Walter assigning Lucky to audit a string of pharmacies in Alabama provided their cover story. Still being the boss had some privileges.
Two days later Lucky knocked on the door of a middle of the road hotel room. He hadn’t been followed; he wasn’t being tracked. He’d checked his loaner four times. Paranoia saved lives. The night in a hotel room without Bo hadn’t been kind. His head pounded a steady tempo.
At least his Ray-Bans protected his eyes from the bright Texas sunshine, and he’d been able to leave his jacket at his hotel. So much warmer in Houston than Atlanta.
A young woman opened the door wearing a huge smile full of braces, framed by glittery lipstick. “Hi, I’m Viv.” She beckoned with a beringed hand sporting long, polished fingernails. “Come in. I’ve been expecting you. Cruz will be here soon.” She was a bit shorter than Lucky, maybe five-feet-four or so, with tomato red hair cropped close to her scalp on one side and touching her chin on the other. Huge dangly earrings threatened to pull her earlobes off, and the fluorescent lights glinted off an eyebrow piercing. A distinct Texas twang flavored her words.
As did the chewing gum she popped loudly. This woman was an agent? Lucky owned socks older than her.
Dressed in dark leggings and a white button-down tied at the bottom to expose her waist, she’d have been right at home at Ty’s school—bending the dress code.
What looked like instruments of torture formed a neat row on the bed, and a rather uncomfortable-looking chair sat in the middle of the room.
Were hotel rooms supposed to be this bright?
“Sit,” she commanded. Her cocked eyebrow and scowl struck fear into Lucky’s heart. Something told him she might be small but fierce. Another cocky bantam rooster? More fashionable than Lucky, and undoubtably better mannered, but still, the woman came with attitude to spare.
Lucky sat, facing a full-length mirror. Blood-read nails combed through his hair, lifting. Silver rings clinked together on her fingers.
“Yes, I can really do something here,” Viv said with a happy-sounding sigh. She draped a plastic sheet over his shoulders and held it together with a hair clip. “I won’t change the color too much since Cruz says you’re not used to the level of disguises we use, but I’ll change the texture and cover the gray.”
Cover the gray? Lucky opened his mouth to ask, “What gray?” when two taps at the door preceded Cruz waltzing into the room.
He held a tray carrying three Starbucks cups. “Stevia, decaf, no cream, right?” Cruz lifted one leg and kicked the door closed.
“Yeah.” Cruz remembered how Lucky took his coffee. Creepy.
Viv wrinkled her nose, making her look even more like a high schooler. “You didn’t get me the same thing, did you?” She popped a bubble—loudly. How the hell did she chew gum with braces?
Cruz lifted a cup and grinned. “Nope. Skinny vanilla latte with soy milk.” Lucky bit back,“Isn’t she a bit young for you to flirt with?”But he’d seen Cruz flirting. The way he eyed Viv was beyond his normal meaningful glances. No, he studied this woman like she’d hung the moon.
Like Lucky watched Bo.
Viv took the cup and grinned. “You’re the best.”
“You are too, but we need to get going.” Cruz winked. Yup, there he went with the flirting again, but with more meaning somehow.
Lucky sipped his coffee and tried not to pay too much attention to the chatter and suggestions going on behind him. His straight hair turned wavy, and two shades darker than normal. “Temporary color. It washes out after a few shampoos,” Viv explained, moving on to his eyebrows.
She colored his brows, and shaped them to be un-Lucky-like. “I hear you got a baby on the way. Boy or girl?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“Go you! Old school!” Viv popped a bubble way too close to his ear. “I like. In my opinion, life shouldn’t be so planned out. Where’s the excitement in that?”
Still, Lucky would like to know.
“Got names picked out?”
“We’ve got a short list. We can’t really decide on a name until the kid gets here. Bo’s a third, so says anything but William Patrick Schollenberger IV.” Or as Bo said,“This name needs to stop.”
“How about your family names?” Viv continued working on him, never missing a beat.
Lucky’d kept his naming requirements simpler. “We’re not naming a kid after a NASCAR track.”
Viv looked from Lucky to Cruz in the mirror.
“Don’t ask,” Cruz said, from his place on the bed, propped against the headboard and occasionally offering unhelpful advice like, “Think you can make him prettier?” and “you know, we could always put him in drag.”
