There's This Guy Read online

  Right now, Dallas heard every drop of Simon stubbornly lingering in his best friend’s personality.

  “What’s the matter, C?” He stepped out onto the sidewalk, hoping it would soothe Celeste’s rattled nerves, but the woman shook her head when he reached for her. “Love, nothing’s going to happen to me. We’re in WeHo for fuck’s sake. Or at least close enough to use its zip code.”

  “We’re not in fucking WeHo, Dallas. Look around you. We’re in a fucking industrial park tucked in between the studio’s secondary backlots where they make B movies about screaming stupid women and monsters.” Celeste shuddered, taking a deep breath. Pressing her hand against her generous chest, she bit at her lip, worrying away a stripe of red lipstick. “Honey, I’m trying not to sound like some dramatic queen. I’m not. You and I both know I’m not, but this place… here… it’s not safe.”

  “It’s totally safe. I checked the crime stats before I made an offer on the building. We’re fine. I’m fine. And even if it weren’t okay, we can’t keep running away, C. I’m not saying I’m going to go out and wave a red cape in front of a raging bull but….” Dallas reached for her, and Celeste let herself be folded into a soft embrace. She trembled, probably caught up in the memories of a night when she hadn’t been safe and he’d not been there when the dark closed in on her. “Things are different now. Much different. You of all people know if we hide, nothing changes.”

  “I just don’t want anything to happen to you,” she mumbled into his chest, probably smearing half a ton of makeup on his white T-shirt. “The way you looked at that guy….”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not the gingeriest cookie in the bag, so sometimes, I do stupid things,” he teased. “That being said, I promise you, no ogling hot straight men who look like they can crush my head in one hand, okay?”

  “Okay,” she sniffed and pulled away, wiping at the dampness around her heavily made-up eyes. “But really, rethink the pink. It’ll be awesome.”

  “You go on being you, Celeste Glory, and when you get your own place, you can make it any color you want,” he shot back, twisting his mouth into a smile. “Because I sure as hell am not painting our lifelong dream fucking bubblegum pink. Now, grab the champagne and glasses from the car, and let’s see what I’ve gotten myself into.”

  Two

  “DOES ANYTHING work in this hellhole?” Celeste’s voice carried out of the bathroom, as leaden as the stagnant air they were stewing in. “Because really, Dallas, just cut your losses and open this place up as a sauna or something. Well, maybe a combination rat café and sauna, because I swear to God, I just saw a baby kangaroo climb up this motherfucking pipe.”

  “That was a cartoon, you deluded idjit,” he called back. “And for the last damned time, that wasn’t a rat! It was a possum!”

  “It was ugly as fuck. That’s what it was.” Celeste stomped out of the back, sweat plastering her bleached curls to her high forehead. She’d gone without her normal heavy layers of makeup that morning, complaining the heat and humidity in the thick-walled building made her break out. “And we don’t know for certain it was a possum. For all we know, you’ve got your very own Smeagol under this foundation and he’s digging out a volcano to toss his ring into.”

  “You’ve got it wrong. He didn’t want to get rid of the ring.” Dallas shook his head in mock disgust. “The hobbits went looking for the volcano—”

  “I don’t know why you keep talking to me about this when you know I’m not going to pay attention.” Her sneakers were semi-heels, new rubber wedges once pristine white until she’d begun to help him scrub out the bathrooms in the hopes of saving some of the original tile. “Who cares who wanted to get rid of the damned thing? The point is there’s a fucking volcano in here and we’re cooking in it. I don’t want to die with what little makeup I’m wearing smeared and my legs flung apart because I’ve been broiled open like a rotisserie chicken. I want to die that way because I’m ninety-five and just was fucked to death by my twenty-five-year-old Latino lover who married me over the objections of his entire family.”

  “You’ve thought that out, have you?” Straddling one of the stools they’d found left in the back room, Dallas caught himself before it rocked forward, thrown off-balance by its uneven legs.

  “No, that just came to me. Like this heatstroke.”

  At any other time, he’d have put Celeste’s histrionics down as dramatic overlay, but this time she had a good point. The place was a cesspool, and the temperature was rising faster than he cared to admit. He’d owned the building for two weeks, and in between ducking outside to get fresh air and glimpses of the dark-haired, broad-shouldered welder working across the street, Dallas was grinding himself down to the bone to restore the one-and-a-half-story art deco structure.

  He’d known it was going to be a lot of work, especially since its former owners seemed to only have a passing acquaintance with cleansers and hot water. As the place’s flimsy interior walls came down, more problems emerged. The plumbing was shot, the loft space above the main floor was a trash pit, and the electrical needed replacing, but most of all, the ancient air-conditioning unit chugged one final time after Dallas opened the door with his own set of keys and died a smoking, withering death just as Los Angeles’s summer kicked into high gear.

  Despite the problems, Dallas did love the place. Its windowed west end had been boarded up, and after an afternoon of pulling out nailed-down planks, he’d finally uncovered their glory… and the sets of white-crackled wrought-iron bars someone’d laid over them. There’d been birds’ nests in the cement marquee placard jutting up above the front door, its neon torn from its moorings so long ago there wasn’t even an imprint of the words left on the paint. And to hear the floor guys bitch and moan, it would be a long three weeks before they peeled up the layers of industrial tiles covering the maybe-still-usable wood floor. With its high ceilings and the main floor opened up, he could see the building’s potential, a showcase for men who longed to strut their stuff in stilettos, women aching to swing low, and everyone in between.

  He and Celeste—Simon then—once spun out a haphazard dream of a stage where Celeste could sing her heart out and pretty boys could flash a bit of leg and warble for a crowd boozed up on sugary drinks and even sweeter desires. In the beat-up VW van he’d taken cross-country, Celeste was a bit of flotsam he’d picked up and never let go, a sister of sorts—probably as much of one as Victoria—and a damned fine friend. She hadn’t wanted to be a big star, just have enough of a twinkle to make someone smile and laugh for an evening and maybe more. Bombshells, a nameless club back then, started off under the stars of a New Jersey spring evening, and he’d carried it with him every step until he found the spot to place all the twinkling glimmers he’d found along the way.

  Thing was, Dallas just needed the people he hired to show up and do the damned job so he could get his performers up onstage and booze into paying customers, because while he had more than enough money to bankroll a dream, it was far better for the damned thing to break even.

  Celeste cleared her throat, and he was pulled out of his daydream and back into the reality of the disaster lying around them. “Really, do you think you can pull this off, Dal? Here?”

  “Well, if we can keep on schedule, Bombshells and Beauties will be open in six months, so hopefully by then….” He paused dramatically until she sighed heavily and waved her hand for him to continue. “By then, Ms. Glory, we shall have an air conditioner.”

  “By then LA will be tit-deep in freezing weather and there’ll be crowds of perky-bottomed young women in short shorts and UGG boots climbing all over your pretty ass looking to warm themselves up,” she groaned. “Honey, are you sure you want to do this? Can’t you just live off the money you’ve already made making me look gorgeous?”

  “No, because after that Slurpee I bought you this morning, all that money’s gone.” Dallas grinned at her upraised finger. “That was a compliment, love. Take a step back and look at it again.”
>
  “Well fuck you, backhanded one at best,” she muttered, flopping into a paint-splattered lawn chair. “Seriously, it’s too hot in here. We’re going to pass out from the fumes.”

  “The windows are open as much as they can be.” Dallas wiped his forearm against his brow, not surprised to find his skin dripping with sweat. “It’s the bars some asshole put over them. They block the glass from opening up all the way. Whoever thought blocking the windows was a good idea should be shot. Or maybe skinned. Then rolled in salt. Like right before you roast a pork loin.”

  “That’s one good thing to come from my removal from the family tree… bacon.” Celeste leaned over to snatch a flyer from the ground. Fanning herself, she amended, “And men. Because really, that’s why I walked away in the first place.”

  “Both very good reasons,” Dallas agreed. He was tired of painting drywall, and more importantly, he was tired of the heat. More than a little disgusted at the painters who’d cancelled that morning, he’d gone ahead with it, thankful they’d at least masked off the windows and hardware. “Although unlike a guy, bacon will never let you down. Even at its shittiest, it’s still bacon.”

  “Like coffee.” Celeste pouted at him. “If you can’t get me air-conditioning, can you at least get me an iced coffee?”

  “Your wiles don’t work on me, woman. You’re on the other side of the fence now.” It was steaming inside, and every once in a great while, a tiny wisp of cool air pushed through the cracked-open windows, taunting Dallas’s overheated skin. Not nearly as hot as being back home in Texas but close enough and without an impending storm threatening to break on the horizon. “As pretty as you are, darling, you do absolutely nothing for me.”

  Celeste narrowed her eyes into slits, peering at him over her makeshift fan. Something in his expression must have mollified her because she sighed, then said, “That’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me.” She gave him a quick smile, then leaned her head back against the chair. “Now fix the goddamned air conditioner or you’re going to have to find yourself new slave labor.”

  “Considering how much you cost me in coffee alone, you’re hardly low-cost,” he drawled. “And the air-conditioning has to wait. They’ve got to install a new unit on the roof, and the engineer needs to make sure it can support the damned thing’s weight. But there is something I might be able to do in the meantime.”

  “And what’s that, beautiful?” She gave him a sidelong glance from under slightly parted lashes. “Get a hard-bodied, half-naked man to follow me around with a giant fan?”

  “One better.” Dallas grinned back at her. “A fully dressed man to open these fucking windows.”

  “WELL, IT’S not Brandt, but whoever did the original work wasn’t half-bad,” the hottest man Dallas’d seen in ages murmured to himself. “Not bad at all.”

  God loved him. If there’d been any question in Dallas’s mind about how lucky he was in life, the universe, and everything, it was answered the moment every entity in the known cosmos sent his object of lust over to look at his blocked windows.

  If Jake Moore, the welder from Evancho Metals, was delectable in photos, he was heartbreaking up close. His amber-flecked-green eyes flicked over Dallas more than a few times when he spoke in his soft, not-quite Californian, oddly French accented drawl. A light golden tan gilded his skin, deepening the faint scatter of freckles across his nose. His mouth was a mobile dance of curves while he studied the bars blocking the building’s windows, his expressions ranging from dismay to resignation.

  Jake smelled damned good—a hell of a lot better than Dallas did at the moment—and the breadth of his shoulders and chest nearly gave Celeste the vapors when he came knocking on the front door. Standing back a few feet from the welder, Dallas had a better view of his legs, thickly muscled beneath his jeans, and the denim snugged tightly against his ass as he bent over to inspect one of the grates.

  Celeste had been torn between standing outside to watch Jake inspect the windows or escaping to the coffee shop across the street to get them all iced drinks to beat back the heat. A crisp twenty and a promise from Dallas to keep Jake at the property until she returned was enough to convince Celeste to totter across the street and stand in the air-conditioned store.

  And while Jake’s face and body stroked every single one of Dallas’s nerves with a sensual lick, it was the man’s soft murmured “hello, ma’am” to Celeste that might have made Dallas fall in love with him.

  “Sir?” A flick of a word spoken in Jake’s velvet-warm voice tightened Dallas’s want, tickling his belly with a lick of desire. Sir? Not the game he’d play with the man, but Dallas was up for anything. Then it hit him the man was trying to get his attention. “Mister Yates?”

  “Oh, sorry. Spacing out here. And God, don’t call me Mister Yates. Dallas is fine.” There was little hope he could pass off any flush across his face as anything other than embarrassment, but Dallas was going to give it his best shot. “Tired. We’ve been trying to get this place back up on its feet for weeks now, and it’s kicking my ass.”

  “Yeah, it looks….” The man’s assessment of the building was cloaked in a hooded glance Dallas couldn’t make heads or tails out of. “Place has seen better days, but about the grates….”

  “Can they come off?” Dallas shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “Can’t open the windows, and it’s as hot as shit in there until the AC is fixed.”

  “Well, here’s the thing, the swirled pieces? They’re meant to be decorative overlays on the glass. Someone took them off their brackets and welded them into the bars.” Jake ran his fingers along a piece of curved metal nearly hidden behind the horizontal bars. “This is probably original to the building. Art deco, pretty decent work. Not on the scale of some of the East Coast and Europe pieces, but still, really nice. I can take all of the bars off so they’re off the windows, but after that, it’s up to you what you want to do with the original metalwork.”

  “What’s my other option?” Dallas dragged his attention off of the damp thin line of sweat sticking Jake’s shirt to his back.

  “I can restore the pieces and put the original overlays back over the glass panes.” He pursed his mouth, deepening the dimple in his right cheek. “It’ll be a lot more expensive. Don’t know if you want to spend the time or money on that.”

  “But I’d be able to open the windows, right?”

  “They’re more like jalousies, but yeah, they’ll open. The pieces should be welded onto these frames here. See, the original weld marks are still there. Or some of them.” Jake bent his head and reached in through the bars to point at the edge of the frame. “And unless there’s a stash of panels somewhere, I’m going to have to replicate about ten or twelve pieces, depending on how bad some of these are. You’re missing a good chunk of them, but maybe they’re somewhere in the building.”

  “Hell, they could be in the loft in front. That place is packed with crap.” Dallas grimaced. “You’ve done this kind of thing before?”

  “It’s kind of what I do.” Jake’s smile was a bit shy, and he looked away, watching the traffic on the street. “I restore metalwork on old buildings. Some custom work. Depending on what the job needs. This isn’t going to be cheap. It all depends on what you want to do—take off the grates entirely or put the building back to how it looked when it was first built. I’ll need to do an estimate but—”

  “Yes.” Dallas nodded. “Well, do an estimate so I have an idea about how this is going to blow through the budget, but yeah, let’s do this right. First things first, can we at least get a couple of the grates off? Because if we don’t get the inside cooled off, my free labor in high heels is going to walk, and I’m shit at scrubbing down bathrooms.”

  IT WAS late, well past the time when Jake should have been at home, sweltering in his own hotbox of bricks and stale air. Instead he stood nearly hip-deep in debris going back decades, judging by a newspaper ad announcing a weekend sale of five-and-a-quarter-inch f
loppy discs at Kmart. Staring at the junk piled into the large space, Jake cocked his head at Dallas, who’d forged in deep, shoving his way into the mounds without a care in the world or caution about getting tetanus from any number of ancient decaying relics hidden in the trash.

  “They just sold the building like this? Without cleaning it?” He stepped carefully forward, having already landed on his ass when he’d put a foot down on a pile of National Geographic magazines and they shot out like a pile of angry playing cards avenging their mad queen. “That’s… insane.”

  “Well, to be fair, they gave me a really good deal on the place.” Dallas’s voice seemed to be coming from behind a stack of shelves, but it was hard to see him clearly—something Jake wasn’t all that certain he was upset about. “The downside is that something up here stinks, so I’m guessing we’ve got a rats’ nest or maybe a wheel of Roquefort someone left up here back in the ’90s.”

  The man was… distracting. His almost shoulder-length black hair was a startling cobalt-ebony frame for his strong face and pale blue eyes. It was hard not to watch his mouth when he spoke, because Jake could almost feel the brush of his lips on his neck or collarbone. Jake might have had about twenty pounds of muscle on the man, but Dallas’s lankiness appealed to him, a wiry strength to narrow hips and flat stomach.