Blame It on the Bachelor Page 10

  She should go.

  On the other hand, she couldn’t possibly tolerate the agony of having to sit in a straight-backed chair in some formal restaurant for hours. She simply couldn’t do it.

  “I’d love to, Milty, but I took a bad fall earlier today at a customer’s business and I’ve hurt my, er, back. My, ah, tailbone.” She felt her cheeks growing warm for the second—third?—time that day.

  Now all the men had an excuse to look at her backside, and they did.

  Kylie gritted her teeth.

  “I see,” the chairman said, with an odd expression. She was clearly the only employee who’d ever turned down an invitation from him. She should probably map the way to the unemployment office on Google when she returned to her desk.

  “Well, I’m sorry to hear that. I must say that your gait did seem a bit unusual.”

  Great. So she had looked like some strange bird. And now they were all checking out her legs.

  Then Milty frowned. “You fell at a customer’s business, you say?”

  She could see him adding up nasty worker’s compensation figures in his head. “Yes, but it’s nothing, really. I just need to rest for a few hours this evening.”

  The man called Kenny clucked his tongue and rocked back on his heels. “Can’t be suing a customer for damages, now can you? Bad PR.”

  The other men laughed. It wasn’t that funny. She decided that they had definitely been drinking.

  “Oh, no! I’d never—” Kylie blanched at the idea of explaining in court documents how she’d fallen out of a walk-in fridge in a disheveled state, with the client on top of her. No, not even for fifty million dollars would she sue. Not for a hundred million.

  She chuckled right along with the rest of them.

  “Well,” Milty said, “you boys ready for a tour of the premises?”

  They all moved as a group into the reception area, and Kylie figured she’d dodged a bullet. She breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Oh, Kylie,” called April, the receptionist. “You have a package. Courier-delivered.”

  Kylie took it with thanks. The parcel was about the size of a pizza box and the wrapping was professional. “Who’s it from? Was there a card?”

  April shook her head.

  “Must be your birthday, Miss Kent,” said the tall, gangly banker named Mort.

  “Happy birthday!” said the one named Steven. A chorus of happy birthdays sounded.

  Kylie flushed. “It’s not my—”

  “Well, aren’t you going to open it?” prodded Kenny.

  Milty inclined his head, the king ordering his subject to comply.

  “Um, sure.” Kylie slid her index finger under the tape sealing the gift—if that’s what it was. Probably a calendar from someone she did business with.

  She unwrapped the paper and lifted the lid of the box.

  All of the bankers, including Milty, craned their necks to see the contents, and one by one they snorted with amusement at her expense.

  Inside was an inflatable, red rubber doughnut for sitting on. It had been sent from a medical supply store.

  And she knew exactly who it was from.

  MORTIFICATION PREVENTED KYLIE from using the rubber ring at work, and the obnoxious bankers had, thank God, stopped short of suggesting that she put her lips to the inflation device and blow it up while they watched. She spent the remaining hour of the afternoon torn between outrage at Dev for sending it, helpless amusement at her own expense and fear for the repercussions to her career.

  There was the silly part of her that was touched by Dev’s thoughtfulness: he hadn’t sent the doughnut entirely out of a desire to embarrass her. He’d actually thought she might need it.

  Truth to tell, she did. But she’d rather be battered, deep-fried and served with coleslaw than have anyone she worked with see her sitting on the thing.

  Kylie sat with another rapidly cooling café con leche, ostensibly running numbers on another loan, but actually agonizing over what damage she might have caused to her career today.

  She’d lost her mind and her dignity in that walk-in fridge, and then turned down a dinner invitation from the CEO of Sol Trust before losing her dignity for the second time—and in front of the man who held her career in his manicured hands.

  She told herself she could have made it through the evening. She could have scored some sedatives two blocks away from the bank—this was Miami, after all, capitol city of pain clinics and auto insurance fraud. A wad of cash and you could find a crooked M.D. to write a prescription for anything.

  Right. Go to dinner with Milty Goldman and a bunch of financial players stoned out of her gourd and slurring her speech? Great idea.

  No telling what was actually in the meds on the street. She might not feel the pain in her tailbone, but she probably wouldn’t be able to feel her own feet, either.

  Kylie reminded herself that she hadn’t gotten where she was in her job already by being stupid. Well, except for today.

  But she continued to agonize about the repercussions. And then there was Devon and the unwelcome effect he had on her. What the hell? The guy made her drunk or something.

  He was jeopardizing not only her dignity and her job, but also her self-respect. And hadn’t she learned her lesson from the first dirtbag? She needed to trade up, not down, from Jack.

  Jack had at least had a bright future at one point. He’d had an MBA and a vision of success, like her.

  And Dev? He had a wild past, an irresponsible streak a mile wide and a dubious future as a bar owner and restaurateur. Most restaurants went belly-up within the first year of opening. She wasn’t aware that he had any prior experience even managing a fast-food joint.

  The more she thought about it, the more she wondered how Dev had gotten Priscilla to sign off on his business loan. There had to be a personal connection somewhere. Kylie blanched, horrified, at the thought that maybe Dev had put his charm to work on her boss in the exact same way he was applying it to Kylie herself. Had Priscilla been in the walk-in fridge?

  Dear God.

  When she began to wonder if her boss’s baby was, in fact, Devon’s, she stood abruptly, winced at the pain in her tailbone and fled the office in search of a cold glass of wine—or maybe three.

  15

  SATURDAY MORNING, the Dawn of the Date, was a rough one for Dev. He’d been at the bar until 3:00 a.m. managing things. The things had included a spat between Marla and Maurizio, who’d underbaked a batch of potato skins then burned the replacement batch to a crisp, resulting in unhappy customers who’d bitched her out, demanded their drinks for free and left her no tip.

  The things also included Dev having to bounce out a drunk who’d reached across the bar and honked Lila’s breast like an old-fashioned bicycle horn. Lila, who’d been filling a glass with tonic at the time, turned the tonic dispenser on the guy with one hand and slapped him silly with the other.

  Most normal people would have vamoosed at the time the enraged Lila started screaming Spanish invective, but this particular man stayed around to enjoy it. He then begged Lila to come home with him and spank him.

  That was the point at which Dev had locked an arm around his neck, yanked him off his stool and propelled him by the belt to the exit, inviting him to come back and apologize when he was sober.

  Dev himself hustled drinks until Lila came out of her subsequent snit in the ladies’ room, her talons smelling of fresh nail polish.

  The last thing he’d had to deal with before closing time was the fact that the men’s room door had been locked for a solid hour and nobody could get in. Of course it fell to Dev to pound on the door and then use a master key to unlock it with great trepidation when he got no response.

  This was South Beach, and literally anything could be going on in there: a long cell-phone conversation, a three-way or an overdose.

  Thank God he found only one body and it wasn’t dead, merely a drunk who’d passed out on the crapper. Dev threw a glass of cold water in the guy
’s face, turned his head while he pulled up the man’s pants and then had the dubious honor of flushing before he staggered out of Bikini.

  Dev used up half a can of Lysol in the room and then advised the gentleman who was waiting to use the facilities that he might wish to wait until the air freshener had taken effect before going in.

  This was his glamorous life as an entrepreneur. Dev longingly eyed the full complement of rum behind the bar, but told himself to forget about it. He had to be responsible and he couldn’t manage a business half in the bag.

  By the time he fell into an exhausted sleep, it was almost 5:00 a.m. He woke at noon, showered and then took a look around his condo, which was a bachelor’s disaster of epic proportions. Normally this wouldn’t have bothered him, but since this was the Dawn of the Date, it was very possible that he’d be bringing Kylie back here for dessert.

  And if he hoped to convince her that he was a good candidate for a relationship, he’d better get busy, since the girl he’d hired to clean “regularly” had been a lot less than regular lately.

  Dev grimaced. This, after he’d fallen for her hard-luck story about getting evicted from her boyfriend’s apartment and given her an advance on the next three months’ cleaning so she could get her own place. He hadn’t seen her, of course, since he’d handed her the cash. He was a chump. Why did he have such bad luck with employees? Why was he forever giving people a second or a third chance?

  But he didn’t have a lot of time to think about it. First he attacked his bathroom, which would have frightened a wild hog. It took a razor to remove the scum lining the bathtub, and the toilet had become a fetid swamp. He poured an entire cup of bleach into it and flattened every bristle of the long-handled brush to get it clean. The sink was a minefield of toothpaste globs, but by the time he was done, it sparkled like new.

  Every dish that he owned was crusted over with food and stacked on the counter next to the kitchen sink or in the basin itself. The dishwasher was malfunctioning, and he hadn’t gotten around to doing anything about it.

  Dev carried every pot, pan, utensil, cup, plate and bowl into the guest bathroom, where he placed them in the freshly sterilized bathtub and drowned them in hot water to soak. He added a quarter cup of dish detergent and stirred it around with a slotted spoon.

  While the dishes sat in the hot water, he raked up all the flotsam in the living room, dispensed with most of it, then folded the armchair full of laundry for the first time since he could remember. He usually dumped the contents of the dryer into it and pulled items from the pile as needed.

  He dusted then wiped the windows with glass cleaner. He threw out the petrified husk of the plant he’d managed to kill. Finally, he located the vacuum in the guest-room closet and sucked up a couple of month’s worth of grunge and dust bunnies from the carpet and tile.

  Dev felt pretty pleased with himself as he took inventory of the room, until he got to the grimy—and empty—fish tank. Good luck keeping that fish alive—little boy. Kylie’s words came back to haunt him.

  Shit. He had to acquire another fish before tonight. Dev looked at his watch: it was already 4:00 p.m. and he’d told her he’d pick her up at seven.

  He launched himself at the small tank and carried the whole thing over to the sink he’d just scrubbed. He pulled out the treasure chest, the fake plants and the reef, making a mess of the formerly pristine countertop. Dev cursed, but it couldn’t be helped. He poured the dirty water down the sink, blocking the colored rocks at the bottom with his hand. The stench was awful.

  Dev scooped out the rocks and rinsed them in his colander. For the next twenty minutes, he worked at removing all of the green scum, slime and algae from the walls of the tank. He went through an entire roll of paper towels and all of what was left of the glass cleaner.

  Then he reassembled everything and filled the tank with water from the tap. He checked his watch. It was now almost five. He had just enough time to get to the pet store, purchase a new fish, get back with it, shower and change, and then go pick up Kylie.

  Dev sprinted to the Corvette and peeled rubber out of the parking lot. The Saturday afternoon traffic was heavy and it took him a good twenty minutes to get to the pet store. He skidded in, made tracks for the fish section and chose a fish within two minutes. But the gangly teenaged salesperson—fish monger?—was absorbed in helping a mom and her tubby kid choose just the right combination of fish for his tank.

  Dev tapped his toe and looked at his watch repeatedly as fifteen more minutes went by. Finally he asked the teenager if he could self-serve a fish. All three of them swung around and stared at him as if he’d asked to disembowel them.

  Well, excuuuuuse him. “Sorry,” he mumbled, “but I have a thing.”

  “I will be right with you, sir,” the teenager said in disdainful tones. “As soon as I’ve helped these customers.”

  Dev cooled his heels for another ten minutes, before the boy deigned to wait on him. But the fish he’d chosen was a slick, smart little bastard, and the teenager couldn’t seem to catch him with the little net he had.

  Finally, Dev said, “Grab the first one you can and bag him for me.” He bounced on the balls of his toes in impatience. Teen Boy finally caught one, a plump, ugly, mostly white little bugger with irregular dots of orange and bulging, accusatory eyes.

  Dev dashed with him to the cash register, paid with a ten and told the cashier to keep the change. He shot outside and into the ’Vette, tossing the bagged fish onto the passenger seat. A turn of the key and a roar of the engine later, he was back in the heavy traffic.

  Stop, go. Stop, go. Stop, go. Dev swerved around a PT Cruiser and cut in front of an Audi. He sped up to catch the tail end of a yellow light, and saw the cop across the intersection at the last minute. He stomped on the brakes, and the fish went flying off the seat and splat! Into the windshield.

  The bag broke on impact, sending water pouring out.

  Shit! Shit! Shit! Dev grabbed for the remnants of the bag and the fish, but the bag was a lost cause. The poor creature flipped and flopped in his hand while he looked wildly around for something to put it in. He grabbed a paper coffee cup from the console between the seats and dropped the fish into it.

  But he needed some water for it immediately. The half bottle of Coke in the console would kill it. He knew there was a convenience store a couple of blocks up where he could get a bottle of water, but he didn’t know if the fish could make it for more than a minute.

  The light turned green.

  Dev made an executive decision. He spit on the fish, set the coffee cup in the round holder in the console and hit the gas. Approximately three minutes later, he was inside the store, grabbing a bottle, unscrewing the cap and pouring water over his new buddy.

  The fish lay motionless on its side for a long moment, then flopped feebly. Dev cheered and the two other customers in the store edged away from him.

  Four minutes later he was in the car, headed home. The time: 6:15 p.m. He was at the condo by 6:27 p.m. and the fish was in the tank by 6:28 p.m. Dev shed his clothes and leaped into the shower at 6:29, was out and wrapped in a towel by 6:34 and fully clothed, combed and cologned by 6:41.

  By 6:43 p.m. he was back in the Corvette and he pulled into Kylie’s complex on the dot of seven.

  She lived in a white stucco building with large semicircular balconies on the upper floors. Dev made his way inside and stood in front of the door for a moment, feeling like a thirteen-year-old asking his first girl to a PG movie. Why? He’d never had trouble picking up women. He usually delivered some outrageous line that had them either laughing or slapping his face and walking away—but usually the former. And once they were laughing, he had them in the palm of his hand.

  Yeah. He, Dev, was a sex god.

  So he knocked on the door.

  “Hello, Dev,” Kylie said as she opened it, and pulled the rubber doughnut he’d sent over his head so that it hung around his neck.

  He blinked and gazed down at it. T
hen up at her.

  Black. She wore black from head to toe, instead of white and navy. A black halter dress with black strappy heels, and vast expanses of tanned, sexy skin in between. Her blond hair tumbled over her nude shoulders, her mouth was pale and shiny and her eyes hugely dark and mysterious, thanks to more eye makeup than she usually wore. She looked like some Hollywood star in a film still.

  Dev stood there with the ring around his neck and drank her in. He gawked like a tourist at the zoo.

  Kylie raised her eyebrows. “Is something wrong?”

  He slowly shook his head.

  “Alligator got your tongue?”

  He nodded.

  She smiled. “Well, that’s a refreshing change.”

  “Uh. Out of curiosity, why am I wearing this doughnut? Please tell me you don’t expect me to wear it to the Rusty Pelican?”

  “Is that any more embarrassing than sending it to me at work?”

  Damn. His cute little gesture had backfired. “Oh. Uh. Sorry. I’m a guy. We’re practical jokers, you know? We don’t think a whole lot about dignity.”

  “I figured that out the hard way.”

  Uh-oh. “I thought it would make you laugh, but I also thought it might come in handy, especially that particular afternoon.”

  “It was a very thoughtful gift, Dev. Thank you. It just would have been better if I hadn’t opened it in front of the CEO of Sol Trust and a bunch of investment bankers.”

  “Yikes.” It was all he could think of to say.

  She shrugged, then seemed to forgive him. She lifted the ring off, then tossed it onto a chair. “Yes, I did use it—but not until I got home.” She rubbed at her tailbone ruefully.

  “So, you feeling better?”

  She nodded. “I’m fine, now, but I was pretty sore for a few days.”

  Dev wondered why she was still blocking her doorway and hadn’t asked him inside. “Glad to hear it. Uh, that you’re fine now.”

  She nodded. Then she began to fidget, which seemed unlike her.

  “What?” Dev asked. “Is there something wrong?”