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A tapping sound made him open his eyes. She was drumming her index finger on the plastic sheet over her résumé. The fingernail bore a tiny rhinestone in a star pattern. It was blunt-edged. How would those nails feel raking his back?
You’re doing it again.
“You can see, I’ve done bookkeeping for DD Enterprises and here are the classes I’ve taken so far.” She flipped the page. “I’ve also included a class project.” Three pages of a report crackled by. “References from two professors and my employer.” Flip. Flip. “And finally, my transcripts. A four-point-oh, as you can see.”
“Very impressive—”
“Thank you.”
“—for a student,” he finished, closing the binder.
Autumn Beshkin fixed him with her fierce green eyes. “I’m fast, I’m resourceful and I’ll do what needs to be done.”
“I’m sure you would, but I have neither the time nor the knowledge to train you. It’s budget time, we’re in the middle of an economic development plan, and I’m in charge of the founders celebration—it’s our 150th anniversary—a very big deal around here.”
“Which means you need someone now. And I’m here. Now.”
But he had a call in to a woman who’d recently retired from the Cities and Towns Commission who would do fine. “Look, Ms. Beshkin—”
“Autumn.”
“Autumn.” Her hair was the color of her name—the striking rust-red of leaves in September. Stop. “This job can’t be what you want, either. You need a mentor, formal feedback, written evaluations, someone who can spend time with you.”
“You’re turning me down?” She sounded more outraged than hurt. Like he’d better explain himself and it better be good.
Before he could work up something impressive, Evelyn yelped from the outer office. “Heavenly damn, Quincy!”
Mike rushed out, Autumn at his heels, and found his secretary using her knitting to mop at the laptop she used as her CPU.
“That damn cat knocked over my iced tea!”
Autumn grabbed the laptop and tilted it so the tea trickled from its keyboard. The external keyboard Evelyn used looked untouched. Her monitor, too was all right.
“Is the data backed up?” Mike asked. Evelyn had her own mysterious system of office procedures.
“More or less.” Evelyn balled up her knitting.
“Do you have a forced air duster we can dry it with?” Autumn asked. Seeing Evelyn’s blank stare, she said, “How about a blow dryer?”
“In the bathroom!” Evelyn ran in that direction.
“Please hold this.” Autumn thrust the laptop at him, still tilted, then ran back into his office. She came out with her purse, fished out her keys and detached a small device, which she held up. “This key drive has a gig of memory.” She stuck it into a port at the back of the laptop. “Hopefully I can copy the recent files before the motherboard freezes.”
Mike set the laptop on a dry spot on Evelyn’s desk and Autumn quickly clicked into the hard drive, organizing the files by date. He was impressed by her calm efficiency.
“This way she’ll have access until you can service the laptop,” she said, still working. “If it’s fried, a tech can likely retrieve the files, but who knows when you can get that handled. You have to go to Tucson for service, I imagine.”
“True. Good idea. And quick thinking.”
“This happened to me at the bar once,” she said. “Laptops are convenient, but that also makes them vulnerable.”
“I tried to talk Evelyn into a tower, but she likes to stay fast on her feet, she says.”
“And I bet keeping Evelyn happy makes everything go smoother around here.”
“Exactly.” Already, she’d caught the rhythm of the place. They locked gazes and he felt a zip of recognition and pleasure not entirely related to how attractive she was.
He watched Autumn copy the most recent files onto her drive, almost not thinking about her underwear.
She touched her finger to a drop of liquid on the computer, then tasted it. “No sugar. That’s good. Stickiness is fatal.”
“Yeah,” he said, thinking about her tongue. “Fatal.”
Evelyn arrived with the dryer and handed it to him. “I need to rinse off my knitting.” She bustled away. Evelyn was great with people, but she never let her work interfere with her day. She came through when the chips were down, though. Worked at home on the laptop and read his mind when it counted.
Autumn bent to plug the dryer cord into the power bar and her skirt pulled brutally tight. He looked away, but not before he saw them: black stockings. With seams. And through the slit in her skirt he recognized garters.
Lord God in heaven. Seamed black stockings, garters and a leather cut-out bra. Under that suit, Autumn Beshkin was dressed to kill. Or at least seriously maim. Minimum, make it tough for a man to walk.
She jerked up, surprising him while he was still gawking at her like a kid with his first Playboy.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Uh, yeah.” He cleared his throat.
“You sure?” A knowing smile teased her lips. Had she noticed the drool?
“I’m, uh, sure.”
“If you say so.” She waved the dryer at the damp computer, watching him. “You’ll want to have the unit serviced, of course. Dried and cleaned thoroughly.” She spoke slowly, thoughtfully, playing with something in her mind, he could tell.
He thought about her thoroughly servicing something on him…with her tongue. Get a grip.
“Absolutely,” he said. “Thanks for, uh, jumping in.”
“Whatever you need me to do, Mayor,” she said, low and slow, “I will do.”
Now Mike Fields was not a guy who made snap decisions or reversed course on a dime. But Autumn Beshkin, standing there in her leather underwear, with her magic key drive and suggestive smile changed all that. “Okay,” he said with a sigh, “when can you start?”
2
IT WAS EARLY EVENING when Autumn entered the Copper Corners High auditorium to check on Jasmine, who was at the first rehearsal of the pageant. The job Jasmine had designing costumes would pay for her daughter Sabrina’s nearby summer camp since the burlesque revue Autumn and Jasmine were in together was on hiatus for the summer.
Jasmine was fired up about the two friends spending quality time together, but her real purpose for being here was to spend time with her new guy—Mark Fields, brother to Heidi and Mayor Mike.
From close to the stage, Jasmine spotted Autumn and hurried down the aisle carrying a bolt of fabric. “So? Did you get the job?” Jasmine asked, when she was close.
When Autumn nodded, Jasmine whooped, threw down the fabric and hugged Autumn so fast and hard that Autumn accidentally bit her own tongue. “That’s so fabulous!” Jasmine said, then leaned back. “Hey, aren’t you happy about it?”
“Yeth. Bery ha-y,” Autumn said over her aching tongue. Except she was queasy about how she’d gotten the job. She’d caught Mayor Mike in a lust daze and worked it.
Use what you got had always been her philosophy, but using the sex angle had felt like selling out her new self—the woman who got ahead with her brains, not her body.
The idea made her head hurt. Or maybe it was the French braid that she’d pulled so tight her scalp ached. She’d changed into more casual clothes, but had forgotten to let down her hair.
Or maybe it was her reaction to Mayor Mike’s lust. She’d felt an answering response that had turned her insides to liquid.
Ridiculous. The man was her boss. Completely off-limits, even if she had time for sex. Which she hadn’t since she started school.
“So what have you been up to?” Jasmine asked.
Besides seducing the mayor into hiring me? “Not much. I unpacked, did some housework, fed the pets.” They’d scored free rent in exchange for doing light housekeeping, watering the plants and taking care of the owners’ two cats, freshwater fish tank and a terrarium of turtles and lizards.
“I gave the chuckwalla some meal worms.”
“Gross.” Jasmine scrunched up her nose.
“Everybody has to eat. Though I don’t get the Huffmans. Why spend so much on creatures that couldn’t care less?” The Huffmans had bought piles of toys and elaborate hideout towers for their two cats. The fish tank was jammed with plastic plants, a castle and tunnels, and the lizards and turtles had a tiny creek, decorative boulders and miniature hollow logs in their terrarium. The care instructions filled two typed pages.
“I’m sure the animals love them back,” Jasmine said.
“With brains the size of kiwi seeds? How much love can there be?”
Jasmine shrugged. “The cats are affectionate.”
“When there’s food involved, sure.” Though Autumn respected a cat’s self-sufficiency. If you took care of your own needs, you never got disappointed. “How about you? You’re here for the read-through, right? And did you get Sabrina to camp okay?”
“Yes. She made a friend right away. The girl brought the same Bratz doll to camp.”
“That’s a relief.” Autumn worried about Sabrina, who was eleven, pretty and bright, but fought a weight problem, social awkwardness and puberty, which had her giddy with joy one minute, steamrolled by depression the next.
Jasmine tended to gloss over Sabrina’s troubles, but Autumn connected with Sabrina—they shared a sense of isolation—and she listened in, advised where she could and felt good that Sabrina saved up her tales of triumph and agony for “Auntie Autumn.” Autumn loved that. It made her feel like family. Jasmine said Autumn was Sabrina’s aunt of the heart, as opposed to her real aunts who were too flaky and selfish to be much support to their niece. Or their sister, for that matter.
“Camp will be good for her,” Autumn said. “Fresh air, physical activity, new friends.” Summer camp had been one of Jasmine’s more sensible ideas. She had a tendency to overspend on Sabrina, though the budget Autumn had helped her with had encouraged her to be more thrifty. Jasmine thanked Autumn over and over for the college savings account that was slowly building.
Jasmine leaned on Autumn for financial advice, support at work and help with Sabrina, but she held her hands to her ears whenever it came to romantic issues.
This latest was the worst. Mark Fields got a walking-into-walls crush on Jasmine after seeing her perform a few months ago. Two short visits and some phone calls later and Jasmine had declared him Mr. Forever.
This worried the hell out of Autumn. Jasmine fell in love too fast and the breakups devastated her. She’d spend days in bed sobbing, blackout curtains in place, leaving poor Sabrina to fend for herself. Autumn always felt so helpless when her friend suffered. And she wanted to kick the shit out of the scumbags who caused it. Each time, Jasmine made Autumn swear: Never let me do that again. I mean it this time.
Easier said than done. Jasmine was too much of a romantic. Why couldn’t she just accept lust for what it was and not dress it up in a ball gown of love and parade it around?
During the month in Copper Corners, Autumn hoped to help Jasmine ease back into reality—the way you gently guided a sleepwalker back to bed—before things went bad. She worried about Sabrina, who did not need another father figure to disappear as soon as the affair cooled. Which it likely would.
“You have time for dinner?” Autumn asked her.
“Dinner? Uh, well I—” Jasmine blushed “—I’m kind of waiting for Mark. He plays the town founder, Josiah Bremmer. It’s the lead. So he’s got to be here for the reading.”
“Oh. Sure.”
“You don’t mind,” Jasmine said. “Really?”
“I’ll grab something at the diner. I want to make it an early night anyway. Maybe I’ll study.” Now that she’d forced Mike to give her the job, the jitters had started up. Working for Copper Corners would not be as simple as tracking the receipts at the strip club for Duke. She would be accountable for the entire town’s finances. There were budgets to wrangle and Lydia’s complex software to figure out.
She didn’t dare screw up. She needed the mayor’s recommendation for her class and her résumé. Plus, she’d practically strong-armed him into hiring her. Her pride was at stake.
“How’s this going?” she asked Jasmine, nodding toward the lit stage, where people stood talking, scripts in hand. Two young guys banged away on a rickety-looking covered wagon, while two girls painted saguaro cactus onto a backdrop of a pink-and-orange desert sunset.
“They’re waiting for Mark to start.” Jasmine sighed like an obsessed fan.
“It looks fun.” Autumn loved the feel of the theater—the bright-white lights, the black-painted stage, the smells of wood and linen and paint and pancake makeup. She’d discovered the glory of it when she got a part in a high school musical, but that was an old story that had ended all wrong.
She felt similarly when she performed in the three-woman burlesque revue with Jasmine, who did their costumes, and Nevada Neru, their choreographer. The revue had opened last year to rave reviews and had drawn steady crowds all season. She loved the excitement, the magic, the rapt faces of the audience. When she performed she felt so alive.
She enjoyed the revue better than straight stripping, she’d concluded, because they were a team and their dances were more complex and told a story.
“There’s the director, Sheila,” Jasmine said, pointing to a blond woman who was gesturing dramatically as she talked to the actors on stage. “She wants to meet you.”
“You didn’t tell her, did you?”
“That you’re a stripper? No. I promised I wouldn’t.”
“Good. And no telling Mark, either.” Autumn had been off the night Mark saw the revue, so, if Jasmine kept her promise, Autumn could remain incognito while she was here.
“You’re safe,” Jasmine said in a stage whisper. “No one knows that inside the chest of an ordinary accountant beats the heart of a man-killing pole dancer.”
“And let’s keep it that way,” Autumn said.
“I don’t know why it’s such a big deal. Sheila thinks it’s great that I’m a stripper. She auditioned to be a Vegas showgirl, you know.”
“You give people too much credit, Jasmine. Strippers scare the hell out of women and turn men into slathering beasts.”
“What the hell is slather? Is it sweat or drool?”
“You’re ignoring my point.”
“Whatever. How does the mayor seem as a boss?” Jasmine asked, doing it again.
“It’s too soon to tell.” Heidi had described Mike as everybody’s big brother, and in just the few minutes it took Autumn to fill out payroll papers, she’d seen that. Mike had taken several calls that all ended in him offering some kind of help, then headed out to discuss a property dispute between two ranchers.
“I wonder what’s keeping Mark?” Jasmine looked up the burgundy-carpeted aisle toward the auditorium door, practically quivering in anticipation.
As if on cue, the door opened and two men entered—Mike and a guy who looked like a smaller version of him carrying an armload of books.
“There he is,” Jasmine breathed.
Autumn enjoyed what she could see of the night sky through the doorway before it shut. One nice thing about a tiny town—its few lights didn’t interfere with the darkness so the sky could show off all its stars, millions of tiny pin-pricks in the velvet vastness. The big sky almost made up for the small minds.
