Overnight Male

Dear Reader,

I’d like to thank everyone for their patience while Overnight Male found its place in the schedule. I know from your e-mails how anxiously you’ve been waiting to see the book in print (as have I). I did have a very good time getting Lila and her experiences down on paper. And I think I fell in love with Joel right along with her. Here’s hoping you do, too.

Happy reading,

Elizabeth Bevarly

More delicious “special deliveries”from Elizabeth Bevarly and MIRA Books

EXPRESS MALE

YOU’VE GOT MALE

www.mirabooks.co.uk

For Wanda Ottewell,

who made every book better. Thanks.

Darkness had always been Lila Moreau’s best friend. Throughout her life she had used different kinds of darkness to aid her in different kinds of ways. As a child, she knew the darkness under a bed or in a closet could protect her from her mother’s hurtful words. As a teenager, she felt the shadows of the city could shelter her from people, especially men, who wanted more from her than she was willing to give. As an adult, she used her shady character to keep others from getting too close. But this, the darkness that came with nightfall, was Lila’s favorite. Nighttime was when all the best stuff happened. It was when the world—or at least her world—came to life.

“Hey, lady, ya got a hundred bucks to spare? I ain’t been laid all week, and it ain’t cheap in this part ’a town.”

Lila growled her exasperation at having her profound—and kind of cool and gothic, if she did say so herself—musings interrupted. Okay, so maybe some of the life in her world was more of the low variety than it was of the high. She knew how to deal.

She turned from where she stood on the corner of N Street and Potomac in Georgetown and glared at the lowest-of-all-life who had emerged from the shadows behind her. He was maybe half a foot taller than her own five-four and probably outweighed her by a 150 pounds. Since he was dressed in double-knit sans-a-belt trousers and a shiny polyester shirt that was stained under each arm with perspiration, and since he clearly hadn’t bathed in days—also considering the way he’d just greeted her—he was too poorly dressed and not articulate enough to be a pimp. So Lila concluded he must just be a big scumbag. This part of the nation’s capital didn’t usually attract people like him, since it drew such a large tourist and college crowd and was home to so many of the city’s movers and shakers. (Well, okay, maybe there were one or two scumbags. Not to mention pimps.) But neither was it unheard of to find someone in Georgetown who wasn’t exactly the cream of Washington society.

“Uh, I think you’re a little out of your element here, guy,” she said to the, ah, guy. “Bubba’s Booty Barn is in Cheverly. But good news. You can take the orange line straight there and you won’t have to switch trains at all. Metro station’s that way,” she added, pointing in the general direction of Foggy Bottom, and hoping he’d take the hint.

Of course he didn’t. That would have been too easy.

Instead the guy grinned and said, “On second thought, sweetheart, maybe I won’t need that hundred bucks. You look like the kinda woman who’d be up for just about anything.”

Actually, dressed as she was from head to toe in black, complete with knit cap and gloves, what Lila looked like was a woman who was about to break in to someone’s home. Of course, there was a good reason for that. She was about to break in to someone’s home. Nevertheless, she hated it when men just couldn’t get the gist of the most basic fashion statement. Duh.

Damn. She really didn’t need a distraction like this right now. She had her schedule tonight timed down to the last second. There wasn’t any available room in it at all for a maiming.

But she knew it would be unavoidable when the guy winked at her, nodded his head toward the alley she’d been about to enter, and asked, “Whaddaya say? Do a good job, sweetheart, and I’ll give ya back half of the hundred bucks you’re gonna gimme, too.”

She smiled at him. “Oh, gosh, just keep the whole hundred, big guy. I mean, I should pay you for the privilege, shouldn’t I? A great-looking, charismatic man like you? C’mon.”

His flabbergasted expression in response to her enthusiasm was almost worth the interruption he was causing her. Almost.

It was a testament to his stupidity that he followed Lila into the alley without a speck of hesitation or suspicion. It was a testament to her skill that she unmanned him in even less than her usual five seconds. Oh, he’d still be able to father children someday. Unfortunately. After he regained consciousness. And, you know, found a woman who had the IQ of a piece of lint.

Now, then. Where was she? Oh, yeah. Darkness had always been Lila’s best friend…blah blah blah…the darkness that came with nightfall was her favorite…blah blah blah…nighttime was when all the best stuff happened…blah blah blah…that was when Lila’s world came to life.

Got it.

Brushing off the last lingering remnants of disgust at having come into contact with Mr. Scumbag quite literally, Lila looked around and assessed her situation. The alley between two rows of sleepy town houses was deserted this time of night, save the occasional unconscious—and unmanned—scumbag, and silent save the soft sigh of a late spring breeze that nudged a stray piece of newspaper from one side of the narrow pathway to the other. She gazed up at an unlit window on the third floor of one of those town houses—the one through which she would momentarily be crawling—confident that the occupant was by now fast asleep.