When You Dance With The Devil (Dafina Contemporary Romance) by Gwynne Forster

acting strange ever since you started walking around here with your eyes in some book.”
    “Now, Percy, that’s not fair. You’ve got it all wrong. I don’t have anybody to talk to, so I read. And I always noticed you, but you didn’t expect me to walk up to you and tell you I thought you were nice, you know, start up a conversation, did you?”
    He shifted from one foot to the other. “Well, I guess not. When can we go out? I’m off Sunday through Tuesday.”
    Maybe she was making a mistake, but he looked like a man of experience, and since he was older, she surmised, he’d be grateful for a younger woman’s attention.
    Somehow, she didn’t anticipate the Sunday afternoon date with Percy with the same enthusiasm she had invested in Bob and Jim. Nevertheless, she put on her little gray and white seersucker suit and headed for the parking lot beside General Hospital three blocks south of the boardinghouse, where she had agreed to wait for him. When she passed Rhone Street, she could see the Assawoman Bay and the powerful turbulence of the Atlantic Ocean, and her thoughts drifted to Gregory Hicks and the one time he gave her swimming lessons. Maybe she shouldn’t have stood him up for Bob Tucker, but Bob had excited her in a way that she didn’t understand. A crazy, itchy kind of way.
    When she turned into Bay Avenue, she saw the red Hyundai at the entrance to the parking lot. Percy reached over, opened the door, and she got in and fastened her seat belt. She couldn’t help comparing him unfavorably with Gregory, who had always fastened her seat belt. And he’d never failed to get out of his car, walk around to the passenger’s door and open it for her, too.
    Percy handed her a pair of dark glasses. “Hi, babe. Put these on so people won’t recognize you. All anybody around here ever does is gossip.”
    “Thanks for being on time, Percy. I didn’t want to stand out here in the hot sun and get a sun stroke.”
    “I always look out for my women, babe.”
    He drove to the outskirts of Ocean Pines, turned off the highway and parked in front of a modest, two-story private house.
    “Don’t say nothing to nobody, babe. Just walk straight up the stairs.”
    A queasiness settled in her belly as she walked into the house. With the center stairs facing the door, she had no difficulty following Percy’s instruction. At the top of the stairs, her guess as to what he intended became a certainty. She didn’t like it, but consoled herself with the thought that he probably had plans to make their tryst memorable. After all, he’d said she was attractive. With that and her youth, you’d think he’d do everything he could to please her.
    He followed her up the stairs, opened a door, took her by the hand and walked into a very small bedroom.
    “This is a nice clean place, so you don’t have nothing to worry about,” he said, kicked off his shoes and began pulling off his clothes. She dropped herself into a chair and stared at him. Even with her limited experience, she knew this wasn’t right.
    He pulled off his boxer shorts, walked around to the other side of the bed, got in it and pulled the covers up to his neck. “Come on, babe. What you waiting for? I’m paying by the hour.”
    She dropped her pocketbook on the floor beside her chair and braced her hands on her knees. “I don’t feel right about this, Percy. In fact, I don’t feel a thing. This isn’t how I expected the afternoon would go.”
    He sat up in bed, dropping the covers and exposing his paunch. “What are you talking about? You wanna go spending a lot of money in bars and restaurants pretending what ain’t real, when all the while this is where you plan to end up? Come on, woman and get in this bed.”
    “I’m sorry. I guess prostitutes can do that, but I can’t.”
    “Well, if it’s a kiss you want, come over here and I’ll give it to you.”
    She shivered as if a cold draft had blown over her. Wouldn’t anybody ever understand how she