Enjoying the Show

Chapter One

Checking her watch for the fourth time since she left work, Hailey Jennison floored the accelerator of her overworked Celica and snagged the last available parking spot in Block D of the Abberwick Apartments. Shoving the gear in park, she shot out of the car and up three flights of stairs, thanking the cloudless night sky for what promised to be one hell of a night’s entertainment.

Panting, she reached apartment 306 and glued her finger to the doorbell, practically tripping over Faith when she suddenly opened the door.

“I’m here, I made it. What did I miss?” Hailey rasped as she entered, her eyes slowly adjusting to the darkness of the living room. Giving herself a minute, she gradually made out the ring of chairs facing the large, streak-free window in Faith’s spacious living room.

Three of the four chairs were already occupied. Sydney, Beth and Amy turned as one to glare at her.

“Do you mind? He just sat down to dinner.” Amy grabbed a handful of chips and began munching.

Hailey’s excitement plummeted. “Dinner? I almost killed myself for dinner?”

“Relax.” Her best friend Sydney smiled and patted the chair next to her. “So he’s hungry today. It’s Friday, he deserves the break. Besides, if I’m not mistaken, he looked particularly sweaty earlier.”

“He did. I saw him as I was walking upstairs,” Amy chimed in, giddy as a schoolgirl.

Faith dragged another chair to join her friends; the addition of her seat effectively sandwiching Hailey between her and the window. “I still say this is tantamount to stalking.”

“Stalking? Please. All the man has to do is shut his curtains,” Sydney muttered around a chicken wing.

“I think he likes the attention,” Hailey offered. Hell, she looked forward to rushing through Friday night traffic to join Faith and the others for their own private show.

“Besides, do you know how much it costs to rent a stripper these days? And I mean a good one, one who doesn’t stuff his Jockeys and who isn’t gay?”

Beth nodded. “Seventy-five an hour.” They stared at her, and she shrugged. “What?

My sister just turned forty, and she’s been divorced twice. I bought her some quality fun, so sue me.”

“The point is,” Hailey continued, grabbing a pretzel, “that most normal people don’t wander around their house naked with the lights on at night unless their drapes are closed. Hell, I live next door to Ethel and Gertrude—”

“Janice and Roberta,” Sydney corrected.“—the pie ladies, and I still close my blinds before I hop into the shower or wander around the house in my undies.”

“But you’re a prude.” Amy shrugged.

“I am not.” Hailey took offense, hearing the truth she wished was anything but. She wanted to say something vulgar for the sheer hell of it, to prove to Amy how much of a prude she was not, when Mr. Tool stood and stretched, distracting her. “Come on, baby, give us a show tonight.”

Faith sighed, and the women crowded noticeably closer to the window.

“I think he looks tired, don’t you?” Sydney asked. “I mean, imagine lugging nail guns and drywall around all day long in the summer heat. He’s got to be beat.”

“Yeah, but look at how toned he is from all that work.” Hailey stared with admiration at the man who haunted her dreams. “So have we found out who Mr. Tool is yet?”

“I kind of like Mr. Tool.” Amy laughed.

“Gage something.” Faith popped the top of a soda can and slurped. “I finally bumped into him and knocked his mail to the ground. I didn’t see a ring on his finger.”

Beth snorted. “As if that means anything.”

“Yeah, but in the past three months, have you ever seen him with a woman at his place?” Hailey asked, waiting on a breath for the answer.

“No,” Faith said slowly. “And if I hadn’t seen him, ah, enjoying himself to a porn movie the other night, I might have thought him gay.”

Hailey sat up so suddenly she nearly kicked her chair out from under her. “What?”

she shrieked.

The man across the way paused as if he’d heard them, and they froze when he looked out his window.

Short black hair framed a masculine face full of sharp angles and jagged planes. His chin was firm, his nose strong and straight, and his lips, God, his lips were full and pink and prone to curl wickedly when he was amused. He wore a pair of jeans slung low on his hips and no shirt. The light in his place showed his hardy eight-pack dusted with black hair, and Hailey imagined that hair would feel as soft as down.

Damned if she wasn’t turned on just from looking at him. Of course, the memory of his naked body was enough to set her scorching. They called him Mr. Tool because he worked construction, but once they’d seen said tool, they’d kept the name in deference to his massive hammer.

She wanted to fan herself and eagerly watched him stretch and unsnap the top of his jeans. “Uh, Faith? You said something about seeing Gage the other night?”

“Last night I was getting ready for bed when I happened to glance over at his place,” Faith said primly. “Besides, Jeremy had gone home for the night and I was bored.”

Hailey bit her lip to refrain from commenting on how bored she’d be if she had to endure Dr. Jeremy Pichter’s tight ass too. The identical expressions on Sydney’s and Beth’s faces told her she wasn’t alone in that thought. The creep had made a play for her moments after he’d met her, but Faith had shrugged away his lechery by focusing on his money and his looks. Charm and decency, apparently, weren’t on her must-have list.

“What happened with Mr. Tool, I mean, ah, Gage?” Sydney asked.

“He turned on the TV, put in a tape, and then sat back on his couch to watch it.”

“You couldn’t have seen much,” Hailey objected, bothered Faith might have witnessed something from Gage that she hadn’t. Though it didn’t make sense, she thought of Gage as her own personal fantasy.

“Well, it was hard to see much more than his arm occasionally jerking. But I did see two women and a guy getting it on. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to put the ecstatic look on his face and the actors on his big screen getting their brains screwed out to make the connection.”

Hailey wanted to groan. Ever since they’d found Gage a few months ago, she wished she’d never moved out of the apartment complex. Despite her love for the little cottage she’d bought, the quiet and peace of the neighborhood could grow a little tedious.

Faith, however, had the ultimate party pad. Because of the way the trees stood between the wings of the apartment complex, her apartment and Gage’s faced one another at less than a hundred feet, but were blocked from neighbors by several mature, sturdy water oaks. And since Faith and Gage had corner spaces, the woods bordered them to the west.

“What I wouldn’t give to be his bar of soap,” Amy groaned and crunched on a chip.

Gage slowly removed his jeans and returned to the window. He opened it, showcasing bulging biceps— whooee, was it hot in here—and stared up at the night sky.

Bracing his forearms against the ledge, he leaned out, wearing nothing more than a pair of white boxer briefs that were unfortunately half-hidden by the low wall under his window.

Hailey’s heart wanted to pound out of her chest. He looked good enough to eat, and the image that thought produced made her want to bang on his door and ride him long into the sunset. Holy hell, did she need to get laid.

“I think I’m going to faint,” Sydney murmured and chuckled when Hailey elbowed her in the side. “Oh, what, Ms. Priss thinks she’s claimed our Gage? Honey, do you even know how to spell the word penis?”

Her friends laughed, and she felt herself blush. Was it her fault she’d developed early, earning too much teasing from boys her age and those much older? No wonder she was shy. She knew why she didn’t like to call attention to herself, but she didn’t quite know how to get over it. If she had even half of Sydney’s confidence, she’d march over to Gage and wrap herself around him like a piece of duct tape.

Duct tape. She mentally grimaced. No wonder she was still single. She should have used a word like candy, Saran Wrap, hell, even sticky tape was more romantic than—

“Oh my God, Hailey. He’s looking right at us!”

Faith and the girls shrieked and dove for cover when a flashlight suddenly passed over the window. Hailey, however, had been too caught up in her fantasy to react in time.

She finally managed to fly off the chair to the floor without crushing Beth, and prayed the glare of light on glass protected her identity.

“Shit! He knows I live here.” Faith panted, then she cursed again. “He’s putting his pants back on. Hell, I think he’s leaving his apartment!”

A mad rush for the door left Hailey and Sydney standing together blinking at one another. They turned and watched as Gage left his place with the door open, only to return a moment later with a newspaper.

“I didn’t know Faith had that much speed in her,” Hailey said stupidly.

“I know. And Beth and Amy were hard on her tail.”

They stared at each other. Then Hailey grinned, prodding Sydney to smile. The sheer absurdity of the moment hit them, and bales of laughter erupted.

“You should have seen your face!” Sydney cried.

“Mine? What about yours!” Her eyes teared, and she clutched her stomach. “As if he could see through the glass at night. And do you think a man who looks like that would really care about a couple of harmless peepers like us, anyway?”

Sydney laughed. “This definitely calls for some wine.” She checked Faith’s cabinets and frowned. “She’s out. How about you round us up some booze while I call the others back? The least we can do since Gage isn’t putting on a show is watch some reruns of Sex and the City.”

“Or anything with Russell Crowe or Hugh Jackman in it.” Hailey chuckled and grabbed her keys. “I’ll be back in a jiffy. And tell Beth she owes me one for not landing on her face when I flew off the chair.”

Still laughing under her breath, she left Faith’s at a much more sedate pace. If anything, tonight’s incident taught her she needed to get a social life, one that included a man. Sighing, she wished, for just a moment, that she could have Gage all to herself.

“Hell, what would I do with him?” She rolled her eyes and tightened her hand on her keys. She’d had sex, even knew the finer points to good sex. But she’d never had killer, to-die-for sex. And with a man like Gage, it couldn’t be any other kind.

Sex with Gage? Yeah, right, her conscience reasserted, bringing her back to reality.

A sudden memory from work made her frown, and she stared down at the keys in her hand unseeingly. Earlier this morning she’d accidentally overheard two of her male coworkers and been mortified to find herself the object of their discussion.

“Come on, Hal. You know she’s the best-looking woman in here.”

“Shit, yes. I’m married, I’m not blind.”

Eddie Flynn had chuckled. “Those tits are killer. Her legs, her ass. Yeah, she’s definitely the one I’d do. But only if I could put a bag over her face.”

Hal had sounded surprised. “But why? She’s pretty enough.”

“Sure, but have you ever looked into her eyes? That’s one frigid bitch. And talking to Jennison is enough to make your dick shrivel up and never come out again.” They shared a chuckle. “So I figure if I don’t have to look at her face or hear her voice, I could do her until I couldn’t breathe any more. She’s that hot underneath that don’t-touch-me glare.”

Hailey had left the nearby coffee room quietly, her head down as she tried to calm her flaming face. Those bastards. After five years with the company, she still had to put up with such immature reactions from the people she worked with. Her first days at work had been hell, but after several months had passed and she hadn’t wrecked any marriages or slept with any coworkers, most of her peers had left her alone. She’d even made friends with Amy and Beth.

But, just like that, a few condescending snickers from the new guys in sales, and she felt all of thirteen again. A young girl on the verge of womanhood, unfortunately toppling into maturity with a body built for sex. Men wanted her, and women mostly disliked her, threatened by her appeal. Hailey snorted. If only they realized she was all show and no action.

The few men she’d dated over the years had complained of her tension whenever sex was involved. And her one serious boyfriend, the lover she’d broken up with a year ago, had left her for another woman, claiming Hailey had too many issues regarding their intimacy together. Apparently, that made it okay to boink his next-door neighbor.

Just thinking about Jerry the Worm made her see red. She’d really thought he might be The One. After so much time doubting herself, she’d found a man to love her for herself, or so she’d thought at the time. She ought to face facts. She didn’t have what it took to hold onto a man, and especially not a man other women would drool over.

An image of Gage made her frown, depression weighing her down. He was great to look at, and a hell of a man to dream about. If only dreams could come true. What the hell would she say if she ever met him face to face?

Hi, I’ve seen you naked. You’re gorgeous, perfect, and the man I masturbate to nightly. But I’m too nervous about my own body to share it with you. Thanks for playing?

Sighing, Hailey had just lifted the handle to the car door when a large hand covered hers, scaring her speechless. Turning her in his arms, her dream man asked in a deep, husky voice as smooth as molasses, “Where are you off to so soon, honey? You’re going to miss the best part of the show.”