“Right.”
He felt like a real dumb-ass as he slid along the bench seat to make room for her. What had he thought was going to happen? That she was about to give him a little demonstration of sex how she liked it?
The booths were designed for intimacy, and he found himself brushing against her as she sat beside him. Her scent enveloped him, and he inhaled surreptitiously.
“Bulgari,” she said matter-of-factly. “Drives men nuts.”
He let out a crack of laughter. She never missed a trick.
“You sure it’s the perfume?” he asked.
She turned her face toward him, and he admired the sweep of her cheekbones and the heart-shaped fullness of her mouth. Her nose was straight and proud, a delicate, feminized version of his own Greek prow, and her teeth flashed white against the plum of her lipstick.
He was as hard as a rock, thanks to her perfume, her tight little top, the sass of her conversation and the chemistry between them. He reminded himself again that she was forbidden fruit—his greatest competitor—but tonight little head was prevailing over big head. And little head was only thinking of one thing: getting Claudia naked as soon as possible.
She opened her mouth to respond just as a skinny guy wearing a cap pulled down low over his face slid into the booth opposite them. Leandro felt Claudia stiffen beside him and he instinctively put a reassuring hand on her knee. Her elbow jabbed him sharply in the ribs and he slid his hand free. For a moment there he’d forgotten who he was sitting next to. God forbid that Claudia Dostis need reassurance.
“I know who you are,” the guy said, gaze flickering over Leandro. He was more interested in Claudia, however. “You’re the producer of Ocean Boulevard, huh? Figured you’d be older. And uglier.”
His tone was lascivious.
“And I figured you’d be smarter. Life’s full of disappointments. Where’s this tape you say you have?” she said.
The guy’s rat-sharp face hardened as he processed her insult, but he placed a notebook computer case on the table.
“I don’t say I have anything—I’ve got it. And if you want it, you’re going to have to pay,” Rat Man said.
Claudia looked bored. Leandro dropped an elbow onto the table and leaned forward.
“More showy, less talky,” he said. “Then we can discuss what it’s worth. For all we know you’ve got footage of a pajama party.”
Rat Man laughed. “No pajamas at this party, buddy,” he said.
Unzipping the bag, he flipped open the lid on a seen-better-days notebook computer and pressed a button. The screen sprang to life, and Rat Man flicked them both a look of anticipation before hitting the touch pad.
Leandro met Claudia’s sideways glance and correctly interpreted the dismay in her guarded expression. Whatever was on the original tape, it had already been converted to digital. Which meant it was just a few mouse clicks away from finding its way, via the Internet, into every teen boy’s hard drive across the country.
The screen started out black, then a naked body walked in front of the camera and Leandro recognized Wes, naked and sporting a very respectable hard-on. A second body entered the frame, moving in a blur of motion, launching herself at Wes so that he fell backward onto the bed, the woman on top. Leandro recognized her as Alicia Morrison only because he knew it was supposed to be her—the woman on the screen could not have been further removed from the “pure as the driven snow” character she played on Boulevard, or the sweet girl next door she presented as in real life. Naked, full-breasted, and sporting a tattoo of a miniature devil with a pitchfork on her left butt cheek, she was very much in charge. Straddling Wes’s body, she wriggled her hips until she had him placed just right, then she glanced over her shoulder toward the camera.
The look on her face was pure naughtiness as she slid down onto Wes’s erection. She licked her lips, closed her eyes and mouthed the word “Yum” to the camera. Then she started to work her hips like a seasoned pole dancer, and Rat Man clicked the screen to blackness.
“I want five hundred thousand,” he said.
Leandro didn’t bother checking with Claudia.
“What do you think we are, Bank of America? You think we’ve got that kind of money lying around?”
“I don’t give a shit,” Rat Man said, supremely cocky now. “You get me the money by Friday, or this goes public. She’s pretty hot stuff, that little blond girl, isn’t she? I reckon I’ll be able to spin a few bucks out of folks watching her shaking her tail feather.”
“Spare us the yap, Sparky,” Claudia snapped. “How are we going to make this exchange? And how do we know you won’t take the money and release the footage anyway?”
“You’ll just have to trust me, won’t you? I’m the one calling the shots. Which means we’ll meet back here, this booth, this time on Friday. No cops, no smart stuff, nothing—or my partner smears this across the world,” Rat Man said, patting the computer confidently.
“I’ll be here,” Leandro said. There was nothing else to be done at this stage, of course. They had to keep stringing the guy along, no matter what they decided afterward.
“Not you—her. Just her,” Rat Man said. “I like her.”
He smiled, showcasing his yellowed and prominent canines. Leandro opened his mouth to protest, but Claudia’s hand clamped down on his thigh beneath the table.
“Done. I’ll see you on Friday,” she said.
She didn’t look at Rat Man again as she slid from the booth and strode for the door. Leandro wanted very badly to wrap his hand around the skinny guy’s throat and shake him until the videotape and all the copies the little creep had no doubt already made came tumbling out.
But he knew that wasn’t the smart way to play it, so he followed Claudia out the door and up the street.
He could tell by the way she walked that she was angry. Amazing how quickly a person could learn to read another person. He’d only ever seen Claudia at a handful of organizing committee meetings prior to the actual convention, but he could read her like a book. And right now she was steaming.
“What a sleazy loser,” she vented once she’d reached a silver Porsche Cayenne SUV. “Exactly how dumb does he think we are? The moment we give him his five hundred grand, that footage is going to every downloadable porn site on the Net. Even if only a small percentage of people actually pay to see it, he’ll still make a fortune.”
“Yep,” Leandro said, digging his hands into his jeans pockets as Claudia paced back and forth in front of him, her high-heeled boots clicking on the pavement. She was wearing tight black jeans that hugged her legs like a second skin, and even though most of his brain was busy trying to find a way out of the mess their two stars had landed them in, a small, primitive part of his mind was noticing that she had the pertest, perkiest damn butt he’d ever seen.
“No wonder Alicia was crying. That tape will ruin her career,” Claudia fretted, running a hand through her silky bob. “All because that…rat got his hands on something private and personal.”
She’d been right about the footage, about Alicia’s part in the taping. Alicia had been knowing, aggressive, a real vixen. And if it went public, she was going to be labelled a porn slut by the media no matter what spin was put on it. Rob Lowe might have lived his escapades down, but the only way Alicia could recover anything from this situation would be if she went the Pamela Anderson, Paris Hilton route. He didn’t have to know Alicia to guess it wasn’t exactly the career trajectory she’d had planned.
“What do you think?” Claudia asked, stopping in front of him and tucking her hands into the back pockets of her jeans.
The