Susan Phillips - First Star I See Tonight

He needed to get back down to the club floor, but he stayed behind his desk. After two months in this business, his office still smelled strange-not of rubber and sweat-not of specially formulated pain compounds and chlorine-doused whirlpools. Instead, it carried the scent of paper and paint, of new upholstery and a computer printer cartridge. But as much as he missed those familiar smells, he wouldn’t let himself hold on to the past. Opening Spiral was his announcement to the world that he’d never become one more washed-up jock with nothing better to do than seal himself in an announcer’s booth and broadcast bullshit about plays he could no longer pull off himself. The nightclub business was his new turf, and Spiral was only the beginning. He intended to build himself an empire, and just like in football, failure wasn’t an option.

He turned back to his computer and Googled “Esmerelda Crocker.” Her green card had given her age as thirty-three, but she looked a lot younger. He flipped from one screen to the next and eventually found her name on an alumni list for London’s Middlesex University. No other information. And no photo to show that crazy-wide mouth, firm jaw, or those wily eyes almost the exact color of a blueberry Pop-Tart-eyes that demanded he jump into her crackpot world right along with her.

If he hadn’t been so pissed, he would have laughed at her offer to “sexually satisfy” him. He didn’t need any more crazy in his life. Besides, after eight years of seeing his name plastered all over the tabloids, he was on temporary hiatus from women.

He hadn’t intended to turn into a cliché-one more NFL quarterback with a beautiful Hollywood actress in his bed. He wouldn’t have, either, if he’d stuck with a single actress. But after that first relationship had fizzled due to conflicting schedules, too much publicity, and infidelity-hers, not his-he’d met another beautiful A-lister. And then another. And then one more after that.

In his defense, all four of those relationships had been with stars who were brainy as well as beautiful. He liked whip-smart, successful women who also happened to be heart-stoppingly beautiful. What man didn’t? And being an NFL quarterback gave him access to the cream of the crop. Now, however, all his laser-sharp attention was focused on growing a nightclub empire. Women brought too much drama, too much press, and too damned much perfume. If he was quarterback of the world, he’d outlaw the stuff. Women should smell like women.

Esmerelda hadn’t worn perfume, and with all her disguises, who knew what her hair looked like? But there was that interesting face and those shapely legs. Still, the whole episode was making the back of his neck itch exactly the same way it did right before he got blindsided.

Piper jerked off her wig and drove home from Spiral with one desperate scheme after another churning through her head. A different approach. A better disguise. But it wouldn’t take him long to see through both. If she didn’t come up with something quickly, she’d be on a one-way street back to a computer job in a cubicle, something she couldn’t abide thinking about. Her last job as a digital strategist for a local chain of auto parts stores had been interesting at first, but after the second year, boredom had begun to set in, and by the fifth year, she’d found herself dreaming of a zombie apocalypse.

Her father had denied her the career she was born for, working with him at Dove Investigations-or even working with one of his competitors, something he’d made certain didn’t happen. Everybody in the country knew him, and Duke Dove had put out the word. “Anybody who hires my little girl to do any investigating that doesn’t involve stayin’ at her computer is gonna have to deal with me.”

But Duke was dead, and she owned the business he hadn’t wanted her to have-the business she’d paid far too much to buy from her stepmother only to discover too late that Duke’s client list was woefully out-of-date, and her stepmother’s bookkeeping practices were, if not outright fraudulent, the next closest thing. Piper had bought little more than a name, but the name was precious to her, and she wouldn’t give up without the fight of her life.

By the time she fell asleep, she’d made up her mind. She was going to stick with barmy Esmerelda Crocker and hope for the best.

The next morning, she showered, slipped into jeans and a T-shirt, and ran her fingers through her wet hair-no need for a wig. After she’d grabbed her coffee and a slice of three-day-old pizza, she set out.

The second-story condo she couldn’t afford to keep much longer was part of a five-unit brownstone in the city’s Andersonville neighborhood and boasted its own private parking space. As she slung her bag into her car along with her travel mug and the cold pizza slice, she wondered whether she’d be in jail by the end of the day. It was a risk she had to take.

Graham occupied the top two floors of a converted, four-story former seminary on a tree-lined street in Lakeview. Lakeview wasn’t Chicago’s most expensive neighborhood, but it was one of its best with great shops, trendy restaurants, a stretch of shoreline, and Wrigley Field. She wedged her Sonata into a semi-parking spot across from a postage-stamp park and took a few bites of the pizza and a swig of coffee. Her days of treating herself to a morning Starbucks were gone.

She tugged on a blade of her real hair-short, choppy, the same chestnut brown Duke said her mother’s had been, before she’d been murdered in a sidewalk robbery. Piper was four at the time and barely remembered her, but the effect of her mother’s violent death had set the course of Piper’s upbringing.

Duke had raised Piper to be tough. He’d enrolled her in one self-defense class after another, along with teaching her every trick he’d picked up over the years. He’d taught her to be strong, and even when she was very young, he’d freeze her out if she cried. He’d rewarded her toughness by teaching her to shoot and taking her to ball games, by letting her go with him on trips to the corner bar and laughing when she cussed. But no tears. No whining. And no visits to play at a friend’s house until he’d run a background check.

That was the bewildering, contradictory part of her upbringing. At the same time he demanded strength from her, he was also maddeningly overprotective-a constant source of conflict between them as she’d grown older and he’d planted himself firmly between her and her ambitions. He’d raised her to be as tough as he was and then tried to wrap her in cotton.

She wadded up the rest of her pizza and shoved it in the overstuffed litterbag hanging from her dashboard. She’d begged Duke to let her join him, but he’d refused.

“This business is too dirty for a woman. I didn’t spend a fortune on your education to see you staked out in a car photographing some asshole cheating on his wife.”

Her throat tightened. She missed him. The disturbing combination of his harshness and his overprotection had caused years of raging arguments between them and left her feeling as if she was never quite enough. Still, she’d never doubted his love, and she kept expecting to hear his voice on the phone warning her not to be walking around the goddam city at night or getting into a goddam cab without making sure the driver had a legitimate license.

You drove me crazy, Dad. But I loved you.

She forced a sip of coffee down her tight throat and tried to concentrate on transferring the last of yesterday’s handwritten notes to her laptop instead of thinking about her money-grubbing stepmother, who was now enjoying a town house in Bonita Springs bought with Piper’s money. An hour went by. She wanted more coffee, but that would mean pulling out the Tinkle Belle.