Flirting with Temptation - By Kelley St. John Page 0,27
dark circles under her eyes, due to her insistence upon a new ’do.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow she’d see Jeff and start the two-fold progression to one, make him realize he was a fool for not calling her back, and two, get him to give Kitty another chance so Babette could keep her business thriving, taking full advantage of Kitty’s extra-healthy chunk of cash and her connections in the Birmingham society scene.
A big gust of wind passed through the window, and she inhaled thick salty air. She really loved it down here and was slightly miffed at herself for not returning since her split with Jeff. A beach vacation would’ve been nice, but it’d have also taken money, and heaven knew she hadn’t had much of that. However, thanks to Kitty, that was changing. And the additional clients that would come because of Kitty could change it permanently.
“Wild ride, lady!” The screaming kid was perched outside of a hut-shaped shop speckled with airbrushed T-shirts and car tags. He held a fluorescent green T-shirt, apparently his item to be painted, since he was standing in line with a horde of other kids waiting for the airbrush artist to embellish their purchases. As if Babette hadn’t heard him, he waved the shirt in the air and yelled again, and the remainder of the line turned to see what had caught his attention.
Babette smiled and patted the dash. She’d grown so accustomed to heads turning when she drove Sylvia, her pet name for her CRX, that every now and then she forgot how unique the vehicle was. Sylvia was one of a kind, for sure, but not in the Lamborghini or Ferrari arena. She was more like that car Johnny Cash sang about, made up of a wild conglomeration of pieces and parts.
A teenager who lived next to Babette at her old apartment, the one she lived in before she moved next door to Granny Gert, was a vo-tech student, and Babette had let him and his classmates practice on Sylvia. The only problem was that she had no say in the final product, and they never practiced the same technique on the entire car. As a result, Sylvia was truly eclectic. The body on the driver’s side was pale purple. For a couple of years, the passenger’s side had simply been primer, but the boys had finally given it a shiny candycoat finish, transparent red over gold. The hood was royal blue with a hot pink swirling flame that looked like something straight off Pimp My Ride.
Babette had considered getting a more conservative, or at least more normal, vehicle after she’d started the Love Doctor venture, but Sylvia was paid for, ran great and got a lot of attention. And, God help her, Babette liked attention.
Another surfer dude whistled as she cruised down the street, and Babette whistled back. Damn, she’d missed the beach. And beach guys. She wouldn’t have even considered anything more than whistling at the guy (and she did that while her car was moving away from him); he looked nineteen, early-twenties tops, and she wasn’t ready to be a cougar. But that was the great thing about Florida and the beach. The guys would flirt, she could flirt back, and that was that. There wasn’t any third date consideration, because there wasn’t a first or second date to begin with. It was a fun, free-spirited atmosphere with sand and sun and waves, and Babette truly blended well here. Well, maybe “blended” wasn’t the right word. She stood out, from her car to her hair to her clothes, but standing out wasn’t a bad thing. The locals and the tourists seemed to appreciate it, which was emphasized again when a passing car honked, and then the guy inside whistled.
Babette whistled back. Drive-by flirting. You didn’t get safer sex than that.
She saw Jeff’s resort, towering several stories above the other condominium complexes along the beach. It was stark white with a royal blue roof and the White Sands logo, a matching royal blue wave along one side. Awnings of the same bright hue extended from the wide windows in the center of the building, and Babette knew from her previous stays that those were the elaborate suites, expansive luxury condominiums that stretched from the front of the building to the back and were the equivalent of four normal-sized condos. Jeff had one of those; the one in the direct center of the building, in fact, and he loved the view that the broad