Neck & Neck (23 page)

“Here you go, sweetheart,” he said.

Her lips twitched with something of a smile, but she didn’t take the proffered autograph. “Can’t you at least personalize it?” she asked.

He expelled a sound he hoped indicated how much she was trying his patience, then pulled the napkin toward himself again. “Fine,” he said tersely. “Who should I make it out to?”

When she didn’t reply right away, he looked up at her again. Her smile now was broader, and something about it made him think she was having a joke at his expense.

“Miss?” he prodded, his voice in no way courteous. “Who should I make it out to?”

“Amber,” she told him. “Amber will be fine.”

And with that, she pulled out the chair opposite him and seated herself, setting a tiny black purse on the table. As she scooted herself forward, she said, “You know, a lot of guys do this chair thing for their dates instead of making them do it themselves.” She folded her hands—as unadorned as the rest of her—on the table in front of herself. “You never get a second chance to make a first impression and all that. Then again, I guess we’ve both already had our first impressions of each other, haven’t we? So I don’t suppose either of us has set the bar very high this evening.”

Before Russell had a chance to say a word, their server appeared table side and withdrew the champagne that had been chilling in its silver bucket since his arrival ten minutes earlier. As Russell continued to study Amber in stunned silence, the waiter poured a small amount of effervescent gold into his glass and, without even thinking about what he was doing, he lifted it to his lips for a taste. Then he silently nodded his approval, even though the champagne could have tasted like sawdust for all he could have said at that point. Their server then filled an elegant crystal flute with the pale gold wine for Amber and set it on the table in front of her. She thanked him softly and lifted the glass to her lips for an exploratory sip.

“It’s lovely,” she told their server with a soft smile and all the dignity of that monarch Russell had once imagined her to be.

The man turned to Russell again, holding up the bottle and asking if he’d like his glass filled, as well. Since he wasn’t even halfway through the Glenlivet he’d ordered for himself along with the champagne, he shook his head. The waiter returned the bottle to its nest of ice, asked if there was anything else he could do for the moment, and when Russell shook his head—silently again—the man dipped his own head deferentially and conveniently disappeared.

Amber smiled and sipped her champagne again with all the grace and sophistication of a debutante. Then she said, “And hello to you, too.”

Russell looked for something—anything—that might have clued him in to her identity. But there was nothing. The big red hair had obviously been a wig. The brown eyes—and he’d always been a sucker for brown eyes—had clearly been contact lenses. And the cosmetics . . . well, evidently cosmetics really could transform a woman.

“I bet your name isn’t really Amber, is it?”

This time she was the one to shake her head, punctuating the gesture with a quiet laugh. Everything about her was quiet tonight, he noted. Her looks, her voice, her laughter, her actions. Though she was still able to hold her own with him, so it wasn’t the outer armor she wore as a cocktail waitress that allowed her to do that. It was some inner strength that allowed her to do that.

“No, my name isn’t really Amber,” she told him. “But it will do.”

He reminded himself that he’d seen her wearing next to nothing, and that the body he’d so admired couldn’t have possibly been faked. So that was something. All he had to do was keep his gaze below her face, pretend she wasn’t wearing a boring black cotton dress, and maybe the evening wouldn’t be a total washout. The wooing was looking unlikely, however. As was the
Wooing!

Amber—or whoever she was—sipped her champagne again and tucked a strand of boring brown hair behind her ear. Only then did he note something Amberesque in her appearance. Her ears were pierced a lot. Maybe a half-dozen times. But she only wore simple hoops of varying sizes in each hole. Black to match her dress, though perhaps that was the only color she wore. At the club, her hair had covered her ears, so he hadn’t noticed the hardware. How or why a woman would allow herself to be stabbed so many times like that he couldn’t imagine. He told himself over-abundance of metal should be off-putting. Instead, coupled with the clean lines of her face and the simplicity of her attire, the punk/goth thing was kind of erotic.

Of course, Russell was the sort of man for whom a stray piece of lint on a woman’s collar was erotic, so that wasn’t really saying a whole lot.

She set her glass back on the table, met his gaze levelly, and said baldly, “I hope you brought a credit card with a big line of credit. I’m planning to run up a hell of a bill tonight.”

Russell chuckled at that, surprising himself. He hadn’t been thinking there was anything funny about the situation. He’d been expecting a promiscuous, redheaded bombshell he’d have on her back—or, even better, on all fours—before the night was half over. Instead, he had a woman who looked like Little Orphan Amber. Only with pupils. Thank God. Not that he wasn’t still perfectly willing to uphold his offer, and not that the expense would be any more than negligible to him, no matter how much of a bill she ran up. Then he realized he wasn’t chuckling because he found the situation funny. Or even because of what she said, really. He was laughing because what she’d said had made a ripple of something surge through him that he hadn’t felt in a very long time: happiness. Her forthrightness, maybe even her very presence at the table, made him feel good inside.

Well, wasn’t that a kick in the ass? Maybe the evening wouldn’t be a complete waste of time after all.

“Don’t worry,” he told her. “Like I said, money is no object. Order whatever you want. As much as you want. I can even send Raoul out for a cooler if you want to take a doggie bag with you.”

She sipped her champagne again and grinned. “Tell him to get a big cooler. Tell him to get two of them. Maybe three. I’ll be taking a lot of doggie bags with me.”

“Have a lot of doggies, do you?” Russell asked as he reached into his other inside jacket pocket for his phone. He’d put Butch/Raoul on speed dial for the night.

She nodded. “Great big ones. Rottweilers. Let’s see, there’s Fang and Killer and the twins, Terminator and Eviscerator.”

Russell arched his brows at that one. “Eviscerator?”

“He’s actually a big softie most of the time. He only eviscerates when he thinks I’m in danger. They still haven’t found the remains of the cable guy who came on to me that time.”

Russell punched the button for the chauffeur and put the phone to his ear. “Good information to have.”

He started to say something else, but his driver picked up at the other end, so he gave him Amber’s instructions and told him to take his time procuring the biggest, baddest coolers—along with a few major doggie toys—he could find. Then he folded the phone closed and started to return it to his pocket. But before he completed the action, and after only a small hesitation, he pushed the Off button, something he normally never did. Not many people had this number—only the ones who would have to get in touch with him over subjects of a life-altering, earth-moving, or business-collapsing nature. For some reason, though, suddenly, Russell wasn’t concerned about any of those things. So after returning the powerless phone back to his pocket, he forgot all about it.

He picked up his Scotch and leaned forward, and was delighted when Amber mimicked the action. The table was small, since Russell hadn’t wanted there to be room for anything more than the two of them, so the double action brought their faces quite close. Close enough that he marveled again at how smooth and lovely her skin was. At how blue and clear her eyes were. At how good she smelled, even though he recognized the scent as one from his childhood: Ivory soap. Whose slogan he could also remember from childhood. Ironic, since he could say without doubt that Amber was anything but ninety-nine and forty-four one hundredths percent pure.

He remembered how, the first time he’d seen her in Minxxx, he’d been struck by the contradictions in her. He’d been thinking that by removing her from the garish environment of the strip club, she would be less of a puzzle to him. That once the outer trappings of the cocktail waitress were gone, her true nature would surface. And he supposed, in a way, it had. Her outer trappings had actually been a disguise that, once removed, had revealed a completely new set of outer trappings. But instead of making Amber easier to figure out, now she was even more of an enigma.

An enigma, Russell thought as he lifted his glass to his mouth again, that he couldn’t wait to unravel.

 

 

GINNY SAT IN THE SOFTLY LIT, ROMANTICALLY APPOINTED restaurant across from Russell Mulholland, pre tending she knew what she was doing and trying to ignore the heat lashing her stomach and the erratic racing of her heart. What the hell had she been thinking to assume she’d have the upper hand tonight? Whenever she’d been with him before, they’d always been in her world, where she was comfortable, where she understood how everything worked, where she did indeed have the upper hand and knew perfectly well how to use it.

Tonight, though, they were in his world. A world with which she was in no way familiar and whose rules she couldn’t begin to understand. When she’d agreed to go out with Russell, she’d figured this would be her chance to take a walk on the less wild side. To see what made life so sweet on the moneyed side of the street. She’d thought it would be a lark. She honestly hadn’t realized she’d feel so different, so uncomfortable. Not in his environment. And not with him.

She was beyond uncomfortable here, had no idea how to act, and had lost the upper hand the moment she’d taken her first step into the restaurant. Sure, she’d known it would be nice, but this . . . this was unlike anything she’d ever seen before. There was a woman in a velvet dress playing the piano in the lobby. The host was wearing a suit. The hostess was wearing pearls. And their server. Holy crap. The guy was wearing a
tuxedo
, for God’s sake. With white tie and tails.

The minute the guy had approached the table, Ginny had been hit by the realization that, essentially, she and he did the same thing for a living. But he sure as hell didn’t have to wear a plastic halter top, almost certainly didn’t have to pull anyone’s hand from his ass at any point during his shifts, and his place of employment probably hadn’t even once been raided by the cops. And on top of all that, one look at the prices on the menu also assured her he probably took home twice as much in one night as she did.

And he even had an assistant to make the Caesar salad.

Nice work, if you can get it,
she thought. But waiting tables in a place like this required way more refinement and panache than she had, and way more knowledge of food and wine than she had, not to mention the ability to describe said food and wine with words heard more often on
Jeopardy!
than
Wheel of Fortune
. But Russell Mulholland moved in a world where people probably didn’t even watch
Jeopardy!
He moved in a world like . . .

Well, she thought, giving the restaurant another surreptitious once-over. He moved in a world like this. Full of linen and marble, velvet and pianos, and freshly sautéed garlic cooked by someone else. Not a world like hers, full of polyester and linoleum, cotton and radio, and garlic powder bottled under the supermarket label. And truth be told, Ginny didn’t even use garlic powder all that often. It was easier to just pull something out of a box or bag and nuke it.

Her world for sure didn’t put her into this kind of proximity with blond, blue-eyed, Adonis-type billionaires, even if they were morally compromised enough to frequent the sort of place where she worked. Yet here she sat, her head bent toward Russell’s, close enough that she could inhale the fresh, clean scent of him, could note the glitter of amber highlights in his hair, could detect just a hint of gray at the center of his azure irises. As she sat in silence gazing back at him, he arched one brow and grinned, a gesture that hinted at a single faint dimple on his left cheek. She would have sworn the photos she’d seen of him had been retouched, because no man could be that handsome, that perfect. But he looked even better in person than he did in magazines.

What
had
she been thinking to agree to go out with him tonight?

As if he could tell what she was thinking, he asked, “Having second thoughts already?”

“Of course not,” she lied, digging deep for what little bravado she had left. “Are you?”

He shook his head. “Not at all. In fact, I find myself looking forward to the evening ahead now even more than I was before.”

“Before what?” she asked. Then mentally smacked herself for pushing her luck.

“Before a woman sat down on the other side of the table from me who looks infinitely more mouthwatering than anything on the menu.”

Oh, now who was lying? she thought. No way did she believe that. Men who visited places like Minxxx did so because they relished the trashy, trampy side of women that society liked to keep behind closed doors, and Amber Glenn personified that perfectly; Ginny worked hard on her costume to make sure of that. Ginny Collins, on the other hand, was about as plain and ordinary as they came. The sort of woman men never looked at twice. She worked hard to make sure of that, too.

Something on her face must have hinted at her thoughts—or maybe he really could read her mind—because he asked, “Why the disguise when you work? You’re a lovely woman under all the paint and big hair. Do you really think an over-the-top redheaded bombshell would make better tips than a cute girl next door? Believe it or not, a lot of guys go for the wholesome look way more than the lady-of-the-night thing.” He smiled. “Especially if the girl next door is wearing knee socks and a plaid skirt.”