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When she first started coming to the café, he didn’t even notice her. He didn’t know who dressed her but, Christ, they needed to be drawn and quartered. She looked like someone’s grandmother, with her cardigans and loafers. Except…
He couldn’t remember now what had made him look at her. A sound she made, or a cough. Most likely, her blush. He’d been shocked as hell, that much he remembered clearly. She was gorgeous. Her skin was pale and flawless, delicate, like her body. Tall—he’d guess around five-seven or so—and a little too slender, she walked like a dancer. She’d smiled only once in all the months she’d been coming here. Not at him, but he’d caught it.
She was a natural beauty. No fake boobs, no fake hair, no piercings anywhere visible. She reminded him of someone from another time. The Renaissance, perhaps. But he also felt something else hiding behind those old-fashioned clothes, behind that blush. He knew it. He felt it. And he wanted it.
He sat down, ran his fingers over the keyboard. Was it his imagination or was there a trace of talcum lingering in the air? He turned on the machine and typed in the address for TrueConfessions.com. Once there, he checked it out, saw how it worked.
Good Girl.
That was the name he’d seen. If she hadn’t been so flustered, she’d probably have blocked his view or turned off the computer. But she hadn’t. And he was just the son-of-a-bitch to take advantage of the situation.
About five minutes later, just after Brian brought him another cup of coffee, he hit pay dirt—Good Girl’s journal entries. He never did drink any of the coffee.
THE MUSIC from Tabby’s bedroom reverberated through the apartment, the thundering bass making vases tremble and the crumbs on the table shift into interesting patterns. Amelia tried not to mind. At least, not too much.
Her roommates were nice girls, all three of them. A bit self-centered and obsessed with sex—but they were in their early twenties, so what did she expect?
Oh, please. While she hoped she wasn’t quite so self-centered, she would be lying if she said she wasn’t just as obsessed. Her roommates didn’t help with that, either. Every one of them brought men home on a regular basis. Tabby had Josh, and they were the only two who were in a somewhat monogamous relationship. Donna rotated three guys, and for the most part, that worked smoothly enough.
Twice, though, two of her guys had shown up on the same night. Donna’s solution? The three of them went to the bedroom. Amelia had had to use the earplugs that night. And the pillow over her head.
She’d been shocked, of course. For a while. Then, the idea of two men, two beautiful men, in bed with her, doing all manner of wicked things, made the idea almost appealing. Of course, Amelia would never have the nerve to do anything like that. She barely had the nerve to speak up in class, let alone flirt.
The thought made her blush, and her blush made her think of Jay. She closed her eyes to picture him better, and within moments she had to get a cold bottle of water from the fridge.
As she drank, she scolded herself. It was almost four-thirty, and she hadn’t gotten back to her term paper. That meant she’d be in for a long night, which meant she couldn’t go to the café in the morning. Or that she’d be so tired she’d probably fall asleep in class.
She wiped her mouth with a tea towel as her gaze moved to the dishes in the sink. She knew exactly how long they’d been piling up. Since the last time she’d washed them.
The others, especially Kathy, took advantage of her, she knew that. But she was also the only one of the four who seemed to have any time for the mundane things in life, like laundry and dishes and vacuuming. Every time she cleaned up their mess, she swore it was the last time.
If she couldn’t gather the courage to let her roommates clean up after themselves, how on earth was she going to be strong enough to talk to him?
Right. Like that was going to happen. And monkeys might fly out of my butt. She chuckled, only slightly scandalized at herself. The slightly was because she’d been practicing. She’d said all sorts of bad things in the past two months. Curses that would make a freshman jock blush, insults that cut to the quick, and jibes so clever she had to laugh out loud. Of course, she’d only said them to herself, but hey, it was a start, right? Soon, she’d be just as brazen and hip as everyone else at school. Maybe not so crude, but she’d be in the ballpark. Not such a freak. An outsider.
She sighed as she leaned against the fridge door. Jay would never want a girl like her. Not in a million years. She should give it up. Chase him out of her thoughts. Forbid him to visit her dreams.
As if.
AT FIVE-FIFTEEN, Jay couldn’t stand it another minute. He had to do something, and do it now. “Karl.”
His assistant looked up from behind a vintage Harley. “Yeah?”
“How do you feel about locking up tonight?”
Karl nodded, then pushed his Buddy Holly glasses up to the bridge of his nose. The guy was older than Jay by ten years, but his long, scraggly hair and sparse goatee made him look like one of the students who came in here to drool. “You got a date?”
“Of sorts.”
“No problem. Marie isn’t gonna be home until after eleven.”
Jay grabbed his jacket from the counter, shoved it on, then picked up his helmet from the floor. “So she’s still got that job?”
“Yeah. For some reason she likes working with numbers. Go figure.”
Jay headed toward the door of his shop, his gaze automatically checking the display models, making sure the bikes were polished to a shine. “At least she’s working.”
“The second income is pretty welcome. Of course, if you’d pay me what I’m worth—”
“You don’t want to go there, buddy.”
Karl sighed like a lovesick teen.
“Get a grip.”
His assistant laughed, but Jay had left behind the conversation as he pushed open the door. He’d hardly been able to think of anything all day…except Good Girl. At the café, he’d read a number of her early journal entries, and the more he read, the more intrigued he became. She came as a complete surprise to him—and that didn’t happen often.
No one would guess that inside that Minnie Mouse of a girl lived a Jessica Rabbit woman.
He slipped his helmet on, then mounted his bike, a 1965 panhead, full dresser, electric glide, in mint condition. The engine came to life with a jolt, and then he was off, heading straight home to his computer, relaxing instantly as he listened to his bike purr like a kitten.
As he maneuvered through the Manhattan traffic, he kept picturing Good Girl peeling off her clothes piece by piece. But he had to cut that stimulating scenario short when he almost crashed into a hot dog vendor.
Twenty minutes later he pulled up to his brownstone. It was an old building, right in the heart of what used to be called Hell’s Kitchen. The neighborhood wasn’t what it used to be. It had been gentrified, with trendy shops and restaurants popping up like weeds. It didn’t matter to him. They could build whatever the hell they wanted, as long as they left him alone.
He pulled the bike into a small alcove on the side of the building, and, helmet tucked beneath his arm, secured the bike with three sturdy locks. The neighborhood might be more upscale, but it was still Manhattan.
He headed for the door, pausing to nod at Jasper, the doorman. The guy was, like, a hundred-and-eight or something, and his uniform looked as if it had been made during the Crimean War. But Jasper had been the doorman for as long as anyone could remember, and that wasn’t going to change until the old guy died. Not much about this building changed, including the fact that the elevator smelled like a wet dog. Jay lived on the fifth floor. The elevator stopped on three. The door slid open to reveal a man almost as old as Jasper.