Midnight Madness

She choked. Governor Hammersmith wasn’t at all what she’d expected.

“I figured that look would go over well next time I had to speak to a Rotary Club or cut the ribbon at the grand opening of a new senior citizens home.”

“So you’d like me to pierce your ears, too—and custom order a spiked dog collar? Rip the sleeves out of your Brooks Brothers’ button-downs? And how about a few tattoos?”

“Exactly.” He nodded. They exchanged a look of amused understanding. Then he ruined it. “You’re even prettier than the picture in Shore magazine.”

She felt her cheeks warming as she opened her nylon bag and pulled out a salon cape. Not only should she cover that chest for her peace of mind, but also to protect him from the little hairs that would fly everywhere during his haircut.

“I said to Maria, ‘She’s really cute. Call that one.’”

Marly lifted an eyebrow. Great way to pick a stylist, Governor. What if I’m a really cute butcher? But she didn’t say it out loud. “What happened to your regular hairdresser?”

“She just had a baby,” he explained. “And she’s retiring for a while to be a mom. I didn’t have time to look for someone else in Tallahassee before this meeting, so we called you.”

She was back to looking at his chest again, and all that male skin and muscle was having a bad effect on her. Her breathing had gone shallow and heat had bloomed at the back of her neck, under her arms and in other places she didn’t want to think about.

“Are you Irish?” he asked.

She blinked, then shook her head. “Dutch by heritage.”

“All that dark hair and the big blue eyes and the flawless skin—I thought maybe Black Irish. Though you’re not pale—your skin’s sort of olive.”

“There’s some Greek back there somewhere,” Marly said. “And you? You have the same coloring.”

“English, though my great-great-grandfather married an Italian. They say I get my looks from her.”

Marly found herself wanting to touch his skin, just run a hand over those shoulders and those biceps. She hadn’t had this kind of visceral reaction to a man since college. He put every nerve and ion in her body on full alert. Get a grip, stupid. Why do you think they call the guy The Hammer? Apart from his surname, he nails a lot of women.

John Hammersmith was a world-class flirt, and he’d been seen and photographed with all kinds of jet-set beauties. There’d been the Colombian emerald heiress, the Yugoslavian model, the English industrialist’s daughter, the Parisian countess, the New York fashion editor and the famous, double-jointed fitness instructor. The list went on and on. The Hammer’s personal little black book was reputed to contain ten volumes, or something like that.

It was a wonder there weren’t dozens of little illegitimate Jacks running around, but rumor had it that The Hammer owned stock in Trojan. Recently, however, she’d heard rumblings that his handlers wanted to marry him off. It was hard for a playboy to be taken seriously in politics, especially when his platform preached morality and conscience.

Hypocrite. Marly scowled and dug for her scissors.

“What’s that look for?” the governor asked. “You have something against Italians?”

“Huh? Oh…no, not at all. I was thinking about something else.” Too late, she realized how rude that sounded.

He grinned that thousand-watt grin at her, and parts of her body she was unaware she had melted. Oh, yuck. Was she really that susceptible—and to a Republican?

“Do I bore you, Miss Fine?”

“No…I’m sorry, I’ve just been distracted lately.” She scrambled and came up with a bit of truth to try to salvage things. “Until yesterday, I was afraid we were going to lose our retail space at After Hours and have to default on our business loans. It was scary. But everything’s okay now.”

It helped when the landlord was crazy in love with your business partner. She wouldn’t be surprised if Troy and Peggy ran off to Vegas and got married, in fact.

“I’m glad to hear it. I couldn’t have my favorite hairstylist going out of business—even temporarily.”

Marly’s eyebrows pulled together and she forced herself, once again, to look away from the man’s chest. “How can I possibly be your favorite hairstylist when I haven’t even cut your hair yet, Governor?”

“It’s a mystery, isn’t it?” He looked intently into her eyes again and she felt more exposed than if she were naked. Marly shifted her weight from foot to foot.

“Do you believe in love at first sight, Miss Fine?”

She gripped her scissors tightly and backed away from him. No matter how good-looking and charismatic and half-naked, the guy was starting to exasperate her. And what a cheesy line! “No, I do not.”

He sighed. “I was afraid of that. And I have a feeling it’s going to take a lot of effort to change your mind.”

2

LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT? Marly couldn’t help herself. She rolled her eyes. “Come on, Governor. You can do better than that.”

He crossed his arms over his delectable chest and actually had the gall to look offended. “You think that’s just a bad come on.”

“I certainly don’t think it’s a good one!” Great, Marly. You couldn’t have played along, dodged the pinch to your ass, and added John Hammersmith’s name to the After Hours’ client roster? What’s wrong with you?

“So you wouldn’t believe me if I told you that the moment I saw your picture in the magazine, I knew you were The One?”

Marly gaped at him and was saved from having to answer by the arrival of room service and Ms. Turlington again. Marly poured herself some green tea and watched The Hammer drown his strawberry waffles in syrup and smother them with whipped cream, for all the world like a little kid. A demented little kid…a Republican one. Ugh.

Really, she should leave now, while there was someone else in the room to act as a buffer.

“Did you know that my great-great-grandmother was essentially a mail-order bride?” Hammersmith said around a mouthful of waffles. “The Italian one.”

“No.” Marly took a sip of her tea and tugged on her braid, which had grown tight. Her scalp prickled with discomfort and something like alarm.

“Great-great-gramps saw a cameo portrait of her, and that was it for him. He went to find her and bring her back to the States.”

The tiny hairs on the back of her neck jumped to attention. Then they parted to make way for a deep shiver. But she didn’t react visibly, just eyed him with a tolerance reserved for the insane.

“Isn’t that romantic?” the governor said, swallowing. He ate standing up, his plate in his left hand, sawing through the waffles with the edge of his fork.

She nodded for Ms. Turlington’s benefit. Marly might not have finished college, but how stupid did the man think she was? He figured he could feed her this pack of BS and she’d tumble into bed with him?

It was a lowering thought that she might have done so based on the recommendation of his bare chest alone. She could have just had a fling—to support morality and conscience and Republican values, of course. But there was no way she’d do it now, with this lame talk of love at first sight. How many women had he snowed with this stuff?

Ms. Turlington changed the subject, bless her bossy, crabby, proper little heart. “Mister Governor,” she announced, eyeing his plate with something like despair, “you’ll note that there is an egg-white omelet under that steel dome. Those waffles you’re consuming—with the entire udder of butter and bathtub of syrup—contain a minimum of 3,600 calories and—”

“Turls, you know I detest egg-white omelets, and you probably had them fill it with broccoli and onion, too.”

“—six hundred grams of carbohydrates, not to mention enough saturated fat to deep-fry a herd of buffalo.”

“But I do thank you for your continued concern about my health. It’s very sweet of you.”

Miss Turlington sniffed. Then she produced a bona fide white, lacy handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes.

“Turls…” the governor groaned. He cast her a look of long-suffering, set down his waffles on a stack of scary-looking legal documents sporting lots of little yellow flags and plucked the steel dome off the omelet plate.