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Couldn’t hurt to remind them her reputation was riding on their high kicks tonight. Missy gave her two thumbs up as they all filed onto their designated places on top of a wheeled piece of staging that would bring them out onto the stage, the acrobats and singers hanging back as they waited for their turn in the spotlight later tonight.
Rita stood back to cheer them on, the boat rocking gently beneath her feet while she wished Jayne were there to help calm her nerves when the audience got their first glimpse of the outfits. Jayne never had stage fright and always danced like a pro. From preschool pageants to high school plays, she’d never been flustered onstage, never lost her supreme confidence in her ability to perform.
Rita was another story. She’d always done well in rehearsals and could nail any routine in the privacy of her bedroom, but on opening night she froze like a deer in headlights. A supreme disappointment to her torch-singer mother who’d dreamed of seeing her girls onstage.
Thankfully Rita had found work that allowed her to stay backstage, and even tonight, she only sent a small piece of herself out into the bright lights.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the announcer’s voice boomed over the house speakers as a drumroll hummed in the background. “Welcome to Roman Cruise Lines’ world-famous Venus floor-show extravaganza.”
Rita watched the wheeled conveyance full of dancers start to move. The synthesized, edgy rock music for the performance began. Danielle Divine whispered last-minute instructions to a very fidgety Missy, who Rita knew was in danger of losing her job just two months into her contract. Poor thing.
Dancing gigs were damn hard to come by and fiercely competitive. If the woman lost this job…
Damn it, the red-eyed dancer wasn’t the only one whose job was on the line. Rita forced herself to stop thinking about everyone else in the show and concentrated on her own responsibilities—making sure her deceptively simple leather costumes looked good enough to eat on stage.
The whole idea for the biker babe number had been Rita’s, from the outfits to the music to the core theme behind the choreography. It had been hell to convince the show managers that the unconventional material could work on stage given its tendency to stretch, but once they’d glimpsed the possibilities and made sure Rita would be on hand for free alterations, they’d been all over the concept.
Nervous energy charging through her, she grabbed Jayne’s outfit for the next number and tiptoed to the edge of the backstage curtain to gauge the audience’s reaction. Jayne played a bigger role in the previous night’s production but in this show, she had a solo dance sequence in just one of the acts. The house was packed, but the only faces Rita could make out were the folks in the front row. Thank God Jayne’s loser boyfriend—Horatio the ass-grabbing blackjack dealer—wasn’t in attendance for once. He normally sat front and center and ogled Jayne along with every other dancer, but tonight that seat belonged to…
Come to mama.
Someone much more interesting.
Rita wasn’t in the market for a man. Especially not a high-roller type who traveled alone and booked Carib bean cruises for the access to round-the-clock gambling. Traditionally, those were the kind of guys who reserved the front row tables at the nightly floor-show touted for a nearly nude revue capping off every performance. No, Rita didn’t like that type of guy at all.
But if she had, her head would have been turned by the prime male specimen currently peeling the label off his bottle of beer while a battalion of leather-clad women sashayed past him. He was a big man. Big enough to make his chair look more like doll furniture than people seating.
His legs sprawled long and muscular beneath the cocktail table in front of him. His shoulders had the kind of width only a custom-made suit would accommodate. Which, of course, he wore. Navy-blue and pinstriped, the clothes gave him the appearance of a forties movie star, the kind of guy her mother would have fallen for in a heartbeat. But then, Margie Frazer had an unusual love of the forties and fifties screen icons, a fact advertised to the world by naming her daughters Rita Hayworth Frazer and Jayne Mansfield Frazer.
Licking her lips at the hot prospect seated in the first row, Rita momentarily forgot about the show and how much she had riding on it. Leaning one shoulder into an empty rolling rack tucked behind the backstage curtain, she indulged the urge to stare for just another moment. How many times in life did a woman feel that overwhelming sense of attraction at first sight?
She hadn’t felt this way since A.J. the quarterback had given her heart palpitations in the eleventh grade. And as sweet as that first crush had been, Rita had to admit that with a woman’s more mature and discriminating hormones at work, her attraction now was a hell of a lot stronger. Earthier. Yummier. Dancing biker babes flooded the stage in a swirl of color and feminine curves while Rita’s gaze narrowed to just one man.
Close-trimmed dark hair framed the stranger’s face, his brooding eyes glued to the bottle label he slowly mutilated. Although his sleek suit and narrow green-and-blue tie broadcast success, his forbidding expression and preoccupation reminded her of the desolate faces she’d seen at the ship’s bar at 4:00 a.m. The shell-shocked folks who came onboard for a good time in the casino and somehow lost half their life savings to the roll of a die or hand of cards.
Foolish, clueless people who had no business indulging in the free drinks available at Venus’s twenty-four-hour casino.
She hoped for this gorgeous man’s sake he wasn’t staring down the throat of a longneck for those kinds of reasons. Maybe his girlfriend had just dumped him and all he needed was a cynical, buxom redhead to put his life back into perspective for the night….
Rita debated taking a chance for once and sending him a drink. But as the music died away and the audience erupted into applause, she warned herself to get her head on straight and find Jayne to help with her costume change while a singing duo took the stage between dance numbers. The other dancers’ next outfits weren’t Rita Frazer Originals, but Jayne’s was. Because Jayne played the central character in a very fluffy musical drama involving lots of feathers and coy smiles, her outfit could be different. Better. Hand sewn by Rita for a little extra spotlight.
Tearing her gaze away from the superstud with dark disappointment in his eyes, Rita waited for Jayne at the edge of the stage, costume already in hand. Too bad Jayne was still nowhere in sight.
Damn it. What was her sister thinking?
Praying Danielle Divine—aka Danielle Domineering—wouldn’t notice the absence, Rita waited to see her sister’s Veronica Lake-style red waves bob around the corner.
And waited.
Until a bad feeling crept into her veins, chilling her skin and setting her every cynical, wise big-sister instinct on edge. Sprinting around the back of the staging area to another dressing room, Rita scanned the small expanse of lighted mirrors and makeup tables for a glimpse of Jayne.
To no avail.
Heart pounding, she mentally shuffled the image of Jayne’s hopeful face with the fact that Horatio the loser blackjack dealer wasn’t in his usual seat tonight. Hadn’t Jayne said she was ready to get out of showbiz?
And hadn’t Rita known damn well that couldn’t be good?
Hightailing it to the other side of the stage where half the dancers were already naked and shimmying their way into their next outfit, Rita found Jayne’s dressing table graced by a glittery star, her duffel bag beneath it. The bag was unusually light given all the stuff Jayne normally hauled around. There was no purse, no bulging makeup case. Just some tissues, hairbrush, masking tape and—a note?
The dread that had been knotting in her stomach traveled up her throat in a burning path.
Don’t be mad at me, big sister! You know this routine inside and out and let’s face it—no one deserves the spotlight as much as you tonight. I had an urgent appointment in St. Kitts because Horatio really wanted to—ready?—elope!!!
Love and kisses,
Jayne
Oh no. Oh no. Oh no freaking way.
Rita didn’t need to run to the nearest porthole to know the big ship had already cleared St. Kitts harbor by a mile. Jayne must have slipped off the boat with seconds to spare considering Rita had seen her in the shower just twenty minutes before the boat set sail. Jayne had timed her defection flawlessly—no surprise there considering her perfect stage routines and the fact that she had every male security guard aboard the Venus wrapped around her finger.
Damn! Shoving aside the wealth of worries for her sister and more than a little resentment for herself, Rita’s fingers tightened around the leopard-print notepaper in one hand, Jayne’s dancing costume in the other.
With performers already lining up, Rita had zero time to make a decision. In fact, she didn’t realize she’d actually made one at all until her clothes were sliding off and she found herself jamming one foot after another into the leg holes of the barely-there feathered concoction.
She could dance, right?
She’d sat in on all the same damn tap, jazz and ballet classes as Jayne until she’d emancipated herself from Margie’s stage-mother stranglehold. Plus, for three months running Rita had rehearsed all of Jayne’s dances so she could get a feel for how the costumes needed to be crafted to keep them fluid and feminine.
Shoving her bare feet into strappy rhinestone sandals that went with Jayne’s ensemble, Rita nearly toppled over as Missy rushed by, headdress askew as Sammy the Somersaulting Albanian tried unsuccessfully to right the heavy tiara.
“Can you help her, Rita?” Sammy whispered, ever mindful of Danielle who wouldn’t hesitate to axe any dancer who couldn’t hold her own.
Or any dancer who did something really, really stupid like elope in the middle of the show.
“I’ll take over, Sammy. Thanks.” Rita let the wiry acrobat off the hook as she picked up speed fastening her rhinestone top, determined not to flub this. Why was she not surprised Sammy looked endlessly grateful as he hurried away with the fluid grace that came naturally to gymnasts?
“What are you doing?” Missy jammed fistfuls of hair into the headdress with no success. “Where’s Jayne?”
What could she say? Jayne’s sucking face with the worst mistake of her life while our careers go up in flames? Yanking her own headpiece off a hook over Jayne’s star-spangled dressing table, Rita plunked the tiara on her head.
“She had an emergency, but that’s just between us, okay?” Snitching a bobby pin from the jumble of accessories on the table, Rita thrust it into Missy’s long blond curls and anchored the heavy headpiece to her scalp, the need to lend a hand still strong even when she had no time to help. “Don’t worry about Danielle once you’re onstage. Just dance.”
As if she had time to dispense career advice while undertaking the stupidest scheme of her life. Even Jayne had never been this impulsive.
Okay, taking into account eloping with Horatio, maybe she had.
“Places, ladies!” Danielle’s throaty call for action multiplied the butterflies in Rita’s stomach.
The last thing she needed was for Danielle to see her in Jayne’s costume. With the headdress on, there was a chance she’d never notice. Thank God every Frazer woman had been given the same five feet ten inches to work with.
She had to at least try to get past Danielle for the sake of Jayne’s job, which wouldn’t be here for her when she came back—oh God, if she came back—without a little intervention.
The music changed as the performers lined up for the scene Jayne called the Wicked Angel. It looked like one big T-and-A fest to Rita’s eyes, but Jayne insisted it was a fallen woman with a heart of gold act. Well, fallen woman with a heart of gold and sexual appetite the size of Texas since the dance involved substantial writhing around on the floor. Though the pastel feathers made the writhing look more innocent, according to Jayne.
Hence the Wicked Angel.
Rita had never explored her inner angel, preferring to barge through life being blunt and direct and simply asking for what she wanted. But tonight she’d play simpering and coy for all it was worth in order to save Jayne’s paycheck.
She just hoped she didn’t fall off her heels. Or turn left when everyone else turned right and possibly high kick her neighbor right in the schnoz.
All of which had happened to her before in her long and colorful career as her sister’s crappy sidekick.
“Hurry up, Jayne!” Danielle the Destroyer glared at her with a look that would have sent heavyweight boxers running for cover. Thank God the abysmal backstage lighting prevented her from discerning Rita’s features under Jayne’s headdress. “You’re on in five. Four…”
Rita’s bare legs quivered beneath her as she prayed for coordination and knew it wouldn’t come. The only way she’d ever been able to get through a solid dance routine had been to isolate herself in a room all alone. Maybe she could close her eyes and pretend she was alone.
“Three. Two…”
The house lights swirled and changed from moody blues to brazen reds. The music kicked up volume. Her knees knocked so hard she wasn’t sure she could haul herself out there. Closing her eyes would definitely result in her spiked heel planted in someone’s instep.
She’d simply choose a focus point. Meditate the rest of the humongous amphitheater away.
“And you’re on!” Danielle’s threatening growl mingled with the beat in the music that cued the first step.
Where Rita’s eyes promptly alighted on the only focus point in the room that interested her. The one man whose presence just might be the key to saving her feather-covered ass.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_462241b3-1cc0-574b-a389-fff45d5d9cff)
SPECIAL AGENT HARRISON Masters knew damn well he wouldn’t find the answers to his problems by staring through the glass of his empty beer bottle like an amber-colored lens. Then again, he didn’t think he’d find a fluffy white feather there, yet that didn’t stop a downy quill from floating through his field of vision to land with a delicate sigh along the back of his hand.
Hauling his thoughts from his quickly-going-nowhere investigative work, Harrison scratched his nose and shook off the bit of fluff. He took in the extravagant floor show and searched for the source of the feather. Visions of snowy doves circling the all-you-can-eat buffet formed in his brain for all of two seconds before he locked gazes with a redheaded chorus girl in the front row.
And damned if he didn’t get struck by a bolt of lightning.
Heat throbbed through him even as he realized the electric jolt had been a laser image broadcast across the dancers through the haze of fake red fog pumped through the amphitheater. When Harrison had left Naples, Florida, to embark on his first pleasure trip in years—even if he wasn’t quite as interested in the recreation as he pretended—he’d briefly toyed with the idea of a vacation fling.
He hadn’t seen a woman to pique his interest until now, however. The hot-as-hell redhead stared at him as if her life depended on maintaining eye contact—so much so that Harrison couldn’t resist sneaking a look behind him to make sure he wasn’t missing something. Like a seven-foot Martian at his six o’clock.
The bawdy, stripper-style music in the background played a mischievous accompaniment to the women garbed in angelic white feathers and strategically placed rhinestones. One dancer wore little more than a couple of quills over her breasts and a tiny G-string made entirely of red jewels.
Not that Harrison really cared what anyone else wore. He was merely curious to see how the rest of the women measured up to the auburn-haired bombshell with a pinup’s body and mile-long naked legs.
They didn’t.
Whoever this brazen dancer was, she seemed unique in her tendency to look right at an audience member. Him.
And yeah, he noticed. He was male and breathing, after all—and totally freaking free since his girlfriend of one year had dumped him eight weeks ago, leaving him high and dry but making him realize he’d never been all that fired-up about their relationship anyway. Too bad he’d been so busy figuring out his father’s hotel business he’d temporarily inherited—a work world so different from the one he’d trained for—he hadn’t even seen it coming.
Worse, he didn’t really mourn the loss of her so much as the loss of her insights on the hospitality industry. No wonder she’d dumped his sorry ass and started dating the resort’s golf pro, who also happened to be Harrison’s best friend. Past tense.
These days, Harrison didn’t think he would be ready for another serious relationship for a long time, at least until he’d untangled the mess he’d made of the last one. But now that he’d embarked on the cruise to follow his missing ex-girlfriend and a pile of absent cash from the resort that had disappeared along with the golf pro a few weeks later, Harrison wouldn’t mind some nonserious adventure if it happened to sashay his way.
Something he’d bet the redhead could provide.
Settling into his chair at one of the handful of VIP tables up front in the theater, he shoved aside his empty beer bottle and concentrated on the woman onstage. Less made-up than her counterparts, she looked younger and older at the same time. Investigative instincts flared to life, cataloging clues to this woman’s psyche for the best way to get into her head—and possibly under her feathers. There was less sophistication in the loose way she wore her hair and the lack of stage makeup around her eyes. Yet she was no nineteen-year-old college student, not with that intense stare of hers.
This woman had character. Some secrets, maybe.
She shimmied, she sashayed, she spun, her gaze always returning to him. To seduce him? Damn but he’d like to think so.
Loosening his tie by a fraction of an inch, he allowed himself to imagine taking this angel to bed. High, generous breasts supported a jeweled bodice that resembled a feminine version of chain mail. And suddenly he was thirteen years old again, studying the bra catalogs for a hint of nipple.
He hadn’t made time for that kind of frivolous pleasure in the past year since he’d delved into the family business after his father collided with a mountain in a debilitating skiing accident. His dad had been forced into early retirement and his mother now dedicated all her time to his rehabilitation. Helping his family through a crisis had seemed more important than a career that once meant everything to him—even if he’d missed the intellectual thrill of cloak-and-dagger games, the adrenaline rush of tapping into big-league crime rings.
But no matter how much he itched to return to the FBI next week now that he finally had a temporary management team in place, he hadn’t ever let himself screw up with the high-end Naples resort that provided much-needed income for his father’s ongoing medical bills—far more than Harrison would ever see as a special agent. And he’d been doing a damn good job as the makeshift manager until Sonia had disappeared during a cruise on the Venus last month.
His instincts had twitched, but he’d wrestled them into submission. Until a considerable amount of cash vanished from the Masters Corporation accounts shortly thereafter. Then, he couldn’t write off his concerns as sour grapes or even misplaced longing for some intrigue in a life grown tedious. He’d hired the temporary management team to ease his transition back to his work as an agent, then he’d driven all the way across Florida to jump on a boat and find out what sort of Bermuda Triangle effect was taking place in the Caribbean these days.
He wasn’t onboard just to play spy. The Venus would dock in Antigua for a day, where he could visit Masters Corporation’s newest hotel property. It was all practical with just enough time for some pleasure in the mix.
The redhead’s sudden high kick right over his table gave him a view of her French-cut bikini bottoms. Long ropes of clear rhinestones seemed to tie the panties around her hips while allowing the trailing stones to caress her pale thighs. There was no way this woman could have been onstage in the first number. She had a knack for commanding his attention, something he didn’t give to many people in a life grown too fractured. He would have noticed her.
Lowering her body to the floor, she rocked her hips in provocative fashion. Writhed on the ground as if she couldn’t wait for fulfillment. For sex. For him.
Damn but she was hot.
Renewed interest in his trip had him clapping and on his feet when her number ended. A wolf whistle fell from his lips without thought.
He didn’t know if she had more dances or if she was done for the night, but either way he made up his mind to go backstage and find out. He might have squelched his aptitude for spontaneity over the last year of putting family first, but he’d always had a flair for closing a deal.
And the brazen bombshell hurrying offstage in glittering silver sandals was one opportunity he wouldn’t let slip away.
* * *
HAULING BUTT OFFSTAGE, Rita wanted to slip out of sight and slink away before Danielle the Demoness could get a hold of her. She’d missed two cues by a fraction of a second. Not enough that the audience would notice, but enough to soften the performance and take off the edge of crisp perfection Danielle drilled into their brains at Jayne’s rehearsals.
It was the man in the front row who’d thrown Rita off. When he’d turned to look at her head-on… She closed her eyes to recapture the hot sensation of desire that had showered over her.
Deep. Dark. Delicious.
If she didn’t need to search for Jayne, she might be tempted to track him down and see what happened. Resigned to giving Danielle the slip and helping her sister keep her job instead, Rita hurried out of her costume before the show manager realized what happened. Luckily, Jayne’s stage perfection usually bought her a wide berth from Danielle who—while she liked to nitpick every detail of her productions—possessed a healthy respect for star talent.
Sliding into her shorts and knit halter top she’d been wearing earlier, Rita rushed out of the backstage through a lesser-used side door out onto the Mercury deck while still securing the knot around the back of her neck.
“Can I help you with that?”
Through the veil of her hair with her neck kinked down, Rita spied the object of her stage fantasies framed by the dark night of the open deck. The man in the navy pinstriped suit looked even better close up. He reached for the tie on her halter top.
