Midnight Madness

“I know. Give it a little longer? Then we’ll bring in a couple more hairdressers, and everyone can ease up on their appointments a bit.”

Marly nodded. “You know I don’t mean to bellyache, hon. I’ve got my dad’s medical bills, but you’re under even more stress, with the whole business school thing.”

She only had a few more months to go to pay off the thoroughly scary multithousand-dollar hospital bill that she’d had sent to her, because if her father had seen it he would have relapsed, gone into renal failure and died.

She’d worked a deal with the administrator: only a quarter of the bill balance was sent to her parents. She’d dropped out of art school and begun working immediately to pay it off, since they were on a fixed income.

The pace of her work these days was killing her, but she focused on the light at the end of the tunnel, when the balance would be paid.

What would it be like to have spare time again? A social life? She couldn’t wait. Marly went to greet her next customer and initiated the normal chitchat while she snipped and reshaped the woman’s hair.

The rest of the day flew by: she cut the hair of a city council member, wove blond extensions in for a local model, did a short, spiky style for a woman who owned a boutique around the corner. She snipped, textured, shaved, highlighted, gelled, moussed and sprayed. Then she did it all over again.

By 10:00 p.m. her feet were throbbing and she was exhausted—but they had two hours of prime party time to go. Marly looked longingly at the wine Shirlie, their receptionist, brought to the customers, thinking that just one glass would do a lot to ease her pain and give her a second wind.

But it was an extremely bad idea to cut someone’s hair under the influence…so she’d wait and have her wine after they’d locked up.

She welcomed her 11:00 p.m. client, Regina Santos, and sent her off to be shampooed. Marly’s thoughts turned renegade again, toward Jack Hammersmith, his bare chest and his mouthful of waffles. The way his tongue had licked the whipped cream from the corner of his mouth. The way he’d looked into her eyes as if he could see into her mind, and his calm certainty that she was The One.

The One what? The one who’d tell him that the Hammer wasn’t going to nail her?

JACK HAMMERSMITH successfully dodged Turl’s urges to take an extra vitamin and got dressed in front of the maid whom Housekeeping sent to remove his room service cart. He gave the maid credit for waiting until he put on his shirt and tie before she asked shyly if she could take a picture of him with her camera-phone.

He said, “Sure, sweetheart—do you want a photo of us both?” Turls pressed her lips together and did the honors, before almost chasing the poor woman out.

Jack would much rather have signed two dozen autographs or taken as many photos with hotel staff than get down to work with Stephen Lyons and Jorge Martinez, his top aide and his campaign manager, respectively.

But they barged in at 9:45 a.m. regardless of his personal preferences, and worse, they forced him to crack open the thick manila file folder on the suite’s desk. They pulled out three of the yellow-flagged documents and handed him a pen snagged from behind Martinez’s ear.

“Do you wash those ears?” Jack teased him, pretending to wipe earwax off the pen. “Because I know you’ve always got one or the other of them pressed to the ground, spying and dragging them in the dirt.”

Martinez shot him a cool glance. “That’s why you pay me the big bucks.”

Lyons started yakking at him about pending legislation in the Florida state senate. When he paused for breath, Martinez jumped in. “I’ve hired a professional PR firm just to manage your press coverage—and consult on your image—during the campaign.”

“Great, more people to push me around,” Jack said in jovial tones. “Well, I’m sure they’ll approve of my haircut. You like it, Lyons? Marty?”

They stopped talking at looked at his hair. “It’s great, Jack,” said Martinez, and moved on to a new topic: the train wreck that a public school initiative had become. Lyons made a circle out of his thumb and forefinger, spreading his other three fingers wide in the A-Okay sign.

“Hey, Lyons? Your wife—does she ever wear blue nail polish?”

“What? No. Twelve-year-olds and rock stars wear blue nail polish.”

“And artists, wouldn’t you say? Creative spirits.”

“Jack, can I get you to focus, here?” Lyons asked.

“I’m very focused,” said The Hammer.

“Oh, Christ,” said Martinez. “What inappropriate woman are you obsessing about now?”

“She’s not inappropriate. She’s perfect.”

“Jack, if she wears blue nail polish, she is not perfect. I have one name for you—Hilliard. She’s beautiful, she’s connected, she’s got style and wit and fashion sense. You’ve known her all your life. Now will you please, for God’s sake, get engaged to the woman? It could make or break your reelection campaign.”

“That’s crazy. It’s not my prospective wife who’s running! I got elected single last time. Why is it so important that I be coupled now?”

Martinez sighed and sat in a club chair. He spread his knees and dangled his clasped hands between them. Not a hair on his head fell forward, however; it was all sprayed into place.

“The polls, Jack. People cut you some slack before because of the way Lady Annabel dumped you so publicly.”

“I dumped her!”

“A matter of spin, Jack. Poor Hammer, left practically at the altar…”

“I would never have married her!”

“Water under the bridge, Jack. The point is, now the polls are reflecting that people think you’re too wild. They don’t want a playboy running the state—they want a responsible, settled adult. They’d love to see little Jacks bouncing around the capitol lawn.”

“I fail to see how that’s anyone’s business but mine.”

“Jack. Don’t be naive. You’re a public figure with a political career at stake. You could be in the running for a vice-presidential seat in the next six years or so. Get your ass married to an appropriate woman or jeopardize all that. Do you hear me?”

“Loud and clear, Martinez.” Jack cast him a glance of impatience, bordering on dislike. The waffles sat heavy in his stomach and the syrup and whipped cream gurgled. He should have eaten the damned whole-grain toast and omelet, but he was beyond sick of being told what to do every second of every minute of every friggin’ day. Leader of the state? Hell, he felt more like a trained ape.

Jack, who’d grown up in politics like his father before him, found it hard to take it all seriously. Politics wasn’t his calling; it was Dad’s calling, but he’d found himself fresh out of law school and going into retired Senator John Hammersmith’s law firm, without even an interview. His experience was so alien compared to that of his friends, who clerked and schmoozed and interviewed wildly—everywhere from Miami to New York to San Francisco.

He’d felt guilty and not particularly deserving of his golden-boy status as John Hammersmith Jr. born with a pedigree and dimples to match.

His mother had a law degree and connections, as well. But if she wanted to, she had the luxury of fading into the woodwork and just being exceptionally well married. Jack wondered what it was like to have options like that; be female; choose your role in society.

Did she feel guilty about not being more of a trailblazer? Had she burned her bra back in the seventies, only to walk right back into its harness like an obedient broodmare? He mused about it. Jeanne kept her mouth shut about such things.

Martinez was waxing poetic about poll numbers and Lyons advocating that he play in some charity golf tournament.

Jack nodded, the waffles in his stomach gurgled around some more, and he found himself thinking about Marly Fine. He put a hand up to his neck, still feeling her cool, efficient hands in his hair and the rhythmic snipping, eyes always measuring, gauging length and proportion and thickness.

He had a lot of hair. If he ever let it grow, he’d probably resemble an afghan that had just stuck its paw into an electrical outlet.

Marly had done an exceptional job of making him look suave and goobernatorial. But suddenly Jack wished he had rock star hair and maybe an earring through his nose; a different perspective on life and how to live it. A perspective that would make him more appealing to a woman who wore blue toenail polish and no bra and a long gypsy skirt that Jeanne Hammersmith probably wouldn’t give to the housekeeper for polishing the silver.

He hadn’t lied when he’d said that the instant he’d seen her picture he’d known Marly was The One. He’d seen it in her cool blue-green eyes and the dark sheen of her hair. In the way she held herself and the tilt of her pointed little chin.

She was the kind of woman who inspired love songs. She was a Helen…a woman who caused men to do crazy things. Such as tell her within moments of meeting her that she was The One.

Jack grinned. Because she hadn’t giggled and blushed; she hadn’t taken it as a come on that could help her career if she played ball. She’d just told him flat-out that he was nuts.

The general public didn’t tell Jack that he was nuts—only his inner circle did. So Marly had stepped into that circle without even trying.