Stranger

Chapter 02

“Earth to Grace.” Jared snapped his fingers in front of my face. “Gloves?”

I blinked and shook my head a little, laughing off my lack of concentration. Jared Shanholtz, my intern, held up the box of latex gloves that had seen better days. “Sorry. They’re in the laundry room, I think. On the rack of shelves by the wall.”

He tossed the battered cardboard box into the trash. He nodded toward the body on the table in front of us. “Need me to bring anything else?”

I looked over Mr. Dennison’s still form. “No. I think he’s just about done.”

I leaned forward to brush the hair back from his forehead. His skin, cool under my fingers, had a faint dusting of powder. It didn’t quite match his natural skin tone. “On second thought, grab me the box of foundation, okay? I want to redo this.”

Jared nodded and said nothing, though I’d already spent an hour on Mr. Dennison. I stared down at him. He couldn’t care if he looked like he was wearing makeup, but I did. Even if his family didn’t care, I still did.

Pride didn’t do diddly for my fingers, though, that kept fumbling with the small pots and brushes I used on the corpses. I’d nearly made a mess of the embalming, too, but turned it around by giving Jared the “opportunity” to do most of it himself while I supervised. Jared was the first intern I’d ever hired and though it was hard for me to give up control of what went on in my business to give him the chance to learn, I was glad he was there then. Thank God he was good. If he’d been a bumbling disaster, we’d have been screwed.

Screwed.

I turned away from Mr. Dennison’s placid face. I had to take small sips of air to keep from bursting into a flurry of giggles I would’ve been hard-pressed to explain to Jared. The stifled laughter twisted in my gut and made it hurt. Coffee would help. Maybe.

Shit, nothing would help. I’d fucked a stranger the night before, but the wrong one. Not the stranger I’d paid to play with. Dammit, not only had I taken a huge personal risk, I’d wasted a hefty chunk of change, too.

“Grace?”

I turned, again caught up in my own thoughts. I took the box of miscellaneous pots and jars from Jared, and set them on the table. “Sorry. My mind’s wandering.”

“If you wanted me to take over,” Jared offered with a gesture at Mr. Dennison, “I could. Give you a break.”

I looked at the man on the table, and at Jared. “No, thanks.”

“Want to talk about it?”

I looked up. Jared gave me a look that told me I hadn’t been as nonchalant as I’d thought. But…huh? Talk? To Jared? “About what?”

“Whatever it is that’s bothering you.”

“Who says anything is?” I stroked my cosmetic sponge down Mr. Dennison’s cheek.

Jared didn’t say anything until I looked up at him. “I’ve been here for six months, Grace. I can tell.”

I stopped what I was doing to give him my full attention. “Do you want to take over with this? I mean, if you really want me to give you something to do, Jared, I can tell you the hearse needs to be washed, and I’m sure Shelly could use a hand with vacuuming the chapel.”

Jared liked washing the hearse. I hated it. It worked out perfectly, and if he thought I was being nice by letting him do that instead of the hundred other tasks of running the funeral home, I was happy to let him think so.

He grinned, taking a bit of the wind out of my sails. “Sure, boss. If that’s what you want. I just thought I’d offer.”

He tipped me a salute. I smiled. “You could make sure there’s some fresh coffee, too. You know Shelly doesn’t have a clue how to brew it.”

He nodded. “Late night, huh?”

“The usual.” I shrugged.

“You know, Grace, I’d be happy to take more call time.”

I concentrated on putting away my pots and jars and washing my hands as I answered. “I know. I appreciate it.”

“Just thought I’d offer,” Jared repeated, and left.

Quick and eager to learn, Jared was excellent with the clients and unafraid to take on new tasks. I was seriously considering offering him a position after he graduated. The problem was, though Frawley and Sons had grown every year since I’d taken over from my dad three years before, I still couldn’t afford to hire another full-time funeral director. Not if I wanted to eat, anyway. I could make him take more call, but I’d have to pay him more and trust him to provide my clients with the same level of service I could give them myself.

Nobody could give them the same level of service I could. After all, I had very big shoes to fill. My dad and his brother, Chuck, both retired now, had taken over the business from their father. Frawley and Sons had been the only funeral home in Annville for fifty years. People could and did go to funeral homes in the adjoining towns, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t keep trying to be the best.

I busied myself with cleaning up the supplies I’d used on Mr. Dennison, glad for the chance to work in silence. I couldn’t stop thinking about the stranger. Sam. The hair, the eyes, the smile. Those long damn legs. The way he’d gotten harder when I said his name. I hadn’t even asked for his number.

Hell. He hadn’t asked for mine, either. I don’t blush easily, but I blushed just then, thinking what he must have thought. No wonder he’d looked so strange when I thanked him. He hadn’t known it was an accident.

The first time I’d paid for sex had been an accident, too, though the date was on purpose. For years my parents had supported a local preschool’s dinner-dance fund-raiser, but since taking over Frawley and Sons, I’d also taken on the social obligations that went along with the position. With no boyfriend in the picture and no desire to get one, I’d done what any organized woman would do. I’d hired a man to take me.

I could have gone alone. I wasn’t afraid of being without a man. Hell, the last boyfriend I’d had was in college and when that relationship ended, I’d been more relieved than upset. But dinner and dancing at the country club was always more fun with someone to dance with. It had been a no-brainer. I hired people to service my car and pull my weeds. Paying someone to pull back my chair and bring me drinks didn’t seem any different. In fact, paying someone to treat me like a goddess without having to deal with any corresponding male-ego crap had seemed like the best idea I’d ever had.

It was ridiculously easy to find a place where men could hire female “companions,” but it had taken a little bit of searching to find an agency offering similar services to women. As director of the funeral home I had to be discreet, but I also had a lot of contacts. People consumed by grief didn’t always censor their commentary. I’d learned about a lot of crazy things while offering the tissue box to mourners, most of which was useless. Places to buy drugs, who was sleeping with whom, where Mr. Jones had gone to buy the garter belt and stockings he’d been wearing when he died. The mourning widow, Mrs. Andrews, had slipped me a card just before launching into full-on mourning-widow mode.

Mrs. Smith’s Services for Ladies. Massage, conversation and other. I’d called the number on the card, made the arrangements and paid in advance. Mark had shown up at my door on time, perfectly groomed and handsome in a tuxedo that looked as if it had been cut to fit every line of his perfect, gorgeous body. It had been a little heady, being on his arm and entering the room filled mostly with people I’d known my entire life. Heads had turned and gossip had started, but the good kind.

It was, hands down, the best date I’d ever had. Mark was considerate, charming, a good conversationalist. If his responses were a wee bit slick and practiced sounding, that was all right, because the intensity of his deep blue gaze more than made up for any hint of role playing. I hadn’t, even then, been fooled into thinking the promises in Mark’s eyes were real. I didn’t believe it from men who tried to pick me up in bars or the grocery store, much less from a man whose time and interest I’d used a credit card to secure.

Yet I couldn’t help being flattered by the way his hand never strayed far from my shoulder, the small of my back, my elbow. By the end of the night, I had a pretty good idea what the “other” listed on the card meant. For safety reasons, and upon the advice of the anonymous Mrs. Smith, I’d met Mark in the parking lot of a nearby strip mall, then driven to the country club together in my car. On the way back to Mark’s car the tension had been as thick as honey and just as sweet.

“The night doesn’t have to be over,” he’d said when I pulled up next to his road-worn Saturn. “Not if you don’t want it to be.”

We’d gone to a shabby motel in the next town. My college boyfriend, Ben, had been good looking but nothing like Mark, who was truly so handsome it sort of made my eyes hurt to look at him for too long. My hands had been shaking when I undid the bow tie at his throat and the buttons on his shirt. He hadn’t rushed me. I’d unwrapped him inch by inch, revealing a body as delicious unclothed as it had been in the tux. I’d touched him all over, from the tight hard muscles of his belly to the thick branch of his cock, which swelled nicely in my hand. At his low noise, I’d looked up, startled out of my mesmerization. His gaze had gone dark. He’d reached out to touch my hair, softly, his fingers tugging it out of its loose coil.

I’d paid him to act like he thought I was sexy. I’d hired Mark to treat me like a queen—and in doing so learned I deserved to be treated that way. That I was lovely, and sexy. That I could get a man hard with a cocked hip and a slide of tongue on lips. Money can buy a lot of things, but a hard cock doesn’t care about a bank account. I might have paid him to spend time with me, but when it came right down to it, he’d wanted to fuck me just as much as I wanted him to.

It wasn’t the best sex I’d ever had; I was too nervous and uncertain to be adventurous. But Mark had made it easy for me. He was an expert lover, using his hands and mouth until we both lay panting in the tangle of sheets.

It was a hundred-dollar orgasm, when it finally happened, and worth every cent.

He didn’t stay. He shook my hand somewhat formally at the door, then lifted it to his mouth and kissed it, shooting me a grin that no longer had any hint of plastic about it. “Ask for me anytime,” he murmured against my skin, his eyes never leaving mine.

Right then, I’d understood exactly why the price had been so high.

Mrs. Smith had perfected an expert matching system to suit her clients. In the three years I’d been using the service, I’d never had a bad date. Whether I wanted to go to a concert or a museum, or spend a night having orgasm after orgasm while tied up with a red velvet ribbon, Mrs. Smith provided it all.

Contrary to my girlfriends, who either bemoaned the lack of a boyfriend or bitched about the men they did have, I was the most fulfilled woman I knew. I never had to go anyplace alone unless I wanted to. I never had to worry about what the sex “meant” and if my lover cared about me, because it was already prenegotiated and prepaid. Hiring escorts had given me the freedom to explore parts of my sexuality I’d never known existed, and without risking my safety or emotions.

More importantly, for their sake as well as mine, my gentlemen friends were utterly discreet. My business was open to constant scrutiny. It had been hard enough not being the son of Frawley and Sons. The funeral-home business was still mostly male dominated, and though I’d spent my entire life in Annville and had been a part of the family business for just that long, there were still those who thought a woman couldn’t do the job a man could. There was far more to the work than sending death announcements to the newspaper and embalming corpses; a good funeral director offered grief support and helped each and every family through what was often the most difficult time of their lives. I love my work. I’m good at it. I like helping people say goodbye to their loved ones and making the process as easy and bearable as possible. Even so, I never forget that people won’t bring their loved ones to someone they don’t trust, or whose morals they felt were questionable—and in a small town, morals are easily questioned.

“Grace?”

Again, I’d been caught in contemplation. I looked up to see Shelly Winber, my office manager. She looked apologetic, though she didn’t need to be. I’d been off in la-la land. “Hmm?”

“Phone for you.” She pointed upward. “Upstairs. It’s your dad.”

Obviously upstairs, since my ever-present cell phone hadn’t done so much as peep from its place on my hip. “Great, thanks.”

My dad called me at least once a day if he didn’t stop in. For someone who was supposed to have retired, my dad sure didn’t take much of a break. I took the call at my desk while I listened with one ear and made the appropriate “Mmm, hmms” and scrolled through the columns of my advertising budget.

“Grace, are you listening to me?”

“Yes, Dad.”

He snorted. “What did I just say?”

I took a stab. “You told me to come over for dinner on Sunday and bring the ledger so you can help me balance the books.”

Stone silence meant I’d messed up. “How do you expect to succeed if you don’t listen?”

“Dad, I’m sorry, but I’m a little busy here going over some things.” I held the phone next to my computer mouse and click-clicked. “Hear that?”

My dad huffed. “You spend too much time on the computer.”

“I spend time on this computer doing work to help the business grow.”

“We never had e-mail or a Web site, and we did just fine. The business is more than marketing, Grace. It’s more than just numbers.”

His intimation stung. “Then why are you always on my case about the budget?”

Aha. I’d caught him. I waited for him to answer, but what he said didn’t make me happy.

“Running the funeral home is more than just a job. It’s got to be your life.”

I thought of the recitals and graduations and birthday parties my dad had missed over the years. “You think I don’t know that?”

“I don’t know. Do you?”

“I have to go, Dad. I’ll see you at dinner on Sunday. Unless I have to work.”

I hung up and sat back in my chair. I knew it was more than a job. Didn’t I spend nearly all my time here? Giving it my best? Giving it my all? But try to tell my dad that. All he saw was the new gadgets and logo and the commercials on the radio and ads in the paper. What he didn’t understand was that just because I had nobody to sacrifice but myself didn’t make my efforts any less noble.

“You’re looking sparkly today.” My sister, Hannah, raised an eyebrow.

I flicked one of my chandelier earrings until the tiny bells chimed. They matched the Indian-style tunic top I’d bought from an online auction. The deep turquoise fabric and intricate beading could be described as sparkly. “Thanks—eBay.”