Vampire in Paradise (13 page)

Marisa bucked up then and waved Yolanda’s concern aside. “Nothing important,” she said. “It’s been very nice chatting with you.”

To her disappointment, Marisa got only a twenty-dollar tip from Yolanda, which would have been considered good back in her regular job. She expected more here. However, when she went out to greet her next customer, she saw a little gift from Yolanda wrapped in plain brown paper. The Whirly-Girly? She also saw several hundred-dollar bills stuffed in Izzie’s jar. Hedy told her they were from Yolanda. Once again, Marisa had made a rash judgment about someone, only to learn perception was not reality.

That theory was tested when her next client arrived . . . none other than Lance Rocket.

“Ms. Lopez?” he asked, sauntering into the room, thankfully wearing an oversize white towel to cover his generous endowments, not that she was looking below his hairless chest. Seeing as how he had thick, dark brown hair, he’d probably been waxed.

“Mr. Rocket,” she said, leaning forward to shake his hand. “We met briefly last night at Mr. Goldman’s party.”

“Right. Call me Lance.” He shook her hand. “That was something with Farentino keeling over like that.”

“Yes, but I understand he’s going to make it. Thank God! Please sit.” She motioned toward the massage table.

Some people’s legs dangled over the side, but because of his height, about six-foot, his bare feet were planted on the tile floor. He was a handsome man, but up close she could see by the fine webbing at the corners of his eyes and mouth that he was older than she had thought. Possibly forty. You wouldn’t know it by his body, though, which was lean and well-muscled.

“What kind of massage are you interested in, Lance?” She pointed to the sign on the wall, which listed seven different types that she gave.

“Pfff. I could probably use them all, but it’s my thighs and hamstrings that are killing me.”

“Oh?”

“I work on my knees too much,” he told her with an absolutely straight face, assuming she knew what he did for a living.

“Are you a priest?” she asked, just to tease.

“Huh?”

“On your knees. Praying a lot.”

He grinned when understanding seeped in. “I pray at the love altar,” he said, still with a straight face. “However, I don’t practice celibacy.”

She barely stifled a groan. She’d stepped right into that one.

“I had numerous knee injuries when I played football in college. As a result, my knees are shot, especially the left one. To relieve the strain on my kneecaps, I tend to work more in a squat position or leaning back. Try doing that for hours at a time, and your hamstrings would scream, too.”

No way was Marisa going to picture that.

“Have you consulted a doctor?”

“Yeah, but I don’t have time for knee surgery and lengthy rehab. And I can’t take off work for six months, either, like one doc suggested. The best I can do is cortisone shots every three months.”

“Okay. Well, let’s see what I can do. Lie down, face first.”

He did, but had to adjust himself more than usual for obvious reasons. The towel was still draped over his behind and his face rested on the small pillow at the top of the table. Still, he squirmed around. Muttering, “They oughta have donut holes cut in these tables to accommodate us men. Big, padded donut holes.”

What could she say to that? Nothing. Instead, she busied herself with gathering some towels until he was settled.

“I’m putting warm oil on my hands, and then I’m going to try to work these hamstrings. Okay?”

“Just take it easy.”

She tested the muscles on the backs of his thighs, which were indeed tighter than over-wound springs, first with soft presses of her fingertips, then deeper presses by the knuckles and heels of her hands.

“Sonofabitch!” he groaned.

“Does that hurt?”

“Hell, yes!”

She could see that his hands were fisted, the knuckles white.

“But don’t stop,” he quickly added and exhaled whooshily several times until she could feel the tendons loosen and lengthen. “There, that’s the spot. Damn, but that feels good.
There
. Right frickin’ there.”

Since he was more relaxed now, she changed her massaging to longer, firmer strokes from the tops of his thighs down to the backs of his knees, and even his calves and the arches of his feet. When he moaned intermittently now, it was from the lessening of pain.

“I’m going to massage your shoulders and biceps, too. Often, to compensate for the pain in one place, we tighten up other parts of our body.”

“Whatever works, babe.”

Some women would find that term offensive, but she could tell he didn’t mean it that way.

“So you played football in college. Where?”

“Penn State.”

“Whoa, that’s big-time college football.”

“Yep. Division One.”

“When did you get involved in . . . um, adult movies?” She found it difficult to say “freedom of expression” movies. It just didn’t fit.

He chuckled, perfectly aware of her hesitation to mention the word
pornography
. “After college. I graduated with a degree in American literature, and—”

Holy moly! A porno poet!

“—the only job I could get was substitute teaching high school English—”

What did he expect, with that major? Really! She constantly ran into people who said such things as, “I got a 4.0 in French medieval history, and I just don’t understand why I can’t land a job.” She was tempted to tell them, “Get a reality check, buddy.”

“—even though I had imagined myself the next Ernest Hemingway.”

Really? Okay, a writer then. But did he have a clue what most writers made? Think barely more than minimum wage.

“I barely made enough to care for my wife and baby girl.”

Bingo.
“You have a wife? And a daughter?”

“Hah! I have three daughters now. And, before you ask, I’ve been married to the same woman for eighteen years.”

Call me naïve, but why do I find it so hard to reconcile a wife at home and a husband boffing dozens of bimbos?

“An old college girlfriend, who had just starred in that Internet sensation
Mandy Does Manhattan
, mentioned me to her director. You’ve seen that one, right?”

“Uh, no.” She didn’t want to say that she’d seen at most three adult movies in her lifetime and then only parts of each before either laughing herself silly, or being so disgusted or embarrassed she refused to watch more. Instead, she told him truthfully, “I was only about ten years old back then.”

“Oh,” he said, “but it’s a classic. Most people I meet have seen that one.”

Obviously, I’m not most people, and I’m no longer sure if that’s good or bad.
“So you didn’t need any acting experience to move from the classroom to the big screen . . . or little screen, in the case of TV?”

“No acting experience. In fact, I didn’t have a lot of sexual experience, either, believe it or not. Yeah, I’d always carried this junk around with me, but I didn’t have a clue what to do with it. Time to profit from what had been an embarrassment before, I decided.” He was lying on his back now and waved a hand toward the bulge down below. The grin on his face belied just how embarrassed he was, or had been. “That was fifteen years ago, and I’m still going strong.” More big ol’ grinning. “Except for these damn knees.”

“Can’t you take a break for a while? Get the operation and do a few months’ rehab?”

“Are you kidding? My wife would have my ass in a sling if I did that.”

She wanted to insist that surely a wife of eighteen years would want her husband to get better, but by now she knew she’d said too much. Surprise must have shown on her face, though, before she could mask it with a polite change of subject.

“Carla’s become accustomed to a certain lifestyle. We just bought a vacation home in Costa Rica, not that I’ve gotten to spend more than a weekend there so far. Plus, my oldest daughter is a freshman at Harvard. Do you have any idea how much tuition is there? And I have two more daughters coming up for high school graduation. Ka-ching, ka-ching.”

Another porno player getting into the game because of higher education expenses. None of that “The devil made me do it.” Nope. “My kids made me do it.”

I wonder if I’ll ever have to worry about paying for Izzie’s college education.

I can’t think about that now. I just can’t!

“Well, then, I suggest that you find a reputable physical therapist, or a licensed masseur, who can work on you weekly, or twice a week, if possible.”

“How about while I’m here on Grand Keys? I could barely crawl out of bed this morning.”

“You can come in every morning, if you’d like, but I should probably alternate the types of massage. Deep tissue one day, hot stones another. Regular Swedish massage, of course. Even relaxation massage or aromatherapy could help.”

“Sounds great to me.”

“And, by the way, you should drink lots of water today to wash out the toxins I loosened up for you.”

“No prob. I drink lots of water anyhow.” He gave her a two-hundred-dollar tip when he left, but she noticed that he never once asked about her life, or her family. His only interest was in himself. That was not unusual. Lots of folks were self-centered that way, and not just “celebrities.”

It was one p.m. by the time Marisa cleaned up from Lance’s appointment. She had time for only one appointment before she had to leave for the bungalow, where she would grab a quick sandwich for lunch and do her best with a travel sewing kit to make her waitress uniform presentable, or at least minimally modest. Her dinner shift at the Phoenix Restaurant started at five p.m. and ran until midnight. No early-bird servings on this island.

With only ten minutes to spare, she tossed the sheet and pillowcase in the laundry basket, wiped down the table with disinfectant, and laid out clean linens. Then she ran into the bathroom for a quick pee and repair of her makeup. When she came back out, her next client was already coming through the door of the customer dressing room.

Dr. Sig! Six-foot-four of blond-haired Norse yumminess.

“What are you doing here?”

“Someone got up on the wrong side of the bed furs this morn. Are you wearing anything under that garment?”

She glanced down, realizing that she’d forgotten to put the sweater back on when she’d been in the bathroom. Raising her chin haughtily, she barely restrained herself from grabbing a towel to cover herself. Even worse, she felt her nipples pearling just from looking at Sigurd.

Wearing nothing but a towel!

And, though he didn’t display Lance’s particular type of assets, he had plenty of his own. Wide shoulders, slim waist and hips, long, long, lightly furred legs leading down to narrow, well-formed feet. Today, his dark blond hair hung loose to his shoulders with those thin braids on either side of his sharply sculpted face.

“No. Are you?” she snapped, and immediately regretted her hasty reply.

“Not a thing,” he said, adjusting the knot on the low-riding, hip-hugging towel. Even his belly button was attractive.
Darn it!
His lips twitched with a knowing almost-grin—
Darn him!
—which he quickly replaced with a frown. “You ask why I am here? I am here because we have a problem.”

“We? There is no ‘we.’”

“For my sins, there very definitely is a ‘we.’”

“Forget the ‘for my sins’ crap. What are you doing here? My next appointment was with a Mrs. Kervanjian.”

“Um. Mrs. Kervanjian had a change of plans.” A light blush colored his sharp cheekbones.

“Oh really? Did you flash those cute fangs of yours at her?”

“My fangs are not cute.” The blush deepened.

Fascinating!
She put her hands on her hips and tapped a foot impatiently, then immediately folded her arms over her chest when she noticed his eyes about to bug out with gaping at her breasts.

“What do you want, Sigurd?”

He gave her a look that pretty much said,
Are you serious?
But then he shook his head as if to clear it and asked, “Have you been with Harry Goldman?”

“
Been with?
Are you crazy? When would I have time to ‘be with’ anyone? I left the party last night and was in bed by midnight. I got up at five a.m. to arrive here for my first appointment at six a.m.”

“Does that mean that you have not been with Harry?”

She rolled her eyes. “What is it with your fixation on Harry Goldman? He’s no different from any other man.”

“I beg to differ.” Sigurd was walking around the room, picking up and examining various items. Like the hot stones, which he dropped from one hand to the other before rubbing his palms appreciatively over their smooth surfaces. “As soft as the skin on a maiden’s buttock,” he murmured.

Oh Lord! He’s not picturing my behind, is he? Not that I’m a maiden, whatever the hell that is, probably a virgin.

He examined a battery-operated Shiatsu massager, which he turned on and off before grinning at her.

“It’s not that kind of vibrator,” she insisted.

He put up both hands in surrender. “I have no idea what you mean.”

Yeah, right.

Then he undid the stoppers on several vials of oil and sniffed. “This is my favorite. It reminds me of your essence.”

She could read the label from where she stood on the other side of the table. It was the oil of rose honey, cut with a pinch of ginger to tamp down its sweetness. “The only essence I have is soap and deodorant.”

“Whatever you say,” he agreed, but his eyes said differently.

In fact, she could smell his orangey-evergreen cologne even through the other scents in the room, but she’d mentioned it to him before and wasn’t about to get involved in that discussion again. “What did you do to Mrs. Kervanjian?”

“Do? Nothing. Well, I might have mentioned that they are giving away free sex toys in the hotel lobby, until the supply runs out. She decided to reschedule her appointment.”

She narrowed her eyes at him.

“They
might
be giving away such devices. In fact, your previous customer overheard my comment and went running out of here like a bat out of hell. And believe me, I know bats out of hell.”