Free Calling His Bluff by Amy Jo Cousins

In his first true
     act of courage, J.D., who still considered the sight of blood a personal affront and
     a deliberate attempt to make him nauseous, stabbed his index finger with a distressingly
     dull penknife when he was ten years old to become blood brothers with his best friend,
     Christopher Robin Tyler.
    He’d made Tyler confess to his real name before agreeing to the bloodletting. It seemed
     a fair bargain and was useful for a lifetime’s worth of blackmail material. Tyler
     was his best friend, his brother. But when J.D. had been angry and frustrated at the
     world, as only a young man can be, he would wander the Tyler household, looking for
     the quiet slim girl with long dark hair, hoping to round a corner of the staircase
     and find her sitting on the steps with a hardcover book in her lap. She was always
     so focused that he could take a dozen pictures of her before she noticed him. Then
     she’d look up with an open smile and a ready
hello
and invite him to sit down next to her. Sometimes she’d tell him about what she was
     reading, but more often she’d just dig into one of her pockets, pull out a piece of
     cherry licorice and pass it to him. She would read next to him while he chewed, and
     J.D. remembered it feeling like he’d managed to call a big time-out on the world.
    Sarah was his peaceful place to rest before heading back out into the loud, mad craziness
     of life. Sooner or later a shout would reach him—Tyler calling for him, maybe—and
     he’d jump up and run off, half the time forgetting to say goodbye to his quiet companion.
    But this Sarah…
    When she shut her hotel room door in his face with a chipper, “Later!” it was only
     the presence of the other hotel guests in the hallway that kept him from using one
     of half a dozen Italian gestures he knew that meant “Piss off!” at the door.
    The fact that manners required him to return in an hour to escort Sarah down to the
     casino floor, where he would swiftly park her at the heady excitement of the quarter
     slots, was nothing but a further example of the poor judgment call he’d made by extending
     this invitation.
    But he grinned as he grabbed the do-not-disturb sign off her neighbor’s door, flipping
     it so that Sarah’s room now requested “Service, Please.” If there was any justice
     in the world, someone would walk in on her in the shower. That would be payback, barely,
     for listening to her nonstop chatter all the way here from the airport.
    Or, even better, maybe she’d walk out of the bathroom naked, with just a towel wrapped
     around the masses of her wet, dark hair, and then when she saw someone in the room,
     she’d give a little scream and press a hand to her breastbone before whipping the
     towel off her head…
    Jesus, what was the matter with him?
    Why the hell was he picturing himself standing at the foot of her bed, watching as
     she realized who was staring at her so intensely?
    J.D. shook his head sharply and strolled down the hall toward his own room. Too much
     celibacy after all those weeks in the hospital and his past month of house arrest
     in Chicago, mixed with the close proximity of a decent-looking woman, even one as
     overbearing as Sarah Tyler, was messing with his brain. He needed to end the dry spell,
     clearly.
    And he knew just who to call.
    * * *
    “Holy hell.”
    He wondered if he’d hear the thump of his brains hitting the floor behind him after
     they finished falling out of his skull.
    Red.
    Fire-engine, flaming-hot, the-devil’s-come-to-call red.
    A woman who could not possibly be Sarah Bearah had her back to him as she tugged Sarah’s
     hotel room door shut, tucking the keycard into a miniscule beaded bag that looked
     like it would be hard-pressed to hold a lipstick and a condom, much less anything
     else.
    The trailing ends of a halter-top dress skimmed between ivory shoulder blades before
     brushing gently against the small of a bare back. Half a moment after the dress