Free Hush by Amarinda Jones Page A

the exchange rate of the dollar and whether it was smart to travel when “you could lose money on a bad deal.”
    Eliza’s main concern was about making real her fantasy of having sex with a stranger. I want it. I need it. How the hell do I get it? Did you walk up to a man and just ask? Was there a look a woman was supposed to give? Damien was simple and predictable. Sex was scheduled for Tuesday and Thursday and occasionally Sunday if he had no report to finish. Not that it was Damien’s fault. She had always known he was grey, colorless and boring and she had latched on to him as a safe harbor, using him to save her from well-meaning and nosy friends who wondered why there was no man in her life. Damien, in essence, was her ‘beard’, the boyfriend who made her look normal.
    “Whatever that is,” Eliza snorted as she parked her rental car and took in the roadhouse before her. It was tacky and touristy and was exactly as the brochure pictured it. The theme was sand and sea.
    “And lots of pelicans, apparently.”
    There seemed to be at least ten stuffed pelicans, in various degrees of flight, tacked to the side of the Inn. But then, so far, Resort City, the supposed pearl in the oyster of Florida , as another described it, was not quite all it seemed. Sure, it was near the ocean. The information she had read had it sited on regenerated swampland. And, while there weren’t exactly the golden beaches of back home in Australia, there was a folksy charm to the wooden boardwalks and striped beach umbrellas that dotted what she could see of the shoreline.
    Once, it had been called Brownsville. That was before the founding fathers considered nearby Miami was taking too much of the tourist trade and they decided to try and equal the score at the turn of the century. They had. To a degree. Resort City was the budget conscious traveler’s destination when they weren’t quite able to afford the glitz of Miami but wanted more than just a motel swimming pool. And that was Eliza. She had some money but not a lot. This trip was more of a sexual odyssey than a photo opportunity. As corny as it sounded, she wanted to find herself.
    “Through sex.” Her mother would have had a heart attack if she had said that. But then her mother, to Eliza’s knowledge, only had sex once and that was to procure the obligatory child her husband wanted. “I so do not want to be like my mother.”
    Eliza got out of the car. The black cotton of her tailored trousers and shirt stuck to her skin. She always wore black. Her mother was always harping on to her it was slimming and “as you’re quite a big girl, Eliza, you need to hide some of that.” Why, Eliza was never quite sure. She was who she was, flab and all.
    But, like boring sex, she was out to change her wardrobe. She was tired of hiding.
    “Maybe I’ll buy something white and quintessentially tacky like a sequined halter neck top and white spandex mini skirt.” She smiled as she pictured herself squeezed into such an outfit. “And my hair. I may just chop it off or wear it out.” She had soft, shiny brown shoulder-length hair. She knew it was an asset, but still she bound it up into a tidy bunch on her head like the rest of her tidy world.
    “Well, from today, no more tidy careful Eliza.”
    She headed into the roadhouse. She needed water and the directions to the Busty Gladys Hotel. The name made her smile.
    This was no pre-packaged homogenous, well-known corporate hotel that catered to the boring. The Busty Gladys was reported to have “old world mariner charm with the sensual appeal of a buxom harlot welcoming you into her loving arms”. At least that’s what the brochure said and that was what sold it to Eliza. That and the photo of the carved, half naked, larger-than-life, tacky statue that looked like it would have adorned the bow of a ship.
    “I need charm and I need sensuality and especially sex.
    Dirty needy sex. Just how to get it.” She pushed open the door of the