Fave Stranger Scenario...decisions decisions!

Great Moments from last night's reading
Book: Stranger by Megan Hart
Page: 150
Spoiler level: Low

Is there a bad Megan Hart Spice book? No, don't answer that--I won't believe it if you say there is!  I am devouring Stranger right now. The basic plot is simple: Grace, the heroine, pays male prostitutes to pick her up in bars or come to hotel rooms and enact little fantasy scenarios she cooks up. She's a funeral director with issues.

I'm trying to think of my favorite scenario so far for this post...I loved them all, but I guess it comes down to either this one about the pizza delivery guy, and the stranger in the bar.

Yes, after much deliberation, I have decided I like the pizza delivery one best so far. He comes to her hotel room with the pizza and demands that she pay up. But I don't have any money! she protests. Then I guess we'll have to think of something else, he says.

"If you think--" I started, intending but unable to sound angry. My voice shook just a little, and I had to stop to swallow against my dry throat.

"Turn around. Put your hands on the table."

I did, one on each side of the pizza box, still warm and smelling of cheese and sauce. I didn't dare turn, not even to glance over my shoulder. I closed my eyes so I didn't have to watch my fingers clutch against the sleek laminate of the hotel table, and I waited, every muscle tense and atremble, for him to touch me.

He didn't. Not as soon as I'd thought he would, and the waiting became torture.

I sometimes think Megan Hart's special genius is in hooking into female fantasies in a precise and honest way. But it's also in getting the little details right that make it all feel very real life. Like the laminate table and the smell of pizza. Or afterwards, she and this rentboy, as she calls them, Jack, laugh about his having borrowed the delivery uniform from his friend and how mad this friend would be if he knew how Jack used it. And she compliments him on the nice touch of actually bringing the pizza. And then they eat it.

I also totally enjoyed realizing who Jack is from Dirty, and the reappearance of other characters from that book, and frankly, the fact that the heroine has sex with other guys even after she meets the hero. I never really liked that rule. But I sure like this book!