Hot and Bothered. Serena Bell

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      “Well, then, I’m sorry. But I can’t work with Pete Sovereign.”

      Even before the words were all the way out of his mouth, in the sober, hungover, head-splittingly bright light of day, he remembered that he had very few choices. And he didn’t like the pitying way Haven was looking at him, head tilted to one side. As if he was too pathetic to be believed.

      “What happened between you and that guy?”

      There was no way he was going to tell her. He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall.

      She sighed. “Fine. Don’t tell me. I’ll just take your word that it was a big enough deal that you can let your dad rot because you’re too proud to issue some meaningless apology.”

      He closed his eyes.

      He could hear her breathing. Fast. Maybe the walk from the 40th Street station, maybe anger. With his eyes closed, he could imagine that was what her breathing would sound like if he got her worked up. If he licked around the rim of her ear, along the line of her neck, and down the curve of a breast.

      Now he was breathing fast.

      “You’re going to have to find a way to work with Pete Sovereign.”

      His eyes flew open. Apparently, she was steel under all that satin. He could see it in her shoulders, in the hardness of her eyes. “It’s none of your business.”

      “Too bad. I want this gig, and you’re the gig. I begged Jimmy to give you one more chance. I begged on your behalf. You owe me this.” Her eyes were challenging, her hands on her hips now.

      “No. No way. I didn’t ask you for anything and I don’t owe you anything. I don’t even know you.” Even if I have undressed you in my mind several times since the first time I laid eyes on you.

      “This isn’t negotiable.”

      “There’s no negotiation, Haven.”

      “There’s me, standing here and telling you, you have to do this. Also, there’s your dad. You said he needs a lot of physical therapy.”

      “Tons,” Mark admitted. “Every day.”

      “And the nurse.” She said it matter-of-factly, with the same sympathy that always undid him.

      He couldn’t speak. He just nodded.

      “Mark. It doesn’t have to be the world’s most heartfelt apology. It just has to be an apology. This time I’ll be there when you deliver it.”

      She’d moved from steel to supplication, and he could already tell it would destroy his resolve—that, and the implacable reality of his father’s debt. Mark was crumbling inside, and there were no inner reserves with which to shore himself up. Haven’s compassion had started his undoing, somehow, on Thursday. It was always the urge to let down your guard that killed you in the end.

      “I don’t want you there when I deliver it.” As good as surrender.

      “Well, tough luck,” she said. “After last night’s fiasco, I promised Jimmy I’d stick close to you for anything that might attract public attention until the tour.”

      Stick. Close. To. You. His pulse kicked up. “You agreed to follow me around for six months?”

      “If that’s what it takes.”

      “You really want this gig. You begged Jimmy Jeffers. You came all the way out here and—” He wasn’t sure what to call what she’d done to him. Bossed. Pleaded. Unleashed something he wished she’d left pent up.

      She didn’t quite meet his eyes. “Yes.” She scuffed the toe of her shoe lightly along the floor, and his eye followed the line of her leg. Today’s skirt was more standard issue, black and midthigh length. Nice, lean, strong thighs he’d like wrapped around his waist.

      “I like a good challenge, and you want to do this because you love your dad. And maybe because you’ve done nothing for the last ten years but play wedding gigs and make cameo appearances for screaming groupies. I can’t imagine you find that very satisfying.”

      You forgot something, he wanted to say, with the same fervor that urged him to put his hands in her hair. I want to do it because you’re going to follow me around for the next six months. And even though I shouldn’t want that, even though it’s suicidally stupid for me to want that, even though you will never mean those looks you give me, I do. I want that.

      “No,” he said instead, because she was right. “It’s not very satisfying.”

      “So let me help you apologize to Pete Sovereign, okay?”

      He understood defeat well. It was his friend. “Okay.”

      “And let me help you clean up your act, okay?”

      “Okay.”

      She eyed him suspiciously. Smart woman. His motives were about as impure as it was possible for them to be. They were dirty and male and all about the dark secrets her body was keeping from him, the ones he wanted to unfurl, one sweet mystery at a time.

      “Why are you suddenly so agreeable?”

      You.

      “Free haircut,” he said, and she laughed, a real, open, musical laugh, and his heart pounded almost out of his chest.

      * * *

      HUNKS OF MARK WEBSTER’S hair were hitting the floor, and Haven wasn’t feeling as satisfied by that as she’d expected to.

      They were in Caruso’s, a high-end barbershop where Haven liked to take straight male clients. The chairs were covered in black leather, the rest of the furniture espresso and ebony. The sage-green walls displayed vintage photos of female movie stars, classy and sexy at the same time. These were the women Haven had modeled herself after when she’d realized that, as much as she admired them, she didn’t want to be like her mother or her sisters.

      Actually, she hated the way Mark’s hair looked on the wide-plank wood floor, the softness of the pieces curled around nothing. The shorn look he had now revealed a pretty-boy quality he’d been hiding from the world for a long time. She wanted it to go back into hiding, because clean-cut Mark was doing something to her insides she didn’t like at all.

      The barber, Derek, had shaved Mark first. She’d watched the straight razor scrape over his skin. The blade moved like a caress, highlighting the strength of his jaw, his high cheekbones. Crazy-deep dimples flashed now when he smiled at her in the mirror, just often enough to keep her attention. She was standing there waiting for him to smile at her again. That couldn’t be good, right?

      “My hair hasn’t been this short in, like, a decade. I didn’t cut it for almost two years after the breakup.”

      Now the look he shot her in the mirror was more the usual Mark. Hard jaw, angry eyes. A little easier to take. She caught her breath, which made her realize she’d lost it, somewhere along the line.

      “What made you cut it after two years?”

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