Forbidden Stranger Read online

  “Sure,” Amanda agreed. She’d had a salad for lunch before Julia had arrived, but that seemed a long time ago.

  “I’m supposed to meet Rick at that Mexican place down the block from the club at five-thirty. Is that okay?”

  No, Amanda wanted to say. She’d agreed to a meal with Julia. It wasn’t fair to throw in Rick after the fact. She didn’t want to sit down at a table with him. Didn’t want to share a meal. Didn’t want to feel that intense gaze on her.

  Didn’t want to be reminded that he had a thing with Julia.

  “Yeah, sure,” Amanda said with an awkward smile. “That’ll give me time to shower.”

  Julia sniffed, then her nose wrinkled. “Yeah. Me, too. I’ll see you there.”

  Padding along quietly, Dancer followed them to the door, then trotted into the yard to take care of business. The dog sniffed the flowers, stopped to watch a squirrel in the neighbor’s yard, then stopped again to watch Julia drive away.

  “Not in any hurry, are you, puppy?” Neither was Amanda. Wasn’t it enough that she saw Rick at the club?

  But Dancer finally trotted back onto the porch. Amanda opened the screen door for her, then headed for the bathroom herself.

  Ninety minutes later, she was showered and shampooed, smelling of exotic spices and looking like any thirty-year-old woman in faded jeans and a lace-edged T-shirt. Her still-damp curls were piled on her head none too tidily and her makeup was her toned-down everyday version. She looked fine for dinner with a friend.

  Better than fine for dinner with that friend’s boyfriend.

  The restaurant was three doors down from Almost Heaven, a mock-adobe hacienda with a red-tile roof and lush vines flowering everywhere. Amanda paused for a moment inside the door to let her eyes adjust to the dimmer light, then the hostess pointed out the corner where Rick waited. Alone.

  The table was a half-round booth, barely big enough for three, and he sat with his back to the wall. He wore a white shirt, unbuttoned at the neck, sleeves rolled halfway up his forearms. His fingers were clasped around a practically full glass of beer, his head was tilted back and his eyes appeared to be closed.

  “He’s a good-looking man,” the hostess murmured. “Do you suppose he has a father who’s available?”

  Amanda shrugged. Gerald Calloway had been dead for as long as she could remember, but according to gossip, before his death he’d always been available.

  She wove her way between tables and other early diners to the booth. About halfway there, she realized that his eyes had only appeared to be closed. Though he showed no signs of awareness, she felt the instant his gaze locked in on her.

  When she slid onto the seat across from him, he raised his head and fully opened his eyes. “Hey.”

  “Hey.” She ordered iced tea from the waiter who’d followed her, then gestured to the empty margarita glass beside him. “Where’s Julia?”

  “In the bathroom. The margarita didn’t sit well on an empty stomach. She was too nervous to eat lunch before going to your house.”

  Amanda nodded. “She did fine today.”

  “Good.”

  That was the extent of their conversation until Julia returned from the ladies’ room. She looked paler than usual and the smile she gave them both was sickly. Instead of waiting for Rick to stand up and let her slide into the middle, she bumped against him, pushing him over. He looked as if he wanted to protest—Amanda certainly wanted to—but moved, giving her his seat.

  “Oh, man,” Julia said, patting her face with her napkin. “No booze ever again. I see why you don’t drink.”

  Since Rick was sipping his beer at that moment, Amanda assumed the comment was directed to her. “I work too hard to stay in shape. If I’m going to splurge, it’s going to be on chocolate and ice cream.”

  Rick gave her a long look—at least, the part of her he could see. “You don’t look like you ever splurge.” His voice was normal, his comment a simple statement. But it was the look that sent a tiny shiver down her spine, that raised her temperature a degree.

  The look, and the fact that his girlfriend was sitting right next to him, oblivious.

  Amanda turned her attention to the menu, though she always ordered the same thing. Better than looking at Rick, though, and feeling that little sexual tingle, or looking at Julia and feeling guilty.

  After placing their orders with the waiter, Amanda and Julia chatted about pretty much nothing until the food came. Halfway through the meal, Julia put her fork down, pushed her plate away and fixed her gaze on Amanda. “Would it be okay if I come by the club some night and just watch?”

  The memory of Rick “watching” the night before streaked through Amanda, leaving heat and edginess behind. It made her throat tighten, made her hand tremble when she picked up her glass for a sip. “That’s what we’re there for,” she replied with a smile she couldn’t hold for more than a moment.

  “I think maybe I could learn something. Could I meet some of the other dancers, too?”

  “Sure. Anytime you want.” Preferably on Rick’s night off, though he’d be likely to accompany her. He’d said he wanted to keep an eye on her, hadn’t he?

  Amanda’s father was the first and last man to care about keeping her safe. He’d lost the physical ability to protect her when she was six, but emotionally, he’d been there for her until the day he died. She missed that. Missed having someone who would worry if she didn’t come home. Missed having someone to share things with.

  She missed having a man in her life.

  “Are you friends with all of them?” Julia asked, then smiled deprecatingly. “I know I’m probably totally naive, but I imagine it’s like some kind of sisterhood. You know, exotic dancers united against the rest of the world.”

  Amanda glanced at Rick, leaned back, one arm resting on the seat cushion at Julia’s back, apparently content to listen to the conversation without contributing, then she shrugged. “I’m friendly with all of them, but not necessarily friends. It’s like any group of women who work together. Some are nice. Some aren’t. Some are competitive. Some are jealous. The younger girls are looking for friends or mentors—or mothers,” she added drily, thinking of the eighteen-and nineteen-year-old kids she’d helped along. Even when she was nineteen, she’d felt years older.

  “How old do you have to be to dance?”

  “Eighteen most places.”

  “How old were you?”

  She finished the last of her tea and folded her hands in her lap. “Eighteen.”

  Julia shook her head. “Wow. I was finishing high school and starting college then. And you—” she elbowed Rick “—were probably raising hell back home at eighteen and making everyone grateful you were leaving for college, too.”

  “Hey, there were plenty of people who were sorry to see me go,” he protested.

  “Let me guess. All of them female and under the age of twenty.”

  “Twenty-two.” His gaze narrowed, as if he were thinking hard, then relaxed again. “No, twenty-four.”

  Julia laughed. Mention of girls in his past didn’t seem to faze her at all. She must trust him a lot, Amanda thought, and envied her that. Most of the men in her past had been trustworthy only about as far as she could have thrown them.

  “How did you get into dancing?” Julia asked, including Amanda in the conversation again.

  “I had a friend who danced. She badgered me into auditioning and…” She shrugged as if to say, Here I am. And it was basically true. Just the shortened version. She had intended the dancing to be a temporary thing, just something that was fun and would give her a little extra cash to make life easy for once. Financially, life had gotten easier, practically from the first day. Emotionally, it had taken a nosedive. Her mother and her aunt had both objected strenuously—first to the dancing, then to her. They’d wheedled, coaxed, demanded, judged and damned, and her relationship with them had never recovered.

  The waiter began clearing dishes from the table. “Would you like some d
essert? Fried ice cream, flan, sopaipillas?”

  “Sopaipillas,” Rick said. “With three spoons.”

  Amanda’s mouth watered, though she was experienced at resisting temptation. She took a sidelong look at Rick and reminded herself: very experienced.

  “Great,” Julia said grumpily. “And I’m supposed to be watching my weight.”

  “Your weight’s fine,” Rick said. His tone was absentminded and he didn’t make any sweet gestures, like squeezing her hand or giving her that amazingly sexy smile. More curious to Amanda, Julia didn’t seem to notice either the tone or the lack of gestures.

  The woman wanted to strip because she wanted to know how it felt to have men look at her and think she was sexy. She’d been stuffy all her life and wanted to be different, just for a time. She had a drop-dead gorgeous boyfriend whom other women thought was incredibly sexy, but she didn’t seem the least bit insecure.

  Interesting relationship.

  When the waiter returned with the sopaipillas, he set the platter in the center of the table and left three napkin-wrapped spoons. The rectangles of fried dough were drizzled with cinnamon, chocolate and honey, and separated by mounds of soft whipped cream. Rick dug in and so did Julia, after murmuring, “I’m sure I’ll regret this….”

  But after the first bite, she stiffened and her skin took on a pallid cast. “Oh,” she said, injecting a wealth of meaning into the single syllable. “I don’t—”

  She slid to her feet, one hand pressed to her stomach, and held out her other hand. “Give me my purse, will you? I’m going home before—” A burp interrupted her. Flushing, she grabbed the purse Rick held out and bolted for the door.

  “Shouldn’t you go with her?” Amanda asked.

  There wasn’t a shred of concern in Rick’s expression. “Do you want someone around when you puke up your guts?” He slid the platter closer to her. “It’s got chocolate, and whipped cream is close enough to ice cream.”

  “But—”

  “Julia will be fine. It’ll just make her think twice about drinking on an empty stomach. Or eating spicy food when she’s just thrown up. Or rich food.”

  “I’ll just check—”

  He extended his hand, and Amanda stopped both her words and her movement to stand. “Let her go. She’s embarrassed enough. She’ll go home, crawl into bed and sleep it off.”

  Crawl into his bed. Sleep it off with him—sooner or later—at her side.

  Warmth spread through Amanda. Lust? Envy? Guilt? Since none was better than the other, she preferred not knowing and sank back onto the bench.

  “So…” Rick nudged the third spoon closer to her. “Are you and Mr. Hines friends or just friendly?”

  She watched as he cut off a chunk of dough, drenching it with sweetness, then lifted the spoon to his mouth. Watched as his lips closed over the gooey good stuff, as his jaw worked when he chewed, and she almost sighed. Not because it was Rick. Not because he made eating sexy. Just because the dessert looked so damned tempting.

  Yeah, sure. It was the dessert that tempted her.

  Knowing she shouldn’t, she picked up the napkin and unwrapped the spoon. She took her time cutting off a small corner of one pastry, took even more time drenching it in the sauces, then slid it into her mouth. This time she did sigh.

  He laughed. “That sounded almost obscene. It’s good, isn’t it?”

  She nodded, still savoring the flavors.

  “It’s okay to indulge once in a while. Go ahead.” He edged the plate closer. “Finish it off.”

  The plate was near enough now that she could smell the warm fragrance of the cinnamon, the distinct sweetness of the honey, the dark richness of the chocolate. She frowned at him. “Are you trying to tempt me?” Almost instantly her cheeks heated. Wrong words, wrong person to say them, definitely wrong person to say them to.

  He scooped up a spoonful of the sauces and held it in midair. “Can I tempt you?”

  No, no, no. Three strikes. He’s out, remember?

  She baldly returned to the earlier subject. “Why are you so interested in Rosey?”

  He shrugged. “He’s the boss, but I really don’t know much about him.”

  “He sees that you’re paid on time. What more do you need to know?”

  Another shrug, another sexy ripple. “I guess I’m just a curious guy.”

  “Haven’t you heard that curiosity killed the cat?”

  Outwardly, nothing changed. He still sat, loose-limbed and relaxed. He still swirled his spoon in the sauce. His gaze was still lazy, even disinterested. But something sharpened the air around him. Something about him seemed very interested. “Is that a warning?”

  Amanda blinked. Warnings were for vulnerable people, people who might find themselves at a disadvantage in a dangerous situation. She couldn’t begin to imagine Rick being vulnerable, no matter what. “No. It’s an old saying. That’s all.”

  “I’ve heard that not all of his business interests are legal.”

  Indulgence over, she put down her spoon, then folded her arms across her middle. “Almost Heaven is, and that’s the only one I care about.” Then, unable to resist, she asked, “Are you looking to get cut in on the ones that aren’t?”

  He gave a good impression of actually considering it before he grinned. “Nah. It would break my mama’s heart.”

  “You have a mother?” she scoffed even as a picture of Sara Calloway came to mind—pretty, blond, always the image of the genteel Southern lady. Amanda’s mother had waited on Sara at the restaurant, at the shop, and had been unrelentingly jealous of her. Life always goes her way, Brenda had fumed more than once. She’s got everything.

  And Brenda had had nothing but a husband who needed twenty-four-hour care and a daughter who was last on her list of priorities. She blamed the Calloways for David’s accident, for the two and sometimes three jobs she worked, for the drudgery of everyday life and the lack of a future.

  Fifteen years had passed since David’s death, fifteen years since Amanda and her mother had moved to Atlanta, and not a lot had changed. Brenda now worked one job; she didn’t have an invalid husband to care for or a daughter to neglect. But life still wasn’t what she wanted.

  “My mother’s a very nice woman,” Rick said, pulling her out of her thoughts. “You’d like her.”

  “I like mothers fine, but they usually have a problem with me.”

  “Mom wouldn’t.”

  Maybe not. Unlike the other Calloway women, Sara had always been friendly to the working class in Copper Lake. She hadn’t treated them like servants too stupid and common to associate with. But being nice to people who worked in her family business and contributed to her family fortune was one thing. Being nice to a stripper who was attracted to her eldest son was another entirely.

  “Does she know you tend bar in a strip club?”

  “She knows I tend bar.” Both on the job and off, Rick’s policy was to stick to the truth as much as possible. The fewer lies he told, the fewer chances he would get caught in them. So Sara knew he was working in a bar, but she also knew it was part of his job. She didn’t like it when he was undercover. It gave him reason, she claimed, to forget all those lessons she’d taught him and his brothers about right and wrong.

  He hadn’t forgotten anything, and in her heart Sara knew it. It was just her way of covering how much she worried about him.

  “What about your mom?” he asked. “Does she know you dance in a strip club?”

  “She does. And she doesn’t approve. We don’t speak often—Christmas. Her birthday. Mother’s Day.”

  She didn’t mention her own birthday. So Mom didn’t approve of her daughter’s job, but Amanda made an effort anyway. No matter what he or his brothers did for a living, Sara would never shut them out of her life.

  “Does she live around here?”

  Amanda nodded. “Does yours?”

  “No. She still lives in the town where I grew up—the town where she grew up. A little place no one’s ev
er heard of.”

  Amanda’s smile was soft. Young. “The same place half the people in Atlanta are from, including me. I’ll never go back.”

  Rick shrugged. He didn’t have any bad memories of Copper Lake, other than his father, but he couldn’t see himself ever moving home again. Maybe if he got married and had kids and wanted someplace small and safe for them to grow up…

  Not that he’d ever been tempted by the idea of marriage or kids.

  “My brothers have stayed there. Russ is in construction and Robbie’s a lawyer.”

  Something flickered across her face, there and gone so fast he couldn’t identify it. Surprise that he really did have a family? Horror that there were two more just like him out there? He could have reassured her. Russ was quiet, dependable and responsible, and Robbie was…well, none of those things. In fact, in spite of being a lawyer, he was the least respectable of the bunch.

  “I have no brothers,” Amanda volunteered. “No sisters, either.”

  “Just the sisterhood of strippers,” he said with a grin.

  Her smile was faint, barely formed. “I’ve been close to some. I tend to attract the new girls, the really young ones who need advice. Some of them are so young. They’re just not prepared for life in the real world.”

  “You said dancers have to be eighteen in most places.”

  “But eighteen can be much younger for some kids than it is for others.”

  He knew that was true. Hell, Robbie was thirty, same as Amanda, but outside of work, he acted about ten years younger. Maturity wasn’t one of his strengths.

  He shifted on the bench, turning to face her more, aiming for a totally casual attitude. “I met a girl at the Marietta club named Tasha. She looked about fifteen—acted that young, too. Do you know her?”

  “Blond hair, big brown eyes?”

  He nodded.

  “That’s Tasha Wiley. She danced at Almost Heaven for a while. And she was nineteen.”

  “Where did she go?”

  Amanda shrugged. “She said she got a better offer. That usually means dancing at someone else’s club, finding a man with plenty of money that he wants to spend on you or maybe even finding a guy who’s willing to overlook your past and marry you.” She gazed down for a moment, then, her tone subdued, went on. “It can also mean taking a job filming adult movies or working the streets. Rosey doesn’t tolerate his dancers using drugs. It’s not good for business. The girls who start using leave to work elsewhere.”