Midnight Madness. Karen Kendall

tried to focus on what Martinez and Lyons were droning on about now, but he had a hard time caring. Instead he wondered exactly what his great-great-grandfather had said first to the Italian girl he’d crossed continents to find.

      Had he said, “Signorina bellissima, I know you are The One?” Or had he actually employed some subtlety? Jack had never found subtlety particularly useful. Either people didn’t catch it at all or your message was diluted entirely.

      Subtlety was not to be confused with the fine arts of political innuendo and favor-currying. Now he excelled at those…but wasn’t exactly proud of the fact.

      Yeah, the more he thought about it, he needed to cultivate rock star hair and maybe one of those terrible little soul patches on his chin. That sure as hell would appeal to the conservative voters—about as much as a girlfriend who wore a long braid down her back and no bra.

      No bra…hmm. The Hammer suddenly wondered if Marly had a policy against underwear altogether. He really wouldn’t mind finding out.

      4

      “SO?” SHIRLIE, the receptionist at After Hours, nudged Marly the next day. Her pale blue eyes sparkled with curiosity and every spiky, mascara-covered eyelash jutted forward eagerly, like antennae wired to collect information.

      “So, what?” Marly looked through a stack of pink message slips for any calls that needed to be returned before the evening. Misty Horowitz, Sandra Tagliatore, Janine Burbank. No—she could call all of them later.

      “The governor!” Shirlie kept probing. “What’s he like in person? Is he as hot as he is on TV?”

      “Hotter. Though he’s going to develop a belly to rival Buddha’s if he keeps on eating the way he eats.”

      “What does he eat? Is he nice?”

      Marly laughed. “He eats little boy food—waffles and syrup and whipped cream.”

      “So was he nice or did he treat you like the hired help?”

      “He was…very affable.” Besides being crazy and trying to use a bad line to get me into bed. Who does he think he is?

      “So what’s his body like? It’s hard to tell under those suits.”

      “Nothing wrong with the man’s bod,” Marly said before she could censor herself. “He greeted me without a shirt or shoes.”

      “No!”

      “Yup.”

      “How big are his feet?”

      Marly sighed. “You know, your obsession with penis size is really not healthy, Shirl. How many times did you try to find out the number of inches Troy Barrington sports?”

      Shirlie didn’t bother to blush. “I’m taking a survey for scientific purposes.”

      “Right. And my grandfather was a prima ballerina.”

      “So I’ll give you the goods on T.B. if you tell me The Hammer’s foot size.”

      Marly rolled her eyes. “That’s a myth, the foot size thing.”

      “It’s not! Research shows—”

      “Whose research? Let me tell you, the shortest guy I ever slept with, the one with the smallest feet, by the way, had the most gargantuan schlong.”

      Shirlie’s eyes widened. Then she thought about it. “Well, Troy has giant feet, judging by his shoes, but Peggy told me he’s hung like a piece of elbow macaroni. This blows all my survey results out of the water.”

      Marly poked her tongue into her cheek. “Did Peg tell you that when she was angry? Because I don’t buy it.”

      “Ohh.” Shirl stuck the eraser end of her pencil into her ear. “I didn’t think about thaaaat.”

      Be careful, hon, or you’ll shove it right out the other side. Marly grimaced at herself. She shouldn’t be so bitchy—Shirlie was a great receptionist and all the customers loved her. They hadn’t hired her because she had a Ph.D.

      “I’ve got to get ready for my next appointment, Shirl. Just give me a buzz when she shows, okay?”

      “Yeah,” said Shirlie, frowning in concentration, the pencil still in her ear. “So does the Hammer have toe hair? Because that can be a factor, too.”

      Don’t poke your eye out with that, little girl. The pencil obviously wasn’t tangling with a lot of brain matter.

      “Toe hair?” said Marly. “Uh, I really couldn’t say.”

      She went to the back of the salon, removed her scissors from the black nylon bag and stowed it away in a cabinet. Then she went to her station and started straightening things. She gazed fondly at the photo of her dad she kept there; acknowledged a tinge of guilt that she didn’t have a picture of Mom there, too. She sprayed the mirror with Mountain Berry Windex and wiped it clean. She stared at her makeup-free face and wondered just what it was that Jack Hammersmith thought he’d seen in it to feed her that cheesy line. Gullibility? Naiveté? General lack of intelligence?

      Okay, so there was a hidden romantic part of her that thrilled to the story of his great-great-grandfather and his Italian bride. But there was also a big part of her that said, hey—even if it’s a true story—the woman saw an opportunity to marry a rich American and have herself a bit of freedom and adventure in a whole new world. She could have just been an opportunist who didn’t want to marry the village shoemaker or butcher. By no means was it sure that she’d fallen in love….

      “Oh, gawd,” said Nicky behind her, into his cell phone. “He wanted me to turn vegetarian for him! Yes! Can you believe it?”

      Marly tried not to listen to what Nicky was talking about. The last time she’d overheard one of his private conversations, she’d found out more than she wanted to know about the possibilities of chest hair transplants. Imagine a guy having hair-plugs on his chest.

      “Get out!” Nicky shrieked.

      She winced.

      “I don’t believe it.” He ran a hand through his sun streaked golden locks. “You’re telling me. This Internet stuff is for the dogs…except dogs are luckier. They just run up to each other and sniff each other’s butts.”

      Okay, I just do not want to hear this phone call. Marly headed to the kitchenette for some green tea, shaking her head. Nicky was definitely the most flamboyant gay man she’d ever met. The others she knew were a little more subtle, a little more restrained in their demeanor. Nicky was a neon gay pride banner with a built-in squawk box.

      Speaking of squawks…that sure sounded like Shirlie up front. Had a cockroach crawled in the door? Marly went up front out of curiosity, remembering too late that it had killed the cat.

      Governor Jack Hammersmith smiled at her from the doorway while behind him, two bodyguards—or secret service or whatever they were—scanned After Hours for thugs, terrorists or kidnappers.

      One of them honed in on Nicky’s orange spandex pants. The other one honed in on Shirlie’s twenty-two-year-old breasts.

      Marly gaped at The Hammer. “What—are you doing here?”

      “I thought I’d just stop by to see if you had time to—“

      “I’m all booked up,” said Marly. “Sorry.”

      “Actually,” said the ever-helpful Shirlie, “you had a cancellation at two, and, as you can see, Deirdre is more than ten minutes late, so you could take him now.”

      “Fabulous,” said the governor with a smile that would have had Mother Teresa on her back within ten seconds. He stuck out his hand. “I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Jack.”

      “I know who you are!” gushed Shirlie. “Ohmigod, you’re twenty-times-better-looking-than-on-television! Sometimes the makeup’s