Page 1 of Never Say Yes To A Stranger

Chapter one

Ignacia

Ignacia Sutherby may be my not-so-real name, but my legit toxic trait is that I let strangers sleep in my bed for money.

Hot bedding.

Okay, maybe it’s not that bad if people let me explain what the hell is hot bedding. I suppose I do it differently than most people, though. Yes, I’m careful. And no, nothing funky ever goes down. There are contracts and cameras for mutual protection. What’s more, all my clients are old, sweet, and harmless. How did it come to this? Well, a girl has needs.

Mine happen to be that I’d like to keep the run-down acreage I bought under a fake name when I fled the state and city from my scammer slash abusive ex and not lose it to the ravages of time. Time ravages are really a thing.

No one tells you that bugging out, getting a fake ID, going into hiding, and assuming a new life isn’t as fun as it sounds. You pretty much have to leave everything about yourself behind. For me, it meant taking a hiatus from my fairly lucrative, rising-star fashion design career and becoming someone who kind of lives on the prairie and sews prairie dresses. You know, those long boho-style ones that were so popular in the seventies? Cottagecore is actually a thing again.

I had to start from nothing all around, but in the past eight months, I’ve reinvented myself, though it came with a price tag. First of all, the acreage just about bankrupted me, but I did buy it in cash. Getting a fake ID isn’t cheap either, even when you know someone who knows someone who knows someone. Even without a mortgage, I have bills to pay, groceries and fabric to buy so I can eat and sew, and the constant upkeep of this place.

By upkeep, I mean I need to keep most of the buildings from falling down around me.

Luckily, the house is mostly cosmetic, but that’s not the case with the barn and shop. If I wanted to save them, something had to be done.

I didn’t have the money to hire anyone, so thatsomethingwas done byme.

I first heard the termhot beddingwhen I was driving around in my ancient station wagon, trying to hear the crackly radio above the roaring heater that was spewing out very little warm air while I drove on snow-covered back roads, heading into town to mail out a stack of finished orders. Yes, I’m good. Starting over sucks, but it didn’t take me long to get back into the roll of things. My work speaks for itself, I guess. Plus, granny dresses are hot, so hence the massive order stack I had to get out.

I would have been doing fine if I hadn’t walked into the barn to feed the two stray cats that kind of came with the place and noticed that the walls were…what’s the term? Cantilevering? I’m not sure if that’s right, but one was moving one way in, and the other was moving the other way in, so they were both bowing in the middle in ways they shouldn’t. I took some photos and joined an online forum, where some very nice people informedme that I was hooped—and hooped hard—unless I acted fast. Meaning I needed to pour a concrete floor and pin the cement grade beams in place by digging out all around them and making sure they couldn’t move once I straightened them out and realigned the walls with them using all sorts of jacking and blocking methods.

It sounded really scary, but I learned there isn’t anything I can’t do with enough muscle power, enough hours of shoveling, and the knowledge and will to get it done.

The one thing I didn’t have was twenty grand to pour a new floor and make sure the walls stopped moving. Doing it by hand with bags and a mixer wasn’t an option for a pour of that size, so the advice I got was to call a truck in. The pouring would be done by the truck, and the rest would be done by me.

When I realized I’d need a big chunk of money fast, and I needed to also do a hell of a bunch of research, I turned to the internet. The only thing I was willing to sell was my feet, but it didn’t work out. Everyone talks about making bank off their toes, but I got a whole lot of zero tractions from the websites I tried.

And then.

Inspiration.

Hot bedding.

It’s not a very big thing here in the US, but I think it’s why I’m able to make so much money so fast. There’s a fledgling website that is gaining traction, so I signed up.

I couldn’t believe rich men were willing to travel out here, into the middle of bum farge nowhere North Dakota, just to share the other half of my queen-sized bed for the night. Regular hot bedding is supposed to be where people rent out half of their bed or their whole bed for a night, and they take a shift sleeping in it with a stranger. No one shares the bed at the same time.But maybe I was desperate, or maybe I was just willing to go the extra mile. I wanted something that would set me apart.

Of course, I have some rules.

There’s no crossing the imaginary halfway line. Cameras are installed in the corners of my room for everyone’s safety and protection, and a contract is negotiated and signed before said visitor arrives. I have a fake age within five years listed on my profile—older, not younger—and my one stipulation is that anyone coming has to be over the age of sixty. I also don’t have a profile picture. Just a very honest physical description. It took me a while to get going, but then my clients were nice enough to rate me, and a few stars meant more regular work.

Though, I shouldn’t call it work. Jesus.

Long story short, I’m still saving up. I have the walls and grade beams pinned in place with a heck of a lot of wood supports and blocking. I have everything dug out, I have the holes drilled in all the cement, which I had to rent a crazy huge hammer and concrete drill bits to do, and I have most of the rebar in place. That all cost a hand and a foot because the dang barn is two thousand square feet, but my biggest expense is going to be the cement itself. I can’t mix up that much concrete, so I’m going to have to pay trucks to come and workers to do it because I’d mess it up and by working alone, there’s no way I could keep up before it set. If I’m spending all the money, I want it to look decent when I’m done. I want the barn to be saved, not me screwing it up at the last minute and finding out that I did something wrong and it’s entirely unfixable and all of it was just for nothing.

Anyway. I’m currently six thousand eight hundred and seventy-six dollars short of my main goal.

I’m exceptionally dedicated to getting this done so I can stop renting out the other half of my bed to strangers while I sleep on the other side because it’s weird, and if anyone found out I was doing it, it would be even weirder.But…I have standards.

And the one I don’t ever waver on, like EVER, is the over-sixty clause.

Which brings me to right now. The good old present and my present state of confusion and distress. Because I’m standing here at the front door, utterly dumbfounded.

This guy isn’t over sixty. I’d bet my left butt cheek that he’s not over freaking fourty-something.

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