Auctioned

by Lulu Pratt

  “I’d love to tell you about the new show,” he chirped, tugging at his necktie, some kind of Hermès knockoff.

  He waited, as if for my cue. I gave a half-nod, which he took with glee.

  “We’ve just brought in an act from China. It’s very high concept, with lots of special effects and exciting music cues and big, like, art thoughts.”

  “And?”

  Jack appeared lost. “And what?”

  “There must be a reason they were booked here,” I snorted. “We don’t peddle in high concept and whatever ‘big art thoughts’ are. We’re low-down snake oil salesmen. So what’s the hook?”

  He sighed. “In between their many excellent acrobatic numbers, or stunts, whatever you call them… they also do some stripping.”

  Yup, there it was. If a pitch ever seems vague in Vegas, dig a little deeper and you will, without fail, find some nudity in there. I wasn’t offended by the nudity so much as the predictability.

  “Well, that’s nice,” I said finally, not able to muster up much more enthusiasm. As it stood, I was stifling yawns. “Jack, bud, you know I don’t care about the day-to-day operations of Dazzlers. I leave all that shit to you. So why am I hearing about strippers from China? The strippers could be from anywhere — Jakarta, the Netherlands, Portland. Not my problem, as long as they can shake some tit and keep the business afloat.”

  Through the thick mask of keen servitude, Jack twitched with annoyance. Well, that was something. At least he was still capable of having human reactions.

  I didn’t care for men like Jack, men who bent the knee and then went a step further, insisting that you step on their knee and use it as a vault to the next step, hoping that in the process, you’d take them with you. By extension, I didn’t care for Vegas. It was a town of bent knees, in every sense of the expression.

  This shit wasn’t my dream. That goes without saying, right? How many kids grow up, hoping that maybe one day, they can give booze hounds and lotto addicts a teat to suckle at? Not quite as noble as your run-of-the-mill firefighter or astronaut. Casino owners don’t help communities, or have bold ideas, or get fancy medals from the President. Casino owners make money and die rich.

  That’s what my dad did, anyways. He built Dazzlers, put his life blood into it, and then kicked the can, leaving one ungrateful son who he’d never cared about as anything other than an heir to the throne. Hi, hello, it’s me — the ungrateful son. Kinda suits me, no?

  Dazzlers was my father’s vision, and now I was stuck with the scraps. Yeah, I know, to complain about being born into wealth, and in this economy… it’s not charming, I get it. The good news is, I could not give a shit if you or anyone else likes me. I have enough money that societal approval no longer appeals. And that right there is how rich guys end up being assholes. We can do whatever we want, whenever we want, and if you don’t like us, we’ll buy someone who at least will say they like us.

  Not that all this self-awareness is gonna keep me from throwing my life down the drain or anything, but it must count for something. Hey, it kept me from developing some kind of early onset gambling addiction.

  When I was twelve, I rolled my first dice on a casino board, my dad standing behind me, eyeing the green as the plastic flipped and tumbled in the air. In a single toss, I won a cool one thousand dollars. People at the table grumbled that the owner’s son, besides being underaged, had the game rigged for him. Though of course, I knew I’d won that money fair and square. My father was a big believer in Lady Luck, and would never interfere with her locomotions.

  But that one roll had felt a little too good. It made my mouth water, gave me tingles along the back of my hands and through the knots of my shoulders. The dice bubbled in my stomach, releasing intoxicating fumes. My life flashed before me. Rather, not my life, but my father’s. And let’s just say, it was grim. I haven’t gambled since.

  Jack interrupted my acidic thoughts with the flap of a hand.

  “Whaddya say?”

  “To what?” I grumbled, peeved out of habit rather than for any definitive reason.

  “To coming to the strip— I mean, the acrobatic show?” Jack asked. “It would, uh, bolster morale. Be good for the team.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Did I give you the impression I care about the team?”

  My business manager bit his tongue, but I saw him clench a fist in the pocket of his lightweight linen pants. Good to know he wasn’t entirely devoid of fire.

  “It’ll help market the show, sir,” he said in a monotone. “If you show up, get a few pictures, do the rounds.”

  Ah, now that made sense. I was, technically speaking, the face of Dazzlers. I’d recently done a single photo shoot with some big magazine, and shortly thereafter, my picture was plastered around town with Dazzlers written in a glittery pink scroll across my chest. Overnight, I’d become a sex symbol. As a twenty-seven-year-old man, this isn’t the worst outcome, but it did have the negative side effect of making me synonymous with my casino, as though it was somehow my brainchild, and forcing me to do additional publicity for Dazzlers, once the public realized that I was conventionally attractive.

  The upshot was that it kept the investors happy. They saw me posing and preening, and interpreted it as me being committed to the cause. The cause, in this case, being their bank accounts. This was hilariously off base, of course — spend any time with me, and I think it becomes fairly apparent that I’m not ‘committed’ to shit — but there was no harm in letting the men have their fun. Besides, if my press kept them from looking too closely at my daily involvement with the casino, so be it.

  “Fine,” I agreed. “I’ll go to the show.”

  Jack heaved out a breath he’d been holding in for far too long.

  “Excellent, sir, we’ll be thrilled to have you in attendance.”

  We were maneuvering to a row of craps tables. Jack had resumed some speech about switching alcohol vendors while I tuned him out with ease. I looked into the crowd before me, trying to pick an individual and guess their story. It was a trick I’d learned as a kid, when my dad used to make me watch him play a round of poker, his specialty. While he played, my eyes would wander to Dazzlers patrons, and I’d make up whole worlds in my head for them. Vegas may be the average person’s fantasy, but my fantasy was just, well, average people.

  Today, I was met with nothing distinct, just a sea of khaki and sunburns.

  Except…

  There, in the corner, not more than five feet away, was a waitress bent over a table, cleaning something up. Normally, my eyes glazed over the wait staff — not because they’re dull, per se, but because in their uniform getups, they become one with the gilded décor.

  But this girl, she was something else. I couldn’t see her face, just hair draping over her shoulder and hanging down like a thick divider between her and the world. Her body was lovely, yes, but that wasn’t it, either. Maybe I was drawn to the determined set of her shoulders, the way they squared off. Though her face wasn’t visible, I could imagine her biting her lip in concentration as she worked at a particularly challenging stain.

  It was right about then that I saw her eyes dart to me, then return to her fellow waitress.

  In a voice I’m sure she thought was too low to be audible, she whispered to the other woman:

  “Don’t look now, but Mr. Evil Prick has arrived.”

  “Excuse me?” I said, loudly enough that other patrons eyeballed me with mild interest.

  The whispering waitress bolted up from the table, her tiny skirt flipping through the air.

  I was about to demand an apology when I got a good look at her face.

  Well, fuck.

  She was just about the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.

  Now what was I supposed to do?

  CHAPTER 3

  Kiki

  OLD GAMBLERS will tell you that there are days the cards are dealt in your favor, and days where they, pardon the language, “fuck your wife, fuck your kids, and kick your dog
.”

  My cards today appeared to be hemming to the latter.

  I twirled around, but before my body had even arced a one-eighty, I knew that standing behind me, glowering and pissed, would be the man himself — Tate, inheritor extraordinaire of Dazzlers, in all his unfair beauty.

  Sure enough, my character heels twisted in the carpet and I was brought face to face with him.

  And damn, was it a nice face.

  If I had to pin him somewhere on a sliding celebrity scale of appearance, I’d put Tate between Chris Evans and, mmm, maybe like a Zac Efron after he got buff for Baywatch or whatever.

  His features resolved before me. From across the floor, they’d been blurrily appealing, but up close, I knew they were the kind of collection that had broken many a heart. He had bright blue eyes beneath thick brows, a strong nose with a little crick in the center that gave him some character (otherwise, he would’ve been blandly stunning), and beneath a short beard, a classically handsome jawline.

  He looked — shit! — like a real specimen of a man. A Disney prince who went off the compound, lived a little, and came back with a couple of hidden scars and a barrel of good stories. Wait, did that make me the princess?

  He also, relatedly, looked mad.

  “H-hi,” I managed to stammer out.

  In the blink of an eye, his face morphed from enraged to jovial, kidding even.

  Tate stuck his hand out. “Hi, I’m Evil Prick. And who might you be?”

  I raised an eyebrow. Was he really gonna let my insolence roll right off his back?

  I hesitated a beat — apparently, he was. Tate showed no signs of firing me. A surge of relief flooded my body, and I clasped his hand in mine, riding the adrenaline rush of, well, keeping my job.

  As I faltered for words, the small, rotund man standing at Tate’s side piped up.

  With a sneer, he said, “She’s just some waitress, sir. Far below your pay grade.”

  Okay, I would’ve been happy to just stay silent, mind my business, and be grateful to work another day, but that was a bridge too far. I might be trailer trash from the Vegas slums, but I wasn’t below anyone’s pay grade, certainly not this asshole’s.

  “I’m Kiki,” I declared. That didn’t feel like enough, so I elaborated, “I work here.”

  Tate’s eyes roamed over my outfit in a way that made my skin tingle beneath my bedazzled tights.

  “Yes, I can see that. The scrubbing was also a hint,” he replied gesturing to the table. “Paying customers don’t usually do the mopping.”

  My face flushed and I tried to keep my gaze from following the visual path from the top of his tie down to the waistband of his pants.

  “I—”

  “Jack,” Tate said, turning to the man on his right. “How long has she worked here for?”

  “I can check the records, sir, if you’d like.”

  Maybe it was the heat of the moment, or maybe it was a long-building resentment to Dazzlers, but in that split second, my tongue got away from me. My dad always said I had a temper like a rattlesnake — didn’t want trouble, but if you got too close, I’d shake my tail and raise hell.

  “Hey, I’m standing right in front of you,” I spat. “You can ask me the questions. No need to send your little minion running around.”

  Tate bit back what looked like a grin creasing his tan cheeks. “My minion, eh?”

  Well, I’d already started the rant that was sure to seal my fate at Dazzlers. Might as well fucking finish it.

  “Yeah, your minion.” Said minion was about to interject, you could tell by his puffed-out cheeks, but I cut him off. “The least you can do as the owner of this casino is to treat me with some basic decency.”

  “How do you know I own Dazzlers?” Tate asked, with a mixture of disturbing calm and a little something else. Was it regret? There was a taste on my tongue like he hadn’t wanted to be ID’d.

  “The posters,” I said slowly, making sure to enunciate. “You’re all over town making that idiotic pose.”

  I copied his infamous stance from the signs — thumbs tucked into belt loops, shoulders squared and a sexy scowl. Whichever photographer gave him that instruction was apparently more accustomed to working with male strippers than billionaires. The whole effect was very 2000s boy band.

  Jack the minion’s face flamed red.

  “Sir, she can’t talk to you like that!” he squealed. “I’ll fire her right now, this very instant, you just give the word.”

  Tate held up a hand as his lips twitched upward. “No need, Jack. She — Kiki, rather — is right. The posters are ridiculous.”

  “You look wonderful in them, if I may say so, sir,” Jack dithered.

  Tate’s chest rose with tight exasperation at the man’s slime-soaked words. What is it like, I wondered, to have someone follow you around all day, saying everything you want to hear? Thinking about my aching feet and my blistered hands, for a fleeting moment, this sounded like a dream. It’d be like floating through perfumed air. Everything around me would become all the sweeter.

  But no sooner had I thought it, then I realized the sour notes in the aroma. You’d feel as though the world around you were built on trembling ground, like your reality was fading in and out with the yeses of lesser men. Clearly, it was starting to wear on Tate, perhaps had been for some time. He didn’t look thrilled by the constant praise. He looked exhausted, like every second he refrained from rolling his eyes was a dull chore. Despite my long-ingrained hatred for the Dazzlers boy wonder, my heart prickled with pity. My world might suck, but at least it was all mine.

  Then I remembered myself. Why the fuck was I feeling sorry for some playboy? He was rich, he was gorgeous — he didn’t need an ounce of my sympathy.

  I steeled myself and acidly replied as though trying to get fired, “Your boy’s a yes-man.” My head bent to Jack, who lurched back as though gut punched.

  What the fuck am I doing? I asked myself. I had a temper, sure, but this was beyond just a Kiki flame-up. What had gotten into me?

  Here, I think, is the real answer — a small, stupid, part of me was hoping that, thanks to my heavy dose of self-sabotage, Tate would fire me right then and there, thus saving me from the black hole of Dazzlers. Sure, it would mean I was out of a job and still with my father to support, but that was a small price to pay for avoiding a life of carpet vomit and soaked felt. I was egging on the owner, hoping that his dazzling grin would in turn fade and, in a moment of fury — because God knows men like him always have tempers — he would fire me, tell me to walk out and never step foot in his casino again. Then, maybe, I could chase that cabin in Washington.

  Instead, he laughed.

  Laughed.

  “You’re right,” Tate said, speaking as if Jack wasn’t even there, the way he’d spoken about me only moments ago — oh, how quickly tables turn. “He is a yes-man.”

  Jack blustered, “B-but—”

  “No, Jack. It wasn’t a question.”

  The little man’s face flushed. “But… well. Okay, sir. If you say so. I guess you’re right, sir, you usually are.”

  I’d never seen a pinker belly in my life. I wouldn’t trust this Jack guy to run a decent fruit stand on the side of the road, let alone a casino. One can only imagine what kind of shady shit a guy without a moral compass, just a head with which to nod, might get up to in Vegas.

  My blood curdled. I didn’t need to imagine — I knew exactly what the Jacks of the world did. They encouraged gambling addicts day in and day out, placing casino flyers in front of Gamblers Anonymous and giving the guys they recognized extra liquor, in the hopes that they’d drop more that day than usual. The story was familiar, too familiar.

  And the Tates of the world? They just sat back and watched it happen, because they couldn’t be bothered to take a little responsibility. No, not these silver-spooned princelings. Everything was just ‘yessir’ and ‘right away, mister.’ Though I’d felt an initial spark of attraction to him — because, I mean,
come on, he was hot — I knew we had nothing in common. Everything I had, I earned. Everything he had, he inherited.

  “You never answered my question,” Tate said suddenly.

  My mind went blank. The rage had run the colors to white. “What?”

  “My question. I asked how long you’d worked here for.”

  “It’s a complicated answer.”

  He smirked. “Certainly the math can’t be that difficult.”

  I felt my shoulders tighten. Of course he didn’t realize what he’d just implied about my level of education, but it was a sore spot and the lesser woman in me lashed out.

  “Yes, Tate, I can do math. For one, I’m a cocktail waitress — I spend all day doing math. For another — just because I’m a girl doesn’t mean I can’t add. I’m sure ladies just dumb themselves down around you to avoid having a conversation.”

  Well, that should close the chapter on my time here, I thought with sickening finality. There was definitely no coming back from that little outburst. The reality of the situation began to descend as his blue gaze leveled with mine. I’d have no job, and Tate would probably blacklist me from other casinos. In a matter of weeks, my father and I would be on the streets, begging for food, maybe with a mangy cur at our sides.

  Yes, I’m a pessimist. I know, it’s not my finest trait.

  But really, I’d dug myself into a hole Satan himself couldn’t pull me out of. Probably because he was a close personal friend of Tate, et al.

  He tried to fight back. “I didn’t mean — I know women can—”

  “And, for the record,” I added, because either way I was toast, “the answer is that I’ve worked here for six months, but it’s basically been a lifetime. Because my dad worked here my whole life, up until pretty recently, when he hit retirement and decided to come back and spend his pension in this casino. I’ve been coming to Dazzlers since I was born to watch my dad work, but mostly to watch him lose all the money he earned here. So, yeah. Feels like I’ve been on the Dazzlers payroll for a long fucking time.”

  Tate’s face went pale, and beneath the shiny veneer of self-congratulatory bullshit, I saw a ripple of real emotion. Something had set him off. I’d been teetering on the edge of getting fired for several minutes now, but nothing had upset him the way my last tirade had. It was as if I’d found the sole soft spot in a rock-hard wall.