Champagne Rules (38 page)

A push of his remote button turned on the exterior and interior lighting of his house. A soft click told him the doors unlocked as well. He dropped his suitcase inside the back entry hall, then punched the LOCK button. “Okay, if it’s that important, I’ll head over there now and pick it up before the renter gets there. The master bedroom. Got it.” He walked back toward the car.

“Key still in the same place? Thanks, pal, I’ll give you a call when I wake up.”

Another beep unlocked his car door and he threw in the phone before heading down the beach toward his friend’s place to pick up his gift.

“Oh, Jack, my man,” Derek whispered from the doorway of his friend’s master suite. “You have outdone yourself this time.”

When his fiancée broke their engagement, Derek had been relieved. Unfortunately, his friends thought he was desolate and took up a crusade to find him a replacement. All had failed.

Jack was the only friend who hadn’t tried to fix him up over the past year, for which he was profoundly grateful. Derek rested his shoulder against the door jamb and grinned. And now Jack had given him . . . this . . . for his birthday. He’d been celibate for way too long. Jack must’ve known he was ready to experience something new.

To walk on the wild side.

His eyes caressed the nude perfection of the woman spread before him on Jack’s
orgy
bed while he stripped with more eagerness than he’d felt in longer than he cared to remember. He snagged a handful of condoms from the mess on the floor on his way to collect his birthday gift.

Good old Jack,
he thought as he climbed up on the bed with his personal nymphette.

He bought me a hooker
.

Don’t miss this sneak peek at Susan Lyons' HOT IN

HERE. Our hero: a firefighter calendar model, Mr. February. Also known as Scott. Also known as
hot
. Coming from Kensington in August 2006 . . .

Backstage, pacing, Scott Jackman heard the raunchy music swell, the crowd whoop and roar in appreciation. He groaned. What the fuck had he got himself into?

Who’d have guessed that his lifelong ambition to be a firefighter would land him here? Yeah, he’d known that, as a rookie, he’d be the butt of a bunch of stupid jokes. But if he’d ever figured he’d have to wriggle his ass across a stage in front of hundreds of screaming women—not to mention gay guys, the gang from good old Firehall 11, and his little sister—he might have . . .

Hell no. Whatever his parents might wish, he’d never been cut out for the farming life in Chilliwack. He was a firefighter, through and through. And firefighters were tough. If he could risk his life in smoke and flames, he could bloody well get through three minutes on stage. Scott had made the first cut, based on photos submitted by a couple hundred guys. He was one of twenty-four finalists for twelve firefighter calendar spots. If he didn’t win a month, the guys at the firehall would never let him forget it. 

Beyond the curtains, the last notes of music were swallowed up in a thunder of applause. Crap. The audience was voting with their hands, feet and voices, and it sounded like this guy was sure to make the calendar.

The curtains parted and a panting, laughing man burst through. He’d gone out wearing full firefighter turnout gear and was back minus the helmet and jacket. His muscled upper body gleamed with oil and sweat, and he was hauling his turnout pants up over leopard-print briefs. There was a fire hose slung over his shoulder. God knows what he’d done with the hose on stage.

Whatever it was, the audience sure the hell seemed to have got off on it.

Shit, shit, shit. What had he been thinking, trusting his little sister Lizzie to put together his act? Tap? Fucking tap dance? In front of an audience that clearly wanted raunch?

Was it too late to change his plan? There were still a few people ahead of him, he had time to work up a new routine. Nah. Lizzie’d kill him. She’d put a lot of time into coaching him.

But the guys at the station would rib him to death if he made a fool of himself.

’Course, it wasn’t like they didn’t already. The next competitor strutted toward the curtain, wearing turnout gear and—oh, great—carrying an axe. His music started up. More of that hip-grinding rhythm.

Scott groaned again, then clapped the headphones of his iPod to his ears and cranked up the music Lizzie had chosen. He closed his eyes, settled into the beat, imagined the steps, riffs, the way his hips and arms would move to the music. The sultry notes of the sax began to heat his blood. Man, this kind of music always made him feel like sex.

Speaking of which . . . If he focused on the music, went out and sold his number and made the cut for the calendar, there was a damned good chance he’d be going home tonight with one of those screaming firefighter groupies. Preferably one with a killer bod and long blond hair.

The other women were clapping but Jenny Yuen lifted her digital camera and snapped a final shot of the latest . . .
con-
tender
had to be the only word, the way the guy’d clasped his hands together over his head like a victorious wrestler. His body was a wrestler’s too. Gross!

“Any guy with overblown muscles like that has to have a tiny dick,” she told her girlfriends. “That’s why he brought an axe; it’s his penis substitute.”

The Caprice nightclub, packed with a few hundred very warm bodies, was a noise machine. Everyone was yelling and Jenny, at five foot nothing in her kitten-heeled pink sandals, had to scream even louder. Fortunately she never had a problem pumping up the volume. The club was set up with tiny tables, packed closely together. Jenny’d come early and made her case that a midget reporter doing a cover story needed a down-front vantage point to shoot photos. As a result, she’d scored a primo table for her and her best gal-pals, the Awesome Foursome.

“Isn’t it balls that shrink from steroids?” Suzanne Brennan shouted back.

The applause finally died down and they all settled back in their seats.

“Yeah, it’s testicles,” Ann Montgomery said. A lawyer, she was a stickler for accuracy. “And a reduced sperm rate, and erectile dysfunction.”

“Oh yeah?” Jenny said. “Could’ve sworn it was dicks.”

“Doesn’t exactly matter, does it?” Rina Goldberg was the fourth member of the Foursome. Her naturally soft voice had grown hoarse from all the screaming. She took a sip of her lemon drop martini. “The guy’s not going to be much use to a woman, either way.”

“True enough,” Jenny said, as her mind flagged a possible story idea. Obviously there were a lot of misconceptions about the side-effects of steroids, and this was stuff young women—

and men—really needed to know. Like, if the people in this audience knew the truth, would any of them be cheering for Mr. Muscle-Bound? How could a guy be sexy, if unwrapping his package was going to lead to a major let-down?

She reached for her own chocolate martini. Man, was that great! Almost as good as sex—with a guy with a functioning package.

Better than sex with Pete, the guy she’d recently dumped. He’d functioned, but the sex had, after the first few times, turned out to be pretty ho-hum.

Pete, from Korea, had been the latest in a string of dates and lovers she kept secret from her majorly old-fashioned family. For them, only Chinese guys rated as date-worthy. For her—third generation Canadian and a thoroughly modern Jenny—race, culture and religion were irrelevant. She wanted a guy who was hunky, smart and sexy. And, while some of the family-approved Chinese guys had turned out to be good company and stimulating conversationalists, not a single one had ever turned her crank.

And her crank was getting rusty from a month’s disuse. Being in this room was both heaven and hell, for a sexually frustrated girl.

Because, no two ways about it, sexy was what tonight was all about. The people in this room were on a mission: to choose the men who would grace the Greater Vancouver Fire Fighters calendar for next year. Civic pride was at stake. Vancouver simply had to have the hottest guys on their calendar. Besides, the hotter the guys, the more people who’d buy the calendar, and the more money that would be raised for charities like the Burn Fund and Cancer Lodge.

Music began again, calling her attention back to the stage as the next competitor sauntered out. He was dressed in full turnout gear, the way most of the others had started out. When this one peeled off his helmet, she saw he had silver in his closecropped hair. No question he was handsome, though. She snapped a shot.

“This is more like it,” Ann said, leaning forward.

“Too old,” Jenny shouted.

“Old enough to know how to handle his hose,” Suzanne chimed in, and they all laughed.

The man was gyrating to a classic rock number with a sexy, throbbing beat. He peeled off his bulky jacket, revealing a white tank-top stretched over taut muscles.

“Oh yeah,” Ann said. “No steroids here, and I bet this guy’s package is fully functional.” She fanned herself with her hand.

“What’s this thing you’ve got for older men?” Jenny asked, clicking away busily.

“It’s not
age
, it’s about appreciating quality,” Ann shot back. Jenny studied the man. Nah. Had to be damn near forty. To a twenty-three-year-old like her, that was definitely
old
. Really old.

Still, she had to admit the silver fox had a better body than the limp-dick steroid guy, and a more handsome face. And he did know how to move. In fact, Jenny’s pulse was pounding in time with that sexy beat, her body was starting to sway, and she pressed her thighs together, feeling the ache of arousal between them.

Okay, so maybe she wouldn’t kick this fox out of bed, just for having silver hair.

When he finished his number, she leaped to her feet and joined her friends in cheering loudly. “My vibrator’s going to get a workout tonight,” she shouted to her friends. 

“I know
exactly
what you mean,” Ann called back. Then Jenny climbed up on her chair, tugged down her denim mini, and turned to take some crowd shots. The club was packed. Most of the women and some of the guys wore bright, fun clothing, and the lighting should make for interesting effects. Beyond the superficial, though, she hoped she was a skilled enough photographer to convey the throb of sexual energy in the air, the buzz of excited conversation, the musk of sweat and hundreds of different perfumes, colognes and assorted toiletries. Young women had turned out in droves, but there were lots of men too. Funny to see the trendily-dressed West End gays shoulder to shoulder with burly dudes who could only be firefighters, come to cheer—or jeer—the competitors. Music started up and she slipped back into her seat. Ooh, this was different. Same old, same old on the music, but this competitor had on a Zorro mask as well as the standard helmet. A little shorter than most of the guys—a couple of inches under six feet?—and slender, this man sauntered slowly to center stage then began to move to the bump-and-grind music in a mesmerizing, hip-swaying motion. Hands went up, the helmet came off. A head shake and—

“Oh, my, God!” Jenny shrieked. “It’s a woman!”

Long, gleaming red auburn hair tossed every which way.

“Woo-hoo!” the crowd shrieked, with the women yelling variations of “Go, sister!” and the guys—the straight guys—

beginning to chant, “Take it off!”

The woman on stage gave a wide, sultry smile and began to take off her turnout coat. Like the silver-haired guy, she was wearing a tank, but hers was hot pink, almost the same shade as the crop top Jenny was wearing.

“Wow,” Rina said admiringly, “she’s sure toned.”

“They have to be strong,” Ann said, “to be able to drag people out of burning buildings. Right?”

“Gotta envy those boobs,” Suze said. She, like Jenny, was barely a B in a good bra.

The performer, her nipples erect under the skin-tight top, was definitely a braless C.

Jenny clicked away, knowing one of these shots would make it into the
Georgia Straight
for sure. The woman peeled off her giant boots and baggy turnout pants to reveal black tights, slung low on her hip bones.

As she did, two men in black toted something onto the stage then disappeared behind the curtain.

It was a pole, mounted on a platform.

“A fire pole,” Ann yelled. “That beats an axe or a hose.”

The audience howled approvingly, drowning her out. The volume increased as the masked woman twisted and twined her way around that pole. Man, that looked sexy. Hadn’t Jenny heard somewhere that pole-dancing lessons were a new craze for bachelorette parties ?

Cool. Another story idea, and the research would be a blast. The woman finished her act and the audience was on its feet, cheering, stomping the floor, wolf-whistling loud enough to burst eardrums.

“Good for her!” Ann yelled, clapping furiously. “She’s definitely going to win a slot on the calendar. Gotta love how she busted the all-male stereotype.”

Jenny had her camera to her eye when the woman reached up to pull off her mask, revealing a laughing, strong-featured face, then flung the mask into the crowd. A tall dark-haired woman grabbed it out of the air, the lights went off and the woman on stage was gone.

The audience was still buzzing, even more energized than before.

“A tough act to follow,” Suze commented.

“Yeah. Pity the next guy,” Jenny said.

The stage remained dark.

“He chickened out,” Rina said.

Music started up, but it wasn’t the kind they’d been listening to all evening, with a throbbing, fast-driving beat. Instead it was—

“Saxophone.” Rina didn’t have to yell, the room had gone so quiet that even her whisper carried. “Also known as sultry, sensual, seductive.” A musician herself, she knew all about instruments.

“Sexy,” Suzanne sighed on a slow breath of air. A light came on, but rather than the floodlights used in the previous acts, this was just one blue spotlight, and the stage was . . . smoking.

“Dry ice?” Ann murmured. “Effective.”

Into the smoky blue spot, walked a man clad in turnout gear. No hose, no axe, no props at all. He stood quietly, lifting his head as if the music was seeping through him. Then, with minimal movements he removed his helmet, turnout coat, then the boots and finally his pants.