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that she looked a mess. She’d seen her post-club self gaping blearily back at her over the sink more than enough times to know the horror.
     
    Peeping over her shoulder, she saw that Hoosier was really out. The sheet slanted across his belly, and she paused for a moment and stared at that chest. The hair over it was black and not too heavy. Like Tom Selleck on Magnum P.I . Just right. A narrower swath ran down his belly, leaving the contours of his abdominal muscles totally exposed for lecherous ogling. Tattoos covered his arms, but his chest and belly were unmarked, except for a thick scar a couple of inches under his right nipple.
     
    He was sex on a plate.
     
    Shaking herself out of her lechery, Bibi eased carefully out of bed and grabbed her chenille robe off the back of the door—just in case Gina had come home and not alone.
     
    The coast was clear, though. The front rooms were empty, and Gina’s bedroom door was open. Bibi was alone with Hoosier. She went into the bathroom.
     
    After she peed and brushed her teeth, she picked up the pliers from the window sill under the painted-shut, frosted-glass window, and turned the broken hot-water knob on tub faucet.
     
    The claw-foot tub was ancient, the cast iron showing through an assortment of chips and cracks, flowering rust in all the faults. The shower was a jury-rigged contraption connected to the tub faucet, enclosed by two shower curtains suspended by a metal ring. The air pressure from the steam of the hot shower, or something like that, made the shower curtain pull inward and attach itself to the body inside.
     
    Showering was an exercise in overcoming claustrophobia. But after two years, Bibi was used to it. She waited while the pipes groaned and rattled, and then she finally got the water finessed to a bearable temperature—today, a little too much on the hot side, which was better than the occasional cold showers she got stuck with.
     
    Bibi stepped in, and by the time her hair was fully wet, the shower curtain was clinging emphatically to her legs. Far past the days when she fought fate, she ignored it and washed her face.
     
    She’d just gotten her hair fully shampooed when the shower curtain left her legs and instead billowed outward. The door had opened. With her hands in her hair, she froze. “Gina?”
     
    A deep, masculine chuckle. “No. Need to take a piss. That okay?”
     
    “Uh, yeah. Yeah. Go ‘head.” The door closed, and the shower curtain eased back inward.
     
    For a moment, she stood exactly as she was, shampoo oozing down her face. When it hit her eyes, she snapped out of it and turned, leaning her head backward so that the water ran over her face and down her hair.
     
    When she looked up and blinked her eyes clear, Hoosier was watching her. He’d opened the curtain a few inches.
     
    They stared at each other.
     
    Finally, Bibi felt naked and exposed—because she was—and she took hold of the curtain. “You need somethin’?”
     
    He smiled, and her insides fluttered. Cause and effect. “Yeah, I do. But first, not sure if I can flush without boiling you.”
     
    Oh, good point. If he’d flushed, she would have definitely been Bibi Thermidor. “No. Just put the lid down. Thanks.”
     
    He moved away, and she heard the lid drop onto the seat. Then he was back. “Can I join you?”
     
    She didn’t even bother to think about it. She simply nodded.
     
    In bed last night, as much of him as had touched her, she hadn’t gotten a good, clear look at all of him, and she hadn’t had much chance to touch him, either. He’d been in charge of everything they’d done. And that was good, because Bibi had figured out last night that there was a lot about sex she still didn’t know, no matter if she’d lost her virginity at sixteen.
     
    Now, as he stepped into the tub with her, she stared. And she felt like she could honestly say that, until last night, she’d never been with an honest-to-goodness man . A real man. He was