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She sighed. “Unlike you two rich boys, I have to get back to work.”
“Don’t forget where your real job is,” Coop warned. “And next time you’re late, I’m docking your pay.”
“Yes, sir.” She peeled off toward the parking garage.
***
As the two men watched her disappear, Heath shook his head. “She doesn’t have a clue, does she?”
“Nope.” Coop refused to say more.
They passed a men’s boutique featuring plaid pants he wouldn’t have been caught dead in. Splashes of fallen leaves brightened a black-and-white store awning. More leaves lay like rusty fifty-dollar bills on the sidewalks.
“She kind of sneaks up on you,” Heath said. “It’s those legs.”
It was the whole damn package. Piper’s curves were right where they belonged, with nothing exaggerated, everything strong and efficient. But mostly it was her eyes. And her irreverence. And that crazy kind of decency lying underneath all her attitude.
“She reminds me of Annabelle,” Heath said. “The first time I met her.”
Coop knew what he meant. Annabelle had the same kind of feistiness. But there was a big difference. “Annabelle’s sweet and Piper’s a viper.”
“Obviously you haven’t spent enough time around my wife.” Heath glanced toward a bra and panty set in the window of Agent Provocateur.
“Just as long as the two of them never meet,” Coop said.
“I think it’d be entertaining.”
Coop shuddered. He liked Annabelle, but he didn’t like the way she wanted to poke her nose into his relationships. “Make sure it never happens.”
“I’m promising nothin’, pal. And for the record . . . Why did you really want me here?”
It took a few beats too long for Coop to respond. “Exactly what I said. You have more experience with women’s clothes.”
Heath hadn’t gotten where he was by being stupid, and Coop expected to be called on his bullshit, but Heath merely smiled his python’s smile. “And she’s never been in People magazine,” he said. “This gets more and more interesting.” He slapped Coop on the shoulder and headed back to the bra and panties at Agent Provocateur.
“Dude!” Two teens who should have been in school dashed across the street to high-five him. Coop welcomed the interruption. Inviting Heath to show up had backfired. He’d been so sure
his agent would be bored. Not that Heath would have shown it—he was too slick—but he’d have been texting the whole time, and that’s all it would have taken. Seeing Sherlock through his agent’s jaded eyes would have restored Coop to sanity. He would have remembered all the women more beautiful, more accomplished, more Coop-like who were part of his world. Instead, Heath’s cell had stayed in his pocket. But then Heath liked quirky women. Witness Annabelle. The two of them—the matchmaker and the sports agent—were a love story for the books.
Coop knew exactly what women on the hunt looked like, felt like, smelled like, and Sherlock had none of the characteristics. She refused to come on to him. All she wanted was a job, and once he lost that hold, he’d be no more important to her than those dresses he’d bought.
This would require careful strategy, something he was very good at.
***
Piper wore the cobalt dress that night—her fourth night on duty at the club—but instead of making her blend in with the trendy crowd, it attracted more attention than she wanted. A couple of guys asked to buy her drinks, and PhairoZ, the club’s guest DJ, singled her out during his break.
PhairoZ—real name Jason Schmidt—looked like a tatted-up European soccer star. Coop was a smart businessman. He understood that he was the lure drawing customers in for their first visit, but the club itself had to draw them back, so he hired the best DJs to keep things fresh, as well as a good-looking male staff. Where the women were, the male customers would follow.
“So you want to hang after I get off?” PhairoZ leaned one palm against the wall behind her.
“Thanks, but seriously . . .” She regarded him with earnest eyes and what she hoped was a semi-shy expression. “You’re way too hot for me.”
“That just means I can warm you up faster.”
She resisted her natural tendency for put-downs. “I’m too insecure.” She gave his arm a friendly squeeze, ducked under it, and walked away.
That night, she hovered in Spiral’s basement behind an industrial-size water heater, the same place she’d waited for the past two nights. Overhead, she heard the staff closing up for the night—or early morning, since it was a little after three. She yawned. She’d broken up a tussle in the ladies’ room; tailed Dell, the useless bouncer; and made sure some very drunk women found a cab. But in five hours, she had to be at the Peninsula to take one of the older princesses to her plastic surgeon’s office, and she wanted to go to bed.
