Forbidden Stranger

by Marilyn Pappano

  She felt like a newbie, experiencing the power of her own sexuality for the first time. Fine for an eighteen-year-old, way past ridiculous for her now. Focus on the music. That was how she’d survived her first night—hell, her first month—on the job. How she’d survived twelve years.

  It was how she would survive this dance.

  After his last customer left, Rick headed straight for the back door. He wanted to be out quickly enough to miss Amanda. After her dance in the goddess outfit, he’d needed another break to get his body temperature somewhere close to normal. Unfortunately, Chad hadn’t been willing to extend his time at the bar, so Rick had gone back to work, hot, turned-on and confused.

  Sure, she was beautiful, and her body was heart-attack-inducing, but she’d always been beautiful and it had never bothered him before. She hadn’t done anything that he hadn’t seen a thousand times before, but something—besides his hard-on—had changed. He just couldn’t figure out what. Was it because he’d talked to her? He’d been to her house? He’d seen her outside the club, being a normal woman in a normal life?

  Maybe it was because he hadn’t gotten laid in a while. Undercover operations and women were difficult to manage at the same time, at least for him, so he tended not to mix the two. But he’d been on this job for less than three months. He wasn’t so sex-hungry that the first pretty woman could turn him into a horny kid. On this job in particular, he was surrounded by pretty women.

  And Amanda was the prettiest of them all. The sexiest. The smartest. The most innocent. The one he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about in the past twenty-four hours.

  The October night air held a chill that smelled faintly of the Dumpsters at the edge of the parking lot. He took the steps from the stoop to the pavement two at a time and was digging his keys from his pocket when headlights brightened the night. The finely tuned engine of a long white Mercedes broke the quiet as it glided to a stop a few feet in front of Rick.

  A scrawny weasel of a guy jumped out of the front passenger seat and hurried around to open the rear door. Leaving his keys in his pocket, Rick watched as Rosey Hines slowly emerged from the car’s interior. Beyond the Mercedes—more of a necessity than a luxury, thanks to his bulk—Rosey didn’t flaunt his wealth. He wasn’t weighted down with gold, he didn’t dress flamboyantly and he wasn’t attended by a bunch of tough guys meant to intimidate. Rosey was intimidating enough by himself.

  “Calloway,” he greeted with a nod.

  “Mr. Hines.”

  “How was business tonight?”

  “Not bad.”

  Rosey grinned. “It never is. I do have the best girls in town.”

  Almost Heaven was one of the better clubs, Rick acknowledged. All the dancers were young, pretty and in shape. They didn’t need makeup to disguise needle marks or to hide the effects of too much booze; they didn’t look as if they lived on the fringes of respectable society. The clientele was better, too—businessmen, professionals. Few blue-collar types ever came through the door. With drinks starting at eighteen bucks and everything else going up from there, they couldn’t afford to.

  “Is it Chad’s turn to lock up?” Rosey asked, and Rick nodded. According to Harry, Rosey knew his employees’ work hours better than they did, and he scheduled his visits to the club accordingly. He came only at closing time and only on nights when Chad was working late. That could be because Chad was Rosey’s cousin once removed, but Rick figured it was more likely because Chad was on Rosey’s payroll in more ways than one.

  Behind Rick the door opened and soft soles slapped down the first few steps before stopping. Rosey’s gaze shifted past Rick and a smile crossed his face. “Amanda.”

  Of course it was. Rick glanced over his shoulder just long enough to catch a glimpse of a T-shirt, snug jeans and sandals, then switched his gaze back to Rosey.

  “Mr. Hines.” The footsteps resumed, then Amanda stopped again a few feet to Rick’s right.

  “Aw, you don’t have to be formal around Calloway here,” Rosey said with a grin.

  Amanda smiled, too. “Hey, Rosey. How’s your mother?”

  “Enjoying her cruises way too much. She’s threatening to spend the rest of her life sailing.” Rosey tilted his head Rick’s way. “Calloway says the night wasn’t bad. Was it worth coming out or would you have preferred to stay home working on your bedroom?”

  What the hell did Rosey know about Amanda’s bedroom? And for that matter, how the hell did she know anything about Rosey’s mother? He wasn’t the type to get too chummy with his employees—only those who had been with him a long time and were involved in his illegal enterprises. Did Amanda fall into that category, or was there something different between them? Either possibility was so repugnant that Rick had to stifle the impulse to step back and put distance between him and both Rosey and Amanda.

  “—tips will pay for that pricey wallpaper I’ve been coveting,” she was saying when Rick tuned in. “Yeah, it was worth coming out. But it’s been a long night. I’ve got to get off my feet.”

  “Me, too,” Rosey said, setting his girth in motion. “See you. You, too, Calloway.”

  Rick stepped back to let him pass, followed by the weasel, as Amanda circled the rear of the car. After watching Rosey’s slow progress up the first couple steps, Rick headed in the opposite direction, catching up with her about the time she reached her car.

  “You’re on a first-name basis with the boss?” he asked as she opened the rear door of her car and tossed her bag onto the seat.

  Her glance didn’t quite reach his face. “I’ve known Rosey for years. He was the bouncer at the first club I ever worked at.”

  “And twelve years later he owns five clubs.”

  “He was always ambitious,” she replied with a shrug, making the glitter-and-paint Eiffel Tower on her shirt ripple.

  “You’re ambitious, too,” he pointed out. “Going from Atlanta’s finest strip club to the staff of its most liberal college.”

  “But because you’re not ambitious, that makes it a flaw of some sort in those of us who are?”

  Rick rested one hand on the trunk of her car, leaning so his hip was against the rear panel. “What makes you think I’m not ambitious?”

  Her whole manner became fluttery—her weight shifting from one foot to the other, her hand making a meaningless little gesture, her gaze sliding away from him, then skittering back again. “You have a college degree, yet you tend bar in a strip club.”

  “Atlanta’s finest strip club,” he reminded her. “I said none of my college teachers looked like you. I didn’t say I stuck around long enough to graduate.”

  Though he did. He’d started out in pre-law, like both of his grandfathers, his father, all of his uncles, one of his aunts and, after him, both of his younger brothers. But he’d known from the beginning that he was never going to be a lawyer. Half of the lawyers in the family had never practiced, Granddad Calloway had pointed out. They worked in the family business, protecting what generations before had built, adding on to their success. But they still had the degree. It was family tradition.

  Rick hadn’t cared enough about tradition to spend the time and money earning a degree he would never use. Over Granddad’s protest, he had switched his major to criminal justice and he’d never regretted it.

  “So did you graduate?” Amanda asked, toying with her keys.

  No. A simple lie. He lied all the time on the job and was pretty damn good at it. He’d better be, since his life depended on it. But for reasons that wouldn’t bear close scrutiny, he didn’t want to lie at that moment. Instead he asked, “Does it make a difference? Does having a college degree make me smarter, better, more respectable? Does not having one mean I’m not respectable?”

  Her gaze held steady for a moment, then the corners of her mouth tilted up. Before she could answer, though, his cell phone gave an annoying buzz. He fished it from his pocket, glanced at the screen, then flipped it open. “Hey, babe.”

  “There’s
my first clue that you’re not alone,” Julia said. “Are you still at the club?”

  “I’m just heading out. I’m standing in the parking lot talking to Amanda.”

  “Tell her hello for me.”

  He dutifully did so, and Amanda offered her own hello loud enough for the cell phone to pick it up. He pivoted so he was leaning against the car, so Amanda was just a shadow in his peripheral vision instead of dead-on in front of him. “What are you doing up so late?”

  “Getting used to the hours. Unpacking. Trying to decide whether to find suitable hiding places around the apartment for my weapons or if I’d just be safer wearing a pistol at all times.”

  “Aw, it’s not that bad.” He’d been living there for three months. It wasn’t the sort of place Rick Calloway, GBI agent, would choose—his condo was in a much better part of town—but it was appropriate for Rick Calloway, bartender. “Listen, babe, I’m heading out. I’ll be home soon.”

  “Don’t surprise me. I might shoot you,” Julia muttered.

  With a laugh, he hung up, then fixed his attention on Amanda again. “What were we talking about?” He didn’t need a reminder: she’d been about to tell him that she was the last person who would judge someone else’s worth by the extent of his education. She’d been about to smile at him, which would have made him grateful the car he was leaning against would support his weight because it would have been questionable whether his legs could.

  It was a good thing Julia had interrupted. A timely reminder to both him and Amanda that there was another woman in his life.

  “I don’t remember, and at the risk of repeating myself, it’s been a long night. I’ve got to get off my feet. Tell Julia I’ll see her at noon.” With a grimace that was supposed to pass for a smile, she got into her car, started the engine and drove away.

  Rick walked to his own car and, ten minutes later, he was climbing the stairs to his second-floor apartment. His boots clanged on the metal tread, with only the thin light from a nearby streetlamp to light the way. The bulb next to the door was burned out, broken or stolen again. He didn’t mind the dark—anything he couldn’t take care of himself, the pistol secured to his right calf could—but for Julia’s sake, he should check the bulb. Not that she would be going out without a pistol, either.

  He knocked, then called out, “Hey, Jay, it’s me,” before unlocking the door. He stepped inside, dropping his keys on the table as he closed and locked the door. The jangle of the keys hitting the floor made him turn. And stare.

  Ten hours ago he’d left the shabby apartment with its third-rate carpet and fourth-hand furniture. Now rugs covered much of the carpet and throws covered the furniture. The table that had stood next to the door was across the room now. His one measly lamp was gone, replaced by four others that lit up the room like midday, and the musty odor he’d come to associate with the place had been replaced by a fragrant candle scent.

  Julia appeared in the hallway that led to two cramped bedrooms and the bathroom. She wore jeans and a T-shirt, with her Sig Sauer holstered on the waistband, but that wasn’t what made his eyes widen. He’d seen her in casual clothes before, and wearing a gun, too. But he’d never seen her with her hair thick and loose and curling around her face, or with a real makeup job, or looking pretty.

  “Wow.”

  Color heated her cheeks as she scooped a box from the dining table with jerky movements. “Grab that other box, will you?”

  He picked it up, nothing too heavy, and carried it into the bedroom across the hall from his. This room had changed, too. When he’d left for work, it had been an empty room with no sheets on the mattress, no signs of use at all except for the running shoes piled on the floor and the fishing gear laid across the bed. Now those were gone, presumably dumped in his room, and there were more rugs, bedcovers in pale green, tons of pillows, a jewelry case on the dresser, clothes in the closet and shopping bags on the bed.

  He set the box on the floor, then picked up one of the shopping bags. “I thought you were just bringing a few things until you passed your audition with Harry.”

  “This is a few things.”

  “Huh. I moved in three months ago with one suitcase and a box and haven’t needed anything else.”

  “I noticed. You had three bath towels, three washcloths, two coffee cups, a bag of plastic spoons and a jar of instant coffee. No dishes, no dish soap, no sanitizer, no microwave, no books, no television, no stereo, no computer.”

  “I travel light,” he said with a shrug as he looked inside the bag, then removed one of the shoes there. It hardly qualified for the name, with little more than a sole, a clear vinyl strap across the toes and another one that circled the ankle, each topped with a thin pink bow. The heel was slender and long, four or five inches, and could probably substitute as a weapon in the absence of anything else. “You gonna wear these?” he asked cynically, glancing from the heel to the flats neatly lined up on the closet floor.

  Julia pulled both the shoe and the bag from his grasp. “I’m going to try.”

  “What else did you buy?”

  She grabbed for the other bag, but he got it first, emptying it on the bed. There was a garment that would have been worthy of the name shorts if it had an extra yard of material. A bra and bikini bottom made of silver mesh, with lengths of silver beads dangling from each hip and between the breasts. A navy blue dress, simple, straight, falling just to the hips and with no back. A bra, thong and breakaway skirt in fiery red.

  “You gonna wear these?” he asked again, his brows raised to his hairline.

  Her jaw tightened as she swept up everything and stuffed it back into the bag. “I’m going to try. Did Hines come by tonight?”

  Sobering, Rick leaned against the edge of the dresser. “Yeah, just as I was leaving. Amanda’s on a first-name basis with him. Asked him about his mama.”

  “They’ve both been in the exotic-dance business a long time.” Her nose wrinkled. “Roosevelt Hines and exotic dancing. There’s an image that’ll be hard to get rid of. You think she could be involved with him?”

  No. But Rick kept his gut response inside and considered it rationally. It wouldn’t be the first time a woman had slept with her boss. Or the first time a beautiful woman had fallen for an unlikely man. And was Rosey really so unlikely? They were in the same business. He could have been a big help to her career in the past twelve years. He could have given her money, advice, contacts. And she would have given him…a pretty girl on his arm? All the sex the big man could handle?

  But Rosey had a criminal record five miles long. Amanda had nothing more than a speeding ticket when she was twenty-two. He was scum who belonged in the underworld where he resided. She’d just been passing through to better things.

  Though twelve years was an awfully long time to pass.

  “Well?” Julia prodded. “You think Amanda has something going with Hines?”

  “You’re a woman. What do you think?”

  “I think if he came near me, I’d shoot him where it don’t grow back.”

  “But?” With Julia, there was usually a but.

  She shrugged, her hair shifting in soft waves. “A woman does what she has to. I’ve never been in Amanda’s place. I don’t know how she grew up, how she got to where she is today. I don’t know what she’s had to do.”

  Rick didn’t know any of that about Amanda, either. The background the bureau had done on her was cursory—name, age, address, credit check, criminal record check. It had been sufficient for their purposes.

  Now that he’d talked to her, it didn’t seem sufficient at all. He wanted to know a whole lot more.

  “You know, we’re overlooking one possibility,” Julia said, clearing everything from the bed, then turning down the covers. The sheets were pastel green and white stripes, and the pillowcases matched, with the addition of tiny roses embroidered in bright pink. “She could actually like the guy.”

  She could be a nice woman who’d become friends, nothing more, with her
sleaze of a boss. Rick would rather think not, but it beat the other possibilities.

  He pushed to his feet and went to the door. “Whatever the case, she’s leaving the business next month. You’ve got to be in place well before then.”

  Julia nodded, her look less apprehensive than it had been before she’d met Amanda. Do you think she’ll loosen up enough to actually get onstage? he’d asked Amanda.

  I don’t know, she’d said. A lot of people will do whatever it takes to get what they want.

  While Julia might not want to strip, she did want to succeed at her job. She would pull it off. For the first time since their boss had suggested it, Rick felt confident of that.

  Then he thought again of Rosey and the way he’d smiled at Amanda. What about her? What had she done—what would she do—to get what she wanted?

  Chapter 3

  W ednesday was one of Amanda’s days off. Normally tips were good enough that she worked four days a week, though on occasion she had put in five or six days—when tuition was coming due, when her car needed a new transmission, when her aunt had asked for money for a divorce. Though Amanda hadn’t seen Dana in years, she’d given her the cash to pay the lawyer and the deposits on an apartment and utilities.

  She hadn’t heard from Dana since. But that was all right. Amanda had to live with her conscience, Dana with hers.

  “You want to get something to eat?”

  Amanda looked at Julia, collapsed on the floor, one foot propped on the stripper’s pole. They’d spent the last four hours working, Julia mimicking moves before hesitantly trying a few of her own. She felt foolish, she’d admitted, but Amanda had already figured that out. Every stiff line of her body had screamed it.

  But by the end, she’d been a little more relaxed. She’d shown something more than determination—a hint that someday this might come naturally to her.