Forbidden Stranger

by Marilyn Pappano

  And if he were any other man, when it was done, it would be done. No future to keep in mind. No feelings to worry about—neither his nor hers.

  But this was Rick. He was special.

  She got to the club forty-five minutes before opening, leaving herself plenty of time for clothes and makeup and a visit to the bar while no one else was around. Even if she couldn’t think of the words right now, they would come. When she saw him, she would know what to say.

  Or—she recalled that kiss Sunday night—she would know what to do.

  Julia was already in the dressing room, wearing the prim—from the front, at least—navy dress that she’d bought on their first shopping trip. It had a high neck, a collar and buttons from top to bottom, along with short little sleeves. The kicker was the back of the dress: there wasn’t one to speak of. Maybe four inches of fabric that covered her butt and a red G-string. Because the dress didn’t allow for a bra, underneath it she wore adhesive bra cups, also in red.

  She was going to be out there closer to naked than Amanda had been in six or eight years. Oh, how the straitlaced had fallen.

  Amanda greeted everyone, then stepped behind the screen to change. She tugged on a tiny aqua bra, little more than strings with a couple triangles of fabric, then a matching thong. She usually stuck with the Brazilian thongs for the additional coverage, but tonight she went with a T-back thong, as daring as she ever got.

  Over those pieces went a matching fishnet top with three-quarter sleeves; it was just long enough to cover her bra. The fishnet shorts were tiny, only a shade bigger than the thong. With six-inch spike heels that had clear straps with a narrow aqua strip running across her foot and her hair pulled back from her face with shell-shaped combs, she was ready to take on any audience.

  Including an audience of one.

  When she came out from behind the screen, Eternity murmured. “It is the goddess of the sea.”

  Julia gave her a wide-eyed look. “Wow. I’ve taken up yoga. Tomorrow I start running. You look great.”

  “Thanks.” Amanda slid into her seat to touch up her makeup. As she dusted shimmery shadow over her lids, she noticed a photograph in Julia’s hand. “What’s that?”

  “I was changing lockers because the door on mine kept getting stuck, and I found this inside the new one. Monique and Eternity were telling me about them.” Julia held it out so Amanda could see.

  Lisa, Tasha and DinaBeth.

  “I told her they got new jobs, new lives,” Eternity said. “Just as you’re going to have a new life soon. One of these days we’ll be calling you Dr. Nelson.”

  “If you’re not ashamed to admit that you know us,” Monique added.

  “I would never be ashamed of anyone here.” Amanda switched the eyeshadow brush for the blush brush. “Well, besides Vincent.”

  There was a moment of scornful laughter, then Rica said, “Even Vincent’s mama is ashamed to admit she knows him. She should have done the world a favor and drowned him at birth.”

  Julia turned her attention back to the picture. “These girls are just babies.”

  “You grow up fast in this business.” And Rica knew. She was barely twenty-one herself. “Look how quickly it’s changed you. Five days ago you were scared spitless at the thought of going onstage and talking to the customers. Now look at you.”

  “This one may have been a good girl,” Eternity said, patting Julia’s shoulder. “But she longed to be bad. At the rate you’re going, you’ll be the most popular one here after Amanda retires.”

  Tuning them out, Amanda finished her makeup with a touch of bronzer, repositioned the combs that held her hair back from her face, then started to rise from the chair.

  She couldn’t do it. The knot in her stomach was too heavy, the breath in her lungs too thin. What if Rick said no? He’d been quick to agree that this wasn’t a good time for either of them. He hadn’t pressed the issue—hadn’t kissed her back when she’d stopped kissing him, hadn’t given even a hint that he’d like to stay when he’d taken her home. Whatever made this the wrong time for him, he might reject her. While she was quite good dealing with rejection—being a dancer, being her mother’s daughter, how could she not be?—there was no sense in going looking for it when she had to be onstage soon, upbeat and smiling.

  She would wait until the club closed. This time she could be the one waiting in the parking lot. She would invite him over for coffee, pop, great sex.

  The seven o’clock dancers went onstage and the girls trickled into the main room, Amanda with them. Several of her regulars were there, waiting their turn with her. Some of them had a bit of an ick factor, but for the most part, they were nice guys. They never tried anything inappropriate.

  If she ever got married, Amanda vowed, she would never give her husband reason to go seeking attention elsewhere. Simple companionship, someone showing interest in them—that was all most of these guys wanted.

  Her first set was at eight. She remembered to smile, to make eye contact when she could, and she kept her gaze from straying to the bar too often. Rick was usually busy when she did look; a time or two, he’d stood back against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, face in shadow. He wore a white button-down shirt tonight, the sleeves rolled up, the color made bright by his dark skin.

  If she could persuade him—seduce him—she would undo those buttons one at a time, slowly, caressing and kissing him, making him hot and eager and about to crawl out of his skin. Then she would start on his jeans—

  A voice separated from the background noise, slicing through the music. “Hey, it’s Mandy. Any of you guys remember Randy Mandy?”

  Her steps faltered and she stopped and scanned the audience before catching herself, falling back into the rhythm of the music. That knot in her stomach had tripled, making her movements sluggish. She gripped the pole with both hands for support, swayed side to side, letting her head fall back, her eyes drooping practically shut. Her spine was arched so far that she was at risk of popping out of her bra, but her covert look at the first few rows, albeit upside-down from her angle, showed no familiar faces, no one unusually interested in her.

  Maybe she’d misunderstood the shout. Maybe the emotional state she had worked herself into over Rick made her more susceptible to a bad memory from the past. She hadn’t heard that hated nickname in fifteen years. It was just a confidence issue that she thought she’d heard it tonight.

  She finished her set without incident and went into the dressing room. A couple of girls were changing for their next sets. They nodded, and she nodded back as she snagged a cheap white bath towel from the basket next to the door and blotted the sweat from her face.

  Randy Mandy was gone—had never truly existed except in the spiteful form of Robbie Calloway. She’d never understood why he’d chosen her to hurt, what she’d done to deserve what he did.

  She hadn’t deserved it. She’d been an easy target, that was all. As for why he’d chosen her…society always wanted rational explanations for people’s behavior, her psychology professor had taught, and such explanations could usually be found. But sometimes people were just mean. Not psychotic or sociopathic; not suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or cripplingly low self-esteem. They just did mean things, especially kids.

  Dropping the towel into the hamper, she pulled the fishnet top and shorts on again. Normally she went into the audience in bra and thong, but tonight she needed more, no matter how flimsy. The illusion of clothing gave her the illusion of coverage.

  After inhaling half a bottle of water and reapplying her lipstick, she drew a deep breath, then returned to the main room. Julia was onstage now with Monique and Halle, and Rick was busy at the bar, scowling fiercely. Amanda took another breath, pasted her smile on and plunged into the mass of tables and customers.

  It was the usual routine—smile, eye contact, the offer of money. She sat for fifteen minutes, listening, talking, and the knot in her stomach began to dissolve. Another few smiles and looks, and anoth
er offer.

  An auditory hallucination. She’d never had one before, but there was a first time for everything. That was all it was.

  As she was leaving her second customer, a young man suddenly appeared in front of her. He was about her age, dressed in casual but expensive clothes and grinning from ear to ear, a sparkling testament to good orthodontia. “Hi. Uh, hello. Amanda, right? I’m Shawn. No last names, right?” He had a nice, refined Georgia accent, though his voice was less than steady. “How’s this—This is how it works, right? I give you money and you come to my table?”

  He shoved a handful of bills at her, and she caught a glimpse of two fifties and at least three hundreds. It disappeared into her palm as she smiled. Bless young people with more money than sense. “That works fine. Where’s your table?”

  “Over here.” He started to take her arm, then drew back. “No touching, right? I mean, you could touch me, but I can’t touch you, right?”

  “Yes, that’s how it works. Is this your first night at a club?”

  “In a long time and, frankly, I got so drunk the other times that I don’t really remember anything about them. Here we are.”

  It was a table built for five; they numbered seven. As one appropriated a chair for her, the others scooted their chairs around until they were seated, as Monique liked to say, butt to cheek. She wiggled into her chair—no quick escape from this table—and surveyed her customers. All young men, though the one directly across from her looked ten years older, and he wasn’t having nearly as good a time. A few of the faces seemed vaguely familiar, but that was no cause for concern in this business. Along with their regulars, there were new men in the club every night of the week.

  She gave her name and each man around the table offered his. The morose man was named Tom and he was the reason for their being at Almost Heaven. He was getting married the following weekend. Bet he’d had no say in how they celebrated the end of his freedom.

  “Looks like you’ve lost a friend,” she said, nodding toward the empty seat beside her.

  “Nah. He’ll be back. In fact, here he comes.”

  She turned to look, but another customer blocked her view until the man put his hands on the backs of his own chair and the one to its right, swung through the narrow opening and dropped into the seat. He wore a ready grin, along with a haze of too much alcohol in his blue eyes and the fragrance of eau de booze.

  “Hey, Mandy. Long time no see. Guys, this is the one, the only, Randy Mandy.”

  Her breath froze in her lungs. Robbie Calloway, in the detested but living flesh. In her club. Talking to her. With the exception of her long-ago dream that she’d done her whole stripper routine on the stage at the Copper Lake Baptist Church, Robbie invading her turf like this was the worst thing she could imagine.

  “What’s the matter, Randy Mandy? Cat got your tongue? We used to figure that family of yours ate cats, you know, being that you were so poor.” He looked around the table for encouragement and got it from most of the others. Tom just looked as if his evening couldn’t get much worse.

  Join the club.

  Robbie grabbed her arm, and while she tensed, she didn’t pull it away. Shawn intervened for her. “Hey, Robbie, you can’t touch her. It’s against the rules.”

  “Screw the rules. My brother works here and his rules are that no one messes with his little brother.”

  Did Rick know Robbie was here? Was he watching from the bar at that very moment? Had Robbie already told him everything he knew about Amanda? Except the truth. Robbie’d never told anyone the truth.

  She twisted in her chair, trying to get a clear view of the bar. Vincent was working at the nearest end. She couldn’t see the other end.

  It was all right. Chad was just around the corner at the front door. She had regular customers who felt a little proprietary toward her, some a little paternal, scattered through the crowd. The other girls were all around, and she had no doubt every one of them would come to her aid if she screamed.

  The panic wasn’t for her safety now. It was all that long-ago pain. That humiliation. She’d had little enough pride when she was fifteen in Copper Lake; Robbie had stolen every bit of it for his own amusement, nothing more.

  Straightening her spine, she looked at each man in turn except Robbie. “You guys could use better taste in choosing your drinking partners.”

  “Oh, yeah, like people are going to take advice from you. Town whore of Copper Lake. She slept with half the guys in our class.”

  She leaned close to him. “I didn’t sleep with any of them, including you. Especially you. You lied, because everyone else was getting laid that summer except you. You were so afraid of being left behind, so afraid of your little secret getting out.”

  His eyes darkened, filling with rage, and he stood. His chair fell back to the floor and he yanked her from her chair, then kicked it back, too. His fingers were tight around her upper arms, grinding the pattern of the fishnet against her skin. “You were so damn easy. So desperate for attention, living in that dump with your father the cripple and your mother, who scrubbed toilets for my mother. A lying little bitch whore—that’s all you were. You thought I really wanted to be friends with you. Like a Calloway would want to be friends with a white-trash Nelson. You were stupid. You were—”

  Abruptly a big, tanned hand circled the back of Robbie’s neck, squeezing until white spots appeared. “Get your hands off her now,” Rick said, his voice little more than a whisper.

  Robbie’s slimy smile faltered. “Okay, sure. I imagine she costs a whole lot more today than a few lunches and a couple compliments.” He let go and raised both hands in the air. “She wants more money, I got it.”

  “Shut up.” Rick’s words were sharp, icy. “Go on, Amanda. Go back to the dressing room.”

  Before she could move, Robbie made a move toward her. “If she’s not staying, we want our money back.”

  Rick’s face took on a crimson tinge, his breathing slow and shallow. His fingers tightened around Robbie’s neck enough to make him wince. “That’s up to her.”

  She still clenched it in her palm. From the instant she’d recognized Robbie, she hadn’t intended to keep it. Give it to the other girls, buy drinks for everyone on the house, but no way she was taking Robbie Calloway’s money home with her.

  Her fingers trembling, she opened them, and the bills fell from her sticky palm to the tabletop. Before Robbie could reach for them, Rick gathered them up and handed them to the disapproving Tom. “I’m sure the church can put that to better use than these guys will. Consider it yours if you get them out of here before I throw them out.”

  Amanda wriggled between the crowded chairs and was weaving her way toward the stage door when Robbie called, “I’ll see you again, Randy Mandy. You can bet on that.”

  What followed was a familiar sound to anyone who’d spent twelve years in clubs: a fist smacking into a jaw, a grunt, chairs scraping, customers scattering, a table breaking. She didn’t look over her shoulder, but kept walking, barely able to keep her balance in her six-inch stilettos.

  Footsteps sounded behind her once she’d reached the hall—not the solid thud of Rick’s boots, but the click of heels along with the softer pad of platforms. Julia and Eternity followed her into the dressing room, where Eternity closed the door for the first time in Amanda’s memory. “You okay, sweetie?”

  Amanda looked at the red finger marks on both arms, reflected in the mirror, then grabbed a baby wipe from the carton on the counter. “I’m fine,” she said, scrubbing the marks. She threw that wipe away, then used another to remove her makeup. “But I’m done for the night.”

  “Why didn’t you knee him in the balls?” Julia asked.

  Amanda smiled faintly at the idea. “I couldn’t think.”

  “Probably couldn’t have found ’em anyway,” Eternity said scornfully. “Has to get drunk and surround himself with friends to find the courage to pick on one woman half his size. He ain’t no man.”

 
Julia slid her arm around Amanda’s shoulders as she finished removing her makeup. “You probably shouldn’t go home alone. Wait here until I clear it with Harry and I’ll go with you, okay?”

  Amanda patted Julia’s hands. “I’ll be all right. Really. Friday-night money’s too good to skip out on. I’ll curl up with Dancer and we’ll enjoy some television.”

  She pulled a dress from her locker, a simple sheath that ran from her neck to the top of her kneecaps. Its stretchy fabric allowed her to pull it on over her head, and its white shade went well with the sleeves of the aqua fishnet top she still wore. “Tell Harry I’m sorry and I’ll be back tomorrow.”

  “We’ll walk you to the door,” Eternity said and Julia nodded.

  They did, standing together on the stoop while she crossed the parking lot to her car. They stayed until she was inside, doors locked, and waved when she drove past. Her own phony smile lasted about halfway home, when she remembered to let it go.

  In her driveway, realizing she still wore the six-inch heels, she took them off, then padded barefoot across the cool grass to the warmer steps. She unlocked the door and let Dancer out, watching her for a moment, before calling her back in.

  It wasn’t even nine o’clock. The last time she’d been home from work this early was when she’d caught the flu and had thrown up onstage. For days, everyone kept asking if she was all right; customers who’d usually taken the stage-side seats moved back a row for weeks.

  Ignoring the chaise, she curled into the lone chair in the room. It was hardly comfortable for one, and didn’t cut it when Dancer joined her. Still, she needed the contact with the dog. It made her feel better.

  By now Rick had talked with Robbie. He knew her old nickname, knew she’d once thought a Calloway cared for her. He’d heard Robbie’s claim that she’d slept with him and everyone else and he probably wouldn’t even ask if it was true.

  She’d lost her virginity at nineteen. She’d experienced the pain, the bleeding, everything associated with the first time.