Polished Slick (Natural Beauty) Read online

They’d have to find another way to get air into the often-stuffy barn.

  Trinity tried not to pay attention to the men working in the rafters. For once, Jerry had worn shorts to work, and it took all the willpower she could muster to avoid falling into a hypnotic trance from ogling his calves. She didn’t have time for that. As it was, if it were possible, she’d give herself a swift kick in the ass for throwing herself at the man the way she had the night before. A good night’s sleep hadn’t improved her guilt over the situation—if anything, she woke up feeling even more ill at ease.

  If she’d been paying attention to the screen, and not her long-neglected libido, she might have been able to…well, she didn’t know for sure if she could have made a difference. The barn was a bit of a drive from the closest police or sheriff station, so by the time law enforcement arrived, the saboteurs might have been gone.

  Nikki wanted to keep the police out of it for the time being and do some investigation on her own.

  Trinity sighed. No use getting hung up on it. She just wouldn’t allow herself to be distracted in that way again, no matter how unnervingly sexy the distraction was.

  Fortunately, he seemed to be avoiding her, too, so maybe she wouldn’t have to try so hard.

  “Trin, the polishes look great!”

  Trinity jumped.

  Nikki had snuck up, quite a feat at that stage of pregnancy, and positioned herself at the bench carrying the crate of reformulated colors she’d been storing at the house.

  “Really?” Trinity picked up a few of the filled syringes and examined the tones and opacities. “I like this one,” she said, holding up a pale pink.

  “Yeah, I had preteens and debutantes in mind when I mixed that one. Not for you, though.” She took it, gingerly, from Trinity’s fingers, rooted through the crate, and pulled out a wild orange-y peach. “Yeah, that one’s more your speed. Reminds me of the color you blush.”

  “I don’t blush that much.”

  “You’re blushing right now.”

  Yeah, she probably was.

  “Why don’t you try some on? I’d like your opinion.”

  “Well, I don’t really wear nail polish. The last time I bought any it was clear and I needed it for pantyhose. Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve worn pantyhose?”

  Nikki nodded sagely. “I can guess.” She closed Trinity’s fingers around the peach, then found olive green and midnight blue syringes as well. “Try those on. You’re paler than me, and I’m curious about the pigments.”

  “Um.” Trinity closed her fingers around the tubes, but her expression must have been wary, because Nikki laughed and gave Trinity’s back a reassuring thud.

  “You’re in a damned good mood for someone whose business keeps getting broken into.”

  Nikki shrugged. “My polish is safe, so why bark? And why are you so tightly wound today?”

  “I’m not.”

  “Yeah you are. Juan said you showed up for game night last night.” Nikki leaned in close to whisper. “It’s not like Jerry to get distracted, so I suspect you’re the cause.”

  “I…I just wanted to watch the stream.”

  “Right. Sounds like the worst foreplay ever.”

  “We didn’t…”

  “I don’t care. I really don’t. Just don’t let whatever it is or isn’t affect your work. Take a break this morning. I want to spend some time with the soap makers, and we need your bench to set paperwork on. Find a comfy corner and give yourself a manicure. Let me know when you’re done.”

  Nikki gave Trinity another pat on the back, and shuffled in her sparkly flip-flops toward Francine and Daisy.

  Trinity sighed and stared at the nail polishes in hand. What a waste of time, but if Nikki said to polish her nails, she’d polish her damn nails.

  Trinity settled onto one of the chenille sofas and twisted an applicator brush onto the peach-tone polish. She shook the syringe vigorously and flipped off the little plastic cap, grumbling all the way. She started on her right pinky and immediately smeared the stuff onto all three cuticle sides.

  “Awesome.”

  The next four nails weren’t much better. Briefly fanning her wet right hand to set the polish, she picked up the next shade.

  That hand was a far worse disaster, since she was nowhere near as ambidextrous as some southpaws she knew. She was scraping the excess off her skin with a thumbnail when Nikki waddled over and leaned on the sofa back.

  “Hmm. Love, love, love the blue. But, I don’t like the peach after all. It reminds me of this girl I used to dance with. She was all sunshine and flowers until other people got picked to dance lead roles. Then she was a downright bitch. Pale skank of an ice princess who the guys hated to lift for reasons they wouldn’t elaborate on. She used to wear this peach headband all the time. Matched her leg warmers. I’m trashing that one.”

  “Oh-kay.”

  “Stay right there.” Nikki dragged the entire polish box over along with a paper bag of organic Mitchell Farm cotton balls and a squeeze bottle of Natural by Nicolette nail polish remover. “I need you to try colors two, four, nine, thirteen, and fifteen.”

  “Nikki, I can’t just sit here painting my nails all morning.”

  “Yes, you can. And you will. And don’t forget you have toes, love. Let me know when you’re done with the next colors.” She waddled away once, leaving Trinity to stew.

  “Seriously?” Trinity sighed and grabbed the nail polish remover. The sooner she got it over with, the better. If Nikki didn’t want her to work, she could be at home catching up on reading or something.

  “You haven’t had much practice with that, have you, pixie?” Jerry walked around the sofa and sat on the arm furthest from Trinity, grinning at her.

  She narrowed her eyes and parted her lips to tell him what he could go do with himself, but there was something unusual about his face that made her take a longer look.

  He cocked up an eyebrow.

  Ah. “Where’d your lip, nose, and brow piercings go?”

  “Took them out yesterday.” He ran his tongue behind the missing labret stud to emphasize the hole.

  “Yesterday when?” Hadn’t they been there the night before when she’d damn near attacked his face?

  Must not have been. She would have felt the lip stud, at least.

  “After work. Need the holes to shrink a bit.”

  “You going to put them back in?”

  He shrugged. “Why, you going to miss ’em?”

  “No.”

  His grin broadened. “I love that you’re so blunt. I don’t know if I’ll put them back in. On one hand, I’m kind of bored with them, but on the other I’ve had them so long that I’ll probably feel the loss keenly for a while.”

  “Maybe you can pierce something else.”

  He shook his head. “Nah, I’m good.”

  Yet to be proven. Where that thought came from, she had no idea, but it made her face burn all the same. She wasn’t going to give him a chance to prove anything. No distractions.

  “Can I help?” He riffled through the box and studied the pens.

  “Um…I…” Awkward. “Don’t you have tech stuff to do?”

  He pursed his lips and shook his head. “Waiting for the server to install some updates. I was holding off on them, but when I plugged everything back in this morning, it wouldn’t take no for an answer. None of us have internet connectivity for the moment.”

  “Oh.”

  “I know what I can do.” He stood from the armrest, bent, and propped Trinity’s sneaker-clad feet atop the coffee table. He untied the knots with dexterous fingers, and slipped her shoes off.

  She had never been so glad to have had cleaned the holey socks out of her drawer the week before. He peeled off her socks, stuffed them tidily into her sneakers, and then straddled her legs to sit on the coffee table.

  He picked up her ankles and placed her feet onto his lap.

  “All right, hand me number two.” He extended his palm, and his expres
sion was deathly serious.

  “Are you…? Wait…”

  “Two is gold? Let me see it.” He made a gimme gesture with his hand.

  She handed the configured syringe over. “This is kind of awkward.”

  He uncapped the brush and flattened Trinity’s right foot toward his belly for easier application. “It’s only awkward if you act like it is.”

  “Nikki’s gonna…”

  “Gonna what?” He focused those odd brown-rimmed, blue eyes at her.

  She could get lost in those eyes.

  She sighed. He was right. Nikki wasn’t going to do a damned thing.

  He slicked the cold polish onto her big toe, and the little tingles made her giggle. She hadn’t thought she was ticklish, but the gentle caress of his fingers around her arch to hold her still contributed to the discomfort a bit. She shifted in her seat, making him tighten his grip around her foot.

  “Stay still, pixie. This here is fine art.”

  “Right.” She giggled again right as Nikki returned.

  Nikki cocked her head to the side and squinted at the exposed foot between Jerry’s legs.

  Oh God. What’s she thinking?

  “How’s that?” Jerry asked with complete nonchalance, and Trinity couldn’t believe how damned casual they were.

  Nikki squatted down on her heels as if she were about to give birth, and took Trinity’s hands into hers to assess the second round of polish she’d applied.

  “Olive, yes. I’m on the fence about the purple. It looked good on you, though.”

  Trinity gaped.

  Jerry didn’t react.

  Nikki returned Trinity’s hands back on her lap, and shifted her attention to Jerry’s handiwork. “I like both the platinum and the gold.”

  “Me, too. These were Beth’s favorites, right?”

  “Yeah. She stole about half the batches and has been wearing them all over town. Generating some demand, so I can’t really bitch at her.” She gave Trinity a commendatory slap on the knee. “Cool. Let me see the last one then you can take the afternoon off, okay?”

  Trinity furrowed her forehead at the generosity. That was oddly magnanimous for Nikki. “Really?”

  “Uh-huh. But there’s a catch.”

  Naturally. “What is it?”

  “I’m going to give you an address for a place in Elizabeth City. I need you to go pick some stuff up for me. You can just keep it in your car until next Tuesday. It’s for the shoot.”

  “Oh! Well that’s easy.”

  Jerry and Nikki shared a look.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” Nikki said sweetly.

  Trinity believed her as far as she could throw her, and with Nikki being eight months pregnant, that wasn’t far at all.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Trinity and Ginger sat beneath an oversized beach umbrella in Corolla late Saturday afternoon, watching the waves crash, and chatting about nothing in particular.

  Ginger was dressed in her usual one-piece bathing suit and a matching sarong.

  Trinity wore a bikini with a bandeau top she had to keep hitching up.

  Clearance bin: 1, Trinity: 0. So much for trying to be fashionable. Apparently that was hard without tits.

  Sometimes the duo swam. Sometimes they gathered shells or pretty stones. Mostly, they sat quietly, occasionally plucking beers from the cooler they used as a table between them, and caught up on beach reading.

  They’d been there all day and would probably repeat the activity every Saturday and Sunday until fall.

  Ginger sometimes rented out the little Corolla cottage, but mostly left it vacant for their easy access. She said if she ever retired, she’d move there and transfer her house in Edenton to Trinity.

  Trinity didn’t want to think about it.

  “You’re starting to burn a bit, Trin. I think you’re in the sun.” Ginger stared at her great-niece over the tops of her cat-eye sunglasses. She was channeling Lucille Ball with all that red hair piled high and held back with a kerchief.

  Trinity eyed her shoulder and cringed. “Crap. That’ll be itching for a week. I’m going to pack it in for the day and take a cool shower. You coming?”

  “Nah. Take the cooler, will you? I’m going to hang out a little while longer. I’ve got four chapters left and I want to start something new tomorrow.”

  “Aunt Ginger, you’ve been slogging your way through that book for three weekends now. If it sucks, just quit.”

  “I can’t! I paid full price.”

  Trinity rolled her eyes and flattened her beach chair. “Masochist.”

  “I’m a dentist, so I guess deserve a little self-inflicted pain.”

  “Right.” Trinity tucked the chair into the space between the cooler’s extendable handle and the wheels, and hiked her bag up onto her shoulder. “See you for dinner.”

  “No rush, Trin. Why don’t you go have a drink or something? I’m going to stroll down to Della’s. I haven’t seen her since she got back from that service trip to Mexico.”

  “Okay.”

  Ginger’s house was second row from the beach, so the trek was hardly grueling. That didn’t stop Trinity from exhaustedly tripping all over herself when she noticed a familiar yellow Jeep parked in the public lot.

  It couldn’t be.

  A few more feet and a man with a naked, heavily-tattooed chest, and wearing Hawaiian-print swim trunks came into view.

  Jerry didn’t see her.

  Trinity paused, looking around and wondering if there was a more circuitous route to the house, but she took too long finding it.

  He slammed his back door shut, turned around, and caught sight of her with little hassle. Shock registered on his face for a brief moment, then he smiled and waved. He jogged over to her in bare feet.

  “Hey there, pixie.”

  “Um…hi.” The bit of fidgeting she did made her nearly drop the cooler. Her bandeau was slipping, and she didn’t have a free hand to grab it.

  He stepped in and took her tote from her.

  “Going home?”

  “Well, sort of. My aunt has a house here.”

  “Oh, you mean the charming lady from the bar?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Cool. Can I help you tote some of that?” He went ahead and laced his fingers around the cooler handle without waiting for an answer.

  She let him do it.

  “Are you…coming or going?” she asked as they took up a moderate pace toward the cottage with her slightly in the lead.

  “Coming. Can’t really surf when there are too many swimmers in the way.”

  “Oh, right. I never tried. Extent of my water sport prowess is paddling a canoe.”

  “Better than nothing, right?”

  “Yeah, I guess. This is the house. Can you put that stuff on the porch? I’m going to shower off on the side.”

  “Of course.”

  She hurried around and practically threw herself under the cold stream of water while hoisting up her top.

  Don’t even look at him. Don’t look. It’s a trap and he’s just the bait. Nope. Don’t do it.

  Although she got all the sand out of the most critical places, the shower did nothing for her surging libido. Her breasts ached even under the cold water just thinking about his skillful tongue, and here she was, practically naked for his inspection. She shut off the water, and quietly lurked up the stairs to the side door. She eased it open, and darted into the house in search of a shirt.

  She found a plain white one crumpled on the floor beside the guest bed, and pulled it on before letting Jerry in through the front door.

  “Do you have a wetsuit or rash guard? Something a bit more secure than a bikini top?” he asked as he carried the heavy cooler over the hardwood floor of the sitting room into the nearby kitchen. He’d already dumped the remaining ice.

  Handy guy to have around.

  She pinched herself for even thinking of the possibilities. Her and Jerry? No way.

  “U
m, no. I don’t.”

  “Pity. I would have put you on my spare board and taught you to surf.”

  She guffawed. With her limited coordination, that effort would end with epic mortification and possibly mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. The mouth-to-mouth part might have been nice, though. “Not really my scene,” she said.

  He was nonplussed. “You might like it if you tried it. It’s a good work-out.” He picked up a bottle of aloe perched atop the center island and handed it over to her. “Looks like you need that.”

  “Thanks.” She took it, and walked toward the bathroom where she could pull off her shirt without scrutiny.

  “Need some help? Your shoulder blades were looking a bit charred. You need to be better about being under the shade. What happened? Did you fall asleep and the sun moved?”

  “Yeah. Damned good nap, too.”

  “Beer and heat are good for that.”

  She sighed, and tried to reach the tingling parts of her back, but couldn’t manage it. “Yes, I’d like some help,” she said quietly. She pulled a towel from the nearby hook.

  He slid into the tight bathroom and took the bottle she extended, standing very close to her back. Careful hands slid over her sunburned skin, and the chill of the gel made her shudder.

  “I’m going to undo your clasp.” He unhooked it without waiting for her objection, and ran a finger over the burning line where her band ended and sunburn began.

  “Ouch.”

  “That’s the worst of it. If you were any redder I’d want to dip you in butter and bite you.”

  “Funny.” She held the bandeau tight over her chest and reached for the T-shirt she’d accidentally dropped off the sink side.

  In one deft movement, he pulled at the loose bandeau strap and yanked the top away from her.

  “Jerry!” She wound the towel around her top and turned to face the bandit.

  He was very close to her, so close that when she turned, the side of her arm grazed against the erection his swim trunks couldn’t hide.

  Her breath hitched, and she shuffled her weight from foot to foot awkwardly, uncertain of what to do. Leave? Tell him to leave?

  “I figured you’d like to finish what you started at my place,” he said smugly.

  “Th-that was a mistake,” she said, shaking her head emphatically from side to side.