First Star I See Tonight

  ***

  The theme from Buffy awakened her the next morning. Momentarily disoriented by her new surroundings, she fumbled for her phone, knocked it to the floor, and then hung upside down over the edge of the bed to get it. “’Lo.”

  “Open the door, Esmerelda. We have to talk.”

  “Now?”

  “Now.”

  She groaned and flopped back onto the luxurious mattress. The bed was heaven, and she didn’t ever want to leave it, especially now, when she wasn’t nearly sharp enough to go one-on-one with her employer. She gazed at the time through bleary eyes—nine thirty. But she hadn’t gotten to sleep until after three. Thank God the club wasn’t open every night. Four nights a week was more than enough.

  She’d slept in a Chicago Bears T-shirt and underpants. She fumbled with her jeans and awkwardly zipped them as she crossed the living room on bare feet. She didn’t look at him as she opened the door. “I don’t even talk to myself until I’ve brushed my teeth.” Turning away, she headed for the apartment’s tiny bathroom, where she peed, brushed, and pulled herself together. When she came out, he was sitting on her couch, one ankle crossed over his knee, a Starbucks cup curled in his giant hand. She looked around hopefully for a second cup but didn’t see one.

  “You’ve spent one night on the job,” he said, “and I’ve already had my first complaint about you.”

  She didn’t have to think long to come up with the most likely source, but she played dumb. “No way.”

  “You pissed off Emily Trenton.”

  “Emily Trenton?”

  “The actress on Third Degree.”

  “That’s the worst show,” she retorted. “I don’t know about you, but I’m getting sick of seeing women’s bodies with slit throats and bullet holes every time I turn on the TV. Whatever happened to letting audiences use their imagination? And don’t get me started on the autopsy shots. I swear if I see another—”

  “Your job is to watch the staff, not antagonize the customers.”

  She started to protest, then stopped herself. “You’re right. It won’t happen again.”

  He seemed surprised that she wasn’t arguing with him, but she’d been out of line with the actress, and she saw no sense in defending herself.

  He took a sip of coffee and studied her. “What did you say to her, anyway?”

  “I told her she should dump the guy who was making her so miserable.”

  “One of the dirtiest players in the league,” Graham said in disgust. “Late hits, facemasks, head butting. You name it, and the son of a bitch has done it. One of my MRIs has his name written all over it.”

  “Yet you let him in the club.”

  He shrugged. “If I excluded everybody who’s pissed me off, I could be out of business.”

  “I don’t get why you’re doing this in the first place. It’s a semiseedy business—not that Spiral is sleazy, but the hours are crap, and you already have enough money to buy a small country. Or an island. That’s what I’d do. Buy an island.”

  “They’re a dime a dozen.”

  Lack of caffeine made her stupid. “I don’t like you.” She quickly amended her statement. “Let me clarify. Personally, I don’t like your sense of entitlement, but as your employee, I am completely loyal to you. I’d even throw myself between you and a bullet.”

  “Good to know.”

  Considering the fact that he’d given her a job and offered her an apartment, she was being rude, even for her. He also didn’t seem inclined to censure her for last night’s incident with the actress. “Sorry. I have an attitude problem when I haven’t had my morning coffee.”

  “Only then?”

  “Other times, too. I’m kind of a guy that way.”

  “Really?” His gaze dropped to her breasts, and that brought her fully awake. She’d forgotten she wasn’t wearing a bra under her Bears T-shirt, and she automatically slouched. He smiled. Why not? He’d seen some of the most expensive breasts in the world, and hers were nothing more than ordinary. But still, he’d made her uncharacteristically self-conscious.

  “The coffeemaker’s on the counter,” he said.

  She started for the kitchen, then remembered she hadn’t bought coffee. “Never mind. I haven’t been to the grocery.”

  “There’re beans and a grinder in the kitchen downstairs. I’ll unlock the door for you.”

  “Let me get my shoes first.”

  Her shoes weren’t all. She slipped on a bra. When she came out, he’d found Oinky, and he held it up. “Exactly what school has a pig for a mascot?”

  “Community college. Farm country.”

  “Ah.” He flicked the pig to her with a short underhand spiral that she doubted he expected her to catch. But she did.

  She relished her small victory as he led her down the back stairs. Instead of turning toward the club’s kitchen at the bottom, he opened the door into the alley. “Hold on a minute, will you?” He stepped outside.

  She peered out and saw that the wind from last night’s storm had strewn some sodden liquor cartons across the alley’s cracked pavement and in its muddy craters. Graham wasn’t happy. “This was supposed to have been cleaned up already.” He grabbed a soggy box and tossed it in the Dumpster, then snatched up another. She gave him points for being willing to do the dirty work himself and went out to help.

  As she gingerly pulled a waterlogged carton from a filthy puddle, she saw Jada coming down the alley. The grocery bag in her arms suggested she had responsibilities a lot of kids her age didn’t. Jada waved and Piper waved back, then turned to pick up more sodden cardboard.

  A teenage boy popped out from around the corner, Nerf gun in hand.

  Piper stiffened, then spun around, calling out Jada’s name.

  Jada reached for the Nerf protruding from her jacket pocket, but the bag she was carrying got in her way. Her teenage assassin braced his gun hand like a TV cop. The girl was going to die. But not on Piper’s watch.

  She lunged forward and shoved the first thing she touched directly into the path of the bullet.

  Cooper Graham.

  6

  Graham stumbled. Not from the bullet, which had bounced harmlessly off his arm, but from being thrown off balance without warning.

  A second bullet whizzed past from the opposite direction as Jada took control. “You’re dead!” she cried.

  “Not fair,” the kid protested.

  “Totally fair!” Jada retorted.

  Graham, in the meantime, had gone down in the middle of the alley, one hip landing in a pothole brimming with filthy water, a foot landing in another. “What the hell?” he exclaimed.

  Defeated, Jada’s murder victim disappeared around the corner. Jada gasped as she finally noticed what had happened to Graham. Piper raced to him. Rivulets of mucky water splattered his skin and clothes. A dab of mud had even lodged in that formidable cleft in his chin. His jeans were filthy, his hands grubby. She went to her knees next to him. “Oh, God . . . Are you okay?”

  Jada charged down the alley. “Coop! Please don’t tell Mom! Please!” She whipped toward Piper. “I would’ve been killed if it hadn’t been for you!”

  And now Graham was going to kill Piper. Not with a Nerf gun, but—if the look on his face was any indication—with his big, filthy hands.

  Muddy water seeped through the knees of Piper’s jeans as she leaned back on her ankles. “You’d . . . better go inside, Jada.”

  Jada didn’t need prodding. With one backward, pleading glance at Graham, she, the grocery bag, and her Nerf disappeared into the building.

  Piper was alone in the alley with a man who’d built his career on single-mindedly dismantling his opponents. As he shifted his weight from the pothole, a desiccated grapefruit rind slid off his shoe. She reached out. “Let me help you up.”

  “Do. Not. Touch. Me. Ever.” He came to his feet with both the grace and the deadly intent of a leopard. Who could blame her for stumbling a little as she stood up? Clenching his teeth, he gro
und out the words “Never touch me again! Do you understand?”

  The murderous heat in his eyes was more than a little disconcerting. “Yes . . . sir.”

  His icy rage turned hot. “What the hell is it with you?”

  “I’m a finely tuned fighting machine?” She’d made it a question instead of a statement, but either way, it was a big mistake because his expression grew even more thunderous.

  “What I did was instinctive,” she said quickly. “You were in the way, and I reacted automatically to protect Jada.”

  “From a fucking Nerf gun!”

  “Yes . . . I know, but . . .” Now didn’t seem like the most opportune time to explain about the Pius Assassins, so she settled on the abbreviated explanation. “It’s a game. Money and peer acceptance for the new kid are at stake.”

  “In case you didn’t get the memo, I am not one of the players.”

  “No. Absolutely not. If you hadn’t been standing in the way, I’d have blocked the shot myself.”

  The muscles tightened at the corners of his eyes. “Barely ten minutes ago, you were bragging about taking a bullet for me. How’s that working out?”

  “Well . . .” She gulped. “Now you know exactly how fast my reflexes are. That has to be sort of comforting. How many humans on this planet are quick enough to sack you?”

  Uh-oh. Wrong thing to say, because the steam boiled right out of his ears. “You didn’t sack me! You ambushed me.”

  “Potato, poh-tah-to. But I get your point.” He hadn’t noticed the blood trickling from the heel of one of his multimillion-dollar hands, but she had. She rushed to hold the door open. “Let’s go inside so you can get cleaned up and I can get that coffee you promised me.” She tried to think of something that would appease him. “We can have a business meeting at the same time. I’ll give you my first report.”

  Miraculously, that did seem to settle him a bit, although he grabbed the door from her and pushed her none too gently into the hallway. Only then did he notice his bloody hand. He blistered an obscenity.

  “Just a scratch.” She shot ahead of him to open the second door into the kitchen. “I’ll patch you up in no time.”

  “Like hell you will.”

  “All I need is a first aid kid.”

  “And a license to kill.” He stalked past her. “Or maybe you already have that?”

  “Funny and smart. I’m so lucky to be working for you.”

  “Shut up.” Still, his rancor was a little less heated.

  The small, spotless kitchen had a stainless-steel counter, oven, deep fryer, and grill to prepare the club’s limited food menu: minisliders, French fries with malt vinegar, and—at two in the morning—platters of complimentary bourbon fudge brownies. As Graham washed up at the sink, Piper found a first aid kit in the well-organized pantry, but he snatched it away from her. “Give me that thing. Call me greedy, but I want to keep this hand.”

  “So insulting.”

  When he flipped open the plastic lid, she saw specks of gravel in his palm. “I really am sorry.” She was going to have to do more than apologize to appease him. “Here’s some good news. From what I’ve observed so far, your VIP staff is exemplary. Considering the size of the tips they’re getting, they should be, but it’s reassuring to have that confirmed.” He didn’t look mollified. She needed more. It wasn’t the right time to talk to him about his lazy bouncers, and she had no evidence to back her suspicions about Taylor, the server. That left her with only limited possibilities. “I know this will make you happy. I’m going to personally update your Internet fan club site.”

  He rummaged inside the first aid kit. “I already have someone doing that.”

  “Yes, but unlike them, I know the difference between a subject and a verb.” A trickle of blood was running down his wrist. She grabbed a paper towel and gave it to him but decided not to mention the dab of mud still lodged in his chin cleft. “You’re a big celebrity in Chicago now, but how long will that last if you don’t keep pumping the social media machine? You only played for the Stars for three years, not like Bonner or Tucker or Robillard, who built their careers here. Fame fades, and if you want your business to grow, you have to keep your edge.”

  He didn’t like that. “I always play at the top of my game, something you need to remember.”

  She was trying to pacify him, not insult him, and she steeled herself. “For the next few weeks, I’ll also monitor and respond to the club’s online reviews.” This was exactly the kind of work she thought she’d escaped. “And that, my friend, is totally worth a few muddy potholes.”

  He pulled out a set of tweezers. “Keep talking.”

  “You want more?”

  He shrugged.

  “Give me those.” She snatched the tweezers from him.

  He didn’t seem to believe in holding a grudge, and as he handed them over, he appeared more contemplative than angry. “You’re pretty much a train wreck, you know that, right?”

  “Only around you.”

  “Why is that?”

  Because he controlled her future. “Because you’re a legend.”

  “Try again, Esmerelda.”

  “I’m human.” She swabbed the tweezers with one of the disinfectant pads. “You’re . . . superhuman.”

  “You’re not seriously going to give me that ‘you’re a god’ bullshit again, are you?”

  Exactly what she’d been about to do. “Of course not. I’m merely pointing out that I get nervous around you because I’m a regular person and you’re larger than life.”

  “A viper pit wouldn’t make you nervous.” She brightened at the compliment, but he went on, oozing satisfaction. “You’re sucking up to me because I sign your paycheck and because you need that paycheck to stay in business.”

  She set her teeth. “A bitter pill to swallow. Now hold still.” She began to clean the gravel from his hand. It had to hurt like hell, but Captain America was built of vibranium, and he didn’t wince, nor did he take his eyes off her.

  “Tell me about yourself,” he said, as if he really wanted to know. “The nonbullshit version.”

  She probed as gently as she could. “Only child. My mother was killed in an armed robbery when I was four, which left me with a father who alternated between treating me like the son he really wanted and being overprotective. Talk about schizophrenic.”

  “Explaining your personality disorder.”

  “Best not to insult the woman holding the tweezers.” She extracted another bit of gravel. “I have combined degrees in computer science and sociology from U. of I. and eleven years working at desk jobs I grew to hate. I thought about giving my father a coronary and applying for the police force, but I didn’t want to be a cop. I wanted to work for myself. Fast-forward . . . I bought Dove Investigations from my stepmother after my dad died.” No way was she telling him how much she’d overpaid for what she’d ended up with.

  “Bought it?”

  One piece of gravel had gone deep, and she worked as gently as she could. “The alternative was murdering her. I thought about it, but they can put you in prison for that.”

  “Good point. Straight or gay?”

  “Me or the Wicked Stepmother?”

  “You.”

  The gravel was out, and she dabbed the wound with antiseptic. “Straight. Unfortunately.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  She cleaned the tweezers and put them back in the kit. “In general—and there are exceptions—I like women more than men. They’re more interesting. More complicated. And they’re loyal. One of my biggest regrets is my lack of sexual attraction to members of my own sex.”

  He smiled. “Sounds like you’ve had one too many bad boyfriends.”

  “Says the man who’s dated most of Hollywood. What’s it like to go to the Oscars?”

  “Boring as hell.” He wiggled his fingers, as if he were checking to make sure she hadn’t stolen one of them. “Current boyfriend?”

  “Your cop pal is working
on it, but no.”

  “Cop pal?”

  “Eric Vargas. Officer Hottie?”

  Graham laughed. “You’re kidding, right? Not to be offensive, but”—the evil glow in his golden eyes indicated he intended to be very offensive—“isn’t he a little out of your league?”

  She grinned. “You’d think so, right? But I’ve never had much trouble attracting good-looking guys.”

  He frowned, not liking that his deliberate put-down hadn’t made her curl up in the corner and cry. “You have a theory about that?”

  “I do.” She applied one of the large bandages to the heel of his hand. “They think I’m one of them, and that makes them comfortable around me. Until they figure out I’m using them. Not callously. I don’t believe in that. But, really, how can you take most straight men seriously?”

  He cocked his head, as if he wasn’t hearing all that well. “You’re using them for . . . ?”

  “For—what do you think?”

  She’d sacked him again, and he seemed temporarily at a loss. She loved her flippancy. He couldn’t see how short-lived her bed-hopping days had been or how lonely they’d made her feel.

  “So you’re basically a man-eater?” Graham said.

  “Oh, no. I’m not sexy enough.”

  He started to say something—almost as if he wanted to argue with her—then he backed off. She snapped the kit shut and got up to look for the coffee beans.

  ***

  Coop watched as Piper disappeared into the pantry. She wasn’t beautiful, but she was . . . what? He could only come up with one word. Infuriating. Maybe two words. Infuriating and intriguing. He looked down at his mud-splattered jeans. The tear in the arm of his jacket. His bandaged hand. Infuriating, intriguing, and . . . a little bit dangerous. Those quick reflexes; her dark hair, as jagged as old razor blades; those shrewd blue eyes, and thick slabs of eyebrows; that crazy-wide mouth; and a jaw nearly as solid as his own. Her body, too. There were no bones protruding. Her curves were right where they should be.

  But . . . as soon as this gig was over, she was out. Now wasn’t a good time to have anyone unpredictable around him, even though she gave him this odd—not exactly a rush—more a hyperawareness. She was unexpected, and that meant he had to keep up his guard.