Meanwhile, Back in Tampa, Fl. Toby’s apartment.

It was Shirley knocking on my door. My dick was knocking back. I stood in the shadow of my living room, ear cocked to her light tap tap tapping, and I prayed for a fire. Anything to keep me from opening the door. I was sitting on the corner of Rock and Hard Place and Shirley was the bus that I was about to step in front of.

The knocking didn’t subside, nor did it increase in it’s intensity. Shirley was rhythmic. She was patient. She knew I was standing on the other side of the door with a boner and a headache, and she knew I would answer. Eventually.

Okay. Fine. The dead bolt slid effortlessly back, and she was there, leaning on the door jamb, inches from me. Her dark hair looked messy and sexy, like she’d been caught in the wind and her chest was heaving up and down, those glorious mounds of hers. She looked pointedly in my good eye, down to my crotch and drug her eyes slowly back up to mine, licking her lips. Sonofabitch!

“Let me in, Toby?” She breathed the words, and I stepped back, shut the door behind her and adjusted my crotch when her back was turned.

“Toby, get real. I didn’t use you to watch the girls, I sent you on a mission.” She gave me a hard, blank stare. “Are you not **** getting this? Have you not figured out what’s going here, what’s at stake? Who’s ****’ running this show?” She plopped down on my sofa, stretched her legs, long and bare and tan, along the length of my worn sofa. “Did you not read the folders, Toby?” She sighed, laying her head back on the thread-bare arm of the couch.

I could almost hear her purring. Like a cat. Like a sexed-up cat stretched out on my couch.

“ What I know amounts to jack-****, Shirley. I know that I found an ad online for a job. I know that I needed the job. I know that your husband hired me with virtually no effort and left me equal amounts of instruction. I know that I was supposed to watch your house. I doubt if I was meant to go in, and furthermore I doubt if I was supposed to take my boss’ brats to the mall. I know that your laying on my couch right now like you own it, and I know that you know that I can see the **** lace on your panties right now, under your skirt.” My chest heaved up and down. One long leg slid up, opened and offered a golden view of the lace panties I’d had my good eye on since she taken up residence on my couch. In fact, my entire tirade was told to her crotch, and I was dying for a reply.

“You are under the wrong impression, Toby. I’m not married to Wright McClain. He’s my brother. You should not make assumptions, Toby darling. Not a good idea in this line of business.”

“Your not…?”

“No, I’m not.” She tapped the rock on her ring finger with a painted nail. “I am married though. My husband has been in Melbourne, Australia for some time now. I haven’t spoken to him in two years. A lonely two years. I don’t know if he’s dead or alive. I might as well be a widow.”

I stood stock-still, staring down at her. I was confused, perturbed, unnerved and desperate to top it all off. Despite the sensibilities that told me to demand answers from this broad, to get a grasp of just what kind of mass **** predicament I’d walked into, I still couldn’t get her panties off of my mind. Is this what women meant when they said that when it comes to men, only one head works at a time?

Shirley slid up to a sitting position, tossed her brown hair to the side, and pinned me with the most seductive look I ever had the pleasure of receiving, aside from that substitute teacher my senior year of high school. “I have things to tell you Toby. I need your help. Your protection. Are you ready for this? Are you going to man up for this job?”

No audible words could form and I offered only a primal grunt of desire. I pulled her up from her seat, pressing her to my chest and my crotch, crushing my mouth to hers. She tasted like vodka, my favorite.