Lucas’s internal sigh stopped just short of being audible. “Where’d he find her, anyway? That TV show was canceled how many seasons ago?”
Ellen grimaced. “She found him. I’m afraid. Youknowwhat that means.”
“She wants something.”
“But just try tellinghimthat.”
Lucas got up from his desk, took a fleeting glance at the Santa Barbara coastline, imagining the sailboat where he’d hoped to spend the day. Maybe he still could. Maybe this wouldn’t take too long. He opened the door of his office and nodded at Ellen. “Shall we?”
The walls of Killer Body, Inc. were plastered with photographs of Julie Larimore, the company spokesmodel. The walls of Bobby Warren’s office were plastered with photographs of Bobby Warren. The shots of the iron-pumping man in the posters had little in common with the Bobby W of today, who, although he still worked out, had to do it around the good-size paunch beneath his windbreaker. Sitting on the chaise across from his cherry-wood desk, he held a glass of bourbon in one hand and Rochelle McArthur’s thigh in the other.
“Come in, come in,” he said, as if greeting a visitor to his home. Apparently forgetting Rochelle, he rose to shake Lucas’s hand and greet Ellen with a kiss on the cheek that turned into an appraising gaze of her body. He smelled of expensive cologne, like the ones that arrived embedded on the glossy papers accompanying Lucas’s credit card bills each month.
And bourbon. Yes, he smelled of that, too. And it wasn’t even noon yet.
“Care for a cocktail, Luke?”
Fifties word, fifties attitude toward liquor in a health-oriented organization.
“No, thanks. It’s a little early for me.”
Bobby W grinned, bringing his eyes, the same color as the bourbon, to life. Lucas couldn’t help giving in to a smile. He hoped he had half the old man’s stamina when he was his age.
“We were getting ready to have a little lunch out on the balcony.” Then it obviously hit him he’d forgotten the other half of thatwe.“Oh, please. I’m sorry. You know Shelly, of course.”
Lucas nodded, although they’d met only once in passing.
“Lucas is our marketing director,” he said. “My right arm. And Ellen here is my left arm.”
“The rest of that body belongs to you, I hope.” With an unstated defiance, Rochelle McArthur crossed her legs and didn’t bother to pull down the skirt of her shimmery knit dress, green as the contact lenses she wore.
Her voice was the way Lucas remembered it from her tele-vision series. The face and body hadn’t fared as well. Either hard living or plastic surgery left her looking drawn beneath her ironed-on tan and bleached-to-the-point-of-brittle hair.
Still, to a seventy-year-old widower, his vision dulled by Crown Royal and loneliness, Rochelle probably looked like one of the hotties draped like fur coats around Bobby W in the photographs on his wall.
“I’m always in the market for takers.” The old man sat down next to her on the silver-gray chaise, and Ellen and Lucas followed suit on the other side of the coffee table. Ellen perched on the edge of her chair, as if whatever had afflicted Rochelle were contagious and she didn’t want to catch it.
“So what we’re discussing is the Ass Blaster,” Bobby W continued, as was his way, as if they’d all been in on the conversation from the beginning. “This aerobic stuff is shit, ifyou’ll pardon my French. I’m not denying what it does for the heart, but what good is your heart if you’re hauling around an assload of lard?”
“My point exactly, Bobbo.”
Damn. No one but his oldest buddies called Bobby WBobbo.Yet, he didn’t seem to mind.
Lucas glanced past Rochelle’s crisscrossed high-heeled sandals, her long white-tipped toenails, at the pearl-inlaid coffee table and its conveniently available coasters. She’d barely touched her drink. Catching his eye, she reached down and lifted the glass to her lips, deliberately. “You know, Bobbo, someone needs to say it just like that. No mincing words.”
Now she’d done it. If anything glazed Bobby W’s eyes and good sense more than a semisexy woman looking his way, it was someone, anyone, agreeing with him.
Lucas winced as Bobby W shot him a look of pained superiority and ran his hand across the fraying remains of what had once been a full head of hair. “I’ve been trying to tell that to my good friend Luke, here, but every once in a while, we fail to see eye to eye.”
“But I’m sure not very often.” Without moving her gaze from Lucas, Rochelle reached for her glass once more. “Killer Body being your business and all.”
“Good business is good people, and I have the best.” Bobby W frowned at his empty glass, as if it, and not this troublesome conversation, were making him uncomfortable. “Ellen, honey, get me the Ass Blaster file, will you?”
Ellen stood, as if glad for an excuse to flee. “Which Ass Blaster file?”
“The marketing file. The photos, endorsements. Hell, why not bring in the prototype, too? Maybe Shelly would like to try it out, see if we can improve on perfection.”
“Sure,” she said in a voice that sounded like a sigh.
