Excerpt of Dirty Dining by Em Lynley

Chapter ONE

“YOU EVER do any modeling?” The guy came up to Jeremy Linden in the gym locker room while Jeremy was drying off after his shower. Jeremy had noticed him checking out a few other men in the weight room and even at the pool while Jeremy was taking a breather from laps.

“I’m not interested in whatever it is you’re offering.” Jeremy had heard these kinds of offers before. Friends had taken the bait, and it never ended well. No way he’d fall for the scam. It was never just “modeling.”

“You could make some easy dough.”

“I don’t need easy dough.” Jeremy opened his locker, but he didn’t want to take the towel off in front of this guy.

“Sure you do. I’ve seen your car. Someone smashed into the side of it and you haven’t fixed it yet.”

“Too busy,” Jeremy lied. Truth was he used the insurance money for bills, but he’d never admit as much to this guy.

“Don’t you want to know what the job is?”

“No.” Jeremy didn’t have time to waste. He grabbed his boxers from the locker, turned away from the guy, and bent down to step into them.

“That’s all you’d have to do. Just take off your clothes and let people look at you.”

“I don’t strip. No thanks. Emphasis on the ‘no.’”

“Three hundred bucks for about two hours’ work, just to take off your clothes. Not stripping. You just remove one piece at a time. Five hundred if you let someone else take your clothes off for you. No other touching or funny business, unless you want. And that would pay extra.”

“Get out of here before I call the front desk.”

The guy held up his hands and backed out of Jeremy’s personal space. “Sure thing. Sorry.” He slid a hand into his jacket, and Jeremy braced for him to pull out some kind of weapon. All he had was a business card. “I’ll leave this, and if you change your mind, call me. The job’s on Friday night.” He put the card on the bench and left.

Jeremy finished dressing quickly before the guy came back or followed someone else in from the gym. He was slinging his backpack over his shoulder when he glanced down at the card. More out of curiosity than anything else, he picked it up.

Thomas Jerrold

The Dinner Club

415-555-1087

He flipped it over, but the back was blank. Just a simple white card with raised black printing. For some reason the simplicity intrigued Jeremy more than anything the guy had said to him, so instead of tossing it, he jammed it into his pocket and headed out. He tossed the pack into the passenger side of his car, then walked around to look at the damage: the whole right side of the car was scraped and dented from someone opening their door as he drove by. He sure would like to get the damage repaired. He could already see a tiny telltale spot of oxidation, and even though the brutal Northern California rainy season was at least a month or so away, the exposed metal under the scraped paint would certainly begin to rust before he could afford to fix it.

Maybe he could get more hours at the tutoring center. He’d ask about it tonight when he went to work.

BUT THE center didn’t have any more students for him. They had plenty of kids who needed math or writing tutors, but he only did biology and chemistry. He met with his one scheduled pupil, then went home to the apartment he shared with Doug, another grad student at Cal.

Jeremy was starting the fifth year of a PhD in molecular biology, with a specialization in immunology. While other students in his department had a free ride thanks to government and NIH grants, Jeremy’s cutting edge research had won him a coveted fellowship from PharmaTek, a Silicon Valley biotech start-up working on an HIV vaccine. Jeremy’s work on VLP—virus-like particles—was potentially revolutionary and would help to bring their product to the testing phase and then to market more quickly than other approaches.

He was proud to be part of such an important project. While the funding covered his fees and a generous research budget, his personal stipend barely covered the basics in the expensive Bay Area. There wasn’t a spare dollar for the unexpected, like a car accident.

Well, he could just ignore the car. As he stared at it before going inside his apartment building, he thought he could see the rust spot growing before his eyes. Maybe he should just sell the damn thing and use his bike to get around. He’d long passed the point where he could ask his family for money. At twenty-seven he was supposed to be self-sufficient. He could try to get a loan from the university, or… he dug his hand into the front pocket of his jeans and pulled out the little white business card.

Three hundred bucks just to take his clothes off? A couple of hours of being naked didn’t really seem so bad. He was in good shape. He cycled and swam. He’d even done a triathlon before his research ate into his training time. Nothing wrong in just checking out this Dinner Club. He was staring at the card when Doug, his roommate, came through the front door with a pizza.

“Leftovers, want some?”

Doug worked at one of the best pizza places in town, and even their leftovers were better than fresh pizza from almost anywhere else.

“Sure.” For the next thirty minutes, Jeremy forgot about Thomas from the Dinner Club and concentrated on double-crust pizza with chicken, tangy tomato sauce, and marinated artichoke hearts. And they shared a few beers. By then Jeremy had already started working on his reading for class the following day and didn’t have time to google the Dinner Club. He’d research it tomorrow.