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young.”
    “In years maybe,” she said. “Not in experience. Age is relative. It’s a number. We’ve already had this conversation. A couple of times.”
    They had and Seth had admitted that Kerri was far from a typical twenty-year-old. She was as experienced as he had been at twenty-five or twenty-six. And if he hadn’t known better, he wouldn’t have guessed her a day under that. “Do you like eggs?” he asked.
    “If they’re scrambled,” she said, “but I don’t usually eat breakfast. Just the coffee is fine, which by the way, is incredible.”
    “I’m glad you like you it. Humor me on breakfast,” he said. “I never get to cook for anyone. So you like scrambled eggs. How about pancakes?”
    “Pancakes are good. Can I help?”
    “Nope. Relax. Let me serve you.”
    “My, my, Mr. Hardy, aren’t you the perfect host?” She lifted her shirt in the back and twisted around to study her behind. “I have red marks all over my butt.”
    “That would be the Persian rug,” Seth said, covering the counter with bowls and utensils. He pointed to her legs. “Got them on your knees too.”
    She looked down. “Holy hell. We were bad.”
    “Yes, we were. All over Dr. Jarrell’s rug. He’s very proud of that rug. I hope we didn’t leave it any worse for wear.”
    “So what’s the deal with him again?” Kerri said, pulling up a bar stool. She sat crossed-legged on it and nestled the mug of coffee in both hands.
    “He’s a professor at Northeast. On sabbatical for the year. In Germany, I think. His wife passed away; kids are all grown. They couldn’t offer me much money, but when Dr. Jarrell threw in his house for the price of utilities, I jumped on it. It’s a win-win. He gets someone to take care of his house while he’s gone and I get,” Seth gestured grandly, “all this.”
    “Not bad,” she said, taking in the cherry cupboards and granite counters.
    “I’ll show you the rooms we didn’t defile after breakfast.”
    “Defile?” she said. “You mean christen .”
    “Yeah. That’s what I meant to say.” He added food from the pantry and refrigerator to the bowls and utensils on the counter. He turned then to see her studying him. “What?”
    She narrowed her eyes. “Why would a man leave the City of Angels for…the Mistake by the Lake? It has to have something to do with a woman. Right?”
    “It had to do with a lot of things.”
    “So tell me the story.”
    “For an artist, Los Angeles is a big, sexy city and pure heaven if you know the right people and get the right breaks. Otherwise, it’s being trapped on a stair climber…in hell.”
    “Sounds a little overly dramatic, Professor.”
    “That too,” Seth said, pouring a cup of milk into a stainless steel bowl. “Anyway, L.A. had lost its shine for me about the same time my publisher told me that a community college in Ohio had begun using my novel in their classes and wanted to know if I’d consider being a guest instructor for a year. And here I am.”
    “That’s not a story. That’s a synopsis. I want the story. And don’t even think about leaving out the woman part.”
    “No, no. A gentleman does not—”
    “A gentleman?”
    “That’s right. A gentleman does not talk about another woman to the one he’d spent the night making love to.”
    “Ooo, making love? I thought we were fucking.”
    “The two have been known to overlap.”
    “Uh-huh. Quit stalling and tell me the story.”
    He picked up the spatula and said, “Do you need a spanking before breakfast?”
    “I always need a spanking. I’m a very bad girl.”
    “There’s little doubt about that,” he said and told her how he’d moved to Los Angeles after being hired by an independent film company to adapt The Fourth Option into a movie. The company went bankrupt before shooting started and he saw only a tiny fraction of the money he was owed for months of hard work. “I’ve always believed that things happen for a reason,” he told Kerri, hugging