Chapter One

Alexandria was a city that felt like a village. Nice restaurants, entertainment, and interesting places and people were just a few steps away. It was just a short subway ride away from D.C., and your next- door neighbor just might be someone you saw on the evening news. Denton Manning enjoyed all the amenities. He especially liked having to go only as far as his door for the morning paper.

“Wait, hold up.”

Denton slammed his door. It wasn’t fair having to deal with that woman before he drank his first cup of coffee or read the morning paper.

“Come on, Denton,” his neighbor Sadie Croft pleaded. “Don’t shut the door on me. Open up.”

Reluctantly, Denton opened his apartment door.

Moving with the grace of a dancer, Sadie wheeled her suitcase into the hallway and marched toward him, taking mini steps in her four-inch red stilettos.

“I have to leave town for a few days,” she said with desperate appeal. “Can you keep Lucky for me?

She won’t be a minute’s trouble.” Sadie snuggled her face against the golden pooch. Lucky yapped excitedly, and Sadie gave the froufrou Pomeranian a generous hug. Sometimes he wished he hadn’t given her that damn dog.

“Sorry. Not a good time,” Denton said. “I have too much going on.”

“You’ve got to. I can’t leave her with just anybody. She likes you.”

Is this woman serious? “It’s a dog, Sadie, not a toddler.”

“You don’t understand. Oh, my Lucky, Lucky. Mama’s going to miss you, darling.”

Denton scoffed. Sadie’s melodrama was getting on his nerves. She pressed her lips tightly together and thrust the dog at him.

“I have to go to work. The thing sheds. I can’t have fur on me.” He hopped back to keep tufts of gold fur from sticking to his dark suit slacks. “Don’t make me regret giving you this dog.”

“Please, Denton. You’re my only option.”

“I can’t, Sadie. Leave it in a kennel. There are plenty of good ones around here. You live right in the center of the doggie capital of the metro area.”

The horrified look on Sadie’s face was comical as she stammered, “I . . . I can’t do that. She might catch something, or another animal might attack her.” She gently pushed the mutt into his hands. It was either hold it or drop it. Denton held it at arm’s length, but Lucky still managed to stretch to lick his face.

“See, I told you she likes you.”

Forget this. “I’m not keeping this dog. I don’t have time to walk her day in and day out.”

“I wouldn’t ask you if I didn’t need you.” On the edge of panic, Sadie’s voice wobbled, her eyes flooded with dainty tears, and her red painted lips trembled.

“Save the acting for somebody else.”

“My mother is very ill. She needs me. I have to leave. Immediately.”

“Another lie, Sadie? You told me your mother was dead.”

The trembling stopped and tears disappeared. Denton smothered a smile.

“The woman raised me like a daughter. Same thing. Gotta go. Here.” She tossed him her apartment keys. “Water my plants, too, okay?”

“Sadie, are you in trouble?”

“No!” Sadie’s heels made tiny dents in the carpet as she strutted down the hall, her fur coat swaying as she grasped her suitcase and rolled it after her.

Denton glanced at the dog and charged toward her. “Wait up! If you need help, let me know.”

“I don’t.”

“Be careful, okay?”

Sadie nodded. “Get Lucky’s food at Reo’s Gourmet down the street.” She didn’t break her stride. “I’ll pay for the food before I leave. Quilla will be expecting you. Anything else you need, you can get it from my apartment. Don’t forget to give Lucky a treat after lunch and before bedtime. I left notes on the table.” She blew Lucky a kiss and in seconds she was out the door and headed to her car.

With heartbreaking brown eyes, Lucky stared wide-eyed at Denton.

“Listen, mutt. You chew one thing in my pad, you’re history.” With sudden inspiration, Denton unlocked Sadie’s door and lowered the dog to the floor. Giving a cursory glance at the instructions propped on the napkin holder, he left a bowl of water and shut the door after him. Let Lucky run wild in Sadie’s place, he thought. As it was, he’d have to run back at lunchtime to check on her. A treat before bedtime. Get real. Sadie catered to that dog more than most people catered to their spouses.

Suddenly Denton’s anger cooled. He couldn’t deny that Sadie was genuinely a good person, which was why it was so hard to turn her down. She went out of her way to be kind to all the tenants. Except for a few a saint couldn’t win over, practically everyone loved her.

And he had been an ogre.

Denton felt almost human as he settled down with his first cup of coffee. Just the aroma of it lightened his mood. From his chair, he watched the morning news on the large-screen TV while his coworker Jake Foster crunched on a bowl of Apple Cinnamon Cheerios. The picture on the tube was set against a twilight scene. Christmas lights draped the trees, and Colonial period storefronts gleamed in the background. The story must have been taped the night before.

Strings of twinkling lights blinked as a reporter interviewed holiday shoppers. Denton captured the remote and started to lower the volume so he could scan a report. Suddenly the image of Sadie flickered across the screen. What is she doing on TV?

Wind-whipped brown curls whirled about Sadie’s head, making her look younger than her thirty- five years.

Denton settled deeper into the cream-color leather couch and leaned forward to watch the show. He was an undercover Customs agent. So was Jake. As part of their investigation into illegally exporting unlicensed equipment by the president of Smitherton Corporation, they’d watched Sadie spin a web around several men. More than likely she’d do the same with the reporter. Sadie was an opportunist. Some of the men she dealt with had a totally different life from the one they presented to their families and the Alexandria, Virginia, social circle. He only hoped Sadie’s life wouldn’t catch up with her.

“Take a look at Sadie,” Jake said as he looked up from his bowl. “What’s she doing on TV?”

“Who knows?” Denton increased the volume.

Neon lights flashed REO’S GOURMET SHOP near the corner of King and St. Asaph streets. When a yapping dog emerged from the folds of Sadie’s fur coat, Denton barely recognized the Pomeranian, draped in a red-and-black plaid velour blanket and tucked securely in Sadie’s arms. The treat Sadie stuffed into the pooch’s mouth quieted the dog only for a few seconds.

“Sadie Croft has just sold a novel that features the life of a mistress,” the reporter said above the dog’s stringent barks. “How did you gather information, Sadie? Did you interview women in the trade?” she asked and thrust the microphone in Sadie’s face.

“Is she out of her mind?” Jake stared at the tube in wonder.

“Shhh...”

“Actually, it’s pure fiction. I’m writing a novel on the experiences of a protagonist who happens to be a mistress. As an apartment manager as well as a writer, I meet many interesting people. My novel is part imagination, mixed with actual events I gathered from my research.”

“I understand that you received a sizable advance, unlike most first-time authors,” the reporter continued.

Denton snorted. Sadie was probably writing about her own life.

“I received offers from three publishers. My agent and I finally settled with Bierdeau.” Sadie’s persona, winter-white dress, and black-pearl necklace deceptively pegged her as innocent and sweet, when actually she was defiant and smart, and she knew how to work a situation to her advantage. Denton knew from observing her. Lots of men knew better than he did—from a close-up perspective.

“Washington is certainly an area that’s rife with scandals. Did you write about any of them from personal experience? Could you give us a sample of what’s to come?”

Sadie offered the coy smile that was designed to drive a man’s blood pressure off the scale, one she must have refined from birth. “I mixed tiny bits of truth with fiction, as one tends to find in most novels.”

“Could you give us an example?”

“I took the perspective of women who serve wealthy clients. We get a look at the wives, the men, and the mistresses.”

“The public will be waiting for your book’s release. We’ll be happy to have you back.”

Gliding her fingers seductively through the dog’s thick fur, Sadie smiled brilliantly into the camera. “Thank you,” she said. “I’m looking forward to it.”

Denton wondered how many men got a turn-on from that motion.

Giving Sadie that dog had been an excellent idea, Denton thought. The froufrou dog suited her. She’d sunk so low into depression, sulked around the apartment building crying her eyes out after her other dog had died. She lived across the hall from Denton, and every evening after he got home from work before he could escape in his apartment, she’d catch him to pour out her misery. He was desperate. He would have paid anything, anything for some peace.

At least she and the dog had forged a meaningful relationship, he thought. Her relationship with her pet was real; the ones with men weren’t—except from the profit they generated.

The camera focused on the newscaster, who then reported on the string of burglaries around Alexandria before she began to interview people offering their dogs the treats the owner of Reo’s Gourmet Shop handed out.

Then she interviewed the owner of the shop, a pretty cinnamon-toned sister wearing black jeans and a red sweater. Denton sat up straighter in his chair. There was a freshness and energy about the woman, captivating him through the tube. Even though the woman and Sadie appeared to be about the same age, there was no real comparison between them. This woman would never give up her soul for the easy way out.