Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Topaz Tango

Because both dancing partners were being scored separately, it would be hard to tell the leaders from the losers until the very end. And the viewers would become more frantic to visibly boost their favorites as the scoreboard player favorites.

“Care to make a bet?” Rafi asked Temple, leaning in to whisper.

“My money is on blond over black,” she said. “Our boy is looking good, but I admit José has the edge on the Latin dances. Polish is not the Latin type or temperament. I’m sure they started with the waltz to put everybody on an even basis to begin with.”

Molina leaned in on Temple’s other side, as if competing with Rafi. “This is all hopeless hoopla. If Ekaterina didn’t look like a lost sheep, I’d jerk Mariah out of here in half a heartbeat. Rafi, you’re backup. Watch her!”

He nodded. “I’m glad she’s not competing. That’s where all the attention is focused.”

“My point exactly. We’ve got to focus on Mariah because she’s in the background.”

“So far this has been pretty tame,” he said.

Molina eyed her large, serviceable watch. “Everyone gets a dinner break before the show. Zoe-ee can take her cat and hang in the junior girl’s dressing rooms. You and I can split,” she told Rafi, “to cover the men’s and women’s dressing rooms.”

“Uh,” said Temple, “I might want to buzz by the men’s dressing room for some hit-and-run secs.”

Both stared at her. She realized what “secs” sounded like.

Molina frowned. She might not rock ’n’ roll, but she was becoming a champion Botox candidate overnight. “You don’t want to blow your cover as a ditsy Goth girl.”

“ Pish! Zoe Chloe is a total man groupie. She just wants to google-oogle the guys in the changing room and report back breathlessly to all the junior girls. It’s part of her job building rapport with her peeps!”

“Will you stop using that asinine expression? No one is . . . are . . . your ‘peeps.’ ” Molina eyed them both, then made an executive decision. “You,” she told Rafi, “will watch this loose cannon and make sure she doesn’t roll right over all our efforts to lock down the danger quotient at this contest. And you,” she told Temple, “will keep your contact with your fiancé to the bare minimum.”

Zoe Chloe smiled like a cherub. “I wish I could make certain that those female contestants did that too.”

“Molina sure has a burr up her nose,” Temple said as she hustled alongside of Rafi Nadir through the mazelike backstage area to the dressing rooms.

“This is one of those thankless stakeout jobs you can’t ignore, but won’t get anything but grief from,” he answered. “Look at it from her perspective. She’s having to go back to undercover, like she hasn’t since they made her do john stings in L.A. Her daughter’s on the premises, and she’s got to put up with you and me.”

“Oh, yeah. But look at the bright side. She gets to support her daughter in something that’s very important to her. She gets to know what a stand-up guy you are.”

Rafi snorted.

Temple went on. “She gets to see Matt transformed into a hoofin’ hottie.”

Rafi snorted again. “You think she hasn’t noticed your boyfriend? Even I can see they have a history, and I’m brand-new on the scene.”

“Nothing . . . sexual.”

“Chickie baby, your guy may be an ex-priest, but that would be right up her alley at the corner of Guilt and Common Ground Streets. Those Catholics stick together.”

“Max was brought up Catholic too.”

“I rest my case. Carmen wouldn’t have such a hard-on to accuse your ex-boyfriend, Max, of something if he didn’t have something she doesn’t know she wants.”

Temple couldn’t keep bouncing along like Zoe Chloe on bubble gum any longer. She stopped and confronted Rafi. He eyed her seriously. Almost sympathetically.

Rafi might be right, but that road ran both ways, so Temple had the last word, and took it.

“By your logic, Molina wouldn’t be as hard on you as she is if you didn’t have something she didn’t know she wanted either.”

Hot Stuff

Zoe Chloe was one subdued little Goth girl by the time they arrived at the men’s dressing room door.

Rafi Nadir wasn’t the dumb, disgruntled ex-cop Molina acted like he was. Maybe he’d been bitter and angry when he’d first discovered his ex-roommate was alive and well with his unsuspected child in Las Vegas. That was then. He’d pulled it together since, as far as Temple could tell, maybe because his ex-roommate was alive and well with his unsuspected child in Las Vegas.

And maybe he was just a tad jealous of any man Molina knew in this town, which included two of Temple’s.

Rafi knocked on the open dressing room door. “Femme coming through.” He must have done touring show security work to know the backstage routines.

A leg trousered in black kicked the ajar door wide. “We’re loaded with femmes. Bring her on in.”

José Juarez was lounging in a metal folding chair, his dress shirt open to the navel. He eyed her. “You one of the kiddie dancers? Sure you’re old enough to be here?”

Rafi was there like a bodyguard. “Ms. Ozone is the celebrity emcee for the junior competition. She wanted to acquaint herself with the adult division competitors.”

José spread his arms to display his pecs and washboard stomach, reassured she was of age. “Acquaint yourself.”

Obviously God’s gift to the female gender. Temple eyed the women costumers who were still fussing around with final touches.

Three of the four men contestants were stationed at mirrors framed with lightbulbs as thick as dotted Swiss. Tasty snack food on hotel ware lay amid the scattered hair products and makeup, a buffet for the harried hoofer.

At Keith Slater’s station, a full dinner filled a room service tray accessorized with linen, sterling silver, and a single rose in a vase. Too bad Keith was standing, with a weird air of satisfaction and embarrassment, as a female costumer knelt before him to repair an entire seam on the fly of his pants that had ripped out during the rehearsal.

His food was getting cold, but he must be so severely corseted for the dance that the trousers couldn’t be removed for repair. Backstage mishaps broke down the usual modesty bounds, and at least Salter’s corset ensured he’d have good posture during the waltz.

Matt was at the other end, wolfing down a ham sandwich while being admonished by Tatyana.

“Shoulders back and you will be perfect,” she was saying.

His grooming remained perfect, except for his tucked front white shirt, open at the neck for breathing and eating room, and revealing a bit of tan rub-off inside the collar.

“You were awesome in rehearsal,” Zoe Chloe cooed. (When you had a name like Zoe Chloe, you could coo.)

Tatyana rolled her hazel eyes. “When he has shoulders back properly, he will be this ‘awesome.’ Do not swell his head too much, little Miss Muffet, or his collar will not close for the actual performance. A good rehearsal can jinx the real thing.”

She huffed away to pick at another of her pupils, the Cloaked Conjuror, whose costume and full-face mask forced him to stand and watch the others eat while he killed time. He was just visiting, as Zoe and Rafi were. Because of constant threats on his life, he’d been given a separate dressing room, with his own bodyguards on duty as well as hotel security.

Matt sighed relief to see Temple and Rafi.

“You are looking at an airbrushed portrait of a person,” he said. “Was the waltz all right? I felt like a badly soldered tin soldier on parade.”

“First-rate,” Temple whispered in her own voice. “Right, Rafi?”