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Part 1
Into the Night
Chapter 1
Shemadeagrandshow of coming through the main entrance, where everyone in the lounge was sure to see her. Mitch hadn’t spent an hour getting ready for nothing. Especially when she wasn’t supposed to be Mitch tonight. She was Michelle, the hyper-feminine persona she adopted on nights when only one thing mattered.
Although she liked the way these strangers looked at her, too. Men took notice because she was the idealized version of a woman they used to know. Other women either wondered where she got her indestructible fishnets or fantasized about getting to know her better. Those who straddled the line between masculine and feminine, like Mitch, knew what she was.
A whole lot of trouble. Assuming they got too close.
Mitch wasn’t out to hurt anybody, but she also wasn’t interested in what the dirty denizens of the high-end lounge wanted with her. She only had one person in mind that night, and she wasn’t about to miss her chance to have another thrill of a lifetime.
She sat at the bar. Beside her, a Bay Area financier ordered a double while his sugar baby hung on his every word about his favorite hockey team. Behind her, two men with their suit jackets over their shoulders jeered one another to approach her. Mitch patiently waited for the bartender to have a moment before ordering a dry martini.
Mitch surveyed the room. It was what she expected, in terms of expensive clientele and the kind of top-shelf drinks they imbibed, but the woman she was to meet that night had yet to enter. Mitch checked her phone photos once more. A selfie of a woman in a black cocktail dress and heavy eyeliner looked back at her. No, the woman was not in the lounge that was barely big enough to hold the fifteen people in there.
Mitch hadn’t been out of the house for long. Granted, she didn’t make a habit of coming out to the Financial District by herself, but there were reasons to put on her clingiest dress, fishnets, and her favorite short wig with red highlights. When she meticulously applied enough makeup to put Sephora out of business, she no longer recognized herself. That was the point. Mitch desired to disappear into “Michelle” so far that she became a different kind of confident woman. By day, she was the ex-Marine in jeans and T-shirts and donning a permanent scowl. By the occasional night? Not even her mother knew who she looked at.
“Now, what’s a lovely woman like you doing here by herself? Waiting for someone?”
A man in his 40s asked that the moment Mitch received her drink. She intended to ignore him, but he sat on the stool next to hers, a curious look bringing down the mood of the room. Mitch had no choice unless she wanted to get the bartender involved – and that killed the mood.
“No one in particular,” she lied.
The man, who smelled of a cheaper aftershave than the financiers and software executives, leaned in closer. Mitch almost gagged. “Perhaps you were waiting for me, then?”
This was not the first time this had happened. Whenever Mitch joined the public as Michelle, she discovered that most men in a three-piece suit were brazen enough to not only ask her out on a date – but how much it would cost them. Often, she told them “too much,” and the ones to take her up on her offer soon received the coldest shoulder to ever slap them across the face. Mitch did not have time for the men who wanted her to be their new one-night fling or, even more embarrassing, sugar baby. She had someone, anyway.
That someone looked nothing like the man with the receding hairline or the giant mole on the back of his left wrist.
“Like I said, I am waiting for no one in particular.”
Mitch surveyed the room once again. Still, the woman she waited for was not there, and she wasn’t about to describe her to a stranger with boundary issues.I could land him on the floor with my boot on the back of his neck in two seconds.Mitch could, too. She had incapacitated more men than most ever did in their lives.
She knew how to take care of herself, that was for sure.
“What’s your name, honey? I like to know all the girls who regularly come in here.”
Mitch provided the fake name she kept on standby. “Teresa.”
“That’s… a name you don’t hear often anymore.”
“I was named after my grandmother. It’s not special.”
“Aw, now see, you seem fairly special to me. You got a guy, Teresa?”
She already knew where he was going but was willing to indulge the man if it meant he was embarrassed in the coming minutes. “No. I can safely say that I do not.” Wouldn’t he be burned to discover that Mitch was quite attached to another woman? One who was taking her sweet time arriving at their rendezvous?
“Isn’t it my lucky day? Here I thought you’d shoot me down because your boyfriend or husband was about to meet you.”
The corner of her mouth twitched. “Not quite.”
“I see you got a drink. Would you like another? My treat.”
“I’m fantastic already, thanks.”
“I’d say suit yourself, but I’m quite insistent that I get you something. Let me spoil you, Teresa. If not a drink, then a bar snack. Are you hungry? Or… maybe…” Yes, here it came. “You’re after something else tonight?”
