She sulked for a while.
Syphilis? Or erectile dysfunction? Eeny meeny miny mo, catch a whopper by its toe…please, lady, just let me go!
Then the heavens intervened. “By the way, you should know that I’m not really in the mood anymore, Alejandro.”
Praise God and all His angels. Alejo dredged up a wounded expression. “But…I am devastated.”
She shrugged and tossed her hair over her shoulder. Then she folded her arms across her chest and pressed her knees firmly together. If he hadn’t been so relieved, he might have poked his eyes out with the cuticle stick.
Women. Hard enough to understand them when they were sober. He couldn’t keep up with their lightning changes of mood then, much less adding alcohol to the equation. All he knew was that he’d been spared, thanks be to Jesus.
Alejandro polished Heather’s toes for the second time that night, and then escaped from the room, only to run into Peggy Underwood, his other partner.
Peg, the spa’s massage therapist, stuck her hands into the pockets of her white lab coat and looked pointedly at his crotch. Her eyebrows climbed into her hair. “Alejo, did your client try to Bobbitt you?”
He could feel his face sizzling. “No. She, um…”
“Tried to play footsie with your tootsie?”
“That about covers it.”
Peggy grinned. “Sweetie, it’s gotten to the point where we can tell which women are your clients. The ones who come in for their pedicures in short skirts. They’re absolutely shameless!”
“Yeah, tell me about it. I can’t keep doing this, Peggy. If my buddies find out…” He shook his head.
“Alejandro. Since you’ve been doing pedicures, our revenue on them has shot sky-high. Like it or not, your fifty-dollar pedicures are bringing in over two thousand dollars a week, and don’t tell me to hire someone else, because it’s you they want. Shirlie tells me we get calls all the time, asking for the guy who looks like Jesse Metcalfe from Desperate Housewives. If you’re not available, they say they’ll wait.”
“But it’s humiliating!” he complained. “You don’t understand. Peruvian men don’t give manicures or pedicures. They just don’t! You have no idea what will happen if this gets out. I will be branded rosquete, be the butt of jokes, kicked off the soccer team!”
“What’s a rosquete?” Peggy asked.
Alejandro shuddered. “It’s very rude. It means big doughnut, and it’s used to describe gay men.”
Peg snorted with laughter.
“It’s not funny!” he hissed. “Not at all.”
“Sorry,” she said, trying and failing to smother her mirth.
“I’m telling you, I cannot do this anymore.”
She sobered. “Alejo, it’s just until we get the business loans paid down. You said it yourself.”
“Yes, and my MBA loan, and—There’s no end in sight. Meanwhile I’m dying inside every time I touch a woman’s foot or hand!”
“Sweetie, how many men would beg to be mauled by beautiful women all day long?”
He growled.
“Plenty of Asian men do nails. Why shouldn’t you?”
He growled again.
“I know, I know. But we’ll keep your secret. None of the clients even know your real name, Señor Manos, and your friends just think you’re an owner. It will be fine. Our secret. Just for a few more months.”
He groaned and swiped a hand over his face. “You don’t understand. Latino men do not give manicures!”
2
THE NEXT MORNING, Alejandro sat in dark slacks and a pressed white shirt in his marketing class, one of the requirements for the Executive MBA program at the University of Miami.
As usual, his gaze strayed from the professor’s scintillating discussion of economics to the profile of Kate Spinney, a fellow classmate.
Kate’s face was all angles and planes and chiseled features—like a young Katharine Hepburn. Even in her baggy, frayed khaki pants and oversize man’s blue oxford shirt, her feet stuck into beat-up, brown penny loafers, Kate was gorgeous. And as far as he could tell, completely unaware of her looks.
Penny loafers. God, they were ugly! Women in Miami did not wear such things. They wore high-heeled, strappy, sexy sandals. They wore ankle bracelets and toe rings. They did not wear men’s shoes or shapeless clothing.
But Alejandro had observed Kate for months now, and he couldn’t imagine her in sexy, strappy heels or low-slung, skintight pants that bared her belly.
When it came to fashion, she was a walking disaster, and when it came to social grace…His mouth twisted wryly. Kate certainly hadn’t been born in the South.
At the meet-and-greet cocktail party that kicked off the first semester of the program, she’d stood forlornly in her loafers, clutching a bottle of beer in her scrawny hands. She’d shredded the label using her ragged, unpolished nails within minutes, and she shook hands like a man: no nonsense, vice-like grip, brief nod and sketchy introduction. “Hi, I’m Kate Spinney from Boston.”
No, “A pleasure to make your acquaintance,” or “Nice to meet you.” Just the identifying tag and the impersonal hand-squeeze. That was Kate.
She had the intellectual capacity of a mainframe computer, and Alejandro wondered why she wasn’t studying business at Harvard or Yale or Wharton. Overall, she seemed the sort of person who belonged in Miami about as much as a hooker belonged in a convent.
He was curious; intrigued. And he didn’t know why, since his tastes in women usually ran to black hair, C-cup and size eight. Kate had springy, crazy, ginger-brown hair, tiny breasts that he’d guess were an A-minus and she’d be lucky to be a size two. In short, she was built like a string mop. And yet…he thought about her.
She wasn’t an everyday, average woman, and he’d detected a hidden sense of humor behind her Yankee reserve. Every once in a while her green eyes went warm and sparkled with a sense of the ridiculous, etching lines of sweetness around her mouth. There was more to Kate than met the eye.
He turned his attention back to Professor Kurtz, a big burly guy with small eyes in a slab of face. But Alejandro couldn’t stop his eyes from wandering back over Kate’s messy, wiry curls and the way they clung to her delicate neck.
Kurtz was waxing poetic on the intricacies of supply and demand, using a certain brand of baby lotion as an example when Kate called out, “Excuse me, but that’s incorrect.”
All eyes in the small auditorium swiveled to her, and then to Kurtz and then back to her.
The professor bristled. “What do you mean, incorrect?”
“I mean that your information is wrong. In 2002, Johnson & Johnson wasn’t even marketing that product.”
“My information is reliable.”
“Johnson didn’t put that new lotion formula onto the shelves until spring of 2003. They were still product-testing in 2002. I know this because Spinney Industries is their main competitor, and we introduced our version of that lotion in October of 2001, gaining the edge in the market.”
Kurtz blinked his small eyes rapidly. After a pause, he said, “Fine. Thank you, Miss Spinney.”
“You’re welcome. And it’s Ms., please.”
A collective rustle