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Fleur was ashamed of herself, too. “It wasn’t about Jake. I’m not that stupid. It was about feeling like an overgrown teenager again.”
“I’m not buying it,” Magnolia Blossom said. “Don’t you think it’s time you stop kidding yourself and take a hard look at your feelings for that gorgeous man sitting in your living room?”
“My feelings for him are made up of dollar signs. Really, Kissy. I’ve practically lost Olivia, and the only clients who want me to represent them are ones I don’t want to represent, like that cretin Shawn Howell. Jake’s not even pretending to write, and—” She stopped. “That’s no excuse. I’m sorry, Kissy. You’re right. I’ve been acting infantile. Forgive me.”
Kiss finally softened. “All right. But only because I feel the same way every time I see you and Charlie together.”
“Charlie and me? Why?”
Kissy sighed and refused to meet Fleur’s eyes. “He likes you so much, and I know I can’t compete with you when it comes to looks. Every time I see the two of you talking, I feel like the Pillsbury Doughboy.”
Fleur didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “It seems like I’m not the only one who doesn’t know herself very well.” She gave Kissy a bear hug, then glanced at her watch. “Butch Cassidy is on television tonight. If I’m calculating right, we should be able to take a peek, then get back to the party before we’re missed. Do you want to indulge?”
“You bet.” Kissy flipped on the small television perched on a secondhand table in the corner of the bedroom. “Do you think we’re getting too old for this?”
“Probably. We should give it up for Lent.”
“Or not.”
The Hole-in-the-Wall Gang had just robbed the Overland Flyer, and Paul Newman’s Butch, along with Robert Redford’s mustachioed Sundance Kid, were drinking on the balcony of the whorehouse. Kissy and Fleur settled on the edge of the bed as the schoolteacher Etta Place climbed the steps to her small frame house, lit the lamp inside, and unfastened the top buttons of her shirtwaist. When she reached her bedroom, she pulled off the garment and hung it in the closet. Then she turned and screamed as she saw the chiseled features of the Sundance Kid staring menacingly at her from across the room.
“Keep going, Teacher Lady,” he said.
She stared at him with wide, frightened eyes. Slowly he picked up his gun and leveled it at her. “That’s okay. Don’t mind me. Keep on going.”
She hesitantly unfastened the long undergarment and then stepped out of it. Clasping it modestly in front of her, she tried to hide her eyelet-trimmed camisole from the outlaw’s eyes.
“Let down your hair,” he ordered.
She dropped the undergarment and pulled out the hairpins.
“Shake your head.”
No sensible woman was going to argue with the Sundance Kid when he had a pistol trained on her belly, and the schoolteacher did as she was told. All she had left was the camisole, and Sundance didn’t have to talk. He raised his pistol and cocked the hammer.
Etta slowly opened the low row of buttons until the camisole parted in a V. Sundance’s hands moved to his waist. He unfastened his gun belt and pushed it aside, then stood and approached her. He slipped his hands inside the open garment.
“Do you know what I wish?” Etta asked.
“What?”
“That once you’d get here on time!”
As Etta threw her arms around Redford’s neck, Fleur sighed and got up to turn off the set. “It’s hard to believe that scene was written by a man, isn’t it?”
Kissy gazed at the blank screen. “William Goldman’s a great screenwriter,
but I’ll bet anything his wife wrote that scene while he was in the shower. What I wouldn’t give…”
“Uhmm. It’s the ultimate female sexual fantasy.”
“All that male sexual menace coming from a lover you know will never hurt you.” Kissy licked her lips.
Fleur touched her morning glory necklace. “Too bad they don’t make men like that anymore.”
Jake stood in the hallway outside the partially opened door and listened to the two women. He hadn’t intended to eavesdrop, but Fleur had looked funny all evening, and they were gone so long he’d decided to check up on her. Now he was sorry. This was exactly the kind of conversation a man should never hear. What did women want? In public the rhetoric was all about male sensitivity and equality, but in private, here they were, two intelligent women having orgasms over caveman macho.
Maybe he was a little jealous. He was one of the biggest box office draws of the decade, and he was living right above Fleur Savagar’s head, but all she wanted to do was take verbal potshots at him. He wondered if Redford had to put up with this kind of crap. If there was any justice in the world, Redford was sitting in front of his television someplace in Sundance, Utah, watching his wife go melty-eyed over one of Bird Dog Caliber’s rough-’em-up love scenes. The thought gave him a small moment of satisfaction, but, as he slipped away, the emotion faded. No matter how you looked at it, this wasn’t the easiest time to be a man.
