Rarities Unlimited 04 - The Color of Death

genius who still couldn’t be trusted to run the family stores without constant oversight. It really pissed him off that he wasn’t allowed to buy a pair of underwear without ten minutes of maternal advice.
    Relax, Peyton told himself. Don’t be like your old man and pop a vein in the middle of an argument. Just keep slamming away themoney and in a year—three max—you’ll be toasting your butt in Rio de Janeiro with four underage sweeties to keep you happy.
    He took several relaxing breaths and concentrated on his own personal vision of Paradise: young women in his bed and his safe-deposit boxes brimming with the best of the gems that the South American gangs brought to him.
    And if the gangs roughed up a few couriers along the way, hey, life was tough all over.

Chapter 13
    Scottsdale
    Tuesday
    8:00 P.M .
    Sharon Sizemore shook back her artfully sun-streaked brown hair, adjusted a pair of thin-rimmed, rectangular black reading glasses, and skimmed the room-service menu. Nothing had changed since yesterday. She could have the scampi on fettuccine or she could just cut to the chase and order a cold pasta and shrimp salad.
    Because whatever she ordered, it would be cold by the time it got to her room.
    “Make mine rare,” Peyton Hall said from the suite’s bathroom.
    “Cabernet or zinfandel?” she asked, understanding his unspoken request for filet mignon, rare, with baked potato, double sour cream and chives, extra butter.
    “I’ll try the zin this time.” Smiling, dripping water from his shower, Peyton stood in the bathroom door and watched her order their dinner. This was as close as he would get to having a naked secretary, which had been a favorite fantasy since he’d gotten his first executive office. He’d tried it once with a call girl. It just wasn’t the same. “Tell them not to hurry.”
    “You do want dinner this month, don’t you?”
    “You’re too hard on the staff.”
    “Someone has to be,” she muttered. “Once, just once I’d like to lift the lid on a room-service dish and see steam rise. Maybe if I ordered shrimp on dry ice…?”
    Peyton tied the hotel robe around his thick middle and grabbed the TV remote. He and Sharon had been fairly regular lovers for six years, long enough for him to know that he wasn’t going to get lucky again before dinner.
    “Hey, they’re showing Blue Velvet, ” he said.
    Sharon shrugged. “Just because it has dialogue doesn’t mean it isn’t a fuck flick.”
    He sighed. She really was out of the mood. “Maybe we should cancel room service and eat out.”
    She scrolled through the notes she’d been making on various items that should be called to her father’s attention. “Why? I thought you wanted to be alone.”
    “I did. I am.”
    She looked up, confused.
    “You barely stopped working long enough for a quickie,” he said.
    With a muffled sound of impatience, she set aside her tiny laptop. “Sorry, darling. The more Dad drinks, the more details I have to chase.”
    “I know. I’m buried too. We’re trying to outguess the economy and lock in Christmas gem orders for all the stores. Then the South Americans clobbered one of my couriers last week and my insurance rates are already so high I get a nosebleed just okaying the checks.” Not true—the courier’s company took the gaff—but Peyton was working on the sympathy vote.
    “Poor baby. Come here and let mama make it all go away.”
    She didn’t have to offer twice. Tugging at his bathrobe, he started toward her.
    The phone rang.
    “You better answer it,” she said. “Your calls are being forwarded to my room tonight. No one who calls me will be surprised to heara man’s voice. I don’t think Marjorie would be happy to hear mine.”
    He swore and picked up the phone as his bathrobe hit the floor. “Yeah?” he said roughly.
    The change that came over him told Sharon that it was indeed Marjorie calling.
    “You got a note from Timmy’s teacher?” he asked.
    Without missing a beat Sharon picked up her computer and went to the bedroom. Experience told her that Peyton’s wife was about to unload a day of single parenthood on her husband’s head. No need for Sharon to hang around, listening to Timmy’s latest screwup and Tiffany’s endless need for expensive clothes, dance lessons, and the car she simply had to have for her upcoming sixteenth birthday. As Ted Sizemore had often pointed out to Sharon and her brother, Sonny, kids were an expensive pain in the