovering by the phone all afternoon! Why didn't you call me sooner? I was worried sick.”

Claire winced at the verbal assault. “Because I didn't feel like listening to you try to talk me out of anything.”

“What do I need to be talking you out of? Claire? What are you up to?”

“I just came here to sleep with Mason, that's all.”

“That's what I was afraid of! Why didn't you talk to me about this ahead of time? Did you hit your head when you had that accident yesterday?”

“No, my neck's a little stiff, and Daisy's totaled, but I'm fine.” Claire felt a pang of sadness over her poor, smashed-up Mustang. That event, more than anything else, had convinced her to do whatever it took to make sure she was a victim to no man's charms, and especially not to Mason's.

“I'm sorry about your car—I mean, Daisy, but don't you think your reaction is a little drastic?”

“I thought you wanted me with Mason.”

Lucy sighed into the phone. “I do, but not like this, not as part of some scheme to make yourself forget him.”

Claire felt her face burning. Was she really that obvious? Maybe not to the whole world, but to Lucy, who knew her better than anyone, she was. There was no sense in trying to hide anything from her because she always guessed what was really going on.

“You're such a romantic, Luc. Not everyone can have what you and Judd have.” Some people, like Claire, just wanted the sense of adventure and possibility that came with being single, and if it meant sacrificing having one true love in order to have her carefree lifestyle, she was pretty sure she could deal with that.

“Of course you can!”

Claire rolled her eyes at the phone. She might as well just accept that Lucy was never going to see eye to eye with her about her lifestyle. Claire loved her job managing the travel agency, loved the opportu
nities she had to visit exotic places and make love to exotic men, loved never having to deal with the complications that came with long-term boyfriends.

Her life was everything she wanted it to be. Well, almost. Except for her Mason problem.

“We've had this argument already, and there's no point in having it again right now, because Mason has already kicked me out of his suite and told me to leave the resort.”

“No!”

“Well, not in so many words, but he got his point across.”

“What did you do to him?”

“Nothing much,” Claire said, smiling. Lucy would have a conniption fit if she knew the truth.

“Claire…”

“Really! He just wasn't exactly happy to see me, that's all. Understandable, given our history.”

“Maybe if you apologized to him—sincerely apologized—”

“Don't worry, I have a feeling me hanging out at Mason's resort is going to be the least of his problems after what just happened a few minutes ago.” Claire told Lucy what she suspected was going on at Escapade.

“A
what
service?” Lucy asked, her voice instantly rising to a screechy pitch.

Claire held the phone closer to her mouth and over-enunciated, “A
dom-in-a-trix
service. Do you
think Mason is capable of being involved in something like that?”

“Absolutely not. No way. He'd never—”

“Okay, okay. I thought that's what you'd say, but I wanted to be sure.”

“Are you sure it's really a—a dominatrix service? I mean, how do you know?”

Claire explained the incident at the bar followed by the one at her door. “I'm not totally sure, but I'd be willing to bet that's exactly what's going on,” she said, happy that she'd managed to tell the story while carefully avoiding any mention of the drink napkin. She couldn't quite explain how that mix-up had occurred, anyway. It just would have muddied the water.

“Mason's going to be furious. This could ruin the reputation of his business if word gets out.”

“Yeah,” Claire said, not exactly feeling sorry for Mason, but surprisingly not gleeful either. “He's going to have to crack down on it right away and try to keep the news of it quiet…. Or who knows, maybe wild rumors about the place are just what he needs to keep business booming.”

“That's not Mason's intention. He wants Escapade to be more about luxury and less about sex. He's not going to like this one bit—you've got to tell him right away.”

“Why should I help him? He wouldn't help me if my life depended on it.”

“You're not giving him enough credit, and you
should help him because it's the right thing to do. And because it might mend a few fences between you two.”

“I don't want any mended fences—I just want him to sleep with me.”

“You can't have one without the other,” Lucy said.

“Believe me, I don't have to like him to sleep with him, and vice versa. In fact, it's impossible for me to like such an arrogant, pigheaded—”

“You're talking about my brother-in-law. I don't want to hear it.”

Claire rolled her eyes at the phone. “Okay, fine. I see where your loyalty lies.”

“Stop pouting—you know I want what's best for you.”

Okay, so maybe she did, but that didn't mean she had any idea what really was best for Claire. Lucy thought Claire needed to settle down, get married and do the family thing, but Claire knew she was too restless for such a limited future. She needed freedom, adventure and a different guy for each season, preferably.

But that thought reminded her that she hadn't had a single summer fling yet this year—and not a spring one, either, for that matter. Summer was quickly passing into fall, and she hadn't been able to summon any real interest in a guy besides Mason since…last March, at best.

Yikes.

Maybe helping Mason was just what she needed to do to break down his I-hate-you-too-much-to-sleep-with-you barrier, and then she'd be free to fling to her heart's content.

“Luc, I gotta go. I just remembered something I need to do.”

“You're going to tell Mason, right?”

“Um, right. Talk to you soon. Bye!” And she hung up before Lucy could issue any dire warnings about what might happen if Claire behaved irresponsibly.

She checked her lipstick in the mirror, fluffed her hair up a bit and readjusted her dress to ensure maximum cleavage. There—now she was armed for seduction again, and she had a new weapon in her arsenal. She smiled to herself as she set off for Mason's room again, determined not to leave this time until she'd gotten her man.

 

M
ASON PEERED THROUGH
the peephole and muttered a curse under his breath. The redheaded devil was back.

Damn it.

Maybe he just shouldn't answer. Or maybe he should call security now before things got out of control. But curiosity got the best of him again.

“What do you want?” he called through the door.

She looked him in the eye through the peephole and offered a tentative smile. “We need to talk about a problem,” she called back.

“The only problem we need to talk about is you leaving before I have to call security.”

He spotted the flash of anger in her eyes, which she quickly subdued.

“There's something going on here at Escapade that you need to know about. Do you want to stay in the dark or let me in and listen to what I have to say?”

Mason couldn't tell if she was bluffing, but it was a sure thing that Claire wasn't offering any helpful information about his business. “You expect me to believe you're here to help?”

“Lucy insisted.”

That, he could believe. With all his better instincts protesting, he unlocked the door and eased it open. Immediately, his body had its usual animal reaction to Claire.

“What?” he said, trying hard to ignore the sensation of increased blood flow to his guy parts.

“I don't think this is something you'll want discussed in the hallway,” she said, eyeing the inside of his suite.

Mason reluctantly stepped aside, half-convinced that she was lying in order to pull some kind of Claire Elliot stunt.

She entered the room and took a seat on the sofa as if she owned the place, then patted the cushion next to her.

“I'll stand,” he said, then set the timer on his watch. “You've got five minutes.”

Claire raised an eyebrow at him. “So, what do you think of domination and submission?”

“As in S and M?”

“Mmm, hmm. Whips, chains, scary chicks in leather chaps. Does that do it for you?”

“Not especially. What does this have to do with Escapade?” Knowing Claire, this was probably her idea for improving business.

Her smug expression suggested she had a secret she was enjoying a little too much. “Did you know you have a dominatrix-for-hire service operating here at the resort?”

“A
what?
”

“I guess you didn't know then.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Mason felt all the heat dissipating from his groin and relocating to his temples.

“A little while ago a man came to my door with some pretty odd requests, considering I'd never seen him before in my life.”

“That's not necessarily unusual here, you know,” Mason said, remembering a few incidents of guests getting carried away that his employees had already witnessed.

Mason listened as Claire told him what she'd seen at the bar and then at her door, and the more he listened, the more he got the urge to punch something. Just last year business at his Fantasy Ranch resort had nearly been ruined by a vindictive ex-girlfriend
who'd cooked up a sabotage plot to get even with him for dumping her. And now he had scumbags operating a dominatrix service on his new resort? Why did this kind of thing happen to him?

“Somehow I don't think you'd just tell me this out of the goodness of your heart,” he said when she finished.

Claire's eyes flashed a spark of pure mischief. “I've got more, and I might even know who's running the show, but I'll need a little incentive to tell you anything else.”

Mason reminded himself to breathe. Deep, cleansing breaths. No more angry thoughts.

“You're asking for a bribe?”

“Well, a sort of sensual bribe, I guess you could call it.”

“Claire, whatever you're thinking, forget about it,” Mason said.

She took a step closer to him, and suddenly the faint dampness of her lips was an offer almost too tempting to refuse. She smiled a luscious, wicked smile. “Make love to me, just for tonight, and I'll tell you whatever you want to know.”

Claire slid her hands up his chest, pressed her tight little body against him, and Mason considered resisting. Could he live with himself if he accepted her condition? Would a night with Claire finally get her out of his hair for good?

He wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer.