After Mick had sent the last of the revelers on their way, he’d opened all the windows and the patio doors, windmilling his arms in an attempt to disperse the smell of booze, drugs, and most importantly, the suffocating cling of the working girls’ perfume. Didn’t matter what perfume they used. Vanilla. Floral. Musk. To him, all hookers smelled the same. Smelled of home and claustrophobia. Made him feel sweaty, as if he might suddenly wake and find himself trapped in that old life again.

The place had been called Frank’s Chicken Ranch. When Mick was six, his grandpa turned up his toes, and his grandma Flo renamed it the Desert Rose Ranch. She’d sprung for a giant disco ball and some new carpet in the parlor. Drove into town and went wild at Michaels. Bought a shitload of vases, a glue gun, bedazzled the hell out of them. Stuck the vases all over the place, stuffed full of various arrangements of plastic flowers and greenery. Then she typed a new menu of services, the new prices reflecting the “upgrade in decor.” Didn’t matter how many vases his grandma wanted to bedazzle, the place would always be a bunch of double-wide trailers hoisted up on a concrete foundation out in the middle of the dusty Nevada desert.

Mick’s mom, Judy, had been gone more often than not. But when times were tough, she’d come scratching on the back door, needing food and a place to stay. She wasn’t a hooker, per se, but she wasn’t averse to spreading her legs if money was low. She had no idea who Mick’s father was. Or if she did, she wasn’t talking.

Mick tugged his mind back to the present. It was a waste of time and energy to wallow in the past. Running around dirty-faced and barefoot among the tumbleweeds attempting to avoid rattlesnakes of both the reptilian and human kind, with a constant hunger residing in his belly. That was a distant memory. A dream. He was grown now. Mick Talford. Auteur filmmaker, a creative force to be reckoned with and rich beyond his wildest dreams. The mere act of sitting behind his mahogany desk in his wood-paneled study made him feel better, back in control. He was dressed. Thank God. Peterson and Co. had been flushed out of his abode. He would now be able to properly focus and send the mock Mennonite on her merry way. Once that was accomplished, he was going to take a long, hot shower, go to bed, and sink into deep, blessed slumber.

He heard the front door open and shut, her footsteps, hesitant, in the hall. An unexpected feeling of anticipation coursed through him, a heightening of his senses. Weird. Must be lack of sleep muddling his thoughts.

“Mr. Talford?”