King of Hearts

  King of Hearts

  Jennifer Stevenson

  For Rich, my personal stagehand hero

  Published by Book View Café

  www.bookviewcafe.com

  copyright 2010 by Jennifer Stevenson

  All Rights Reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  ISBN 978-1-61138-012-5

  Cover design by Sally Hayes

  This book is a work of fiction. All characters, locations, and events portrayed in this book are fictional or used in an imaginary manner to entertain, and any resemblance to any real people, situations, or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Chapter One

  Nadine Fisher took the empty coffeepots back to the Bunn machine near the restrooms and rinsed them out one at a time, watching out the window.

  Across the grimy alley outside, two roadies on dinner break came out of the stage door of the Auditorium Theatre and walked up the alley toward the nearest bar.

  Nadine swirled water into the carafes over the sink.

  She changed out the filters on the Bunn and put in fresh coffee, keeping her eye on the stage door across the alley. The door opened again, but it was only the production manager for Les Miz and a local carpenter. They followed the roadies.

  She scowled out the window at the stage door. More stagehands trickled out of the theater and headed toward the street. She knew most of them by name. Liz Otter’s was next door, open twenty-four hours. They all came in sooner or later.

  She’d made the coffee. Now what? The water glass rack needed straightening. And she could fill glasses.

  Maybe he hadn’t come to work tonight. He’d meant to. She’d overheard the guys say so this morning. Too busy chasing skirts, she speculated contemptuously. Though why girls fell for blue eyes and city charm, when they must know what kind of man he was!

  Nadine jammed a stainless steel water pitcher into the big ice machine and yelped as an ice cube bounced up and leapt down the front of her starched white uniform. She reached into her cleavage to fish out the ice cube, peeking guiltily through the window, just as King Dave Flaherty raised his head from his cell phone not twenty feet away.

  She yanked her hand out of her dress.

  He wouldn’t get very far with her. King Dave was lucky he was Mister Somebody in a big city, boy. Back in Goreville, Texas, he’d have had to answer for his misbehavior before the entire congregation. And Nadine would have taken great pleasure in paying him a visit to administer spiritual correction.

  She’d heard some awful, awful stories about King Dave.

  King Dave didn’t seem to notice her in the window. He leaned back against the dirty bricks of the Auditorium’s back wall and put one foot up, so that the yellow light from the streetlight washed down over his rippling muscle shirt and highlighted the curve of his thigh.

  There was a smug smile on his angel face. Had he seen her at the window after all?

  With a delicious thrill of horror, she saw him stuff his cell phone in his jeans pocket, reach out a lazy hand, and beckon with two fingers.

  Her heart pounded. She ducked behind the Bunn machine.

  Was he beckoning to her?

  King Dave, she’d like to say, looking down her nose, You have a nerve coming on to me after everything I’ve heard about you!

  Hiding behind the Bunn, she peered out the window one way and then the other, trying to see up and down the alley.

  She touched her tongue to her lips. If he summoned her into the alley, it wouldn’t be for anything good.

  On a bet, King Dave had slept with every waitress at Corbett’s, including one who was engaged at the time.

  King Dave and his friends had almost set fire to the Cadillac Theatre by peeing on the transformer vault, and one guy had gone to the emergency room with an unusual electrical burn.

  King Dave had punched the head electrician at the Shubert Theatre for hassling a waitress. The electrician, knowing better than to lay a finger on the son of FX Flaherty, had done nothing.

  King Dave’s poopers didn’t stink.

  Of course, if she went out there, she could give him that piece of her mind she had ready for him.

  Best to make sure.

  With assumed casualness she stepped out from behind the Bunn, raising one eyebrow in hauteur.

  He was talking to a harlot.

  No mistaking the woman’s intentions. Nadine sniffed at the woman’s fishnet stockings. The five-inch heels. Okay, it was summertime in the city, but shouldn’t she have something on her behind besides those itty-bitty shiny red hot pants?

  The harlot turned slightly and Nadine saw two things.

  One, this was King Dave’s ex-wife, Tammy, who had screamed until the glasses rang in Liz Otter’s, not a month ago, when she tracked him down and demanded money in front of the Auditorium crew.

  And two, she saw most of Tammy’s front. Word around town was, King Dave was a breast man. Tammy had them.

  King Dave spread his arms wide in a “knock yourself out” gesture. Nadine stiffened. Tammy bent over his belt buckle.

  I should look away. I should go back to work. I should march right out there and tell him he’s a disgrace to his mother, his God, and his country. With a shiver, she saw his head tip back against the brick wall. A look of unholy bliss crossed his face. She wet her lips again.

  Don’t think about him. Think about how he’s degrading that poor woman out there. That poor woman’s bottom wiggled back and forth, imperfectly concealed by the red hot pants.

  I must be too appalled to move.

  Tammy reached into her big purse, which she had set down the better to degrade herself, and took something out—a can of hair spray? She uncapped it and threw the cap behind her, picking up her bag in the other hand and backing away from King Dave.

  Nadine’s mouth dropped open.

  Up came the spray can. Out came a cloud. Tammy put fingers to her lips. Nadine heard her whistle faintly through the window. In the depths of the alley, a car gunned its engine.

  King Dave took forever to open his eyes. Tammy had backed away, clear across the alley’til she stood near Nadine’s window, holding something up to her face. King Dave stood slack-handed with a dumb look on his face and a great big patch of Day-Glo orange paint on his crotch.

  Flash! Flash!

  King Dave winced and put a hand up.

  Flash! Flash! Flash!

  Nadine blinked, also blinded by the camera flash.

  The car squealed around the alley corner and pulled up between King Dave and Tammy. Tammy jumped into the back seat. Now she was shouting what Nadine could tell were bad words even through the sealed coffee shop window.

  The car roared away. King Dave stumbled into the middle of the alley, open-mouthed and staring, with his jeans unbuttoned and his Day-Glo orange dignities hanging in the breeze.

  The last thing she’d ever expected was to feel sympathy for King Dave Flaherty. Suddenly, she knew exactly how he felt.

  It was mighty hard to fall from top of the heap into disgrace.

  She shook her head and, at her movement, King Dave saw her.

  Across the alley, through the window, his eyes met hers.

  A parade of emotions crossed his face. She read them as if they were printed in letters of fire. Astonishment. Rage. The quick look down at his fly and the quick fumble to button it up with orangey fingers. The realization of what Tammy had done.

  And then he looked back up at Nadine, and she knew he had caught up with her.

  Nadine’s heart filled to bursting as she realized, in one thump of blood to her brain, that she now had King Dave by the short, orange, and curlies.

  He glared at her through the window for a long moment. Then he marched to
ward the street—and the front door of Liz Otter’s.

  I’m in real trouble now, she thought gleefully.

  Chapter Two

  In the thirty seconds it took King Dave Flaherty to get to the front of Liz Otter’s, he scoped the situation.

  He decided to take a high moral tone with the waitress in the window.

  He had her pegged. She was a tight-ass, a snooty little snip, always passing judgment on him, giving him vocabulary. He would simply scold her for being where she shouldn’t have been. Nice girls didn’t work the night shift, she ought to know that. And even the night shift girls didn’t look out the back window into the alley in case they saw something they shouldn’t see.

  So she better keep her trap shut.

  His anxiety cranked up a notch.

  If she didn’t keep quiet, he was in trouble.

  Look at it more carefully. He was doomed.

  The pictures didn’t worry him. Tammy wanted a down payment on a Porsche. Okay, she would get it. She had him fair and square, he could buy her off. It was only money.

  But this little waitress could ruin him in the Stagehands Union Local by telling the story of what she saw. Tammy might back her up, bought off or no. And then what?

  King Dave knew damned well what. The end of tolerable life as he knew it.

  King Dave knew he had a lot of latitude—hell, he knew. He was King Dave Flaherty, son of the president of the Local. His shit didn’t stink. Now and then he admitted to himself that maybe his shit should stink. Hey, he was still young. A guy needed to cut loose now and then.

  But the old man’s name wasn’t going to cover this one. It was too ridiculous. He’d never hear the end of it. Never. King Dave looked into a future of pushing boxes and running follow-spots and manning the flies and focusing lights. And everywhere, in backstage corners all over town, he would find the pictures—eight-by-ten glossies duct-taped to a stage weight carriage, soaped to the mirror in the men’s room, hot-melt-glued to the side of his own workbox or Super Trouper follow spot.

  Full-color photos of his Day-Glo orange dick.

  Unless he bought Tammy off. Okay, he’d buy her off.

  But that wasn’t the worst possible consequence, he realized with fresh horror.

  His father would go ballistic. That could translate into serious consequences—less work from the hall, fewer cherry jobs with gobs of overtime. His mother, shit, she’d have a shit hemorrhage.

  But worst of all, naturally they would hang another moniker on him. There was a no-brainer.

  Day-Glo Dick Dave.

  He shivered, aghast. Quite a comedown from King Dave.

  Hell, he knew guys who would never call him Dave again. Just “Day-Glo Dick.” The very thought made him cringe down to his socks. Creative sons of bitches that they were, they could come up with a dozen variants, he’d never beat it out of ’em. Day-Glo. Glow-worm. Ouch.

  They didn’t even need the photos to do that to him. He could pay Tammy off and this waitress could still ruin his life. The moniker would stick.

  It could go on for years. It might never end.

  He glanced around the coffee shop as he walked through the door. Thank heaven, nobody from the Local was in here right now.

  King Dave filled himself with a lungful of righteous hot air and walked slam into that snippy waitress.

  Hot coffee cascaded down his tee-shirt, scalding his nipples. He yipped.

  “What th—why can’t you—oh, it’s you.” He was off to a bad start. He met her eyes. The shock literally rocked him back on his heels. Whatever advantage he may have had, he realized he wasn’t going to recover it.

  She smiled at him. It was a warm, kind smile, the smile you get from the day-shift waitresses at Liz Otter’s—not the skinny young ones in black lipstick with studs in their lips, but the big-hair, big-bra old babes who’ve seen it all and forgiven all, short of a check stiff. Her smile told him what he most feared.

  She’d seen everything. She knew who he was. She knew what she could do to him. And she knew he couldn’t do a thing about it.

  “King Dave, you get yourself right back to the men’s room,” she said, as if she was one of the old waitress babes, not some snippy tight-ass Southern chick with too much vocabulary.

  He opened his mouth and shut it. She was tall enough to look straight into his eyes. Her golden hair was piled up on her head like a queen’s. Her usually lazy-eyed aloofness was transformed. As if she’d suddenly, finally noticed he was a man, goddammit, and at the absolute worst moment.

  Someday she’d be old enough to wear the big bra and boss him and the other boys around. But not yet.

  In self-defense, King Dave ogled her up and down, meaning to slap her down with his eyes. She was wearing health sneakers. Jesus. In heels she might be taller than he was. Her body was all curves under her Liz Otter’s white uniform, curvy but strong.

  There wasn’t a drop of coffee on her.

  His tee-shirt was drenched. He flushed.

  She ignored his hey-baby look. She put her hand on his shoulder and said in a motherly, half-scolding tone, “Go right back there. I’ll see if the cook has a spare pair of pants. You lock the door. Clean yourself up. I’ll knock when I’ve found you some clean clothes.”

  She glanced down at his coffee- and paint-stained shirt and then, for an instant, a little lower, at the orange fingerprints all over the fly of his Levis. King Dave felt himself go hot. It was already starting. Damn her.

  Then she turned him by the shoulders and shooed him back toward the men’s. “Get along.”

  There was definitely, definitely a hint of laughter in her voice. God damn her.

  King Dave shut his gaping mouth and allowed himself to be hustled to the little boys’ room. He took some satisfaction in shooting the lock noisily shut. Was that a giggle outside the door? Grrr! After sixty futile seconds glaring into the mirror, he stripped and got down to the awkward business of trying to wash orange spray paint out of his pubic hair.

  Nadine fled back to her coffee station. Heart hammering, she poured a new cup of decaf and delivered it to the customers in booth six. Her breath came in halts. Something strange was happening in her head, a kind of dizzy singing silence that made it hard for her to concentrate.

  She shut her eyes and remembered their collision in the doorway. Lord, he was attractive up close. In the instant before she spoke, as the coffee doused him, she had looked straight into his eyes. She knew: King Dave Flaherty, a god among men, was completely in her hands.

  And she realized that she wanted him.

  What appallingly bad judgment. What a delicious cave-woman feeling.

  Somewhere in the back of her mind, Nadine was a practical girl. If she were not to go down in Day-Glo orange flames herself, the butt of stagehand humor until the day she quit Liz Otter’s and scurried back home to Daddy with her tail between her legs, she would have to plan her next moves very carefully.

  The main thing was never to let him see her off balance.

  She begged Miguel the cook for his spare pair of whites and snitched a Cafè Les Auteurs tee-shirt from the pile under the cash register. As she passed the shiny Bunn machine, she whipped out her lipstick and freshened her makeup.

  Daddy would have conniptions to see her in lipstick. She flushed, remembering Daddy’s condemnation and the humiliation of slinking out of town. Oh, King Dave, I’ve been there.

  That was why she would never betray what she’d seen.

  If she was to succeed, however, King Dave must never know.

  She could feel his gaze on the front of her body like a fingerprint. He was furious. He was anxious. He didn’t trust her.

  Well, she’d have to make him trust her. If she didn’t, she knew well, he was capable of doing something supremely nutty and unpleasant to make himself safe. King Dave Flaherty would not let her take him down without a fight.

  She knew she ought to be scared.

  Nadine smiled. It was a tender, affectionate smile for a waywa
rd boy who badly wanted his butt smacked and his face kissed, in that order. She made sure the butt-smacking part of her smile was uppermost when she knocked on the men’s room door.

  “King Dave, honey?” she said in a low voice.

  The door was jerked open. King Dave glared through an inch crack.

  “Here.” She shoved the pants and tee-shirt into his hands.

  He took them and started to shut the door in her face.

  “And King Dave,” she added in her sternest waitress voice. The door stopped moving. She could see past his head to the men’s room mirror. In the mirror, she could see all of him from behind. He was naked to his socks. His back looked as sculpted and muscular as his chest. She felt a hot spike of lust shoot up through her body.

  “Now King Dave,” she said in her most motherly voice, “don’t you worry about a thing. Nobody was in here who knows you.”

  He stared at her through the crack in the door, his face a picture of doubt and heart-stopping vulnerability.

  “So all you’ve got to worry about is the women.”

  His look said as plainly as words, You’re one of them.

  Her smile said back, Well of course I am. But you’re going to have to trust me anyway.

  The door slammed and locked again.

  Chapter Three

  With shaking hands, King Dave donned the tee-shirt and the cook’s spare pants. No way this waitress was going to get the better of him, no way. Snippy, superior, attitudinal little—okay, not little. Hell, she was so curvy and tall she might outweigh him.

  She shook him. Unacceptable. Not acceptable at all. Did she even know who he was?

  King Dave, honey, don’t you worry about a thing.

  That was a Yes.

  All you’ve got to worry about is the women.

  How dare she threaten him? Enraged, he yanked the doorknob, forgetting it was locked. Then he heard voices outside the door.

  “I think somebody’s in there, honey,” said the voice of the evil waitress.

  “Guess I’ll go back to work,” said the voice of Bobbyjay Morton, his best buddy.