Megan Hart is the acclaimed author of over thirty erotic novels and novellas, including Dirty, Broken, and the bestselling Tempted. Megan lives in the deep dark woods of Pennsylvania with her husband and two children, and is currently working on her next novel for Spice.

You can contact Megan through her Web site at: www.meganhart.com.

Stranger
Megan Hart

www.spice-books.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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To the Bootsquad for the crit and the craziness. To the Maverick Authors for the same. To Jared for growing on me.

And, as ever and always, to DPF, because I could do this without you but I’m awfully glad I don’t have to.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Special thanks to Steve Kreamer of Kreamer Funeral Home in Annville, Pennsylvania, for coming in to my high school class and making me think about the funeral director business as a career. And thanks as well for the time spent years later helping me understand just what it’s really like. Anything I got right is because of him—anything I got wrong I messed up all on my own.

Chapter 01

I was looking for a stranger.

The Fishtank wasn’t my usual hangout, though I’d been inside it once or twice. Recently redecorated, it sought to compete with a bunch of brand-new bars and restaurants that had opened in downtown Harrisburg, but though the tropical theme and aquariums were pretty and the drinks cheap enough, the Fishtank was too far away from restaurant row to really compete. What it did have that the other, newer bars didn’t, was the attached hotel. The Fishtank, “where you hook ’em,” was sort of a joke with the young and single crowd of central Pennsylvania. Or at least with me, and I was young. And blessedly, purposefully, single.

Scanning the crowd, I wove my way through the closely set tables toward the bar. The Fishtank was filled, literally, with people I didn’t know. One would be the perfect stranger, emphasis on perfect.

So far, I hadn’t seen him, but there was still time. I took a seat at the bar. My black skirt rode up a little and my stockings, held up by a garter belt of wispy lace, slipped on the leather stool. The sensation whispered up my thighs, bare above the tops of my stockings. My panties, of even wispier lace, rubbed me as I shifted.

“Tröegs Pale Ale,” I told the bartender, who passed me a bottle with a nod.

Compared to many of the women in the Fishtank, I was dressed conservatively. My black skirt was cut fashionably just above the knee, my blouse silky and formfitting, but in the sea of low-riding jeans and navel-baring T-shirts, spaghetti straps and hooker heels, I stood out. Just the way I wanted.

I sipped my beer and looked around. Who would it be? Who would take me upstairs tonight? How long would I have to wait?

Apparently, not long. The seat next to mine had been empty when I sat, but now a man took it. Unfortunately, it was the wrong man. A stranger, yes, but not the one I was waiting for. The guy had blond hair and a gap between his two front teeth. Cute, but definitely not what I wanted. Also unfortunately, he didn’t seem to take a hint.

“No, thanks,” I said when he offered to buy me a drink. “I’m waiting for my boyfriend.”

“You’re not waiting for your boyfriend.” He said this with unshakable confidence. “You’re just saying that. Let me buy you a drink.”

“I have one already.” I gave him points for persistence, but I wasn’t here to go home with a frat boy who thought “not” jokes were the height of humor.

“Okay, I’ll leave you alone.” Pause. “NOT!”

He laughed, slapping a thigh. “C’mon. Let me buy you a drink.”

“I—”

“Are you hitting on my date?”

Frat Boy and I turned, and both our jaws dropped. I’m pretty sure we each had different reasons. His was probably surprise at being wrong. Mine was in delight.

The man standing next to me had the dark hair and blue eyes I’d been looking for. The earring. The jeans, deliciously worn in all the right places and the white T-shirt with a leather jacket over it. I was seated on a high bar stool and he still towered over me. I guessed him to be at least four inches over six feet, if not more.

Very, very nice.

My stranger flicked his hand like he was brushing away Frat Boy. “G’wan, now. Go.”

Frat Boy, to give him credit, didn’t try to make excuses. He just grinned and got off the stool. “Sorry, man. You can’t blame me for trying, can you?”

My stranger turned to look at me, and his blue-eyed gaze roamed over my every inch before he answered. “No.” He sounded considering. “I don’t guess I can.”

My stranger took the vacated seat. He held out the hand not gripping the glass of dark beer. “Hi. I’m Sam. Don’t say Sam I am, or I’ll toss you back to that doofus.”

Sam. The name suited him. Before he gave it I might’ve imagined him as anyone, but once he did I could think of him as nobody else.

“Grace.” I shook his proffered hand. “Nice to meet you.”

“What are you drinking, Grace?”

I lifted my bottle. “Tröegs Pale Ale.”

“How is that?”

I sipped. “Pale.”

Sam held up his glass. “I’ve got Guinness. It’s not pale. Let me buy you one.”

“I haven’t finished the one I have,” I said, but with the smile I hadn’t given Frat Boy.

Sam leaned in. “C’mon, Grace. It’ll put hair on your chest.”

“Uh-huh. Do I look like I want hair on my chest?”

Sam blatantly eyed the front of my blouse. “Without seeing the chest in question, I’m afraid I can’t say.”

I laughed. “Riiiight. Try again.”

Sam gestured to the bartender and asked for two more bottles of the pale ale. “For when you’re done with that one.”

I didn’t take the second bottle. “I can’t, really. I’m on call.”

“Are you a doctor?” Sam tipped back the last of his beer from his glass and pulled a bottle toward him.

“No.”

He paused, waiting for me to say more, but I didn’t. He drank, swallowed. He gave the sort of manly grunt and lipsmack guys make when they drink beer from bottles and are trying to impress women. I watched him without speaking and sipped from my own bottle, wondering how he meant to do this. I really hoped he’d make it convincing enough for me to go upstairs with him.

“So. You’re not here to drink, then?” Sam eyed me, then turned on his stool so our knees touched.

I smiled at the touch of challenge in his tone. “Not really. No.”

“So…” He paused, as if thinking. He was very good. “So what you’re saying is, let’s say a guy, oh, bought you a drink.”

“Okay.”

“Before he knew you weren’t here to drink.”

I smiled again, holding back a laugh. “Sure. Let’s say that.”

Sam swiveled on his stool to fix me with an intense gaze. “Would he already have fucked up too bad, or would you give him a chance to make it up to you?”

I pushed the bottle he’d bought me toward him. “I guess that would depend.”

Sam’s slow grin was a heat-seeking missile sent straight between my thighs. “On what?”

“On if he was cute or not.”

Slowly he turned to show off his profile, then to the other side until he finally looked at me head-on. “How’s this?”

I looked him over. His hair, the color of expensive black licorice and spiked on the crown, feathered a bit over his ears and against the back of his neck. His jeans had rubbed to white in interesting places. He wore black, scuffed boots I hadn’t noticed before. I looked back up to his face and the quirking mouth, the nose saved from being too sharp only by the way the rest of his features came together. He had brows like dark wings, arched high over the center of his eyes and tapering to nothing at the outside corners.

“Yes.” I leaned closer. “You’re cute enough.”

Sam rapped the top of the bar with his knuckles and wahooed. The noise turned heads, but he didn’t notice. Or he pretended not to. “Damn. My mama was right. I am purty.”

He wasn’t, really. Attractive, but not pretty. Still, I couldn’t help laughing. He wasn’t what I’d been expecting, but…wasn’t that the point of meeting a stranger?

He didn’t waste any time.

“You’re very pretty,” Sam, beer finished in record time, leaned to murmur in the vicinity of my ear.

His lips tickled the sensitive skin of my neck just below my lobe. Already primed by the fantasy, my body reacted at once. My nipples pushed against the lace of my bra and outlined themselves in the silk of my shirt. My clit pulsed, and I squeezed my thighs together.

I leaned close to him, too. He smelled a little like beer, a little like soap. A whole lot like yum. I wanted to lick him. “Thanks.”

We each sat back on our stools. Smiling. I crossed my legs and watched his gaze follow the hem of my skirt as it rose to give him a glimpse of bare thigh. His eyes widened in satisfactory appreciation. His tongue slid along his bottom lip, leaving it glistening.

He looked into my eyes. “I don’t suppose you’re the type of girl to go upstairs with a guy she just met, even if he is cute as all hell?”

“Actually,” I told him, matching his low, breathy tone, “I think I might be.”

Sam paid the bill and left a tip big enough to make the bartender grin. Then he took my hand to help me down from the stool, holding me steady when my foot came down wrong as though he’d known all along I’d stumble. Even in four-inch heels I had to tilt my head way back to look into his face.

“Thank you,” I said.

“What can I say?” Sam replied. “I’m a gentleman.”

He stood head and shoulders over most of the crowd, which had grown considerably since I came in, and he led me without faltering through the maze of tables and bodies toward the door to the lobby.

Nobody could have known we’d just met. That we were strangers. I was going upstairs to a stranger’s room. Nobody could know that, but I did, and my heart thumped hard and harder the closer we got to the elevator.

The walls inside reflected us both, our faces blurred by the dim lighting and the abstract pattern of gold in the mirrors. His T-shirt had rucked up out of his jeans. I couldn’t look away from his belt buckle or the hint of bare skin just above it. When I looked up again to meet his gaze in the mirror, Sam’s smile had shifted.

I saw him put his hand on the back of my neck before I felt his touch. The mirror had created that distance, that second of delay. Like watching a movie or TV, but somehow that small disconnect made this seem all the more real.

At the door to his room Sam took his hand away from the back of my neck to dig in his pockets for the key card. He tried both front pockets and came up with nothing but a few coins. He fumbled. His nervousness charmed me even as it prompted my own. He found the key inside his wallet, tucked into a back pocket.

I liked his laugh when he pulled it out and fit it into the door. The lock blinked red, and he muttered a curse I deciphered by tone, not by word. He tried again, his hands so big they engulfed the slim plastic card. I couldn’t stop staring at his hands.

“Fuck,” Sam said clearly, and handed me the card. “I can’t get the door open.”

I reached for the card. Our hands touched. Then somehow his hand had encircled my wrist and my back pressed against the still-closed door. Sam pressed against my front. His mouth found mine already open for him. His hand discovered my leg already cocked to fit his grasp just behind my knee. He fit between my legs like the key ought to have fit in the lock, without hesitation, opening my door. His fingers slid higher beneath my skirt above the edge of my stockings and found bare skin.

He hissed into my open mouth and his fingers tightened on my wrist. He lifted an arm above my head, pinning me with his hands and body and mouth to the door. There in the hall he kissed me for the first time, and there was nothing slow or easy about it. Nothing soft or hesitant.

Sam stroked my tongue with his. His belt buckle pushed my belly through my silky shirt. Lower, his cock nudged me, too, through the barrier of his jeans. He let go of my wrist.

“Unlock the door.” He stopped the kiss just long enough to speak into my mouth.

His hand hit the door handle as I rammed the key, without looking, into the lock. Behind me the door flew open with the pressure of our bodies, but neither of us stumbled. Sam was holding me too tightly for that.

He moved me, mouth still glued to mine, two steps into the room and kicked the door shut behind us. The slam of it echoed between my legs. Sam, breathing hard, pulled away to look into my eyes.

“This is what you want?”

I found the voice to rasp, “Yes.”

He nodded, just once, and took my mouth again. His kiss might have bruised me, had he not pulled back just enough to keep it from hurting. Without the door holding me up, I had to rely on Sam’s arms around me. One slid behind my shoulders. The other left the secret treasure of my thigh to go around my lower back. He pulled me along with him even as he step-by-stepped me back toward the bed. It hit the back of my legs. He broke the kiss again.

“Hold on a second.” Sam reached around me to tug down the comforter, tossing it unceremoniously into a pile on the floor.

He grinned at me. His cheeks looked a bit flushed, his eyes a trifle sleepy-lidded. He reached for me again, and I stepped again into his arms. Mine went around his neck. His went around my waist.

We made it to the bed in a tangle of limbs and laughter. Sam was as long lying down as he was standing, but on the bed I could move up to kiss him without having to tilt my head so far. I found his throat, the jut of his Adam’s apple. His skin tasted of salt. I rubbed the first poking bristles of his beard with my lips.

My skirt had ridden up, helped by Sam’s hands. He pushed the material higher. One large hand cupped my thigh. The edge of his fingers brushed my panties, and my breath caught.

I looked up to see him looking down with an expression of mingled amusement and something else I couldn’t quite decipher. I took my mouth from his skin and sat up a little, pushing back but not pulling away.

“What?”

His hand on my thigh shifted higher while his other went to prop his head. Stretched out that way, his clothes askew and our limbs tangled, he looked enviably comfortable in his own skin. Men often did. Sometimes they had to put it on, that confidence, the way they put on cologne. Sam’s seemed more innate, an awareness of himself as much a part of him as the color of his eyes or those long, long legs.

He shook his head. “Nothing.”

“It can’t be nothing,” I said. “You’re looking at me funny.”

“Am I?” He sat up a little but didn’t take his hand from my thigh. He crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue. “Was it like this?”

I burst into laugher. “Not quite.”

“Ah, good.” Sam nodded and leaned to catch my mouth in another kiss, speaking without taking his lips from mine. “That would have been embarrassing.”

Then he laid me back onto that big, soft bed and proceeded to kiss me breathless. His hand stayed on my thigh, sometimes slipping down closer to my knee and moving up again, but though his fingers occasionally brushed the lace of my panties, he never actually touched me there. He didn’t lie on top of me, either, squooshing, but kept his weight to the side. Nothing was going quite as I’d expected…but wasn’t that what I wanted? To be surprised?

He kissed me fast. He kissed me slow. He nibbled and nuzzled and licked, and all the while his hand stayed in its maddening position so close to where I wanted it, but never quite making it there.

“Sam,” I whispered finally, hoarsely, unable to take it any longer.

He paused in kissing me to look into my eyes. “Yes, Grace?”

“You’re killing me.”

He smiled. “Am I?”

I nodded and slid a hand between us to tug on his belt buckle. “You are.”

His hand inched higher. “Can I make it up to you?”

I unhooked the buckle. “I think so. Maybe.”

He turned his hand as he moved it. When he touched me, finally, the heel of his palm pressed flat to my cunt, and my mouth parted in a gasp I didn’t bother to try to keep silent.

“How’m I doing so far?” he asked, his head bent so his mouth brushed my cheek.

“Good. Very…good.” Speaking took the effort of concentration I found difficult with his hand on me. So far he’d done no more than press against me. Hadn’t even rubbed. But primed by the long, slow minutes of kissing and the hours of mental foreplay I’d gone through already, my body was more than ready for him.

His lips slipped down my neck to center over the pulse in my throat. Sam sucked, gently, then took the skin between his teeth. The bite didn’t hurt, but it did send sensation ripping through me. I arched beneath him. My hands found the back of his head, the smooth silk of his hair, and I wound my fingers in it. Pressing him to me, keeping his mouth there while he sucked my skin. I would bruise. I couldn’t, just then, care.

“I like the way you say my name,” he murmured. His tongue slid along the place where he’d left his mark. “Say it again.”

“Sam.” I breathed it.

I heard the smile in his voice when he spoke again. “I am.”

Then we were laughing again, until he took his hand from between my legs and used it to tug open the buttons on my blouse, one at a time. Then I stopped laughing, too breathless to do more than sigh. He eased open my shirt. He pushed himself up on one elbow and folded back the material to show my bra. His fingers traced the lacy edges over the tops of my breasts.

My nipples had gone tight, hard, aching. When Sam’s thumb passed over one, I sucked in a breath. I watched his face as he looked down at me. When he bent to kiss my exposed skin, I bit my lower lip. My body moved beneath him.

Sam sat up. He shrugged out of his leather jacket and pulled his shirt off over his head, leaving his hair standing up all over the place. His body was as long and lean as his legs. He knelt beside me, one hand rubbing his chest almost absently. His other hand toyed with the open belt buckle, then the button beneath. He undid it, but left the zipper alone.

I watched him, enjoying the show. “Are you going to take those off?”

Sam nodded, solemn. “Absolutely.”

I lifted an eyebrow. “Tonight?”

Sam laughed. “Yes.”

I slid one stocking-clad foot up over his thigh and rubbed the front of his jeans. “Are you shy?”

Sam’s hips pushed forward at the touch of my foot, and his mouth parted. His hand paused in its rubbing, fingers going flat over his heart. “Maybe. A little.”

Holy hell, that was hot. I didn’t believe him, really. He hadn’t acted shy anytime tonight. “Want me to go first?”

Sam’s grin melted me. “Okay.”

I got off the bed to make it easier for myself. Without my shoes on, I was face-to-chest with him—not a bad view at all. Sam’s bare chest was smooth and muscled, with a hint of six-pack abs but nothing overdefined. I took a couple steps back. My shirt hung open, courtesy of his unbuttoning. I took my time sliding the fabric from one arm, then the other. I tossed the shirt onto the chair. Sam’s eyes didn’t even follow it. They stayed on me.

I’d chosen my skirt for the ease of getting it off, but though it would have taken me but a second to unhook and unzip it, I took much longer than that. Never taking my eyes from his, I slipped open the button at my hip. A second later I unzipped, inch by slow inch. Then I slid the fabric over my hips and let the skirt fall to the floor in a puddle at my feet. I stepped out of it and hooked it out of the way with my foot. I stood before Sam in my white lace bra and matching panties, in the wispy garter belt and nude, seamed stockings.

The look on his face had made every second worth it.

I would never win any beauty contests. Too many bulges in places I wanted to be flat, too little curve in places I wanted to be round. I also knew that really didn’t matter. Not really, not to most men.

Sam didn’t appear to have any shields on his expression. His pupils had gone large and dark, nearly swallowing the green-blue. His lips glistened from where he’d swiped his tongue. “…Wow.”

The compliment was all the nicer because it sounded so sincere. “Thank you.”

He didn’t move. One hand still pressed over his heart, the other hooked into the front of his jeans. He looked at me, his mouth pulling up on one side. “My turn, huh?”

“Your turn, Sam.”

“God,” Sam said. “I love the way that sounds.”

“Sam,” I whispered, stepping toward him. “Sam, Sam, Sam.”

I’d heard of kinkier fetishes, but he said he liked it, and…hell, I liked it, too. There was something sweet and sexy about the name. About him. The way each time the word purred from my tongue his smile twitched broader.

I reached for the front of his jeans. The metal button and zipper were cool compared to the heat coming through the denim. My heart skipped a little when my fingers traced the outline of his erection. He groaned. I wanted to get on my knees at that sound, but I didn’t.

I looked up at him, instead. Way, way up. I tugged open the button. Click-clicked down the zipper. Always watching his face, not his crotch. Sam hadn’t moved his hand from his chest, though his fingers tightened a bit on his skin. The pulse leaped in his throat, and a muscle in his cheek twitched. His smile had thinned. He reached to push the hair off my face.

I hooked my fingers in the denim at his hips and pushed. It didn’t snag. He’d worn a belt for more than just fashion, and the jeans were loose enough I had no trouble sliding them down. He moved a little, helping me. Our gazes never left each other’s as I bent to push his jeans all the way to his ankles and waited while he lifted one foot, then the other, to pull them off. I stood then, swiftly, running my hands along his endlessly long legs as I did.

I couldn’t look at his crotch.

I didn’t know why I had suddenly become shy. I wasn’t a stranger to bulging boxers. Something in his face stopped me.

There is always a moment when the final barrier has to come down.

“Sam?”

He nodded. He stopped holding his heart and reached for me, instead. He bent, I stretched, and we met somehow in the middle with our mouths.

This time he covered me completely when he laid me on the bed, but I didn’t feel crushed. I felt…embraced. Enfolded. There was so much of Sam he surrounded me.

I should’ve panicked, maybe. Felt trapped. But too busy with his mouth and his hands helping me off with my underwear, too busy reaching to free him from the cotton boxers, I didn’t have time. I couldn’t think of anything but the silky heat of his cock in my hands when at last I found it.

Sam made a small, helpless noise when I touched him there. I slid my hand along his erection. Sam’s prick, like the rest of him, was long. His fingers closed over mine. There was no room to stroke him, not with him on top of me that way.

He buried his face in my neck. The rise and fall of his breath pushed our bodies together. The seconds ticked out between us, only a few. He moved down my body to kiss my breasts. His tongue stroked my skin and teased my nipples. He moved lower, over my ribs and the curve of my belly. He mouthed my hip, then down a little farther to my thigh.

I let the pleasure sweep over me, but at the odd motion of his head I had to look down. “What are you doing?”

“Writing my name,” he said without apology, and demonstrated with his tongue on my skin. “S-A-M-S-T—”

It tickled, and I squirmed. He grinned up at me briefly before dipping his head lower. His breath gusted over my trimmed pubic curls, and I tensed. I always did at that moment, waiting for the first touch of tongue on sensitive flesh.

Sam, perhaps reading the tension of my muscles as distaste, moved back up my body. He looked up past my face, stretched and hooked open the nightstand drawer with a finger. The movement brought his chest within licking distance, and I didn’t pass up my opportunity. He shivered. He pulled back to me and held open his hand.

“You pick,” he said.

I looked over the selection of condoms in his hand, thinking how sweet it was not to need to wonder if there was going to be an issue about using protection. “Wow. Ribbed for my pleasure, extra-lubricated…glow in the dark?” I laughed at the last one.

He did, too, and tossed it to the floor. He held up one of the ribbed condoms. “This one, then?”

“Looks good to me.”

He handed me the package, warm from his palm. Sam rolled onto his back, arms behind his head on the pillow. No more shyness, not for either of us. No point in it now.

His body was put together like someone had taken extra care to make sure everything fit just right. Legs and thighs and belly, hips and ribs and neck, shoulders, arms and hands. Each of Sam’s pieces fit. Clothed he’d looked a little gangly, but naked he was pretty near perfect.

He watched me looking, and his mouth tilted again. I couldn’t quite get a handle on Sam’s smile. It wasn’t a smirk, or smug. It was almost a little bemused.

Naked, I knelt next to his thigh. I stroked his erection, and he pushed his hips upward when I did. He untucked a hand from beneath his head and slipped it between my legs. His thumb pressed my clit, and it was my turn to shiver.

I stroked. He rubbed. In a minute we were both panting. He moved a finger along my folds. I knew he felt how wet I was. How ready. He slid a finger inside me and my grip on him faltered as I gasped.

“Grace,” Sam whispered, voice gone guttural and low. “I hope you’re ready, because I can’t wait much longer.”

Neither could I. “I’m ready.” I paused, then added, “Sam.”

I had no trouble figuring out what his smile meant that time. I shifted on his hand so he could slide free. I put the condom on him, and a moment after that, myself. His hands gripped my hips. I leaned forward, my hands on his shoulders.

We looked into each other’s eyes.

He moved me, at first, with slow, steady strokes. We found our rhythm almost at once. My clit rubbed him with every thrust, the pressure tantalizing but not quite enough. Sam solved that problem in another minute when he put his thumb against me again.

I didn’t care what came from my mouth just then. A string of words that made no sense, maybe. Something halfway between a prayer and a curse. But one thing I do know I said was his name.

Orgasms are like waves, no two alike. They ebb, flow, rise and crest. And crash. Mine crashed over me so fast it took me by surprise. Hard, almost sharp, the pleasure peaked as I moved on Sam’s cock. His thumb ceased its pressure, easing off just when I needed it to, but in the next moment he’d started doing this little jiggling motion that sent me up and up again. The second climax followed the first without time for me to catch my breath, but when it was over, that was it. Warmth rippled through me and languor crept along my limbs. I put my hand over Sam’s to keep him from moving it.

I didn’t know how close he was, but when I opened my eyes, his were closed. His hands gripped my hips again. His thrusts got harder. Sweat had broken out along his hairline. I wanted to lick it, and the sudden stab of fresh desire surprised me as much as the intensity of my orgasm had.

“Sam,” I whispered. I watched his face contort. “Sam…”

And he came. His face twisted and his fingers clutched, giving me more bruises. He arched and fell back onto the pillow, and let out one last, long and heavy breath.

He opened his eyes a moment later and smiled at me. His hand came up to twine in my hair. He tugged it, pulling me close to kiss my mouth tenderly. His pupils were still wide and dark, with nothing to reflect me.

We disengaged and took care of the things that needed to be done, but I hadn’t yet managed to rouse myself enough to climb out of bed and go to the bathroom when the distinctive jangle of my phone came from my purse.

“Is that ‘Smoke on the Water’?” Sam lifted his head to look at me.

“Yes.” I ignored it, too sated to think about getting up for a phone call, even though I knew I should.

Sam’s broad and hearty laugh shook the bed, and I looked over at him. “Awesome.” He made rock horns with his fingers.

I had to laugh, too. He seemed younger with postsex sleepiness lodged in his eyes and his hair all rumpled. Not that it mattered.

He yawned and of course, unable to help myself, so did I. He kissed my bare shoulder and rolled onto his back again, hands tucked under the pillow, to stare at the ceiling.

“I knew that fortune cookie was right,” he said without looking at me. “It said you will meet someone new.”

“My last fortune cookie told me I was going to find money,” I said. “So far, nothing.”

Sam turned his gaze to me, though his head stayed still. “You’ve got time. I don’t think there’s a statute of limitations on fortunes.”

I rolled my eyes. “I wish it would hurry up, though. I could use some money.”

Sam’s expression shifted, subtly, as we stared at each other. My phone rang again, this time with the less awesome ring tone that meant I had a message. I couldn’t ignore that, since it was probably from my answering service. Someone must’ve died.

“I have to get that,” I said without moving.

“Okay.” Sam smiled.

I leaned over to kiss him quickly, on the cheek. I felt his gaze on me as I gathered my fallen clothes and my purse and went to the bathroom. I punched in the number of the answering service as I slipped into my panties and juggled the phone while I hooked my bra. The garter belt and stockings I tucked into my bag, not wanting to bother with them when I was going home.

I took care of the call and finished dressing, then patted some cold water on my face. Sam’s bathroom looked used, a rumpled towel on the floor by the toilet and a small toiletries bag on the sink. He used an electric razor and favored a different toothpaste than I did, but this peek into his private life seemed intrusive and personal and I stopped looking. I took an extra few minutes to freshen my makeup and tie back my hair.

When I came out of the bathroom, Sam had pulled his boxers back on. The remote lay next to him on the bed, but he hadn’t turned on the television. He sat up when I came out.

“Hey,” he said.

My phone beeped again with another message. Someone had called while I was on the phone. I pulled it from my purse but didn’t flip it open. “It’s been great, but I have to go.”

He got up, towering over me even after I put on my heels. “I’ll walk you to your car.”

I shook my head. “No. You don’t have to. I’m fine.”

“But I really should.”

I looked up at him. “Sam, it’s okay.”

We smiled at each other. He walked me to the door, where he bent to kiss me far more awkwardly than he had before.

“Good night,” I said on the other side of the door. “Thank you.”

He blinked and didn’t smile. “You’re…welcome?”

So cute.

I reached up to pat his cheek. “It was great.”

Sam blinked again, those dark brows knitting. “Okay.”

I waved and moved toward the elevator. He closed the door behind me, and I heard the blare of the television almost at once.

At my car I remembered to check my voice mail. Sitting behind the wheel, buckling my belt, I punched in my password and listened, expecting to hear my sister’s voice. Maybe my best friend Mo’s.

“Yeah, hi,” said a voice I didn’t recognize. “This is Jack. I’m calling for, um…Miss Underfire. We were supposed to meet tonight?”

He sounded uncertain; I felt suddenly sick. Miss Underfire was the name I used with the agency, the name I used to keep everything discreet.

“But I’m here at the Fishtank, and…well…you’re not. Um…call me back if you want to reschedule.”

I listened to a very long pause while I waited for the call to disconnect, but it didn’t.

“Anyway, I’m sorry,” said Jack. “Something got messed up, I guess.”

A click, and he was gone, and the pseudofeminine robotic voice-mail message was instructing me how to delete the message.

I closed my phone and put it carefully into my purse. I gripped the steering wheel tight, with both hands. I waited to scream, or laugh, or cry, but in the end I only turned the key in the ignition and drove home.

I’d wanted to sleep with a stranger, and that’s exactly what I’d done.

Chapter 02

“Earth to Grace.” Jared snapped his fingers in front of my face. “Gloves?”

I blinked and shook my head a little, laughing off my lack of concentration. Jared Shanholtz, my intern, held up the box of latex gloves that had seen better days. “Sorry. They’re in the laundry room, I think. On the rack of shelves by the wall.”

He tossed the battered cardboard box into the trash. He nodded toward the body on the table in front of us. “Need me to bring anything else?”

I looked over Mr. Dennison’s still form. “No. I think he’s just about done.”

I leaned forward to brush the hair back from his forehead. His skin, cool under my fingers, had a faint dusting of powder. It didn’t quite match his natural skin tone. “On second thought, grab me the box of foundation, okay? I want to redo this.”

Jared nodded and said nothing, though I’d already spent an hour on Mr. Dennison. I stared down at him. He couldn’t care if he looked like he was wearing makeup, but I did. Even if his family didn’t care, I still did.

Pride didn’t do diddly for my fingers, though, that kept fumbling with the small pots and brushes I used on the corpses. I’d nearly made a mess of the embalming, too, but turned it around by giving Jared the “opportunity” to do most of it himself while I supervised. Jared was the first intern I’d ever hired and though it was hard for me to give up control of what went on in my business to give him the chance to learn, I was glad he was there then. Thank God he was good. If he’d been a bumbling disaster, we’d have been screwed.

Screwed.

I turned away from Mr. Dennison’s placid face. I had to take small sips of air to keep from bursting into a flurry of giggles I would’ve been hard-pressed to explain to Jared. The stifled laughter twisted in my gut and made it hurt. Coffee would help. Maybe.

Shit, nothing would help. I’d fucked a stranger the night before, but the wrong one. Not the stranger I’d paid to play with. Dammit, not only had I taken a huge personal risk, I’d wasted a hefty chunk of change, too.

“Grace?”

I turned, again caught up in my own thoughts. I took the box of miscellaneous pots and jars from Jared, and set them on the table. “Sorry. My mind’s wandering.”

“If you wanted me to take over,” Jared offered with a gesture at Mr. Dennison, “I could. Give you a break.”

I looked at the man on the table, and at Jared. “No, thanks.”

“Want to talk about it?”

I looked up. Jared gave me a look that told me I hadn’t been as nonchalant as I’d thought. But…huh? Talk? To Jared? “About what?”

“Whatever it is that’s bothering you.”

“Who says anything is?” I stroked my cosmetic sponge down Mr. Dennison’s cheek.

Jared didn’t say anything until I looked up at him. “I’ve been here for six months, Grace. I can tell.”

I stopped what I was doing to give him my full attention. “Do you want to take over with this? I mean, if you really want me to give you something to do, Jared, I can tell you the hearse needs to be washed, and I’m sure Shelly could use a hand with vacuuming the chapel.”

Jared liked washing the hearse. I hated it. It worked out perfectly, and if he thought I was being nice by letting him do that instead of the hundred other tasks of running the funeral home, I was happy to let him think so.

He grinned, taking a bit of the wind out of my sails. “Sure, boss. If that’s what you want. I just thought I’d offer.”

He tipped me a salute. I smiled. “You could make sure there’s some fresh coffee, too. You know Shelly doesn’t have a clue how to brew it.”

He nodded. “Late night, huh?”

“The usual.” I shrugged.

“You know, Grace, I’d be happy to take more call time.”

I concentrated on putting away my pots and jars and washing my hands as I answered. “I know. I appreciate it.”

“Just thought I’d offer,” Jared repeated, and left.

Quick and eager to learn, Jared was excellent with the clients and unafraid to take on new tasks. I was seriously considering offering him a position after he graduated. The problem was, though Frawley and Sons had grown every year since I’d taken over from my dad three years before, I still couldn’t afford to hire another full-time funeral director. Not if I wanted to eat, anyway. I could make him take more call, but I’d have to pay him more and trust him to provide my clients with the same level of service I could give them myself.

Nobody could give them the same level of service I could. After all, I had very big shoes to fill. My dad and his brother, Chuck, both retired now, had taken over the business from their father. Frawley and Sons had been the only funeral home in Annville for fifty years. People could and did go to funeral homes in the adjoining towns, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t keep trying to be the best.

I busied myself with cleaning up the supplies I’d used on Mr. Dennison, glad for the chance to work in silence. I couldn’t stop thinking about the stranger. Sam. The hair, the eyes, the smile. Those long damn legs. The way he’d gotten harder when I said his name. I hadn’t even asked for his number.

Hell. He hadn’t asked for mine, either. I don’t blush easily, but I blushed just then, thinking what he must have thought. No wonder he’d looked so strange when I thanked him. He hadn’t known it was an accident.

The first time I’d paid for sex had been an accident, too, though the date was on purpose. For years my parents had supported a local preschool’s dinner-dance fund-raiser, but since taking over Frawley and Sons, I’d also taken on the social obligations that went along with the position. With no boyfriend in the picture and no desire to get one, I’d done what any organized woman would do. I’d hired a man to take me.

I could have gone alone. I wasn’t afraid of being without a man. Hell, the last boyfriend I’d had was in college and when that relationship ended, I’d been more relieved than upset. But dinner and dancing at the country club was always more fun with someone to dance with. It had been a no-brainer. I hired people to service my car and pull my weeds. Paying someone to pull back my chair and bring me drinks didn’t seem any different. In fact, paying someone to treat me like a goddess without having to deal with any corresponding male-ego crap had seemed like the best idea I’d ever had.

It was ridiculously easy to find a place where men could hire female “companions,” but it had taken a little bit of searching to find an agency offering similar services to women. As director of the funeral home I had to be discreet, but I also had a lot of contacts. People consumed by grief didn’t always censor their commentary. I’d learned about a lot of crazy things while offering the tissue box to mourners, most of which was useless. Places to buy drugs, who was sleeping with whom, where Mr. Jones had gone to buy the garter belt and stockings he’d been wearing when he died. The mourning widow, Mrs. Andrews, had slipped me a card just before launching into full-on mourning-widow mode.

Mrs. Smith’s Services for Ladies. Massage, conversation and other. I’d called the number on the card, made the arrangements and paid in advance. Mark had shown up at my door on time, perfectly groomed and handsome in a tuxedo that looked as if it had been cut to fit every line of his perfect, gorgeous body. It had been a little heady, being on his arm and entering the room filled mostly with people I’d known my entire life. Heads had turned and gossip had started, but the good kind.

It was, hands down, the best date I’d ever had. Mark was considerate, charming, a good conversationalist. If his responses were a wee bit slick and practiced sounding, that was all right, because the intensity of his deep blue gaze more than made up for any hint of role playing. I hadn’t, even then, been fooled into thinking the promises in Mark’s eyes were real. I didn’t believe it from men who tried to pick me up in bars or the grocery store, much less from a man whose time and interest I’d used a credit card to secure.

Yet I couldn’t help being flattered by the way his hand never strayed far from my shoulder, the small of my back, my elbow. By the end of the night, I had a pretty good idea what the “other” listed on the card meant. For safety reasons, and upon the advice of the anonymous Mrs. Smith, I’d met Mark in the parking lot of a nearby strip mall, then driven to the country club together in my car. On the way back to Mark’s car the tension had been as thick as honey and just as sweet.

“The night doesn’t have to be over,” he’d said when I pulled up next to his road-worn Saturn. “Not if you don’t want it to be.”

We’d gone to a shabby motel in the next town. My college boyfriend, Ben, had been good looking but nothing like Mark, who was truly so handsome it sort of made my eyes hurt to look at him for too long. My hands had been shaking when I undid the bow tie at his throat and the buttons on his shirt. He hadn’t rushed me. I’d unwrapped him inch by inch, revealing a body as delicious unclothed as it had been in the tux. I’d touched him all over, from the tight hard muscles of his belly to the thick branch of his cock, which swelled nicely in my hand. At his low noise, I’d looked up, startled out of my mesmerization. His gaze had gone dark. He’d reached out to touch my hair, softly, his fingers tugging it out of its loose coil.

I’d paid him to act like he thought I was sexy. I’d hired Mark to treat me like a queen—and in doing so learned I deserved to be treated that way. That I was lovely, and sexy. That I could get a man hard with a cocked hip and a slide of tongue on lips. Money can buy a lot of things, but a hard cock doesn’t care about a bank account. I might have paid him to spend time with me, but when it came right down to it, he’d wanted to fuck me just as much as I wanted him to.

It wasn’t the best sex I’d ever had; I was too nervous and uncertain to be adventurous. But Mark had made it easy for me. He was an expert lover, using his hands and mouth until we both lay panting in the tangle of sheets.

It was a hundred-dollar orgasm, when it finally happened, and worth every cent.

He didn’t stay. He shook my hand somewhat formally at the door, then lifted it to his mouth and kissed it, shooting me a grin that no longer had any hint of plastic about it. “Ask for me anytime,” he murmured against my skin, his eyes never leaving mine.

Right then, I’d understood exactly why the price had been so high.

Mrs. Smith had perfected an expert matching system to suit her clients. In the three years I’d been using the service, I’d never had a bad date. Whether I wanted to go to a concert or a museum, or spend a night having orgasm after orgasm while tied up with a red velvet ribbon, Mrs. Smith provided it all.

Contrary to my girlfriends, who either bemoaned the lack of a boyfriend or bitched about the men they did have, I was the most fulfilled woman I knew. I never had to go anyplace alone unless I wanted to. I never had to worry about what the sex “meant” and if my lover cared about me, because it was already prenegotiated and prepaid. Hiring escorts had given me the freedom to explore parts of my sexuality I’d never known existed, and without risking my safety or emotions.

More importantly, for their sake as well as mine, my gentlemen friends were utterly discreet. My business was open to constant scrutiny. It had been hard enough not being the son of Frawley and Sons. The funeral-home business was still mostly male dominated, and though I’d spent my entire life in Annville and had been a part of the family business for just that long, there were still those who thought a woman couldn’t do the job a man could. There was far more to the work than sending death announcements to the newspaper and embalming corpses; a good funeral director offered grief support and helped each and every family through what was often the most difficult time of their lives. I love my work. I’m good at it. I like helping people say goodbye to their loved ones and making the process as easy and bearable as possible. Even so, I never forget that people won’t bring their loved ones to someone they don’t trust, or whose morals they felt were questionable—and in a small town, morals are easily questioned.

“Grace?”

Again, I’d been caught in contemplation. I looked up to see Shelly Winber, my office manager. She looked apologetic, though she didn’t need to be. I’d been off in la-la land. “Hmm?”

“Phone for you.” She pointed upward. “Upstairs. It’s your dad.”

Obviously upstairs, since my ever-present cell phone hadn’t done so much as peep from its place on my hip. “Great, thanks.”

My dad called me at least once a day if he didn’t stop in. For someone who was supposed to have retired, my dad sure didn’t take much of a break. I took the call at my desk while I listened with one ear and made the appropriate “Mmm, hmms” and scrolled through the columns of my advertising budget.

“Grace, are you listening to me?”

“Yes, Dad.”

He snorted. “What did I just say?”

I took a stab. “You told me to come over for dinner on Sunday and bring the ledger so you can help me balance the books.”

Stone silence meant I’d messed up. “How do you expect to succeed if you don’t listen?”

“Dad, I’m sorry, but I’m a little busy here going over some things.” I held the phone next to my computer mouse and click-clicked. “Hear that?”

My dad huffed. “You spend too much time on the computer.”

“I spend time on this computer doing work to help the business grow.”

“We never had e-mail or a Web site, and we did just fine. The business is more than marketing, Grace. It’s more than just numbers.”

His intimation stung. “Then why are you always on my case about the budget?”

Aha. I’d caught him. I waited for him to answer, but what he said didn’t make me happy.

“Running the funeral home is more than just a job. It’s got to be your life.”

I thought of the recitals and graduations and birthday parties my dad had missed over the years. “You think I don’t know that?”

“I don’t know. Do you?”

“I have to go, Dad. I’ll see you at dinner on Sunday. Unless I have to work.”

I hung up and sat back in my chair. I knew it was more than a job. Didn’t I spend nearly all my time here? Giving it my best? Giving it my all? But try to tell my dad that. All he saw was the new gadgets and logo and the commercials on the radio and ads in the paper. What he didn’t understand was that just because I had nobody to sacrifice but myself didn’t make my efforts any less noble.

“You’re looking sparkly today.” My sister, Hannah, raised an eyebrow.

I flicked one of my chandelier earrings until the tiny bells chimed. They matched the Indian-style tunic top I’d bought from an online auction. The deep turquoise fabric and intricate beading could be described as sparkly. “Thanks—eBay.”

“I don’t mean the earrings. They’re cute, though. The shirt’s a little…” Hannah shrugged.

“What?” I looked down at it. The fabric was sheer, so I’d worn a tank top beneath to keep it from being too revealing. Paired with the simple pair of boot-cut black slacks, I hadn’t thought the outfit was too outrageous, especially with the black fitted jacket overtop.

“Different,” Hannah amended. “Cute, though.”

I checked out Hannah’s demure scoop-necked shirt and matching cardigan. She was missing only a strand of pearls and a hat with a veil to be the epitome of a 1950s matron. The outfit was better than the cartoon-character sweatshirt she’d been wearing the last time we had lunch, but not by much.

“I like this shirt.” I hated the defensiveness that rose up, hardwired to the buttons my sister knew just how to push. “It’s…sassy.”

“It sure is.” Hannah cut her salad into precise, astoundingly symmetrical bites. “I said it was cute, didn’t I?”

“You did.” She’d said “cute” the way some people would say “unfortunate.”

“Anyway. That’s not what I meant.” Hannah never spoke with her mouth full. She gave me a dissecting stare. “Did you have a…date? Last night?”

At the memory of Sam’s hand between my legs a few days before, I couldn’t hold back the smile. “Not last night, no.”

Hannah shook her head. “Gracie…”

I held up a hand. “Don’t.”

“I’m your big sister. I’m allowed to give advice.”

It was my turn to raise an eyebrow. “Um…is that in the handbook someone forgot to give me, or what?”

Hannah didn’t laugh. “Seriously, Grace. When are we going to meet this guy? Mom and Dad don’t believe he exists.”

“Maybe Mom and Dad spend too much time worrying about my romantic life, Hannah.”

The more I denied having a boyfriend, the more convinced my family seemed to be that I was hiding one away. I thought it was funny, most of the time. Today for some reason, I wasn’t as amused.

I got up to refill my mug of coffee, hoping by the time I got back to the table my sister would have decided to abandon the topic. I should’ve known better. Hannah with a lecture was like a terrier with a rat. Probably the only thing holding her back from full-on rant mode was the fact we were in a public place.

“I just want to know what the secret is. That’s all.” Hannah fixed me with the glare that used to be able to yank any secret from me.

It was still pretty effective, but I had years of practice at resisting. “There’s no secret. I’ve told you before, I’m not seeing anyone seriously.”

“If it’s serious enough for you to look like that,” Hannah said with a sniff, “it should be serious enough to bring him to meet your family.”

This veiled reference to sex so stunned me, I could only stare. My sister, older and prone to lectures as she might be, had never been free with advice on lovemaking. Other girls had gone to their big sisters for advice on boys and bras, but Hannah, seven years older, had never made our relationship comfortable enough to discuss sex. I wasn’t about to start now.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I think you do.” Hannah picked me apart with another look.

“No, really, Hannah.” I grinned, defusing her the best way I knew how. “I don’t.”

Hannah’s mouth thinned. “Fine. Whatever. Be like that. We’re just all wondering, that’s all.”

I sighed and warmed my hands on my mug. “Wondering about what?”

Hannah shrugged and looked away. “Well. You always make an excuse for why you won’t bring him around. We’re just wondering if…”

“If what?” I demanded. It wasn’t like Hannah to hold back on anything.

“If he’s a…he,” Hannah muttered. She stabbed her salad as if it had done her wrong.

Stunned again, I sat back in my chair. “Oh, for God’s sake!”

Hannah’s mouth set in a stubborn line. “Is he?”

“A man? You want to know if I’m dating a man? Instead of what…a woman?” I wanted to laugh, not because this was funny, but because somehow laughter might make this less strange. “You have to be kidding me.”

Hannah looked up, lower lip pushed out in the familiar way. “Mom and Dad won’t say it, but I will.”

In a moment of insanity I considered telling her everything. Which would be worse, admitting I paid for sex or that I dated women? Maybe paying women for sex would’ve been worse, and the thought of my sister’s face if I told her that curved my mouth into a smile. I resisted, though. Hannah wouldn’t find it as funny as I did.

If it had been anyone else asking the question, I really would have laughed, but because it was my sister I just shook my head. “Hannah. No. It’s not a woman. I promise.”

Hannah nodded stiffly. “Because, you know, you could tell me. I’d be okay with it.”

I doubted that. Hannah had a pretty narrow worldview. There wasn’t much room in it for sisters who liked girls or who hired dates. Not that it was any of her business.

“I just go out. Have a good time. That’s all. I’m not dating anyone regularly enough to bring him around the family, that’s all. If I ever do, you’ll be the first to know.”

Probably the easiest way to figure out if you’re doing something you shouldn’t is if you can tell your family about it. There was no question about me telling my family anything about my dates. Hell, I’d never even told my closest friends. I wasn’t sure they’d understand the appeal. The satisfaction of it. No worries. No hassles. Nothing to lose.

“Boyfriends take a lot of work, Hannah.”

She rolled her eyes. “Try having a husband.”

“I don’t want one of those, either.”

“Of course you don’t.”

I couldn’t win for trying. Her sniff told me what she thought of that—it might be fine for her to complain about her spouse, but for me to say I didn’t want one was like saying she was wrong to be married.

“I like my life.”

“Of course you do. Your life,” she said like an insult. “Your simple, personal, single life.”

We stared each other down. After another long moment in which we battled with our eyes, she let hers go pointedly to my neck. I kept myself from touching the small bruise I knew Sam had left.

Much unspoken hung between us in the way it does with families. Hannah changed the subject finally and I let her, relieved to be past the awkwardness. By the time we parted, the regular balance of our sisterhood had almost been restored.

I say almost because the conversation clung to me for the rest of the day. It left a sour taste on my tongue. It made me clumsy and forgetful, too, refusing to be put aside even though I had a meeting.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Stewart?” I folded my hands on top of the desk my father had used, and his father before him. At my left, I had a pad of lined paper. At my right, a pen. For now I kept my hands folded between them.

“It’s about my father.”

I nodded, waiting.

Dan Stewart had regular features and sandy hair. He wore a suit and tie too nice for the meeting, and probably was what he wore to work. It was too nice for an office job, which meant he was either a corporate bigwig or an attorney.

“He’s had another stroke. He’s…dying.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” I might not believe in a chorus of heavenly hosts, but I understood grief.

Mr. Stewart nodded. “Thanks.”

Sometimes they needed prompting, those who sat across from me, but after a second Mr. Stewart spoke again.

“My mom doesn’t want to deal with it. She’s convinced he’s going to pull through again.”

“But you want to prepare?” I kept my hands folded, not picking up the pen.

“Yeah. My dad, he was always the sort of guy who knew what he wanted. My mom…” Stewart laughed and shrugged. “She does what my dad wants. I’m afraid that if this isn’t prepared in advance, he’s going to die and she’ll have no clue what to do. It will be a real mess.”

“Did you want to begin the planning now, yourself?” It could be awkward, planning a service without the spouse.

He shook his head. “I just want to get started. Thought I’d take some stuff home, talk about options with my mom. Talk to my brother. I just want…” He paused, his voice dipping low for a moment and I understood this was for him more than anyone else. “I just want to be prepared.”

I slid open my file drawer and pulled out the standard preplanning packet. I’d revised it myself, one of my first tasks when I’d taken over. Printed on ivory paper and tucked inside a demure navy blue folder, the packet contained checklists, suggestions and options designed to make the process as easy as possible on the mourners.

“I understand, Mr. Stewart. Being prepared can be quite a comfort.”

His smile transformed his face from plain to stunning in seconds. “My brother would say I’m being anal. And please. Call me Dan.”

I smiled in return. “I wouldn’t. Planning a funeral can be stressful and exhausting. The more you take care of beforehand the more time you have to devote to your own needs when you’re dealing with a loss.”

Dan’s smile quirked higher on one side. “Do you have a lot of people preplanning funerals?”

“You’d be surprised.” I gestured at my wall of file cabinets. “Lots of my clients have planned at least something, even if it’s just the type of religious service.”

“Ah.” He looked past me at the row of file cabinets, then met my eyes again. The intensity of his stare would have been disconcerting if his smile wasn’t so nice. “Do you handle a lot of Jewish funerals, Ms. Frawley?”

“You can call me Grace. A few. But we certainly can accommodate your service. I know Rabbi Levine from the Lebanon synagogue quite well.”

“And the chevra kadisha?” He eyed me, his mouth stumbling a bit on words he’d probably never had to say before.

I knew what the chevra kadisha did, though I’d never been present while they prepared the bodies for burial according to Jewish custom. Traditionally, Jews weren’t embalmed, nor laid to rest in anything but the simplest of pine coffins.

“We don’t have many Jewish services,” I admitted. “Most of the local congregation goes to Rohrbach’s.”

Dan shrugged. “I don’t like that guy.”

I didn’t much like him, either, but wouldn’t have ever admitted it. “I’m sure we’ll be able to provide your family with whatever they need.”

He looked at the folder in his hands, his smile fading. Funny, though, how it left its imprint on his face, which I no longer would ever have considered plain. His fingers tightened on the blue paper, but it wouldn’t crease.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m sure you can.”

His hand, when he offered it, was warm and the shake firm. I stood as he did, and walked him to the door.

“Is it hard?” he asked, turning. “Dealing with so much sorrow all the time?”

It wasn’t a question I’d never been asked, and I answered it the way I always did. “No. Death is a part of life, and I’m glad to be able to help people deal with it.”

“It doesn’t get depressing?”

I studied him. “No. It’s sad, sometimes, but that’s not the same thing, is it?”

“No. I guess not.” Another smile tweaked his mouth and made him handsome again.

It invited me to smile, too. “Call me if you need anything. I’ll be happy to talk to you and your family about how to take care of your father.”

He nodded. “Thanks.”

I closed the door behind him and went back to my desk. The unmarked pad of paper, the still-capped pen. I had paperwork to fill out and phone calls to return, but I simply sat for a moment.

There’s a fine line between sympathy and empathy. This was my work. I dealt with grief, and this job might also be my life, but it wasn’t also my grief.

The e-mail from Mrs. Smith had an innocuous subject line. “Account information.” It could have said “Information about your fuck buddies,” and it wouldn’t have mattered. I had correspondence from Mrs. Smith and her gentlemen sent to a private e-mail address I accessed only from my laptop.

My account information showed a credit. Normally, missing the appointment wouldn’t have meant anything. Clients paid whether or not they showed. There were no refunds, unless the escort had to cancel. But Jack hadn’t canceled. He’d been unable to find me. I’d figured that three hundred bucks to be lost.

Mrs. Smith didn’t seem to agree. Her polite tone and careful phrases were always the same. I pictured Judi Dench in red lipstick every time I read one of Mrs. Smith’s messages. This time, she was offering to reschedule the “missed appointment” at my convenience.

I looked around my dark apartment. The only light came from my laptop screen, balanced now on my lap as I curled up on the couch. My iTunes shuffled through old favorites. Did I want to reschedule? Really?

It had been a week since I’d met Sam the stranger. An entire week in which I’d tried to forget him. I hadn’t been too successful.

I set my laptop on the coffee table and went to the bathroom, where I climbed into the shower before the water had time to get hot. I hissed when the needles of cold spray stung my skin, but contrary to popular belief the cold water did nothing to quench my libido.

Fuck.

It was all I could think about. Sam’s hands. His mouth. Oh, God, his legs, going all the way up to the fucking moon. The noises he’d made.

Was he thinking of me? Did he pick up women all the time in bars, take them to his room? Fuck them breathless the way he’d done to me?

If I went back there, would I find him again?

No longer a stranger, then. What would I do if I saw him again? More importantly, what would he do?

By the time the water was hot enough to make steam, my hand was between my legs. Shower gel slicked my skin, but I didn’t need any extra lubrication. I’d been wet for a week, thinking about Sam. Thinking about strange.

I touched my clit with two fingers. The other hand went up against the glass brick of my shower wall. I closed my eyes, picturing Sam’s face. Remembering the feeling of him inside me. How he’d smelled. Tasted. The length of his prick.

I wanted to feel it again in my fist and my cunt. My mouth. I wanted to take him down the back of my throat…Oh, God. Muscles in my thighs jerked and quivered as the tension built higher and higher.

I could get myself off in a minute or two this way, with the shower pounding down all around me. I could come in the steam, with the rush of the water pounding in my ears. I wanted to, certainly. And I was going to, in a few seconds more.

My hand slipped on the glass, old bricks from a halfhearted renovation that had never been fully completed. My clit pulsed. I was coming…and pain shot through my palm as I stared, made stupid by pleasure, at the blood welling up from the cut just below my right pinkie. Water washed away the blood, but it came right back. Pain and pleasure tangled together as my body tipped over into orgasm.

I held my hand under the spray as I caught my breath. The wound didn’t look deep, but it stung under the water and the edges separated to reveal more red beneath. Looking at it churned my stomach. I got out of the shower and wrapped my hand in a towel, but by then the bleeding had slowed enough I needed only a bandage to cover it.

The shower off, I searched the glass brick but could find no sign of a chip or crack. I didn’t want to find it with my fingers, either, so I didn’t run my hands over the glass. I’d have to be more careful, I thought as I dried the rest of my body and slipped an oversize T-shirt over my head. It wasn’t the first time I’d made myself come or bleed in the shower, though I wasn’t sure how I would explain exactly how it had happened to anyone who cared to ask.

In my living room, the laptop had gone to sleep. It took only the touch of a fingertip to the keyboard to wake it. Mrs. Smith’s e-mail hadn’t disappeared. The offer still stood.

“Hello. You have reached Mrs. Smith’s Services for Ladies.” Mrs. Smith really did sound like Judi Dench. “If you are calling to make an appointment, please leave your name and telephone number, and one of our representatives will return your call shortly.”

“Hello,” I said briskly into the mouthpiece of my phone. “This is Miss Underfire. I’d like to reschedule the appointment that was inadvertently canceled last Thursday, but I’d like to change the services. Please have someone call me for the details.”

Then, the dirty deed done, I sat back and waited.

I didn’t wait long. Mrs. Smith’s gentlemen were used to being called on short notice. Jack returned my call within half an hour. I knew he’d been paged, but not what he’d been told.

“Hi, is this Miss Underfire?”

“It is.”

“This is Jack.”

“Hi, Jack.” I studied the bandage on my hand. It had crinkled at the sides, and I could see a hint of pink beneath the beige adhesive. “What happened last week?”

“I’m sorry,” he said at once, properly apologetic though I’d been the one to mess up the meeting. “I was running late, and then…”

I wasn’t going to tell him I’d been an idiot and mistaken a real stranger for the faux. “It was a mistake. No need to be sorry. Can we reschedule?”

“Yes! Sure, sure. Great.” He sounded eager, and I thought of Mrs. Smith’s description. Dark hair. Earring. Slim build. Damn. I was thinking of Sam again. “Um…do you want the same…?”

“I don’t, actually. I think I’m kind of soured on strangers.”

He laughed, just a little, as if he wasn’t sure I was joking. “All right. So what would you like, then?”

I’d paid quite a bit of money for the use of his time and conversation, and since I couldn’t get it back, I might as well use it up. “Do you like dancing, Jack?”

A pause. I heard an intake of breath. Not a hiss or a gasp. Something deeper. A peculiar huff-breath-hold and a subtle sigh. He was smoking. “Yeah. I like to dance.”

Mrs. Smith had assigned a smoker to me? Interesting. Well, I had requested someone different than my usual. I didn’t like smoking, as a rule, though it did look sexy.

“Great. I want to go dancing. Does Friday night work for you?”

Another pause. I heard the shuffle of papers. “Yes.”

“I’ll meet you just outside the parking garage on Second Street at nine o’clock.” I didn’t have to check my calendar. “Listen, Jack. Since the arrangements have changed, can you tell me what you look like?”

Jack’s deep voice became a low chuckle. “Sure. I have black hair and blue eyes. I’ve got two earrings in my right ear and one in my left, and a ring in my left brow.”

I must have made some sort of noise, because he laughed again. “Is that okay?”

“It’s fine.” If I’d known all that, I’d never have mistaken Sam for the gentleman I’d contracted. Then again…yeah. A stranger.

“Let me ask you something else, Jack.”

I heard the distinctive huff-breath-hold again. “Yeah?”

“How tall are you?”

“I’m almost six feet. Is that okay, too?”

“Perfect,” I said, since any other answer would have sounded rude, and we both hung up.

He was definitely not going to be Sam.

Chapter 03

“Where’s your head, Grace? Up your rear?” As usual, my dad didn’t pull any punches. He waved the folder stuffed with bank statements in my direction. “C’mon, talk to the old man.”

Somehow I couldn’t imagine confiding in my dad that I’d picked up some guy in a bar and spent a few hours fucking him in a hotel room, and that my concentration was for shit since all I could think about was doing it again with somebody else.

“Sorry, Dad.”

“Sorry?” My dad shook the folder again. “You think I don’t have better things to do than spend my time balancing your checkbook?”

I managed a genuine smile for my dad at that. “What else would you be doing?”

“Fishing.” He peered at me over the rim of his half specs. “That’s what I’d like to be doing.”

“Since when do you fish?” I leaned across the desk to yank back my folder, but my dad grabbed it out of the way.

“Since I retired and your mother told me I’d better find something to do to keep me out of the house.”

I sat back in my chair with a laugh. “Uh-huh.”

Even nearly three years later, it still felt wrong to be on the other side of this desk while he sat in the chair meant for clients. I don’t think he liked it much, either, if the way he waved that folder was any indication. I didn’t need my dad to go over the books for me, just like I didn’t need him to ask me if I had enough gas in my car or if I needed someone to come in and fix my sink. I didn’t like feeling secondguessed. He didn’t entirely want to let go. It was half on the verge of ugly.

My dad grunted and pushed his glasses back up on his nose. He spread out the statements and stabbed one with his finger. “See, there? What’s this for?”

Two clicks of the mouse brought up my accounting program, a system my dad had never used. “Office supplies.”

“I know it’s office supplies. The charge is from the office-supply store. I want to know why you spent a hundred bucks!”

“Dad.” I tried to keep calm. “It was for printer ink, computer paper and stuff like that. Look for yourself.”

He didn’t do more than glance at the monitor before he dived back into the pile of papers. “And why are we getting a cable bill?”

“We aren’t.” I plucked it from his hand. “That’s mine.”

My dad wouldn’t ever come out and accuse me of trying to slip my personal bills into the funeral home’s accounting. He’d hammered hard the idea that the home’s expenses had to be kept separate from family bills enough times that I had no trouble remembering it. Considering the fact I’d be expected to cut my salary should the business require it, I didn’t see any issue with paying for my cable bill out of the same bank account, especially when it was ridiculous to have two separate cable Internet accounts to serve one location. I lived just upstairs. I could share the home’s wireless.

“I’ll have a talk with Shelly. Tell her to make sure the bills don’t get all jumbled up like that.” My dad harrumphed a little. “Maybe give Bob a mention, too, next time I’m at the post office. Make sure he’s putting them in the right slots.”

“Dad. It doesn’t matter.”

He gave me a look guaranteed to make me quake. “Sure it does, Grace. You know that.”

Maybe it had when he was running the business while raising a family, but now it was just me, and I didn’t agree. “I’ll talk to Shelly. You’ll just make her cry.”

Fresh from two years of business college, Shelly’d never worked anywhere else before I’d hired her for the office manager position. She was young, but a hard worker and good with people. My dad huffed again, sitting back in the chair I could tell he still thought of as the wrong one.

“I wouldn’t make her cry.”

It wasn’t too hard to make Shelly cry, but I didn’t argue with him. I tucked the cable bill into the drawer where I kept my private things and looked back at him. “Anything else you have a question about?”

He looked over the bills and statements again, but perfunctorily. “No. I’ll take these home. Get it all worked out.”

I hadn’t had a problem, but it was almost guaranteed he’d come back with a list of questions about expenses I needed to justify. You’d have thought I was running the place into the ground, sometimes, the way he talked. I shrugged and he closed the folder.

“That still doesn’t answer my question,” my dad said. “About where your head is.”

“I thought it was up my rear.”

My attempt at humor didn’t make him smile. “Don’t be smart, Gracie.”

I raised a brow in a perfect imitation of him. “You want me to be dumb?”

He didn’t smile this time, either. He was really mad. Or upset, I couldn’t tell. “Your sister says you’re seeing somebody. Says you don’t want to bring him around the house. Meet the family.”

I held back the groan. “Hannah talks too much.”

He snorted. “I won’t argue with that, but is she right? You have some fella you don’t want to bring around? You’re ashamed of us, or what?”

“Oh, Dad. No.”

“No, you’re not ashamed,” he said, “or no, you don’t have a fella?”

I should’ve known better than to try to get around my dad by twisting words. “No to both.”

“Huh.” He gave me an eye. “Is it Jared?”

I wanted to laugh, but the sound that came out didn’t quite make it. “What?”

My dad jerked a thumb toward my office door. “Jared.”

“Oh, God. No, Dad.” My head tried to fall into my hands, but I kept it up. “He’s my intern.”

My dad huffed a little more. “People talk, that’s all.”

“People like you?” I folded my hands together on my desk.

My dad didn’t look ashamed. “I’m just saying. You’re a lovely young woman. He’s a young guy.”

I sighed, heavily and on purpose. “And he’s my intern. That’s it. Drop it, okay?”

My dad just looked at me, up and down. He didn’t say he was sorry, the way my mom would’ve, and he didn’t bug me for answers the way my sister would have. He just shook his head slowly from side to side and left me to wonder what that meant.

“What’s that sign out there say?”

Whatever I’d imagined he might say, it wasn’t that. “Frawley and Sons.”

My dad nodded. He put his glasses away into his breast pocket. He stood, the folder of bills in one hand. “Think about that.”

He turned to go, apparently not planning to say anything else, and I got up. “Dad!”

My dad stopped in the doorway, but didn’t look at me.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I cried.

He looked at me then, the same look he’d given when I’d sneaked in after curfew, or brought home a bad grade. The look said he knew I could do better. More than could. Should. Must. Would.

“I’m sure your sister won’t let her kids come within an arm’s length of this place. Your brother…” He paused, but only for a second. “Craig, if he ever has any, won’t either.”

“So it’s up to me, is that what you’re saying?” I blinked, hard, thinking the sting in my eyes would go away.

“You’re getting older, too, Gracie, that’s all I’m saying.”

If I was getting older, why was he still so good at making me feel like a kid? “Dad! Are you kidding me? You are not actually suggesting I need to get married, are you? Have some sons? Just for a stupid sign?”

He bristled. “There’s nothing stupid about that sign!”

“Right, nothing stupid except for the fact I’m not a son!” My shout shot around the room and hung there for a moment until silence defeated it.

Everyone had assumed my brother would take over from my dad. Everyone but Craig. The news had finally been delivered one Thanksgiving when the inevitable argument erupted between him and our dad about Craig stepping into the shoes of the son in Frawley and Sons. Craig, eighteen at the time, planned to go to NYU film school instead. Craig had left the table and not come back for a long time. He lived in New York with a series of increasingly younger actresses and made commercials and music videos. One of his documentaries had been nominated for an Emmy.

“I’ll get these back to you in a few days,” he said.

My dad pushed through the door and I watched him go, then sank back into the seat behind the desk. My chair. My place. My fucking desk, if you wanted to get right down to it. This was my office, and my business now.

Even if I wasn’t a son.

I’d never thought of Jared as anything other than an intern, but knowing that other people were making romantic assumptions about us, I couldn’t stop thinking about him like that. It pissed me off. Until now, we’d had the perfect working relationship. It was as uncomplicated as my dates with Mrs. Smith’s gentlemen.

It wasn’t as if I’d never noticed Jared was attractive or anything. He had a nice face, kept in shape, had an affable personality that made him easy to get along with. We joked a lot, but I’d never had even a hint that he was flirting with me, and I know I never did with him. Why couldn’t men and women just be friends without someone, somewhere, shoehorning sex into it? On the other hand, why did everyone assume that having sex with someone meant you had to fall in love?

“Hey, Grace. Want me to give Betty a bath while I’m out there?”

“You know, I have noticed you have a serious hearse fetish, Jared.” I took the last pile of brochures from the printer and stacked them neatly on Shelly’s desk for her to fold. “But sure. If you want to.”

“Sweet.” Jared grinned and headed out through the back doors into the parking lot and the fresh April air.

Black Betty was my car. A 1981 Camaro, it had been Craig’s first, purchased with his after-school newspaper-delivery money in honor of his obsession with the punk band The Dead Milkmen. I’d inherited it when he’d moved to New York. I only drove it when I didn’t want to use the funeral home’s minivan emblazoned with the Frawley and Sons logo. It was my sex car. She didn’t quite run like lightning, but she sure sounded like thunder. Jared lusted after her. I noticed boys did that a lot. Ben had, too.

I followed him to the garage, a converted carriage house barely big enough to fit our hearse, the minivan we used to transport bodies and Betty. Bigger funeral homes had more cars, and someday I hoped to add a flower car or a vehicle mourners could ride in. One thing at a time.

“You coming to help me?” Jared filled a bucket with water from the spigot and grabbed up a big sponge from one of the neatly kept shelves. He’d already pulled the hearse out into the driveway. “I thought you hated washing the hearse.”

“Yeah. My dad used to make me and Craig do it every Saturday.” I didn’t take a sponge and stayed well away from the splash zone. I was still dressed for work and had an appointment in an hour.

Jared gave me a curious look. “You worried I’m going to hurt Betty or something?”

“No.” I looked fondly at the car that had seen me through two proms, college and numerous other escapades. “She’s a big girl. She can take care of herself.”

Jared snorted and dipped his sponge into the soapy water, then knelt next to the hearse and started working on the wheels. “Just as long as she doesn’t come to life and start killing people. Hey. That would be a good twist, huh? The car goes around knocking people off to bring more business.”

“Ha, ha.” I shook my head. “Don’t ever say anything like that to my dad.”

“I won’t. Your dad’s scary enough.” Jared scrubbed, then gave me a glance over his shoulder. “Boss, you’ve got something to talk to me about?”

I didn’t, really. I couldn’t exactly tell him my dad and maybe half the town thought we were schtupping. “I just wanted to tell you that you’re doing good work. That’s all.”

Jared stopped washing the tires and stood, his hands covered in foam. “Thanks, Grace.”

His smile was nice enough but didn’t send sparkles through me, and the fact I was even trying to see if it did pissed me off. “You’re welcome.”

He was still looking at me curiously. “Anything else?”

“No. Carry on.” I shooed him with my hands and went back inside, where Shelly was busy folding brochures and answering the phone.

I went to my office, where I sat in my chair and surveyed my realm without the satisfaction it usually brought me. No matter how hard I worked, there were always going to be people, my dad and sister among them, who measured my success by their standards. I didn’t want to let their view of what my life should be affect me.

Unfortunately, it did.

Jack’s self-description had not been incorrect. He waited for me where I’d told him to, and though I knew he was a smoker I couldn’t smell it on him. God, he was young. He looked no older than twenty-two or twenty-three, and that was being generous. Young but pretty, even with the metal in his face. More than pretty. Jack was downright gorgeous.

He’d said his hair was dark, but it was impossible to see that under the ball cap he wore pulled low over his eyes. I didn’t recognize the name of the punk-rock band on the black T-shirt he wore over a long-sleeved white Henley pushed up on his elbows to show off an intricate design of tattoos beginning at his left wrist and covering all the skin I could see on his arm. He wore faded jeans low on his hips and held in place with a black leather belt.

“Jack?” I held out my hand.

He shook it firmly and didn’t squeeze too tight or hold it for too long. “Yes.”

“I’m Miss Underfire. But you can call me Grace.”

Jack smiled. “Pretty name.”

If my name were Esther or Hepzibah he’d have said the same thing. As if a name matters. And again, I was thinking of Sam.

“Thanks. So’s Jack.”

Jack smiled, and I stared, dumbfounded at the transformation in his face. Without a smile he was gorgeous. With one…incandescent.

Either he didn’t understand this or he’d long ago learned to deal with gape-mouthed women, because he didn’t look taken aback. “Sure, if you don’t mind the nicknames.”

I burbled something incoherent, unable to manage much more than that, at least until the superpower of his smile released me.

“Nicknames?”

He hung back a little, letting me lead. I turned left out of the parking garage’s small driveway. The street was crowded and would only get more so as the night went on. Listening to Jack laugh was like sipping premium hot chocolate. Warm and decadent. Delicious.

“Jackrabbit,” he said. “Jackhammer. Jack of all trades. Jack Sprat. Jackass.”

I joined his laughter. We headed toward the Pharmacy. Someone had bought the original drugstore on the ground floor and turned it into a hot spot for up-and-coming bands. There was dancing upstairs, where the walls were painted silver and cages were set onto the dance floor.

“I won’t call you Jackass. I promise.”

Jack turned a half-wattage grin on me, for which I was grateful. I didn’t want to be struck dumb again. “Thanks. I’ll try not to act like one.”

This early we didn’t have to wait in much of a line. I thought of sneaking a peek at Jack’s driver’s license when he pulled it out to show the bouncer at the door, but I could only catch a glimpse of his photo. He was old enough to get into the club, at least.

“Jacko,” said the bouncer, barely looking at the license as he slid it into the nifty little machine that scanned it for legality. “You still over at the Lamb?”

Jack took back his license and slipped it into the plain black wallet he’d pulled from a back pocket. “Yeah. Part-time.”

“Yeah?” The bouncer took my card without even looking at me. He slid it through the scanner perfunctorily. I guess I didn’t look underage. “What else you doing?”

Jack didn’t even give me a glance. “Going to school.”

“No shit?” The bouncer goggled. “What for?”

“Graphic design.” Jack shrugged a little. He neatly nipped the conversation short with a grin and one of those specifically male gestures that probably originated as caveman sign language. Kind of a trigger-finger, club-swinging motion.

I let him lead the way inside. Jack was good at picking up my cues, but he wasn’t quite good enough to make it seamless. He got an A for effort, though, when he asked me what I wanted to drink and got it for me, along with a beer for himself.

Downstairs, an odd mix of current hip-hop and old-school rock blared from the speakers as people mingled in front of the small stage where the night’s band would perform. It was cooler and less crowded here than it would be upstairs, and for the moment I was content to sip my beer and watch the crowd.

“So,” I said by way of conversation. “Graphic design? That’s interesting.”

He grinned around his beer and gave the same sort of shrug he’d given the bouncer. “Yeah. I guess so.”

“You must think so,” I said. “Or else you wouldn’t be studying it.”

Jack nodded after a second. “Yeah. It is. I think I’ll be good at it. I like it, anyway. And it beats bartending.”

It might beat fucking for money, too, but I didn’t say that. “You’re a bartender?”

“Yeah. At the Slaughtered Lamb. Just down the street.”

“I haven’t been there.”

“You should come by,” he said, but couldn’t make me believe he meant it.

Two girls dressed in too-tight tops and too-short skirts sidled by, eyeing him. “Hey, Jack,” said the taller one.

Jack nodded. “Hey.”

The girls eyed me next. I smiled and lifted my bottle, waiting for a challenge. The shorter girl tugged the taller’s elbow, pulling her away before there could be one.

“Sorry.” Jack looked pained.

“Old girlfriend?”

He shrugged, nodded, shrugged again. “She thought so.”

“Ah.” I drank more beer, wanting to finish before it got warm. “She the one who called you Jackass?”

God, that fucking smile again. The real one. Brilliance. It totally slayed me and erased each unsmooth moment of this date so far.

“Probably,” Jack said.

This wasn’t the best date I’d ever been on, but it wasn’t the worst, either. Jack seemed new to this, which was forgivable. I wasn’t as demanding a client as I knew some women to be. Sometimes the gentlemen, though they weren’t supposed to, spoke out of school.

“Jack, do me a favor, would you?”

“Yeah?”

I leaned closer to him. Tonight I wore stack-heeled boots that allowed me to reach his ear with my mouth without stretching. “Take off your hat.”

He did at once, hooking it with one finger and shaking his hair when it came off. Guh. So. Fucking. Pretty.

I don’t believe in love at first sight, but I do know firsthand the way my body can be triggered into full-on lust mode at the sight of something simple. Jack’s black hair streamed like silk over one eye. Short in the back, longer in front, it invited my fingers to run through it. He pushed it off his face, fingers stuttering just slightly as if he wasn’t sure what to do with his hand.

“Very nice,” I said.

He was nervous, I realized suddenly. More nervous than I was. I felt tender. Also very turned on.

I finished my drink and put the bottle on the bar. I leaned in again. He turned his head when I did, so his breath sifted over my face. I smelled beer and cologne and still no smoke. Heat filled the minute space between our faces.

I took his hand. “C’mon. Let’s go dance.”

I pulled him upstairs, his hand in mine, and led him to the middle of the dance floor where strobe lights threatened to give the dancers seizures and the music was so loud the bass thumped like a drum in my stomach. There was no question of talking here, so neither of us had to feel like we had to speak. We only had to move.

I love to dance. Always have. I’ve never had lessons, not even the ballet/tap/jazz classes so many little girls take. I wasn’t a performer. I just liked to move, to sweat. To work my body. Good dancing is like good sex. Fucking with clothes on.

Lots of the guys up there stood back and watched the girls writhing. A few shuffled back and forth, or did some grinding. Some, fueled by fifty-cent drafts, jerked around like fish on a line.

Jack had moves. Nothing fancy, just an innate sense of rhythm that kept him moving in time to the beat. He looked good, and I caught more than one group of girls checking him out. He kept his eyes on me, the hat now tucked into his back pocket and his hair still falling like silk. He kept brushing it back, like it annoyed him.

We danced hard, and he kept up with me. When a slower song came on, the floor filled at once with couples doing some sort of grinding, rubbing thing. Jack looked at me. I looked at him and waited for him to take me in his arms.

When he didn’t, I gave an inward sigh and crooked my finger. That grin again, the one that made my thighs twitch, lit up his face. He molded himself to my body without another hesitation. If I’d thought he was a decent dancer before, I discovered he was frigging brilliant, now.

He’d been waiting for permission, and once he had it, he didn’t stop. We danced fast, we danced slow. It was constant full-body contact after that, his hands on my hips and ass and keeping us connected in all the important places. And every now and again he’d give me that grin. He was having fun. So was I.

The best part of all of it was knowing that no matter what happened on the dance floor, it would go no further if I didn’t want it to. Of course, it would go no further if he didn’t want it to, also. Legally, I was paying Jack for his time and company, not for sex. Any monkeyshines we got up to later would be between two consenting adults, only. I’d never had a date turn me down, though, and I didn’t expect Jack to.

If I wanted him, I’d have him, but even though he was lovely and a good dancer, I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to take him to bed. Sam’s face still lingered on the edges of my mind, and though I figured Jack wouldn’t give a damn if I fucked him while I thought of another man, I would.

For now it was enough to dance a lot, drink a little. Feel his hands on me and watch that smile. Sweat slicked us both and kept his hair back when he pushed it off his face. When I pressed my cheek to his, I resisted seeing if he tasted like salt.

I’d half expected to get paged, but the night spun on without so much as a beep from my phone. I did, however, have a limit to my budget. When I gestured toward the stairs, Jack nodded. To my amusement, he didn’t wait for me to lead this time. He took my hand and wove us through the crowd with the same confidence he’d discovered on the dance floor.

My ears still rang from the music as we reached the street. Jack hadn’t let go of my hand. All hell didn’t quite break loose, but it sure as shit rattled the bars of its cage.

“You asshole!” The tall girl from earlier had quite a bit more liquor in her now. She stumbled out of the doorway, her eyeliner and lipstick smeared.

Jack turned away, face pained again. His fingers tightened in mine, but I let go of his hand. He shot me an apologetic look, which I returned with a half shrug as we started walking.

“Hey, Jack! Jackass! Don’t you walk away from me!”

“C’mon, Kira, don’t.” This came from the marginally less drunk friend. “He’s not worth it!”

Scenes like this were probably commonplace at 1:00 a.m. but I wasn’t usually the one involved in them. In fact, part of what I paid for was the privilege to not be swept up in interpersonal dramas from drunk barsluts showing off their thongs.

“Fuck you, Jack!” Kira couldn’t let it go, apparently.

Jack grimaced and pulled his cap from his back pocket. He put it on, but didn’t look at her. We hadn’t gone more than another few steps down the sidewalk when Kira launched herself at his back.

Jack stumbled forward as she pummeled him, her legs and arms whaling akimbo. She didn’t actually manage to hit him more than once or twice, but the spectators leaped out of the way of her whirling-dervish performance. She was shrieking insults, mostly stupid and incoherent ones.

Jack pushed her off him firmly and grabbed her arm at the same time so she wouldn’t fall on her drunk ass right there on the dirty pavement. She kept trying to hit him and missing, and though it shouldn’t have been funny I had to cover my mouth over a laugh.

“Stop it,” Jack told her and gave her arm a little shake before letting her go. When she flew at him again she managed to knock his cap off. Anger crossed his face and he held her off with one arm while she struggled to get at his face with her nails.

“I hope your Prince Albert fucking rips out and you have to piss through three holes!” she screamed.

“Kira, c’mon,” her friend pleaded, reaching for her.

Kira allowed herself to be led away, still shouting insults. Jack picked up his hat and brushed it off, but didn’t put it on his head. He won more points for that bit of common sense, even if he’d lost a few for dating an idiot like Kira.

“Fuck,” he said after a minute. “I’m sorry.”

His chest rose and fell rapidly, and his hands clenched at his sides. He was shaking, just a little. He reached to his pocket like a reflex, but then pulled it away.

“It’s okay.” It wasn’t, quite, but I wasn’t going to make him feel worse than he obviously already did.

He walked me back to the parking garage in increasingly uncomfortable silence. By the time we got to my car he wasn’t visibly angry any longer, but that didn’t really help. I unlocked Betty’s door and turned to him.

“Well, Jack, it’s been interesting.”

He ran his hand through his hair. “I hope…you had fun.”

Three hundred bucks’ worth? Not so much. “Sure,” I said anyway, because there was no point in being a bitch.

Jack straightened a little at that. “You didn’t have fun.”

“No, no—”

“Grace,” he said. “I know you didn’t. I’m really sorry. Shit. I’m oh-for-two, huh?”

I leaned against my car to watch him. Again his hand drifted to his pocket and pulled away. I thought of the huff-breath-hold. “If you need to smoke, you can go ahead. I don’t care.”

Not now, when I knew there was no way I’d have to taste smoke on his tongue.

His look of relief was so vast I laughed. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one with a lighter emblazoned with a picture of the biohazard symbol. He offered me one, which I declined.

We stood a few feet apart, me still leaning against my car and him leaning against the one parked next to it. He blew the smoke away from my face and visibly stopped twitching. We didn’t say anything until he’d puffed a few times. Then he looked at me.

“Sweet car.” His eyes roamed over Betty’s lines, seeing her as she should be, maybe, instead of how she was.

“It’s my bitchin’ Camaro,” I told him with a grin.

Guys dig cars almost as much as they dig pussy.

“Nice.”

It wasn’t, really—it had rust spots and dings and dents and was saved from being a junker solely because of its “cool” factor rather than any extra-special care I’d given it.

“It runs.” I opened the door. “That’s the best thing that I can say about it.”

Jack drew in more smoke and let it out. “She wasn’t my girlfriend. We hooked up once or twice.”

“You don’t have to explain things to me.”

He shook his head. “Yeah, I know. But I am, okay?”

In the parking garage’s harsh lighting he shouldn’t have looked so pretty, his face all smooth lines and curves. With a cigarette in his mouth and smoke squinting his eyes, he should’ve looked harder. Or at least older.

“Look,” he said when I didn’t answer. “I’ll give you your money back.”

“Mrs. Smith doesn’t offer refunds.”

“I know.” He finished the cigarette and dropped it to the floor to grind it out beneath the toe of his black boot. “But this date really sucked, and I’m sorry.”

“It wasn’t all that bad. You’re a good dancer.”

His mouth tipped up a tiny bit. “Thanks. So are you. But that business with Kira…shit. That was fucked. I’m sorry.”

“You can’t help it she’s a stupid cunt,” I told him, and Jack looked shocked for one second before he burst into laughter.

“Can I give you some advice?” I asked, watching him laugh.

He nodded. “Sure.”

“Do you plan on doing this a lot?”

He didn’t ask me what I meant by “this.” “Um…well, yeah.”

“And you want to be good at it, right?”

“Yes. For sure.”

I studied him another moment. “First of all, don’t make appointments where you can’t smoke.”

Surprise swirled around his mouth and eyes. “No?”

“No. Watching you suck on that butt was like watching a baby going for its bottle.”

He laughed, chagrined. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. Just don’t make dates where you’re going to feel like you can’t be yourself. Because I have to tell you, Jack, that’s what’s going to work for you. Not trying to be someone else.”

He nodded, slowly, and gave me an assessing glance. “I sucked that bad, huh?”

“No. Not really. But…” I thought of how to get my point across. “Okay, think of it this way. What am I paying you for?”

“My time and company,” he answered promptly as he pulled out another cigarette and lit it.

At least he got that right. “Exactly. But you have to act like these are real dates, Jack. You have to do your homework. Read the information Mrs. Smith sends you, and pay attention. Be a little more confident. Don’t make it so much like you’re waiting for permission to show me a good time. Just go for it.”

“What if I’m guessing wrong?”

“If you’re doing everything else right,” I said, “you won’t be.”

He sighed. “Great.”

I laughed and reached forward to push the hair out of his face. “And don’t go on dates where you’re likely to run into psycho barsluts.”

“Well, that limits me.”

We laughed together. I looked into my car but didn’t slide behind the wheel. He moved toward me, one arm sliding around my waist to hold me against his body.

“Is this what you’re talking about?”

Against his dark brows, his eyes looked very blue. Not a hint of green anywhere. His hair had stayed off his face this time.

“Yes.”

He inched me closer. “So…are we saying good-night?”

“Yes, Jack.” I tempered it with a smile.

He didn’t let me go. His fingers splayed on my hip. “Is it because of the way things went tonight?”

I shook my head and answered honestly. “No.”

“The cigarettes?”

“Oh. No.” I meant that, too.

Jack paused, his eyes searching my face but finding what, I didn’t know. “Do you think you might call me again?”

“Sure.” I might. Or might not.

“Great!”

Then he let me go and stepped back to let me get in the car. The world shook a little and my body with it, because he gave me that smile again, that bright and shiny brilliant smile that made me want to dip him in butter and gobble him up.

He sauntered away and I watched him go, and I realized something. That smile had almost made me forget Sam the stranger.

I would definitely be calling Jack again.

Chapter 04

I didn’t have time to think of smiles or strangers for a few days. I had services to oversee and families to soothe. I know many people think what I do is morbid. Maybe even creepy. Few understand the purpose of a funeral director is not to take care of the dead, though that’s a part of it. My job is to care for those whose lives stutter in the face of their grief. To make the horrible task of saying goodbye as easy as it can never be.

I appreciated Jared more than ever as the week began with three funerals on the same day. My dad and uncle had always had assistants, but when I took over, the business had initially dipped and I’d had to let them go. I’d turned it around quickly enough, largely in part by doing most everything by myself. Running the home wasn’t impossible to do on my own, but it was pretty damn difficult. Having Jared there to help me organize and arrange services was a luxury I hadn’t wanted to get used to.

When a person dies in a hospital or nursing home, there are staff and gurneys available to make the transferal easy, but when a body needs to be picked up at a private residence, I never go alone. Most people don’t die conveniently by the nearest exit, and it can be too difficult to lift or transport a corpse down flights of stairs by myself.

We got a death call early Tuesday morning. The woman, in her early thirties, had died at home but had been taken to the hospital. Her husband would be coming in to make the arrangements with me while Jared went to pick up the body.

It’s easier with some than others. When the deceased passes after a long illness, or at an advanced age, for example. When it’s not a surprise.

“It was such a shock.” The man in the chair in front of me cradled an infant against his chest. He wasn’t weeping, but he looked as if he had been. A little girl played quietly at his feet with the set of blocks I kept for kids. “Nobody knew this was coming.”

“I’m sorry,” I told him, and waited.

I’ve heard horror stories about families being pressured into buying the best caskets and vaults, or being forced to make decisions hastily. Some other funeral homes operated like revolving doors, shuffling people in and out as fast as possible. Mr. Davis deserved my time, though, and he could have as much of it as he needed.

“She hated that van,” he said. The baby against him peeped and he shifted it. A boy. I could tell by the baseball bat on his outfit. “Why would she want to die in it?”

It wasn’t a question that needed an answer, but he looked at me like he thought I should have one. I tried hard not to gaze at the little girl on the floor, or the baby in his arms. I tried hard to just look at his face. “I don’t know, Mr. Davis.”

Mr. Davis glanced down at his children, then back up to me. “I don’t know, either.”

Together we planned a simple service. He gave me the clothes he wanted her to wear, and her favorite colors of lipstick and eye shadow. His son fussed and he pulled a bottle from a small cooler bag to feed him while we talked. I had Shelly take the little girl to give her some cookies and juice.

It was only routine to me, but for him it was the end of life as he’d known it. I did the best I could for him, but Mr. Davis left with the same blank gaze he’d had when he came in. When he’d gone, I went down to the embalming room to see if Jared had returned with Mrs. Davis. He had. Since he wasn’t yet licensed, he wasn’t able to actually do anything until I was there to supervise, but he’d set up the table and our supplies, and turned on some music.

He was quiet, though, when we uncovered her. Usually Jared’s full of humor and jokes. Nothing disrespectful toward the people we’re taking care of or anything. Just a generalized goofiness. Today he wasn’t joking, or even smiling.

He stared at her. “She’s so young.”

I looked at Mrs. Davis. Her eyes closed, her face serene, skin pale and no longer flushed with the rosy glow of carbon-monoxide poisoning she’d have had when they found her. “Yes. She’s my sister’s age.”

Jared looked startled. “Shit. That means she’s my sister’s age, too.”

He turned to the sink, where he washed his hands vigorously. His shoulders hunched for too long. I’d forgotten Jared hadn’t yet had to deal with anyone like Mrs. Davis. He’d been with me for six months, and though we’d had our share of deaths from disease and old age, and a few accidents, we hadn’t had any suicides. We hadn’t, in fact, had anyone younger than forty-five.

When he turned back to me, though, he looked under control. “Ready?”

“Are you?” I hadn’t done anything to get started. We weren’t in a hurry.

“Sure.” He nodded. “Yes.”

“Why don’t you tell me what we need to do first.” I offered this to remind him this was a job, no matter how disturbing it might be sometimes.

Jared did, rattling off the steps of the procedures we needed to follow. But his eyes lingered too long on Mrs. Davis’s face, and he had to turn away a few too many times as we worked. I put a hand on his arm, finally.

“Do you need to take a break?”

Jared let out a long, slow breath, and nodded. “Yes. Want a soda?”

“Sure.” I didn’t need a break, but I took one anyway.

We both had cans of soda from the ancient machine I kept stocked in the lounge just down the hall. With its battered furniture and scarred flooring, it wasn’t the lounge we used for clients. Just a place for staff to eat lunch or kick back for a bit.

Jared cracked open his can and stretched out on the worn sofa while I plopped onto a floral-print armchair with mismatched cushions. We drank in silence. From above I heard the faint pitter-pat of Shelly’s heels on the uncarpeted floor.

“I guess we need some new insulation.” I looked up at the drop ceiling, then at Jared.

He nodded, staring at his can. “Yeah.”

“It’s really bothering you, isn’t it.” I watched him study his can as if it was going to tell him something secret.

He looked at me. “Yeah. Damn. Grace, I know it shouldn’t—”

“It’s okay if it does, Jared. A big part of our job is compassion.”

“It doesn’t bother you,” he said. “I mean…does it?”

“Her being so young, you mean?” The cold bubbles tickled my throat and made me cough. Coffee would’ve been better, but that was all the way upstairs.

“Yeah. And…the kids. I saw the little girl when she was with Shelly and you were still talking to the husband. I came upstairs after I brought Mrs. Davis in and she was there. She was what, maybe three?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“It doesn’t bother you,” Jared repeated.

“It’s part of the job, Jared. My job is to make this as easy as possible for her husband and family, and to make sure she’s taken care of.”

He rubbed at his eyes and tossed back some soda. “Yeah. I know. You’re right. It’s just hard, sometimes. Isn’t it?”

I thought of the conversation I’d had so recently with Dan Stewart. “It’s sad, sure.”

Jared shook his head. “Not just sad.”

“Do you want me to finish her by myself?” I asked, generously, I thought.

“No. I need the hours and it’s not like I won’t ever have to face this again.” He looked up at me. “But…how do you do it, Grace? How do you not let it bother you so much you can’t do it, but keep that compassion?”

“I find a way to put it away at the end of the day,” I told him.

“Like…?”

“Like it’s a job,” I said. “Which it is. You have to find a way to be able to put it away at the end of the day.”

“Even if you get a death call two hours after the end of the day?” Jared grinned.

“Even then.” I finished my soda and tossed the can into the recycling bin.

“So, what do you do?” he asked on the way back to the embalming room.

What did I do? I went out and paid men to fulfill my fantasies. “I read a lot.”

Jared snorted under his breath. “Maybe I should take up knitting.”

“You could do that.” We worked together for a bit longer. He didn’t need a lot of instruction. “You’re going to make a really good funeral director, Jared. Did I tell you that?”

He looked up from what he was doing. “Thanks.”

We finished without any more philosophical discussion, but when he left that night, I thought more about what I’d said. My tumultuous relationship with Ben had ended with spectacular horrendousness. He wanted to get married. I didn’t, and not because I didn’t love him. Ben had been very easy to love. In fact, I’d assumed, as he had, that someday we’d get married and have some kids. Do the family thing.

I believed in love. Believed marriages worked. My parents were still happily married after forty-three years, and in my work I saw many families bound together by the strength of their devotion to one another.

I’d been around the dead my entire life, but it had never hit so close to home until I started my internship with my dad. I arranged memorials and talked with priests, ministers and rabbis in order to help the grieving families who came to us send off their loved ones in whatever way they deemed fit. Funerals weren’t for the dead, but the living, after all. I overheard arguments between warring family members who wanted different levels of religion in the service, and assisted with preparations for nondenominational services, too. I listened to the prayers of hundreds of mourners, and though the method in which they prayed might differ, or the specific deity they implored to care for the deceased, one thing was the same. People wanted to believe their loved one was heading off to someplace beyond this one.

But they were wrong. The dirt fell on the coffins the same way, every time, no matter if it was a plain pine box or a casket costing thousands of dollars. The body inside eventually became dust and even the memories of the person to whom it had belonged faded and became dust, too. I’d overseen hundreds of funerals and never once seen angels taking a soul to heaven, nor devils dragging it to hell.

You died, they put you in a box in the ground or burned you to bits to hasten the process, and that was it. Done. Fini. There was nothing after that.

No ever after, happily or otherwise.

Ben blamed me for breaking us up, but I pointed the finger at the summer I worked for my dad full-time for the first time. I blamed the women who came to us shattered by the loss of their spouses, women who’d spent their lives so enmeshed with their husbands they had no idea where their men left off and they began. I blamed the wives so battered by grief they couldn’t function, and the children who cried over losing their parents.

With Ben I’d been so tied up in the beginning of things, I hadn’t thought so much about the end. Dead was dead, there was nothing else. I wouldn’t know I was dead, so why be afraid of it? Everyone died. Everyone went.

I wasn’t afraid of going.

I was afraid of being left behind.

There was no question that the dates helped me put away my job. I could have a cop, a firefighter, a teacher. I could play naughty nurse, or secretary, or anything else I wanted, limited only by imagination and my budget.

I told Jack to meet me at the hotel I’d been using for months, a recently renovated strip motel on Harrisburg’s city limits. It had cheap rates and clean sheets, and was a good forty minutes’ drive from my home, which pretty much guaranteed I’d never accidentally bump into someone from town. Or someone’s aunt or uncle or brother, or someone I went to high school with who was home for a holiday, or someone whose brother or sister I’d gone to school with.

I never worried about bumping into someone for whom I’d done a funeral. Not just because most families I serviced were also from the local area, and in my town the local area meant a radius of no more than ten miles. It was simpler even than that. People who met me for the first time at a service didn’t see me. They saw a funeral director, if they saw anyone at all through their own haze of emotions. Out of the very limited element in which they’d met me, I was unrecognizable.

I’d been to that motel close to a dozen times in the past year, but the clerk behind the desk didn’t recognize me, either. It was the sort of place where the staff was paid to recognize anonymity.

I secured the room and left the small office with the key dangling from my hand. Renovations aside, the Dukum Inn hadn’t switched over to key cards. I liked the weight of the heavy black plastic key ring with the room number inscribed on it in faded white. I liked the way the key fit into the lock and turned. It was tactile in a way sliding a card into a slot wasn’t.

Jack, looking scrumptious in a battered black leather jacket, met me at the door as I opened it. Inside, the room was nothing spectacular. I couldn’t have said whether or not I’d ever been in that particular one, as a matter of fact, though after the visits I’d made you’d think I might have bothered to remember.

Jack looked around as he shrugged out of his coat and tossed it onto the chair. “Looks like they’ve done some upgrades.”

I closed the door and set the key on the dresser before I turned to him. “You’ve been here before?”

He shot me a sideways grin. “Couple times. Not for a while.”

“Is that so?” I stepped closer, reaching for the front of his shirt. “Don’t tell me. You’re used to classier accommodations?”

His low laugh tickled me in hidden places. He let me tug him closer by the shirtfront. He had to tilt his head only a little to look down at me. The wind had blown his hair back, but even the tangles looked soft.

“Nah.” He was smart enough not to elaborate, and I gave him credit for that.

Jack fit his hands onto my hips. Our bodies nudged. I leaned closer to take a breath, half expecting the smell of cigarettes and motorcycle exhaust. He smelled like spring-night air, the sort that can’t decide if it wants to be cold or not.

“Hey,” he murmured until I looked up at his face.

“Hey,” I replied.

Jack leaned in, slow to kiss me, giving me plenty of time to turn my face if I wanted. I didn’t. I wanted his mouth on me, all over, including mine. I like kissing. Sometimes that’s all I wanted to do. Kiss. Soft and slow, hard and fast. Long, lingering kisses or brief brushes of lip on lip.

I’d given him unspoken permission to kiss my mouth, and Jack took it without a second pause. His mouth slanted over mine as he pulled me closer with one smooth motion. Our mouths opened. I tasted mint. He didn’t use his tongue right away, but when he did, the sensation of his warm and wet flesh sliding against mine made me draw in a short, sharp breath that wasn’t quite a gasp.

He pulled away, just enough to ask, “Is this okay?”

I pulled him back to my mouth. “Less talking.”

Jack’s smile curved against my lips. “Yes, ma’am.”

I slid my hands beneath the hem of his buttoned shirt and found the soft cotton of a T-shirt beneath. I pushed that up, too, to give my fingers room to play on his bare skin. I slid my palm flat along his stomach, just above the waistband of his jeans. He pushed against my touch and left my lips to slide his mouth to my ear.

“Thanks for going out with me tonight.”

I turned my head so he could kiss my neck. “You’re welcome.”

“I don’t have to be home until midnight.”

I’d been specific about what I wanted, but I’ll blame the way his lips and tongue were painting a picture on my skin for how long it took for his words to click. “Midnight? But…oh.”

I got it. I fought my smile by biting down on my lower lip, hard, and heard Jack’s smile in his voice when he answered.

“Yeah. Mom and Dad said I could stay out a whole hour later because I made the honor society.”

I put a hand on his chest and twisted away from his mouth and hands. “Is that so?”

Jack nodded, glee glinting in his eyes but his face solemn. “Yes.”

I turned my back, part of the game, but also to gather my composure. I’d told Jack to do his homework and he had.

Good boy.

“You must have studied hard.” I made my voice casual and didn’t turn around.

“Yeah, I did. Really hard.”

This was a game I’d never had the chance to play before, and my heart stepped up its thumping as I contemplated how it should happen, exactly.

I turned to face Jack. “So, I guess you think you deserve a reward.”

He gave me a perfect, puppyish look. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

“I don’t know.” I feigned skepticism. “I’m not so sure it’s a good idea. Your parents—”

Jack looked indignant. “I’m a freshman in college! They can’t tell me what to do forever!”

I fought back a giggle at his grand gesture. It was my game, and if I didn’t hold it in, how could I expect him to?

“This is serious!” I shook my finger, as much a warning to myself as it was part of the role playing.

Jack crossed his arms over his chest. “I might not even be home by midnight, so there.”

“Well, then,” I answered. “You know what that would make you.”

One corner of his mouth twitched. “Bad.”

My hips swayed a bit more than usual when I moved closer to run a fingertip up the line of his buttons to stop just below his chin. “Is that what you want to be, Jack? A bad boy?”

He shook his head. “No.” He put his hand over mine and pulled it away from his chin. “So don’t make me be one.”

He’d improvised, surprising me. I looked at his hand circling my wrist, and to the way his face had shaded from eager to intent. Yet unlike at the Pharmacy or even the first time he’d kissed me, Jack wasn’t hesitating now. He was going for it the way I’d advised.

It was working.

There is always a part of me that can’t get lost in the game. No matter how thoroughly I’ve imagined the scenario or how good the players, something inside me refuses to cooperate. Refuses to allow myself to be convinced, even for an hour, that I’m someone else. It was why I’d never played this game before, the older woman giving the younger man his First Time.

Except here and now, I was older. Jack was younger. And this was our first time.

I tugged my hand, but not hard enough to break free of his grip. “What makes you think I shouldn’t?”

His fingers closed tighter. “Because you want to.”

And I did, a fact the heat rising in my throat and cheeks couldn’t hide, nor the way my nipples poked at the front of my shirt. Or the way my mouth parted to allow the swipe of my tongue along my bottom lip. Jack looked at all of these signs, so blatant, but he kept the role in which I’d cast him.

“Do you want to touch me?” The words came out scratchy and hoarse, but I didn’t clear my throat.

He nodded. We stayed that way, him holding my wrist and staring into each other’s eyes for as long as it took for my heart to stutter-thump a few times. Jack’s fingers opened, freeing me. I put my hands out to my sides.

“Then go ahead.”

His gaze fell to my body. For a minute I wished I’d worn something sexier, a short skirt and garters, maybe. Yet when he put his hands on my waist, pushing up my shirt to do so, I was glad I wore jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. It was less of a cliché…which made it feel more real.

Jack’s thumbs pressed my belly while his fingers curled around to each side of my spine. He waited, taking a deep breath and staring hard at the place his hands disappeared beneath my shirt.

I was supposed to believe he’d never touched a woman before, at least not like this. Watching the set of his mouth and his steady stare and feeling the skid of his hands along my sides, it wasn’t so hard for him to convince me.

We had no script. Nothing had been agreed upon. Only a few words checked off a list and a few scribbled sentences in the comments section of an almost-forgotten questionnaire from a while ago.

It was enough.

Jack pushed my shirt up and I raised my arms so he could pull it off over my head. He tossed it away and put his hands back on my waist at once. His gaze followed every curve before going to my face.

“Are you sure?” His already deep voice had gone even lower. “I can touch you?”

I took his right hand and slid it upward to just below my breast. We were both breathing hard by now. My nipples felt like iron pegs. Between my legs, my pulse throbbed and thrummed.

He touched me. I drew in a breath that had no trouble becoming a gasp. Jack cupped my breast in his hand and let out a slow hiss of his own breath. We stayed that way for a moment, until he slid his left hand up to do the same. Then he bent his head to brush his lips over the exposed curves. He straightened and looked into my eyes.

“Come to bed,” I said. I turned and didn’t watch to see if he would follow. There was no question that he wouldn’t.

“Take off your shirt,” I said when we got there.

He did. I stared for a second, then reached to touch the silver barbell through his left nipple. It wasn’t exactly in keeping with the image of an honor-society nerd. It was also pretty hot.

Jack’s skin humped into goose bumps at my touch, though I knew he couldn’t be cold. I smiled. My finger traced his nipple, then the other one, and finally right down the center of his chest. I stopped just above his navel.

“Take off your pants.”

His hands went at once to the button and zipper and in moments he’d pushed his pants down to step out of them. He kicked them to the side. Neither of us bothered to look where they landed.

Jack’s black boxer briefs rode low on his hips, exposing a hint of dark hair. The front bulged impressively, but he wasn’t quite hard. Not yet.

“Those, too.” I watched his face.

He was good at this, much better than I, who had to think carefully about my reactions to make them authentic. Emotions drifted across Jack’s face and got trapped in his eyes. Pride. Excitement. A hint of anxiety.

He hooked his thumbs into his waistband, but before he could push them down, I put my hands on his. Remembering, suddenly.

“Wait.”

He gave me a curious look.

“Is there…anything I should know?”

His brow creased. “…No?”

I thought about what Kira had shouted in her drunken assault. I looked at the metal in his eyebrow and nipple. I looked down to the bulge in his briefs. I didn’t want to lose the mood or destroy the illusion, but the thought of being suddenly faced with a cock ring had made my heart pitterpat and not in a good way. A Prince Albert, the barslut had called it. I’d seen a few, but never on someone I was about to have sex with.

I let go of his hands. “Take them off.”

I wasn’t aware I was holding my breath until he stepped out of his briefs and showed me his entire body, nude. No Prince Albert to be found. I let out the air in my lungs with a little squeak. I looked at his face. Confusion had joined the other emotions.

I’d tell him later why I’d hesitated. For now I had some deflowering to do. I stepped back and let my gaze sweep over him.

His cock twitched when I looked there again. I glanced up at his face. “Tell me what you want, Jack.”

“I want to…I want to take your clothes off.” He swallowed and licked his mouth. His eyes gleamed. His cock grew longer and thicker.

“So do it.” He reached for me at once, but I held up a hand to stop him. “Take your time.”

His eager hands slowed at my command. He manipulated the button and zipper of my jeans and slid them over my hips, but didn’t pull down my panties with them. I didn’t warn him about my boots, but he figured it out when the denim slid past my knees and he realized he wouldn’t be able to pull them all the way off without taking my boots off first.

It was perfect, really, the fumbling. Sweet and eager but controlled because I’d ordered it. Jack pulled my boots off one by one, then eased my jeans off, too. On his knees before me, he lifted my feet to peel away my socks. He looked up at me with a grin when I giggled at the tickling touch.

He straightened and his hands went to the mechanism on my bra that any woman can manipulate with one hand but often stumps even the most dexterous of men. He struggled a little more than I thought he had to, but I suffered it because it, too, was perfect in this scene.

When at last he’d unhooked the bra and stepped back to slide the straps down my arms, Jack paused before pulling the lace from my breasts. He took a few shallow breaths, ducking his head. I touched his cheek, turning his face until he looked up at me.

“Take it off.”

He did, fingers trembling with eagerness or anxiety or good acting, I didn’t care which. When the bra fell away, Jack cupped my breasts again. He moved so close I felt the flutter of his lashes on my skin just before he kissed each breast.

I put my hand on his silky hair. When he licked my nipples, I moaned softly. His hands moved down to my hips, hooking into the sides of my panties as he sucked gently on my nipples.

Jack wasn’t the only one trembling with eagerness this time. Together we pushed my panties down as he stood and our mouths met. Our teeth clashed from the force of our kiss but we didn’t stop.

“Sorry,” Jack muttered between kisses.

I said nothing, just pressed against him as soon as I was as naked as he. His cock was hard now. Thicker than I’d expected. It rubbed my belly as he moved his hips.

“Put your hands on me, Jack.”

He did, in as many places as he could manage. Passion glued us together in half a dozen places as we walked toward the bed, where we ended up in a tangle of limbs.

His erection pressed urgently against my hip as his hands roamed and his mouth tasted me. Jack nudged my head upward so he could feast on my throat, then lower. He sucked at my nipples, one then the other as his hands smoothed over my belly and thighs.

His hand slid between my legs, already parted. His thumb stroked the sensitive flesh of my upper inner thigh, and my body tensed in anticipation. I’d forgotten I was supposed to be teaching him.

Jack buried his face into my neck. His thumb pressed my clit and my hips moved, pushing my cunt against his hand. I closed my eyes and listened to the sound of our mingled breathing.

I know women who’ve fucked more men than I have, but who would think I’m a slut for paying what they give away for free. There are a lot of differences between their choices and mine, but one thing I feel certain is the same. There’s always something unexpected about the first time you go to bed with someone new.

With Jack it was how readily and well he took on a different persona. How convincing he made his performance. How he picked up on my subtle cues and went with them—and how much faster and better he was at it when he was pretending to be someone else than the first time we’d met.

“Jack.” I opened my eyes. The ceiling swam into focus, then the edges of his profile. He’d been kissing my shoulder.

He looked at me and murmured. I touched his hair, falling over one eye. “I don’t feel like playing this game anymore.”

When I was in high school, slap bracelets had been all the rage. Stiff, thin strips of flexible metal covered by fabric. The trick had been to slap them when they were straight onto your wrist, where they’d curl. Straightening them made them stiff and flat again.

Jack went rigid like a slap bracelet. Tension infused his arms, his legs, even his belly. He pushed up on his arms and tossed the hair from his eyes.

“Okay,” he said, not moving. I gave him a moment, after which he said, “Why?”

I shifted a little. “Because I decided I don’t really want to teach you how to fuck. I want to see if you know how to do it already.”

And fuck, that smile again, this time made even brighter by the laugh accompanying it. My entire body went awash with heat. Jack rolled onto his side, one hand still on my belly.

“You’re sure?”

I got on my side, too, facing him. His hand slid to my hip. I slid my thigh between his. “I’m sure.”

“Okay.” He paused again, brow furrowed as if he was thinking. “But…I didn’t guess wrong, did I?”

About the fantasy, I understood him to mean, and it pleased me how he’d taken my advice to heart. “No. Definitely not.”

“Good.” He flashed a dimmer version of the thousand-watt grin. His hand slid back between my legs. “So I don’t have to pretend I’ve never done this before?”

“Not today.”

He pressed gently, in just the right spot. “Okay.”

We didn’t say anything for a minute. We didn’t move. Jack’s eyes were the color of an August sky without clouds, but thick black lashes cast shadows in them when he blinked.

He kissed me again, soft and sweet and slow. His fingers moved in small circles on my clit. When I sighed, he smiled.

He knew what he was doing, there was no question of that. He paid attention. He didn’t rush. Was patient, even though it was taking me a long time. And what I liked best was that he didn’t use my slow response as an excuse to trot out every sexual position or act in an attempt to get me off sooner. Jack kissed me and rubbed my clit in small, gentle circles without cease until I finally gripped his arm, my body tense, and whispered, “Now.”

He moved faster, then, to slide on the condom and get between my legs. But slow again when he slid inside me. Slow, too, when he began to move. The few seconds’ reprieve had faded my urgency, though not by much. Our bodies worked and moved together, each push and pull an experiment in timing.

Tension coiled, tighter and tighter. I made a wordless noise. He picked up the pace. My hands slid along the smoothness of his back, to the sharp curve of his shoulder blades and the shallow groove of his spine.

I came, finally, making no sound as my body tightened around him. Jack shuddered and lifted his head to look at me with heavy-lidded eyes. He closed them, hard, face tensing, and thrust once more with a low groan. He rolled off me after a minute.

I looked over at him as he sat on the edge of the bed, facing away. His shoulders had hunched as he took care of the condom. I yawned and stretched, letting the glow wash over me, but after another moment I sat up, too.

I got out of bed and used the bathroom, not hurrying. When I came out, Jack had pulled his jeans back on. Cool currents of air swirled in the room and I thought I smelled the faintest odor of smoke.

“Hey,” Jack said with a small smile.

“Hey.” I smiled, too, and gathered my clothes. I stepped into my panties and hooked my bra, well aware of Jack’s gaze on me, but not turning again to look at him until I sat on the motel’s rickety chair to pull on my socks and boots.

I hadn’t felt awkward until it looked as if he might. I took an envelope from my purse and went to the bed and sat next to him. He looked at the envelope, then at me.

“This is for you.” I pressed it into his hand.

He took it, staring down at the plain white paper. I’d sealed it. He turned it over and over in his fingers.

“It’s a tip.” I hadn’t thought I needed to explain.

His brow furrowed for a second before he looked up at me again. “Okay.”

“Don’t your other ladies give you tips?”

His mouth quirked. “Not like this.”

I raised an eyebrow. “How do they do it?”

He shrugged. “They usually just give me a twenty or something.”

I had no idea how much training Mrs. Smith gave her gentlemen, only that each was an independent contractor. They set their own rates and negotiated their own dates, and gave Mrs. Smith a cut of the fees for the privilege of providing the scheduling and clients. Both times I’d called the service to arrange for Jack’s company, I’d had to list exactly what I’d wanted for the date with the understanding that anything additional would be taken care of in cash between the two of us. That was the way it worked.

“Huh,” I said. “Well…far be it from me to tell you how to do your job, Jack, but…”

He groaned and fell back on the bed, arms flopping out. “Wrong again?”

I laughed and rubbed his denim-clad thigh. “It’s not wrong if it works for you.”

He looked up at me through the fall of his hair. “This job didn’t come with an employee manual, okay?”

“I guess not.”

He groaned again, then sat up and tried to put the envelope back in my hand. “You don’t have to give me this.”

“Yes, I do!”

Laughing, we tussled for a minute until the envelope landed on the floor. We both looked at it. I nudged it with my toe.

“Don’t you even want to know how much is in there?” I asked.

Jack shook his head. Then nodded. Then shook it. We laughed again. He was still half-naked and the warmth of his shoulder against mine felt good. I kissed it, tasting the clean salt flavor of sex-earned sweat, and got up. I picked up the envelope and put it in my pocket.

“Stand up.”

He did, obedient.

“Okay,” I said. “You read my file.”

He grinned. “Yes.”

“What sorts of things do I like to do, Jack?”

He thought for a spare second. “Movies. Dancing.”

“What else?”

“You like to play games?” he said, less certain. “Roleplay. Like what I tried to do with you tonight.”

“Yes. I like to play games. So we’re going to play the game right now, and it’s called making a date.”

Jack raised both brows. “Okay.”

“I’m calling you.” I demonstrated. “Hello, is this Jack?”

“Yes.”

“Jack, I’d like to see you for a date. I’d like to go to the movies and then dinner.”

“Okay.”

We were both trying hard not to laugh. “And if things work out, I’d like to spend some time with you after the date.”

“Okay!” Jack gave me a thumbs-up. “Awesome.”

“Don’t say awesome,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Well…it doesn’t sound professional.”

“Right. Okay. Um…very well, miss, I think I can accommodate you.”

We laughed again. “That’s better. Okay. So, how should I compensate you for your company?”

“Gee, Grace,” said Jack. “Nobody’s ever said it that way before.”

“Just go with it.”

“Okay. Um…two hundred dollars.”

“And what about the additional time?”

Jack scuffed the carpet with his foot. “All the other times it was more up front. You know. Meet them somewhere and screw. That was it.”

“Huh.” I looked him over. “So you don’t ask for more?”

“Nope.” The smile. “I just consider it a bonus.”

Now I really started laughing, hard. “Jack!”

“What?” He shrugged. “What can I say? I’m twenty-four, I like girls.”

I was all at once very fond of Jack. “It shows.”

He laughed, too, and ran a hand through his hair again. “You want to know something?”

“Sure.”

“I thought this would be easier.”

I chuckled. “I’m sure you did.”

He looked at me. “I’m not a total loser, Grace. I do know how to take a woman out on a date.”

“I’m sure you do. You’re very cute.”

He made a little face. “It’s just that this is different. I want to do a good job, you know?”

I nodded. “I know you do. And, Jack…you’re not doing a bad job. Really.”

Thumbs-up. “Awesome.”

I kissed his shoulder again, then patted it. I pulled the envelope from my pocket and handed it to him. “This is for you. Don’t look at it now. That’s tacky.”

He gave me a scornful look. “I know that.”

“And next time, negotiate ahead of time,” I told him as I headed for the door. “Get the money for additional time in advance. Excuse yourself to go to the bathroom to count it so you’re not getting scammed.”

He turned the envelope over and over in his hands. “Won’t they think it’s rude?”

“The ones who do this a lot will expect it. The ones who are new won’t know any different. Watch out for yourself, Jack. Even women can be pricks.”

He nodded. “Sure. Okay. Next time.”

His voice stopped me at the door. “Grace?”

I turned. “Hmm?”

“Will there be a next time?”

I gave him a thumbs-up. Jack smiled.

Awesome.

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