Stranger

“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?”