After Hours Bundle Read Online Free Page B

like a garden slug.”
    Peg shook her head. “Shirl, you’re impossible. Go dancing tonight. Get it out of your system. Do everything I wouldn’t do, and have fun. You know I adore you, but I cannot check out a customer’s equipment on the sly.”
    â€œCan you step on the sheet accidentally? And, hey, do you have a camera phone? Or you could text message me from the back room—”
    â€œ No. I’m going to lunch now. Can I get you anything while I’m out? A foot-long hot dog, perhaps?” She laughed as Shirlie threw a wad of paper at her, and ducked out the door.
    Peggy walked down the block to a local sandwich shop, grimacing at the heat and humidity of Miami in May. Unfortunately, her seven-o’clock appointment the next day had now started to assume a significance of epic proportions. The question was, would her client’s significant proportions also be epic?

3
    A T FIVE MINUTES TO SEVEN , Peggy put a William Ackerman new age CD into the treatment room’s stereo system and hit the play button. She lit an imported French candle—Japanese-quince scented—and spread plastic, clean white towels and a fresh sheet on her massage table.
    She looked around the room, satisfied that it was soothing and calming. The walls were a delicate pale blue, with a mural of trees, grass and rolling hills on one side and a beach on the other. Marly, the salon’s hairstylist, had painted them, plus a mural of an open window on one end, since the real thing was absent. The window “looked into” a cozy living room, so that the client felt as if he or she was being treated in an outside garden bower. They’d added a real window box at the painted sill and planted silk flowers in it. The effect was charming and magical—as well as soothing.
    For some odd reason, butterflies had invaded Peggy’s stomach. She emerged from the treatment room and rounded the corner, walking down the apple-green hallway and then into the hall near the front of the spa, wiping her palms quickly on her lab coat as she heard the door of After Hours open and close. A deep voice announced that Troy Barrington was here for his seven o’clock appointment.
    Troy. The Man’s name, at last. It fit him: one no-nonsense syllable, and masculine in the extreme. Peg still couldn’t believe she’d forgotten to ask it yesterday.
    She braced herself to go out and get him, tying her hair back into a ponytail since it was best not to shed on the clientele. She buttoned her lab coat and then pulled a tube of Sugar Lips Ride Him Raspberry from her pocket. She dabbed some on her lips while simultaneously scolding herself for primping. She’d sworn off men for a year, remember? Plus, the guy was an über-jock, for God’s sake, and she’d sworn off jocks for life.
    Peg walked into the reception area. She should have brought a tissue to wipe the drool from Shirlie’s chin. The girl’s cheeks were flushed, and she kept rearranging a vase of flowers, managing to snap half the blooms and leaves off them.
    Peggy remembered a time when hot men had made her nervous. But that was so long ago, before she’d learned that they were all schmucks. The butterflies she’d felt in her stomach? Puh-lease. It was just hunger: she wanted her dinner.
    â€œNice to see you again, Troy.” Peg held out her hand to him. See? It wasn’t shaking the tiniest bit.
    Troy had been inspecting the display of erotic lipsticks with a raised brow, paying special attention to Whip Me Cream.
    He turned to greet her and she felt dwarfed by his sheer size: not all height, but breadth, too. Somehow, with the reception counter between them, he hadn’t seemed quite this big yesterday.
    He wrapped huge, warm fingers around hers and clasped gently. “Hi.” He gestured with his head toward the lipsticks. “Interesting products you got there.” He wore a knowing grin.
    She felt a