Offensive Behavior (Sidelined #1)

by Ainslie Paton

  Mass-scale grumbling ensued. He wasn’t supposed to ask that. Shit. Lux met his eyes with her patented kiss-off look. Up close and casual like this when it couldn’t be construed as part of her act, he didn’t like it one bit. And he didn’t like the disapproval either.

  “Ah, none of that. You’re not strippers, but why the hell not? You’re more than halfway there, why not own it?” It was the same logic he’d used at Plus. Halfway good was never good enough. To succeed you had to commit one hundred percent, even when that went against common sense and collected wisdom.

  “Wow,” said Cinnamon. “I’m a pole dancer because one day I’m going to be a chiropractor and not crippled with debt when I get there. You do know what a stripper does?”

  Interesting, they expected him to judge them poorly for what they did. “Earns more than you guys. Works in better clubs. Gets to become a debt-free chiropractor a whole lot quicker.”

  “Takes her clothes off for money,” said Lavinia. “Let’s men touch her. Gives lap dances.”

  “None of that is a crime. It’s a choice. It’s an art. It’s an industry.”

  “The sex industry,” said Lux. “Which traditionally takes advantage of women.” Her expression told him he could fuck off and die, but he didn’t get it. She didn’t get it.

  “You think because you don’t strip and you don’t work in a real strip joint you’re not in the sex industry?”

  “Yes, we’re hypocrites,” she said.

  “Exactly.” So she did get it. “You get paid the same way.” He looked around the table. “You’re all contractors, right? You have no benefits,” he threw his hands up in frustration. “It’s like being half pregnant.”

  “I don’t like this guy anymore. I’m ordering something expensive to go with my hypocritical, not a stripper, not accidentally pregnant attitude,” said Lavinia. She half stood with the menu in her hand to get a waitress’ attention and he thought for a moment she was about to lean over and slap him. Maybe he deserved it. Was it more chivalrous to suggest they should be fully dressed at all times data-entry operators?

  “That’s exactly what my parents think,” said Tiffany. “I told them it was just dancing. They think I’m a prostitute.”

  “Now that’s different. Dancing for money and sex for money are not the same things.” Any fool could see that.

  “Some strippers sell sex, so what you’re saying is we might as well all do that,” said Lux. She had a way of putting words in his mouth that annoyed him.

  “I’m not saying that. I’m only saying you’re all talented.” He glanced at Tiffany. “You’ll get there if you keep working at it.” Tiffany ducked her head and blushed, and it occurred to him he need not have singled her out, even though what he said was true. Sarina would’ve chewed him out for that.

  “You could all be doing better for yourselves at a better club.”

  “You think we should be strippers, well of course you do,” said Cinnamon. “We only get to be saints or whores.”

  “What I think is irrelevant, but you’d be in good company. Gypsy Rose Lee, Josephine Baker, Mata Hari, all strippers.”

  “Who?” said Tiffany.

  “Have you been researching strippers? That’s creepy, ew,” said Cinnamon.

  “I have time on my hands.” And yes, maybe it was a slimy thing to have admitted to.

  “He’s right.” Lavinia slid the menu between the salt and pepper shakers. “Mata Hari was a spy. Josephine was the bomb. First black movie star, got a medal of honor for working for the French Resistance in World War Two, and that woman refused to dance for segregated audiences. She stood on stage with Dr. King.”

  Reid went on. “Channing Tatum, Lady Gaga, Chris Pratt, Dita Von Teese, Diablo Cody.”

  “She wrote Juno and United States of Tara,” said Vi.

  “All reportedly strippers at one time. You do not have to be ashamed of what you do, clothed or unclothed.”

  “You’re just being a man,” said Cinnamon.

  “If I was being a man I might react like Tiff’s father. I’m being a realist, no bullshit, no moral judgments. I don’t believe God is going to get you for this. I think if you’ve got an asset you have a responsibility to use it to the best advantage.”

  “So you’d have no trouble dating a stripper,” said Lux. “Treating her with respect. Taking her home to meet Mom?”

  Fuck, if only that was an invitation. No hesitation. “None.”

  Lux shook her head in disbelief. “That’s bullshit.”

  It was on the tip of his tongue to say try me, when the waitress arrived with the coffee pot. Everyone wanted a refill. Reid just wanted Lux to meet his eyes again.

  “What do you do for money, Reid?”

  He turned to Vi. He could say any old thing, it wouldn’t matter. “I’m an unemployed bum.”

  “So you’re not a dealer?”

  He laughed. “You think I’m a drug dealer?” He glanced at Lux. She was stirring sugar into her coffee, but her eyes flicked up to his.

  Vi shoved her hand in front of his face. “You have money, you have free time, you hang out at Lucky’s.” She ticked those points off finger by finger. “You know about stripper history. You don’t look like a sad bean counter, or a roofer, or a salesman.”

  “I’m totally a drug dealer.”

  A cone of silence descended on their table. Apparently that wasn’t funny. “If I was a dealer, don’t you think I’d fuck myself up with my own product?”

  “Didn’t say you were good at it,” Vi grumbled.

  “I’m not a dealer. I promise I’m not. I had a great job I loved, but I screwed it up and got fired, that’s why I’ve been moping around Lucky’s, drowning my sorrows.” He fixed on his brunette dream girl who’d unwittingly given him another reason to keep showing up. “But I told Lux if she came out with us, I’d straighten up, so you won’t be seeing me around anymore.”

  The suggestion of a smile tugged at Lux’s lips. It did strange things to his pulse.

  “Hold on.” Cinnamon made a TV hostess arm wave over the table. “You told Lux you’d quit boozing if she went out with you, this is not the same thing.”

  “It’s not, but this is Lux’s choice.” Like it was her choice not to tell the whole story. Did she do it to protect him from embarrassment? She had no idea how well he had embarrassing himself checked off already.

  “That girl is a damn fool,” said Lavinia. “Of all of us she could be earning bank, in clubs where the dancers are treated right and the big money shows up, private parties, the works, but she won’t take the chance. There’s this club, Madame Amour, they have a competition with prize money. Lux could take it out if she wanted to. She won’t even try.”

  “You don’t strike me as the scared type, Lux?”

  Lux folded her arms, the action sending his eyes straight to her chest. “You’re buying my breakfast, not my life story.”

  He blinked hard, had to bite back a response. He wanted to order everyone out of the room so he could go one on one with Lux about wasting her talent. But he wasn’t in a conference room, he was in a diner surprisingly lively for nearly 4 a.m. He shifted, and it was only when his spine hit the chair’s back he realized he’d been leaning way forward. When he did that at Plus, Sarina would touch his shoulder or scribble him a note telling him to sit back, not to look like he was about to jump down a person’s throat.

  He palmed his face. He was having breakfast with five women he didn’t know, one of whom he virtually itched to be alone with, and he’d lectured them about their work choices, their lives.

  “You’re right. I’m sorry.” He was a desperately useless human being and he finally understood what Sarina had tried to teach him. Mostly people want to enjoy their work, and if they enjoy it, they do well at it, and the way to connect with people was to talk to them about what they enjoyed.

  “What I should’ve asked you all is if you were having fun?”

  Dead silence.

  So maybe he
still didn’t get it, because when Sarina asked that, the people she talked to got busy responding, either complaining about things that annoyed them or falling about like silly kittens, pretty much purring and rubbing up against all the things they liked about work. It’d always been his cue to walk away, now it was his backup plan.

  “What, like now?” said Lavinia. “I’ve eaten enough to store till next winter.” There were agreeable murmurs.

  “No, as dancers? Does what you do make you happy?”

  There was another awkward silence and Reid recognized it for what it was. To answer the question, the women had to share a part of themselves with him, and he’d done nothing to prove himself worthy of that.

  Cinnamon took a sip of her coffee. “It’s a hell of a lot more honest than working as a massage therapist.” She put her cup down and took a deep breath. “There were guys who didn’t want to pay me full price because I didn’t give them a happy ending. I’m trained as a sports masseuse but going into locker rooms made me so nervous I used to puke. You know there are teams who won’t hire men, because they think there’s something weird about having another man touch them. They didn’t hire me because I was as good as a male masseuse, but because I was a woman. That’s not positive discrimination, it’s sleazy. I don’t have to worry about what the men who watch me dance are thinking. I know what they’re thinking. I don’t have to worry that my hand is going to accidentally end up somewhere I don’t want it. So yes, this is my happy thing till I’m done studying.”

  “You never said that before,” said Lavinia. She shoulder-bumped Cinnamon. “Girl, that’s wicked twisted.” She looked at Reid. “I don’t have any Josephine Baker kinda reason for doing this. I just know this body,” she shimmied her shoulders, “ain’t gonna last forever and I want to use it before I lose it. I used to work in an office, but the money was bad and it was so boring I thought I was going to take a staple gun and go postal. One day I’ll have to do something different, but I’m young, I’m having fun and the fact I can make a man’s tongue hang out while I do it, yeah, I’ll take that. My name is Lizabeth, by the way.” She held her hand out to shake and Reid took it.

  “I’m Kathryn,” said the dancer known as Cinnamon. She held her hand out too.

  He was blown away by the power of that simple question and what happened when he actually listened to the answer. He felt connected to the women now in a way hired cars, waffles and grand gestures didn’t achieve. He looked to Tiffany.

  “I don’t know yet. I’m so bad at it,” she said. “But there are worse things. I’m a singer more than a dancer and I want to be in musicals but I have to do something between auditions and I figured this might help build my confidence. At my last audition they said I had poor stage presence.” She stretched her hand across the table to Reid. “My name is Therese.”

  Reid shook Therese’s hand, but he waited on Lux’s answer as if his next career move depended on it.

  “No kidding,” said Vi. “I used to sing, cocktail bars and lounges. I wasn’t Barbra Streisand or anything, and I got older and jobs dried up. Lou has been good to me. This job keeps the rent paid, feeds me, my mother and daughter, and gives me enough left over to buy books. I could do worse.”

  Lux played with the zipper end on her hoodie, her eyes down; she made no move to take her turn. He needed Sarina on speed dial and a dozen more of her inane but magic questions if he was going to connect with Lux, if he was going to learn her real name before they all turned into pumpkins.

  Then she looked up. “You tell me, Reid.”

  He grinned while the others made ooh, ahh sounds. He freaking loved the way his name sounded coming from her mouth, that was a fantasy fulfilled right there. He’d like to make her shout it. Jesus Christ, to be close to her, to think he could make her feel about him like he felt about her.

  Someone said, “That shut him up.”

  It was in every line of her body, every thrilling spin and thrust and stretch, every impossible position and improbable pose. She loved it. But she’d trapped him into speaking for her, into acting like his opinion came before hers, into his usual offensive, he knew best behavior.

  Not this time.

  “I don’t know how you feel about it, but I know how you make me feel.”

  More catcalling and Vi’s elbow in his ribs. The hint of a smile that threatened on Lux’s lovely face went Defcon. The force of it hit his chest, hitched his breath and prickled his throat.

  She smiled all the way to her eyes. “How do I make you feel?”

  He leaned forward, because he wanted her to know what she did to him. Made him want to dive across the table to be close to her. “Like you could teach me to fly.”

  Lux didn’t break eye contact. Reid hardly dared to breathe.

  Lizabeth said, “You two should so get a room.”

  EIGHT

  They’d taken everyone else home, now it was the two of them. Zarley had no excuse to sit snug in the shelter of Reid’s body in the back of the SUV. She sat on one side, Reid on the other, a huge expanse of leather between them. It seemed like a tragic misuse of resources.

  “We can drop me off first,” he said.

  She wasn’t worried about him seeing where she lived anymore. He might come off like a man who held his ground, who you had to skirt around, but she had the impression that if she hip-checked him he’d fold at her feet.

  “I’m closer, and I am the Black Widow when I’m not a pole dancer so I think it will be okay for you to know what street I live in.” She scooted over that leather wasteland to speak to the driver between the seats. Then she simply stayed in that halfway position, where she could look closer at Reid, where she could enjoy the way he looked at her.

  Like she was somebody he wanted and was scared to try for.

  It made her feel tense in a good, blood rushing, gut squirming, toe curling way, in a way she hadn’t felt in a while. It made her feel powerful in a way she only felt on stage.

  Maybe they should get a room.

  She watched his chest rise and fall, too quickly to peg him as relaxed. He wore a white business shirt with the cuffs turned back to show his long-boned forearms. Black jeans didn’t disguise the muscle of his thighs and she’d already had a preview of how his pants framed his tight ass. He needed a haircut, but the shaggy look suited him. He wasn’t smiling. He’d had one hand clasped around his kneecap, but now he flattened it on the seat between them as though he’d intended to reach for her and thought better of it at the last moment.

  She put her hand on the seat beside his, almost touching. He twitched. She watched his face, his eyes, going to their hands, then bouncing back to hers. She licked her lips and he grunted softly. This big, strange, aggressive, opinionated, not good at taking no for an answer man, was waiting for her to make the first move.

  She really should thank him for breakfast, remind him of his promise to quit Lucky’s and get out of the car he’d hired. That was the way to avoid trouble and he’d already signed on as a complication.

  Only a year ago she’d specialized in complicated, the messier the better. She wasn’t doing that anymore.

  She turned more fully to face him. “This is a thing.”

  He frowned but turned toward her, putting his back against the door.

  “Between you and me. We’re having a thing.”

  “I’m not following.”

  “You have a thing for me.”

  He grunted. “There’s no disputing that.”

  “Why me?”

  “We’d need all day.”

  “Give me the summary.”

  “I’m in awe of what you can do with your body.”

  “Ah-huh.”

  “I’m turned on by the things you say.”

  She made a noise of disbelief. “I mostly argue with you. I yelled at you.”

  “You don’t get rationales in the summary version.”

  “So you’re like most guys, you want to get with an exotic dancer. It’s a sexual conques
t thing.”

  “Ah.” Now he broke eye contact. He turned his head away completely to look out the window.

  “It’s okay.” She almost laughed, but that would be cruel. Goddam it. “I have a thing for you too.”

  He turned his head around, his expression a little fierce, and hit her with her own question. “Why?”

  “Does it matter?” He wanted. It’d been a dry spell. She was offering. It could be good. It was a one-time thing.

  His mouth flattened. Not what he was expecting. “I’m the drunk who ogled you on stage for a month and never had the guts to step up and tip you, who made you feel like you’d been attacked twice in that alley, and then let you see him at his worst physically. I think I barfed on you. That cannot be attractive.” He stopped her responding with a raised hand. “I’m unemployed. I have an income, but I don’t have a job and I have no idea when I will have one again. I think it matters.”

  “It was close, might have splattered my shoes.”

  “Shit.” He palmed his face, his head dropping forward so she saw the curve of his neck and imagined what it might feel like to grip him there, hold on while she treated him to a lap dance.

  “You didn’t tip anyone else either, except Vi.”

  He straightened up and hit her with his laser lock eyes. “I am out of my depth with you.”

  “I can see that and I like it. I like the idea you’re obsessed with me.”

  He groaned. “That cannot be healthy.”

  “Probably not.” She eased closer and his nostrils flared. “But then I’m a pole dancer who hasn’t committed and you’re a bum without prospects.”

  He laughed and lifted one arm so it draped across the seat back, almost like he was making a space for her to fit into. “In your experience, what happens when two people have a thing?”

  She moved into the space and his breath stalled. She ran a finger down the middle of his chest to his belt, over the crispy cotton of his shirt, but kept her eyes on his. “They fuck like rabbits.”

  Reid made a choking sound. “I don’t even know your name.”

  She held out her hand like Lizabeth had first done. “I’m Zarley.”