Free Hot and Bothered by CRYSTAL GREEN

plethora of booze.
    â€œEither you boys are stocking up for the week,” she said, “or you plan to spend the night passed out on the concrete.”
    â€œActually,” Buzz said, “I’m gonna make good use of that elevator tonight to get to my room. Imagine that—an elevator in Shel’s house.”
    Jonsey chuckled from over by the cabana. “You’d think we were hillbillies or something, Buzz. Didn’t Uncle Dale ever have an elevator in his SoCal place?”
    He looked at Rochelle for confirmation. He was asking about her dad’s house, after all.
    â€œNone that I can recall,” she said. “Then again, Dad never overspends or gets more than he needs in a house or cars or whatever.”
    Tucker pointed at her. “Except if it’s overspending on you.”
    She shrugged. Dad really was good about expressing affection—with his money. But that’d always been better than the missed phone calls she got nowadays, she supposed.
    Buzz still wasn’t over it. “An elevator. You know you’ve reached the heights when you’ve got one of those.”
    Suzanne finished drinking and said, “Why the surprise, boys? Rochelle is a best-selling author with her books going back to print over and over as well as staying in the top of the digital sales lists, and it wouldn’t do for her to rent a shack. Especially with the subjects she writes about.”
    Buzz ribbed Rochelle. “So you’re only keeping up impressions, huh?”
    â€œI,” Rochelle said, “and my pocketbook.”
    Suzanne continued. “Would you expect Jackie Collins to sleep in a tract house?”
    Rochelle laughed. So she was lucky that she’d hit on some subjects that people just happened to want to read. And she had a dad who had set up a trust fund with investments that had drawn ridiculous dividends over the years.
    Elevators it was.
    Jonsey came back, opened his beer, and then toasted the table with it. “Here’s to Rochelle, whose hospitality is unmatched.”
    â€œAnd unconditional,” said Tucker. “It’d have to be to put up with this crowd.”
    This time Rochelle nudged him, but then they all raised their glasses.
    It was only when Buzz made his contribution that she nearly dropped her cocktail.
    â€œAnd here’s to Gideon, who really came through for us.”
    As they all drank to that, Rochelle gulped down her drink, because if the boys knew just how much Gideon had taken care of her once upon a time, there’d be no toasts.
    There’d be hell to pay.
    ***
    Gideon had made arrangements to meet Boomer at the Rough & Tumble to touch base about the creeper since the PI had spent the day doing some legwork.
    But truth be told, he’d also needed this built-in break from Rochelle more than he’d realized.
    Usually, watching over a client was the iciest experience Gideon could think of. Other BGs he knew liked to call themselves Terminators because they were like human machines—always on guard, scanning everything and everyone around them for the slightest hint of something wrong. But Gideon’s Terminator self had been mightily distracted by Rochelle.
    The scent of her hair whenever she’d walk past him.
    The sound of her laugh as she’d chatted with readers.
    The sight of her stretching in the limo on the way to another signing, then closing her eyes for a moment of rest.
    Had she slept as badly as he had last night? Or, more to the point, had she slept at all, knowing that they were only footsteps away from each other?
    As he entered the Rough & Tumble, some hard Janis Joplin rushed at him from the corner jukebox, and he told himself that soon he’d need to untie these sexual knots that’d been bunching in him. And when he saw a few familiar girls at the bar—waitresses from the Silver Hills Casino near the interstate—his gut gave a tug, like it was already