Midnight Oil Read online

  She looked around the room, satisfied that it was soothing and calming. The walls were a delicate pale blue, with a mural of trees, grass and rolling hills on one side and a beach on the other. Marly, the salon’s hairstylist, had painted them, plus a mural of an open window on one end, since the real thing was absent. The window “looked into” a cozy living room, so that the client felt as if he or she was being treated in an outside garden bower. They’d added a real window box at the painted sill and planted silk flowers in it. The effect was charming and magical—as well as soothing.

  For some odd reason, butterflies had invaded Peggy’s stomach. She emerged from the treatment room and rounded the corner, walking down the apple-green hallway and then into the hall near the front of the spa, wiping her palms quickly on her lab coat as she heard the door of After Hours open and close. A deep voice announced that Troy Barrington was here for his seven o’clock appointment.

  Troy. The Man’s name, at last. It fit him: one no-nonsense syllable, and masculine in the extreme. Peg still couldn’t believe she’d forgotten to ask it yesterday.

  She braced herself to go out and get him, tying her hair back into a ponytail since it was best not to shed on the clientele. She buttoned her lab coat and then pulled a tube of Sugar Lips Ride Him Raspberry from her pocket. She dabbed some on her lips while simultaneously scolding herself for primping. She’d sworn off men for a year, remember? Plus, the guy was an über-jock, for God’s sake, and she’d sworn off jocks for life.

  Peg walked into the reception area. She should have brought a tissue to wipe the drool from Shirlie’s chin. The girl’s cheeks were flushed, and she kept rearranging a vase of flowers, managing to snap half the blooms and leaves off them.

  Peggy remembered a time when hot men had made her nervous. But that was so long ago, before she’d learned that they were all schmucks. The butterflies she’d felt in her stomach? Puh-lease. It was just hunger: she wanted her dinner.

  “Nice to see you again, Troy.” Peg held out her hand to him. See? It wasn’t shaking the tiniest bit.

  Troy had been inspecting the display of erotic lipsticks with a raised brow, paying special attention to Whip Me Cream.

  He turned to greet her and she felt dwarfed by his sheer size: not all height, but breadth, too. Somehow, with the reception counter between them, he hadn’t seemed quite this big yesterday.

  He wrapped huge, warm fingers around hers and clasped gently. “Hi.” He gestured with his head toward the lipsticks. “Interesting products you got there.” He wore a knowing grin.

  She felt a jolt at the contact, and a flush started at her neck, as if she were a teenager. “They’re great. The next Smashbox or Hard Candy, but more fun.”

  His amusement faded to puzzlement.

  “Never mind. Girl stuff.” She smiled. “My name is Peggy, and I’ll be doing your sea salt scrub this evening. Can I get you something to drink? Wine? Beer? Sparkling water?”

  “Bottled water would be great,” he said, releasing her hand.

  She nodded in approval. He cared about his body. Peg was torn about the alcohol policy in the spa. On the one hand, it brought them clients and helped them keep the fun, partylike atmosphere at night. On the other, alcohol didn’t really have much to do with total mind-body-spirit fitness. It muddled the mind, slowed the body and wasn’t great for the spirit, either, after the initial high.

  However, alcohol had been great for business. Simply amazing how a drink or two loosened up wallets and led to further treatments. A regular pedicure became a spa pedicure; a simple facial led to the purchase of two hundred dollars’ worth of products, and so on.

  “Just follow me.” She led Troy to the treatment room and showed him the table, though he seemed to be looking at everything in the room but that. He was intense about it, too.

  It was almost as if he were some kind of corporate spy, checking out their premises so that he could set up a competing business. She didn’t know what to think.

  “Have you ever had a sea salt scrub before?” she asked him.

  He shook his head. “No, can’t say as I have. Why is there a drain in the floor here?”

  “This used to be the only wet room we had,” Peggy explained. “So we had what’s called a Vichy shower mounted over the treatment table. But now we have four wet rooms surrounding central locker rooms over there—” she pointed to a set of double doors “—so the showers are centralized. When we’re done here, you’ll just walk into the men’s area, find an unoccupied shower and rinse off.”

  He nodded.

  “Through the doors and to the right, there’s a set of teak shelves where you’ll find folded spa robes and clean towels. Here’s a locker key—” Peggy handed it to him “—so you can store your things securely.

  “Go ahead and take a quick shower just to get your skin moist, and then come on back in here. You can hang your robe on the back of the door. Then just lie down on your stomach and cover yourself with the folded sheet at the foot of the table. Do you have any questions?”

  “So when did you make all these improvements to the place?” Troy asked casually.

  “Recently. Just last year, when Alejandro relocated what was his mother’s salon and expanded into a day spa, too. I came onboard as the manager and massage therapist only about three months ago.”

  “Alejandro is your…?”

  “Business partner and a childhood friend.”

  “Oh, so you grew up in Miami?”

  “No, I grew up mostly back East. But we lived here for a few years. Alejandro’s been here all his life, though, and we’ve always kept in touch.” Peg moved toward the door. “I’m going to get your water now, okay? Go ahead and make yourself comfortable and I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.”

  She exited and tried not to think about Troy Barrington unbuttoning his shirt, unbuckling his belt, stepping out of his jeans. Tried not to think about the expanse of muscle that would greet her when she walked back through the door. She was a professional, after all.

  Peggy walked to the kitchenette and got one of the spa’s tall, apple-green plastic cups from a cabinet, added a few ice cubes to it and began to fill it with bottled water from the fridge. She caught sight of herself in the steel microwave door and as usual hated her freckled, pug nose. Not the kind of schnoz that got a man fantasizing.

  “Hey!” she said aloud. “I don’t want men fantasizing. Mind, body, spirit. No guys.”

  “What’s that, hon?” Marly Fine, the spa’s hairstylist and muralist, walked up behind her and dumped out the remnants of her green tea. Her glossy black hair hung in a loose French braid down her back and she’d eaten off all her lip gloss, along with part of her lip liner, too. Despite this, Marly was true to her last name: fine. Tall and willowy and ethereal, with deep blue-green eyes and unfairly olive skin.

  “Mind, body, spirit. Impulse control. Balance in all things,” said Peggy, feeling like the Pillsbury Doughboy in a red wig beside her. She needed to get her butt running again, instead of just coaching kids to do it from the sidelines. But no matter how much she ran or starved, her legs would always be short and thick compared to Marly’s.

  “Right, mind, body, spirit.” The hairstylist batted Peg’s ponytail playfully. “I hear you have a hottie under your sheet right now.”

  “Is Shirlie still panting out there?”

  “Yes.” Marly’s expression was amused. “And she swears she’s seen the guy before, in the news or on TV or something. What does he do?”

  Peg shrugged. “Beats me. All I’ve done is ask him what he wants to drink and point him toward the men’s locker room.”

  “Well, once you’ve got him kneaded to jelly under your magic hands, try to figure out the mystery. She’s going to drive me crazy.” Marly got another tea bag out of a canister and stuck her mug, full of water, into the microwave.

  Peggy liked green tea, too, but preferred it cold, straight from the refrigerator. “Okay. So what’s your evening look like?”
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br />   “I’m doing highlights on Candy Moss right now. She’s had two glasses of wine and is giggling for no apparent reason under the dryer. Then a couple of updos for some gala in Coconut Grove. And last a simple cut and blow-dry. I should be able to leave early tonight.”

  “Lucky you.”

  “That reminds me, though—would you be able to wax a client’s eyebrows after you’re done with the hottie?”

  “Sylvia can’t do it?” Sylvia was their aesthetician.

  “She can, but this woman doesn’t like her—she over-plucked her last time.”

  “Oh, okay. Sure.” Peg headed for the exit. “Good luck with Candy after glass of wine number three, okay?” They really weren’t supposed to give the customers more than two drinks, but sometimes it was hard to cut them off.

  Marly laughed. “Thanks.”

  Peggy headed down the hallway and knocked on the treatment room door.

  “Come in,” Troy said. He was lying facedown on the table, with the sheet draped over his lower half.

  Peggy swallowed hard at the sight of his broad, smooth, tanned back and powerful biceps and triceps. She’d had a feeling his body was gorgeous underneath the simple cotton knit shirt.

  “Here’s your water,” she said.

  Troy propped himself up on his elbows and accepted it with thanks, flashing a chest that reminded her of Brad Pitt’s in, appropriately enough, Troy. It segued into a perfectly flat abdomen sporting a six-pack of trained, hard muscle, and her knees went disgustingly weak at the sight.

  Jock. Eddie. Jocks suck. Be true to own mind, body, spirit. Impulse control.

  Still she stared at Troy’s chest while he drank his water, until he quirked an eyebrow. “Have you spotted something important to science?”

  “What?” She flushed. “Uh, no. Let’s get started, okay?”

  He flashed her a quizzical grin and she realized, mortified, that she’d sounded as if she was in a hurry to touch him. Worse, he didn’t seem surprised. Egotistical jerk.

  He set his cup down on a side table within reach and relaxed again on the table.

  “Music okay?” she asked in crisp tones as she prepared the salt scrub. She added just a touch more shower gel to it so it would glide onto his skin smoothly. She mixed it with a wooden tongue depressor, the same thing a doctor would use with patients.

  “It’s very…uh, peaceful,” he said. “So how long have you been doing this, Peggy?”

  Let the small talk begin. “For about five years.”

  “What did you do before?”

  “I got out of college, waitressed and bartended for a couple of years, then tried to work for my brother, Hal, as an account manager—which was boring beyond belief.”

  “You don’t like a nine-to-five office environment?”

  “God, no.”

  Peggy filled her hands with the salt scrub and warmed it a bit before spreading it over Troy’s shoulders and upper back. “I’m more of an outdoors person, believe it or not.” She laughed a little self-consciously, smoothing her hands in circles over his skin.

  He groaned softly, and she was pleased that it felt good to him.

  “But I’m not really artistic enough to become a landscape architect,” she continued, “and I don’t have any desire to dig ditches…so here I am. I do this and also coach a powder-puff football team on the side.”

  Troy lifted his head. “You’re kidding—my twelve-year-old twin nieces are on a powder-puff team.”

  Her hands stopped. “Twins? Their names aren’t Danni and Laura, are they?”

  “Yes! Blond? Smart mouths?”

  “That’s them! I coach them Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday at the Woodward School. They’re really good, too.”

  “Yeah, don’t I know it. I’m the one who taught them to throw a ball. I used to play strong safety for the Jacksonville Jaguars.”

  Ugh. Football player, worst species of the genus Jock. She should have known. “Of course—that’s where I’ve heard your name,” Peg said politely. “Shirlie, our receptionist, was convinced that you were some celebrity…she’ll be so psyched that she was right.”

  “Celebrity? Nah.” But he looked pleased. “You tell her I’m just a broken-down old ball player.”

  He certainly didn’t look broken-down to Peggy. He didn’t feel broken-down, either, as she polished his body with the salt scrub and a loofah mitt. She was so close to him as she worked that she could smell the faint aftershave on his jaw and the essence of Dial soap on his skin.

  The gel she’d mixed with the salt had a sweet grapefruit scent. Imported from France, they’d just gotten it in last month and it was very popular. She smoothed it into his skin, exfoliating and massaging, and thought about the odd intimacy of her job. Most of the time, if anyone was uncomfortable, it was the client, unused to the touch of a stranger.

  But right now she herself was discomfited, and fighting the urge to…she didn’t know exactly. Rub her face against the smooth skin of his back, or even hike up her lab coat and skirt and sit astride him, feel him between her thighs.

  To distract herself from the renegade thoughts, she forced herself to focus on his nieces, white-blond Danni and dishwater-blond Laura.

  “Laura’s an amazing place kicker and Danni throws one of the tightest spirals I’ve ever seen,” she said, trying not to be fascinated with the corded muscle in Troy’s forearms. The man might have retired from the playing field, but he still worked out.

  “Yeah.” He chuckled. “Danni’s got quite an arm. And she’s fierce, too! Laura’s not as aggressive, but she’s all about precision. I started working with them on my visits when they were about six, I think. So how did you get into football? I know a lot of women who watch it, but not many who play it or coach it.”

  Peggy didn’t know exactly what to say. She had a love-hate relationship with football. How did she explain, without sounding pathetic, that she’d started learning it to get her father’s attention after he left? That she was so good that all the Little League teams had been thrilled to have her—until high school, when suddenly she was suspect.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said, working her way down to his lower back muscles and getting perilously close to the sheet covering his glutes. “I was a real tomboy, I guess, and used to play with the neighborhood kids. I worked at it. I was good. I watched it all the time on TV—thought it was a lot more interesting than making Barbie kiss Ken. And my dad was really into football.”

  She didn’t mention that she’d loved to tackle people, that it had helped with all the pent-up anger and frustration she’d felt over her parents’ divorce. At first she’d blamed her mom for not being nice to Dad, for making him want to leave. Then she’d found out why Mom wasn’t nice: Dad had a girlfriend on the side.

  “Yeah? So what’s your favorite team?” Troy asked, his voice trailing into something like a deep purr as she firmly massaged the muscles on either side of his spine.

  “Dolphins. Dan Marino was my hero.”

  “Yeah? Mine, too.” Troy turned his head toward her and smiled. “Watching the guy run with those bad knees was like seeing paint dry, but man, his passing game was incredible.”

  Peggy nodded. “Quick release, amazing accuracy, tight spirals. Good thing he had Mark Clayton and Mark Duper to pass to.”

  “I can see my nieces are in good hands. Speaking of which—” Peggy moved from his back to his thighs, and he edged them apart a bit “—so am I. They teach you how to do this in some special school?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I’ll bet you got all As.”

  “Let’s just say I did better at this than at trig and calculus.”

  His legs were covered in a light sprinkling of coarse hair, and his thighs were packed with muscle, as were the calves. She applied more scrub and worked it in over every inch that wasn’t private, right down to his feet and each toe.

  “Okay,” she said finally. “You can turn over now.”

  He rolled onto his back, holdi
ng the sheet in place over him.

  She did her very best not to look at that area, even though Shirlie’s questions came tumbling back into her mind. Do you have a camera phone? Can’t you just accidentally step on the sheet? You can text message me from the back….

  Peggy bit her lip to keep from laughing.

  “What’s the dimple for?” Troy asked, just as her humor vanished on seeing his chest and shoulders again.

  She turned away for another handful of the salt scrub. God, the man was gorgeous. And this—she applied the scrub to his skin, trying not to meet his eyes—this was even more intimate.

  “Dimple?” He had flat, coppery nipples, and she avoided them, not wanting the salt to irritate the more sensitive areas of his skin.

  “You get a dimple, only on the left, when you’re trying not to smile. It’s cute.”

  “Um, thanks.” She worked salt scrub into his left bicep and tricep groups, using both hands to span the muscles. She swallowed as she met his eyes, which were gray green like stormy seawater and set off by his tanned skin.

  His lips held a devilish curve as she bent over him and worked her way over his chest, across his rib cage, down his abdomen. He had an old scar there, she noticed, and as her fingers drew near it he murmured, “Appendicitis at fifteen.”

  “Painful,” she said.

  “Mmm.”

  She’d reached the limits of the sheet and couldn’t help looking right smack into the center of it. Not that she was sharing with Shirlie, but she didn’t need to accidentally step on the sheet to tell that there was nothing wrong with his personal equipment. Troy Barrington, she decided, had never been on steroids.

  Chapter 4

  TROY RELAXED on the massage table, relieved that Peggy hadn’t connected him with the “stalker” in the parking lot.

  She’d been quite the little scrapper then, and he loved her hands on him now. They were small, white and soft, just like her, but they possessed an unexpected strength—and she radiated competence from every pore.

  Competent, confident women turned him on like nothing else. Women who didn’t need him and didn’t look up to him; women who weren’t groupies or sluts. Cool women who were a challenge without being bitchy—those were the ones Troy found irresistible.