Forbidden Stranger

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?

Breaks were few and Amanda had always protected every moment of hers. For every hour she’d spent in a college classroom, she’d spent two in this oversize closet, reading, cramming. Everyone knew to leave her alone when she was there. Oh, Eternity dropped in sometimes, always curious about Amanda’s studies and her plans for the future.

But the break was slipping away, and there was Rick blocking the door, saying nothing, just looking. Men have probably always looked at you, Julia had said. Men, sure. A Calloway? Just once, and she’d paid for that.

But that was a long time ago. She was all grown-up now. Her father was dead, her mother hardly spoke to her and soon she would be starting a new life. Nothing Rick could say or do could hurt her. Life, and her mother and his brother, had made sure of that.

Still, it took courage to turn her back, stroll across a few feet of plush carpet brought from home and seat herself on the chaise. She swung her legs onto the cushion, then picked up her book. “Did you come here for a reason?”

“Yeah. But damned if I can remember what it was.” The words were accompanied by a charming grin that could have fluttered every female heart in the place. But her heart wasn’t fluttering. It was just indigestion from the too-rich chocolate she’d eaten before his visit.

“Then close the door on your way out, will you?” She opened the book to the dog-ear marking her place and began to read again. At least, she went through the motions. She squinted at the words, getting each one into her brain in order but understanding none of them. She had no problem, though, understanding that he hadn’t left the room. That he still stood there, still looked at her. She ignored him as long as she could before lowering the book and asking, “Is there a reason you’re still here?”

“Are those your reading glasses?”

She glanced at the wire-framed glasses on the table. “Everything in here is mine.”

“So why aren’t you wearing them?”

Picking them up, she slid them into place. She wasn’t vain. As glasses went, they were flattering, and the fact that they brought hazy words into focus made wearing them a no-brainer. The fact that they made Rick hazy instead was another benefit. Plus, she couldn’t deny that somewhere down inside, she felt more serious, more substantive, when she wore them.

Did she want Rick to think there was more to her than a nice body?

“Cute,” he said, then slid his hand into his pocket. After pulling out a handful of bills, he counted out three twenties, a ten and a five and folded them neatly in fourths. “For today’s lesson.”

She took money from men on an almost-daily basis, but not from a Calloway since fifteen summers ago when she had clerked part-time at the Copper Lake Lumberyard, owned by Rick’s uncle Garry. He’d paid her in cash, folding the money in exactly the same way, delivering it with an oily smile and a look in his eyes that had made her feel small and insignificant.

At the end of that summer, Robbie had made her feel even worse.

But Rick’s look wasn’t any different than usual and he’d saved her the trouble of folding the bills herself. Accepting them, she slid them into the thin slot barely noticeable in the platform of her left shoe. Tip-jar shoes, they were called, giving a dancer a secure place to keep her tips when she was onstage…or in a back room.

“Thanks,” she said, then lowered her gaze to the book again, expecting him to leave.

He didn’t. “Do you think Julia will loosen up enough to actually get on a stage?”

Proust would have to wait for another day, Amanda acknowledged, closing the book and removing her glasses. “I don’t know. She says she wants to. A lot of people will do whatever it takes to get what they want.”

Like her. She’d worked hard to get what she wanted and she firmly believed the struggle would make the success that much sweeter.

“Do you think you could persuade Harry to give her a shot here?”

“You want to watch her dance in front of strangers?” There was that ick feeling she’d experienced earlier in the day.

“I want to keep an eye on her. She’s not used to places like this.”

“I can ask, depending on how the next lessons go.” Amanda had worked with Harry for years and she’d rarely asked favors of him. Because of that, and because she was popular with his customers, he would likely give Julia a shot without sending her to one of the smaller clubs first.

“Does your boyfriend ever come and watch you?”

She glanced at the clock, then stood, balancing on the eight-inch platforms as naturally as on bare feet. “No boyfriend.”

“What about the guys you date?”

“None of them, either. I’ve had priorities,” she said as she checked her appearance in the mirror, adjusting the headband. “Save money, buy my house, finish my degree. There will be time to worry about relationships when I retire.”

Rick’s brows raised. “You plan to wait another thirty or forty years before you look for a guy?”

She turned away from the mirror and replaced his reflection with the real thing. “When I retire from dancing. Five weeks and five days from today.”

He still looked surprised. “Then what will you do?”

She couldn’t contain the smile that spread from ear to ear. “When the spring semester begins in January, I’ll be the newest English lit teacher at the James C. Middleton College of Liberal Arts.”

He thumbed in the direction of the main room. “The old guys out there? The budget committee?”

She nodded. “Dean Jaeger, the one who wears the bow ties, was my advisor. When the job opened, he suggested I apply. I did, and they hired me.”

“And they don’t mind your dancing?”

Any traditional school would have found her background objectionable. Amanda had been prepared for that. She had even considered more than once changing her major—had acknowledged that to get a teaching job anywhere, she would have to gloss over her background at best, flat-out lie about it at worst. “They take the liberal part of their name seriously. Having a former stripper teach English lit seems perfectly reasonable to them.”

“Wow. I never had teachers like you in college. I might have paid more attention if I had.”

She hadn’t thought about his own college degree. Higher education had been a given for all Calloways, and the University of Georgia had been the place. They went on to successful lives. Amazing what advantages could do for a person. And yet Rick was tending bar in a strip club. How had that happened and how did it sit with the family back in Copper Lake?

The questions were nothing more than mild curiosity, she told herself, and she brushed them aside as easily as she gestured toward the hallway behind him. “Break’s over. I’ve got to go.”

He stood there a moment longer, then stepped aside. “Got to go entertain the budget committee,” he remarked, an odd note of something in his voice.

She didn’t try to figure out what it was, but slipped past him and went down the hall. When she turned into the dressing room doorway, he was still standing there. When she came out a moment later, he was gone. Relief seeped into her muscles, though she wasn’t about to examine why his presence—or absence—even registered.

As she approached the stage door, a new song started. Pop was the music of choice at Almost Heaven, though on occasion she opted for blues or something Latin, sensual and sexual and steamy. At the moment, even with no sign of Rick, she was happy to have the pop. It would keep things cool.

Keep her cool.

The stage lights were bright enough to make the customers shadowy, but there was nothing muted about their reception. There was a whistle or two, some applause, a murmur of encouragement as she wrapped herself around the pole. She used the pole much as a woman might use her lover, swaying around it, rubbing against it, sliding down until her knees were splayed, then rising again, twisting until the pole was centered in her back, repeating the long, languid slide down.

Her eyes were half closed, her lips half curved, as she let the music surround her. Dancing came as naturally to her as breathing. She heard a note or two, and her body began to sway. She didn’t have to think, plan or concentrate. The music took over, and everything else faded into the background. The voices, the heat that formed a sheen over her skin, the gazes and leers…none of it mattered. Only the music.

She loosened the chain around her waist, letting its length trickle between her fingers into a small mound at the base of the pole. The hook that secured her dress was next to go. With a shimmy, the gold lamé puddled at her feet, leaving her in a strapless black bra and a thong. The act brought the usual reaction, still muted in her music-dazed brain…then her muscles went taut. A shiver rippled along her skin, making her feel exposed; heat followed in its wake.

Opening her eyes, she searched for the gaze that could create such awareness through the haze, knowing before she saw him that it was Rick. He stood off to the side, just inside the door that led to the back hallway, arms crossed over his chest. He looked formidable enough to be a bouncer and drop-dead sexy enough to be any woman’s fantasy.

And he was watching her with enough intensity to make her feel like his fantasy.

She turned her back to him. He was a Calloway. He worked at the club. He was involved with Julia. More than enough reasons to keep her distance. But that didn’t stop the warmth from seeping deeper inside her. It didn’t stop her nipples from drawing into hard peaks. It didn’t stop the rush of desire that welled in her belly.

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.”