Chapter 15
Kellan
The music was loud and obnoxious—the typical South Beach salsa remix tunes that seemed to play in every club up and down Ocean Beach Boulevard. I sat at the end of the bar, nursing my skinny mojito and wishing Selena and Carla would show up already.
I was as surprised as anyone was when Selena had blown up my phone earlier that day, hatching a sinister plot to get the notoriously workaholic Carla out of the office for a night on the town. I’d immediately texted back, proclaiming what a great idea I thought it was and how I’d be happy to set it up. But Selena was having none of it, claiming a top-secret super-spy supermodel liaison and keeping me out of the loop until the last minute when she’d told me to meet at the Cougar Club by eight.
Glad that Carla and Selena had mended fences, I willingly agreed, even going so far as to text Carla that I’d be working late on a new account and not to wait up for me. She replied with a winking emoticon that she’d be meeting Selena for a nightcap and not to wait up for her! Figuring Selena had sealed the deal, I showered and got ready and was at the Cougar Club an hour later.
That was two mojitos ago and they still hadn’t showed. I sighed and assumed they were probably catching up, sharing a bottle of wine on Carla’s rooftop hideaway and had simply lost track of time. Ordering another mojito, I figured a good plan of attack would be to drink until the music quit annoying me and settle in for the night. It wasn’t like the Cougar Club was torture. After all, it was appropriately named, with randy hot MILFs outnumbering their younger male counterparts 3 to 1. It would’ve been a great ratio for me to get lucky had I been single, but now that I was attached, I sat comfortably on the sidelines admiring the view.
South Beach’s finest were out for a night on the town, despite the fact that it was nearly ten on a weeknight. Platinum blondes and well-preserved Latinas ground against their lucky young suitors on the dance floor, making me wince at their clumsy approximation of doing the “grind” and twerking.
I was just settling in for my third drink of the night—or was it my fourth—hard to keep track with all the strobe lights and throbbing house music—when I saw Selena and an entourage of even lovelier ladies wind through the club.
I perked up, expecting Carla to be in there somewhere, but as the fine ladies headed my way, Selena in the lead—in more ways than one—she was nowhere to be seen.
“Kellan!” Selena cried, and it was clear from her woozy strut and girlish demeanor that I hadn’t been the only one indulging in cocktails all night. “It’s so good to see you again!”
I smirked, offering a hand of greeting when she swatted it away and literally fell into my arms, kicking up one heel old black and white movie kiss style and smothering my face with wet, sloppy kisses. I felt her lips merge with mine before I could peel away, only to receive the same treatment from Selena’s super hot friends.
“Ladies,” she slurred when they’d finally let me up for air. “This is Kellan. He’s a model, too!”
“Which makes us all models!” said one of the girls, a fragile Asian beauty who looked about to pass out.
“For Florida Faces?” asked another one of the girls, a vapid blond with legs as thin as my bar stool.
Selena shook her head, “no,” like it was some tragedy. “For Miami Models,” she said, and all the girls frowned in concert.
They giggled at that, and drifted toward the bar as Selena remained, flirty and ripe in a too tight, too short, too low cut, too shimmery dress. It left little to the imagination and, while the goods on display were more than adequate, I much preferred Carla’s older, riper, less revealing style.
Who knows, I wondered. Maybe I was getting old as well.
Or maybe Selena and her brash, brassy persona just wasn’t my style.
“Where’s Carla?” I asked over the sound of the blaring house music.
Her big brown eyes got even bigger. “She didn’t text you?” she purred, her accent thicker—and huskier—than the first time we’d met only a few short days earlier.
I reached for my phone but she stilled my hand with her own. “She’s running late,” she said, helping me slide it into my front pocket—and then down a little lower. “She said she’ll catch up with us but first, I should get you out on the dance floor!”
I demurred, but Selena—with the aid of her sexy young friends—was a force of nature. Before I could refuse, let alone finish my drink, we were up and on the dance floor. The crowd parted for us as if they were the Red Sea, Selena busting out moves that might have looked comical in any other setting but, in the Cougar Club, with its winking lights and throbbing music, not to mention my empty stomach full of island rum and cane sugar, looked perfectly appropriate.
I didn’t dance so much as get bounced around from bony model to bony model, my silk shirt coming undone, my hair getting mussed, skin drenched in sweat but then… so was everybody else’s.
I kept waiting for Carla to show up but, in all the commotion, I figured she’d find me soon enough. After all, you could hardly miss me—the lone guy in a throbbing sea of model flesh!