Palm Springs Heat (17 page)

* * *

Half an hour later, Lara lay on her
back with Clay snuggled alongside her, asleep, head on her chest, breathing
rhythmically and low. Lara remained awake, her eyes trying to penetrate the
deep shadows. Her mind worked in overdrive, trying to undo a tangle of
thoughts, worries and emotions.
How can the best and the worst be happening
at once?

And then she noticed the blinking
“missed call” light on her phone.
Like I need another thing to worry about.
I’ll check it in the morning.

She closed her eyes and tried to
will herself to sleep. But they shot open just a few seconds later.
What if
Clay wakes up and sees something I can’t explain?

Lara moved one arm deliberately
toward the nightstand, trying not to disturb Clay. She panicked each time he
breathed, certain he was waking up. After what seemed like an eternity, she
finally reached the phone. She picked it up and, craning her neck, saw Gina’s
name and number. Paranoia shot through every nerve. Gina Wray was a well-known
presence on the web.

And a sworn enemy of Fast Lane.

She carefully worked the flip-phone
open with one hand and tried turning it off, but it slipped and hit the glossy blond
wood of the nightstand with a clunk before tumbling to the floor.

Clay’s head popped up. “What…?”

“Nothing,” Lara said. She guided
his head back down. “It’s a beautiful night. Let’s just sleep.”

She stroked Clay’s hair as he
nestled into a comfortable position and fell back to sleep. Lara remained awake
far into the night.

13

 “You had better hope you find
him before I do,” Sushma snarled into her phone. Her voice was as cold and
murderous as a gunfighter’s as she charged from her office.

“Yes, ma’am,” came back the cool,
confident voice of Morgan Hopkins, the man who’d headed security at the ICE
House since Chase Creighton built it in 1968. “Where do you suggest we start?”

“Never mind. I will take care of
it.”

“Let me know if you change your
mind.” He was well acquainted with Sushma in shark mode.

 Sushma marched up to Lara’s
suite and pounded out a code on the number pad. The door clicked opened.

“Where is he?” Sushma barked as she
entered the bedroom.

Lara yelped as she jolted awake.

“Where is he?”

He?
Lara blinked and ran her
tongue around her dry mouth as her body and brain trudged up to speed.

“Where is Clayton?” Sushma’s voice
came from the dressing room.

Clay? He left.

Lara scooched up to a sitting
position, clasping the sheet in front of her. Unlike the previous night, she
had not put anything on before falling to sleep; she had wanted to feel Clay’s
skin touching hers. “Doesn’t
anyone
around here knock?”

“It is
seven twenty-five
. Clayton was supposed to be in my
office at
seven fifteen
.” Sushma
stormed back into the bedroom, stood at the foot of the bed with her hands on
her hips and glared at Lara.

“Satisfied?” Lara hissed.

“You do not fool me.”

“You’ve looked everywhere but under
the bed! Here, let me help you.” She leaned over and yanked up the dust ruffle.
Something caught her eye.

My phone! Fuck
! Now Lara was
fully awake.
Keep cool
.

Lara let the ruffle drop and looked
back at Sushma with steely eyes.

Sushma straightened her suit
jacket, smoothed the skirt and folded her arms. “You cannot play your little
games with me.”

“Games?”

“You are attempting to make me make
a fool of myself.”

Lara just cocked her head, daring
Sushma to look.

Sushma ground her teeth; she
clearly did not want to lose this bizarre game of chicken.

They were interrupted by a knock on
the open door.

“Hello?” Morgan called. “Everything
all right in here?”

“You are the chief of security; why
do you not see for yourself?” Sushma called back, keeping her eyes on Lara.

“Someone said they heard something
funny, so we came right away.” Morgan entered the bedroom, trailed by two young
male assistants. When he saw Lara, he matter-of-factly looked away, but the
assistants had a hard time keeping their eyes in their sockets.

“What is their problem?” Sushma
demanded.

Morgan turned to the assistants.

“She’s not wearing any clothes,”
one assistant babbled.

“I’m glad somebody noticed.” Lara
hiked the sheet all the way to her neck.

“I apologize, ma’am.” Morgan nodded
without looking at Lara. And then, like a Zen master to two incorrigible
pupils, he addressed the assistants. “What a professional does in a situation
like this, gentlemen, is simply avert his eyes.”

He waited for a moment, but the
assistants were intractable. “Never mind. Go wait in the hall.”

“Both of us, sir?”

“Yes, both of you.” Morgan grabbed
their arms and escorted them to the door. They kept sneaking peeks at Lara
until he closed the door in their faces.

“Now,” he said, “I believe this
young lady and I have not been properly introduced.”

Lara extended her hand. “I’m Lara
Dixon.”

“Nice to meet you, Miss Dixon.”
Morgan looked at her eyes as he shook her hand. “I’m Morgan Hopkins, chief of
security here at the ICE House.”

“Nice to meet you, Mor—“

Sushma interrupted. “Oh, for
heaven’s sake. Do your job.”

“Yes, ma’am. What would you like me
to do?”

“Help me locate Mr. Creighton.”

“Yes, ma’am. Have you checked the
bathroom?”

“Of course. Look under the bed.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Shit.

Morgan dropped to his hands and
knees, peered under the bed and felt around.

“All clear,” he announced as he
climbed back to his feet.

Lara’s heart skipped a beat when
she saw Morgan holding her phone—with the “missed call” light still blinking.
“I believe you dropped this, Miss Dixon.” He put the phone on the nightstand.
Face-down.

Whew.
“Thanks.”

“Shall I continue the search, Ms.
V?”

“Yes. And when you find Mr.
Creighton, inform him that I am not pleased that he missed our scheduled
meeting.”

Morgan headed for the door, still
careful not to look in Lara’s direction.

“Mr. Hopkins?” Lara said, smiling.
“Thank you for respecting my privacy.”

“Of course, ma’am. Let me know if
you ever need any help from me or my people.”

* * *

Lara’s smile vanished as she turned
to Sushma. “So, are you planning to look around a little more?”

“Your sarcasm is unbecoming. I have
a few things to say.”

“Could I put on a robe or
something?”

“By all means.” Sushma crossed her
arms and waited.

“Could you at least turn around?”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Sushma
pursed her lips, sighed and turned grudgingly around.

Lara retrieved the pink fuzzy robe
from the floor, where it had ended up the night before. “Why did you think you
would find Clay in here?”

“Do not try to act coy. I know he
was here.”

“Is there a rule against that?”

“No, there is no ‘rule.’”

 “Then what is your problem?”

“May I turn around? Your highness?”

“By all means.”

Sushma turned around. “
You
are the problem.”

“Why would you say that?”

“I have my reasons.”

“Do you treat every woman who comes
into Clay’s life this way?”

“Do you know why you are here
today? Why you have been brought into The Rotation?”

“Because of the way Clay and I—”
Lara stopped herself.

“The way you and Clay what?”

Lara went into the bathroom and
squeezed a generous helping of toothpaste onto a brush. “The way Clay and I
have hit it off since meeting a week ago?” She swished the toothbrush around in
her mouth.

Sushma appeared in the doorway.
“For the record,” she said, “I do not believe you are a stupid person.”

“High praise,” Lara sputtered
through the foam.

“I assume you know by now that Clay
Creighton does not choose the women who join The Rotation.”

It was hard to miss.

Lara spat out the toothpaste. “So?”

“The Rotation is a business
proposition, Miss Dixon. An extremely important business proposition. Every
dollar Fast Lane earns proceeds from it. And it so happens that Clay
Creighton—the man millions of men depend on for advice about women—is a
particularly poor judge in these matters.”

Lara’s jaw stiffened. “
Business
matters, you mean?”

“Precisely. When it comes to
business, he makes appallingly bad choices.”

“If I’m such an appallingly bad
business
choice, then why
did
you bring me into The Rotation?”

Sushma got right up into Lara’s
freshly polished grille. “I have brought you into The Rotation so that I can
keep my eye on you.”

“I see. If Clay were allowed to
date me—or whatever—on his own, anything could happen, including”—she moved so
close to Sushma that their noses almost touched—“the end of The Rotation.”

Sushma’s gaze hardened from steel
to titanium. “Everything you do for the next several months—every minute of
every hour of every day—comes under the purview of Fast Lane Enterprises
Incorporated. If you were interested in ‘privacy,’ you should not have signed
the agreements. Do we have an understanding?”

Lara nodded coolly.

Sushma strode out of the room.

Lara remained rooted in place until
she heard the door slam. She looked in the mirror and saw she still gripped her
toothbrush tight. Like a dagger. She put it down and went into the bedroom,
where the first thing she saw was her phone.

Gina.

Shit.

 Lara picked up the phone and
stared at Gina’s number. Lara thought about calling her back at that moment,
but then turned the phone off and set it back on the nightstand.

She needed to think.

* * *

Not one hour earlier, Clay had
awakened from a particularly restful slumber and lain next to Lara for a good
half-hour. He didn’t want to pull some kind of clichéd one-night-stand move by
leaving, but he was never going to fall back to sleep. Not with so many thoughts
crashing about in his brain. Lara breathed slowly next to him, her skin
softened by the lanolin effect of sleep. Clay turned his face to smell her
hair. A moment of perfection. He wanted it to last forever, and the only way he
could think of making that happen was to get up and start getting dressed
before anything happened to change it.

Lara turned over and smiled at him
sleepily.

Clay kissed her forehead. She ran
the back of her hand along his face and chin. He liked how smooth it felt
against the bristle of his unshaven skin.

“What time is it?” Lara asked.

“Six-twenty.”

“You always this eager to greet the
day?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” he said, his
eyes gleaming. “Life is good.”

“It’s not so bad hunkered down in between
these silk sheets, either.” Lara pulled up the covers and rolled onto her side.

Clay considered the contours of her
body. Smooth. Curvy. Alluring. But he had to go. People would be looking for
him.

“I have to talk to someone,” he
said.

“At six-twenty?”

“He doesn’t live in this time
zone.”

Clay brushed Lara’s hip with his
hand as he started toward the deck. His toe bumped something on the floor, but
he couldn’t see anything, so he headed outside.

Fog lingered as Clay climbed onto
the roof. He passed the steps that led to the War Room, dropped to a sandy
hillock topped with tall, swaying grass and marched toward the building where
he kept his antique cars.

It was a defunct Packard
dealership, a quaint edifice that Chase had transplanted brick by brick from
Mendocino a half-century before. As Clay entered the showroom, he drew a deep
breath to savor the cocktail of smells: Rubber and oil blended with carnauba
wax and a dash of old leather.
Not a bad place for a man to live out
eternity.

He strolled past the massive,
chrome-covered beasts of the 1950s—a Hudson Hawk, a Nash Ambassador, two
Buicks, a Ford—and continued around the cartoonish balloon-fendered cars of the
’40s toward the sleek, art-deco masterpieces of the ’30s that had led Chase
Creighton to an epiphany about how an ideal woman would look. “The curvaceous
architecture of a ’36 Delahaye,” he famously wrote in the inaugural issue of
Fast Lane, “is sex set in steel. Behind the wheel, a man is not merely driving
a car, but having an erotic experience nonpareil.”

Of course he had not meant to
equate driving to being with a woman. But Fast Lane readers understood. Clay
did, too; Chase’s prized jet-black and silver Delahaye reminded him of Lara
under the sheets. He smiled and continued on, past the twin brown-over-gold ’39
Bugatti Avaris to a ’38 Buick that Chase dubbed “The Forever Mobile” because it
looked so much like the car Cary Grant and Constance Bennett are driving when
their characters from
Topper
smack into a tree and enter the afterlife.

Clay stroked the edge of the
distinctive tail fin and climbed in. The ancient leather seats creaked as they
conformed to his body. He caressed the steering wheel and tugged on the shifter
knob, then opened the glove box and took out its sole contents: a fading photo
of Clay and his father sitting in this very seat on the day Clay turned
sixteen. The two of them were off to the Simi Valley DMV so Clay could take the
road test for his driver’s license. Clay smiled, remembering the examiner’s
face when they pulled into the parking lot. The examiner had administered exams
in a few Bentleys and Ferraris, but got quite a thrill from riding in a vehicle
so rare.