by K. A. Tucker
His gaze rolls over the crowd again, never stopping on the stage as the dancer named Delyla peels off another layer. “Do they know about you dancing?”
I frown and shake my head. That sounds like the right answer. What parents would want to know their kid is doing this? Sam actually did know about my pole-dancing lessons. He didn’t seem to care about it. It worked well as a cover. I’d hand a small bag to one of the managers there once a week before class.
“Money is good, right?”
“Yeah, money’s good.” The money is really good. Between the bar and the stage, I’m bringing in several thousand a week. “Could be better, though. A guy just offered a grand for an hour. Isn’t that crazy?”
I catch the almost imperceptible tensing in Cain’s jaw. “Not surprising.” There’s a pause. “Are you upset with me for not putting you in there?”
I should say that I am, but my head is shaking before I can get the lie out. When his shoulders seem to sag in relief, I’m glad I told the truth.
“You’ve never worked a private room before, right?” He asks it so gently, and yet panic suddenly courses through me. Has he figured out that I lied about stripping in Vegas? Is he going to fire me? Is that why he’s out here, talking to me now? Ginger said it’s next to impossible to get fired from Penny’s, but she also said not to lie to him.
And all I’ve told him is lies.
Biting the inside of my mouth to keep my alarm from showing, I look out over the crowd as I decide how to answer. If he told me right now that I could work those rooms, could I?
I was alone in a room with Sal when it happened. He said it was standard to remove your pants for a search. Hiding my panic, I laughed in his face and told him I wasn’t new to this. Then I asked him if he demanded that of all the men who came to visit him, too. Sal flashed a wicked grin—complete with crooked, stained teeth—before gripping the back of my neck and slamming my body over the table, asking me if I wanted to go about this the easy way or the hard way.
I’m still not sure which way he went about it.
I remember holding my breath and watching the door, waiting for the other guy—the one I normally dealt with—to come back. He’d always been respectful to me, as far as drug dealers go. He wouldn’t allow this.
Sal didn’t rape me in the traditional sense, as surprising as that is, given everything else he did to me. Sometimes I still get flashes of his rough, callused hands as they delved into my body. When I didn’t react—not a sound, not a tear, even when I should have cried out from the pain—I guess he got bored. Like a cat batting around a mouse that doesn’t run. He called me a cold bitch and turned his back on me to check the delivery, giving me time to pull my pants back up. At the time, I was relieved that he let me go without taking full advantage. Most men would have.
It wasn’t until after I ran to my car, after I drove to the drop site, after I burst into tears in front of Sam, that the shock wore off and the worst part of it all hit. The part where I emptied my stomach of the vileness but didn’t feel purged. Where I stood under the scalding-hot water until my skin was raw but still could not feel clean. Where I put fresh clothing on and still felt naked. Where I curled up into a ball until the sleeping pills kicked in, only to wake up squeezing my thighs together, feeling like his dirty fingers had just been there.
The actual event with Sal, while horrendous and humiliating, lasted no more than thirty seconds. But the feeling of complete and utter filth lingered for weeks. “Charlie?” Cain’s voice calls breaks into my thoughts.
“I just can’t do it.” The truth slips out of me before I can control it, and I feel Cain’s eyes bore into the side of my face.
I’m surprised when a warm hand curls around my arm, the pad of his thumb running up and down my bicep affectionately. Turning, I find Cain’s normally expressionless face pinched with worry. “If you ever feel like you can do it, promise me you’ll come talk to me?”
I nod in response. I know without a doubt that Cain would certainly not make me feel vile. Cain would make me feel really, really good.
And now I’m pretty sure I know why Cain didn’t allow me to work the floors. Ginger was right. It isn’t about being overstaffed. He knows I haven’t worked one of those rooms and he’s doing his best to keep me away. To keep me safe.
I’m living a life where safety is a luxury, where the only family I have risks my well-being without thinking twice. Yet it took this man—a stranger—mere seconds to decide that he would protect me.
Beyond my frustrated physical feelings for Cain, I feel a pang of something new. Something unwanted. Something that Sam would never approve of.
It’s only amplified by Cain’s next words. “You know that you can come to me for anything at all, right, Charlie? I will help you however I can.”
Pursing my lips together, I nod as I struggle to wrap my mind around this version of Cain. This interaction is so different from any other that we’ve had. I’m forced to come to the conclusion that Cain just may be a truly good man.
A man who deserves a good woman.
The tightness in my chest tells me that woman is not me.
But whether I deserve his attention or not, the devil in me wants it. “How are you enjoying the show?” I ask, keeping my tone casual.
I catch the flash of surprise before he dips his head and chuckles, his hand sliding over that tattoo. His mouth opens and closes several times before glancing back up at me with a dangerous look, his tone having suddenly dropped by a few octaves. “It’s quite the game you’re playing, Charlie.”
I shouldn’t ask. I shouldn’t. Don’t ask. Don’t . . .
“And do you like playing it?” I’m surprised he even heard me, what with my voice as low as it is.
But he must have—that or he read my lips, where his focus is locked right now—because he steps in closer, until our chests are almost touching but aren’t. I hold the air in my lungs as he leans in toward my ear, his warm breath skating along my neck. “Yes, I do. Too much.”
I watch his retreating back as he turns around, unable to breathe for several long seconds as the butterflies thrash about in my stomach.
And I wonder if maybe there is also another side—a darker, less controlled, not so good side—to Cain, after all.
chapter seventeen
■ ■ ■
CAIN
“I thought you said you were staying away from her.”
I look up from my desk to see Nate’s dark form looming over me, his arms crossed over his chest.
Of all the ways I should have answered her question . . .
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Charlie.”
“It’s inappropriate.”
“Maybe you should interact more with the customers so you can make more money.”
But, no. I just kicked the door wide open and invited a mountain of trouble in because Charlie Rourke has swung a wrecking ball into my willpower.
Picking up a pen and tossing it, I groan. “She’s driving me fucking crazy! And yes!” I throw my hands up in the air. “I’m well aware that I keep going out there to let her do it.”
“Cain, you are a damn stubborn fool.” In front of others, Nate bites his tongue. But the club is closed and empty, and he won’t hold back now. It’s both annoying and refreshing.
With a snort, I mutter, “Tell me something I don’t know.”
He shifts his body off the desk so that he’s looming over me again. “I think you need to get out of this business.”
“Yeah . . .” My focus shifts to the stack of supply order forms on my desk, quickly dismissing him. I’ve heard it before. “Maybe I could get her off the stage and doing management. I’ll pay her well. It’ll be less distracting for me.”
There’s a pause, and then Nate’s hand finds its way to the bridge of his nose to squeeze it, as if he has a
sudden headache coming on. “Management, Cain? Those dancers will eat her alive.”
I shrug. “She’s quiet, but she’s not shy.” She sure as hell wasn’t tonight. He’s right, though. You need to have Ginger’s personality—loud, pushy, borderline insensitive—to not get walked all over around here. “Maybe I can get China to back her up. People defer to her,” I toss out without thinking.
Nate barks with laughter. “China’s going to help the woman you’re nailing?”
“I’m not—”
“Doesn’t matter. Everyone in this place thinks you are.”
I sigh. “Maybe taking Charlie off the stage will kill all that.”
“That won’t stop the rumors! It’ll only add fuel to the fire.” He shakes his head at me.
“Whatever.” I wave a dismissive hand. “I don’t give a fuck about gossip anymore. It’s been going on for years.” Only this gossip might become fact, the way things are going.
Nate makes his way toward the door. I don’t blame him for wanting to head home; it’s almost four a.m. But he suddenly stops. “Man, I’ve been through hell and back with you, Cain. I owe you everything. But I’m tired of watching you chase ghosts and punish yourself for shit you can’t change—shit that happened years ago and wasn’t your fault.
“Do you remember the night we opened this place? You sat in that chair, pissed out of your skull, watching an old surveillance video of Penny onstage, promising that if you ever met another girl like her, you’d do things differently. You wouldn’t sit back and make excuses. Hell, you said you’d walk away from this business in a heartbeat if you could just have another chance.”
I think back to that night. I remember wanting to shoot myself in the head the next morning after downing half a bottle of cognac. Then I remember seeing the frozen screen shot of Penny’s face on the monitor and wanting to down the other half of the bottle. But I sure as hell don’t remember saying any of that.
Nate doesn’t wait for my denial. “And here you are, doing the exact same thing with Charlie.”
“This is nothing like—”
“It’s the exact same thing!” Nate rarely raises his voice but, when he does, it reminds me that he’s not the scrawny little kid I knew back in South Central. “You knew you wanted Penny and you waited, giving excuse after excuse as to why you weren’t good enough, why she deserved better, why you’d be taking advantage of her. Playing a fucking martyr. And then you finally made a move, when she was on her way to the altar!” His voice suddenly quiets because he knows his words have already pummeled me and his next ones will kick me while I’m down. “And it was too late.”
The air hangs silent and heavy in the room. Nate has hit old wounds that closed over but never truly healed. I should have swept Penny off her feet the second she walked through my door. But I did what I thought was the “right thing” by staying back. I figured I’d wait. Wait until she got out of this business, until she was no longer working for me, and then maybe I’d tell her how I felt.
But a plumber named Roger beat me to it. He came along, showering her with flowers and romantic dinners, making her feel as special as I wanted to. As I should have. He proposed to her within four months. It was fast and unexpected and it hit me like a freight train but still, I held my resolve, convincing myself that he could give her a life I couldn’t. She deserved a white picket fence and a respectable father for her babies. I was a fucking strip club owner with a cargo plane’s worth of skeletons.
The night she came to me to tell me they had decided to elope the coming weekend and she wouldn’t be coming back to Penny’s, I panicked. I couldn’t deny it any longer—I was in love with her and I selfishly wanted her for myself.
So I spilled my guts. I dropped to my knees, my hands wrapped around her legs, begging her not to marry him, to stay with me, to give me a chance. I told her everything about me. Everything! It all just tumbled out.
She yelled at me for not telling her how I felt sooner, cried that she couldn’t do that to Roger, that he was good to her and it would wreck him. And then she completely broke down, spilling into my arms. We made love that night in my office, for the first and last time. She left with a “sorry.”
No one but Roger will ever know exactly what happened the next night. The video surveillance showed her working her last shift with a sad smile. Everyone assumed it was because she would miss the friends she had made. I couldn’t face her, and so I hid in my office like a coward, burying myself in paperwork.
Around midnight, the last cameras caught Penny and Roger in a whispered conversation. By the tears in her eyes and the repeated “I’m sorry” forming on her lips while she fumbled with her ring, as if trying to take it off, I have a good idea what they were talking about.
Why she decided to do it then, at the bar, I’ll never know.
I wish I had been out there. I wish Nate had been closer. I wish I had swept her off her feet in the first four seconds that she walked into my life. I wish a lot of things . . .
I wish I’d known that Roger had one hell of a temper.
“You’re scared, man,” Nate proclaims now with that penetrating stare fixed on me. “Make all the excuses you want—you’re plain scared of getting hurt again. That’s why you’re letting Charlie play this little game of hers, enjoying the view while not taking the leap. You think avoiding the conversation will somehow keep you safe. I’ve got news for you, Cain. You’re already hung up on that girl. You can’t focus on anything else when she’s in the building. It took me a whole ten seconds to grab your attention tonight and you were standing right beside me!”
I rub my hands over my face. I was watching Charlie and Ginger react to something Ben had said. I had never seen Charlie burst out laughing before, but tonight she did. I was desperate to know what was so funny, and bitter that it was Ben making her laugh like that and not me.
“But what if she doesn’t want anything to do with me?” Penny may have given herself to me that night and she may have been breaking off her engagement for me, but I saw the fear in her eyes when I laid out my past. The disgust. I wasn’t the kind of guy she was looking for. And I also saw the confusion because, despite her upcoming wedding, despite me not being the model citizen, she did feel something for me. Whether she wanted to or not. “Doesn’t Charlie deserve someone normal?”
“You mean like a nice, quiet plumber who will bash her brains into the ground?” His words stab me in the chest as he turns and slowly walks toward the door again. “Make it easier on everyone, including yourself, Cain. Tell Charlie whatever you feel you need to about yourself. Or don’t tell her anything about your past, because it’s the past and I don’t think it matters as much as you think it does. Either way, make a damn move. Make it now. ”
chapter eighteen
■ ■ ■
CHARLIE
“Charlie!” I hear Ginger’s voice yell out over my hair dryer.
“Yeah?” I yell back, turning to see her holding a phone out.
The new burner phone I picked up from the extended-stay hotel this morning.
Switching off my hair dryer, I smooth my expression as I take it from her. By the lit-up screen displaying “unknown caller,” someone has called and Ginger has answered.
I feel the blood drain from my face.
Oh no . . .
“It was ringing, so I got it,” Ginger explains, though by her drawn brow and hesitant tone, I think she’s wondering if maybe that was a mistake.
I’d love to tell her that she sure as hell shouldn’t have gone into my purse to answer it, but now is not the time. Swallowing the rising bubble of panic, I say, “Thanks, Ginger. I’ll be out in a second.”
She opens her mouth but then pauses as if in thought. She must have decided it’s better left unsaid. Spinning on her heels, she walks back over to my couch and dives into it.
I take a deep breath as
I pull the door almost shut but not quite—to ensure Ginger doesn’t scurry back over to press her ear up and eavesdrop. She’d be the type to do that. Holding the phone up to my ear, I say with a slight wobble in my voice, “Hello.”
“Hello, Little Mouse.” It’s the standard greeting, only there’s the tightness in Sam’s voice that I hear when he’s displeased with me. “Who is Ginger?”
Shit.
He knows her name.
That means they talked.
What did he say to her? What did she tell him? Does he know I have a job? That I’m working at a strip club? That I moved? My hand finds its way to clutch my throat and I can feel my racing pulse beneath my fingertips as I swallow once, twice, three times. Dammit, Ginger! In only minutes, she may have just unraveled my life, my plan!
Swallowing the crippling lump in my throat, I explain, “A friend.”
“A friend who answers this phone?”
“I was in the bathroom and she heard the ring.”
There’s an unnaturally long pause. That’s how Sam typically shows his irritation. Silence. I think he believes the mounting anxiety is more effective than yelling.
I think he’s right.
“Is your friend Ginger going to be answering your phone from now on?”
“No. Definitely not.”
There’s another long pause. “I told you to lay low down there. Making friends is not laying low.”
Okay, deep breaths. It doesn’t sound like she’s told him anything. “I’m sorry. It’s really nothing . . . she’s just a neighbor who comes over for coffee sometimes.”
“A neighbor who you let answer that phone?” My stomach muscles spasm as I peek out at Ginger, still stretched out on my couch, flipping through a magazine. “Do I need to come down there to check on you?”
I bite back the scream, keeping my teeth gritted until I can manage to get out in a relatively calm tone, “No. It’s all good.” He hasn’t been keeping tabs on me so far, from the sounds of it, and I sure as hell don’t want him to start now. The very idea of Sam infiltrating my little make-believe life causes me chest pains. I don’t need him coming down here. Finding out that I’ve moved.
