Marilyn Pappano - Forbidden Stranger

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?

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.”