Glitter Baby (Wynette, Texas #3)(104)

“Keep going, Teacher Lady,” he said.

She stared at him with wide, frightened eyes. Slowly he picked up his gun and leveled it at her. “That’s okay. Don’t mind me. Keep on going.”

She hesitantly unfastened the long undergarment and then stepped out of it. Clasping it modestly in front of her, she tried to hide her eyelet-trimmed camisole from the outlaw’s eyes.

“Let down your hair,” he ordered.

She dropped the undergarment and pulled out the hairpins.

“Shake your head.”

No sensible woman was going to argue with the Sundance Kid when he had a pistol trained on her belly, and the schoolteacher did as she was told. All she had left was the camisole, and Sundance didn’t have to talk. He raised his pistol and cocked the hammer.

Etta slowly opened the low row of buttons until the camisole parted in a V. Sundance’s hands moved to his waist. He unfastened his gun belt and pushed it aside, then stood and approached her. He slipped his hands inside the open garment.

“Do you know what I wish?” Etta asked.

“What?”

“That once you’d get here on time!”

As Etta threw her arms around Redford’s neck, Fleur sighed and got up to turn off the set. “It’s hard to believe that scene was written by a man, isn’t it?”

Kissy gazed at the blank screen. “William Goldman’s a great screenwriter, but I’ll bet anything his wife wrote that scene while he was in the shower. What I wouldn’t give…”

“Uhmm. It’s the ultimate female sexual fantasy.”

“All that male sexual menace coming from a lover you know will never hurt you.” Kissy licked her lips.

Fleur touched her morning glory necklace. “Too bad they don’t make men like that anymore.”



Jake stood in the hallway outside the partially opened door and listened to the two women. He hadn’t intended to eavesdrop, but Fleur had looked funny all evening, and they were gone so long he’d decided to check up on her. Now he was sorry. This was exactly the kind of conversation a man should never hear. What did women want? In public the rhetoric was all about male sensitivity and equality, but in private, here they were, two intelligent women having orgasms over caveman macho.

Maybe he was a little jealous. He was one of the biggest box office draws of the decade, and he was living right above Fleur Savagar’s head, but all she wanted to do was take verbal potshots at him. He wondered if Redford had to put up with this kind of crap. If there was any justice in the world, Redford was sitting in front of his television someplace in Sundance, Utah, watching his wife go melty-eyed over one of Bird Dog Caliber’s rough-’em-up love scenes. The thought gave him a small moment of satisfaction, but, as he slipped away, the emotion faded. No matter how you looked at it, this wasn’t the easiest time to be a man.



The next morning Jake showed up to run with her, but as they made their way around the Central Park Reservoir, he barely spoke. She had to find some way to motivate him to at least attempt to write. When they returned to the house, she impulsively invited him in for Sunday morning breakfast. Maybe he’d be more communicative with a full stomach. But he declined.

“That’s right,” she replied coolly. “Your schedule’s been a real killer lately with all that time you’re spending pounding away at your typewriter.”

He tugged open the zipper of his sweatshirt. “You don’t know anything.”

“Are you even trying to write?”

“For your information, I’ve already filled up a legal pad.”

Jake composed at the typewriter, and she didn’t believe him. “Show me.”

He scowled and brushed past her into the house.

She showered, then slipped into jeans and her favorite cable-knit sweater. She’d been so preoccupied with Michel’s collection, Olivia’s skittishness, and trying to anticipate Alexi’s next move that she hadn’t focused on the problem over her head. Jake Koranda had made a deal with her to start writing again, and he wasn’t following through.

At ten o’clock, she went out into the front hallway and unlocked the door that led to the attic apartment. He didn’t answer when she knocked at the top of the stairs. She slipped her key in the lock.

The attic was a large, open space lit by both a skylight and smaller, rectangular windows on two sides. Fleur hadn’t been up here since Jake had moved in, and she saw that he’d furnished it sparsely with a few comfortable chairs, a bed, a long couch, and an L-shaped arrangement of desk and table that held a typewriter and a ream of paper still in its wrapper.

He had his feet propped on the desk, and he was tossing a basketball from one hand to the other. “I don’t remember inviting you in,” he said. “I don’t like interruptions when I’m working.”

“I wouldn’t dream of interrupting your creative process. Just pretend I’m not here.” She went into the small kitchen that sat behind a curve of counter and opened the cupboards until she found a can of coffee.

“Go away, Fleur. I don’t want you here.”

“I’ll leave as soon as we have a business meeting.”

“I’m not in the mood for a meeting.” The basketball passed back and forth, right palm to left.

She plugged in the coffeepot and walked over to perch on the desk. “The thing is,” she said, “you’re dead wood, and I can’t afford to have anything pulling me under right now. Everyone in town thinks you signed with me because we’re sleeping together. Only one thing’s going to stop the gossip. Another Koranda play.”