I nod, and the kids start chattering eagerly, asking me questions about leaping from a helicopter and how I’d managed to flip my jet ski over backward. One of them runs to Joe’s office to get paper for autographs, and the group grows from three guys to fifteen.

The kid runs back and hands me a stack of scratch paper, and I start scrawling my name, handing an autograph to each boy surrounding me. As I do, I see Jacey slip away from the ruckus. A part of me is disappointed by that. I’m fascinated by the Jacey that just laid Jake out flat on his back.

I want to know more about her, because she seems different from the Jacey who works at Saffron.

After five minutes or so, Joe sticks his head out of his office and barks at the boys.

“Hey! You’re not here to get autographs. Let the man do his job and you guys get back to work!”

The kids sheepishly disperse, going back to their punching bags or to the locker room, and I head to the weight room to wipe down the seats. When I get there, I find Jacey already crouched by a machine, cleaning it. When I walk in, she glances up at me and smiles.

“So that’s your life?”

I shrug. “Most of the time. It’s why I don’t go out much. It’s just part of it.”

I grab a rag and help her, cleaning the other side of the machine she’s working on.

“Well, I think it’s awesome,” she answers. “Everyone loves you. That must be an amazing feeling.”

I snort. “Yeah. Everyone loves me. Jacey, no one knows me. Not really. They know my face. They know the roles that I play. But they don’t know me. That’s okay, though. It’s how I like it.”

Jacey shakes her head. “That’s depressingly lonely, Dominic.”

“Not really,” I mutter, bending next to her to grab the bottle of sanitizer. As I do, she wrinkles up her nose.

“Jesus. You smell like sex. Did you come straight from a whorehouse?”

I feel myself flush, just a bit, because she caught me dead to rights.

Visions of the girl-on-girl action I was a part of just before I came here flash through my head. I hadn’t taken the time for a shower because I was late enough already.

Busted.

Jacey shakes her head in… what? Disappointment? Disgust?

Before I can figure out her reaction, she walks away, breaking whatever moment we’d been having and leaving me staring after her in astonishment as she exits the room. No one ever walks away from me like that.

But she just did.

Not only that, but she’s not looking back, either. She’s not so impressed with who I am that she’ll overlook any fault that I might have. Interesting… and unusual.

As I stare at her shoulder blades, I realize it’s possible that there might be more to this girl than I thought.

Yeah… no, there’s probably not.

I decide this a few hours later as I walk into the parking lot at the end of my shift, after scrubbing toilets, refilling ice packs, and wiping graffiti off the wall.

It’s clear that she’s exactly like I thought she was.

Kaylie, the girl from the party the other night, is dressed in her tiny server’s uniform, and she tosses a bag at Jacey as Jacey piles into Kaylie’s little convertible.

Then, right in the parking lot, Jacey hunches down in the seat and changes her clothes.

Seriously?

I can’t see anything, but I know what she’s doing. And so would the boys in the gym, if any of them happened to look outside. What the fuck is she thinking? One leg extends high into the air, her toes pointed to the sky, as Jacey slips her workout shorts off and her tiny uniform shorts on. The flimsy material sliding over her long legs leaves little to the imagination.

Does she want to invite trouble? A boy’s imagination is as good as the real thing, often times better. So to give them a glimpse like this is only going to make them want to see more.

But maybe that’s what she wants. And maybe that’s why she’s exactly the kind of girl I thought she was. An attention-whore and a tease, which makes total sense given her job.

I stop for a second and watch.

Because that’s what I like to do.

Her shirt comes off, and I get a hint of a slender shoulder, the top of her bra, the curve of her arm. Then she’s busy fastening the hooks of her skimpy corset, which pushes her tits upward and together, before she adjusts her yellow bow tie.

Something about the situation… the fact that Jacey is undressing in a very public place, the fact that I like to watch… and the fact that Jacey has a smoking-hot body incites a reaction from my dick and it hardens against my leg.

I hate that I react at all, physical or otherwise, because I wouldn’t touch this girl with Sin’s dick, let alone mine. There’s trouble in the way she so clearly needs so much attention. I mean, she works a job where she is half-dressed for the pleasure of men, for god’s sake. I want nothing to do with her, or anyone like her. Yet here I am with a stiff dick.

It’s at this moment that she turns and tosses her bag into the tiny backseat and her eyes meet mine. She pauses, and I can almost hear the breath as it rushes over her lips with surprise. I can almost see the question in her dark eyes as they widen. Did he just see me undress?

But just as quickly as her eyes widen at seeing me, they narrow into a slant and fill with one thing as the car speeds out of the parking lot, the radio blasting.

Disdain.

I don’t know whether to laugh or be annoyed. She’s the one undressing in the parking lot of a youth center in front of testosterone-fueled boys and heading off to a job where she gets paid to flirt with men… not me. Her disdain should be for herself.

I feel like an old man as I tiredly crawl into my Porsche, letting my head rest against the seat for a second, absorbing the spring sun and the fresh breeze before I fire up the engine. As I do, my phone rings and Sin’s name flashes on my screen.

“Yes?” I answer as I back out of my parking spot.

“Dude, I just found out that Amy Ashby is coming to my party tonight. Aren’t you costarring with her in your next gig?”

“Seriously?” I have to admit, I’m surprised. Amy Ashby, super-starlet, hardly ever ventures out of California. She doesn’t see the need. To her, all intelligent life ends at the California–Nevada border.

“Yeah,” Sin answers. “She’s dating a Blackhawk now, apparently, which is a shame because I’d like to motorboat those tits of hers. Are they real? I know you know. You had a sex scene with her in Visceral Need. I know you tapped that ass. You must’ve.”

For just a second, I think about that film, the one that shot both me and Amy to superstardom. And of course, I think about that sex scene. It was my first on-screen sex scene and hers too. We joked that we were popping each other’s cherry. Her tits aren’t real, but I don’t tell Sin.

“You’re ridiculous,” I tell him instead. “And fuck, man. How many parties do you need to have a week?”

Sin chuckles. “Don’t hate. But hey, I just thought of something. Is this going to cause a problem? Because Kira is coming tonight too. I know that Amy likes to have your undivided attention—whether she has a boyfriend or not.”

I sigh. “Amy is definitely high maintenance. But that shouldn’t cause a problem with Kira, because she knows where she and I stand. We’re convenient. That’s it. But knowing it and knowing it are two different things, and she’ll probably get jealous and throw some sort of fit. Why’d you invite her, anyway? I don’t want to babysit.”

“Because she wanted me to call her for my next party,” Sin replies, and I can almost hear him shrugging. It’s not his problem, so he’s not concerned. “And when the fuck did having a fuck-buddy turn into babysitting? Whatever, dude. We’ll make it work.”

An idea occurs to me and I grin.

“Oh, it’ll work. I’ll go home tonight for dinner. Mom’s been wanting to feed me, anyway. Have fun at the party.”

Sin starts to protest, but I hang up on him and turn the car around, heading the opposite direction toward Palos Park, the Chicago suburb that I grew up in.

The Chicago streets turn into the highway, which eventually runs through Palos Park. The quiet streets that I ran on when I was a kid surround me and I take in the quiet scenery as I drive through town to the country. Castle Kinkaide sits on ten acres outside of town and I can see the spire of the tower a mile away.

Honestly, I can’t help but smile. For the most part, I had an awesome childhood and I have great memories of growing up out here in the middle of nowhere, in a house that everyone around considers a gigantic novelty.

As I pull onto the long drive, surrounded on both sides by flowering trees, I take a deep breath of country air and exhale it. I always forget how good it smells here, but once I’m back, it brings back instant memories. Summer nights chasing lightning bugs, camping out with my dad and brothers, and swinging from a rope swing out by the stream.

It was a surprisingly rural upbringing in a town only a few miles from Chicago. As I climb out of my car, I hear Fiona and my mother… their voices drift toward me on the breeze, and I turn to find them walking from the garage into the house. Fuck.

How had I forgotten that Fiona is staying with my parents while her new condo downtown is being renovated? Mother fuck.

Fiona looks up and sees me first, and for the briefest of moments her eyes light up the way they usually do when she sees me. I’ve always been her favorite.

But not now. Now her expression immediately hardens and she pointedly looks in the other direction, a not-so-subtle way of reminding me that I’m on her shit list.

Whatever.

She’s on my shit list. She can ignore me as long as she wants. I can guarantee that I’ve got more patience than she does.

As they walk up the steps into the house, Mom turns her head and drops the sack she’s carrying as soon as she sees me. She runs toward me like she hasn’t seen me in a year. It’s only been a few months, but you’d think it was an eternity by the way she barrels into me and clutches me tight. Her head barely reaches my sternum, but she buries it there, her hands clasped behind me.

“Dominic James Kinkaide,” she scolds. “You’ve been away too long this time. You’re getting too thin. You’re not eating.”

She looks up at me, her blue eyes snapping. “You get yourself inside and wash up. Dinner’s in thirty minutes, and you’re going to eat everything I put on your plate.”

She marches ahead of me, trying to pretend that she’s angry and not happy to see me. But her eyes betray her, because when she stops to let me open the door for her, they’re warm.

“It’s about time you came home,” she tells me as she walks past. “Go see your father. He’s in the library.”

Fiona ignores me so I ignore her, walking past her into the long hall that leads to the library that serves as my dad’s study. When I round the doorway, I find him staring out the window, a glass of scotch in his hand.

“Hey, Dad,” I greet him quietly. “Can I get one of those?”

My father turns his head and smiles at me, his temples a little grayer than the last time I was home.