Sighing through his nose, he shook his head to clear it. With one hand, he felt the key in his pocket and his stomach tightened into a hard ball of apprehension. What if he actually went into the Orion Hotel, took the elevator to the third floor, rapped hard on the door, and it was opened by a withered old woman without teeth? What if the damned door was opened by a man? A queer dressed up as a hooker? Oh, Jesus! What if this whole arrangement was a setup, the result of Jason’s twisted sense of humor?

He gritted his teeth and glanced behind him as he reached the Orion. No one seemed to have followed him and no one other than Jason would guess that he was here. Somehow he found strength in his anonymity as he lingered on the steps of the high-rise that jutted upward, washed by floodlights, white concrete slicing into a sky as black as obsidian.

Hesitating a fraction of a second, Zachary locked his jaw, squared his shoulders, threw open the hotel’s front door, and decided it was time he became a man.

3

The hotel corridor was empty, a long hallway of gold shag carpeting and metal doors painted to look like wood. The Orion had none of the charm of the Hotel Danvers, but Zach didn’t care. Swallowing back the urge to turn tail and run, Zachary let the stairwell door bang shut behind him and walked, heart knocking, toward room 307. To Sophia. His destiny.

Before he lost his already-faltering courage, he rapped sharply on the door and waited.

“It’s open,” a cool, feminine voice called through the metal.

Oh, Christ! Zach’s heart nearly stopped. He reached for the knob with clammy fingers and threw open the door.

The woman was lying with her back to him. Sprawled sensually across the bed, wearing only a black bra and a lacy black belt with long garters that dangled over a scanty pair of panties, she stretched. Zach could see the dimples above her smooth rump and long thighs and his mouth turned to sand. “You’re late,” she reprimanded gently.