He inwardly cringed. “I can’t. I’ve got an early meeting at the bank. If I you stay, I’ll be too tired to do my job. Perhaps we can do this some other night, when I don’t have to get up so early for work.”
Cathy pouted, appearing disappointed. Seconds later, the unhappy face was gone and she shrugged her shoulders. “I’m free this weekend.”
Grady put on one of his stage smiles. “I’d like that.”
Cathy climbed from the bed. “I parked by Jax Brewery, in one of the pay lots.”
“I’ll drive you back and make sure you get to your car safe, all right?” he suggested, standing from the bed.
She nodded and picked up her tank top from the floor. “That would be great, Grady.”
After dressing and ushering her out of his apartment, Grady took her hand and led her to the second-floor landing. Cathy giggled behind him when he pulled her down the stairs. Just as he was about to take the last step to the first floor, one of the front oak and glass doors opened and someone stepped inside.
He silently cursed his luck. A shadow crossed the threshold, and when the light from the beaded chandelier above illuminated the face coming through the doors, Grady wanted to curl into a ball and hide.
“Well, well,” Al chirped, her disapproving gray eyes all over Cathy and Grady. “I’m surprised to find you here, Grady.”
But Grady wasn’t listening to a word she said. His eyes were too busy drinking in the red sheath dress that clung to her curves. The high-heeled black pumps she wore accentuated the muscular curve of her slender legs. Her long blonde hair was fashioned into a twist, and her face was tastefully made-up, accentuating her exquisite cheekbones, smooth, pale skin, and pink lips.
“Hi,” Cathy spoke out, making up for Grady’s silence. “I’m Cathy.”
“Hello, Cathy.” Al’s eyes disdainfully swept over the younger woman. Then, she turned to Grady. “I’m glad to see you are making friends.” She shot him a cocky grin and headed for the stairs.
Son of a bitch! Grady’s humiliation was complete. The one person he had not wanted to encounter ended up coming through the front doors at precisely the wrong moment.
“Who was that?” Cathy whispered when Al was halfway up the staircase.
“My landlord.” Grady pushed her out the doors.
When they walked through the black gate, Cathy worked her arm around Grady’s waist and began making plans for their next date.
“Maybe we could meet up at Pat O’Brien’s again, and then grab a bite to eat at this great little place I know that has the best ….” Grady tuned out the rest.
His mind was fixated on Al in that clingy dress. He did not know what affected him more: the way she had looked, the grin on her pink lips, or the condescending way her gray eyes had ripped into Cathy. He remembered what Doug had told him about Al having a boyfriend, and Grady considered if she had been coming in from a night out with him. His thoughts quickly became mired with images of the kind of man Al would prefer.
As they made their way to his car parked on Esplanade Avenue, Cathy continued to ramble on, but Grady paid her little heed. He was completely preoccupied with Al. He hated to admit it, but there was something about the woman that was getting under his skin. By the time they reached his gray Honda Accord, Grady had decided that he needed to spend a little time learning more about the prickly woman who detested being called Allison. After all, she was different from the usual flurry of women he encountered on the road. He opened the car door for Cathy and sighed. Perhaps Al would be a welcomed diversion in his life.
Grady felt that familiar kick in his gut. It was the same sensation he used to get when he was faced with an intriguing challenge. It had been a long time since something, or someone, had turned him on like that. While making his way around to his car door, Grady was relieved by the awakening of his dormant enthusiasm. Maybe things were finally starting to look up for him, and the numbing monotony that had filled his empty life for the past four years was about to change. God, he hoped so. What he wanted more than anything was a new life … and someone to share it with.
Chapter 4
The next morning, Grady spent half an hour trying to write a note to leave under Al’s door, telling her of his desire for off-street parking in the rear of the house. He had written and rewritten the note on the blue sticky pad about a dozen times, but none of his drafts seemed appropriate.
“I should have paid attention in English lit.” He crumpled another piece of blue paper in his hand.
Finally, after ten revisions, Grady felt he had the right amount of humor and wit in his note to appeal to his discriminating landlord. Shrugging on a fresh T-shirt, he stepped into the hallway to make the trek up the stairs to the third floor.
As he stood on the second-floor landing and gazed up the flight of stairs to the third floor, his stomach curled into knots. What in the hell was wrong with him? Never had he experienced such trepidation with a woman before. Well, that wasn’t completely true. He had felt the same about his first date with Emma, his ex-wife.
While climbing the steps, he reflected back on the way he had changed outfits—about ten times—before setting out for their first dinner at some forgotten restaurant. The daughter of a Navy admiral, Emma had been funny, athletic, and tough … all the things he had craved in a woman.
“The only problem was she was also promiscuous as shit,” he muttered as Al’s apartment door loomed before him.
Grady stood for several minutes before Al’s door, holding the blue sticky note in his hand. With one last heavy sigh, he pushed the note under the door. Unfortunately, the sticky back of the paper clung to the bottom edge of the door, making it impossible to slide it under.
“Damn it,” he softly cursed, and tried to force the note further under the door.
The sticky back ended up being very uncooperative. Grady was soon on his hands and knees, trying to use his small right finger to shove the note all the way under the door. He was cursing up a storm and making the heavy cypress door shake as his hand banged against it. Suddenly, he heard the door handle turning, and before he could pull his finger away the door quickly opened.
Grady yelped in pain as his pinkie caught under the heavy door and bent painfully backwards. When the tip of his pinkie snapped, he yelled, “Fuck!”
As he was yanking back his hand, the door fully opened. Grady was grabbing at his little finger and hunched over on the floor when Al crossed the threshold.
“What are you doing?”
“What am I doing?” he shouted. “What are you doing shoving your door open like that?”
“I heard knocking. What was I supposed to do?”
He was in too much pain to argue with logic. “I think you broke my goddamned finger!”
She bent down and took his injured hand in hers. “Let me see.” Her cool hands began to palpate his swelling finger. “Now tell me, what were you doing sticking your hand under my door?”
Grady sucked back a painful breath as a film of sweat broke out on his brow. “I was trying to push a note under your door, but it got stuck. Then you come along, open the door, and …. What are you doing home? I thought you would be at work.”
Al could not help but grin while her gray eyes continued to examine his finger. “The doctor I work for didn’t have any surgeries scheduled today.”
Grady sat back on the hardwood floor and wiped his free hand over his eyes.
Be cool … but damn, this really hurts!
“Just my luck.” He took in another deep breath. “What’s the verdict?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Paulson, but your finger is broken.”
He smirked at her. “Gee, thanks, Doc.”
She stood up. “Come on in and I’ll splint it for you.”
He rose from the floor, carefully nursing his injured finger. “Maybe I should go to the ER.”
Al waved off the suggestion. “Nonsense. An ER visit for a broken finger is going to cost you a couple of hundred dollars, and a
n entire day wasted. In the end, they won’t do any more for you than I can do in the next ten minutes.”
Grady swallowed back a nervous lump in his throat. “Do you know how to set a broken finger?”
Her smile added an alluring light to her deep gray eyes. “I was an ER nurse for three years before I went to nurse anesthetist school.” She beckoned for him to follow her into the apartment.
What choice did he have? Grady sighed and stepped through the doorway.
Once inside, he admired the quaint, beige-painted foyer. The walls were covered with a collection of old photographs of well-known New Orleans landmarks. He perused the framed black and white pictures and became instantly distracted by the image of a high roller coaster.
Al closed the heavy front door and stooped to snatch up the blue note stuck to the bottom of it. Her eyes quickly read the note and then she frowned.
“You broke your finger to tell me you were parking your car around back?” She held the note up to him.
Grady tucked his injured hand closer to his chest. “Suzie told me to let you know I was parking back there. She said you would tow away my car if you did not recognize it.”
Al crumpled the note. “I think I would have figured out it was your car parked in my courtyard.”
He furrowed his brow. “How?”
“You have a Connecticut license plate, Grady.”
“How did you know that?”
“It was on the application Burt sent me.”
Grady’s stomach sank to the floor. He had been a complete idiot. Not only had he spent an hour composing a note he did not need to write, but he also had broken his finger by forgetting about the obvious fact that he did have Connecticut plates on his car. He turned back to the pictures on the wall behind him, anxious for a distraction.
“Where is this?” he asked, nodding to the roller coaster.
She moved up next to him. “Pontchartrain Beach. It was an amusement park out by Lake Pontchartrain when I was a kid, but it’s not around anymore.”
He savored the delicate curves of her perfect profile. “What happened to the amusement park?”
“It closed in ‘83.”
Grady eased his face closer to her and swore he could detect a faint hint of lavender in her hair. “Did you go there a lot as a kid?”
She shrugged and stepped away. “My sister took me. She would go to meet boys while I went on the rides. It was the only way she could date. Our mother was very strict about boys.”
“I see. She used you as her excuse.”
A heart-warming smile spread across Al’s thin, pink lips. “Cassie always found a way to do exactly what she wanted.”
“What does Cassie do in L.A.?”
Her smile vanished and Al’s attention went to his injured hand. “Let’s see to your finger.”
“Did I say something wrong?” he posed, aware of how she had avoided his question.
“No. I just don’t like to talk about my sister.” Al let go of his finger and turned into the apartment. “This way.”
Grady followed her into an open living room with polished hardwood floors and a picture window set along an east-facing wall, allowing the morning sunlight to bask the room in warm light. Below the window was a built-in storage bench with taupe cushions. The furniture was modest with a few antique mahogany pieces spread throughout. An inviting modern, fluffy red sofa stood next to a dark end table with intricate carvings of roses on it, while a thick coffee table with brass-covered feet sat before it. On the beige walls were more paintings of New Orleans, but unlike the other portraits in the hallway to his apartment, these canvases were ornately framed. The large room had twenty-foot high ceilings with track lighting set into the exposed cypress beams.
Grady craned his neck upward to take in the twelve-tiered brass chandelier. “You kept the best room for yourself.”
“It was originally one of the master bedrooms of the home, but my mother renovated it to be a family room.” She waved to an arched doorway in the far wall. “I also have the biggest kitchen in the house. It’s just past the arch with a connecting laundry room, and another smaller room that I use as an office.”
“How do you get to the cupola?”
Al went to an antique mahogany armoire located by the arched doorway. “The cupola is off limits.”
“But not to you?”
She opened the armoire and reached inside. “I don’t go up there,” she firmly stated.
“Why don’t you go up there, Allison?”
Al wheeled around to him, her gray eyes brimming with anger. “I thought I told you not to call me that.”
Grady grinned. He liked it when she showed her anger. It filled her gray eyes with fire and made her less like a little girl and more like an Amazonian queen. “I like Allison. I know you detest the name, but I think it suits you better than Al.”
She turned back to the armoire, mumbling words Grady could not make out. When Al came toward him, she had a package of gauze, a roll of white medical tape, and a pair of silver scissors in her hand. She nodded to the red, fluffy sofa.
“Have a seat there.”
Grady went to the sofa, still clutching his finger. “How long have you been renting out apartments?”
Al took a seat next to him and placed the gauze, tape, and scissors in her lap. “Seventeen years now, ever since I took over the house.” She rested his hand in her lap.
Despite the pain in his finger, Grady enjoyed the feel of his hand against her thighs. He pictured those slender thighs hugging his waist as he thrust into her. That excited tingle started in his groin, and he raised his eyes to the curve of her small breasts, indulging further in his fantasy.
“What are you thinking about?”
Grady snapped to attention. “Ah, I’m wondering why you only rent to dancers?”
Her cool fingers delicately felt along the edge of his swollen finger, adding to his excitement. “I haven’t only rented to dancers. There have been quite a few bartenders, comedians, a lot of musicians, singers, and even a chef or two. Anyone who needs a furnished place for a short time ends up on my doorstep. I’ve just got a good rep among the dance crowd. After doing this for a while, I got to know a few agents, like your friend Burt, and they began to send their clients to me. Now, most of my tenants come from the dancing community, but occasionally I still get a musician or two.”
“You prefer the dancing crowd, don’t you?”
She gently braced his pinkie against his fourth finger. “I like that most of them are disciplined and take care of themselves.” She reached for the gauze in her lap. “That’s not to say that I haven’t had to deal with my fair share of drug overdoses, but compared to the musicians and singers, the dancers are quieter.” Al began rolling the gauze around his two fingers. “Actually, the chefs were the best group I ever rented to. They would cook and the house would fill with such exquisite aromas … I even let a few of them have access to my kitchen.”
As she finished wrapping the gauze around his fingers, the light from the picture window glistened on her blonde hair. He ached to touch her hair, to feel its silkiness against his fingers.
“You know, I’m a pretty good chef,” he asserted, hoping to work in an angle to see her again.
She stifled a chuckle while cutting the gauze. “You? I don’t see it.”
“I used to cook all the time for my ex-wife. Emma was never very good in the kitchen, so I took a few classes before we got married.”
She raised her head and stared into his eyes. “You were married?”
He shrugged. “It didn’t last long.”
She put her scissors down. “What happened?”
As he weighed the question—wary of how much to tell her of his past—that voice in his head urged him to open up to Al.
You’ve told enough lies to women in the past, perhaps now it’s time to start telling the truth.
“Emma worked as a paralegal for a law firm in Danbury, Connecticut, where we lived,” he
began. “I thought we were happy, until one day she came home and told me our marriage was over.” He shook his head as snapshots of that day came back to him. “Stupid me. I thought all those late nights at the office were because she was working, not screwing one of the attorneys. After she moved out, I tried like hell to get my life together. Then, two months later, I got laid off from Lehman Brothers.”
Al pulled off a long strip of tape from the spool. “That’s when you went back to dancing and ended up on the road.”
He casually dipped his head to the side. “I had to eat, and dancing was all I had left.”
They sat in silence while Al secured the tape over the gauze holding his fingers together. Grady’s mind raced, eager to find some way to keep the conversation going.
“How is your friend Cathy?” she blurted out.
Grady stiffened at the mention of Cathy. “Yeah, about that—”
“What you do in the privacy of your bedroom is your business, Grady. As long as they are over eighteen and human, I don’t care.” She finished positioning the tape around his fingers. “But she was a little too—”
“Young for me,” he interjected.
“I was going to say simple. Not that she wasn’t a nice girl—
I’m sure she was—but you can do better.”
Grady was intrigued by her comment. “Better?”
She took another long piece of white tape from the spool and cut it with the scissors. “Does she know what you do, or did that even come up in the conversation? Or did you even have any conversation?”
Grady chuckled at her smattering of sarcasm. “No, it didn’t come up.”
Al studied his blue eyes for a moment. “Why are you so ashamed of telling people what you do?”
“I’m not ashamed. It’s just that when you start seeing a woman regularly, the questions begin popping up about the women in the audience, and why I have to kiss them, or rub against them. Girlfriends don’t handle that you are a male stripper very well. Eventually, you’re asked to make a choice between dancing and dating.”
Al looped the last bit of tape around his fingers. “How many times have you been asked to make that choice?”
The Art of Sin Page 5
