Bree’s jaw dropped open, her expression widening at the suggestion. “Slow Hand Sam?”
I looked desperately between the two of them. I had no clue where this was going or who this Sam was. The only thing I knew was that I didn’t like the look on their faces. They were up to no good, clearly conspiring against me.
I started to rise from the table. Bree had driven Melinda to the restaurant and the plan was she would drive her home. I had to escape while I still could!
“Not so fast, Rice Krispies.” Bree’s hand closed around mine. I glowered at her but she wouldn’t let go. Grinning like a demon, she pushed her cell phone at Melinda. “Dial, bestie.”
Melinda picked up the phone, entering the phone number Bree rattled off from memory. Whoever was on the other end answered quickly. Before I knew what was happening, Melinda was pretending to be me.
“Yes, this is Amber Rice, I need to schedule a massage with Samuel Pepin.” She paused as the person on the other side asked a couple of questions. “Tension headaches. I’ll be paying cash…Tuesday at three? Sounds perfect!”
As the phone snapped shut, Bree released me. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a dollar bill and started to fold it in a peculiar manner.
“What did you just do?” I looked at Melinda. Her grin was only half a centimeter narrower than the one she’d wore on her wedding day. I looked to Bree, who was still folding the dollar bill. “What are you doing?”
“It’s a code.” She showed me the bill. “You go in with a hundred folded like this. You get a massage and a hand job from this really hot physical therapist--”
“I will not!”
Bree gave me another one of her eye rolls. “Don’t worry, it’s perfectly clinical.”
I could tell by the demonic smile lingering on Bree’s face it was anything but clinical. I folded my arms across my chest. “If by
clinical
you mean
illegal
!”
“It’s a tip, for a job well done.” She looked to Melinda. “Go on, tell her!”
A look I’d never seen in my sister-in-law’s eyes appeared as she leaned in close. “This is all supposed to be a secret, but…”
She continued whispering in my ear, my expression growing increasingly distressed as she told me first about what Samuel Pepin had done for Imogene Fudge, whose husband had left her after she’d been diagnosed with breast cancer. She followed that report with one about his extra special treatment of Elaine Tyler, who had back surgery last summer, and then Becky Clay…
“He turned Portia Philips’ scrawny ass down, though.” Bree nodded her head at me as if that little fact would clench the deal.
I shook my head. I hadn’t been abandoned by my husband, hadn’t had back surgery, and I looked nothing Portia, who was the DFW area’s answer to Paris Hilton. He had no charitable or aesthetic reason to assist me.
Not that I wanted him to!
“No,” I told them, shaking my head for emphasis. “I won’t do it and you can’t make me.”
********************
I don’t know what gave me the idea I could resist them. After two days of relentless goading by Melinda and Bree, I arrived at the facility twenty minutes early. The building’s automatic doors slid open, exhaling cold air that hit my skin like an arctic blast of shame. Hesitating, I looked back at my little blue Prius sparkling in the Texas sun. I could still flee -- Melinda would give up trying to fix me after a while and things would settle back to normal. Bree I could avoid until she too had moved on to another pet project.
“Move, fat ass.”
Startled, I turned to the familiar voice. Portia Philips’ face twisted in surprise as she realized she had just insulted someone whose daddy was richer than hers. She recovered quickly, her right nostril and eyebrow creeping up her face in an unbecoming sneer.
“Finally seeing someone about your weight problem, Amber?” She adjusted the shoulder strap on her Dolce & Gabbana purse. Her bony hip canted to the side as she waited for my answer. Behind her, the automatic doors slid shut.
I smiled as if I wasn’t talking to a woman who was best described as the spiritual love child of Ted Bundy and Aileen Wournos. “Here to get your STD treated?”
Her gaze narrowed, the sneer disappearing as her mouth pressed into an unflattering thin line of hate. “At least I can get laid.”
My smile widened, but I was relieved she couldn’t see my eyes hiding behind my sunglasses. “I’d be impressed, but every street walker in South Dallas can make the same boast.”
Seeing Portia’s claws extend, I took a little step to the side and triggered the doors once more. If she was going to have one of her infamous hissy fits, she was going to have it with an audience. Surprising me, she gave a disdainful shrug.
“As if your opinion matters! You’re fat. No one would even talk to you if you weren’t Brandon Rice’s daughter.” She flipped a wedge of auburn hair over her shoulder, dismissing me with the same gesture and heading for her neon green Dodge Charger.
She was right -- mostly. Not everyone in Dallas was as shallow as Portia Philips, just the majority. I couldn’t get through the grocery store without someone staring at my cart in judgment.
Feeling about two inches tall, and twenty feet wide, I stepped inside and ducked behind a column to wait for Portia to clear the parking lot. After that, I would leave. What in Hades had I been thinking letting Melinda pressure me into coming here!
I slumped against the cool marble column. I hadn’t been thinking, that was the problem. Frustrated and desperate, my brain had been on vacation. I would remedy that with a call canceling the appointment once I was safely in my car.
Leaving the comfort of my hiding spot, I headed for the door. A white-haired woman with a clipboard intercepted me. She cupped a hand that looked frail but felt like steel around my elbow and steered me deeper into the building.
“Reception is over here, dear.” She talked as fast as she walked, which was slower than tree sap in February. “Do you have an appointment?”
“No…I mean yes, but I’m…”
Before I could finish, my guide handed me off to a middle-aged woman seated behind a polished wooden counter. “Got a fresh one for you, Cora.”
I pushed my signature blue sunglasses up into my blonde curls. “Yes, I have an appointment with Samantha Pepin that I need to can--.”
The receptionist looked at me like I’d just parked a UFO in the waiting area and had sparkly antennae growing out of my head. “Who?”
“Samantha,” I repeated just as I had rehearsed at least a dozen times in the last two days to appear ignorant of Mr. Pepin’s special services. It didn’t matter if I was intent on canceling the appointment. I still didn’t want anyone suspecting I was here for anything more than a legitimate massage. “Or does she go by Sam?”
“You mean Samuel.” The woman enunciated his name very carefully, her scowl disappearing before she slid into the last syllable. “She is a he, honey. That a problem for you?”
“Oh, dear!” I tried my best to sound distressed, which wasn’t a complete sham. I really was distressed, my stomach twisted in knots. I studied my watch for a long second before replying. “I don’t suppose there’s anyone--”
“Sorry, sugar, all booked up.” She clicked her mouse and then peered at her computer screen. “I have an hour free for next Thursday with Rachel.”
I shook my head, half turning for the door. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows that fronted the building, I saw that Portia hadn’t left yet. She stood next to her car, one manicured nail pressed lightly against the expansive chest of a male. One of the window’s intersecting steel support beams blocked his face, but he was dressed in a business suit and had an athletic build. Knowing Portia, his suit was silk and she’d caught sight of a Rolex on his wrist or some equally expensive brand.
His body language told me he was equally interested in Portia. He stepped closer to her, his torso leaning in. She pressed her whole palm against his chest and coyly turned her head. Watching them, a slow burning need started to heat low in my belly. I looked at the receptionist again, my gaze pleading with her to give me a reason to stay.
She reached along the counter and gave my hand a soft pat. “Sam’s a real professional, honey. Five minutes with him and you’ll forget it’s a man that’s got his hands on you.”
That wasn’t at all what I was hoping for, but I nodded. Reaching into my purse, I pulled out my bankcard. Seeing the hundred dollar bill tucked to the side and so precisely folded, I blushed as I handed her the bit of plastic. I waited, cheeks growing hotter, as she processed the payment and then I followed her through a door and into a closed hallway with two chairs on opposite sides of a small water fountain.
“Have a seat and I’ll tell Sam you’re ready.”
I sat down and immediately started fidgeting once the woman was out of sight. I tucked my legs along one side of the chair before I realized I was subconsciously posing. Straightening them, I looked down and saw the swell of my stomach. I winced, folded my hands over it then decided that only drew attention to its size.
I had just tucked my legs along the side of the chair again when I heard a very deep, masculine voice call my name.
“Miss Rice?”
He was standing behind me and to my left. I looked over my shoulder and froze.
Samuel Pepin made one hell of a first impression. He was tall, at least six-two. Deliciously broad-shouldered. The white polo shirt with the center’s logo on it showed off his thick biceps and deep tan. Beige Dockers hugged his narrow hips and fought to contain what promised to be very muscular thighs -- not that I’d ever see them uncovered.
As magnificent as it was, his body finished a close second to his face. It was only two in the afternoon, but his six-o’clock shadow was out in full force, darkening his expression and contouring his cheeks. The thick black eyebrows and heavy lashes made his emerald-colored eyes pop. A firm-set mouth and square jaw ensured the overall effect was ferociously masculine.
Sam repeated my name, his mouth quirking up in a smile that softened his features. I nodded, realized my jaw was about two inches away from touching the floor and pressed my lips together. Standing, I cast my gaze at the door that led to the reception area and a very lonely sense of safety -- at least until I got to the parking lot and had to watch some jerk drooling over Little Miss Satan.
A warm, strong hand closed around my elbow. “Oh no, Hollywood. You’re coming with me.”
Coming? Certainly I was close -- at least I thought I was. If I knew whether I really was close, I wouldn’t have been there at all. But the juncture of my thighs had never felt so electric. Muscles I’d never felt before were starting to dance and squeeze and something inside me gave a little roll that turned my knees to rubber.
Feeling lightheaded, I closed my eyes. When I opened them, he was staring down at my face, his gaze hooded by his thick lashes.
“Are you feeling okay?” His other hand wrapped around my opposite shoulder to steady me.
Realizing I was about to nod again like the complete dolt I was, I gathered what little composure I had left and lightly brushed his hand from me. “I’m fine, Mr. Pepin. Why did you call me Hollywood?”
The grin came back, my nipples instantly puckering in response. Like the rest of him, his smile was sexy as sin.
“Because of these.” His hands, surprisingly gentle for their size, reached up, parted my blonde curls, and lifted my sunglasses off. “And call me
Sam
.”
Carefully folding the glasses, he hooked one of their metallic blue arms inside the collar of his polo shirt. His hands took possession of me once more and guided me into the treatment room. Stopping in front of a padded chair, he picked up a remote and started pushing buttons.
The chair straightened and lifted until it looked like a tall, narrow table with over-sized cushions. He folded the arms down, turned to a standing cabinet and pulled out a lightweight terry robe. He offered the robe to me, but didn’t let go when I reached to take it.
“What kind of music relaxes you?”
I shrugged. There was no way I was going to relax with him in the same room with me. His rich, warm voice lapped at my thighs and the way his scent curled around my senses struck a very real fear that I would do something embarrassing if he got any closer.
His smiling gaze turned impish. “When you’re in the tub, the water all warm and bubbly…don’t you have any music playing?”
I blushed, embarrassed that I was incapable of even taking a bath like a normal woman. “Hymns, mostly.”
Sam’s chuckle went straight to my thighs, jolting my swollen flesh like a hard smack. “That’s a waste of a bubble bath, Hollywood. How about I line us up some Etta James?”
“Okay.” Trying not to seem like a complete square, I gave him a tentative smile. “Is she new?”
“New? Etta James?” His voice suddenly grew stern, only the playful tilt of his head and the twinkle of his bright green eyes kept me from panicking. “Miss Rice, you put that robe on and prepare to be schooled.”
He left me to change, my expression wide-eyed and slack-jawed as I wondered if he had any idea why I was there.
********************
I was sitting on the edge of the table-chair thingie when Sam returned, my legs demurely crossed at the ankles. I was too short for the table’s height. Even pointed down, my toes were still half a foot from the floor.