Forbidden Stranger

She’d expected someone pretty, sexy, maybe even edgy. Someone sure of herself personally, professionally, sexually. Someone other guys would covet, who made other women feel insecure.

Not someone like Julia Dautrieve. Oh, she was attractive in a plain sort of way. She needed a more flattering hairstyle and the unrelenting black she wore made her porcelain complexion look pasty and washed out. The below-the-knee dress length was dowdy, and those shoes… Amanda’s only thought on the shoes was burn them.

But she’d caught Rick’s eye.

She was standing in the living room doorway, her gaze returning repeatedly to the stripper pole in the dining room, looking as if she’d like nothing more than to run in those sturdy, plain shoes back to her sturdy, plain car and her sturdy, plain world. But she hadn’t fled yet, so Amanda chose to act as if she wouldn’t.

“Would you like a glass of tea before we start?”

“I’d rather have scotch,” Julia muttered.

“Sorry. I don’t drink.”

Julia smiled unsteadily. “Tea is fine.”

“We can sit on the porch if you’d like. I think it’s cool enough to be comfortable.”

With a nod, Julia went outside. Nosing the screen door open, Dancer followed her while Amanda went to the kitchen for the tea. She carried the two glasses outside a moment later, finding Julia in one of the wicker chairs, Dancer in another. She handed one glass of tea to the woman, then took the third chair.

“Rick says you’re interested in making a career change. What do you do now?”

“I’m a bookkeeper.” Julia’s nose wrinkled. “Big switch, huh?”

“Not really.” Amanda was a stripper about to become a college-level English instructor. That was a big change. “Have you ever danced?”

“I took ballet when I was a kid.”

“Really.” Amanda never would have guessed it, except that she did have perfect posture. But no grace, no elegance, no comfort with her body.

Her noncommittal response didn’t fool Julia. “I know. You’d never know it to look at me, would you?” She ran one fingernail along the rounded neckline of her dress as if it choked. “I’m a little uptight.”

Amanda smiled gently. “I think when it comes to keeping books, being uptight is probably a good thing.”

“Probably, but it doesn’t do much for a woman.”

Didn’t do much for Rick? Was that what she meant?

Gazing at the periwinkles that bordered the porch, Amanda asked, “What made you decide to try this?” If she was forcing herself to act so totally out of character for anyone besides herself, it wasn’t going to work. Like losing weight or getting in shape, stripping was something a woman had to want for herself.

“Oh, I don’t know. I think every woman must wonder what it would be like.” Julia shrugged uncomfortably. “Wearing sexy clothes, doing sexy dances, having men look at you, want you, pay to be with you. Men have probably always looked at you like that, but not me. I just want to know how it feels.”

How it felt was unremarkable. Just as balancing spreadsheets was part of Julia’s day, it was part of the job.

Oh, not in the beginning. There had been a real sense of power in those early days. Men who had never laid eyes on her before were willing to pay money just to have her sit at their tables and talk to them—willing to pay a lot of money for private dances. They hadn’t known or cared that she’d grown up on the wrong side of town, that she’d gone through a wild-child phase in high school, that the boys back home had called her Randy Mandy. All they’d cared about was those few minutes when her attention was all theirs.

“But you have a boyfriend that most of the girls at the club would give a month’s worth of tips to have for just one night,” Amanda pointed out.

For a moment, Julia looked puzzled, then she gave a shake of her head as if clearing it. “You mean Rick. Yeah, he’s a nice guy.”

Funny. “Nice” didn’t come to mind first, second or even third when Amanda thought of Rick—or any other Calloway, for that matter. Handsome, sexy, privileged, snobbish, bastard—at least, when it came to Robbie.

“Did he ask you to do this?”

Pink tinged Julia’s cheeks. No doubt, she hated to blush, but there were men at the club who would pay extra just to see it. Innocence fascinated them, especially when they saw so little of it onstage. “No,” she denied unconvincingly. “I want to give it a shot. See if it will help me loosen up.” She took a deep breath, then her pretty brown gaze met Amanda’s. “I’ve been rigid and stuffy all my life. Just once I’d like to be something else.”

Amanda understood wanting to be something else. She’d felt the yearning, the need, the dissatisfaction. “All right. Let’s go inside and start turning you into something else.”

Julia was slow to rise from the chair. As she did, Dancer jumped to the floor, too, trotted over and walked through the open screen door, stopped at the water dish, then curled onto the one-armed chaise that served as Amanda’s sofa.

“I like your house,” Julia said as she followed Amanda down the hall and into the bedroom.

“Thank you. I did it—am doing it—myself.” She pointed to the chair in front of her dressing table, then slapped down a packet of makeup remover towelettes. “Take off your makeup.”

The dressing table was really an old rolltop desk, with a lighted makeup mirror in the center and everything a woman needed to make herself look good tucked into the drawers and cubbies. Amanda plugged in the curling iron, used in the occasional futile attempt to tame her own curls, then began removing the pins that held Julia’s hair in its unforgiving chignon.

“You realize your age will work against you,” she commented as she combed out the fine silken strands. “Twenty-nine, thirty—that’s pretty much the cutoff for dancers. It’s a hard job.”

“I know. I’m not giving up my day job. I’d just like to do it for a while.”

“And Rick’s okay with that.”

“Sure. Why wouldn’t he be? Your boyfriends don’t mind, do they?”

Amanda combed out a section of silky black hair, then rolled it onto the curling iron. “They usually didn’t mind in the beginning. Sooner or later, though, they got jealous.” Or, worse, they got turned on—not by her, her dancing, her body, but by the fact that other men were turned on by her. The ick factor in that was too extreme to overcome.

But she’d thought Rick… Hell, she didn’t know Rick. And he was Robbie’s brother, after all. His ick factor could well be much higher than she wanted to know.

Face stripped clean of makeup, Julia watched silently as Amanda curled her hair. Finally, almost timidly, she said, “I thought you’d teach me something today.”

“You want things to be different. We’re starting with making you look different. Your hair is too stuffy and your makeup’s too subtle.” Amanda smiled a bit wistfully. “There’s nothing subtle about this business.”

Leaving the curled hair to cool, she turned her attention to makeup. Her skin tone was a few shades darker than Julia’s, but with some mixing of foundations, she matched it pretty closely. Judging by the faint smears on the towelette, Julia’s normal routine included foundation, blush and a single shade of eye shadow, all applied with a very light touch. Her eyes popped when she got a look at the products Amanda lined up, everything from corrector to eyeliner to glimmery powder.

“A lot of new dancers take a drink or two before they go onstage,” she remarked as she worked. “It becomes a habit way too easily, so don’t even start. And take the time to find some good body makeup. If you do much floor or pole work, you’ll need it to cover the bruises. Buy your shoes now and get used to wearing them. You’re about my height, so four-inch heels are the minimum. Try the six-inch, and when you can handle them, consider the eight-inch. They make your legs and your butt look better and that will get you better tips.” “Eight-inch heels?” Julia squeaked. “I wear flats.”

“Not to dance. You’ll have to invest in some clothes, too—thongs, bras, skirts, booty shorts. There’s a little shop here in town—” Amanda broke off when a giggle escaped Julia.

“Booty shorts?” she echoed.

“Micro shorts, hipsters. Just like you CPA types, we have our own lingo. For your first time out, I’d recommend a Brazilian thong. It gives more coverage in back than a regular thong. And you know you have to have a bikini wax.”

“That’s one thing that’s not new,” Julia said with a grimace.

Maybe she wasn’t as ill-suited to this adventure as she seemed. Once Amanda retired, she would give up bikinis forever, because she was damn sure giving up bikini waxes. She was getting rid of all her dance clothes and her arch-killing shoes—well, there was one pair of sweet crystal-encrusted four-and-a-half-inch stilettos that made her legs to die for. And maybe she’d keep the Tinkerbell skirt with its fluttery hem and the iridescent bra that matched. After all, she was giving up stripping, not looking sexy from time to time.

She dusted a mocha-hued eyeshadow over Julia’s lids before picking up the gel eyeliner and a small brush. “If you want to dance professionally for any length of time, you’ll have to get in better shape. Jogging is great for stamina, and weight-training to define the muscles. Yoga, too. It gives you a longer, leaner look. And watch your diet. Low carbs, low fat, low calorie. The lower your body fat, the bigger your tips.”

“Jeez, this sounds like training for some sort of athletic competition.”

“It is,” Amanda agreed. More than most people realized. But dancers didn’t get the kind of respect athletes did—at least, not exotic dancers. To too many people, strippers were one step, if even that, above prostitutes. She’d never had sex for money, but her aunt Dana had still called her a whore when she’d thrown Amanda out of her house twelve years ago. Her mother had still talked about the shame she’d felt when Amanda had decided to make her temporary dance job permanent.

Her hand trembled, smearing the black-brown mascara. She used a swab to clean away the streak, then concentrated on what she was doing. Those old hurts would never be gone. She could haul them out to reexamine tomorrow or next month. At the moment, though, she had a job to do.

Taking money from Rick Calloway to make his girlfriend sexier for him.

Just like her father and her mother before her, she was working for a Calloway. But this was different. Her parents had worked for the Calloways because they’d owned damn near everything in Copper Lake. They’d had no choice. In this venture, all the choices were Amanda’s. Her livelihood wasn’t at stake. All she had to say was no, and their association would end.

When she finished with the makeup, she combed out Julia’s curls before letting her check the results in the mirror. Julia’s brown eyes widened as she turned her head from side to side. “Oh, my gosh. I look…”

Her black hair shimmered in waves that softened her face, and the makeup played up her eyes and the great cheekbones beneath them. She looked prettier, more approachable, sexier.

“Wow. This is worth whatever Rick’s paying you. I could stop right now—” Abruptly, she bit her lip, smudging the lip liner/lipstick/lip gloss Amanda had just applied. After a moment, she smiled and went on with less enthusiasm. “I’m just kidding. Of course I want to learn to dance. I really do.”

Who was she trying to convince? Amanda?

Or herself?

Chapter 2

Rick stood behind the bar, damp cloth in hand, toothpick between his teeth. He glanced at his watch. It was eight-thirty. Amanda had finished her first set fifteen minutes ago and was now seated at a stage-side table with some of her regulars. Four men, early fifties to sixties, varying shades of gray except for one bald guy, always dressed in suits and ties. They looked just like the businessmen that made up about half the clientele, but he knew from the records checks that their business was education. Baldy was the president of a small liberal arts college nearby, and the other three were deans. Tuesday nights were their regular budget committee meetings, or so they told their wives.

Rick hadn’t talked to Amanda since he’d left her house that morning, but he’d spoken to Julia on the phone. She’d been pretty closed-mouthed about her first lesson, saying nothing besides it had gone well. Now she was in the process of moving into his apartment, halfway between Amanda’s house and the club. She didn’t like the idea, even though she would have her own room, but she damn sure didn’t want to give out her real address when she came to work here. If she came to work here.

Amanda’s laughter separated from the background noise, drawing his attention her way. She was standing now, one hand on the back of baldy’s chair. Tonight the thong and bra were black-and-gold tiger stripes. Points of see-through black fabric fluttered over her middle and a length of shiny gold coiled around her upper left arm. The whole outfit was sexy, but just that bracelet wrapped around her bicep was enough to turn a man on.

She patted baldy on the shoulder, then headed toward the bar. Rick watched her, idly noting that the temperature seemed to be rising. Great for the girls in their skimpy costumes. In jeans and a T-shirt, he was liable to break out in a sweat.

Amanda stopped at the end of the bar. “Three vodka Collins, one cosmopolitan and a bottled water.”

He got the water first, sliding it across the bar to her. It was tempting to stand there and watch her drink it—twist off the plastic cap, lift the bottle to her mouth, take a drink so long and so cold that it raised goose bumps on her skin. Instead, he turned his attention to the drinks. His only qualification for this job when he’d started was that he’d drunk his share of liquor over the years. A crash course in bartending, along with a tattered copy of The Moron’s Guide to Mixology tucked under the bar, had gotten him through.

“Those men are old enough to be your grandfather,” he remarked as he poured vodka into all four glasses.

“Father, actually. I’m not that young.”

She looked way too young to be working in a place like this.

“Aren’t you ever tempted to tell them to go home to their wives?”

She held the water bottle to her throat, close enough to feel the chill but not to touch her makeup. She had the makeup application down to an art—enough to look good under the stage lights, but not so much that it looked overdone offstage.

“Their wives don’t miss them. The men have their budget committee meetings and the women have their garden club.”

“Do they ever try to buy more than drinks?” None of his business, Rick silently acknowledged. Some dancers worked the prostitution angle; plenty didn’t. When the case was over, he would put everything he’d found out in his report and if anyone on the job chose to pursue it, fine.

“Not these guys. Coming here is a little wild and risqué for them. Their lives are pretty tame.”

Rick finished off the Collinses with club soda, then added triple sec, cranberry and lime juice to the cosmo. Not these guys, she’d said, which implied that others did. He wanted to ask which ones and whether they’d been successful. “How did it go with Julia?”

“Fine. We went shopping.”

“I’m paying you to shop?”

The remark made her uneasy. Her gaze shifted away and it took a moment for her smile to form. “Great job, isn’t it?” Then she shrugged, her tiger stripes rippling. “You can’t dance without the right clothes and shoes.”

He doubted most men would agree with her. The flashy colors and see-through fabrics were nice, but they weren’t necessary. Every man he knew would be just as turned on by a woman wearing a white cotton bra and panties. In fact, Amanda, with her creamy golden skin, would look incredible in her underwear. There was something more intimate about imagining her in the lingerie she wore for herself, not for tips.

Wishing Harry would turn the AC to frigid, Rick set the last drink on her tray. “We never settled on an amount. How about one night’s house fee per lesson?”

Her eyes widened slightly. One night on the stage cost each dancer seventy-five dollars. Anything over that, they got to pocket. Some girls actually went in the hole on slow nights, but weekends always made up for it.

“All right,” she agreed. She picked up the tray and started away, then turned back. “You should have asked first. I would have settled for twenty-five, thirty bucks.” She gracefully strolled away, tray balanced on one delicate hand.

When she was out of earshot, he murmured, “You would have sold yourself cheap, darlin’.”

She was a beautiful woman. Smart. Capable. She could do anything she wanted, yet for twelve years she’d settled for this. Why?

He’d learned early in his career that asking why people did the things they did was an exercise in futility. Why did a seventeen-year-old honor student decide the profit margin versus risk in selling drugs made it a good choice? Why did a gangbanger open fire on a crowd of strangers—kids, no less—as he drove down the street?

For the most part, Rick had lost interest in the why. His focus these days was on delivering the consequences to people who broke the law.

But he couldn’t help but wonder about Amanda’s why. Why was she a stripper? Why hadn’t she pursued a more respectable career? Why wasn’t she married and raising kids? Why was she spending her nights in a place like this with people like him?

The club had about two customers too many to rank as a slow night. Rick made drinks whose recipes he could now recite in his sleep, watched the customers and talked for a minute here or there with the dancers. It was casual conversation—drink orders, a little flirting. You have any plans when you get off? Want to join me for dessert? Unless he made an effort to see the girls outside the club—too risky—he had no real chance to get information from them. It was tough to subtly say, “A margarita on the rocks, a whiskey sour and, say, do you remember a girl named Lisa who used to work here?”

That was why Julia was coming onboard. Dancers talked to each other. Hopefully, they would talk to her about Lisa Howard, Tasha Wiley and DinaBeth Jones.

Three dancers, all having appeared on the main stage at Almost Heaven, all disappeared over a three-month period pretty much without a trace until parts from Tasha’s and DinaBeth’s cars had turned up in a chop shop on the northern side of Atlanta. The chop shop happened to belong to Roosevelt Hines, who also owned Almost Heaven and its four sister clubs.

Rosey, he called himself, and no one laughed. He stood six-six, weighed three hundred pounds and didn’t give a damn about anyone but himself. He’d started with petty theft when he was ten and worked his way up the food chain. The strip clubs were the most legitimate of his businesses. He said he liked his girls, claimed he kept the bad stuff away from them.

Would Lisa, Tasha and DinaBeth agree?

“Hey, Calloway, time for a break.”

He glanced up to find Chad, bouncer and relief bartender, standing at the other end of the bar, flirting with a little blonde named Dawn. Rick had walked in on them in the storeroom his first night on the job, in the men’s room the next night. He’d seen enough to make a point of always knocking first.

There were dancers on all three stages, the budget committee was having a good time and there was no sign of Amanda. On her own break? Where Rick would have normally headed straight out back, this time he detoured past the dressing room. The door was always open; there was no false modesty among the dancers.

The room looked like an explosion of colors, leathers and metals. Bright lights circled the makeup mirrors and cosmetics spilled across the counters. Lockers lined one wall, holding the mundane jeans, T-shirts and running shoes that turned exotic dancers back into everyday young women.

Only one of the chairs in front of the mirrors was occupied, by a gorgeous Jamaican woman who was adding a coat of something to already-thick lashes. “Hey, sweetie,” she greeted him. “You lookin’ for someone in particular, sugar? Or will Eternity do?”

She could ask that question of a thousand guys and get nothing but affirmation from every one of them. He grinned apologetically. “I wanted to ask Amanda something.”

Her dark gaze narrowed. “Amanda, huh. I was betting Monique would be more your type. If Amanda’s not out front, she’s in study hall.”

“Study hall?”

“That empty little room near the back door that no one ever uses.”

“Thanks.” He took a step out the door, then stopped. “Which one is Monique?”

“Brunette. Short hair. Triple D’s.”

Oh, yeah. There was a time when she would have been his type. A time all of them would have suited. “I have a girlfriend.” It was a lie, but it sounded good.

Better to him than to Eternity, if her look was anything to judge by. “You think all them guys out there don’t, chico?” she murmured as she turned back to her makeup.

Rick’s jaw tightened as he followed the narrow hall to the rear of the building. He knew better than to equate a relationship with fidelity. His father had had a girlfriend or three, along with a wife. The only good thing Rick could say about the bastard was that he’d been discreet in his affairs. His mother hadn’t had a clue until a heart attack had dropped the old man in his tracks and she’d found out that her sons had a half brother living down in Mississippi.

Sara had been a better woman than anyone had expected—than Gerald had deserved. She’d welcomed Mitch into the family and made a place for him in her own home. She loved him like one of her own. Too bad she’d loved Gerald, too.

Rick had been eleven when his father died and his mother’s heart had been broken. He hadn’t felt anything decent for Gerald since.

Reaching the closed door just ten feet from the rear exit, Rick knocked.

A moment later, the door swung open. “Getting formal, aren’t we, Eternity? You always just barge—Oh. Sorry. No one usually bothers me back here besides—” Hugging her arms across her middle, Amanda finished with a grimace.

He would have invited himself inside if the space hadn’t been so small or the idea hadn’t seemed so bad. Instead, he leaned against the doorjamb and gave the room a quick scan. The walls were painted the same shade as her living room and the one-armed sofa looked a match to the one he’d seen at her place. There was an oval mirror on one wall, a floor lamp and a small table that held a bottle of water, a clock, a book, a pair of reading glasses and t-rom a trick-or-treat-size candy bar.

“Study hall?” he asked, bringing his gaze back to her.

She glanced at the table, too. “When I was in school, I studied in here on breaks.”

“Getting your GED?”

A pained look slid across her face. “About eleven years ago. This summer I finished my bachelor’s degree.”

“Congratulations,” he said, then added, “Sorry. I didn’t mean…”

She shrugged. “A lot of us didn’t get to finish high school.”

But that was no reason to automatically assume she hadn’t.

She’d traded tiger stripes for a filmy gold Grecian goddess thing that left one shoulder bare. She’d kept the gold coil around her arm. Her hair was piled on top of her head, curls spilling down, with a gold patterned band circling her forehead. Fabric draped loosely over her breasts, then gathered at her waist, belted by a thin gold chain. The skirt was barely deserving of the name, short, insubstantial, revealing peeks of the black thong underneath. The leather laces of a pair of platform sandals crisscrossed her calves.

And just about finished him.

What the hell was wrong with him? He’d been watching the girls dance for weeks now, first at Rosey’s Marietta club, then here. He’d seen them fully dressed, damn near naked and everything in between. It had become so commonplace that he hardly noticed anymore.

So why had he suddenly started noticing Amanda?